Sermon Tone Analysis

James 4:13-17.

"How to Plan Ahead"

Ajax Alliance Church.

Sunday February 12th, 2023.

James 4:13-17.

[13] Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"-- [14]yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

[15] Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

[16] As it is, you boast in your arrogance.

All such boasting is evil.

[17] So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

(ESV)

Over this past week, overwhelmed rescuers struggled to save people trapped under the rubble as the death toll from a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose past 17,000 this week, with despair mounting and the scale of the disaster hampering relief efforts.

(https://nationalpost.com/news/world/race-against-time-death-toll-passes-5000-from-earthquake-in-turkey-syria)

People have called this an act of God.

But why is it only in situations like this we call events such.

If you were to ask people in Turkey on Monday, what they expected this coming week to be like, you would most likely heard stories of going to work, enjoying time with friends and family, and making plans for doing various things that we all take for granted.

Although it's a good idea to make plans for various things in our life, if we fail to consider the sovereign nature of God in our lives we are in essence, setting ourselves up for disappointment or worse.

God has His own plans and when we ignore, deny, or disobey His will, there are significant consequences.

Life is far from simple.

It is a complex matrix of forces, events, people, contingencies, and circumstances over which we have little or no control, making it impossible for anyone to ascertain, design, or assure any specific future.

Despite that, some people foolishly imagine that they are in charge of their lives.

Sadly, such people ignore not only the existence of God's will, but also its benefit.

Christians have the comfort of knowing that the sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent God of the universe controls every event and circumstance of their lives and weaves them all into His perfect plan for them (Rom.

8:28).

How are we to plan in light of God`s will?

It be silly to plan without considering God`s will?

What if we execute our plans in a direction contrary to what God has revealed?

James tells us to consider in our planning process the blessing of acknowledging God`s will.

In James 4:13-17 he points to four elements in how to properly plan ahead.

First he shows: 1) The Foolishness of Ignoring God`s Will (James 4:13-14), 2) The Arrogance of Denying God`s Will (James 4:16) and 3) The Sin of Disobeying God`s Will (James 4:17).

James however shows us 4) The Blessing of Acknowledging God`s Will (James 4:15)

For us to consider How to properly Plan Ahead, we must first consider:

1) The Foolishness of Ignoring God's Will (James 4:13-14)

James 4:13-14.

[13]Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"-- [14]yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

(ESV)

In James 4:13, the first negative response to God's will is foolishly ignoring it, living as if God did not exist or was indifferent to and benign toward human behavior.

James addressed such people in familiar Old Testament prophetic style (cf.

Isa.

1:18); The persons James addresses, however, appear to be the Jewish Christians who are living in dispersion.

He writes this letter to them and not to unbelievers.

Although his tone changes, James seems to indicate that the readers know how to do that which is good (v.

17), which implies that they belong to the Christian community (Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953-2001).

Vol.

14: New Testament commentary: Exposition of James and the Epistles of John.

New Testament Commentary (146).

Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.)

James begins his address with his words come now which are an insistent, even brash call for attention.

James is in effect saying "Listen up!" or "Get this!"

The phrase come now appears in the New Testament only here and in James 5:1.

This begins an address where the claimants have a deliberate and calculated arrogance.

They would go where they liked, and for as long as they liked.

(Adamson, J. B. (1976).

The Epistle of James (p. 179).

Wm.

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.)

* Underlying this is the sentiment of our day.

People have their lives and plans and don't expect anything or anyone to get in the way.

This text is a wake-up call, in that it is an unconsidered life that is actually getting in the way of the reality of a sovereign God.

The targets of James's rebuke are those who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town/city, and spend a year there and trade/engage in business and make a profit."

The Greek text literally reads "the ones who are saying," indicating people who habitually live without regard for God's will.

The underlying Greek verb, legō, means to say something based on reason or logic.

James rebuked those who habitually think through and articulate their plans as if God did not exist or care (cf.

4:11-12).

There is somewhat of a parallel in Jesus' discourse on the end of the age in which he refers to the days of Noah: "For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away" (Matt.

24:38-39; also compare Luke 17:26-29).

Although no one faults a person for eating, drinking, and marrying, the point is that in the life of Noah's contemporaries God had no place.

These people lived as if God did not exist.

And this is also true of the merchants James addresses.

Note that James has no quarrel with the merchant's occupation.

Nor does he write about the ethics of buying and selling...James takes the businessmen to task for their disregard for God.

To them money is much more important than serving the Lord.

They make plans for the future without seeking the will of God (Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953-2001).

Vol.

14: New Testament commentary : Exposition of James and the Epistles of John.

New Testament Commentary (146-147).

Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.)

* The specific illustration James chose was one that would have been familiar to his readers.

Many Jewish people dispersed throughout the ancient world were successful businessmen, itinerant merchants who naturally sought out the flourishing trade centers in which to do business.

Wise planning and strategizing in business is not, of course, sinful in and of itself but commendable.

No spiritual principles are violated by anything the businessmen said.

The problem lies in what they did not do.

They did extensive planning, but in the course of their planning, they totally ignored God; God was not part of their agenda.

Like Satan's five self-centered "I wills" (Isa.

14:13-14) that caused his fall, the businessmen's statement contains five presumptuous elements indicating their ill-advised confidence.

First, is the choice of one's own time, today or tomorrow.

Second, they chose their own location for doing business, such and such a town/city.

Third, they chose their own duration, deciding to spend a year there.

Fourth, they chose their own enterprise, to trade/engage in business (literally, "to travel into an area for trade").

Finally, they chose their own goal or objective, to make a profit.

James is not attacking their profit motive, but their exclusion of God, because what bothers James is simply the presumption that one could so determine their future and the fact that these plans move on an entirely worldly plane in which the chief value is financial profit.

(Davids, P. H. (1982).

The Epistle of James: a commentary on the Greek text (p.

172).

Eerdmans.).

Please turn to Luke 12

Allowing for no contingencies, they planned as if they were omniscient, omnipotent, and invulnerable.

In Luke 12:16-21 the Lord Jesus Christ told a parable illustrating the folly of presumptuously leaving God out of one's planning:

Luke 12:16-21 [16]And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, [17]and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' [18]And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.