Trust and Obey

Introduction

Trust and Obey are words that we know as Christians. We sing about them. We read about them. We talk about them. But how well do we practice them in our Christian lives? Think about the things that we place our trust in. We trust in material things. We trust in organizations. We trust in other people. We trust in ourselves. We trust in the Lord. What should be the thing that we trust the most in? We know the church answer is the Lord because He never changes… but what do we often place our trust in the most often? Ourselves! We trust in ourselves and our plans and our talents and our abilities and our hearts and our brains and this all comes natural - but it creates a fundamental problem in our lives. Do you remember the beginning of James 4 from last Sunday night? What did we see from the beginning of this chapter? That the cause of the problems in our lives is the sin that resides inside of us. We are at war with God, at least our flesh is. Here’s the problem in our lives: We want to follow the desires of our heart but our heart is at odds with the Lord more times than not. So, what do we need? Rather than making and following our own plans, we first need to make sure that our plans are in line with God’s plan.

Rather than trusting in ourselves and our abilities, Jesus wants us to trust completely in Himself. He wants us to follow His will for our lives and to find satisfaction, joy, and peace in Him as we trust and obey. Sometimes we view trusting and obeying as things that we have to do - kind of like taking some nasty tasting medicine. Have you ever had medicine that just tastes disgusting? There are times where it might seem like God’s will isn’t all that great because it isn’t what we want… but the fact of the matter is that God’s will and plan for our lives isn’t nasty tasting medicine, it’s steak and potatoes. It’s biscuits and gravy. It’s exactly what we need and it’s amazing because God knows best even when we don’t see it that way! Tonight as we finish James 4 and begin James 5, we’re going to unpack what it means to trust and obey God’s will in our lives and why that matters so much day in and day out.

James 4:13–5:6 CSB

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. 15 Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it. 1 Come now, you rich people, weep and wail over the miseries that are coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days. 4 Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Armies. 5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous, who does not resist you.

“If the Lord wills” - every day in our lives, this should be our prayer. Before we act, before we speak, before we do something big or small, our prayer should be that what we are about to do is in line with God’s will and if it is not, for Him to make that apparent. Let’s pray right now that God would help us apply this appropriately to our lives tonight and help us live out His will.

We Must Trust God Because We Are Not Guaranteed Tomorrow (13-16)

This concluding section of James 4 contains within it a verse that we’re all familiar with: Life is like a vapor, here one minute and gone the next. How many of you have heard of that verse before? How many of us have experienced it to be true? We know that this is how life is on this planet. People are here and fine one minute and gone the next. Things are well one minute and different the next. The picture painted by James in James 4:14 is like the morning dew. Here one minute and then whenever the sun shines, it dissipates. Because our lives are this way, James is instructing his audience of believers to understand the importance of relying on God’s plan rather than our personal plan because we are finite and only see a snippet of the big picture.

Now, this steps on my toes because I’m a planning type person. Whenever I was 15, I had my entire life planned out. I was going to graduate from Ozark High School with honors and go to Baylor University in Waco, Texas and get into their medical program and work in Dallas, Texas and become a neurosurgeon in my late 20s. I’d work for 15-25 years and save a bunch of lives and retire by the time I was 50 and have the rest of my life to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, however I wanted, for the sole reason because I could do it. From an outsiders perspective, this sounds great. Save lives, get paid lots of money, retire early, relax and spend your remaining decades (hopefully) on cruise control so to speak. God has a unique way of wrecking our plans and revealing to us His will in His perfect timing. See, God had a different plan for me - ministry versus medicine. I trust that you’ve had your plans changed a time or two by God. Some take this to the extreme that says that we shouldn’t make plans… that’s foolish. Jesus said as much with the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 as the master gave resources to his servants and expects a return on that investment. This requires us to plan how to best maximize that investment. Planning isn’t foolish - it’s Biblical… but we have to understand this principle: We write our plans in pencil, knowing that God alone plans in pen.

As we look at our plans, we have to understand that sometimes they change. Lindsey and I planned on going to Guatemala this summer and then we found out that literally that week we’re going to have baby #2 - God changes our plans and throws wrenches in them at times and that’s amazing - but also confusing!

Proverbs 16:9 CSB

9 A person’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps.

Proverbs 19:21 CSB

21 Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the Lord’s decree will prevail.

We have to wait for the Lord and trust in His perfect plan. What I’ve come to realize and what I’ve witnessed in the lives of some of the people nearest and dearest to me is that we are not guaranteed tomorrow and we must take advantage of the time we have today, regardless of our age. My mind goes to my grandmother in this regard. She lives about 10 minutes away from my parents and her church in Ozark but she is more active in ministry now in her mid 80s than she was 5-10 years ago. There are people in Ozark Missouri who are homeless and many who are living beneath the poverty line and who need clothes and hygiene items and things like that so FBC Ozark launched something called a Clothing Ministry several years ago before COVID that has exploded since COVID. They minister to hundreds of families in Ozark and provide them with much needed items. My grandmother volunteers with this ministry 2x each week and she does this with about a half dozen or so senior adults and several of them are widows who use this ministry to serve and help others in need. My grandmother knows that she isn’t going to be able to do this forever, but while she still can, she wants to serve others and help those in need. There’s work to be done!

This doesn’t mean that relaxation and rest are bad things - they’re good things and they’re absolutely necessary to prevent burnout! But, imagine how the American dream works. You graduate high school or college and you enter the workforce. You work hard for years and years and eventually, if you’re able, you do what? You retire. The American Dream doesn’t just promote a normal retirement… it promotes a luxurious retirement. A retirement filled with a snowbird home in Florida where you can go out on your big boat and collect sea shells and fish and play golf and play in the ocean and do nothing of significant value. You can just kind of coast through the rest of this life because your hard work is finished. How on earth does this align with the Bible? Well the Bible tells us that each day is a gift from the Lord and that each of our days are numbered by Him. What does that mean? It means this: There is no such thing as a spiritual retirement. God has work for us to do each day of our lives. There are people for us to serve. There are people for us to pray for. There are people for us to assist. There is Scripture for us to study. There are songs of praise for us to sing. There is work to be done! We must trust God’s plan because we’re not guaranteed tomorrow and we must do the work that God would have us do today because we can’t put it off.

In the context of James 4, there are people (found in chapter 5) who are tempted to take matters into their own hands rather than trusting in God’s plans. They want do things their way, right away but we know that our way isn’t always God’s way and we have to come to realize that that is ok. We must trust in God’s plan and do what He wants us to do. What we have in James are people who are tempted to trust in their business plans - specifically - and to do what will make them a buck or what they think will make them prosperous rather than trusting in God to provide. Again, planning isn’t bad - it’s good! But its the way that we plan. As Christians we know our eternal destination but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Therefore, James tells us that each day we have to pray for God’s will and if something is God’s will then we do it but we can’t boast about all the things that we have planned because ultimately we aren’t God! There are people in our world who refuse to trust in God’s will because they ignore it, deny it entirely, or they know it but they disobey it.

The positive aspect is found in verse 15 as James instructs us to pray and not only pray but to genuinely obey God’s will. This is the positive aspect. This is what we must do. How can we know God’s will for our lives? John MacArthur shared in a sermon on this text that 90% of God’s will for our lives is revealed in God’s Word. Sure, God’s Word won’t tell you exactly who to marry and things like that, but God’s Word will tell you characteristics to look for in a spouse or friend. What are the specific ways to know God’s will for our lives?

Dive into God’s Word

Devote time to God in Prayer

Deepen Relationships with God’s People

We must not assume that we have a year. We must not assume that we have 10 years. We must not assume that those in our community have that amount of time either - we make long-term plans, yes, but we can’t have long-term laziness… We need urgency and we need wisdom. We need to trust in God and do the good things that He has in store for us to do because we don’t know what tomorrow holds for us and for others. We need God’s wisdom and we need Godly urgency to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples rather than saying that we’ll do those things whenever we eventually have time. Have you noticed that whenever we say that we’ll do something whenever we have time, we never seem to have the time? So many do the same with salvation. I’ll do business with Jesus whenever I’m older or whenever I’m done doing what I want to do. We can’t treat Jesus like this. We can’t treat His people like this. There is work to be done, our life is a vapor, and we must follow God’s plan and do that good work today as we trust in His plan.

We Must Obey God Because We Have A Self-Centered Nature (1-6)

Not only do we trust, but in chapter 5 we see that we have to also submit to God’s plan and this requires us to fight against our fleshly, sinful self! James is a book that had a unique way to step on our toes and one pastor preached through it verse by verse for several months and a congregation member came up to him after the final message and thanked him so much for the sermon series and the member told the pastor that he was so thankful that James wasn’t as long as Hebrews or Acts. The preacher asked him why he felt that way and the member said that he didn’t know if he’d have any toes left if James was any longer! As much as James steps on our toes, we know that James addresses this letter toward believers who are growing in their walk with the Lord and he gives plenty of practical instruction. James 5:1-6, though, is one of the only passages in the entire book that is likely addressed to nonbelievers. They are not called brothers and sisters, instead they are instructed to weep and wail and they are labeled as the murderers of the righteous. Why would James include this in this letter? For one, James was inspired to write what he wrote by the Holy Spirit. But why would God want these 6 verses in this letter? To help us see the reality of the situation that we are all facing. See, we all have a self-centered nature that is opposed to God. Because of this, we need to make sure that we are right with the Lord and saved by grace through faith in Christ and if not, we need to see clearly that God’s justice and judgment is coming soon! Because of this, for those who are Christians, these verses serve as a constant reminder to remain patient and remain obedient to God and His Word, even in times of suffering (as chapter 1 told us).

Throughout the New Testament, we see warning after warning against the love of money - not necessarily money itself, but the passion, motivation, and exaltation of money. We see Jesus talk about this in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:24

Matthew 6:24 CSB

24 “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

The idea here in James 5 is not that one cannot be rich and be a follower of Jesus, that’s not true - we see examples of people in the New Testament church of people who were wealthy and opened their homes for worship and serving others. The idea is of who the master is: Self, or Christ. The majority of the people addressed in the letter of James are poor - that’s why there was the instruction on not showing favoritism to a wealthy guest versus a poor guest in James 2:1-13. The gap between rich and poor in this world was far greater than even today but James is making the point that there is an even greater gap: The gap between self-righteousness and Godly righteousness. James is trying to help his listeners properly understand what God thinks about rich people whose master is self versus God.

We all know people who look really good on the outside and who people aspire to be like but who on the inside are dead and its because Christ is not their master. The businessman who knows how to make money at every turn. The athlete who inspires youth to practice harder, jump higher, and get up when life knocks them down. The doctor who saves lives each day with a smile. The list goes on. We so often exalt what we see on the outside rather than what thrives underneath. In our society in America, amassing great wealth is not only acceptable but admired! We look on the outside, but God see’s what lies beneath and what we all need is to evaluate what lies beneath our skin as well. What is our focus? What is our motivation? It’s easy because of our self-centered nature to strive to amass more and live a life of extravagance even if we don’t think it’s really that extravagant. Look at the description of these servants of money: They hoarded their possessions (2-3), they lived a life of extravagance (5), and they demonstrated injustice toward others (4-6).

They were given much and the expectation whenever we are given much is to give back much. To use what is given to serve. Now, many of us would say that this doesn’t apply to us. We’re not rich. We’re not the 1%’ers in the world. We’re Christians, we’re not the people James is addressing in James 5:1-6. Don’t be so quick… Each one of us have a fallen, self-centered nature. Each one of us, especially in the United States, are so blessed compared to people in other countries around the world. Our Guatemalan brothers and sisters who we will minister with in a few months time reside in 12 x 16 houses often times. Half the world lives on less than $2 per day - we have it so good. So often we have blinders up that prevent us from seeing all the blessings that God has given to us because we’re so busy looking at other people who seem to have more on the outside than us. Isn’t jealousy the thief of joy? Yet, that is our self-centered nature shining through!

What is the solution? To see things the way that God does. Wealth is not necessarily a sign of a life well lived just as poverty is not necessarily a sign of a bad life or God’s judgment. It can be - sure, but it’s not a straight line. What do we need? We need the wisdom of God as James 4 told us to help us to obey God and see things His way rather than seeing things the way of our world. Our world craves more and more - especially in turbulent times like the ones that we are living in. But God’s Word instructs us to give more and trust more in our God. What do we really need? We need God’s will. We need God’s presence. We need God’s provision. Nothing more - but certainly nothing less.

Jesus guards against this with the model prayer in Matthew 6 as He quotes from Proverbs 30:8

Proverbs 30:8 CSB

8 Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither poverty nor wealth; feed me with the food I need.

Give me this day my daily bread… that should be our prayer to the Lord. To guard us against the fleshly desire in our heart for more and the ungodly temptation to satisfy self. We don’t have to be rich in the eyes of our society to squander our lives - we can all fall into the temptation to value and prioritize worldly things that have no eternal value. Whenever we do this, we act a fool and we disregard this warning in James 5.

We Need God’s Help to Trust and Obey

So, where is the hope in a message like this? It’s simply this: We need Jesus Christ. We need God’s help to live out Luke 9:23 and deny ourselves and follow after Christ. We need God’s help to see things the way that He does rather than the way that our sinful world does. We need God’s help to walk by faith and not by sight. Every day of our lives, we must be a people who seek first God’s will and pray for the ability to follow through with God’s will with active obedience. As we think about ourselves and our church, think of where you need God’s help in trusting and obeying. We all have a plan for our lives, but we need to discern God’s perfect plan for our lives. It’s easy to look at numbers and make projections and plans for our church as well, but more than any of those things, we need to pray for God’s will and God’s plan and we need to follow step by step after that in the days to come. We need to trust that He who has called us is faithful and we need to walk after Him in obedience each step of the way.

Let’s pray