James Week 10 - Time
Notes
Transcript
Passage
Passage
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.
Intro
Intro
A humble servant of the King doesn't plan for the future without thinking of his Master. We brought nothing into this life and own nothing to take into glory.
James is warning the rich particularly. It's easy to boast of a large estate as the legacy we leave behind, but as James would say, "Beloved brothers, everything we have is the Lord's." Nothing we do, say, or think escapes God's notice. Everything we do, everything we are, all we could call our own is, in fact, the Lords.
In this passage, James challenges the church about how they use their time. Since our life is so short we must have urgency with the Gospel and with decision we need to make to Move Forward spiritually. The important question to answer is, "What are you going to do with it?"
Time
Time
In this passage, James challenges the church about how they use their time. Since our life is so short we must have urgency with the Gospel and with decision we need to make to Move Forward spiritually. The important question to answer is, "What are you going to do with it?"
James now switches from no longer talking about how to be contrite and following God humbly, to what we do with our time
James in Vs. 13 shows us how some people talk - making plans for the future
Yet what makes Vs. 15 different from Vs. 13?
In Vs. 14 James lays out the fact that our life is a vapor, we are not guaranteed tomorrow, or our last breath
James is not teaching us that you shouldn’t make a plan for the future, he is teaching us that we shouldn’t make sloppy plans
Look at how Proverbs talks about plans
9 The heart of man plans his way,
but the Lord establishes his steps.
21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
Even Paul made plans
21 But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus.
19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.
Paul made plans for his future, yet what was the qualifier?
We are to make plans for our future, but we are to allow God to be the one that is orchestrating and setting up our plans
Then in Vs. 17 James closes out the chapter by pointing out something really tough
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
He said - if you know the right thing to do, and you do not do it, that is sin
No matter what that may be
Questions
Questions
How are you doing on developing the mindset of a humble servant of God?
When you plan for the week, do you consider what God would have you do?
How do you think the last sentence (v. 17) on doing the right thing fits with everything we've learned in James so far?
What has God called you to do NOW that you keep putting off until tomorrow? What areas of your life do you need to be obedient in? What steps of faith do you need to take now to act on the things that God has called you to do? What spiritual things have you been promising yourself that you will start doing, only to see the deadline continued to be pushed back? Are there areas of your life that you are trying to cram spiritually?
Making plans for our lives is a great, responsible thing. However, making plans for our lives without the input and consideration of what God has called us to do is folly and disobedient. Read Proverbs 16:9.
Who is in ultimate control of our lives?
Should we still plan our lives?
What should we remember as we plan our lives?
How often do you think about death/your death? How should that impact the way you orchestrate your life?
“If death is somebody else’s problem, Jesus is somebody else’s savior.” - Matthew McCullough Remember Death
What are your thoughts on that quote?