Living Arrogantly in the Future
Notes
Transcript
Scripture Intro:
Scripture Intro:
Scripture Reading (“Please stand…”)
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”— 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.
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.
Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
Pray...
Intro:
Intro:
In 1598 (or so),
William Shakespeare wrote his play, The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The main character was a man named Sir John Falstaff.
devious and opinionated...
a con man, planning to con two Windsor women out of their money.
He has other con men with him,
one of them... a man called Pistol.
Falstaff: I will not lend thee a penny.
Pistol responds with a line which has become one of our sayings for the last 400 years.
We say, “The world is your oyster.”
He said...
Pistol: Why then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.
I had a hard time not saying that phrase in a Popeye voice (rather than British)
Falstaff: Not a penny.
“The world’s mine oyster...”
“I with sword will open”
The world is mine for the taking.
I will get what I want… even if I need to us my sword.
Over time,
this phrase has morphed into a declaration that we typically say over high school graduates (or others who are embarking on a new chapter of life)...
“The world is your oyster.”
The entire world is open to you...
Go get what you want.
And you may even find a pearl inside.
This passage speaks to two groups of people,
and quite possibly,
someone could be in both groups (not mutually exclusive)
(4:13) "Come now, you who say..."
(5:1) "Come now, you rich..."
First group...
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”—
Overestimate Our Control
Overestimate Our Control
(Timer: ___ minutes left)
(Usually between 8:15 and 12:30 to get to 1st point)
We Think We Control What is Only God's to Control
We look to find our hope in our own ability.
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”—
Tomorrow:
“we will go” (future)
“we will make a profit”
yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
We boast in things that we have no control over.
(v. 16) “arrogance”
As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
The person who is described with this Greek word...
is “one who makes more of himself than reality justifies,”
or “promises more than he can perform,”
The issue with control...
1) Doubt God's power
2) Doubt God's heart
Maybe even that we desire predictability more than whatever God has designed for us.
So our control reveals what is going on in our heart toward God.
That’s why James uses the word “arrogance”.
It’s not a slight character flaw or something we need to “work on”
Our obsession for control...
shows us what we really think of God.
Greek translation of the OT...
“Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples.”
This person does not trust in God.
This shows up in...
For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
But it obviously pushes into related themes as our passage in James.
Thinking that you can shape you own life apart from God.
(v. 16) “all such boasting is evil”
B/c in the Gospel, we have nothing to boast about.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
App. The areas of life that you control most tightly...
Those are indicators of your unwillingness to surrender to God's will.
My control grows when I don't feel God is going to show up.
Or even worse, I think he will work,
but not the way I want.
What areas of life are you most gripped with control?
Instead...
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
“the Lord wills”
He is on the throne.
He rules and reigns.
Yet, we are so prone to think that we do.
“Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”
Overestimate Our Security
Overestimate Our Security
(Timer: How much time left?)
We Chase Security That is Only God's to Provide
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
There is truly nothing wrong with wealth and riches.
God gives his abundant gifts to people.
God provides lavishly.
Abraham, Job, David, Solomon...
some of the wealthiest people on the planet...
by God’s purpose and plan.
Yet, how do “riches” become an issue?
Why does James address these people as “you rich” (obviously negatively)?
“weep and howl”
“miseries coming upon you”
So if riches (in and of themselves) aren’t bad,
what’s the issue that James is writing about?
Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.
Written like bullet points (to help see the parallelism)...
Your riches have rotted and
your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver have corroded,
and their corrosion will be evidence against you
and will eat your flesh like fire.
There is a lot of disagreement among commentators who James is addressing here.
Is James addressing specific merchant and landowners,
or he is setting up some hypothetical,
or he is addressing "rich oppressors" who aren't even in the church...
** The point is that this type of behavior is contrary to a life of faith.
Why?
Riches pass away
They are as transient as we are.
We are like a “mist”
Our stuff is like a “mist”
It “rots”… “moth-eaten”… “corrodes”
But the point comes in the next phrase...
“their corrosion will be evidence against you”
For corrosion to be a witness against them...
they must be trusting in their riches and their stuff.
You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
Further evidence against the one who trusts in riches...
“luxury”
“self-indulgence”
living for pleasure.
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
ILL. Our move to the new house.
“Hey, we don’t have a ton of stuff.”
And then, we started emptying the attic.
I was up in the attic first,
until my back was screaming at me.
Todd jumped up there.
Passing stuff down to Jack and me.
Thankful for those guys.
The more he brought...
the more ridiculous it got.
We have attic floor boards the entire width of our house.
So… why throw things away, when you can simply store it.
And it hit me...
this is a great test of James 5… “you rich”
the corrossion of your stuff testifies agasint you.
App. Don’t do it yourself.
No, no.
Have your friends go up in your attic for you...
And pass your stuff down to you.
That really helps you feel the overage.
Overestimate Security
Overestimate Control
We overestimate ourselves.
What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
You are a vapor.
You think you are something great,
but you here today and could be gone tomorrow.
Therefore...
Underestimate Our Eternity
Underestimate Our Eternity
(Timer: How much time left?)
Phrases of judgment.
Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.
Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
“eat your flesh like fire”
“laid up treasure in the last days”
“crying out against you”
“ears of the Lord of hosts” (Lord of the Heavenly Army)
Living in self-indulgence (an issue)...
But it has eternal consequences.
Living for the here and now...
without considering our eternal destiny...
a recipe for disaster.
Doing anything to gain more and more...
keep wages from workers
“condemned and murdered the righteous person”
Dan Doriani explains:
As before (James 4:2), the murder is probably figurative. Yet by withholding their wages, the rich condemn the poor to poverty, even starvation.
The word “condemn” suggests the law court. It is likely that the rich used the legal system to deprive the poor of their wages and lands.… Those who had power and wealth on their side won in court, not those who had justice.
Living for yourself
Living for your stuff
Living well at the expense of others....
The notion of God’s righteous judgment is all over Scripture...
often with similar phrases as what James uses.
You will make them as a blazing oven when you appear. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them.
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
“in the last days”
A reference to the end of this age...
at the return of Christ.
Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.
There will be an eternal reckoning of our lives.
Did we live for ourselves?
Did we live only for what this world has to offer?
What do we boast in?
Where is our hope?
If it’s in anything but Christ,
our things will testify against us.
our control will testify against us.
** On Communion Sunday...
If after 10:30,
go straight to the Lord’s Supper.
Close in Prayer
Close in Prayer
Closing Song:
Closing Song:
“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
“Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;”
Benediction:
Benediction:
