Living Under God's Authority: Our Plans in His Hands
Notes
Transcript
A. Rapport for the time
B. Reading of the text
C. Review of the text
D. Relevance of the text
I. Pondering Our Presumptuous Plans
I. Pondering Our Presumptuous Plans
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”—
Now don’t forget we have come toward the end of chapter 4 and we have been looking at our place in the hands of a sovereign God.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
When I leave God out of my day to day life I’m left with being the judge is how vs. 11-12 left us last week. We all said that God is the only judge and the only source of truth. The fact is that very often we go about making plans just like vs. 13 talks about. In business or in life in general we determine a plan and how that outcome will come about. But we do so based on past results not on our ability to actually control the future.
golf course budgets—we wrote them by day. When I wrote the budget and used all the numbers I never once thought to ask God to direct and guide me. Instead, I really believed it was all up to me.
Scripture tell us the following:
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,
20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
None of these verses are accomplished in my life when I put myself at the center of the universe.
This constant state of humility before the Lord reminds each one of us whose we are.
Book—the Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living as if he doesn’t exist.
Craig Goeschel—you may believe in God, attend church, and generally treat people with kindness...but are you living as if God doesn’t exist? Have you surrendered to God completely, living every day depending upon the Holy Spirit?
T.S. Our Presumptuous Plans—to perceiving life’s impermanence.
II. Perceiving Life's Impermanence
II. Perceiving Life's Impermanence
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.
Often we will make plans as if we know what tomorrow will bring. The truth is that we can recognize patterns in our life but we really don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Each day we live is unique. James’ asks “what is your life?”
Can you remember the first time that you really realized you would not live forever? Grandfather dying.
James describes our life as a mist that appears and vanishes..in Memphis we totally know what that looks like.
1 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
7 “Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.
8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.
9 As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;
16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.
5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!
The Letter of James, Second Edition 1. Rebuke of Arrogant Planning (4:13–17)
human life is insubstantial and transitory, here one minute and gone the next. Illness, accidental death, or the return of Christ could cut short our lives just as quickly as the morning sun dissipates the mist or as a shift in wind direction blows away smoke.
T.S.
III. Pivoting with Prayerful Plans
III. Pivoting with Prayerful Plans
15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
The bible is very clear that we should make plans but to do that in the correct manner it must be as we submit to Christ our King. The Lord has a perfect plan for us and we are to humble ourselves before him recognizing our need for him and lack of ability to control the universe that we live in day to day. As mentioned earlier there are times that as Christians we act as though we are Atheist because we go about our life as though we don’t serve a God who is providential and Sovereign over all that he has made.
21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
21 But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus.
9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you
10 always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you.
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.
7 For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.
Prayer directs our heart to be set before God that he might direct our paths and our purposes. He is not without ability, none of us would deny this. But we also know that our hearts are prone to wander.
10 With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!
176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.
T.S.
IV. Purging Prideful Boasting
IV. Purging Prideful Boasting
16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
Boast—to express an unusually high degree of confidence in someone or something being exceptionally noteworthy.
Arrogance—a state of pride, but with the implication of complete lack of basis for such an attitude.
James (3) The Sinfulness of Presumption (4:16–17)
James wanted the believers to have absolutely nothing to do with boasting and arrogance. All self-referential statements of certainty about the future are wickedness. In such statements there is no willingness to yield to God’s will; worst of all the temptation is to make pronouncements that claim the sure knowledge of God’s will for the future to one’s own benefit.
Boasting is evil because it denies God the Glory that he alone deserves and places upon us as humans instead, leaving him out of the equation, Christian Atheist. Unbelievers live this way and call it normal. Living life as though they are fully in control of all circumstances and directing their paths to the outcome they both deserve and have earned with not thought about the creator of the universe.
Beloved, James is simply telling us that we know better than that.
THE GOSPEL-Repentance and faith/surrender ourselves to the Lord
Not surrender ourselves to our plan that the Lord may in turn get on our page and we might negotiate our way in life.
We came to the end of ourselves and understand the depth of God and his grace that we find in Christ Jesus empowered by the Holy Spirit.
18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
3 The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, “Who will bring me down to the ground?”
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
When we get things out of place in our life, like when we think we are the ones who are the writers of the law, when we thing we alone control our plans and how we will accomplish what we will is when we are full of pride and belief in ourself not God.
T.S.
V. Practicing Known Goodness
V. Practicing Known Goodness
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
MacArthur Study Bible NASB Commentary
The implication is that they also did what they shouldn’t do. Sins of omission lead directly to sins of commission.
James Vers. 13–17
St. James means that we should habitually feel that moment by moment we are absolutely dependent upon God, not only for the way in which our lives are
James Vers. 13–17
Sinful neglect of duty:—I. That men sin not only when they positively transgress the law of God, BUT ALSO WHEN THEY DO NOT FULFIL THE DUTIES WHICH THE LAW REQUIRES TO THE UTMOST OF THEIR POWER. And—
II. That our guilt is more highly aggravated WHEN WE NEGLECT THE DUTIES WHICH ARE KNOWN TO US, or when we decline opportunities of doing good though we know that it is our duty to embrace them. Conclusion: 1. This subject administers a sharp reproof to those who, in any case, attempt to evade their convictions of duty. 2. This subject administers reproof also to the slothful and inactive servant who rests content with low attainments in religion. (R. Walker.) Sin against knowledge is sin with an accent, wickedness with a witness. (J. Trapp.)
James Vers. 13–17
henceforth spent, but for their being prolonged at all
Application:
