If The Lord Wills
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AN ANALYSIS OF JAMES 4:13-15
AN ANALYSIS OF JAMES 4:13-15
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.”
Our parents, namely our mothers, grandmothers and great –grand mothers were some of earliest Bible teachers. Sometimes consciously , sometimes not so consciously. Some of us could not tell either because like in the days of the Pharisees, culture, tradition and the doctrines of men got mixed up or rather I should say, added to the word of God. I remember my grandmother; you could not mention the word tomorrow with out saying “please God”. In fact any mention of future plans had to include “please God”. If you did happen to omit it, she would ask you if tomorrow belonged to you.
And if you were about to do something stupid, mainly something she would not approve of, she would tell you ‘don’t take God out of your thoughts” or else. And those two admonitions or warnings always were her favourites and always seemed to work hand in hand.
Up until last year when I read through the book of James, (you would notice I said read through and not studied) I always thought what you grandmother used was slang or something handed down or something they made up (you know how people even if they don’t know the Bible, still know how to give reverence to God) until I found similar or the same lessons in James 4:13-15 reads 13(AC)Come now, you who say, "(AD)Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." 14Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. (AE)You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15Instead, you ought to say, "(AF)If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that." (NASV)
Making that discovery was my cue to diligently seek out the word of God? Thus I will be able to say what is slang and what is Bible or what is a poor interpretation of the Bible. I recognized too that television had inadvertently wreaked havoc on us with respect to what was in the Bible and what was not; let me give you an idea.
(site- Moses in the pit of mud and Mel Gibson’s faux pas, and Akel Dama).
Truth is, there are things that people say and sound biblical but are not in the Bible as well as there are things that people say that are different than how it is written in the Bible.
In this scripture, James and I guess to some degree, my late grandmother, attacks the presumptiveness of men to predict their own future leaving out the divine will of God in their formula for success. He virtually cries out that or rather he infers,
After all, life is made up of a very complex melting pot of people , places, activities and events. What makes a man thinks he can command the forces that can align these elements in his favour? What does man have besides intent, that makes him believe that people will react exactly how he expects and events will happen as planned? Brethren apart from the will of God we know that life is but a mystery.
We know also that Life is uncertain. the Bible tells us that; Proverbs 27:1 says
1 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
I’ll just go right ahead and give you two examples of the uncertainty of life. 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.
19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’
20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
You can’t line up anything for yourself.
The recent financial crisis of 2008; People were buying and selling real estate believing in themselves to be wise in comparison to the next man and trusting in wordly treasures. Sometimes things get into my head and I end up playing on words and I could not help believe that some were using the Bible to their own means, and ends. What do I mean by that, well.. Matthew 13: 44- 46 read “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, 46 and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Even in Trinidad people were literally selling all that they had to invest in getting rich. If only they would let us tell them the scripture meant giving up all carnal things so that they can enter the Kingdom of God.
Three (3). James is also implying, that Life is very short. Proverbs 9:12 says 12So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. While we many measure our lives in terms of years, the words of James warns that in terms of the will of God and in terms of eternity, our lives are like water vapour .
9)How short is life? Job 7:6 says
6 My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope.
Job 8:9 Job’s friend Bildad (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:)
9 For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow.
The question remains to Christians, how do we get there? How do we reach to the point where we think we can function without God in our lives? How do we reach to the point where we take God’s grace for granted? It’s not really hard to figure out but it can go undetected since it happens over time.
At first we accept that we cannot live without His grace and as good things happen as he works in our lives we learn to appreciate His Grace. Yet still as we go on in life instead of being humbled by his grace we come accustomed to His grace and that’s when we take matters into our own hands by expecting His grace. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it time and time again, grace is free, is accessible, but it’s not automatic.
What recourse do we have in this situation? When the devil and his angels come to us with their low demand theology (what do I mean by that? Just say this prayer, just put your hand on the tv, just give, just sprinkle) and tell you, you can do it, you have the power to do it, depart , run far away from them as you can . That power they are referring too is not the Holy Spirit.
When they ,tell you you have control over your own destiny without invoking or crying out to God; call immediately on the mercy of God because the next thing they are going to tell you is that you don’t have faith in yourself; and this puts you on an equal level with God and God does not tolerate blasphemy.
10)Let me remind you what happens to people who does not acknowledge God or think they are gods; Romans 1:21, 22, 28
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
1 Samuel 15:11
11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night.
1 Samuel 16:14,15
14 Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him.
15 And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you.
Acts 12:20
20 Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food.
On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. 22 The people kept crying out, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” 23 And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Ezekiel 28 most of the chapter
Did you hear that? Ro 1:21, Professing themselves to be wise.
But True wisdom means and comes from when we embrace God’s vision of how the world works.
We have to come to terms about what makes us behave contrary to the word of God.
There are fundamentally, meaning that all other reasons may stem from them, Two false beliefs drive all of our destructive behavior:
1. My life is about me. My happiness matters most. I am utmost in my affections.
2. No absolute, objective standard exists by which I must live. All people have the right to their own preferences and opinions about what will make them happy.
Correct me if I’m wrong but These two statements pretty much summarize the prevailing philosophy in today’s culture,
Let the implications of those beliefs sink in for a moment. Approximately seven billion people live on the planet. Seven billion people can’t all be right. Seven billion people can’t all do whatever they want. Seven billion people can’t all determine their own paths to personal happiness. Seven billion people can’t be at the center of the universe. This is a chaotic impossibility. And we know it’s impossible, but most people including some Christians, love the lie.
What then is true wisdom? True wisdom is inseparable from good conduct. Faith works. Wisdom acts. just as words are the fruit born from whatever is rooted deep in our heart so, Our actions reveal what we truly believe, This is a dominant theme of James’s epistle. You’ve already encountered this foundational truth in James 1:22; 2:14-26.
It’s easy to deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve checked off all the right theological boxes, believing the right things about Jesus but yet continuing to live according to a worldview that’s just like everybody else around us.
11)Brethren if we don’t want to be a Saul, or a Herod or the rich man with his barns or the king of tyre, James is trying to say invest your lives in things eternal ; God has left his will in the Bible to cover every aspect, every facet of life. You do not want to be “to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” Ephesians 4:14. And that is exactly what men can offer you, Trickery. If you want to know how to conduct yourself in Marriage, Eph 5 says “love your wife as Christ loved the church”. If you want to know how to conduct yourself as a citizen, Romans 13:1 says “Subject yourself to the Governing authorities…. Whosoever resist the authority resist the ordinance of God”. 1Tim 6:17 says , “If you are rich not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.
12)Job 42:5,6. will ask You, and You instruct me.’ 5 “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; 6 Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.
James warning here is against the false wisdom, worldly ambition, and self-centered confidence in believing that life revolves around us and that we have everything figured out. The sins in this passage are self-reliance and a lack of submission to the will of our sovereign God. This sin is declaring ourselves to be sovereign. This is the lie of the serpent still tickling our ears. Thus this my warning to those not yet in Christ
We’ve heard that the sun shines on the just and the unjust, that’s just God playing His part as designer and creator where common graces can be enjoyed by everyone viz. natural beauty, sensory pleasure, and good food, for example. Even the person most violently opposed to God’s sovereign rule can enjoy these things to a degree. Christians, however, experience common graces as good gifts from an even greater giver of the gift. The pleasure fuels humble gratitude. In contrast, the pleasure of an arrogant heart terminates with itself as it consumes common graces without gratitude.
13)The question was asked in the parable of the rich man and the barns ”then whose shall those things be”? Psalm 49 answers that question and lets us know that Time and space belong to God; all the features necessary for future actions are dependent on him. To God be the glory.