Living without Boasting

Turn to James 4:13-17.

This is the Word of God and if you will let it, it will change your life.

James 4:13–17 ESV

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.

Pray

We’ve seen plenty of people who are musical prodigies of a sort: they are expert instrumentalists at tooting their own horns. Mohammed Ali is a great example: Ali once said:

It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.

He also said:

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

We laugh, but he’s serious. In his mind, he really was the greatest. Now most of us would never be so forthright in stating so, but there is a streak of pride in all of us. We find something that we are good at - something that sets us apart from the rest - and we magnify our abilities. And then we get brave enough to brag…and pretty soon we’re eating humble pie for dinner. Ever been there?

We all recognize that kind of pride as sinful - there is hardly a person that genuinely thinks bragging like that is anything other than sin. We see those Mohammed Ali-isms that others make and rightly discern them as proud arrogance.

But when James talks about boasting, he’s not just looking at those “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” types. He’s looking at ways that all of us fall into the trappings of pride - traps that are so well hidden, we often don’t see them after we’re already ensnared. So for a little while, let’s dust off our magnifying glasses (pipe and sleuth hat optional), and let’s become biblical gumshoes as we try to solve this mystery.

Look at his description of the arrogant in verse 13:

James 4:13 ESV

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”—

Does that surprise you? James points to the individual, in this case a merchant, who is making plans for the future. That doesn’t seem bad. Look at the plans:

We will go to a specific city

We will stay for one year

We will engage in business

We will earn a profit

Nothing about these plans is inherently evil. In fact, the Scripture speaks of making plans often in good terms. Take Proverbs 21:5:

Proverbs 21:5 ESV

5 The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.

So what is wrong with these kinds of plans? After all, doesn’t God want us to carefully consider our ways?

Proverbs 23:19 ESV

19 Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way.

Making plans isn’t bad - it’s good. And these plans aren’t really bad, either. They plan to start a business in a new city and to make it profitable. Nothing necessarily wrong about that - as long as profit comes through honest work and not fraud or oppression, the Bible looks at profit as the reward for your labor (cf. Pro. 14:23 for example). In Isaiah 48:17, God says:

Isaiah 48:17 ESV

17 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.

So if the planning isn’t bad, and the plans themselves are not evil, why does James say in verse 16 that their boasting is evil? Where is the trap here? Well, gumshoes, let’s investigate verse 14 and see if there’s a clue:

James 4:14 ESV

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.

He says that these people who are making these elaborate plans are missing something: they don’t know what tomorrow will bring. In other words, they are making plans that may not come about. In their detailed analysis, in their advanced models of the future, they neglect to account for every variable.

Have you ever watched the weather during the news? Ever notice that the meteorologist isn’t always exactly right? Ever taken the time to see that he can’t say with certainty the exact high temperature, or even if it will certainly rain or not (he has to give a percent chance of rain instead).

Now to be fair, how good are you at predicting the future? They have computer models that simulate thousands of scenarios, changing various inputs and altering expected patterns to try to accurately determine what will happen tomorrow. And they are usually pretty close, too. Often they do get it right, or at least close enough to give us a reasonably accurate picture ahead of time.

But even professional scientists with advanced technology and modeling cannot predict tomorrow with complete accuracy. There’s always some error, always some unknown that keeps us in the dark when it comes to the future. And that fact is a clue to the pride trap here.

But there’s another clue: not only are they unaware of what the future holds, they are also not even sure they’ll be there. The end of verse 14 says that they (and us, by the way) are a mist that appears a little while, then is gone. “Your life is so short,” James says, “you may not even make it to see your plans come about.” So these braggards don’t know the future and don’t know that they’ll live to see it - two clues to the trap we’re looking for. But are there more clues? Verse 15:

James 4:15 ESV

15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

Now James points us to what these people ought to say. James tells them, “Instead of saying that, say this: ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do ___.’” There’s a major clue - James is pointing these individuals toward the will of God as a necessary prerequisite for the fulfillment of their plans.

When you’re in college, some classes are pre-requisites for others. You can’t take English 102 until you have English 101 first. The school requires certain classes before other classes are available. The reason is so that the foundation is already laid before you take the more advanced course.

James now is telling them what foundation they should have to their plans: God’s will. If God doesn’t will it, it doesn’t need to happen (and it won’t). But if God does will it, then your plans are fine. I believe, my dear Watson, that Sherlock may have the case solved, but perhaps there’s another clue that can help us beginner detectives solve this pride trap case for ourselves. Let’s keep looking:

James 4:16 ESV

16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

AH! Now we have it! I believe we can identify the trap now, and can close this case once and for all.

The Trap of Pride Is Arrogance

One commentator notes that this boasting in arrogance is really “boasting in your arrogances.” The word for arrogance here is plural, meaning that there are many of them and not just one.

First, it is an

Arrogance of Self-Deception

These people don’t see their own weakness. They don’t realize just how fleeting their lives are, nor how limited their knowledge is. They don’t want to see that the future is mysterious: they firmly believe that they can and have made plans that will hold up to extreme scrutiny. They are self-deceived, and are blind to their own frailties. So they are confident in themselves and their plans.

Second, it is an

Arrogance of Self-Centeredness

Not only do they not need God, they do not want to need God. There is no seeking his will, no looking for his glory or seeking to bring him praise. They have an arrogance of self-centeredness: they do not care about God in the least. Notice in verse 13 how much they do, and yet God is completely absent in their words. It’s all about them and not at all about God.

Third, it is an

Arrogance of Self-Dependency

They do not build-in contingencies into their plans because they believe they have planned sufficiently themselves. They have all they need - they have no need for God’s will. Their plans are modeled to perfection, guaranteed to work. They are so confident in themselves that they could repeat the sayings of Mohammed Ali without batting an eye.

Pride lays its trap through arrogance that has no basis in fact. In fact, it is boasting in such a way that you could not possibly live up to it; its only purpose is to impress men. And that arrogance has its own work:

The Byproduct of Arrogance Is Sin

James 4:17 ESV

17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Arrogance produces sin because it takes us away from God’s will. It causes us to look in the mirror rather than looking upon Christ. It bids us to serenade in the sweet songs of self rather than sing the praises of God. It has us query ourselves for answers instead of asking the Maker of Heaven and Earth. Arrogance makes us think we are enough instead of looking to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). Arrogance always leads us to sin.

That’s why James includes this warning. “There’s a trap here!” James tells us. If you know the right thing to do, but you don’t do it, that’s sin. Sin isn’t just “messing up.” Sin is deliberate disobedience to God. It’s refusing to follow him, and that sin separates you from God. So much so, that the Bible tells us that:

Romans 6:23 ESV

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Transition to Invitation