Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, good morning, everyone.  How many of you are Jeff Foxworthy fans?  Any Foxworthy fans in here?  Yeah, Jeff Foxworthy is the host of Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader.  He’s also famous for his redneck brand of humor.  Now, Foxworthy doesn’t intend to offend anybody when he suggests you might be a redneck.  But he does have a way of kind of looking at life through a different lens and through maybe seeing things as they really are.  For instance- and I wrote some of these down from his website- you’re redneck if your wife’s hairdo was ever ruined by a ceiling fan.  You’re a redneck if you go to your family reunions looking for a date.  You’re a redneck, he says, if taking your wife on a cruise means circling the Dairy Queen.  Now, I saw some of you at the Dairy Queen last night.  You’re a redneck if you played the banjo in your high school band.  I was thinking about Pastor Holley back here on that little…looks like he put his guitar in the wash and wax or something and it shrunk.  This is my favorite.  You’re a redneck if you’ve ever been to a wedding reception at the Waffle House.  Now, I’ll never eat another pancake the same way after that.

0:01:42.0

Well, I wouldn’t dare call you a redneck this morning, but I assume some of us in this place are planners.  Are you a planner?  I thought about that this week and played off Foxworthy a little bit.  And I said…I wrote down some things here.  If you can leave the house without your Day-Timer, you’re a planner.  If you check and update your Outlook calendar more than five times a day like I do, you’re a planner.  If you own a Blackberry, you’re a planner.  If you know how to electronically synchronize your Blackberry calendar with other people’s calendars, you’re a planner and a nerd.  If you’re the keeper of the family calendar, you’re a planner.  If you’ve ever rescheduled an appointment, you’re a planner.  If you’re favorite movie is The Wedding Planner, you’re a planner.  If you’ve ever planned a vacation, made plans to go to college, or met with a career planner, you’re a planner.  If you’ve ever written a small business plan or a strategic plan, you’re a planner.  If you budget your money- and I hope you do- that makes you a financial planner.  And, ladies, one more of you.  If you’ve ever told a guy who asked you out on a date, “I’m sorry, I already have plans,” why, you’re a cold-hearted planner.  Well, today’s message from the fourth chapter of the book of James is for anyone in this room who thinks about tomorrow.  It’s for those of us who plan our work and work our plans.  It’s for those of us who set goals and have dreams about tomorrow.  It’s for those people who live by the motto “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.  Are there any planners in the room?  I’m one of them.  I’m a planner, guilty as charged on every one of those statement that I read.  I love to plan things.  Now, I titled this message “Business Unusual” because what James is getting at James 4:13-17 is an unusual way to approach life.  It’s an unusual way to approach the business of life.  And if you’re tired of approaching life in a business-as-usual kind of way, then you need to tune in and listen up to what James is gonna say.  Because this is all about business unusual.

0:04:09.7

Let’s read this beginning in verse 13 of chapter 4.  James says, “Come now…”  He says, now, listen.  “…you who say, ‘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.’”  Have you ever said something like that?  Have you ever boasted about tomorrow in some kind of way?  He goes on in verse 14, “‘Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.  Instead,” he says, “you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’  But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.  Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him,” James says, “that is sin.”  Now, when you read James 4:13-17 you might come away with the assumption that James is against business people.  He’s against business planning and the profiteering that goes along with that.  But that’s really not James’s angle here.  He’s not against planning.  In fact, he really kind of syncs up with the wisdom found in the book of Proverbs that offers some balance in our lives.  Proverbs 16:19 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps.”  Do you see the balance there?  Proverbs 19:21, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”  We could look at another one in Proverbs 16:3 that says, “Commit your works to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”  James is not against planning.  He’s not against profiteering.  But he is speaking against the kind of planning, we might say, that presumes upon the Lord.  It’s the kind of planning that doesn’t factor God into the equation, that doesn’t take into consideration some of the realities that he’s gonna talk about here in the verses that follow.  So if you’re a planner like I am- if you put a date on your calendar like I did this week to attend a conference in November of this year followed, by the way, by a conference that I’m gonna attend in October of this year that I’ve had on my calendar for a year- if you’re that kind of person that plans way ahead in advance, James is not saying, you know, you’re a bad person if you plan.  But he is speaking to the person who plans his work, works his plan, who lives by that motto “If I fail to plan, I plan to fail”.  And God is found nowhere in the plans there.  There is certainly nothing wrong with writing a business plan before you open up your business on the grand opening day.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with putting that date on the calendar, that wedding date that says “Eight months from now we’re going to get married.”  There’s certainly nothing wrong with a church like Immanuel Bible Church developing a strategic plan to look out five years from now and to try to give forward momentum to the ministry of a church that’s entering into its fourth decade.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But if we don’t factor God into the equation, if we kind of push him to the periphery of our lives, then James might say we are presumptuous in our planning.  That’s what he’s guarding against here.

0:08:07.1

You may remember a story in the Old Testament with Old Testament Israel.  They just came out of Egypt.  Moses, the leader of the Israeli exodus, has led them through the Red Sea.  And shortly thereafter, the Lord told Moses to send 12 spies into the land that He promised to give to the Israelites.  One spy from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.  They crossed over into the Promised Land.  They came back with a reconnaissance report.  Only two of them, Joshua and Caleb, said, “Let’s go.”  And ten of them brought back a negative report.  “There are giants in the land.  They’ll destroy us.”  And the people became frightening, and they began to complain against Moses and against the Lord.  “Why did you take us out of Egypt just to die here in the wilderness” And the Lord took that as unbelief.  And it was at that moment, at a moment when they had an opportunity shortly after leaving Egypt to go in and claim the Promised Land, that they exercised unbelief.  And the Lord said, “Fine.  This whole generation will die in the wilderness.  You won’t enter into the wilderness.  Your kids will.”  And everybody over 20 years of age, it would take the next 40 years for them to die off.  Well, when they heard the news, they said, “Oh, Moses, we can’t have that.”  And a few of them rushed up to the ridge of the hill country and looked out over to the Promised Land and made plans, even though the Lord said, “Too late.”  They made plans to move out and to take possession of the Promised Land.  And the Bible tells us in Numbers 14:44, “Nevertheless, in their presumption they went up to the high hill country, even though neither Moses nor the ark of the Lord’s covenant moved from the camp.”  Moses and the Ark of the Covenant, especially the Ark of the Covenant, was the indication that the Lord’s presence went before them.  And the Lord didn’t move ahead of them in this case.  But they presumptuously set out to take possession of the land, ‘because now, you know, they didn’t want to die in the wilderness.  But it was too late, wasn’t it?  And the very next verse tell us that the Canaanites and the Amalekites attacked them and beat them back all the way to place called Hormah.  They presumptuously…they presumed upon the Lord and set out to implement plans that were not the Lord’s plans.

0:10:34.6

So again, there’s nothing wrong with having a Day-Timer if you’re old-school and like the paper method.  There’s nothing wrong with having a Blackberry and synchronizing with somebody else’s.  There’s nothing wrong with putting that date on your calendar a year from now, or even two years from now, but write it down in pencil.  In fact, James provides us with a couple of reminders here in the verses that follow.  He says, “Come now, you who say, ‘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.’”  Verse 14, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”  In other words, the future is unpredictable, so remember that in your planning.  The future is unpredictable.  Who would have predicted a year ago that we would be paying $4 for a gallon of gas?  I wish I were able to look into the future and predict the future that way, because about a year ago we planned a family vacation in California, a driving vacation.  Now, we’re gonna fly out there.  I’m emptied out all of my frequent flyer miles to get the family out there.  But we’re gonna rent a car and we’re gonna do the LA thing.  And we’re gonna drive up Highway 1, that beautiful California coast, all the way up to San Francisco and around to Yosemite.  Never would have thought in my wildest dreams that we’d be paying $4 and $5 a gallon for a gallon of gas.  Interestingly enough, we’re planning a couple of days in Yosemite Park.  Never would have thought about the California wildfires happening.  In fact, just a week ago I learned that there’s a fire right at the entrance of the park.  Now, I can just imagine the Jones family vacation.  “”Kids, we here.  We’ve arrived.  We’re finally here in Yosemite.”  “Dad, Dad, was is all of that?  What’s that smell, Dad?”  “Oh, just ignore that, kids.  And if you could look beyond this, we…hey, here’s a picture from the brochure, okay.”  Never would have thought that in my wildest dreams.  But this is a vacation that we planned almost a year ago.

0:12:44.1

Who would have thought that we’d be in the housing crisis that we are today?  Who would have thought that you would have received a cancer diagnosis this year?  Life is unpredictable, isn’t it?  A couple of weeks ago Greg Laurie’s son, 33 years old, died in a tragic car accident on a Los Angeles freeway.  Greg is a well-known pastor on the west coast at Harvest Fellowship.  He’s also known for his Harvest Crusades.  God has used him in a remarkable way.  His son Christopher, 33, was on his staff.  Who would have ever thought that his son would have died tragically in an accident on the freeway?  James is saying the future is unpredictable.  You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  Have you factored that into your planning?  Proverbs 27:1 says, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”  You can ask me, “Ron, what are you doing tomorrow?”  And I can hook you into my outlook calendar, and you can see tomorrow and the next day.  I got things on my calendar sometimes five, six, eight weeks in advance.  I can give you some idea of what I hope to be doing tomorrow, what I plan to be doing tomorrow.  But I have no idea what tomorrow might bring.  I don’t even have any idea whether tomorrow will show up.  What I have is today, this moment right in front of me.  The future is unpredictable.  That doesn’t mean we look into the future with fear or that we stop planning.  James is just saying factor God into the equation here, the One who holds tomorrow in the palm of His hand.  You’re planning to go to college?  Well, just talk to Him about that.  You’re planning to get married a year…just talk to Him about that.  You’re planning to start this business over here?  Talk to the Lord about that and humbly submit your plans to Him.

0:14:50.6

There’s another reality that James wants us to know about. And these really fall into the category of mastering the obvious, don’t they?  We all know the future is unpredictable.  But the other one here is that life is short.  Go back to verse 14 here.  He says, “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”  Let’s think about that for a minute.  He says your life is just a vapor.  It’s a mist.  It appears for just a little while, and then it’s gone.  These people on the front row are gonna bring rain gear next week, aren’t they?  Your life is just like a little vapor.  This verse of scripture didn’t mean much to me when I was 15, 16, 17 years of age.  I didn’t think that life was short when I went away to college or graduated from college four years later.  When I was in mid-20s, even my late 20s, accepted a call to ministry and, you know, vocationally had a change in my life.  I wasn’t thinking that life was short.  I was thinking I had a long life ahead of me.  Really, even in my mid-30s I wasn’t thinking that life was a mist and vapor that was here just for a moment and then gone.  It wasn’t until, oh, 40ish, something north of that- I’m 45 now- that I began to think that, well, maybe, according to the actuarial tables, I have fewer days left on earth than I’ve already registered on this earth.  And when you’re 50?  Oh my.  And 60 and 70?  You’re just glad to wake up the next day, aren’t you?  Life is short, isn’t it?

0:16:45.2

I was listening to an interview this week given by former…I don’t know whether to call him a former wrestler or former Minnesota governor, but Jesse Ventura.  You remember Jesse?  And he was talking about how he’s getting older, talking about life in the private sector again.  And the interviewer asked Jesse whether he wanted to, you know, run for office again, you know, be in the public service again.  And he sort of said, tongue-in-cheek, “Well, maybe if they ask me to be a vice presidential candidate.”  And I thought, well, there’s a ticket, isn’t there?  Yeah, Obama/Ventura, McCain/Ventura.  Who you gonna vote for there?  But it was interesting that the interviewer assumed that Jesse was not interested in public life again, in public office, because he makes more money in the private sector.  And he quickly corrected her and said no.  He said, “I just turned 50,” or maybe 53 or something like that.  He said, “I’m in my 50s.  And time is more important to me now than money.”  Isn’t that interesting?  It’s, like, Jesse Ventura there on CNN said, “I’ve just figure out that life is but a mist.  I could be vaporized at any minute.”  It’s short.  It comes and it goes.  

0:18:12.2

Now, we sang a little bit earlier in the service about our everlasting God.  He is from everlasting to everlasting.  Never had a beginning, will never have an ending.  It’s hard for us to imagine something like eternity and the everlasting nature of God.  But you just draw a line, a straight line called eternity, and the put a dot somewhere on that line.  And that’s your life.  Put another dot on there, and that’s your life.  Put another dot over here.  That’s my life.  In light of eternity, it just comes like a vapor, like a mist.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Moses came down to the…near the end of his life.  And he was pondering this himself.  (0:19:00.2) Psalm 90 is the only psalm in the psalter attributed to the leader of the Israeli exodus, Moses himself.  And he writes in Psalm 90:10, “As for the days of our life,” he says, “they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years.”  And he goes on to say, “Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone,” and he says, “and we just fly away.”  Moses lived to 120, but I guess he read an actuarial table.  You know, we might get 70 or 80 years in this life.  But tomorrow is in the hand of sovereign God, isn’t it.  And as we look out into the future, as we page through our calendars, let’s remember the future is unpredictable.  Life is short.  It sits here right in the palm of a sovereign God.

0:20:00.2

Jesus once told a story about a rich fool in the gospels.  Luke 12, remember that story?  That’s the story about a business man who planned presumptuously to expand his business.  He ended up with a surplus one year.  And he decided rather than giving that surplus away generously to help other people, he says, “I’m gonna tear down my barns over here, and I’m gonna build bigger ones over here.”  And as Jesus is telling the story, he says that God came to that man that night and said, “You fool, this very night your soul is required of you.  And now who will own what you have prepared.”  In other words, buddy, you’re making all these plans for tomorrow, and you aren’t even gonna be here.  It’s appointed unto man once to die, the scripture says, after that the judgment.  Once to die.  No reincarnation.  It’s appointed.  It’s on God’s calendar.  It’s appointed unto man, to women, once to die.  And then we’re ushered into the presence of God to give an account for our lives.

0:21:12.4

Well, the whole passage here pivots in verse 15 with the word “instead”.  James says, “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’”  Instead of a business-as-usual approach to life, why don’t you try a business unusual approach to life?  Instead of planning your work and working your plan and forgetting about God, why don’t you pray, plan your work, pray again, work your plan, and then pray again?  Because it’s God who holds tomorrow in the palm of His hands.  That phrase “if the Lord wills” is an interesting phrase, it appears in a number of places in the New Testament.  Let’s go to 1 Corinthians 4:19.  The apostle Paul says, “But I will come to you if the Lord wills.”  Elsewhere in Corinthians he says, “For I hope to remain with you for some time if the Lord permits.”  In Acts 18:21, I believe it’s Paul who might have said, “I will return to you again if God wills.”  Romans 1:10, “If perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you,” Paul writes to the Romans.  Philippians 2:19, 24, Paul says, “But I hope in the Lord Jesus Christ to send Timothy to you shortly.  And I trust in the Lord that I myself also should be coming shortly.”  And then finally, the writer of Hebrews says it this way, “And this we shall do if the Lord permits.”  

0:22:52.0

You get the sense from the writers of the New Testament that they had a God-willing, or what I might call a deo volente, approach to life.  Deo volente is the Latin for this phrase “if the Lord wills” or God-wiling.  And that phrase deo volente was very much a part of the Puritan ethic in our country.  When the Puritans came over to America to experience religious freedom, this was very much found in their conversation, deo volente, God-willing.  The Methodists picked it up years later under the ministry of John and Charles Wesley.  And the Wesleyans, during that Wesleyan revival, you would often see on the correspondence of the Methodists.  They would sign their correspondence with the letters D.V., deo volente, as if to say, “All the plans that we just submitted we humbly give over to the Lord’s permission.”  Deo volente, if the Lord wills, God-willing.

0:23:56.6

Maybe you heard this week…I heard it on the news; I read it in an article, too, about Robert Novak.  Washington insider, syndicated columnists for The Chicago Sun Times, diagnosed with a brain tumor this week. Life is unpredictable.  This article that I read says, Novak issued a statement Monday saying the tumor was found Sunday after he had been rushed to Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital from Cape Cod, where he was visiting his daughter.  The article goes on to say that the Chicago Sun Times columnist says he is suspending his journalistic work for an indefinite- and here’s where the writer of the article puts in quotation marks the exact words that come from the lips of Mr. Novak- for an indefinite “but God-willing not too lengthy period”.  Now, I don’t know Mr. Novak personally.  I don’t know if he’s a God-fearing man.  I just know that not often do we hear the phrase “God-willing” coming from the lips of journalists today.  But a brain tumor has a way of reminding all of us just how dependent we are on the Almighty.  Deo volente, God-willing.  James says, “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills.’”  Now, is James simply advocating, is he simply saying to us, “Add to your list of Christian clichés this phrase ‘Lord willing’, ‘God willing’, ‘if the Lord wills’.”  We’re full of Christian clichés, aren’t we?  We love religious jargon.  We print them on t-shirts.  We put them on bumper stickers.  And there’s nothing wrong with that at some level.  But I think James is getting at something deeper, even though he says, “Instead, you should to say…”  But James is always concerned about what we say as a reflection of what’s in our heart.  And so the attitude of our hearts when it comes to “God-willing” and an “if the Lord wills” approach to life is far more important than some cliché that comes off of our lips or something that we print upon a t-shirt.

0:26:16.9

Let me say it to you this way.  “If the Lord wills” speaks to the reality of a transcendent God and to the relevance of God in our daily lives, friends.  To adopt a “God-willing”, “if the Lord wills”, deo volente approach to life is saying God is relevant to the business plan that I just wrote.  God is relevant to the strategic plan we just hashed out on the elder board.  God is relevant to the wedding plans we’re making.  God is relevant to my family vacation plans.  God is relevant to whatever I put on my Blackberry or my Day-Timer or my calendar.  Maybe we ought to start sending out emails with the initial D.V. at the bottom of them just as a reminder to us and to a reminder to those on the receiving end of it that all the plans that we’re talking about we humbly submit to the Lord. 

0:27:20.1

I’m concerned about where we are as a nation, because even as I read those words from the article about Mr. Novak, the words “God-willing” seemed so strange in a Yahoo! News article.  They just seemed like strange words in our culture today.  And maybe that’s because we have reckoned that God is irrelevant to our lives and to our public discourse.  We have pushed Him to the periphery of our culture, haven’t we?  We’ve kicked Him out of our schools.  We’ve threatened to take “In God We Trust” off our currency and “under God” out of the pledge that we make to the American flag.  We have said that God is somehow irrelevant to the political debate going on right now and that He doesn’t belong in the public square.  If we have made God so irrelevant in our public life today, why do we expect that God will continue to bless America?  And yet James comes to us and says, “Come now.”  Come now, you who think about electing a president.  Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we’ll do this or that or something else.”  Again, I’m not advocating Christian cliché, but it is so absent in our discourse today, public and otherwise, that James would ask us whether or not we are just presuming upon the Lord.  And here’s how it works in a Christian culture, in a church.  We make our plans, and then we come running back to the Lord and say, “Will you bless them?”  We make our plans, and things don’t go as well as we’d like for them to.  And so we go running back to the Lord and say, “I should have asked you first, Father.”  Work your plan.  Plan your work.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  But if you fail to pray first, the failure may be greater than you and I can absorb.

0:29:36.2

What do we do with a text like this and a message like this?  What’s the take-home value in it?  Two things, and I already mentioned one.  And that is to adopt a humble, God-willing approach to life.  A humble, God-willing approach to life.  Why do I phrase it that way?  Well, look in verse 16.  “But as it is, you boast in your arrogance.”  Here is that awful thing called pride gain.  “You boast in your arrogance; and all such boasting,” James says, “is evil.” Unknowingly sometimes, when we push God to the periphery of our lives, when we forge ahead with our puny plans without first asking God, “Do you want me to go do this?”  I love David in the Old Testament, a man after God’s own heart and a decorated warrior.  And I remember a couple of occasions…I don’t know the references right now, but a couple of occasions where it was a slam dunk.  It was obvious that David and the Israelites could go up and defeat, you know, some nation.  But David stopped, he paused, and he says, “Lord, do You want us to go do this?”  It really gives us a glimpse inside the heart, the humble heart, of a man after God’s own heart, who even though he had success after success after success after success on the battlefield, he never presumed upon the Lord.  And he always brought his plans humbly before Him.  Adopt a humble, God-willing approach to life.  It may find its way off your lips and my lips, and that’s great.  But make sure it’s the attitude of your heart as well.

0:31:27.6

And then, secondly, seize the day’s opportunities.  Look at it in verse 17.  James concludes by saying, “Therefore…”  Every time you see a “therefore”, ask what it’s there for.  Therefore, in light of everything we just talked about, in light of the presumption that often precedes out planning, in light of the fact that life is short and the future is unpredictable, in light of this “if the Lord wills” approach to life, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.”  I think James bring us back to today and today’s opportunities.  You can’t predict the future.  Tomorrow is in the hands of a sovereign God.  What yon have right before you is today.  You have this moment.  And if you’re sitting here and staring an opportunity to do what is right, right in the face, if you choose not to do it, it’s sin, he says.  There are sins of omission.  There are sins of commission.  We commit sin willfully, but we also sin…we do what is evil when we’re staring an opportunity to do what is right, and we’re staring it in the face, and we choose not to do it.  We say, “Oh, maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next week.  Maybe next month I’ll get around to that.”  You don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  And remember, here’s your life and my life.  It’s just a mist.  Every one of us in this room could walk about of here today.  And the Lord God of heaven and earth could vaporize us, take us from this life into the next life, where it’s appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.  It’s a sobering thought.  I know we started with a little bit of redneck humor.  But I don’t want to leave you there, because too much is at stake.  Isn‘t it?  Deo volente.  And here’s another Latin term for you, carpe diem.  Seize the days’ opportunities that are before you.  Let’s pray.

0:33:58.7

Father in heaven, thank You so much for Your Word.  Thank You for James, who week after week after week just puts it right into our life where we live.  Help us to take these thoughts, these truths from Your Word, and to walk out with the sober reminder that this text brings.  Father, Lord willing, we’ll go on to lunch today and afternoon of plans with family or friends.  Lord willing, we’ll wake up tomorrow morning, and You’ll give us another day.  Lord willing, we’ll come back next week and worship together.  And I pray that, as we do, we’ll be different than how we walked in today.  And, Father, I pray for that person who may be here today presuming that he or she might have another opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as his or her savior.  Father, I pray that they would sense the urgency found in scripture that says today is the day of salvation.  Because every one of us in this room could hear the words, “You fool, you didn’t know that today, tonight, your soul would be required of you.”  Father, make this a day of salvation.  Draw men and women and young people to faith in Christ today while today is today.  And we pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.

0:35:52.8