Good morning. It’s been a while since we’ve been together to learn under the teaching in the Book of James. This week, we talk about James 4:13-17. This week as we talk about the passage, I want you to know that this is especially hard to hear, not because I’m speaking softly, but because of the topic we’re discussing. To really dive deeply into this passage this morning we have to go back to the framework of wisdom that James talks about in the end of chapter 3— that is of true wisdom and false wisdom. Let’s go to the passage now.
13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:13-17)
We concluded that true wisdom is only found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Without submitting our lives to Jesus, we lack true wisdom and are essentially settling for false wisdom which is bitterly jealous and filled with selfish ambition that is blinded by the earthly dirt that we’re made of. So the argument that we’re going to see here today is hinged upon that idea of wisdom James makes at the end of chapter 3. As we talk about humility and arrogance today, those two things are the foundations upon which the way we live our lives actually plays itself out. True wisdom is built upon the foundation of humility, and false wisdom is built upon the eroding, brittle foundation of arrogance. The weight of the text is really a primer on the limitations of human beings. Let’s go to James 4:13-17.
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. (James 4:13-17)
I want you to notice this: there is no such thing as self-esteem! That’s an aside but I need you to see it because I think some of us will take this text and flip it to say that we should feel worthless about ourselves, but really this has nothing to do with self-esteem. James isn’t about building us up for any reason except total reliance on Christ alone. But more importantly, he’s not trying to tell you that having goals is wrong; not by any means. He’s not telling us to give up on life because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. James is telling us is that we need to understand whether we’re type A people or type B people, we’re going to get screwed (most very literally) by something we can’t control and that is something you can’t type A about or type B about.
But let’s be really honest about it, I don’t know if you’re a Type A, and you got like everything on your to-do list, even down to the times it will take to digest your lunch; or you’re a type B person that kind of knows or hopes that his or her socks will match if they do the colored laundry on Saturday night; or if you’re like me and a crazy and confused type A hiding in type B clothing keeping an insanely long running list in his head that fluctuates and changes about the things that he has planned, but whatever you are, TODAY is a mystery and uncontrollable inferno that feels like a freefall off a skyscraper.
The reason James is saying this is more important to your swagger, or why you lost it as soon as you sat down to listen to this sermon today; James writes, “for you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes…” He’s not talking about a fog that rolls in and encompasses the city of Seattle or a cloud of pollution we see hovering over LA in the morning. What James is talking about is like cigarette smoke or vapes. Like you see a puff and it’s so cool when you do tricks with it for a split second, but then it’s gone. You and me lack the power to do anything about when or where it disappears. James says this is our lives.
Have I been clear about what James is saying is the human condition? It is probably something you have figured out early in life, but you and I don’t matter so much in the grand scheme of humanity, let’s not pretend and act like we do. We should not live like our existence keeps the human race afloat. Our opinions do not matter outside of those people who are willing to put up with you enough to listen to what amounts to nothing more than annoying complaints about how things are stacked against you. Just think about it, we’re so talentless and there’s nothing good inside of us that God could ever use. We should feel that our lameness disqualifies us from being used by God in powerful and profound ways.
The reason I’m saying this is not to tear you apart or put you down, but it’s to help you realize that sometimes the way we act in life is under the guise of false wisdom, and it’s foolish because we can’t even control the effects of things happening around us. So I want us to be aware of our weakness. We don’t want to hide weakness here, but we want to acknowledge them because, when we do, we understand true wisdom—it’s not about us, it’s about God. It’s why the Apostle Paul is told by God in 2nd Corinthians 12:9, “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” That’s the reason Paul says he boasts “all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
If our lives are like a mist that is here and disappears, what’s the point? James says it in verse 15; “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” He’s not saying to caveat all your life plans with the phrase, “if the Lord wills…” Like, James isn’t saying that if somebody asks you on a date or just to dinner, you caveat your plans by saying, “If the Lord wills, we’ll go to dinner.” James is saying is that you and I have a plan to live into by the grace and glory of God. Wisdom teaches us that everything we do is for the glory of God, so our plans, whatever they are should be for the glory of God. I want you know that the understanding James has of the world, is not like our understanding of the world through comic book movies, there is no epic battle between good and evil—between God and the devil. Essentially, when you look at the Bible, and when James witnessed it while following Jesus, God always wins and the devil runs as fast as he can away. The Book of Revelation isn’t much a battle, as it is a statement of how much of a non-battle it will be I the last day. Jesus comes and conquers, there are no major battles because God wins before it was even started.
Go to verse 16 now because James follows up by saying, “if we’re living a life to boast about our accomplishments like they mean anything other than they need to glorify God, then it’s arrogance.” Some of the things we do doesn’t make sense, it’s just dumb, and arrogant planning on our part. We plan to do things arrogantly and in false wisdom—we act that our lives are the central piece of all of humanity and civilization; your worrying or your fretting matters little to our victorious God. Moreover, many of us, compartmentalized our lives to show that God only matters in the periphery, that we are the center, it’s a posture of arrogance. It’s saying, “I don’t need you except for when I do.” It is arrogant to say that the Lord has no sway, no authority, nothing to say in almost every area of your life unless something goes wrong in that area of your life, and then all of a sudden the expectation is He flies in and fixes it all.
Jesus said in the form of a parable in Luke 12:13-21. The parable the parable of the rich fool. This is the reference point by which James is writing to us Christ followers. He knows that some of us, despite knowing everything that we do about God and about wisdom, will do some stupid things and make petty decisions that doesn’t take into account the reality and truth of who God is. God is for God’s glory because He is.
In the story that Jesus tells, there is a rich landowner who was really successful and his plan was to save enough and do enough so that he could “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” Simply put: great plan, without great purpose. The context of Jesus telling this parable is that two brothers came to him that were fighting over an inheritance and came to Jesus to ask him to deliberate on the matter. These people were arrogant in that they only thought of God when they had the problem they couldn’t fix and their intentions were stupidly arrogant.
Now let’s look at verse 17. It says, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
James is saying, and this is where I’m going to wrap it up today, that if we know that our lives mean nothing because we’re a midst that comes and goes; then shouldn’t we prepare to live our lives for something greater than our own lives? Yet despite the fact that our lives are utterly worthless, it is wise for us to spend our every waking moment planning and living a life that God wills for us because that is the right thing to do.
Try to follow what I’m saying here: the right thing to do, the right way to plan, is to plan all that we do for the glory of God because that is the right thing to do. The glory of God is to love Him and love people, and so everything that we plan on doing should reflect a mindset of pleasing God. We’re eating to glorify God, we’re exercising at the gym to glorify God, we’re working to glorify God, we’re going to school to glorify God. This is the right thing to do and anything short of that is sin. We shouldn’t have an ambition in life that is limited to benefit only yourself or your immediate family or friends. That is a waste of an already short and meaningless life. That is a sin.
You were created for more than meaninglessness. If you believe that you’ve travelled too far down the path of meaninglessness, then you need to stop thinking that way because nobody in the Bible, besides Jesus did anything with their lives until God intervened in their lives. It is because of God and His glory that anybody in the Bible had a chance to do anything worthwhile. We need to understand that. Like I have no reason to be on staff at a church except for the wisdom and glory of God, and I follow that, I make my plans to live in that glory of God.
I want you to check out Colossians 3:1-4 because this gives us the framework of true wisdom that James started us on with our decision making and our lifestyles; moreover, it gives us an understanding of how to plan for our lives. Let’s go to Colossians 3:1-4. You have to pay attention because this is really important.
1If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)
This is the Apostle Paul telling the church in Colossae to allow nothing to disqualify you from glorifying God. Jesus, we call him the Christ, the Messiah, he died for us, so that we can choose to live to glorify God. We are raised in Jesus’ resurrection because there is something for us to do when we look to God for it. That is what we’re planning and always striving for. That is true wisdom. This is how you really plan your life.
I don’t want anybody in this room or listening on line to skip this part where we forget the reason we were saved. We weren’t save for ourselves, we were saved for the glory of God. We need to live our lives aiming to glorify God because that is exactly what He wills for us. God wills that the things that we do, despite the fact that we are otherwise undeserving and utterly lame, to appear with Christ in His glory because Christ is your life and he is my life. Marriage, kids, degrees, careers, and the whole lot of that is a waste if you’re not seeking the glory of God.
All of our plans, the fuel, the weight, the drive of all we’re doing is Christ who is our life. I want to live financially in a very generous way because Christ is my life. I want to love my wife well because Christ is my life. I want to consider my time here, how I steward my influence, what I do with my days, because Christ is my life. So plans aren’t a bad thing; 401(k)s aren’t a bad thing; retirement isn’t a bad thing.
Everything in our lives should be driven by Christ, who is our life. Let’s pray.
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