James - James 4:13-17

Don't make a living, make a life. I have a perfect plan for you, for your marriage, for your home, for your church. Now, be warned about the complexity of life, the uncertainty of life. And don't forget the accountability of life. One day we will stand before God and our lives will be examined.

And now let's pray together. Thank you, Father, for your precious will. Thank you that you do not treat us as numbers in a file. We are individuals. You know our names, our needs, and you have given us your word to guide us, and for this we give thanks. Now help us as we study. I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

James is encouraging us to be grown-up Christians, mature Christians. Chapter 1, he says the mature Christian is patient in trials, doesn't fall apart when the wind starts to blow. Chapter 2, the mature Christian practices the truth, doesn't just talk about it, he does it. Chapter 3, the mature Christian has power over his tongue and does not use his tongue or her tongue for destruction, but for construction. Then Chapter 4, the mature Christian is a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. And James tells us that we're going to be troublemakers if we ignore the will of God. You get somebody in your family or in your church out of the will of God, and there's going to be trouble. Abraham got out of the will of God, and there was trouble. Sarah almost was taken, and what would have happened then concerning the birth of Isaac? David got out of the will of God, and oh my, how his family and the nation paid for it.

James 4:13. "Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell and make a profit. Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that. But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin."

Now God does have a perfect will for each of our lives. I believe that's taught in Ephesians 2:10. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained or prepared that we should walk in them." There's a general will for all of God's people. When God tells us not to lie and not to steal and not to gossip, that applies to all of us. There is a specific will for each of us. Paul talks about his ministry. He said that I might finish my course with joy. I have finished the course. Each of us has a course to run. Each of us has a job to do. That encourages me, because it automatically takes care of envy and competition. God's given you a job to do, He's given me a job to do. He'll not judge me on the basis of you, or your abilities, or your opportunities, nor will He judge you on the basis of my abilities and my opportunities. Each of us has a job to do. God has assigned our lot according to our abilities, according to our spiritual gifts, and according to the work He has for us to do. And everybody is important. You've heard me say it many times: there are no big preachers, there are no small churches. All of us are important to the Lord.

Now people have different attitudes toward the will of God, don't they? Here in James 4:13 are people who ignore the will of God. They're having a little conference and they say, "Now, we want to go off to this city. Let's stay a year. Let's set up business, let's do some buying and selling. Let's make a profit." They're ignoring the will of God. They aren't saying, "Well now, if the Lord wills, we can do this or that." They might never get to that city. Or if they get there, they may discover they can't stay a year. They may find out they're losing money instead of making money. There are people who ignore the will of God. Most of the people in the world today ignore the will of God.

Now the evidence that we are ignoring the will of God is boasting. James 4:16. "But now you boast in your arrogance." Now it's bad enough to be arrogant, but to boast in your arrogance, that's something else. All such boasting is evil. This is the pride of life, self-confidence. I have shelves of books in my library written by great administrators, great executives, and great salesmen, and great promoters, telling us how to succeed, how to dress to be successful, and how to do this and that to be successful. Nothing wrong with learning basic principles of executive administration, but you don't boast in those things.

There are those who ignore the will of God. There are those who know the will of God and disobey it. James 4:17. "Therefore to him who knows to do good and does it not, to him it is sin." If I know what God wants me to do and I don't do it, I'm sinning against the Lord.

There are those who obey the will of God gladly. James 4:15. "Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." Notice it's the lordship of Jesus Christ that is important here. I think that you and I want to be among those who want to know the will of God and want to obey it gladly. The will of God to us is not medicine, it's nourishment. We don't want it to be a heavy yoke upon our necks; we want it to be that light and easy yoke because we're walking and working with the Lord.

Now James gives us three warnings here that he wants us to consider as we play with the will of God. You start playing with the will of God, be careful. If you ignore the will of God, be careful. If you know the will of God and won't do it, be careful. There are husbands and wives who are disobeying the word of God with regards to their marriage. Their children disobeying the word of God with regards to their relationship to their parents. They're playing with the will of God. And James issues three warnings.

He says, first of all, consider the complexity of life. Are you smart enough to run your own life when life is so complex? James 4:13. "Come now, you who say..." There's the who. "...today or tomorrow..." There's the when. "...we will go to such and such a city..." There's the where. "...spend a year there and buy and sell..." That's the what. "...and make a profit." That's the why. When you consider the who and the when and the where and the what and the why of human life, life gets very complex. You say, "Well, I'm single, I can sort of run my own life." Nobody can run his own life. We're a part of society. We're a part of a family, a church, a Sunday school class. We're a part of a ministry. The decisions that we make are not independent decisions. Life is complicated. And only God in His will can make it work in harmony.

I consider my body. Whenever my body gets sick and I go to the doctor, I marvel at how my doctor understands my body. He knows more about me than I do, and I live with myself. And he knows how the blood should circulate, and how the muscles should work, and how the joints should operate. He knows what my spleen should be doing, and he knows me. God made me a very complex creature. And yet God is able to cause all of this to work together. In Him we live and move and have our being. Now, if God can cause my body to work together in harmony as I obey the laws of health, can He not make my life to work together in harmony as I obey His holy will? God made this universe, and the universe works in harmony. The planets in their courses, in their orbits, and the day and the night and the seasons, and all that's out there. The scientists have based laws upon the accuracy of God's universe. Now if God can keep the universe running harmoniously, except where people get in and interfere, can He not make our lives, our homes, our marriages, our churches to run harmoniously? Warning number one, says James, you consider the complexity of life. Can you handle a life this complex on your own? You say, "Well, I can do it. I'm going to go to Chicago and I'm going to get a job and I'm going to make money, and then I'm going to move to St. Louis." Wait just a minute, there are many things involved in what happens in your life, and only God knows them and only God can control them. The complexity of life.

Secondly, he warns me about the uncertainty of life. "Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow." How can you even talk about today and tomorrow? "Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will do this or that." Today? Why, you could be dead five minutes from now. Tomorrow? You could be in eternity. You say, "Well, I'm going to go visit my friend tomorrow." How do you know she'll be there, he'll be there? You see, the uncertainty of life.

I think that James is not telling us we shouldn't plan. I have to plan my life. I have a date book and people invite me to come to preach, or I have books to write, I have deadlines to meet. I plan my life. But I try to plan it praying, "Oh God, not my will, Your will be done." Proverbs 16:3 has been a great help to me. "Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established." I turn my work over to the Lord and trust Him to establish my thinking and my planning. Proverbs 16:9. "A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." If I have planned something out of the will of God, He always shows me. He directs me. He puts brakes on me. He knows where I should go. And He warns me from Proverbs 27:1. "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth." We live a day at a time. All the universe operates a day at a time. And we get up every morning and we're starting a new day, and His mercies are new, His compassions every morning. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be."

The uncertainty of life. Listen to this arrogant boasting: "We will go, we will continue, we will buy, we will sell, we will make a profit." Oh, will you? You sound like that rich farmer in Luke 12. "I will build bigger barns and I will say to my soul, Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry, you have much goods laid up for many years." And then he hears a voice in the middle of the night that says, "You fool, tonight your soul is going to be required of you. You're going out into eternity. Who's going to get all these things that you've stored up for future enjoyment?"

Now life is not uncertain to God. James tells us we should say, "If the Lord wills." I notice that often the apostle Paul did that when he wrote to his friends. When he wrote to the Romans, he asked them to pray for him. Romans 1:10. "If by some means now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you." He didn't say, "Pray that come what may, God will take me to Rome." He didn't say that. God might not have wanted him in Rome. He did, but he is so cautious to say, "I want the will of God." Romans 15:32. Again, he's asking for their prayer support. "That I may come to you with joy by the will of God." Now you'll find him using the same phrase in 1 Corinthians 4:19, in 1 Corinthians 16:7, in Acts 18:21. Often Paul says, "In the will of God." Warning number one, consider the complexity of life, you can't run it by yourself. Number two, the uncertainty of life, only God knows how long you're going to live.

Which leads us to number three, the third warning, the brevity of life. The brevity of life. Life is too short to waste. Life is too short to make a mess out of it. You wreck your car, you can buy a new one. Wreck your life, how do you pick up that lost time, those lost years that were lived out of the will of God? "Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that. For what is your life?" Well, you say, "My life is all planned out." Oh, wait a minute. "It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." The book of Job reminds us of the brevity of life. Job 7:1. "Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man?" Life is just like a laborer who works for a day and then that's it, that's it. He's gone. In Job 7:6, "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle." Ever watch those looms at work? Oh, that shuttle moves so quickly, and then the pattern is finished and then that's it. Job 7:7. "Oh, remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good." Just a breath. Job 7:9. "As the cloud disappears and vanishes away, so he who goes down to the grave does not come up." Job tells us that life is so brief. The brevity of life. Job 8:9. "We are but of yesterday and know nothing because our days on earth are a shadow." On and on it goes, warning us of the brevity of life.

This is why the psalmist wrote, and we better take this to heart. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 90:12. "So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Now we don't number our days, we number our years. We think we live a year at a time. Someone says, "How old are you?" Oh, 45, 50, whatever. But we don't number our days, we number our years. God says you better number your days. You live a day at a time. My whole universe operates a day at a time. And God is one day going to hold us accountable for how we have spent our lives. I shouldn't use the word spent. How we have invested our lives. Some people waste their lives because they ignore God's will or they know God's will and they don't do it. We want to invest our lives, not just spend them, not waste them, invest them because we want to do the will of God. "Therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin." We're going to have to give an accountability and answer to God for what we have done with the opportunities of life.

I think what James is saying here to wrap it up in one statement is this: don't make a living, make a life. These people were concerned about only making a living: buying, selling, getting a profit. Now God knows we have to make a living. We need these things of life. He knows that. But He says to us, don't just make a living, make a life. I have a perfect plan for you, for your life, for your marriage, for your home, for your job, for your church. I have it all worked out. Now, be warned about the complexity of life, the uncertainty of life, the brevity of life. And don't forget the accountability of life. One day we will stand before God and our lives will be examined.

[Interview:]
You're listening to a study on the book of James with Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe. Up next, Warren talks with Arnie Cole, CEO of Back to the Bible International.

Warren, in your book "Be Mature", you say that the secret to a happy life is to delight in duty. What do you mean by that?

Well, I'll just tell you another story. They discovered some years ago that I was diabetic. Not radically so, but just enough I better be careful. So the doctor is telling me about testing your blood and he said, learn to like the things you should eat and to hate the things you shouldn't eat. Now, I'm Swedish in background. The Swedes love sweets. My mother baked all kinds of wonderful sweets. And he says to me, no more. So I had to learn to hate things that were bad and like things that were good. And you know what? It worked. If we look at obedience to the Lord as a burden, the Christian life is not going to be the Christian life. My Bible says that His commandments are not grievous. They're not a burden, they're a blessing. The purpose of life is not to enjoy what I enjoy, but to enjoy what God enjoys. And what a difference it makes. So when I say that, I'm saying simply obedience is the key to blessing. Jesus said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work." Most people don't think that the commandments of God are nourishment; it's punishment. Oh, God may send me to Lower Slobovia. Ridiculous. One day when I was discouraged, I opened my New Testament and I have the Psalms in the back of it, and I was reading Psalm 33. Now you've had this experience: you hit a verse and you say, how long has that been there? And the verse was Psalm 33:11. "The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations." And I said to myself, what am I griping about? God's will comes from God's heart. He has willed this because He loves you. Oh, what a difference it makes.