Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:05] Thank you for being here this morning.
[00:00:07] My name is Harry Shields. I've been with you before. I think this is the fifth time this year I've been with you. And thank you for welcoming me every time that I come.
[00:00:18] If you don't know me a little bit of my history, I have served as a pastor here in Illinois and Colorado and Wisconsin, and I'm grateful for those opportunities.
[00:00:30] My wife Denise will be here for the third service today, and we always count it a great privilege to be with you.
[00:00:39] I'm going to ask you right now to take your copy of the Scriptures and find your way to James chapter four. James chapter four.
[00:00:52] This morning I'm going to be reading from verses 13 through 17, and I trust that you will follow along in your copy of the Scriptures, James 4, 13, 17. And here's what it says.
[00:01:09] 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.
[00:01:21] Yet you do not know what what your life will be like tomorrow.
[00:01:26] For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
[00:01:33] Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.
[00:01:42] But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, all such boasting is evil.
[00:01:48] So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it for him, it is sin.
[00:01:57] One of the things I failed to do just a moment ago is to welcome children to our service today. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes on other Sundays, you are in different places in different classes. So we welcome you here this morning.
[00:02:14] And parents, thank you for bringing your children here, and I trust that you'll be able to teach them a little bit later on what it is that we're talking about as adults here from James Church, Chapter four.
[00:02:27] I'm sure you've noticed this, but every single day your life is filled with assumptions.
[00:02:36] Here are a couple of examples.
[00:02:39] You assume this morning that whenever you went to the garage or out to the driveway, put the key into the ignition of your car. You assumed the car would start.
[00:02:50] In fact, following the starting of the car, you had plans that followed through with those assumptions.
[00:02:57] Or you made an assumption that sometime this morning you were going to come to either the 8:15 or the 9:45 or the 11:15 services. And you assumed that whenever you pulled into the parking lot, the doors would be unlocked and you would be able to come in to worship with the rest of us. You made that an assumption Assumption was followed through with plans. That's the way life goes.
[00:03:23] We all make assumptions, and assumptions somewhere along the way begin to evolve into plans that we make for our lives. And we assume that those plans, because we've carefully put them together, they will result in success on the other side.
[00:03:43] But here's the reality that's not always the case.
[00:03:49] Couple more examples.
[00:03:51] I taught for several years at the Moody Bible Institute. And about a year ago, a young man called me, actually emailed me and asked if we could talk on the phone. And we exchanged phone numbers. I agreed to do it. And I remembered this student. I remembered, for example, he was very passionate about learning the Scriptures. And when we would meet from time to time, he was very passionate about wanting to be a pastor one day. And so I was curious as to what, what he wanted to talk about.
[00:04:21] Wasn't very long in that phone conversation that I could tell he was angry.
[00:04:28] And he was angry because his life started with assumptions. He thought, if I apply to a Bible institute and then do a seminary after that, because I've gotten these degrees and I've had good grades along the way, I will become a pastor one day.
[00:04:46] At that point in time, when we talked, he was out of the seminary for about a year and a half, and he did not have a full time vocational pastoral job at that point.
[00:04:57] As we talked, I referred him to the passage that I just read to you a moment ago.
[00:05:05] I'm not sure if he was impressed by that. I prayed at the end of our conversation that somehow God would guide him, God would lead him, and God would comfort him and the agony he was going through. At that point in time, he had assumptions. Assumptions ultimately evolved into a plan. On the other side of the plan was this assumption that he would have success along the way.
[00:05:31] Here's another example.
[00:05:33] My wife and I, Denise, we happened to know a woman, and a few years back, she kind of told us what was going to happen with her life.
[00:05:43] She had an assumption. She had an assumption that she would finish medical school.
[00:05:48] She had an assumption that she would finish her residency. And then she hoped somewhere in that process she would also meet a man. They would get married and they would have babies.
[00:06:02] That was her dream. That's what she wanted.
[00:06:06] However, she met a man just as she wanted. She finished medical school and her residency as she planned.
[00:06:13] But right before she was married, some friends of her said, are you sure? Are you sure this is the guy for you?
[00:06:20] And they pointed out different things as to how they were different. And she basically said, I'm going to marry this guy. And they got married about a year and a half into the marriage.
[00:06:31] They were in a lot of conflict.
[00:06:34] Some people even said to them, are you sure with all the conflict that you're having, that you really want to have children? I want to have children, she insisted.
[00:06:44] And she had a baby. She loves that baby very much. She cares for that baby very much. However, on the other side of all that, this plan, this assumption, if I just get married, if I just have children, I will be happy hereafter, it did not come to fruition.
[00:07:04] Sometimes we make assumptions and we have plans following those assumptions, but they do not always come to pass.
[00:07:13] Here's an important question.
[00:07:15] What do we do in our lives when that takes place?
[00:07:21] Even better, what is it that God wants us to know about Himself if we make plans and the plans don't come to pass? This is what James is talking about. This is what he's teaching us in James 4, 13, 17.
[00:07:39] Here's what I'd like to do to answer that question as to what we're supposed to do, what we need to know. I'd like to look at just a short overview of what this passage is all about and what the writer is doing.
[00:07:50] Then, after we look at this passage overview, I want to draw a principle out of it. And then I want to take that principle and look at how it applies to our life or how we can practice that principle in our lives. So that's where we're headed. If you've heard me before, you know, I'll say something like this. We'll look at the passage, draw a principle, and then look at some practices that we can engage in. That's where we're headed. So let's start with the passage overview. You can hang all of the thoughts I'm talking about this morning on those three things.
[00:08:23] So here's the passage overview. I want you to know that James is writing to a group of people. And in writing to those group of people, he is identifying a problem.
[00:08:35] And then after the problem, he is also introducing a point of view, a problem and a point of view.
[00:08:42] The problem is introduced in verses 13 and 14.
[00:08:47] Would you notice again what James says in verse 13? He says, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city. And then in the next line he basically says, but you do not know that's a problem.
[00:09:04] We can make a plan, but we don't know everything that will take place in the next day or the day after that, or the Month after that or the year after that, we just don't know.
[00:09:13] He says, we have a problem with knowledge.
[00:09:16] Then in verse 14, he says this of us.
[00:09:19] He says, you are just a vapor. He's talking about the brevity of life. So two problems. Problem is, one, a lack of knowledge. Number two, it's a lack of time. We don't have all of the time that we sometimes assume that we are going to have. So he talks about a problem. Then he has a point of view. You'll Notice in verse 15, he uses these words. He says, instead, what you ought to do is to say, if the Lord wills.
[00:09:52] Or to put it another way, James introduces the Lord God Almighty into life and into our thinking and to introduce him as Lord. He's basically trying to introduce a certain aspect of theology of the Lord. It's basically the supremacy of God. He wants us to see the supremacy of God. Now, I'll talk more about that in just a moment.
[00:10:17] But that also leads to another question. Some of you are saying here this morning, okay, Harry, you're telling us about assumptions and plans, and the plans on aren't always going to be fulfilled. Just tell me how my plans can be fulfilled. Are you telling me that I shouldn't make plans?
[00:10:35] No, I'm not telling you that.
[00:10:37] In fact, if you were to go to that great book of wisdom, the book of Proverbs, and spend a little time In Proverbs, chapter 16, 16 1, 16 3, you'd discover that the wisdom writer is saying much the same thing that James is talking about.
[00:10:54] But he is saying it's okay for you to make plans or you might want to go to the book of Nehemiah. Remember what happened in the book of Nehemiah.
[00:11:05] Nehemiah was a cupbearer to the king of Persia. And he got word back that the city of Jerusalem was still lying in ruins.
[00:11:16] Now, Nehemiah had believed Jeremiah's prophecy that the people returned to the land and the city would flourish again. And he was confused, why was this happening?
[00:11:27] So he gets permission from the king that he might come back to Jerusalem. And so he comes back.
[00:11:33] Actually, he arrives somewhere in an evening and he decides to get on a horse and he's gonna make his way through the city of Jerusalem. He's looking at everything that's happening when he comes out. On the other side, Nehemiah has a plan.
[00:11:52] He has a plan to put a work crew together and he has a plan to get resources together and they will rebuild the wall. Because on the other side of the wall. The people inside of that wall will be the people of Israel, the people of God.
[00:12:07] But for that plan to be fulfilled, Nehemiah had to devise certain steps that were going to be taken.
[00:12:15] I'm telling you that so that you will know that God endorses our right to make plans.
[00:12:24] But how do we make those plans? You go Back to verse 15 if you remember anything. This is what I hope you will remember this morning. Are you ready for it?
[00:12:35] Take this principle with you into the rest of your life.
[00:12:42] When you make plans, keep God's supremacy clearly in view.
[00:12:51] When you make plans and you have a right to make plans, keep God's supremacy clearly in view in all of your planning.
[00:13:01] Now, I need to say something about the supremacy of God. I alluded to it a little while ago, basically saying that when we talk about the supremacy of God, we're not just talking about the fact that God is above and beyond everything else. Every power, every person, every authority. Yes, God is above all of those things. But what do we mean by his supremacy?
[00:13:23] It is a theological term that basically means that when we talk about God's supremacy, we are talking about his sovereign control.
[00:13:33] Or when we talk about God's supremacy, we're talking about God's independence.
[00:13:39] I do not know if you know this, but it might be something good to kind of tuck away.
[00:13:45] God will never consult you for advice.
[00:13:49] Hope that doesn't hurt your feelings.
[00:13:51] Hurt my feelings every now and then. But I've gotten over it. Because God does not take my advice, does not need my advice. God is independent. So God has control over everything. God is independent from everything. But here's something else about God's suppression.
[00:14:08] When we talk about God's supremacy, we're talking about God being truthful and God being good in everything that he does.
[00:14:20] Supremacy talks about God's truthfulness and God's supremacy and his control and his goodness in everything that he does.
[00:14:30] So don't forget the principle when you make plans to keep God's supremacy clearly in view. So that obviously leads to yet another question. And another question is, well, how do we do it? How do we keep it clearly in view? Or what is it that we need to keep in view?
[00:14:48] Three things. Here's the first one.
[00:14:51] In your planning, keep God's supreme knowledge clearly in view.
[00:15:00] I'm saying that again because of verses 13 and 14.
[00:15:04] Notice again what he says. Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city.
[00:15:12] And then in the first part of verse 14, 14a he says, yet you do not know. Now, I want you to notice that there is a contrast here.
[00:15:22] There's a contrast between what God knows and what we know.
[00:15:28] Start with us. He's basically saying in verse 14, you don't know everything that you think that you know.
[00:15:35] In fact, we know very, very little.
[00:15:38] By contrast, God knows everything.
[00:15:44] James is talking about those first century merchants and what they would do. They would make some wares or buy some wares, load those up in sacks on a donkey, go to such and such a city. And the assumption was, we'll just sell these things here, we'll make a profit. But they didn't know the weather, they didn't know what the economy was going to be. They didn't know whether or not they could build rapport with the people in that city. They just didn't know.
[00:16:13] But God knows.
[00:16:15] Now, there's another implication here. And the implication is, if God knows everything, we ought to be seeking his supreme knowledge in everything, especially in our planning.
[00:16:28] I was here with you a few weeks ago and we looked at James, chapter one, verse five. It says something like this. If anyone lacks wisdom, talking about wisdom in trials, if anyone lacks wisdom, you don't know what to do. He says, let that person ask of God. That's what we're to do here as well.
[00:16:47] If God has supreme knowledge over everything, we are to ask God about that. Now, how do you do that?
[00:16:54] Well, you can do that basically by doing three things.
[00:16:58] One of the things you can do is that you can affirm that God knows everything.
[00:17:06] Right now in your mind you wanna say, God, I affirm that you know everything. And then you might be having a need, you need to make some plans to somehow resolve that need. And you'll want to ask. So you affirm. Then you ask God, will you help me? You told me I can ask you about anything, so I'm asking you.
[00:17:26] And then here's the third thing you're gonna want to do.
[00:17:29] You're gonna want to accept whatever God's answer might be.
[00:17:37] Last week I was teaching an adult class at our home church. And at the end of teaching time, we do what we do every week. We have some time in prayer. People write out their prayers on, on lists or cards.
[00:17:52] And sometimes people even raise their hand in the class and say, would you pray for me about this?
[00:17:58] The man who was leading the class last Sunday, he said, I'd really appreciate if you'd pray for me.
[00:18:06] He said, my wife and I have some tenants, they have some rental property and he said, it just so happens that one of the families is immigrant family.
[00:18:15] And he said, the wife came to me and she was in panic mode. And she said, senor, would you go with me down to Chicago? They've sent an order to me. I need to show up. What am I going to do if they arrest me? And my friend Dale thought, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how I'm going to deal with this. And so he said, yes, I will go with you. In fact, he got on the train with them and they rode all the way down to Chicago, went to immigration services.
[00:18:41] The next day, Dale sent all of us in the class an email. He said, thank you. Thank you for praying for me. So let me tell you what happened. He said, we went there, we were there for a couple of hours. And he said, our tenants were given the documentation they need for another year. They're gonna be able to stay here for at least another year.
[00:19:01] There was a person in the class who responded, and they said something like this. They said, o glory to our prayer was answered.
[00:19:11] I had just been studying this passage and I got to thinking, well, what if God said no? What if there was no further documentation?
[00:19:20] Does that mean God didn't answer? No. What we need to do is to affirm God.
[00:19:26] You know, everything I'm asking you to involve yourself in this situation. And then we accept whatever the answer might be. When you make plans, keep God's supremacy clearly in view. And you'll want to keep in view that his knowledge is supreme.
[00:19:47] Here's the other thing you're going to want to keep in mind. A second thing you're going to want to keep in mind that his existence is supreme.
[00:19:56] What I mean by that is there's a contrast between God's supremacy or God's existence in our existence.
[00:20:03] When you read through the Bible, you discover that the Bible says something about God, that he is from everlasting to everlasting.
[00:20:13] What that means is that God has no beginning, God has no end.
[00:20:18] In fact, God will never have an ending.
[00:20:21] God can't be destroyed. God always will be.
[00:20:26] That's what we mean when we talk about his supreme existence.
[00:20:29] Now, by contrast, you have a birth date, and one day your name will be.
[00:20:38] Sorry to say this in an obituary, a date of death.
[00:20:43] We're very different from God.
[00:20:46] Notice what James says in verse 14b. And then following up with verse 15, he says, for you are just a vapor that appears for a little while. He wants us to use that great imagery, especially for those first century merchants. Because you see when they were going from town to town, city to city, sometimes they would sleep in tents at night, they would have a fire pit and they would cook things over that fire pit, they would warm themselves over that fire pit and they would sit back and a father might say to us, look at the smoke, look at the vapor going up in the air. And they would watch it and it would be gone.
[00:21:28] And James says, your life is just like that.
[00:21:34] He says, by contrast, what you need to do if God is eternally existent, supremely existent, and we are not what you need to do, you need to say, if the Lord wills, we'll do this or we'll do that.
[00:21:53] So how do we put this into practice?
[00:21:56] We need to always be thinking about the brevity of our life. In every decision that you make, think about where you are right now, reflect right now, and then make decisions accordingly in terms of what God might say to you.
[00:22:13] Several months ago, an organization contacted me and said, harry, were wondering if you'd maybe want to come and join our ministry and here are some things that you'd be doing. And I was interested, quite frankly.
[00:22:28] So I met with the director of the organization. He told me some of the things that I'd be doing. And some of those things were very engaging. Some of those things were, nah, I'm not sure I necessarily want to do that.
[00:22:41] Then I stepped back and I reflected, here's where I'm at in life.
[00:22:46] I know what my spiritual gifts are. I know what my experiences are.
[00:22:51] I also thought about the brevity of my life.
[00:22:56] Do you know, I'm at a point in my life where one of the things I want to do above and beyond everything else, I want to be able to invest in my grandchildren.
[00:23:07] So with the brevity of life in mind, thinking about my gifts, reading over scripture and praying, I had to come to a point when I said, all right, Lord, I'm reflecting on this, I'm giving it to you. What do you want me to do?
[00:23:23] I know very clearly that God spoke through his word.
[00:23:27] I know he put certain impressions on my heart and I made a decision accordingly.
[00:23:35] In fact, I tried to do what James is teaching us to do.
[00:23:39] When I make plans, when you make plans, keep God's supremacy clearly in view, keep his supreme knowledge in view, keep his supreme existence in view.
[00:23:52] There's a third thing you're gonna wanna do as you look at this text, you're gonna want to think about the fact and in your Planning, you want to keep his supreme authority in view. I say that because of verses 16 and 17.
[00:24:08] Now it's somewhat negative, but notice again what James says, verse 16.
[00:24:13] But as it is, you boast in your arrogance.
[00:24:17] He's talking about those merchants in verse 13 who said, we're just gonna go to another city, we're gonna sell our wares, make a profit, everything will be wonderful.
[00:24:27] He says, when you arrogantly and demandingly make a decision like now, it is evil.
[00:24:35] Verse 17, he says, so for one who knows the right thing to do, and the right thing to do is take your plans, submit them to God in terms of all of his supremacy, and then let God do what he wants to do. He says, anyone who knows the right thing to do, but does not do it for that person, it is sin.
[00:24:57] And you might say, Harry, that seems kind of harsh to me.
[00:25:02] I make plans all the time. I don't necessarily pray about it, just make plans all the time. And James is calling me a sinner because of that.
[00:25:10] Yeah, he is. Here's why.
[00:25:13] Because when you came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God had a plan for you, a purpose for you, and has a purpose above and beyond everything else. Above and beyond your job, above and beyond any role that you might have.
[00:25:29] His purpose for you is that you would become more and more like Jesus Christ.
[00:25:37] That's his plan for you.
[00:25:40] And so if that's the case, and if his authority is greater than that, anytime you go against God's purpose and plan for you, you're actually living like a false teacher before other people.
[00:25:54] James is implying you and I need to repent of our arrogance and are demanding us saying that this is what we're going to do no matter what.
[00:26:06] No, when you make plans, keep God's supremacy clearly in view.
[00:26:15] Surrender to him.
[00:26:17] Number of years ago I was watching NBC Nightly News when Tom Brokaw was the broadcaster for those programs and he had just written his book the Greatest Generation.
[00:26:30] He was giving a series of presentations every evening on the nightly news about the Greatest Generation, what they did, especially concluding World War II.
[00:26:41] He had a scene in which right after there was the Normandy invasion, here were Allied forces going into different towns and then he went into a French town. There were tanks and there were soldiers with guns and they were going into the city. Couldn't hear anything in the background. And then all of a sudden there's this slow motion move in which German soldiers were in abandoned, bombed out buildings and they were coming up with their hands high in the air.
[00:27:08] They were surrendering to an authority that was now greater than them.
[00:27:16] That's how we need to go through life, surrendering our lives, our plans to the living God who knows everything, who is eternally existent, and who has absolute authority over our lives.
[00:27:34] Here's what I want to suggest you do right now. Would you join me in doing this?
[00:27:38] I'm going to ask you, in a spirit of reverence and preparedness to talk to God. I'm going to ask you to bow your head. Everyone, if you just bow your head in prayer.
[00:27:50] As you do so, I want you to open your hands, the palms of your hands pointed upward, and imagine you're going to place certain things in your hands.
[00:28:02] Plans for your job, plans for your children, plans for travel, plans for all sorts of things.
[00:28:13] There they are, all those plans in your hands.
[00:28:17] And now I'm going to ask you to give those plans. Surrender those plans to God. You might say something like this in the quietness of your own mind. Oh, oh, God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, take these plans that you have allowed me to put together and then do with them whatever you want.
[00:28:44] Would you do that? Would you say that right now?
[00:28:58] And then maybe you are here this morning as someone just exploring what this thing called Christianity is all about. And what does it mean to follow Jesus?
[00:29:11] Let me tell you God's plan for you.
[00:29:14] God's plan was that he sent his son, perfect God, perfect man, Jesus, the Son of God, into the world to take the penalty that you and I deserve.
[00:29:28] And his plan is that you and I would trust him in faith.
[00:29:34] If you never trusted Jesus, would you do so right now, this day?
[00:29:42] Thank you, Father, for hearing us.
[00:29:48] Thank you for calling us to yourself.
[00:29:52] Now take our plans and our lives and do with them whatever you want. We pray this in Jesus name.
[00:30:02] Amen.
