“Living in the Here and Now”
James 4:11-17
Message #12 in James Series
26 July 2020
INTRODUCTION:
Whenever you are talking with a child
and you ask him his age he will always round the number upward as in, “I am 7… and a half!” or “I am 12… but I will turn 13 in two
months!” They always do this with that obvious excitement about getting
older. Children and young people live for the future. They dream
of all the wonderful things they will get to do when they get big.
Of course, adults have a different perspective. People
older than about 25 will always round off their age downward, especially
women. A woman will still say that she is “thirty something” when she is
really 39¾. If children live dreaming about the future, adults often live in
the glow of the past. For example, we all know a few baby-boomers who are
still dressing, thinking, and acting like old hippies who never quite made it
out of Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury.
TRANSITION:
But the truth is that we have no
guarantee of the future, and we cannot go back and relive the past. All we have
is the present, the here and now. And as Christians we are called to live for
Christ today, to do what we can now for the Kingdom of God. We
hope we will have tomorrow, but God never promised that to us. And the past is
already rolled up like a scroll, never to be seen or replayed again. Of course,
as Christians we should learn from the successes and failures of the past, and
we should make plans, but we should concentrate on living well today
because today is all we really have. We are told in God’s Word to “redeem the
time.” This means to buy it up and invest it well, for we do not know what
tomorrow will bring.
MAIN BODY:
Verse 11: Do not speak against [i.e. slander, whisper
about, speak evil of] one another, brethren. He who
speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law, and
judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a
judge of it.
- In verses 11-12 of our text James
turns his attention once again to deal with the subject of speech,
specifically mouthing-off, and judging other Christians. This was
likely one of the manifestations of the attitudes that James condemned up
in verses 1-2. Christians were apparently allowing their covetous
attitudes to run rampant and this was causing fights and squabbling among
the believers that James characterizes as “wars and battles.” This
manifested itself in part in judging and condemning one another.
- James’ argument is that if you are
guilty of judging your brother then you are placing yourself above the Law
of God, which forbids such judging. Of course, this is true of all kinds
of lawlessness. When a person breaks the speed laws on the motorway he is,
in essence, saying that he is above the law and that ordinance does not
apply to him.
Verse 12: There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to
save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbour?
- James goes on here in verse 12 to
argue that there is only One who is greater than the law and that is the
Judge and Lawgiver himself. He says to his reader, “There is only one Judge,
buddy, and it is not you, so come down here and get out from behind that
bench.” He argues that you and I have no business judging one
another. We cannot save one another, so we should not try to condemn one
another either. God alone is “…able to save
and to destroy” and He has the moral high ground to do both.
You and I are nothing! Moreover, with our sinful track record we should be
ashamed to point a finger at anyone for anything! “Who are you to judge your neighbour?”
Indeed. The answer is obvious—I am nobody.
Verse 13: 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.”
- Here in verse 13 through the end of
the chapter James takes up yet another subject, and that is, the
fleeting nature of our lives. I think that in James’ mind this
paragraph relates to his former statements concerning worldliness in that
the attitude he is condemning here is a form of worldliness—i.e. leaving
God out of our plans and heading out on our own as though we were in
control of things rather than He.
- You and I live in the midst a
self-imposed delusion—that we are in charge of our lives, that we have
some degree of control over what happens to us. We make plans and lay out
our schedules with the thought that if we just write it down on our
calendars then it is settled. We take precautions and do things to protect
our families and ourselves so that we can sleep at night. We buy insurance
and set up retirement accounts to prepare for the future.
- Do not get me wrong—I am not saying
that we should stop doing these things, just that we should stop thinking
that because we have done them, we are safe now and do not need
God anymore.
- For example:
1. You take Lipitor and a
baby-aspirin, and exercise every morning to protect yourself from a heart
attack, only to have your doctor tell you that you have inoperable stage-4
colon cancer.
2. You make your kid wear his
bicycle helmet every time he goes out riding, but he gets hits in the chest by
a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting down the street.
3. For 20 years you pay for
flood insurance, only to have your house destroyed by a tornado.
4. You raise your sweet
little girl in Sunday School and church, plus youth group, Vacation Bible
School, Christian summer camp, and the best evangelical university on the
continent, only to have her decide to elope with a long-haired rock musician
with tattoos, nose rings, hygiene issues, and lots of attitude about you and
every other Christian he has ever met.
- If you sit around and think about
stuff like this it will drive you nuts, so instead, we keep on doing our
little rituals to keep our minds off the fact that we are in charge of
exactly NOTHING, and we can control exactly NOTHING.
- In verse 13 James is making an appeal
to Christians who think they can plan out their own lives all by
themselves. He gives the example of a merchant who makes plans to expand
his business and travel to new places to sell his wares. Is James saying
that this is wrong, in and of itself? NO, of course not. People in
business are always looking for new markets and new ways to sell their
products to more people. That is the nature of commerce. However, James is
saying that many Christians operate every aspect of their life this way,
leaving little room for God to do anything.
Verse 14: Yet you do not know what your life will be like
tomorrow [let alone next week or next year]. You are just a vapour
that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
- James zeroes in on three human
failings:
(1)
The limits of our knowledge about the future. We do not know what tomorrow
will bring.
(2)
Our impotence to affect the outcome of tomorrow. We are powerless to
control what will happen. And…
(3)
The uncertainty of our life in general. He says we are about as stable
as fog. We are here today and gone tomorrow, or even sooner.
Verse 15: Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we
will live and also do this or that.”
- A believer, who understands that God
is sovereign and in control, will readily admit and acknowledge his
dependence upon God. His attitude will be, “Im yirtzeh hashem…”
(Hebrew), “Deo volente…” (Latin), “Se Deus quiser…”
(Portuguese), “Insha’Allah…” (Arabic), or in English, “If
God wills… we will live and also do this or that.” Our words are
important because they reveal our thought and attitudes.
Verse 16: But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all
such boasting is evil.
- James comes down hard on his readers
by pointing out that this logical and reasoned attitude toward themselves
and toward God was not what they were demonstrating. Rather, they
were “boasting in their arrogance.” He denounces this attitude and
identifies it for what it really is; namely “SIN!”
- There is no place, ever, for this kind
of boastfulness. It is always condemned in Scripture. Ephesians 2:8-9 comes
to mind: “For
by grace you have been saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, that no one should
boast.” Or again in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29: “But God
chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the
weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the
lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are
not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may
boast before Him.”
Verse 17: Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does
not do it, to him it is sin.
- For years I have heard this verse
pulled out of its context and used independently, but it is even more powerful
in its natural setting. In this last verse of our text for today James
sums up this section with a warning to the unthinking boastful merchant of
verse 13, as well as to us, reminding us that there is more than one way to
sin against God. The Jews always tended to emphasize doing the right
thing, with little emphasis on the quality of the attitudes behind the
actions. However, as Christians we all know that our lives should be
characterized by an attitude of humility and a total dependence on God. This
is at the heart of Christian living. And James says that the Christian who
knows this and yet does not do it, “…to him it is sin.”
- We know that all sin starts in the
heart and mind. For example, adultery is, first, a sin of the heart
and the thoughts. The sin of adultery occurs long before the sexual act of
adultery is carried out. We often speak of sins of omission and sins
of commission. However, these both deal with actions that stem from
sinful thoughts and attitudes. “Sins of commission” are when
we do (commit) things that we should not do, things we have been
forbidden to do, by God in His Word or by the laws of men, or both, as is
often the case—stealing, hurting other people, setting fire to someone’s
house, moving your neighbour’s property line, etc. “Sins of omission”
on the other hand, are when we fail to do (omit) what we should do,
we fail to do the right thing—e.g. when out of cowardice we fail to speak
up or to prevent someone from being attacked; when we fail to help someone
who needs our help; when we dummy up and refuse to witness to someone whom
God has obviously put in our path, etc.
CONCLUSION:
To clarify this a bit further, we
can think of sin as a three-phase process. Although this can work positively
let’s start from the negative.
·
PHASE
1: Embracing an incorrect thought leads to…
·
PHASE
2: Having an incorrect attitude, which results in…
·
PHASE
3: Committing an incorrect or sinful act.
Let me illustrate this first with something we all
can understand. In pre-WWII Germany those who espoused the doctrine of Aryan
racial superiority and called themselves “Übermensch”
(overmen, or super-humans), came to believe that Jews were less than
fully human. They called the Jews “untermensch,”
meaning “undermen, or sub-humans.” This was their belief, their firmly held
doctrine. However, I think we can all
agree that they were, what I like to call, “Wrong!” They embraced an incorrect thought. That is PHASE 1.
This incorrect thinking led them
to have incorrect attitudes toward Jews. If Jews are sub-humans, then they
do not have the same needs and rights as the rest of us. If they are sub-human,
they are incapable of having the same hopes and dreams as us super-humans. If
they are less than fully human then I can trick them, steal from them, lie to
them, and make fun of them and it does not really matter because it is not like
I am doing it to a real person. That is PHASE 2—Incorrect attitudes
based on incorrect ideas.
PHASE 3 puts it all together and
ties a bow around it. If we know for a fact that Jews are sub-human and are
hateful, dirty untermensch, then it does not matter what we do to them. Really,
they are more like livestock than people, and we kill and eat livestock without
a second thought. Therefore, we can enslave Jews and make them do whatever we
want done, or we can kill Jews by shooting them, gassing them, or starving them
and we are perfectly within our rights. You all know the end of the story. Incorrect
thinking gave way to incorrect attitudes, which in time resulted in incorrect
actions; namely, 6.5 million Jewish men, women, and children being murdered
by the Nazis in horrific ways.
So, now you are thinking, how does
this relate to our text here in James 4? Let me try and pull it together. Just
as the Germans can never say, “We did not
know that killing Jews was a sin,” so also, we can never use ignorance of
the right as a defence or an excuse for our doing of the wrong. If we choose to
disobey God and not do what He has commanded us to do, that is sin, and there
is no excuse for it. On the other hand, if we disobey God by doing what He has
forbidden us to do, that too is sin, and there is no excuse for it. All too
often we are quick to forgive ourselves, and to let ourselves off the hook. As
I have mentioned before, we often take our own sin too lightly. It just does not
bother us that much. But it should, and it will, if we get into the Word and
begin to see things through God’s perspective.
But how do we break the three-phase
sin cycle? Logically, if we want to begin doing the right things, then we must
be driven by correct attitudes. Additionally, if we want our attitudes to be
correct and right before God, then our thinking must be brought into line with
God’s thinking, and that can only be done as we immerse ourselves in God’s
revelation, the Word of God. Life change can only come about because of our knowing
and embracing the truth. Then our righteous behaviours will come into line with
our godly thoughts and godly attitudes.
The apostle Paul said it well in Romans 12:1-2 – “I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as
living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of
worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to
test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Or as Paul says it in Ephesians 4:22-23, “[You must] lay
aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of
deceit, and…be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”
Of
course, telling others to do the right things for all the right reasons is
easy. I can look you straight in the eye and tell you that you ought to do it
this way. However, I do not find it so easy to do it myself. It is a daily
struggle and I fail often. But look again at verse 15. It reminds us that our
seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years are all in God’s
powerful and merciful hands. “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”
He took care of your past when you came to know Him. Let Him worry about your
future because you have no control over it anyway. You just need to
concentrate on living for Him with all your might in the here and now.
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