If The Lord Wills Series

Listen to this quote from P. J. Conlon in the Monthly Journal of International Association of Machinists, dated January 1899:

“…I say if [the public] would only stop to consider this before forming an opinion perhaps the wage-earners might win; but no, they believe everything they see in the newspapers. If the newspaper says the sky is painted with green chalk that is what goes. Verily, I say unto you, the public is a hot mess.”

That is the first recorded instance of the phrase “hot mess” being used in as a metaphor where previously it was used at a literal term to describe hot food from a mess hall. Despite diligent research, I could not locate a source to how “hot mess” transitioned into the “hot mess express” that many people seem to be buying tickets for in modern culture.

So what does that have to do with the Bible? The Bible opens up its narrative with the Garden of Eden – an absolute picture of perfection. And then the Bible ends by painting a picture of a New Heaven and a New Earth – another absolute picture of perfection. But we live in between these two bookends, where we experience the hot mess of living in a fallen world. But here’s the good news…God doesn’t leave us to figure out things on our own. He has given us the Bible which contains ALL the wisdom we need to navigate life in a fallen world (2 Peter 1:3).

Turn with me this morning to James 4 as we continue in our series called Faith and Works. For four and half chapters now, James has been giving us the wisdom we need to help us close the gap between what we SAY we believe and how we ACTUALLY live. At every turn, we’ve been challenged on things like how we treat the poor, where we get our wisdom from, how we handle conflict, and how we respond to things like temptations and trials. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself asking some hard questions of myself over these past two months. And here’s the simple (and yet again HARD) question that we’re going to ask ourselves today: “How does God fit into the plans I’VE made for MY life?”

James 4:13-17

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.

One of the things that I love about this campus is that you can look around and see people from many different backgrounds, different professions, and different stages of life. You see people that love Jesus and root for the Bengals…and you see depraved people that still root for the Steelers (you get the idea). And one of the things that makes the body of Christ so incredible is the ability, through the Holy Spirit, to experience supernatural UNITY amongst incredible DIVERSITY. One of the reasons for so much diversity is because we live in a country where we have so many unique freedoms to make our own choices. In fact, it’s not uncommon to hear someone defend some of their choices by saying, “It’s a free country.”

And if you think about it, your life (for the most part), is the sum total of those choices you make. But if you are a Christian, you are not just a citizen of the great country where you have the freedom to make many different you choices, you are ultimately a citizen of heaven. And as a Christian, you are NOT free to do as you please, because you signed up to be a servant to Christ. And because of this, there should be a distinction in how the Christian plans their life, in regards to motive, process, and desired outcomes. And that means my actual faith in God is evident in how I approach planning: I can plan my life as if I am in control…or I can plan as if GOD is ultimately in control of my life.

And so as we take a deeper dive into these five verses this morning, the first thing James seems to be saying is…

1. DON’T BE A PRACTICAL ATHEIST – vs 13,14a

What do we mean by this statement? An intellectual atheist is a person who has no belief in a god. But a practical atheist is a person who professes belief in God, but God has no bearing in the day-to-day life they are living. This person treats God like a set of fancy dishes which are only used on certain days of the year. But in the everyday life that they are living, God doesn’t really figure into their plans…outside of Sunday morning.