Making Plans Without God Series

Help Wanted: Relationship or Religion series

Making plans without God

James 4:13-17

Good morning everyone, glad that you are with us.

Please turn to James chapter 4:13-17

We have been in a study of the book James and a study of the difference between relationship and religion.

I hope you are beginning to see a difference between the two and why when you just lump them together you are able to see why there are so many problems.

Last week surrender and submission- two great words that people want for everyone else except for themselves. No one likes to surrender and no one wants to submit to authority or be told what to do.

I said that it is not stuff that is bad in itself but when the stuff has us. We are going to read the text and see how James reminds the church that there is another thing that has to be surrendered and submitted to God- that is our time and our plans.

James 4:13-17

Stuff happens good and bad- but we as believers should not be planning out our lives and forgetting God when we do it!!

Now listen…NIV version

Come now…King James Version

You should know better than to say… contemporary English Version

I want you to see that there is a great mistaken confidence that takes place in the people that James is addressing in his message.

James readers would understand his writings. The Jews were good traders in the ancient world. They would understand travel and making money. These people were business people. They were sea merchants and used ships as a way to travel and a way to send their products to the different ports of city.

James is saying to them- Come on now! Listen to me! Here is a new city, great chance of trading and making money. I’ll go there and start at the bottom, Ill trade for a year and make a fortune and come back rich.

Their version of a get rich scheme……….

Most don’t see a problem with the plan they were making out- Most people today would not see a problem with the plan that is laid out.

Where is God in the making of the plans?

For the believer, should not God be consulted before you make plans that will affect your life?

What color shirt you wear? Not so much! But plans for your life.

James answer is that as believers, we do not have a right to make those kinds of plans without talking to God about it.

Illustration-

British sculpture Epstein was visited by British author George Bernard Shaw and Shaw noticed a large block of stone in the corner. Shaw asked Epstein what the stone was for. “I don’t know yet” Epstein replied. You mean that you plan out your work? Why I change my mind several times a day. To which Epstein replied that is well and good with your 4oz manuscript, but it is another thing with a 4 ton stone.

Note to self- we do not know what is going on in other people’s life but we do know what is going on in our life. To some it is easy to change and for others it takes great thought and energy. It is easy for us to move the 4oz manuscript items in our life but to move that 4 ton block of stone, it is no easy task. We cannot look at others and tell them how to move their stones when we are moving manuscripts.

Thomas Kempis had it right in his book the imitation of Christ: “Man purposes, but God disposes”

Proverbs 27:1- “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”

Jesus told the parable of the rich young ruler who was foolish enough to believe about getting rich and he forgot about his soul and that that very night his soul would be required.

Ben Sirach “I have found rest, and now I shall feast on my goods…he does not know how long it will be until he would leave these things to someone else.

Seneca says- “How foolish it is for a man to make plans for his life, when not even tomorrow is in his control.”

What is James saying… that we should not plan our lives-no!!

We should make plans. What James is telling us is that we cannot forget to get God involved in our planning of our lives.

James is saying that the uncertainty of life is not a cause for fear or for inaction.

It is realizing our complete dependence on God.

He says (13) “You who say, today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money”