James 4:13-17 (p. 849) December 1, 2013
Introduction:
Mike Yaconelli writes in his book Messy Spirituality “When my children were young, track meets filled a part of each week during the spring. One particular hot spring day I attended a Jr. High track meet, arriving in the middle of the boy’s 1500 meter race. During the last lap of the race, the audience stood, cheering 2 boys running side by side for the final 50 meters. A short distance behind them ran a pack of 4 or 5 boys jockeying in 3rd place. The crowd broke into applause for the first two runners and then crescendoed as the pack fought for 3rd place.”
Then Mike says, “Another runner caught my attention. As I looked down the track, I saw one boy lagging behind all the others, way back. Poor Kid. The portly 7th grader struggled for each breath. His face was red and sweaty, the main artery in his neck bulging and throbbing to supply oxygen to his deprived muscles. Suddenly the woman to my left stepped over me and rushed to the railing, obviously the boy’s mother. She screamed, “Johnny, run faster.”
I wish you could have seen the incredulous look on Johnny’s face. He had to be thinking “Mom, are you kidding!!! I’m running as fast as I can!”
Satan is the god of the urgent. He is the god of fast living. When I was younger fast living used to mean “debauchery.” But, now it means “FAST.”
Sin does not always drive us to drink; more often it drives us to exhaustion. Exhaustion, tiredness is more debilitating to the soul than drunkenness. Fatigue of our souls is the product of “running faster.”
I love this quote: “Christianity is not about inviting Jesus to speed through life with us, it’s about noticing Jesus sitting at the rest stop.”
Speed damages our souls because living at a certain pace consumes all our energies. Urgency has a scream that drowns out the still small voice of God, and instead of knowing Jesus more intimately, He becomes a diminishing speck in the rear view mirror.
It’s as if we arrogantly think we have life figured out. Time is just a gallon of gas we put into our tank to get down the road...and
I. TOMORROW I’LL GET CAUGHT UP ON ALL I MISSED TODAY
James says “Now, listen, “You say today, at the latest tomorrow – we’re off to start a new business, a new plan. We’re gonna make a ton of money. You don’t know the first thing about tomorrow.”
Life can be so predictable right...ordinary, routine. Wake up, coffee, drive to work or school, ball practice, dinner, homework, T.V., bed. Tomorrow, same story, 2nd verse.
An occasional vacation or weekend to break up the treadmill, but tomorrow will be the same right?
“And while the church earnestly warns Christians to watch out for the Devil, the Devil is sitting in the congregation encouraging everyone to keep busy doing “good things.” I’ve seen entire families speed by each other in unrestrained zeal to lead one activity or another at church every time the doors are open. RUN FASTER!
There are two very arrogant sins involved in this. Sometimes built on a platform of “working your way to heaven.” Those two sins are:
1. It won’t or can’t get done if I don’t do it and
2. I’m the only one that’s going to do it the right way!
And instead of “Passionately Preparing all People for an Eternity with Christ” by reaching lost people and empowering them to grow in Christ, the same people do the same things. Year after year, “Hey, how’d we get to this barn again?”
A lot of this happens because we talk about faith and God’s plan, but really we’ve got tomorrow figured out better than Him.
Really? Maybe the first gift we should give to God, especially through this “run faster Johnny” season is, OUR TIME.
Listen to this event in Jesus and the disciples lives. Jesus has just told the story of the “Good Samaritan” and we read:
LUKE 10:38-42 (p. 725)
Man! You get the picture in your mind don’t you? Martha is a type A (order, structure, and she’s also thoughtful). She’s opened her home to Jesus and His band of many men (or at least I’m guessing the disciples are included). Martha, the army sergeant of the kitchen, attacks the meal and its preparations.
But Mary, hair braided, tye dye T-shirt, holding a flower, (laid back, non-rushed, hippie type personality) sitting in the living room on a pillow while Jesus talks, drinking in His words like a man dying of thirst in the desert.
When all of a sudden Martha barges in the room, hair a mess, sweat running down her brow, and she points at Mary and yells at Jesus “Don’t you care about me? I’m working my fingers to the bone. She’s just loafing there. Tell her to come help me!”
The key verse for Martha, “Martha you are worried about many things.”
Satan loves that kind of urgency, like spinning plates in the circus act.
If I can just get to this place today. If I can just get the meal fixed. If I can make it till tomorrow I’ll catch up on everything I missed today.
Urgency keeps us worried, upset and hoping our future will be rich and leisurely because of our efforts.
Jesus says, “But few things are needed, indeed only one.”
By the way the only thing that needed is a real and intimate relationship with Jesus. “He’s the way, He’s the truth, He’s the life and the only way to heaven, the Father’s presence is through the Son.”
Man has chosen to pursue that above the urgent! So should we, and there is a very good reason we should trust God with our time.
II. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TOMORROW HOLDS OR EVEN IF WE’LL HAVE IT
Since a great deal of our lives are routine, habitual, ordinary, most of us assume tomorrow will be just as routine and ordinary. James says “MAN! BE CAREFUL ABOUT SUCH CASUAL FOOLISH THINKING!”
JAMES 4:14-16 (p. 849)
April (13) 14 1865, April (14) 15 1912, December (6) 7 1941, November (21) 22 1963, September (10) 11, 2001. Why are those dates important? April 13, 1865, the day before Lincoln’s assassination. April 14, 1912, the day before the Titanic sank. December 6, 1941, the day before the Pearl Harbor bombing. November 21, 1963, the day before Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11.
No one knows what tomorrow holds for mankind or for themselves. No scare tactics, no dooms day scenarios, just truth. What is your life? I’ll take you down to Lexington Cemetery, where my dad is buried. Henry Clay’s big ole monument is there. But there are 1,000s of names written on 1,000s of tombstones and not one of them will really mean anything to you unless you’re related. 88 years, 94, 101, 76, 42, 91. Gone like a cold breath on a winter’s day, that quick. “A mist that appears for a little while and then it vanishes.”
No do-overs, no mulligans, no reset buttons. “Only 1 life and soon it’s past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
The only thing that matters is what we do inside the will of God. “If it’s the Lord’s will we will live and do this or that. (v. 15)
Satan’s greatest success, the reason most people will be lost for eternity is...arrogance.
We live our lives as if the world revolves around us. We live our lives scheming to get what we want. No matter the cost.
We chose the carrot at the end of Satan’s stick. That new business will make you tons of money, devote your time, your life to that pursuit.
God had one word for the person who did that. Jesus reveals that word in a parable found in Luke Chapter 12.
LUKE 12:16-21 (p. 727)
“You fool.” Satan has played you. Satan has strung you along. You’ve used all your energies to amass a worldly fortune and done nothing to take care of your spiritual debt.
And because of that you are hopelessly lost.
True peace, true completeness will never come from stuff. Yeah it would be cool to drive a Ferrari shopping on Rodeo Drive, might give you a rush. But you cannot drive or buy enough stuff to fill the God shaped hole in your heart. Only Jesus fits there. Only He provides true peace, true completeness.
[Kari and I are complete opposites when it comes to our TV likes and dislikes! I watch the History channel and Outdoor channel. She watches “The Voice” and “Lifestyle” channel. Except for one show “Duck Dynasty.” And here’s a clip I want to show you from Jase and Missy explaining true happiness.
SHOW DUCK DYNASTY VIDEO CLIP
God, Family, Ducks! Whether you have a lot or a little, the core values don’t change, or shouldn’t.] 1.04 (you can’t buy that)
Folks you can spend your life, your time any way you want. God has given us the freedom to choose. Adam and Eve had that freedom in the Garden of Eden and chose to seek satisfaction outside of God’s plan. Satan lied. He held out the fruit and our spiritual parents grabbed for it.
His fruit may be different, but his schemes are still the same. “This will give you what you want. God knew that and is withholding it from you!” You can spend your life believing that lie, but you can only spend it once.
That’s the very reason our text this morning ends with “If anyone then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
Remember, there is nothing good within us until we are “born again”. Until we receive the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence. We are dead men and women walking, passing from death to life requires the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead to “give life to our mortal bodies.
Our baptism into Christ isn’t a washing of dirt from the body. It’s a death, burial and resurrection. “New life is evident in our actions.”
So, the only way I can know “good” is through God’s Word. And the only way I can desire “good” is because He’s shaping me into the image of Jesus, the only one who is truly “good.”
If I, then have the Holy Spirit saying “do this,” or “say this,” or “help him,” or “love them,” and I know this is God’s desire for me and I say “NO,” James says ”It’s sin.”
Rick, you missed an opportunity to hear me and obey me. Why? Because I was too busy. I was too self-focused. I was listening to the world’s urgent voices and couldn’t hear God’s loving whisper. Yeah, and to me, that’s sin...because the one thing I need is to hear Jesus, and it’s the one thing Satan wants to drown out. It’s not busyness that Satan’s afraid of, it’s a man or woman who listens to Jesus’ voice.
[My friend Sharon Sepanek was a brand new Christian. She works for Norton’s Healthcare. When the earthquake ravaged Haiti she accumulated more medical supplies than 2 boats could deliver. One Sunday I challenged our people to look for opportunities to hear God’s voice. To pray for God to provide opportunities and to listen when the Holy Spirit spoke. And sometimes when we least expect Him to, for Sharon it was when she was getting her nails done. She always had the same elderly Vietnamese lady do them, this time she noticed the picture of a baby on her desk and she asked about the child. The woman started to tear up and said “my grandbaby born with hole in her heart, doctors in Vietnam told my daughter, go home, love the child, nothing we can do.” And Sharon, who knows doctors and medicine said, Have you ever heard of “Doctors Without Borders.” You can get on the web and check them out. Can I pray with you, and Sharon did. It was on the way home God spoke to her. He said, “you get online and check!” So, she did. Two doctors went to Vietnam from DWB, one in Arizona and 1 in Prospect, KY. Sharon lives in Prospect, KY. Sharon called this doctor and explained the situation. The doctor said, “what a coincidence, my brother, a surgeon is going to Vietnam next week. I’ll have him check. He did, he performed the surgery and now Sharon has a picture of a little Vietnamese baby on her desk]
What would happen if we all started listening?
