Please review the following portion of scripture before reading the sermon.
James 4:13-17
13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit";
14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is our life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
15 Instead you ought to say, "if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."
16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
New King James Version
The Main Truths that I have derived from this Epistle:
1) The length of your life on Earth, is extremely brief relative to eternity.
2) Despite your life’s brevity, it is nevertheless highly significant. Why else would God have allowed Himself, i.e. His Son, to be nailed to a cross in our behalf?
3) The ultimate outcome of our tomorrow is determined by the permissive will of God.
4) There may be no tomorrow for you. Are you ready?
5) God created you for a specific purpose(s). To know His will for your life and not do it, is a sin.
The International Brotherhood of Rubber Neckers
I remember it as if it were yesterday. There I was driving through a picturesque farming community in Eastern Ontario when completely out of the blue, I experienced the visual version of sonic boom.
A certain farmer had decided that he wanted to make a loud artistic statement by adorning his front lawn with a 1950’s military jet airplane! Right there on the spot, I became a full pledged member of the International Brotherhood of Rubber Neckers.
I doubt that the intent of this farmer was inspire someone to write out a sermon. Nevertheless, this hilarious in-your-face lawn ornament is very much a sobering proverb for believers and non-believers alike. A proverb that fits nicely into what James is telling us in his wonderful epistle regarding the brevity of time and how we are commanded to make the most of this precious, incomprehensible and irreplaceable gift from God.
Looking at that airplane, I asked myself, how many secret agents were killed trying to steal its design plans? How many test pilots gave up their lives for their country during the testing phases? How many marriages were ruined or seriously tried to the brink as a result of the plane’s engineers working 18-hour days during its design?
At one time, this airplane was considered "state of the art." In less than two to three years, though, it probably became obsolete. By the end of the century, it had ended-up becoming an amusing lawn ornament that kids would enjoy climbing on top of.
How much of our lives are based on fleeting human enterprises? As a television producer, I have a difficult time looking at my work produced five years ago. It looks so incredibly dated. One of my current jobs involves instructing a distance education course through the Internet. It’s quite exciting participating in a form of education that is so "leading edge." It is equally sobering to know though, how incredibly dated this form of training will be in just a few years time.
The reality of time can sometimes be quite disheartening. Especially, if we spend most of it on things that moth and rust will eventually corrupt. (Matt 6:19-20) Beloved, it is extremely dangerous for one to hang his or her identity on the "things" of this world. You more often than not risk making these things into distracting idols. Of course, please do not misinterpret my message to imply that there is anything wrong with pursuing abundance. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with being financially rich. Job, Abraham, and Joseph were all extremely rich. Who though could argue that any of them were not devout men of faith? However, the lure of riches can become a huge impediment in either one’s salvation or Christian walk. If you do not first live for the Lord, you are serving Mammon. And this is a violation of God’s Word. (Matthew 6:24)
A Mere Vapour
James, in his wonderful Proverbs-like Epistle, gives us a crash course on the reality of time and the essence of our existence within it. Here is an epistle that tells us the urgency of each moment that the Lord has given us. It also underscores the sobering reality that without our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and obedience to His will, our lives are utterly insignificant. Would you want to know that your life’s main accomplishment will eventually become a silly lawn ornament- an ornament that is yet another trophy for Satan? Or do you instead want God to make your life amount to an eternal and triumphal crown of glory by obeying His appointed will for your life?
We are reminded in the Lord’s Prayer that it is His will that needs to be done, not ours. James adds another dimension to this command by including the Lord’s Will in ALL of our planning. Only God knows what is going to exactly happen in the next second, let alone ten or sixty years from now. Go ahead. See if you can accurately predict what I am going to say in the next 20 minutes. See if you can predict everything else that will happen by the time you have finished reading this sermon. You can’t.
Anything can happen to us at any given instant. James then, is reminding us of the incredible frailty of our lives. He also bluntly reminds us that our lives here on Earth are extremely brief. They are mere "vapours" or "puffs of smoke" v.14 depending upon the translation. And I’ll mathematically prove it to you in just a few minutes. Before I do, though, let me please emphasize the irrefutable fact that as believers in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, our lives are incredibly significant.
A Highly Significant Vapour!
How significant are we? Did the Lord not die on the cross for us?! Surely God All Mighty has better things to do than to undergo incredible suffering for a useless cause. God has BIG plans for you and me. His blood-drenched contract authenticates this reality.
Beware then of reading this porting of scripture from James with cynicism or despair. And most definitely, do not assume that I am suggesting that you use this sermon as an excuse to work less hard at whatever job you do. God has commanded that we perform our work to the utmost of our abilities. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-14, Colossians 4:17) At the same time though, we are forbidden to make our work into a god or idol. Whenever we do this, we leave behind yet one more useless monument dedicated to the waste of God’s precious gift of time.
The greatest significance that the vapour trail of our lives will leave comes from obeying the will of the Lord and His eternal purposes. These moments of total obedience where we do not rely on our reasoning, will, or emotions, have far more reaching eternal consequences than the significance that we might attach to a state of the art airplane.
You Are a Time Steward
We are all one breath closer to our eventual face-to-face appointment with our Maker. (Psalm 39:4) Each breath that He gives us is an incredible gift that should not be squandered. We not only need to be good stewards of this planet, and the material blessings that the Lord has given us, we also need to rely on His guidance in the way we spend time. After all, time is His unique invention intended for His purposes. Only He knows every minute detail of these purposes. His guidance and direction towards the right paths that we need to take is absolutely necessary. (Proverbs 3:5-6) Otherwise, we will find ourselves stranded in the barren wilderness of a worldly life.
So whatever it is that God wills for your life, do it now- no matter what. Putting off His commands for our lives is not His will but yours. Beloved, we are mediums for God’s use. When we delay obeying His will, we stymie His efforts through us. And given the frailty of our lives, there may never be another earthly tomorrow for us to obey His voice.
One radio evangelist summarized this brief opportunity as follows. "Yesterday is the canceled cheque. Tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is all the cash that you have to spend." And the best way to maximize how we spend this "cash" of time is through prayer. Remember, procrastination is a sin. Don’t put off what the Lord wants you to do.
You Have a Potentially "Flexible" Appointment
Over the last few months, I have gone through an emotional ringer. What seemed stable became unstable. What I took for granted, I no longer take for granted. This was made crystal clear to me with the death of beloved mother. No one, and I mean no one, expected her to die of cancer. And no one expected it to happen so rapidly. She was a robust woman who ate well and exercised daily. She even had managed to lose 20 pounds and maintain it for well over a decade. For those of you who have dieted, you know how remarkable a feat this is! No one in her family had had any history of cancer.
Despite all these factors, she is now with the Lord.
I want to make it clear from the start that I am not a fatalist. God did not create us to be robots. We need to realize though that God can and will intervene in the lives of believers if He deems it to be in our best interest. He sees both the big picture and the minute details of our lives. His will is based on a perfect understanding of the world around us. Plan all you want. Diet all you want. Exercise all you want. Positive think until you go blue in the face. If God wills your death; the failure of your business; a prolonged illness or any other major change in your circumstances, it WILL happen. And it will happen for a very good reason- a reason that we may not know until we are in Jesus presence in Heaven.
Sometimes though, God let’s us suffer the consequences of disobeying His well-intentioned will for our lives. For instance, when Hezekiah begged and pleaded for an extension of his life, the Lord granted his request only to Hezekiah’s detriment. Here was a marvelous man of God who could have finished so strongly and instead begged for an extension that diminished his place in Biblical history.
As for non-believers, to arrogantly assume that God will comply to your will involves a belief that He will somehow relinquish His Sovereign authority over to you. Such a belief finds its origins back in the garden where Satan deceived Adam and Eve into believing that they could become God. This delusional belief is an abomination. No one’s will is above that of God’s. Will all you want. Chant mantras all you want. Nothing that you say or do can stop God and His supreme will. Your free will never has the power to override His will. And this is the bottom line message that James is telling us.
"You do not know what will happen tomorrow." v.14 And you better not be arrogant enough to boast that you have control of your tomorrow. V.16
My mothers’ death also taught me a bold lesson in God’s Sovereign will. God has set a limit on the length of our lives. (Psalm 90:10). He also respects our free will though, and allows us to the right to squander portions of it away through bad decisions be they in nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, and other unhealthy habits.
In essence, He is the giver of the "fuel of time." This fuel can be quickly consumed through fast living or conserved by living according to His will for our physical lives. As believers, we have the choice of either desecrating the temples that He has built for us or maintaining them with the appropriate respect that comes in knowing that He has now taken residence within us.
Do the Math
It is so easy to be fooled into believing that our lives here on earth are far longer than they appear to be. Reaching the age of 80 in good health, for example, is considered living to a ripe old age. And, yet, if you ask most 80 year olds, they will tell you how quickly these years will come and go. It is almost dream-like in its brevity. (Psalm 90: 5) It is a few "hand breadths". (Psalm 39:4)
Beloved, our lives spent on earth are so brief that any statistician worth his salt would have to deem them as being nothing when measured over eternity. Consider the math:
One divided by infinity is basically nothing. Right? What about 100 divided by infinity? How about a thousand? A billion? They all approximately equal zero. Name the number. No matter how staggeringly large it may appear to be, so long as it is less than infinity and it is then divided by infinity, it will approximate zero.
Is it any wonder then, when the Apostles spoke about Jesus’ "imminent" return they were not kidding! Indeed, based on the math, it becomes quite obvious "…that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." [2 Peter 3:8 (NKJV), Psalm 90:4] For the Lord, all of human history is like the time it takes for us open up our Bibles and flip through the millennia covering the first chapter of the Book of Genesis to the last chapter of the Book of Revelation.
By now, you might be asking yourself the following question. Why has God given us such a brief existence on this planet? Wouldn’t it be better if He give us say 100,000 years of life? If you are a non-believer, you would say absolutely yes! After all, you either think that our earthly reality is all that there is and thus live to gratify your senses. Conversely, you are so afraid of the what ifs of death- especially judgment, that putting-off death for a longer period of time is a welcomed reprieve.
I dare not think of the horrible reality that we would all be under if God had not stopped Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of life in the Garden. Imagine how insane this world would be if everyone had eternal existence while inhabiting our current bodies? Multiply the hurt and suffering that happens on a daily basis here on earth by eternity. Just think of how violent we would be like? Enemies who could never kill each other would resort to physical and mental forms of brutality that would make the serial killers of this world appear like Sunday school teachers. Thank God that He mercifully prevented Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree of Life. For these reasons and more, what believer would want to be put on a hundred thousand year wait before he finally receives his perfected body on the day of resurrection? Only a believer that struggles in doubting his salvation perhaps.
(It sounds like a bit of conjecture on my part, but prior to the flood, human life spans were considerably longer than those of today. The Bible tells us that this was a world filled with violence. Excessive time spent in our corrupted bodies is not a good thing).
But so few of us truly see our lives with the reality of its brevity until major crises unfold. Crises in which we are given God’s gracious good fortune to perhaps receive one last opportunity for salvation. These are the closest moments that many non-believers have where Satan’s blinders have a diminished affect. That is why I strongly recommend that you consider visiting hospitals and leave in their lobbies both Gospel tracts and Christian literature. This simple act of non-intimidating seed planting can have a profound impact on a person’s life. My personal testimony can attest to this. Hospitals are extremely fertile places to plant the seeds of the Gospel.
How many times have you experienced a trial in which you were uncertain as to when it would end? Didn’t this experience "feel" like an eternity?! And a short while after it ended, did this trial not feel like a painful but brief blip in your life?
So why is that we have such a distorted view of time? I’m speculating once again, but it might possibly be the result of our tendency to "feel" time rather than eternity. Whenever, we "feel" anything through our faulty senses and reasoning, we end up being captive to the desperately wicked guidance of our hearts. Be careful. Our hearts are as malleable as putty to Satan. Beloved, please, please, please, avoid relying on your feelings when discerning truth. Instead, trust the Lord to direct your path.
Hal Lindsey, in his book Combat Faith described the danger of using our feelings to direct our ways like that of an airplane pilot choosing to navigate his plane through thick fog on his intuitions rather than relying on the autopilot system. The former approach will lead to a crash while the later will get you safely back on the ground. This, in a nutshell, is what the Holy Spirit can do for any believer so long as he places faith his on the Autopilot.
There Is No Time To Waste
Beloved, given the reality of our fleeting Earthly existence, there really is no time to waste if we are to accomplish even a fraction of all that the Lord has purposed for us to do. Every waking second is an opportune time to do His Will. It could be a simple act of trusting His power to overcome a sinful thought or deed, to conveying the Gospel to a loved one who is quickly approaching death. The sky is the limit as to what God wants us to do through Him.
In verse 17 though, James reminds us that disobeying Him during these opportune moments is a sin. James warns us that procrastination or outright disobedience to the commands of our Commander and Chief is a sin. We must follow His orders determined for our lives. And these orders principally come to us as we read God’s Word and are called to action by the indwelling Holy Spirit Who resides inside us.
If He is speaking to you right now, please do not disobey Him by either procrastinating or succumbing to distractions. Do what it is that He has commanded you to do. You will know that it is His command if it in no way contradicts His Word found in scripture.
Beloved, the clock on our lives is rapidly ticking away and we need to be made aware of it for His sake. God created us for a purpose. His plans for us were determined before creation. (Ephesians 2:10) Will we accept His perfect plans though His gracious gift of free will? Will we surrender over this potentially dangerous gift and allow Him to Shepherd us on the right path? (Psalm 23:3, Proverbs 3:5-6) If we do, we will become good stewards of God’s incredibly precious gift of time.
Please note that I described God’s gift of free will as being "potentially dangerous". By this, I mean that free will misused is a disastrous thing. That is, we have the option of choosing either to love or not love God. God is perfect. His perfection means that He cannot be improved upon. Therefore, His creation of humans who love Him is free of any hidden motives. After all, He does not need us. Our creation and our choice to love Him will not add to His perfection. In His incredible graciousness, the Lord has created us to experience His incomprehensible love, pure and simple. Now since love is a decision, it cannot be done under compulsion. It requires free will. The option of choosing to love Him or not is thus ours to make. The consequences of our choice though are staggeringly profound. This is one reason why God’s gift of free will is potentially dangerous. Any person’s choice to be eternally separated from Him by rejecting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour has horrific consequences.
James reminds us "Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin." V. 17. We as believers need to accede our will over to the Lord. He knows what is best for us and our action of surrender puts us in alliance with the most powerful Being in the universe. This is how we can victoriously live the Christian life. We become strong when we make ourselves weak by surrendering our will by faith over to God. We can never walk victoriously on our falsely perceived strengths. Moses and the Israelites certainly realized this when he vulnerably stood before the Red Sea and the vast powerful army of the Pharaoh came charging towards them.
A Tasty Last Meal
Of course, James’ epistle goes beyond reminding us of the fleeting reality of time and God’s command that we make the most of it. Through the double-edged sword of God’s Word, we are reminded of the foolishness of boasting about our destiny and the absurdity of basing our identity in terms of our relative standing in the world.
The math does not lie. If we are here on Earth for a fractional moment, then every possession, position, ounce of power and status that we manage to accumulate, no matter how great it may appear before our earthly eyes, ends up being equally as fractional as our lives over the continuum of eternity.
I don’t care if you somehow manage to become a billionaire during your brief stay on this planet. The pleasure that your riches will provide for you will be as fleeting as the last tasty meal experienced by death roll prisoner prior to his execution. This is the stark reality of the finite when measured against the infinite.
If you use the power and authority that God has permitted for you to have for the purposes of building His Kingdom, then your significance will have incredibly enduring consequences. I am constantly reminded of R.G. LeTourneau, an extremely wealthy industrialist whose generosity towards the cause of Christ has rarely been equaled. This man constantly gave away nearly his entire vast fortune and always ended-up making more. He could not get rid of all of his money. The Lord recognized LeTourneau’s usefulness and kept directing more money his way.
Likewise, every time you allow Jesus to use you as a witness, or to evangelize, disciple and/or encourage someone, you are partaking in a far reaching eternal enterprise in which you will receive a crown of glory.
Please do not be fooled by your financial and social status relative to others in this world. God wants us to focus our true worth on the fact that we are His adopted children who have been given the status of Ambassadors. Now that is an incredible elevation of status, power and authority. I mean think about it. God All Mighty, who can depose the mightiest of world leaders with a flick from His finger has appointed us to a far higher status. He is even willing to spend countless hours listening to our every word that we utter to Him. In fact, He cherishes every single moment that we spend with Him. Name me any world leader that would personally meet with you at the drop of a hat. What a great and loving God that we have!
Do not therefore allow Satan to snare you into basing your identity on what you do or how we are perceived by others. Never base your identity and personhood on such perishable things. (Matt 6:19-20)
If God Wills
At the same time, beware of planning without taking the will of God into consideration. This is absolutely essential. Throughout the scriptures, the Apostle Paul would frequently discuss his future plans by adding the phrase, "If God wills." Any plan that we make; any future activity that we intend on doing, requires our conscious understanding that it will be sifted through God’s will. For this reason, we should add the statement "IF God wills" more often into our thoughts and conversations.
Just make sure that you say it with sincerity. And be extremely careful that you do not say it as if it is some kind of a superstitious expression like "knock on wood." Remember, if God wills something for a believer, no matter how awful it may appear to be, it is for your own good. Remember as well, nothing happens in our lives without the permissive will of God. (James 1:2-3, 1 Peter 4:19, Job 1:9-12, 1Corinthians 10:13) Something that you perceive to be good and noble may not be in your best interest and God will not allow it to happen. Saying, "if God wills" is not a magic expression to ensure that you get your way.
James’ epistle is yet another reminder that if you deliberately take God out of your planning equation, you will find yourself stepping into Satanic territory. One of the oldest and most powerful lies Satan has used since the Garden of Eden is that man can make himself into God. Satan deceived Adam and Eve into believing that they would become gods. He enticed them through pride. He deceived them into handing over their God given gift of free will to believe in the oldest false idol known to man: Belief in Oneself.
Master of Your Own Destiny?
Today, this same false idol rears its incredibly ugly head in the human potential and new age movements. Our society has enslaved itself in awakening that ugly giant within and will soon pay a price for it. The credo of modern Western civilization is that "if we put our minds to anything, it will happen." That is, we can become masters of our own destiny. Being the clever manipulator that he is, Satan has for millennia masked this lie into a myriad of philosophies that are essentially variations of this theme.
This credo is not only arrogant, it is utterly foolish. James knew this irrefutable fact 2000 years ago.
Beloved, we have much less control of our destiny than we care to think. Sure, we generally have the free will to make choices but we have very little control of their outcomes. Some of you out there are known as "control freaks." You crave to control as much of the world around you as possible. You may even get a number of things accomplished. But if you arrogantly think that you have full or even fractional control of the elements, your are deceiving yourself entirely.
You can’t will things into being. Anything that you will, must first be approved by God All Mighty. (Job 1:9-12) If He says no to your will, it will not happen. You are deluding yourself if you think otherwise.
Did you will your parents into being? Did you will their genetic make up? How many of us had a choice as to which one of the billions of sperm and hundreds of potential ovum would be used for our fertilization? How many of us had any choice on the type of food that our mothers would consume during their pregnancies? How many of us had any choice as to whether our mothers would smoke, drink, take drugs or participate either knowingly or unknowingly in any other activity that would affect our intellectual and physical potential? How many of us had any choice as to which neighbourhood we would live in as children? How about our choice of schools? Access to tutors?
How many of us have control of the economy? Demographics? National policy? And this only scratches the surface. Your life, my life, and every microbial cell’s life on this planet is completely in God’s hands.
Do not get suckered into the flavour of the month philosophies that this world serves up so readily. Acknowledge your mortality. Acknowledge the limited time that you have to live on this planet. Don’t be fooled by those smooth talking late night television charlatans and their deceptive promises. You do not have a giant within but a desperately wicked heart that can easily be deceived. (Jeremiah, 17:9, Matthew 15:19, Mark 7:20-23)
We have been designed to worship and walk with God. The more that we accede our free will to Him, the more harmonious our walk becomes with Him. Our existence is a testament of what can be accomplish when one relies on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit rather than the "giant within".
This must drive Satan absolutely bonkers. Think about it. Here is a being that can easily outwit any human. Here is a being with significantly higher capacities- both intellectually and physically, who cannot defeat us whenever we rely on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
So our fleeting moments here have tremendous purpose and potential. Clearly, then, James is not trivializing our existence here on Earth. He instead confronts us with the reality of our earthly existence. It is as short-lived as a jet stream. And yet, despite this brevity, is chuck full of decisions that will have enduring eternal consequences. With God in the mix we can accomplish incredibly significant works!
Beloved, don’t allow Satan to tempt you into procrastination and disobedience of God’s will. Don’t allow him to deceive you into making your work into an idol. If you do, it will at best end up becoming nothing more than that of a rusting lawn ornament. Obey God’s will. Thank Him for His generous gift of time and ask Him to make your jet stream fulfill His intended eternal purposes for your life. Do this. And do it now. There really is not time to waste.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the incredible gift of time. It is so precious. Lord, you know what is best for our brief lives here on Earth. Please guide us into becoming useful instruments for your purposes. Teach us how to make the most of our time here on Earth. Forgive us of the sin of procrastination. Break us free from the shackles of arrogance and boasting. Remind us to never take ourselves too seriously. Keep us meek. Make us a blessing today, tomorrow and for years to come.
We ask this in Jesus Name. Amen.
