“…you are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away…”
"I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
[Now] Don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won’t another minute buy.
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind."
-Kansas
The group that recorded those lyrics is named “Kansas”. Appropriate. If anyone knows about dust and wind it’d have to be someone from Kansas.
Sort of a gloomy song; but they’ve hit the nail on the head with their main theme. We close our eyes only for a moment, and the moment’s gone. And life is made up of moments, isn’t it? One just passed. There goes another!
‘Vapor’ says James. A mist. Not time. Us. “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
James is not the only scripture writer who declares this truth. Psalm 144:4 says,
“Man is like a mere breath; his days are like a passing shadow.”
And in Psalm 39:5...
“Behold, Thou hast made my days as hand-breadths. And my lifetime as nothing in Thy sight, surely every man at his best is a mere breath.”
THE VIEW OF THE FLESH
“The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills, wills.”
- Richard J. Needham, The Wit and Wisdom of Richard Needham.
Well, that summarizes things in a humorous way; but isn’t it amazing that those without Christ, who should be most concerned about the brevity of this life, go through life as though they are in control and as though death will never become a reality for them.
At least, that’s the façade. In truth, they live a paradox. A contradiction
Because while on one hand they struggle and strive to accumulate to themselves material wealth and goods as though these things will fulfill them and keep them forever satisfied, at the same time they scramble like chickens when the fox is in the yard, to find ways to fend off their inevitable death.
They exercise, obsess about diet, search for the newest cures and remedies; and in the meantime, for the short-term, they use cosmetics and cosmetic surgery to help them and those around them forget that time is taking its toll, and they’re marching the same route as everyone else; toward the graveyard.
Lynn recently perused some magazine covers while we were in line at the grocery store, and saw one that had pictures of celebrities without makeup. I didn’t see these pictures, but as we walked away she told me about it and said (as she chuckled), “they look just like regular people”.
But this is a good example of how the flesh views things. This is why the young and beautiful and talented will always have the adoration of the masses. They stand before us smiling self-assuredly; easily, with their wealth and reclusion, hiding the fact that they too have problems and pains and imperfections; and they are worshiped by those who wish they could have that ‘perfect’ life. And the most realistic and thoughtful of us, who realize that those people are plastic and false, still admire them and swarm to them ~ because for just a little while they make us forget that we’re dust in the wind.
They are a paradox. They snatch and snap for instant gratification as though there’s no tomorrow; at the same time working laboriously toward earthly goals as though there will be no end.
This is what James is warning against here in our text.
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit’.”
A year? Spend a year? You don’t know about tomorrow! How many in the history of man, have said, “Tomorrow I will do such and such”, and the morning dawn found them cold on the mortician’s block?
Erma Bombeck advised; “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”
And that’s funny and we laugh. But remember that the people on the Titanic had bought into the claim that it was a ship that could not be sunk. So confident was the White Star Shipping Line in its own claims, that it didn’t even provide enough life boats for all passengers and crew!
What a terrific example that is, of the lives of those lost and without Christ in the world! Their confidence is in science or finances; misplaced, because both of those things can and do betray them. Yet they put their trust in the frames of the world, never checking to see if there’s even enough life boats! Never considering that the thing they’re putting their confidence in may never get them to their destination! They eat, drink and make merry, never bothering to ask, ‘are those I’ve placed my trust in really able to take care of me? Will they be there when I really need them? Will they be my friend when I have nothing to give in return? Will they bear me up when I can’t stand on my own? And when my final moments come, will they go with me to the other side? What good will they be to me then?’
History is full of accounts of those who lived for the moment, until they ran out of moments. This view of the flesh is demonstrated very clearly and simply just in the number of men who die every year and leave no will, because they never stopped to consider that their days were numbered, but not by them.
THE VIEW OF THE SPIRIT
After James has chided the foolish for boasting that which they could not fulfill or be guaranteed of, he gets right to the heart of the matter.
“Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that’.”
Now I want to break that down and be sure we don’t miss his message here.
“Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills’.
What Christian can read or hear those words, and not think of our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane?
He who had told His disciples that His food was to do the will of the One who sent Him. Who in His final hours, when He needed the greatest wisdom and more strength for the coming day than He had ever had to call upon, prayed “Not my will, but Thy will”.
And this is precisely where the division comes, Christians. It began with Lucifer declaring, “I will, I will, I will”; and ever since man surrendered to him in the garden of Eden, he has mindlessly repeated that creed to his own destruction.
“Tomorrow I will go” “I will do this for myself” “I will”. Instead of, “Thy will be done”, or “If it be your will, Lord”.
Somewhere someone said “Mankind was lost in a garden, and in a garden he was found”. And the bottom line is, in a garden the first Adam said, “I will”, but in a garden the last Adam said, “Thy will”; and by so doing won us back.
But look what the Spirit is telling us we ought to be saying. “If the Lord wills, we shall live”
Have you noticed that? The fallen flesh assumes life, when in truth there is no life. It just assumes it has life in itself, and can unilaterally make its own decisions and its own plans and go about according to its own will with no accountability to God or man.
But the Holy Spirit, through James, says, ‘You should begin with the recognition of the truth that your continued earthly existence is constantly in God’s hands.”
“But now ask the beasts“, (says Job 12:7-10) “and let them teach you; and the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you; and let the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?”
Life in the Spirit begins with recognition that all life is from Him. There can be no absolute surrender of the will; there can be no giving of self to Him and true recognition of His Lordship, unless at the very foundation is recognition that we owe our initial and continued, moment-by-moment, existence to Him.
As long as, and during any period of time that, we go on under the assumption that the day is ours, we’ve made our plans, we’ve set our goal and are free to pursue it in our own strength and according to our own free will, we play the part of the fool and we will never accomplish anything of an eternal value.
Church, listen to me! If we really desire to do Kingdom work; if we really mean it when we pray and ask the Lord to use us to win souls and spread the gospel to the world around us, we must begin with acknowledging and internalizing the fact that He is our life in beginning, and He is our life sustained. Referring to the individual believer and the Church herself.
As soon as we lose sight of that, we begin stepping out in the flesh and forgetting that the beginning of our plans is “Thy will be done”.
James says, “If the Lord wills we shall live and also do this or that.” The doing of this or that is the addendum. It doesn’t come first.
It must be a natural thing, because every one of my children did it. When they’re very small, just learning to crawl around the carpet and explore things; they would eventually come to a plant, or a ceramic on a low shelf; and having been told in the past not to touch, they reach a hand toward it, and then turn and look their parent in the eye with a sort of questioning expression that says, “If I touch this, will I suffer consequences?”
I remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, where Bugs is contemplating some mischief. He says, “If I dood it, I get a whuppin’…. I dood it!” And he goes ahead and lights the fuse, or pushes the boulder over the edge, or whatever it was he was about.
Sometimes I think we’re guilty of that. Plan the ministry, pay the money, buy that thing, set that goal, say that thing… and then we look at God like the baby reaching toward the plant and ask, “Was that according to Your will?” “Now that I’ve done it, will You bless it?”
James says, first seek His will, and if it is that you shall live, then seek His will for what you will do with that life you’ve been given, today.
“If the Lord wills, we shall live, and also do this or that”.
Listen to the words of Jesus from His discourse to His disciples in Matthew 6:31-34
“Do not be anxious then, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘With what shall we clothe ourselves?’ For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
We take these words as exhortation to trust God; an encouragement that He will not let His own suffer need. Sermons are preached from these verses decrying worry and worldly ambition.
But I’d also like you to see that these words go hand in hand with the error that James is addressing in our text.
The Lord knew full well, that when we are anxious about what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or with what we shall be clothed, the tendency of the fallen flesh will be to get our eyes off of God, and look to the future. We must plan! We must scheme and jump at opportunities and struggle for the upper hand! Because if we don’t; if we let our guard down; if we relax; if we blink, we’ll go without!
We’ll miss the chance. We’ll be walked on and stepped over. We won’t get our way.
Jesus wasn’t telling His listeners to be irresponsible. He wasn’t suggesting they all become destitute wanderers, lazy and lax and assuming God will drop food and clothing into their laps.
He was telling them about priorities. So was James.
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” said Jesus.
“…say, ‘If the Lord wills’,” says James
The flesh says, provide for yourself, defend yourself, set up your fortress of materials, wealth and clout; then, when you’re safe and secure, acknowledge God’.
The Spirit says, “Owe God your life. Seek His will. Then, while you do an eternal work, He will provide your temporal needs” Priorities.
THE VIEW LOOKING BACK
I’ve talked about the view of the flesh and the view of the Spirit; I want to spend our last minutes today talking about another kind of view. The view looking back.
It’s easy for us, as we face forward to a largely unknown future, to agree that we really are a vapor that is here and then gone. Our imaginations allow us to admit to that if we simply exercise common sense and concede that we really don’t know how many tomorrows we have.
But the backward view gives us some information vital to putting all of this into perspective.
Because if I leave you with this emphasis on the brevity of our earthly life, calling you ‘dust’ and ‘vapor’ and expounding the temporal nature of this world and its trappings, even the most enlightened and Biblically based Christian can go away thinking, ‘Sheesh! What a downer!”
But as I said, the back view gives some perspective to this. Because you see, as transient as all of us are in this world, we really make a much greater impact as we pass through than I think most of us realize on a day to day basis.
I don’t know who first penned these words that to many are very well known, but whoever said, "Only one life ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last" ,
very succinctly capsulated everything being said in James, 4, or Matthew 6, or this sermon or any other commentary on the subject.
As brief as life is, in the overall scheme of things, men and women throughout history have made an impact that lasted after them, whether for good or bad.
Were they ‘vapors that appeared for a little while and then vanished away’? Was James writing about them too? Yes.
And yet we remember their names and their deeds. I can’t begin to list them all; they come to us down through history.
Let’s just start with Adam and Eve! Jump to non-biblical, historical names. Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Rasputin. Hitler. And from the arts. Michelangelo. Monet. Bach. Beethoven. Literary works. Homer. Hugo. Shakespeare. Poe.
There’s sports. War. Humanitarian efforts. Religious characters. St Francis of Assisi. Mother Theresa.
I could just go on and on. People whose lives, whether for good or bad, left a legacy, and to some degree or another, affected us all.
Let’s bring it to a more personal level. My father was a mist in the wind, just like the rest of us. In the overall scheme of things, he was here for a moment and then he was gone.
But who he was and how he lived his life certainly had their affect on me; whether for good or for bad. Mostly good, I hope.
One way or another, his life left its indelible mark on mine. In some cases I learned and avoided some of his mistakes. In some I’ve repeated them.
In other ways my fundamental character was shaped by the values he taught and lived. If I exhibit honesty, integrity, truthfulness, courage, kindness, to a large degree I can attribute that to the values that my father tried to instill in me.
And in ways you’ll probably never realize, what he instilled in me has now affected your lives. It’s the ripple effect.
Most of you, I hope, can point to someone in your past that left you the same kind of legacy.
Simply because they were fallible men and women, just like my dad, they left you both good and bad.
But the fact is, they impacted not only your life, but the lives you’ve affected because of what you’ll pass on.
My father’s influence in my life has influenced the life of my children, and it will influence their children, just as his life was influenced by his father and his grand-father.
So while we nod our recognition and mental ascent of James’ point here, that our days are in God’s hands and we ought to lay presumption and arrogance aside and seek His will for the day, we should also remember that having done so, in making our plans and setting our goals we should remember that the daily decisions and actions we take will have a profound affect, even on generations after us.
And that should humble us further, Christian, to find the right thing to do, and do it.
When we measure the nature of the impact of the lives of men and women down through history, using the plumb line of scripture and the lives of those who have served God against those who have not, then it cannot but become clear that the amount of time they lived didn’t matter, whether long or short; the enormity of their acts didn’t matter; the wideness in scope of the overall effects of their deeds didn’t matter; the degree of worldly celebrity and power and acclaim they attained to didn’t matter.
In fact, although we have a few names, like Moses and Abraham and Paul and Peter who have been the greatest and most influential names in history, for the most part, the people who have had the greatest and most significant impact on history never received celebrity or acclaim. At least, not here. But you can bet their names are known in Heaven.
Because when it comes right down to it, no word was ever written or spoken truer than this; ‘only what’s done for Christ will last’.
My friends, it’s the end of another year. And just like the moments, and the days (which are like a handbreadth), the years are like a vapor. They are here for a moment and they vanish. We just celebrated our church’s birthday last January 5th, and next week the year will have vanished away. ‘POOF!”
We don’t have long. None of us is here for long. But the backward view shows that even in the brief time we’re here, our lives make an astounding impact that will have a ripple effect on generations to come. Not just for our own families, but in the lives of anyone who has been exposed to the claims and the person of Jesus Christ through us.
As we go into yet another year then, I’ll just leave you with this challenge to think and pray about.
The year A.D. 2004 is upon us. What will you do, with your ‘dash’?
