What is your life?
James 4:11-17
Introduction
All that has to be said are two numbers 9-11 and memories and reflections of where we were and what we saw and what we thought come flooding the consciousness. Sit in silence for just 5 seconds and recall the sites and recall the emotions. ABC NBC CBS FOX PBS will all have their documentary salutes to the events. Questions continue to pour in. What happened? How? Why? Many have come to God, grown closer, many more have fled Him and don’t trust Him anymore. The Question I want to attend to is a question that is found in the middle of the text. With today’s uncertainties and no promise for a tomorrow it would seem this question leaped off the page when I read it. What is your life? Can we answer that? In reflection on 9-11 what is our life what should it be?
I. Your life should be an influence (11,12)
a) Has the events of September 11th changed our perspective on people?
i) Have they made us endure and grasp on to those relationships that are near and dear to us?
ii) The scripture in verse 11,12 and last years tragedy should remind us that every word we say to people has the potential of being the last they hear.
iii) How many men and women are grieving because they didn’t get to say I’m sorry or I forgive you or I love you…
iv) To think that the events of last year have changed people and made them more aware and alert would be accurate.
v) To say that they have become more spiritually minded may not be as accurate.
vi) For a month there was meetings of religious minds, an eclectic prayer meeting took place September 23rd where all faiths converged at Yankee Stadium and spoke from their spiritual readings and said philosophical gibberish to appease seeking hearts and raise patriotism… deemed a prayer meeting. Not a memorial service. To who?
vii) All the great religions were represented… who wasn’t there. Not David Wilkerson of Time Square Church who began Teen Challenge. Not Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle a church of nearly 8000 people. Not Billy Graham the great evangelist of our day.
viii) Why? Did they not receive their invitation? Were they too busy that day?
ix) There were “Christian” representatives, but who of them would use the name of Jesus? Making the scripture “whatever you ask in my name it shall be done” null and void
x) In such a large prayer meeting with open doors open to everyone, every faith Jesus was not invited.
xi) We have to be careful about using that name it offends people.
xii) We have to be careful about what we say and what we do it may offend
xiii) But Jesus said, in Mark 8:38 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
xiv) Be not ashamed of Jesus’ name… Be not ashamed of the Holy Spirit
b) Has 9/11 Changed Our relationships with people
i) It is by this name that we have the answer to every longing heart.
ii) I am convinced that it is only by making yourself a disciple of His, will that longing and wondering and questions in your heart be met.
iii) After these events has our relationships with people improved? Has the message of Christ been invigorated in us or did that last for a month and die away as we became more concerned with the financial crisis we have experienced over the year.
iv) Our words we speak to others is precious in this day…
c) Has 9/11 Changed Our hunger to evangelize
i) September 11th should have increased our desire to speak the name of Jesus, to prick their hearts with the gospel message. To give an answer…
ii) This is a reminder for us today. September 11th should remind us of the lives of others as well as our own. Time is precious tomorrow is uncertain..
II. Your life is an Uncertainty? (13,14)
a) Has the events of September 11th changed our perspective on our tomorrows?
i) (14) you do not what will happen tomorrow Early Christians who lived in these days, which James was speaking to, were not assured their tomorrows
ii) Any moment soldiers could have broken in dragging them to prison
iii) Any moment that could be snatched away and murdered
iv) For someone working in the WTC the day the airliner smashed into the building they understood uncertainty. A beautiful day that was suddenly filled with smoke.
b) Uncertainty brings a sense of insecurity
i) The evil and creative capacity that man has embraced to do evil should hardly surprise us. In Matt 24:12 Jesus tells us that in the end days “because lawlessness will abound… the love of many will grow cold.”
ii) And that death of love will create more lawlessness, which in turn will create colder love and the cycle will not end… but he who endures will be…
iii) That is where our security should lie… in endurance, in overcoming…
iv) Man makes his own tragedies… Most 20th century famines are man made; either deliberately or by economic systems that were crippled by dictators or corrupt governments. Most are not caused by nature or the inability of people, but by the policies of government that are more concerned about their own self serving interests. Joseph Stalin deliberately imposed a famine on the Ukraine to get the people to comply with his agenda… (Ethiopian famine)
v) When the mind is corrupted and convinced, not with evil, but with deceptive truth, they will go to great lengths to carry out their ideas of truth.
vi) Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life”. When many thousands were killed at the hands of Christians during the Crusades they followed a deceptive truth not the truth that Jesus proclaimed or the truth that Jesus is.
vii) Our insecurities about God, our country, and man has never been more real Where Who do we trust… Who doe we fear? Who keeps us secure?
c) Uncertainty brings a sense of fear
i) All I have to say is Y2K, 9/11, Anthrax, West Nile Virus, nuclear bombs
ii) 50 times in the Bible it says “Do not Fear” 10 times “fear not”
iii) Jesus said “Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul” Luke 12:28
iv) For some the fear is so overwhelming they drastic measures to escape it
v) In the Frontline Documentary on PBS one photographer witnessed and photographed the many who gave up hope in those fearful moments and jumped from the 80th floor. He could only speculate what was going on in their minds and hearts… Others had their own questions. Questions to God
vi) Why me? Why this? Why now? Where was God? He was grieving over the choice that some men had made to fly planes into buildings?
vii) Was it God’s will that thousands of people dissolve in a dust of debris.
viii) For many atheists they felt their atheism was confirmed God did not intervene… therefore no God.
ix) Even the atheist cannot resist calling the events… cruelty but on what basis, whose moral code are they using? Are there moral absolutes? Cruelty
x) Instead they insist if God exists he must be evil to allow this atrocity…
xi) Yet people allow and applaud a child being ripped out of the womb, killed and discarded and then call it choice, but if God allows a life to be taken He is evil… explain the contradiction…
xii) We live in uncertain days, but God knows what is certain that whoever confesses with their mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believes in their heart that God raised Him from the dead will be saved.
xiii) There is no need for fear of what is uncertain after that… What is your life
III. Your life is a vapor (15-17)
a) Has the events of Sept. 11th changed our perspective on the minuteness of life?
i) James 4 proclaims our life to be a vapor or a passing mist
ii) In the Osacr Wildes book the Portrait of Dorian Gray Dorian has a painting made of him that takes on a life of it’s own. The portrait of him ages while Dorian the man never ages and his life is extended and has assurance of immortality as long as the painting stays intact. Until he plunges the knife in the portrait and ends his own life. We don’t have the luxury of such a painting
iii) Even Job said “my life is a breath” Job 7:7 A breathe that Psalm 78 says is “one that passes away and does not come again.”
b) Has it Changed your perspective on the importance of today?
i) If your life is but a vapor than how much of what we are doing today is really unimportant. Should we liberate ourselves from the mundane things
ii) We have never been busier than we are now. We have never traveled more
iii) Will the important things you do today, be important when Jesus returns.
c) Has it changed your perspective on the importance of God being involved in every moment of your life?
i) Are we walking around and taking each step with the realization that God may have a plan for each step, for every corner you turn could be ordained by God. We make plans with out Him we take our vacations away from Him and don’t include Him
ii) If God is your creator does He get precedence over the priorities in your life?
iii) We describe retirement as “my time”
iv) We see our excelling in business as a chance for more things to buys
v) We feel God is not interested in the mundane matters (Luke 12:4-7)
vi) Has God been consulted about the investments, purchases, changes in your life?
Conclusion
The George Barna Research Institute tells us
Almost nine out of ten Americans say the terrorist attacks have had no lasting impact on their faith
Adults are no more likely to believe in absolute moral truth today than they were on September 10, 2001.
My Life is a vapor, my life is an uncertainty, but my life will be an influence. Today is a day to live for God!
Who should have been here today that you did not invite…
