The Humility of a Pilgrims' Faith

Making Your Plans Without a Parachute James 4:13-17 Preached by L Going at WACC – July 1, 2001

It would be interesting to find out the kind of plans that are being made at present by you who are here today. Some of you are no doubt planning or have already planned for your vacations. Some of you are planning how you are going to pay for college tuitions. Some of you may be planning a job change or making different investments in light of our bearish economy. We all plan. If to desire is to be human so is planning. We all have goals, objectives and dreams.

Let me ask you, how comfortable would you be in letting someone else make your plans for you? Lets say that I set up a business for this kind of service. You do not know what college to go to so you come to me and for a fee I will decide for you. Or you do not know where to go on vacation so you come to me and for a fee I will make your vacation plans for you, even if that means running up your credit card bill so you can enjoy a wonderful two week vacation in the Swiss Alps.

I am sure that we all would feel very uncomfortable trusting other people to make our plans for us. Yet in fact James wants us to know that there is someone who has the final say concerning how our plans turn out. So in a real sense there is someone who makes our plans succeed or fail.

If as we saw last week there is spiritual danger in ‘high altitude judging’ there is also danger in making your plans without a parachute. The parachute in this case is taking into consideration as you make your plans the sovereignty and providence of God. We will see that planning for next year, next month or even tomorrow without a conscious and agreeable dependence of upon the Lord who controls the future is like jumping out a plane without a parachute. Such planning is really evidence of pride.

Recognizing this fact enables you to remain in that place of safety of which we spoke last week – a place of humility before the face of God. Humility before God consists not only of a submissive heart, but also of a dependent heart. Humility, as I see it described here by James, has three elements. First humility leads you to follow God's revealed will as it is given in Scripture (obedience). Second, humility also means that you see the limits to your own powers and resources and third, humility means that you depend on God's gracious providential ordering of your life. These last two elements of humility come out especially in how you make your plans. James is not advocating that we make no plans. Nor is he speaking disparagingly of

1 business and making profit. Rather he is warning against a very secular attitude about life itself. James words really reflect Proverbs 16:9 "In his heart, man plans his way (makes his plans) but God directs his steps." James is confronting all you hold to the first part of this Proverb (“in his heart, man plans his way) but neglect the second part (but God directs his steps). Our utter frailty and dependence and God’s sovereignty and providence are the underpinning of James’ counsel.

It is acceptable for you to make plans. What is not acceptable is for you to make your plans without regard for who you are and who God is.

This is to be presumptuous. This kind of thinking also threatens your place of submission and humility before God.

“Once more it is this key factor of the lowly walk with God that is threatened. Our initial determination is to commit ourselves decisively to God’s side (7), to live in close fellowship with him (8a), to purge our lives and our hearts (8b), to come to the place of wholesale repentance (9) and so to humble ourselves before God. All this can be lost, however, if, once outside the door of our private room, we take the reins of life into our own hands, we forget our ignorance, frailty and dependence and plan our day, our week and next year as if we were lords of earth and time, and there was not God in heaven.” (Alec Moyter page 161)

So James reminds you of two important realities that we forget by being presumptuous.

First he reminds you of “Who You Are.”

The humility that comes from wisdom has a due appreciation for the frailty and weakness of our existence. We are finite. We are also dependent creatures. We are not ultimately self-sufficient. We don't even know what tomorrow may bring and we certainly have no control over what it brings. This does not mean that we should fear the future. Nor does this mean that you should make no plans whatsoever. It means that you are to make your plans with the understanding that you are creatures. This awareness is absent in the minds of those merchants that James describes in verse 13. "Today or tomorrow we will certainly go to this city and we will work there a year and we will carry on our business and make a (big) profit."

James is not saying that you should not plan to go to that particular city. Neither is he saying that you should not plan to carry on a business in that city, nor is he saying

2 that the very idea of planning and working for a profit is sinful. Rather the problem is these plans are made in an arrogant manner without any regard for our limits and how fleeting life is. This is the point that James makes with the image of a mist.

You are but a mist. Like a fog in the morning that is gone as soon as the sun’s rays reach it. Or like a beautiful sunset as the sun’s light passes through the prisms of earth’s atmosphere. Every time there is a beautiful sunset or sunrise we want to run into the house and get a camera so we can capture it permanently on film. I dare say that most of us have photographs of friends and loved ones who are no longer with us. Like the sunset we have their image captured in time but in is only a likeness. We are but a mist.

PSA 90:12 Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

PSA 39:4-7 Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.

Our lives are like a mist. Our lives are but temporary and fragile. On this point the pen of Charles Spurgeon is very pointed indeed!

“Why, then is it, that we are always counting upon what we are going to do? How is it that, instead of living in the eternal future, where we might deal with certainties, we continue to live in the more immediate future, where there can be nothing but uncertainties? Why do we choose to build upon clouds, and pile our palaces on vapor, to see them melt away, as before they have often melted, instead of by faith getting where there is no failure, where God is all in all, and his sure promises make the foundations of eternal mansions? Oh, I would say with my strongest emphasis: Do not reckon upon the future. Young people, I would whisper this in your ears; Do not discount the days to come. Old men, whispering is not enough for you, I would say, with a voice of thunder: Count not on distant years; in the course of nature, you days must be few. Live in the present; live unto God; trust him now, and serve him now; for very soon your life on earth will be over.”

I can hear someone say. "This way of thinking doesn't promote a winning spirit. What a defeatist mentality this is. If Edison had this attitude we would all be sitting around in the dark. If the people at NASA had this attitude, men would have never

3 gone to the moon. If Lance Armstrong had this attitude he would never have overcome testicular cancer and win the Tour de France two years in a row.”

James is not suggesting that we become passive and without purpose or goals, or that we put off all inquisitiveness or effort, etc. What James is confronting is a presumptuous arrogance about life. It is what he calls boasting or glorying in verse 16. "But now you boast in your arrogance, all such boasting is evil." The object of your boasting is what James has in mind. He calls that object "your arrogance". J.B. Phillips is right on the mark in his translation. "You get a certain pride in yourself in planning your future with such confidence." The arrogance is the attitude of self- sufficiency and self-importance that are rebuked in other places in Scripture. The arrogance is literally your taking pride in your life. The word translated here by the English “arrogance” is translated in 1 John 2:16 as “pride of life.”

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world -- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life -- is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

The next reality that James presses on you is you knowing “Who God Is.”

But this is really one side of a two-sided coin. The other side is just a crucial. It is that we are to know and have faith and confidence in the controlling sovereign power and plan of God. So James also calls you to consider who God is and especially the fact that it is by the Lord's will that our plans succeed.

One commentator writes: "What James urges is not a morbid preoccupation with possible disaster, but a realistic attitude to the future made possible by faith in God...Realizing the future is uncertain, not only teaches us to trust God, it helps us properly value the present. To be obsessed with future plans may mark our failure to appreciate present blessings or (lead to) evasion of present duties."

You do not know the future for the simple reason that you do not control the future. If you controlled the future then you would know what the future brings. I suppose you would know the future if the one who does control it reveals it to you. Well, the Lord knows the future because he controls the future. There are evangelical teachers who are questioning both God’s knowledge of future events, and his sovereignty over future events. They state that a variety of possibilities lay open as much open to

4 God as they do to the rest of us. If this were true then James would be wrong. If this were true how could James counsel us to consider the Lord’s will in making our plans? If this were true then this counsel would apply to God! Lord now in making your plans remember you really do not know what is going to happen so a little humility on your part might be appropriate. What blasphemy this is!

James counsels us in this matter because the Lord’s will governs the unfolding events not only of the cosmos and the nations but of your lives as well. So while we do not know God’s will of decree or his sovereign will, we do know Him through Jesus Christ and it is in this knowledge of God’s good purpose toward us that we bow before him and acknowledge his Lordship over our lives, our plans and our future.

This is what you are to do when you make your plans. "You are to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." Of course James is not saying that as long as you attach this little verbal phrase to your plans then your plans will succeed. This is not some lucky charm, fetish or incantation. What he is saying is that you are to stop and consider who it is that really is in control and has the final say. Certainly, voicing this phrase, if it reflects the attitude of your heart is appropriate. It may even help to reinforce the belief. Mouthing the phrase, however, means nothing.

For you to know this and fail to apply it to your lives (to your plans, affairs, business dealings, jobs, families etc.) is a sin of omission. This is what he means in verse 17. "Knowing therefore to do good and not, this is sin." It means that you are really a secular person not a sacred person. You keep God out of your plans. This is unwise (stupid=your life is but a mist, life is fleeting). This is evil. This is sin.

This is also James’ way of stressing the fact that we should “not put off until tomorrow what we can do today.” We do not know what tomorrow may bring. So what is it that God is calling you to do today? You may do a fine job avoiding overt acts of sin and evil. But what good are you accomplishing for the glory of God today? Maybe you have been coming here for some time and you have heard the Gospel but you refuse to respond in trust and faith. To put off responding to the call of God issued in the Gospel is sin.

So what are you to do? Make your plans but do so in faith. Make your plans but always make them prayerfully. Make your plans but always offer them to God and be open to the changes that his providence will make. Make your plans but willingly submit them to God for His changes and direction.

5 In committing yourself to make your plans according to God’s will be sure to seek to include His (revealed will) in what you plan to do. What I mean is this. Do you consider how the Lord wants you to dedicate all that you do to him and to his glory? Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:31 that whatever we do we are to do to the glory of God. This includes not only making your plans but the reason for your plans – the very content of your plans and your motives for your plans. Consider all the things you plan: new business ventures, further education, a new car; family vacation… Most of us make plans to improve our circumstances, our vocational opportunities, our families welfare or increased financial prosperity. In making your plans do you consider how you might honor God and glorify him? Have you considered how in making your plans you can enhance your prospects for sharing the Gospel and win people to Christ? Have you ever made you plans seeking God’s direct help so that you might have more to give to the poor or to missions?

Saying “if the Lord wills” at least means that you are open to having heaven’s purposes interjected into your plans, goals and objectives. To say, “if the Lord wills” must mean that you value his will and affirm his agenda because you are in fact seeking His kingdom and living for his glory. This is the way in which you make your plans supported by the parachute of God’s sovereignty and providence. In other way is like free falling from 10,000 feet without a parachute…it can get quite messy!