Good morning. Whoa, that was loud. Before we open God's word this morning, I just want to take this opportunity to, even as Eric prayed, to wish all the mothers in here a very happy mother's day. But I always say that knowing that this could also be a very difficult day for some of you. And so I just want you to know that I'm praying for God's comfort for those who this may not be a day of celebration. Secondly, I also want to take this opportunity and just tell you how grateful I am to be back. And thank you all for your prayers and for all the care and love that you showed to me and my family. Thank you for all the text messages and all the emails. If I never responded to you, just know my left hand is completely useless and that may have something to do as to why I never responded to you. But my wife and I are truly grateful to you all and for your prayers and thank you for lifting us up and I am doing very well. With that said, we are finishing up our study on chapter 4 of the Book of James that we've been looking at. And we're going to finish up the last few verses 13 through 17 of the letter of James chapter 4. If you're able, would you please stand and let us honor as we usually do the reading of God's Holy Word, reading James chapter 4 verses 13 to 17. Here now, the reading of God's Word. Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a miss that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. And it is you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin. The word of the Lord this morning, or heavenly Father, we come to you, though we may not know what tomorrow holds. We have the very word that you bridged out and gave to us that we can consider, that you revealed yourself through your son and through the pages of the word that we read this morning. Father, we also realize that we cannot understand it and believe it and be transformed by it on our own. And so we need you. So would you speak to us this morning? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. There are no coincidences or accidents. It is always God's providence, providential care for us that allows us to live all lives. And so it happens that on the first Sunday that I return from having surgery on my hand, I preach on a text that is talking about planning for the future. You see, the week before I got to go to the hospital, it was the week before Easter, right? It was Easter week. And I worked so hard as I usually do because Easter happens to be my favorite holiday to prepare an amazing sermon, amazing in quotes, that I was going to preach on Easter Sunday. I, in fact, even asked to preach on good Friday just so that I had enough time to prepare a sermon for Sunday. Everything was in place. All preparations were getting close to being done so that I could celebrate Easter with my family and my church. I had been suffering that week. I was in so much pain. So Saturday morning, I decided I'm going to text my doctor and ask him what can I do with the pain because nothing else was working. And he said, can you call me? And even before I called him, he called me back. He said, your side needs to go to the ER. Of course I'm thinking, what are you talking about doctor? I don't need to go to the ER. Just tell me what to take so that I can take you on my pain. Long story short, I checked myself at the ER Union Memorial, hoping to get some pain management and go back home, continue planning for Easter and be able to be here on Sunday morning. And then as the doctors were looking at me and talking outside and they came inside and they uttered the words I never thought I would ever hear at least not at 38 years of age. Josiah, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to admit you. The world just came to a standstill. I was in other shock. I was completely confused at what was happening. It was just my thing. Why did I need to be admitted at a hospital? And my mind went straight to what is going to happen tomorrow at church. How is Easter going to go without me? What about that sermon that I spent all week preparing and I spent so much time working on who is going to preach that sermon? And it certainly cannot do it. God, this was not the plan. All along the plan was for me to be at church to celebrate Easter and to go home, maybe even check at the hospital on Monday, but not Sunday. Not Saturday morning. This was not the plan. God, your timing is completely off. You cannot be doing this. You can do this next week, but not this week. Of course, I tried to tell the doctors, can I go home, preach sermon on Sunday, and after the service, I'll come back absolutely no Josiah. And so I lay in my hospital bed, just completely confused. For most part, I was actually laughing because I couldn't believe it. I see IVs on my hand and I'm thinking it's just my hand. And God started teaching me stuff a whole lot. I'm not going to share everything, but one thing. That I was learning, as I was studying Scripture, actually listening to it because I couldn't scroll, was to decide you realize how you've been going through the motions as you live your life. Just decide you realize how you make plans every single day of your life. And God seems to be somewhere there. Keep not at the center of all of your planning. Do you realize how you become so callous in subtle ways that you're living your life like you know what the future holds? Do you realize why you're so upset and angry that you sit here, that you've just been running 100 miles an hour every single day, your wife keeps telling you slow down? You are not a machine. And I don't listen. Do you realize how your Bible reading and prayer has taken a back seat? Because it's all about doing the right things. It's all about being the greatest pastor you can be. It's all about the stuff that I got to do because that's what people see. That's what people are looking at. And so you got to do what you got to do. But where is God? Where is prayer? What has happened to your prayer life? I know that may sound like a shock to you that your pastor would confess that it is so easy for me to get caught up in my planning for today and the future. And completely forget the God who I serve. See many of us go and go walking around bragging and beating your chest and saying, you know, I know what's going to happen. I know the outcome of what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't live in arrogance that way. I certainly wouldn't say I do. But in what ways do we in very subtle but extremely dangerous ways? Do we live like we own our life? In what ways do we live like we know the outcome of future events in very subtle but extremely dangerous ways? The question that James is posing here is exactly that. Who's will do you want to be done in your life? You know James is talking to people that actually understand what he's talking about. They know what's going on because if we go back to history and realize the audience of the James is writing to this was doing a time when there was an economic upturn. A time where there were new markets and we're actually told new cities were being developed everywhere. It was a time of pursuing success. It was a time of reaching out to the greatest thing that you can ever be that the time was perfect for you to pursue success in a worldly way. And so James is not telling Christians that they're not supposed to pursue success in any way. He's saying be careful that you're not caught up pursuing success and forget who holds tomorrow. Be careful that you don't pursue success and leave God out of the equation. See for us as Christians that is so true of us, right? That sometimes as we live our lives we forget that in everything that we do in everything that we think in all of our life we must always ask that I will be done and not all will. But you realize how difficult that is easier said than done, right? So, verses 13 to 15, James wants to encourage his Christians to be careful not to boast about the future because the future is uncertain. We do not know what the future holds. But remember his pastor Eric reminded us in the beginning of chapter 4 last week this whole theme on humility. James is actually continuing discussing this theme of humility and what that means. And so James is saying bragging and boasting about tomorrow and all these things is not really right for you. And the sin that James is pointedly giving to us or wanting us against is what we call the sin of presumptuousness. Again, as we've always said and I've always said this when I'm preaching through the book of James, James does not like the time that much. The sin of presumptuousness is also a sin of the time. Think about it, right? You may not be slandering your brother or sister, but what are you doing? You are saying you are using your mouth and speaking with so much confidence, actually not confident, but with arrogance and boasting and making fun without considering the Lord. Especially when it comes to pursuing worldly success, so to speak. And so the people in verse 13, what do they say? Let us go. They decide today or tomorrow we will go here and there to this city or that city and we will trade and make profit. And James is really touching on our life. James is touching on three things of our life, our choices and our ability. Our life, our choices and our ability. Life, think about it first. We tend to think, even as Christians, we tend to think that we can continue to live at will. I will certainly wake up tomorrow in the morning. Will you? But that's how we live, right? We don't think about it, but we feel like we can continue to live at will. What about choices? How often do we tend to think that we are the masters of our own will? That all you got to do is you need to decide what you got to do and know and behold, it shall happen without ever giving a thought. What does God have to say about this? What about ability? We will succeed if we want. How many times have you told your child you can be anything you want? How true is that? How about by God's mercy and grace? If the Lord wills, but we often say it without even thinking a second, that all we need to succeed is you just have to want it bad enough and you can do it. I love how one commentator summarizes it and this is perfectly said. We speak to ourselves as if life were our right and if our choices were the only deciding factor. As if we had in ourselves all that was needed to make a successful thing. As if getting on, making money, doing well, our lives sold object. James is describing a situation in verses 13 and 15 of a people that are so deliberate in their planning, their self plan as they decide where the when and how they are going to do this thing. They are actually so confident not just in terms of we are going to go to this place and make profit, but they even, I just give it a way, they even confident of the outcome of what they are about to do. That on this particular day we will decide to go here and there. We will trade and we will certainly of course make profit. Now I just want to pause there for one second and just make sure that we understand that we shouldn't misinterpret what James is saying. James is not in any way saying or rebuking people for making plans. James is not rebuking people or us for trying to make profit. There is nothing wrong with pursuing profit. There is nothing wrong with making plans. There is nothing wrong with owning a business, making as much money as you can. Nothing wrong. So what is James rebuking here then? James is rebuking an attitude of worldly confidence, an attitude that says, no God allowed here. Neither is James rebuking us making plans for the future. James is not saying you are not supposed to have a retirement plan. James is not saying you are not supposed to have a life insurance or savings. In fact I would make the argument by doing those things that we are being good stewards of what God has given to us. Again, what is James rebuking here is when we think in our own arrogance that we have the ability to determine the events of the future. When we think or just because I did that life insurance, I'm covered. I'm all good. I don't need Jesus in my life. Have a life saving. That's all I need. It is the sort of self-sufficient, self-important planning that keeps God for Sunday. And Monday through Saturday belongs to me. I don't think that James is telling us to live in fear because we don't know what tomorrow holds. Neither is James telling us not to do anything about our future because we don't know what tomorrow holds. James wants us to plan, but to plan with God leading us and guiding us. God must be at the center of all of our planning. And to unpack the whole life choices, ability thing. I just want us to point you back to verse 13 here. Okay, look at chapter 4 verse 13. If you read, come now you will say today or tomorrow we will go into such a town and spend a year there in trade and make profit just that one verse. Try to unpack it on how commonplace that sentence is for us. In terms of our time, the James is touching on time. Come now, now, today or tomorrow, where we're going to go. He's touching on something that is extremely important to us. Purpose that we will go there determined to go to a place. That's all purpose. What about place? Where we're going to live? We're going to go to this city or that city and all goals in life. What is the goal? The goal is to trade. And we worry that we get from it. What are they going to get from their trade? It is to make profit. Think about it. These are the things that we struggle every single day with. We ask the question, how am I going to spend my time today? Who is going to get my time? We spend time thinking about our purpose. Why am I here, Lord? Why did you bring me on this particular earth? What am I supposed to be as a husband, as a church member, as a worker, as all these things? Where do we live? Is it the school district that we're going to consider? Is it affordability? What is it that we consider in terms of original lives? What about our goals? What are my goals in life? To go to school, go to college, get a degree, to be married? What am I going to get out of my goals? What we worry do I get from my goals? We spend our lives trying to find out the answer to this question. All of us, every single day, we are trying to find out how we're going to spend our time. What is our purpose? And the quest to these questions can easily lead us to an over-extension in our commitments. It can lead us to a place of dissatisfaction and compulsion if we're not careful. Why? Because we live in a busy, busy, busy people. Life is just crazy, busy. If you talk to anybody in this room that will tell you, I am busy. As James Dobson once said, if the devil will not make you sin, he will keep you busy. Now, I'm not in any way trying to say that being busy is a bad thing. But there is a kind of business that is not right. When there is no time to do anything else, and by that anything else I mean, there is no time to do the most important thing that we're called to do as Christians. Do you find it so easy for you to put off your Scripture reading and prayer and fellowship with one another for tomorrow or tomorrow that never comes? But it's so easy for you to plan your day and your calendar and make sure that you have all the other things that belong to you, your hobbies, your work, and everything else. It's right there. You will make time for it. What about prayer? What about fellowship? What about Scripture reading? And how do that tomorrow? But tomorrow never comes. We live in a world that is pleasure-dominated, pleasure-seeking that has no regard for God. And you know what? That truth creeps into the church as well. We begin to pursue the same things that the world is pursuing. So much so that we forget. We forget to come before the Lord in prayer when it comes to doing everything in our life. Where is our child going to go to school? Where are we going to live? Do you ever sit with your family and feel about to move somewhere to actually say, can we pray and ask the Lord if we're supposed to be there? Or do we just get up and go like, you know what? Yeah. Makes sense. But how often do we make those choices? Not just, I mean, I may be mentioning things that are super general, but how often do we just get up and go? How often do we just get up and go? Just complete disregard of what God's word says about whether we're supposed to go or not. Also realize that the cares of this world can wear us down so that we go to a place or revert to a place where we think we're self-made, we're self-assured in all lives. I don't know about you, but I'm tempted to make plans and ask God to bless my plans. I don't come to God before planning, but I actually do the planning. And then when I've done everything and I'm so secure and determined that that's what we're going to go, now you've got you, Glasgow's plans now. She's submitting to the Lord's will is not an easy thing, right? What if God says his will for you is to experience pain and difficulty? Are you going to say yes? I do not want to say yes. I still don't want to. Verse 14 reminds us of how life is uncertain and brief. James compares it to miss a steam rising from my tea kettle every morning as I make my tea, but it disappears against the ceiling in seconds. That's all life. That's how James describes all life. If you want to read the story of Job, I encourage you to read it. Of how Job takes and sees his life or his standing before God, this glorious majestic God, and yet he is a tiny little thing. The moments that we really need to hear about how uncertain and brief our life is not when we are about to die. It is now when we are healthy and doing well. We need to be reminded of our own frailties. You know why? So that we can now, not then, we can begin to give back everything that belongs to him and not hold it. The biblical concept here is that human life is utterly dependent on God alone. None of us can stand before God in judgment, say for his grace and mercy. That he is the one who sustains every second of our life, and friends tomorrow is not guaranteed, it really is it? I could drop right now on this book and be gone, just like that. And so the day we have from God is always a gift, not for us to boast, but for us to live humbly, to look to him in faith because we know he is the one who holds our future. So what is the alternative that James gives to us if we are not supposed to boast about the future, which we do not know because it is uncertain. Verse 15 through 17, he says, he is an alternative. He says instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. You know, looking back to the Old Testament, you realize that that language is really never used. We don't find it in the Old Testament, but we actually find it a whole lot in the New Testament. Paul especially, we know he is notorious for using that language. When he writes to the church, he often says, if the Lord wills, like he writes the Ephesians, he says in Acts 1821, he says, I will come back if God wills, if God wills. Elsewhere in Romans, when he was talking to the Romans, he actually expresses confidence without saying the word. If he never said, if the Lord wills, I will stop by it on my way to Spain and all. He actually says, I am coming to you. He expresses confidence. So what am I trying to say here? It's not the saying of those words that means that we actually do mean what we say. It's not just simply saying those words, but it is a right mindset that matters. You can say those words and still live, like the Lord will. The Lord's will doesn't have to be done in your life. And so we need to be careful that we don't make that particular phrase, the Lord will, to become another Christian cliche. Because we're so good at doing that, right? We just say things and just say cliche that we use. But what does it really mean? And are you living it? If you're saying it, do you really mean it? I'm not discouraging us from using it. In fact, I would argue we need to use it because that phrase ought to be at the center of our lives. And the reason why it needs to be at the center of our lives is so that we may not bind to the lives that the world tells us that there is no transcendent God with sovereign in all things. I think that phrase ought to be a refrain in our hearts as we conduct the affairs of our lives, whether we're talking about education, choosing careers, relocating, spending time, and all money, and all of that, let that refrain be true of us, not just because we say it, but because it is true. I will be done. See, there's no magical truth here. There's no magical significance in those words when you say them. It's not a for me. But when you say that will be done, then that is will shall be done. No. But what is James asking us, as he says, what you ought to say is your will or God will be done. I think James wants us to adopt this godly attitude where we applied in everything that we do in our lives so that as we plan and think about our future, we are always guided by the word of God. The other thing we say and do is evaluated from biblical ethical perspectives. You know what our problem is? Our problem is we want to evaluate everything that we do depending on what others say about us. I'm not going to look if I do this. What were my neighbors saying? What were my friends saying? What were my feet? What were with the people that I worked with? What were the church saying? What were my pastors saying? What were my sisters saying? That's how we evaluate things. We want to present ourselves to the people first before we present ourselves before God and ask the question, is this pleasing in the eyes of God? Or what would Jesus say? Not do because you can't do like Jesus. What would Jesus say if I did this? What does the Bible say about this? Not what they're saying so things, but what does the Bible say? And that is what ought to lead us to everything that we do must be taken up in prayer. That's the only way we're going to begin to submit ourselves before God. And you know what? If thy will be done is a true thing in our lives, there can only be one result, one outcome. You know what it is? You know what it is. The result can only be a profound submission to God, nothing else. If we truly say thy will be done and we live it, we can only find ourselves submitting fully, completely to God. Lord help us not to do anything without His permission. And James says in verses 16, otherwise we're boasting in our arrogance for what we are not in control of, thinking that we are in control. He says that arrogance truly must be at the root of our problem. When we don't embrace an attitude of humility, of total dependence upon God, we will boast. And we can boast in Christ, but that's not the positive boasting that James is talking about. James is talking about a particular negative boasting that arises from this place pride in our ability to think that we can control and determine the future. It's self-sufficiency. I am my own. The Scripture tells us we are not our own. We're bought by the price of Jesus Christ, paid on the cross. And yet the world wants to convince us that we are on our own. The world wants to convince us that we can be autonomous and independent. That's how the world lives. Is it true? No. But I think that even as Christians sometimes, we can be tempted to take the same way. To be conformed into such thinking. I think I've shared this story with you a little bit. One time I was saying, faith with a gentleman at a bar while we were watching soccer. And I was just blown away by how he thought about God. And he told me he's not a Christian. But he told me that he thinks that God is only concerned about big things. He told me that God is only concerned with criminals who kill and rape and do all these bad things. But God doesn't care if I commit adultery. Who am I hurting? God doesn't care if I lie. Who am I hurting? But you know, that's what the world thinks. That God is not involved in every detail of our life. Friends, listen. God cares about every single detail of your life. Every one of them. Every single detail of your life. How you think. How you walk. How you look. By looking at people. God cares about every single detail of your life. And to say that God actually wants us to go to Him and tell Him everything. And to say His will be done in every detail of our life. Because He made us. Because He owns us. Because every single breath we take every day belongs to Him. Not yours belongs to Him. He can do with it whatever He wishes. And I think the world sometimes tends to tempt us to take the reins of our life if you will into our own hands, right? I'm driving. I'm in control here. I know where we're going until God stops us in our tracks. Someone says that we can begin to plan our days as if we were the Lord of the earth in time. So what's the warning here? Here's a good warning for us to heed. Don't leave Jesus at church. Oh, hey, here's another one for you tomorrow as you wake up to go to work. Don't leave Jesus in the comfort of your home. Take Him with you wherever you go. We may take tomorrow for granted. Someone wrote, thinking of it as a mark on the rim of times real. Coming on inevitably as the circling years proceed. But in the Bible, the years not circle. They go in a straight line from eternity to eternity. And on that line, we receive another day, neither by natural necessity, nor by mechanical law, nor by right, nor by courtesy of nature, but only by the covenanted mercies of God. The very existence of tomorrow is as much part of our dependence on Him as is our life itself and our ability. You are here because of God's mercy and grace. Finally, verse 17 seems to be out of place, doesn't it? As James says, so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. What is James saying? James is basically saying that God holds us accountable, not only for the bad that we do, but also for the good we fail to do. Sins of commission and sins of omission. And so James is basically bringing all this together and saying, okay, now I've told you what to do as you plan your day. If you do not regard God, and if Jesus is not at the center of all of your planning, and you know it, because I've told you that he has to be, and you still fail to do it, you're silly. Thanks James. Thanks a lot James. Jesus taught us to pray. We know the Lord's prayer. Part of that prayer is a phrase in there that says that I will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and friends that ought to be our prayer every day. You know, every night before I go to sleep, I close my eyes as a line bed in bed. I always say the Lord's prayer, because I don't want to forget it. And because I want the Lord's prayer to be my life. So what does it mean to say that I will be done? If the Lord asks us to give up something, may we be able to say your will and not ours be done. If he calls you to go somewhere that you don't want to go, may the Lord's will be done. If we find ourselves resisting because God has called us to go, may we still say that I will be done and not all will. If he calls you to accept an extremely difficult responsibility that you want nothing to do with it, may his will be done and not yours. And because you and I pray he doesn't, but I think he will to accept trials in your life, may you still be able to say that I will be done and not mine. When he comes and changes your plans and interrupt your plans, may you still be able to say that I will God be done and not mine. When he comes calling you to go, and I mean to really go, even in your dying breath, may you be able to say that I will be done. May that be the constant refrain of our life. As we look to Jesus and not the things of this world, as we turn our eyes to Him so that the things of this world may strangely grow dim in the light of His glory and grace. May we together say that I will be done. Father, we thank you this morning that you are good, that you call us to thank you and to praise you, and to say that I will be done. Father, we realize how difficult it is for us to say that. But the difficulty doesn't mean that it's not possible because we have one, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to say so. And so I pray for all of us in our life in everything that we do, that you would enable us today and forever to say that I will be done. In Jesus' name, amen.