James 4:13-5:6


Morning Greeting:
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Consider. Let’s humble ourselves before the Lord today in worship!

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Introduction:

“According to the National Geographic website (their kids’ version that is) the Pufferfish can inflate into a ball shape to evade predators. Also known as blowfish, these clumsy swimmers fill their elastic stomachs with huge amounts of water (and sometimes air) and blow themselves up to several times their normal size … But these blow-up fish aren’t just cute. Most pufferfish contain a toxic substance that makes them foul tasting and potentially deadly to other fish. The toxin is deadly to humans—1,200 times more deadly than cyanide. There is enough poison in one pufferfish to kill 30 adult humans, and there is no known antidote.
Like Pufferfish, human beings can blow themselves up with pride and arrogance to make themselves look bigger than they are. And this pride can become toxic to a marriage, a church, or a friendship. No wonder the late Bible scholar John Stott once said, ‘Pride is your greatest enemy, humility is your greatest friend.’”
-Matt Woodley, editor, PreachingToday.com; source: “Pufferfish,” National Geographic Kids

Text: James 4:13-5:6
Theme: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble

The unifying thought in these verses goes back to verses 6 and 10. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble… humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

In verses 13-17, we see the pride of presumption. It’s the arrogance of assuming that: just as I have planned it, so it will be.

And in verses 5:1-6, we see the pride of wealth accumulation. It’s the arrogance that denies the temporary nature of wealth, and misuses others in the quest for stuff.

Verses 13-16
Here is an area that many very often fall short: it is that people do not properly recognize God’s authority over their lives, and their inability to control the future.

It is remarkable that people tend to have such a big problem with this, considering how manifestly evident it is that we do not get to determine our future. God’s word teaches us over and over again that man plots his way but it is the Lord who determines his steps. And experience teaches us this as well.

How many of you can remember a day that went just as planned? A day that was just perfect. I can remember many, many days at the end of which that I have been so, so grateful that the Lord worked things out well. And I can remember some plans that mostly came to pass. But I can’t remember a time I have ever completely determined my future.

The truth is, even when things have gone the way I have planned, it’s not because I determined my own future: it’s because the Lord willed it. And anytime that you or I have thought something like “Ah, things have gone just as I planned, I thought that through well!” Then we have sinned. Because we have discounted the sovereign of the universe, and ignored how His gracious hand was involved in every part of it.

Really, on the one hand, it seems so innocent to announce with certainty the plans for tomorrow: doesn’t it? Who is hurt by it? But really think about all the innumerable assumptions that go into that, and think about what an insult to God it is.

Let’s just analyze here this example given by James.

A person says “today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.”

The major assumption here is: “I will be alive tomorrow.” But we are not guaranteed another second of life. And try as we might, and its good stewardship to be healthy and exercise and protect yourself. But try as we might, we just do not get to decide if we are alive five minutes from now or not. There’s just an infinite number of variables and powers of which we have no control or authority over – but God does.

As James says: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”

Since we do not even know if we will be alive tomorrow or not, we also have no way of knowing if something might prevent us from going to that town, or spending an entire year there, or managing to sell anything.

Instead of presuming to know or determine our future, it is better to instead say “if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

If you ever hear me or another believer say the words “Lord willing,” this is why we do that. We have learned, whether that be the easy way of taking God at His word here, or the hard way of seeing self-determined plans fail and fail and fail, that the future is in God’s hands.

I hope this doesn’t sound fatalistic or ritualistic to you. Actually, it is very freeing to recognize God’s sovereignty over our future. Recognizing God’s sovereignty frees us from a lot of burdens and worries. It’s not a license to approach life with a laissez-faire attitude. We should still try to make plans and do good. If you read verse 15 carefully you see that we should be making plans. But recognizing that God is in control and we are not frees us from a whole lot of potential frustration when things don’t go according to plan: and they rarely do.

If you approach life with an attitude of “it will be this way because I have planned it to be this way,” you are setting yourself up for a heavy helping of frustration and disappointment.

And if you approach life that way, you’re also just asking for trouble. A good friend of mine likes to remind me that God has a sense of humor and that it’s not a good idea to test God. He’s always good to remind me, don’t be so sure things will go as you think they will pastor! God is always doing surprising things.
And God is particular about a lot of things, and one of those things is that He gets the glory that is due to Him as the sovereign God of the universe.

I think we have all observed that tendency where we say something will happen and then the opposite does. Like, tomorrow it will be sunny! And then it rains. Happens all the time. I remember a particularly humorous vacation I had as a kid at the beach. We watched the weather forecast every morning. And every morning the meteorologist would happily declare that today would be bright and sunny. And he was bright and sunny too. But that whole week it rained. And he never did stop being bright and sunny and predicting sunshine. At the time it was frustrating, but it makes me smile to remember it now.

We’ll have to ask God about it when we get to heaven, but I can’t help but suspect this happens a lot because of how particular God is about this issue. He’s God and we are not. And think about what is said before this: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble… humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you. If God resists the proud, and its prideful to make plans without Him…

Link: Maybe when you first read these verses you thought this a trivial thing, or some empty ritualistic thing, but I’d encourage you to think again. It is right. It is freeing. It is a joy. It is beneficial to believe in your heart and recognize with your mouth that God is the one who is in control.

And what does verse 17 say?

Verse 17
You know now the right thing to do is to recognize God controls the future, and to give God the glory, will you do that or will you refuse to?

You might think this a small thing, but whoever knows the right thing to do but fails to do it, for him it is sin. Sin is not just actively doing bad things. Sin is also neglecting to do good things. You don’t have to formulaically always say it as in verse 15, but do it some way. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

We see another kind of pride and God’s attitude toward it in the next few verses.
Verses 5:1-6
Strong words! Maybe these might even shock you a little bit. Why such strong words for these rich people? It’s because they were actually doing the things spoken of in these verses.

They were ignoring that we are living in the last days and focused upon earthly treasure.
They were keeping wages from workers back by fraud: practically speaking, what this means is that they hired workers to help them at a certain price, but then lied about the situation and other things in order to pay less than they had agreed to.

Their lifestyle was one of luxury and self-indulgence – worse than ignoring the plight of others, they were actually contributing to it.

And to top it all off, they were taking good and righteous people to court and having them condemned and killed, which James rightly describes as murder. Using a system that God instituted for justice in order to commit murder is an awful, awful sin. God established human government to punish evil doers and protect righteous people. But by their wealth and power, they were using it for the opposite. God has given us human government to protect good people and punish bad people. And God gives people wealth to bless other people with. But they had corruptly used both in order to murder the innocent. Horrible.

Not everybody who is or has been rich is this kind of person. Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man, who gave a private tomb for Jesus’ burial. And another man, named Nicodemus, paid for so many burial spices and ointments for Jesus that it was fit for a king. A total of 65 pounds of spices, worth more than many people would ever earn in their life. He must have been very rich. But these verses are not talking about people like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.

They are talking about those people who are quite powerful in their wealth, and abuse that power for great evil. To such people James gives appropriately strong words. The future looks grim.

I have a story about this sort of thing from my days in China. It illustrates pretty well what it looks like to deny a worker their wages by fraud.
*Story of Seasonal Workers and Demolition*
That’s the kind of powerful evil that wealth can make a person capable of.

But just as wealth can grant people the power for great evil, so it can grant people the power for great good. Money is a resource that can be used for good and evil.

That construction company in China, it looks like they used their money and influence for great evil.

But we know of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who used theirs for good. You can also read through Acts and see many examples of believers helping others in need with the wealth that was available to them.

In the same way, money can be used to put forward advertising programs to advance godly agendas. Money is a useful tool for protecting the lives of the unborn. They do not have their own voice. But godly people using money can be a powerful voice for them. It takes money to run churches. It takes money to run schools. It takes money to run hospitals. God is pleased when wealthy Christians use that God given power and resource to do good things in this world.

So, if you’re here today, and you have money, and you’re reading this verse, you don’t necessarily need to be squirming in your seat. God isn’t mad at you for having money.

However, if you’re here today, God has given you great resources or wealth, and you are using those resources for the advancement of evil purposes – well, all I can say is you’d better stop. You don’t want these verses to apply to you. Believe me! I pray you have an Ebenezer Scrooge moment and turn around.

Conclusion:
God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Do not be prideful in your plans. Give credit to God and submit to Him.
Do not be prideful in your wealth. It will all rust. Use your finances for good and godly purposes.