Elder Kevin Wood preaches on James 4:13 – 5:6, the eighth in our series of sermons this fall from the Book of James under the theme “Wisdom for Spiritual Maturity”.

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Introduction

We have spent the last eight weeks going through the Book of James in a sermon series we are calling “Wisdom for Spiritual Maturity”. We are now nearing the end, with only two weeks to go after this week. We hope – we pray – that these messages are having their intended effect: that each one of us will better understand what spiritual maturity is, that we will have a true desire to grow toward spiritual maturity, and that we will develop more of that character and attitude which define spiritual maturity.

By the way, if you missed a message or just want to review one again, remember that you can find an audio recording, and in some cases also the text, of these messages on the church’s website.

You can find a lot of other things on our website, too, such as our mission statement: “The mission of Forest Park Baptist Church is to glorify God, encouraging everyone to know and follow Jesus wholeheartedly”. We include the final part of that mission statement on the front cover of our bulletin each week: “Encouraging everyone to know and follow Jesus”. It’s a sort of motto.

A World of Mottos, Slogans, and Sayings

It seems like every organization and institution has a motto of some sort, whether official or unofficial. We live in a world full of mottos, slogans, sayings, and the like. Companies have them: Just do it! (Nike); “You’re in good hands” (Allstate); “I’m lovin’ it!” (McDonald’s).

States have them; here in Illinois we are, of course, “The Land of Lincoln”. Cities have them, too; Chicago’s is “Urbs in horto” or “City in a garden”, although these days it’s sometimes hard to find the garden. Forest Park’s motto is “Big City Access, Small Town Charm”.

Politicians have them: “She has a plan for that” (Elizabeth Warren); “Make America Great Again” (Donald Trump); or my personal favorite, from Harry Truman, “The buck stops here”.

As a boy in the Cub Scouts, I learned: “Do Your Best”; I never made it to Boy Scouts, but I still know their motto: “Be Prepared”. I also never joined the U.S. Army nor the Marines, but I still know “Be all you can be” and “Semper fidelis” (“Always faithful”).

Some sports teams have mottos; when we lived in Spain, where soccer (futbol) reigns, we would hear “Hala Madrid y nada más” – “Let’s go, Madrid, and no others” – or from the Barcelona fans, “Més que un club” (“More than a club”).

They are ubiquitous even in the religious world. The motto of the United Methodist Church is “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors”; sometimes a bit too open-minded in my opinion, but, “to each his own”.

And how about sayings such as “Let go and let God” or “Hate the sin; love the sinner”?

And, today, with social media and hashtags, mottos and slogans are even more present in our lives.

A motto when truly believed and truly followed can be a powerful thing. It can motivate people to do important things: “Carpe diem … Seize the day”; “No pain, no gain.” Even extraordinary things: “Give me liberty or give me death”; “All for one and one for all”.

But a motto can also easily become a farce, a mockery. If it morphs into a mere slogan or saying which is no longer truly believed and truly followed, it becomes hollow words.

Our text today – James 4:13 – 5:6 – brings to mind three mottos which are well known in our modern culture. Two are very obviously religious in nature, and the third also has religious connotations. The question for us today is: are these mottos that we truly strive to live by, or are they just empty words?

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I. A warning against trusting in ourselves (4:13-16)

The first of these mottos in inspired by verses 13-16 of chapter four:

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 mist 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.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

“If the Lord wills”; “Lord willing”; “God willing”. I suppose that every one of us here today has uttered this at some time in our lives. Some of us say it quite often.

Down south they’ve added a colorful twist to it: “Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise”.

It was the same in Spain when we lived there. Spaniards, both believers and unbelievers, are fond of saying “Si Dios quiere” – “if God wills”. And I know Spanish believers who won’t finish a letter or e-mail without adding a “D.m.”: “Dios mediante”, “God willing”.

Is it appropriate for Christians to say “Lord willing”? It certainly is if we truly mean it. But if we say it simply out of habit, without thinking, then it loses its significance.

In the verses immediately preceding our text for today, James has been talking about the importance of having a humble attitude before God. He continues with this theme in these verses by issuing a warning against those who would arrogantly trust in themselves rather than in God. If we toss around “Lord willing, this” and “God willing, that” while at the same time trusting in ourselves instead of in God, this is pure arrogance. As James puts it here, it is boasting in our arrogance, and that, he says, is evil.

To avoid such arrogance, we must do three things.

A. We must not presume to know the future.

Firstly, we must not presume to know the future. We must not presume to know the future.

Proverbs 27:1 gives the same advice: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”

And Jesus told a parable along these lines in Luke 12:16-21:

[And he told them a parable, saying,] “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Note that these passages don’t teach that we shouldn’t plan for the future. This man wasn’t called a fool simply for planning for the future; he was called a fool for presuming to know the future and for thinking that he was in control of it.

We must not presume to know the future.

B. We must accept that our earthly lives are fleeting.

We also must accept that our earthly lives are fleeting. We must accept that our earthly lives are fleeting.

James’s metaphor here is striking: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Our lives are like a mist, a vapor. It’s like when we go outside on a cold morning and breathe out and see our breath like steam rising, and then just like that … it’s gone.

Other biblical writers used similar metaphors. Job speaks of his own life like this in Job 7:7-10: “Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone. As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up; he returns no more to his house, nor does his place know him anymore.”

And Psalm 102:3-4 reads: “For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread.” And then v. 11: “My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.”

Likewise, Psalm 103:15-16: “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.”

And David in Psalm 144:3-4: “Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.”

Abraham Lincoln’s favorite poem was by a Scottish poet named William Knox. It is entitled “Mortality” and it begins like this:

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,

A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,

He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

The next 12 stanzas speak similarly of the brevity of life, and then the final stanza goes like this:

‘Tis the wink of an eye — ‘tis the draught of a breath —

From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,

From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud —

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

No, the spirit of mortal man should not be proud. Again, as James has said, boasting in our arrogance is evil.

We must not presume to know the future, and we must accept that our earthly lives are fleeting.

C. We must subject our plans to God’s will.

Thirdly, in the face of the brevity of human life, it only follows that we must subject our plans to God’s will. We must subject our plans to God’s will.

To make plans in this transient, changing world while ignoring an eternal, unchanging God is pure foolishness.

As Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:24-25, quoting from Isaiah 40:6-8: “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

God doesn’t take kindly to people making plans which go against his own plans. Remember the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11? Remember the countless other persons in the Old Testament, even faithful people like Abraham and Sarah, who tried to follow their own plans instead of trusting in God’s plans? Remember the rich man of the parable we mentioned earlier, who planned to build bigger barns?

Instead, we ought to follow the advice of Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight [or will direct your paths]”.

“Lord willing”: whether or not we say it, may it be like a motto to us. May we not trust in ourselves but in God. May we not presume to know the future. May we accept that our earthly lives are fleeting. May we subject our plans to God’s will.

II. A warning against sins of omission (4:17)

The second motto is inspired by the final verse of chapter 4. James 4:17 says: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

“Do the right thing!” This is not necessarily a religious motto, of course. In fact, “Do the right thing” is now the official motto of Google, or more specifically, Google’s parent company Alphabet.

But it can certainly have religious connotations, as in James’ exhortation here: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

This verse is the most succinct statement in the Scriptures of the idea of sins of omission. When we think of sins, we most often think of sins of commission: of those actions, thoughts, and attitudes which we in some way actively commit and which are against God’s will: murder, lustful thoughts, envy, etc. Sins of omission, on the contrary, are those which result when we don’t do something which God’s Word teaches us that we should do. They likewise might involve actions, thoughts, and attitudes, but this time they are omissions: a failure to act, a failure to think a certain way, a failure in our attitude.

A. Not doing good is just as much a sin as doing evil.

It is very important that we recognize and understand that not doing good is just as much a sin as doing evil. Not doing good is just as much a sin as doing evil.

The Apostle Paul certainly understood this. In Romans 7, he bemoans the great conflict within his own body between his old fleshly self and his new godly spirit, noting his tendency toward both kinds of sin: those of commission and those of omission. Verses 15-19 read as follows:

“For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

In these verses, Paul, wanting to do good, struggles against both kinds of sin – doing what he doesn’t want to do and knows to be wrong – sins of commission – and also not doing what he wants to do and knows that he should do – sins of omission.

Paul also encourages us to do the right thing in Galatians 6:9-10: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

King Solomon in Proverbs 3:27 wrote something very similar: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it”.

Jesus, too, spoke of the importance of doing the right thing. In fact, the best-known example of this idea in the Scriptures comes from his story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Two men, a priest and a Levite, both pass by a man who had been robbed and beaten and was in great need; a third man, a Samaritan, stops to help the man. We find Jesus’ conclusion in verses 36-37:

“‘Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy’. And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise’.”

Jesus also talked about this in his parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46. In this parable, the sheep represent the righteous and the goats the unrighteous. Picking up in verse 33, we read:

“And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Note that the people called unrighteous here had not committed any sins of commission against the people in need. They hadn’t stolen their food or clothing, nor physically harmed them. Rather, their sin was the sin of omission, of failing to help when they were given an opportunity to do so.

This is one reason why we as a church have been persistent in pursuing ministry opportunities with Housing Forward. There are needy in our own community; people in need of shelter and food among other things. May we not be among those who say in the judgment: “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”

B. The root of sins of omission is arrogance.

By the way, it might seem that James 4:17, the warning against sins of omission, is a new topic unconnected to the previous verses, the warning against trusting in ourselves. Yet it is clearly intended to be connected because it begins with the adverb “so” or “then”. Perhaps the connection is that in verses 13-16 James is condemning arrogance in thought or attitude, while in verse 17 he is condemning arrogance in behavior, in not acting according to how we know we should.

In this sense, we might say that James’ point is that the root of sins of omission is arrogance. The root of sins of omission is arrogance.

For James to here make the point that our outward actions are somehow related to our inward thoughts and attitudes is consistent with the rest of his letter. In chapter 1 (verses 22-25) he made the point that we should not be simply hearers of the Word, but also doers of it. And in chapter 2 (verses 14-26) he made the point that faith without works is dead. And do you recall the illustration which James gave to show that faith without works is dead?

James 2:15-16: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” Yes, James was talking about sins of omission there, too.

“Do the right thing!” May we strive to avoid sins of omission as much as we do sins of commission. May we recognize that not doing good is just as much a sin as doing evil. May we not be controlled by that arrogance which is the root of sins of omission.

III. A warning against seeking worldly riches (5:1-6)

We turn now to chapter five, where James introduces another subject but with the same words of caution as in 4:13: “Come now”. We will find our third motto inspired by verses 1-6, which read as follows:

“Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.”

Some trust in riches. We, of course, would never say that. We would say that we trust in God.

But a lot of people say that; it’s another motto after all: “In God We Trust”. In fact, “In God We Trust” is the official motto of the United States of America, adopted by Congress in the year 1956 to replace “E pluribus unum” (“Out of many, one”). Among other things, it is inscribed on every bill and coin of U.S. currency in circulation.

In the light of this text from James, this could be seen to be rather ironic. I would submit that the vast majority of money which passes hands in financial transactions every day in this country is passed around with absolutely no thought of God. Some of it is used for things which not only ignore God, but even dishonor him.

And we can say for certain that those whose primary purpose in life is to seek riches are not seeking God. Jesus put in rather abruptly in Matthew 6:24: “You cannot serve God and money”.

And Paul put it this way in his first letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 6:6-10):

“Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”

But is James even talking to believers in these verses? Many biblical scholars make the case that he is actually referring to people outside of the church, to unbelieving rich oppressors. Even if this is the case, however, it can still serve as a warning to us, to avoid going down the same path of materialism and oppression.

A. We must accept that worldly riches are fleeting.

We earlier made the point that we must accept that our earthly lives are fleeting. In thinking about worldly riches, we must likewise accept that worldly riches are fleeting. We must accept that worldly riches are fleeting.

James had already spoken of this in chapter 1 (verses 9-11): “Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.”

Proverbs 11:28 gives a similar message: “Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.”

Here in chapter 5 James uses even more descriptive language to show that riches and material possessions can be quickly lost: “Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded.”

The problem isn’t so much in having riches, of course. Paul did not say, as he is sometimes misquoted as saying, that money is the root of all evil. He said that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. The problem is that we are inclined to trust in our riches, and therefore in ourselves, rather than in God. We are inclined to believe that we will always have our riches, that we will always be able to count on them.

B. We must subject our riches to their proper use.

Another problem is that we are inclined to use our riches for our own use. But just as we must accept that worldly riches are fleeting, we must also subject our riches to their proper use. We must subject our riches to their proper use.

Both the Old and New Testaments are full of admonitions about the proper use of wealth and material possessions. We might summarize them as follows: God is the source of all riches; he blesses us with riches, but he expects us to use them in ways which honor him; they are never to be used to oppress others or take advantage of them; and they are never to become an end to themselves, but rather a means to a greater end.

Here in these verses, James has strong words for those who would misuse their riches; let’s read them again:

“In God We Trust”; if this be true, we of all people should be striving to put our riches to their proper use, to those uses which honor God and help others, not harm them. If not, perhaps we are trusting more in ourselves than in God.

“In God We Trust”. May we heed James’ warning against seeking worldly riches. May we accept that worldly riches are fleeting. May we subject our riches to their proper use.

Conclusion

“Lord Willing”, “Do the Right Thing”, “In God We Trust”: are these mottos that we truly strive to live by? Or are they mockeries, just empty words?

As I said in the beginning, a motto when truly believed and truly followed can be a powerful thing. It can motivate us to do important things, even extraordinary things. If we are truly subjecting our lives to God’s will, and doing the right thing, and trusting in God, then we are well on our way along the path to spiritual maturity. And that, of course, is the point of these sermons from the Book of James, to acquire wisdom for spiritual maturity and to see our lives transformed as a result. May we not resist God in this holy and wonderful work but cooperate fully with him.