When I was twelve years old, I planned to play defensive line for the Minnesota Vikings. In the fall of 1980, I planned to parlay my successful time around the University of Minnesota campus into becoming a famous contemporary Christian musician. In the summer of 1983, I planned to have a great, but very brief, three year evangelistic ministry in the U.S. Army. As newlyweds in March of 1986, Monica and I planned to wait two solid years before considering children. Two months later, Monica was pregnant with Maria. Speaking of Maria, my sweet Maria once planned to become a nanny for a wealthy family in Missouri only to end up working for a woman who saw nothing wrong with serving Milk Duds to a hyper toddler for breakfast. We all make plans. Some of those plans succeed beautifully and some fail laughably. Some plans fail horrifically. But the sad and brutal reality about all our planning is that, as we are all struggling to find our way successfully through this life, many, perhaps even most of us become practical atheists. Tell me I’m wrong! We’re perfectly comfortable giving Almighty God a couple hours on Sunday morning, but Monday through Saturday is almost completely up to me. I love you, LORD, I really do, but on Monday morning, I’ve got to get out there and get busy. I’ve got to make my plans. I’ve got to make my way in the world. I’ve got to take care of my family. I’ve got to get myself and all my peeps ready for retirement. I’ve got to get out there and assert myself in the world or I will never have that car, house or toys I’m craving.
As we close our “listening to Leather Knees” conversation this morning, old James has some critically important planning advice for us. Open your Bibles to James 4, verses 13-17 (page 1108 in your pew Bibles). Scholars say there were two primary kinds of wealthy people in James’ day. There were the super wealthy landowners whom James will address very bluntly in the next chapter. And then there was the merchant class – business people travelling from one place to the next, making plans, doing deals and earning cash. This is probably the group James addresses in our passage today. Listen carefully to what James has to say…
Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
Could there be a passage more relevant to our culture? To us, verse 13 of this passage sounds like the start of a good business plan! It has the when, where, why and what we need. And since our action-oriented friend James is the one discussing these business things, I would think he would be praising people who are taking proper responsibility for their lives. Not so.
James has no kind words here because there’s something missing in their business plan. There is something enormous missing in this plan and all too often missing in our plans also.
God isn’t there. Forgetting God is no small, semantic or bureaucratic oversight…
Just for chuckles and grins, I did a little planning research on the internet. I found all sorts of excellent planning tools and diagrams; financial planning stuff, project management software, elaborate planning diagrams carefully detailing each meticulous step necessary to ensure the very best chance of success. I found some really good stuff – thoroughly excellent. But I didn’t find any block on any flowchart or planning diagram anywhere for prayer. There was never a block that said, “Consult God!” or “Explore biblical foundation!” or “See what seems good to the Holy Spirit!” There wasn’t any of that sort of churchy talk found anywhere.
Oh Pastor, don’t be silly! That isn’t how business operates. Nobody would ever include that sort of stuff in a business plan or project diagram. You’d get laughed out of the room!
I know. Frankly, I think that’s exactly what James is saying.
In all honesty, this is one of the simplest passages in all the New Testament. James is certainly not arguing against good, methodical planning and hard work. James is not saying anything at all against business, responsible preparation for the future or making a good profit from our labor. I believe James is simply trying to remind us of three critically important facts.
You Aren’t In Charge
And the first and most important of those facts is that you aren’t in charge of this deal. Get that through your head! You don’t get to choose whether you get cancer or which of your children will outlive you and which won’t. You don’t get to choose which business ventures will succeed or fail. You don’t get to choose which corn fields will get rain or which neighborhoods the awful tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes will destroy. You don’t get to choose the family, language, country or economic status of your birth. You don’t get too to choose squat! You aren’t in charge of this thing. There is only one LORD of the Rings and He does not share power! The sooner we burn that huge truth into our brains, the better off we will be.
In Luke 12:18-20, Jesus was preaching virtually the same message. He told a story of a man who had a great harvest. The man said, “This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
You don’t get to make these decisions! Do you hear yourself, you poor, foolish farmer? Do you hear how many times the words “I, me, my or mine” appear in your conversation? Do you honestly think this precious life I’ve given you is all about setting yourself up for an easy retirement and a pretty coffin at the end of it all? Do you honestly think that’s all this is about?
Oh my dear farmer friends, can you hold so much as even one star in the sky? Can you sway the heart of the kings of the earth ruling over you or meaningfully change the way even one great river flows? Can you change a leopard’s spots or count more than only the slightest few of the fish in the sea? Do you know each sparrow that falls to the ground or the number of hairs on even your own head? Were you around when all these things were put together?
You aren’t in charge of this thing, Kevin, and you will never be. You have nothing over which to boast and brag – you have almost nothing fully under your control. So stop acting as if this whole thing depends on you and your hard work! Stop worrying as though you can add one minute to your life by doing so! Stop working yourself to death to acquire things you won’t even be allowed to keep and enjoy! Every precious minute of your life should breathe profound recognition that only God controls your existence. Solo Deo Volente! Only God wills what will ultimately come to be. Every minute of your life should loudly exalt the absolute supremacy of Almighty God over all things. Including “if God wills” in our language and plans is not a trite, cookie cutter religious formula – it is our honest recognition of the reality of our existence.
Your Life Is A Gift
You are not in charge of this thing. Your life is a gift. And that’s the second truth our old, camel-kneed friend James longs for us to understand. Your life is a vapor. Your life is nothing but a puff of smoke off a very small fire. Your life is just a beautiful bit of ground fog appearing for just a few moments in the morning before the sun burns it away. It is lovely. It is precious. But it is temporary. It is here for one brief, beautiful moment and gone the next.
Delores Bius told a story years ago in the Christian Reader of how, “One of my grown sons had made up an emergency repair kit for the trunk of my car. The box was so large, I jokingly called it "my coffin." When it was time to buy a new car, my seven-year-old grandson, Matthew, came with me to the dealer. As we looked in the trunk of the car I finally decided upon, Matthew startled the salesman by asking, “So Grandma, are you going to keep your coffin in the trunk of this car now?” We know full well the coffin is always right there in the trunk behind us and so we value each precious moment of our lives, and those of the people around us, as if it might be our last. As we discussed earlier this year, we live as though we were dying. Because we understand how truly little control we have, we value every moment.
There's an old Jack Benny joke many of you will remember in which a mugger accosts Mr. Benny and says, “Your money or your life!" There's a brief silence, and the mugger says, "Well?" And famously stingy Jack Benny responds, "Don’t rush me, I'm thinking. I'm thinking!”
There are some questions we shouldn’t have to think about. There are some questions which shouldn’t even qualify as questions. We above all people understand the gift of life we have been given. We are resolved to live each and every moment well.
Your Instructions Are Clear
And that brings us to the third and final point James wants us to embrace. Because we understand the limits of our control, because we long to make each and every moment count, we are hungry to obey whatever God tells us to do. We know our instructions are clear.
You are not in control. Your life is a gift. And then, thirdly, your instructions are clear. We know that Almighty God, who knows exactly the number of hairs on our heads and the number of days in our lives, is fully expecting us not simply to avoid the pollution of sin, but to advance the good of His Kingdom. Anyone who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, that person sins. Accepting the absolute supremacy of God and the precious gift that is our life means we must then accept the full instructions of God. We aren’t simply concerned with sins of commission, but also with sins of omission. We don’t just avoid sin, we embrace good! We exist to do good because our experience of grace drives us to do good! Anyone who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, that person sins. That is an enormous snippet of truth!
On Wednesday morning, Monica and I had thorough fitness exams at Lifetime Fitness, the new health club we’ve joined since our old gym closed. There is much that could be said about this computerized fitness examination, but I found it very annoying. There was scarcely a word my new fitness trainer told me I hadn’t heard before. None of it was very new, but most unfortunate and annoying of all, none of it was false either. For the most part, I know what I’m supposed to be doing in order to be healthy. Knowledge isn’t my struggle. So it was hilarious to Jan and I when I came back to my study and read the final line of our Scripture passage today. Anyone who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, that person sins!
Most of the time, we know exactly what we’re supposed to do. Scripture is very clear about how we are to live our lives. Loving God and loving others usually makes life pretty clear and straightforward. Old, camel knees James looks us straight in the eye today and says, “Just do it! Kevin, you don’t have time to save your good deeds for later! You know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing almost all the time – just do it.” Your instructions are very clear.
As we close our “listening to leather knees” conversation with James this morning, as we gather around the Lord’s Table again today, I believe God is calling us all to a sort of “ground fog faithfulness.” God is calling us to a faithfulness fully aware how truly little opportunity we all have to be faithful – a ground fog faithfulness driven by our awareness of God's supremacy and our brevity. We know we are not in charge of this thing. We don’t know how long we have on this earth and so we know how very precious each moment of life truly is. We know our instructions are crystal clear and so before the wispy, ground fog of our lives quickly fades away, we are faithfully going to, as John Wesley used to say and I have shared here more than once before, “do all the good we can, by all the means we can, in all the ways we can, in all the places we can, at all the times we can, to all the people we can, as long as ever we can!”
May our ground fog faithfulness release us to become all we were meant to become!
Amen.
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