Latest / Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self / 17.14 - James 4:13-17 - Your Life and Your Plans Belong To God

Transcript

17.14 - James 4:13-17 - Your Life and Your Plans Belong To God · Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self

• 0:00
  Welcome to Tabernacle Talk. Tabernacle Talk is a Bible study
• 0:03
  podcast from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, MD.
• 0:08
  We hope that this podcast will help you to know Christ, grow in
• 0:11
  his word, and show his love to others.
• 0:14
  Let's dive right in. Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk.
• 0:16
  Today we are in James chapter 4 and verses 13 through 17, James
• 0:21
  413 through 17, The apostle James, the half brother of
• 0:27
  Jesus, the son of Mary, and Joseph, a pastor of the church
• 0:31
  at Jerusalem. He is writing to those that were
• 0:34
  once a part of his local congregation but are now all
• 0:36
  across the Roman Empire, scattered as a result of
• 0:39
  persecution. And he is writing some things to
• 0:43
  challenge them, to encourage them in what they ought to be
• 0:46
  doing. And today we're going to see
• 0:48
  some more of those thoughts. As he says in verse 13, Come
• 0:51
  now, you who say today or tomorrow will travel to such and
• 0:56
  such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a
• 1:00
  profit. Yet you do not know what
• 1:02
  tomorrow will bring, what your life will be.
• 1:07
  For you are like vapor that appears for a little time and
• 1:11
  then vanishes. Instead, you should say, if the
• 1:15
  Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.
• 1:20
  But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, all such boasting is
• 1:25
  evil. So it is sin to know the good
• 1:29
  and yet not do it all right. So these verses, they have kind
• 1:35
  of an interesting challenge for us, I think maybe something that
• 1:39
  we don't often think about as being wrong or sin.
• 1:44
  And yet as we read through these verses, we really should
• 1:47
  understand this vital truth. Your life and your plans belong
• 1:54
  to God. Your life and your plans belong
• 1:58
  to God. They don't belong to you.
• 2:01
  And as a result, you have a requirement on your life that
• 2:06
  you submit everything to God, if you will, for approval and for
• 2:13
  review everything in your life. All right, let's look at what
• 2:17
  the verses say and how that communicates that our plans and
• 2:21
  our life belong to God. He says, some of you business
• 2:26
  people are saying, Oh yeah, like today or tomorrow we're we're
• 2:31
  going to go, I'll just throw in some random city names.
• 2:33
  They we're we're going to go to Thessalonica, we're going to go
• 2:35
  to Corinth, we're going to go to Ephesus and we're going to spend
• 2:38
  a year there. We're going to, you know, make
• 2:40
  some business deals and we're going to make a ton of money.
• 2:44
  And they would say this not in a like, all right, let's sit down.
• 2:49
  I'm going to use some kind of today examples.
• 2:52
  I'm going to sit down with, you know, the board of of this
• 2:56
  business or I'm going to sit down, you know, with the
• 2:59
  stockholders and I'm going to say, all right, here's here's
• 3:02
  our business plan for this next sector.
• 3:04
  That's not what's happening here.
• 3:06
  Actually from the context of the book, it appears as though these
• 3:10
  people are boasting within the church.
• 3:14
  So they are using the church as a platform to make themselves
• 3:20
  look super great for their business ventures.
• 3:24
  And certainly as we look at James 3 where we hear not many
• 3:29
  of you should become teachers because we will receive a
• 3:31
  stricter judgment as we look at chapter 2 where it says don't
• 3:35
  put the rich in high places or in the most like in the best
• 3:39
  seats in the church and then tell the poor people, Oh yeah,
• 3:43
  you can sit on the floor because look at how the rich are
• 3:46
  treating you in these verses. It makes me think these teachers
• 3:51
  who wanted these, these rich individuals who wanted to teach,
• 3:55
  they wanted positions of authority and they would just
• 3:58
  try and wow everyone in the church with how great their
• 4:01
  business was. They didn't have any thought of
• 4:05
  how does this forward the Kingdom of God.
• 4:08
  Instead, the thought was how can I make myself look great and how
• 4:14
  can I degrade others down? Even as you look at verses 11
• 4:18
  and 12 about not criticizing, looking down on defaming,
• 4:22
  slandering each other and and judging one another, issuing
• 4:25
  final condemnation on others. So James says for this person
• 4:30
  that is utilizing church as a means to platform yourself more
• 4:36
  and make everyone go, oh man, what a shrewd businessman.
• 4:39
  Oh, he's so cool. Look at where he gets to travel
• 4:41
  and everywhere he goes, he's just making money.
• 4:44
  And James says you have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring
• 4:49
  in your life, if you will, back in these times.
• 4:52
  You know, you can have your foot or your legs stepped on by a
• 4:56
  donkey or a horse, and you could be like totally out of
• 5:00
  Commission for a long time. As you recover from that.
• 5:03
  You could, you know, for these people, from everything that
• 5:07
  I've read in the book, you know, maybe these people weren't
• 5:09
  paying all the taxes that they should have to roam.
• 5:12
  And, you know, they could be arrested.
• 5:14
  These people could get sick and have an illness and be totally
• 5:19
  out of Commission. And so James says you are like
• 5:22
  trying to make yourself seem like you're some great thing to
• 5:25
  the people around you, but you have no idea.
• 5:28
  You have no control over what is going to happen to you tomorrow,
• 5:33
  he says. For you are like a vapor that
• 5:35
  appears for a little time, for a little while, and then vanishes.
• 5:40
  He says your life is so brief, so don't spend your time talking
• 5:45
  about you and your greatness and all of the amazing plans and
• 5:49
  business things that you've got going on.
• 5:51
  Instead, if you will talk about the Lord, reserve the time of
• 5:56
  worship in church for the worship of the Lord, the time
• 6:00
  that you are together as believers.
• 6:03
  Use that time to extol and to lift up Jesus, not to lift up
• 6:09
  you. Then he says in verse #15
• 6:12
  instead you should say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do
• 6:17
  this or that, if you will. There's a couple of things here.
• 6:21
  Some people can just attach the phrase here like, ah, Lord
• 6:26
  willing, we'll get this done. And they don't actually mean
• 6:29
  anything by it that it's just a turn of phrase that they think,
• 6:33
  OK, if I slap Lord willing, or, you know, if it's God's will,
• 6:37
  blah, blah, blah, and the person is not actually thinking like
• 6:41
  God upset my plans. If if that's your will, if
• 6:45
  that's what you think is best, like turn it topsy turvy.
• 6:49
  I think this is the direction that I'm going to go.
• 6:51
  But this is all this is all yours anyway.
• 6:53
  This is your business. These are your finances.
• 6:56
  This is your product and I'm just here to do what you want me
• 7:00
  to do with it. So, Lord, whatever you want to
• 7:04
  happen with it, it's in your hands.
• 7:06
  I'm going to plan. You bring along whatever
• 7:09
  circumstances. And if it's, you know, the
• 7:11
  inventory is half of what I thought it was going to be,
• 7:14
  that's OK. If I'm only able to stay in this
• 7:16
  town for two months instead of a year, that's all right.
• 7:20
  And if I, you know, if I hit a loss on it again, not due to,
• 7:26
  you know, sin or or or failure on my part, but just I did what
• 7:30
  I could and I, I didn't end up turning a profit.
• 7:33
  Whatever God wants, that's what's going to happen.
• 7:36
  Why, why would I say all of this?
• 7:39
  He says if the Lord wills, that is the master, the one in charge
• 7:44
  of your life. And as you acknowledge God, I'm
• 7:48
  just managing your stuff. This is all yours.
• 7:52
  And so God, I'm going to hold it all with open hand like I'm, I'm
• 7:55
  holding on to it. I'm, I'm grateful you've placed
• 7:57
  it in my hand. But God, whatever you want to do
• 8:00
  with it is up to you. And if you take it away
• 8:04
  entirely, that's OK, It's yours. If you bless it and you double
• 8:08
  it or you triple it, I'm OK with that too, because it all belongs
• 8:12
  to you. Is this the way that you play in
• 8:15
  your life? I need to be honest.
• 8:16
  For me, I, I'm a little bit of a planner and I like trying to
• 8:21
  figure out, OK, what are my long term goals?
• 8:25
  Frankly, in a year and a half of pastoring, I guess I should say
• 8:29
  in a year and a half of being a lead pastor, been pastoring for
• 8:32
  longer than that. But in being a lead pastor, a
• 8:35
  senior pastor, I have seen God consistently go, OK, I know you
• 8:40
  had this plan or that plan, but I'm, I'm going to switch this up
• 8:44
  on you a little bit. I'm, I'm going to make some
• 8:46
  changes because it's my church and my people and my sheep.
• 8:52
  They're not yours. And so I'm going to switch up
• 8:55
  your plans. And I can think back, man, last
• 8:59
  April through April, April and May, I initially when I had
• 9:05
  planned out my preaching schedule, I'd gone, OK, I'm
• 9:09
  going to, you know, preach through Philippians.
• 9:11
  And then I'm going to preach like six weeks on like the six
• 9:15
  passages of Scripture that have most impacted me and that have
• 9:21
  kind of made me who I am. It'll be, you know, a way for
• 9:24
  our church to be encouraged through those passages and a way
• 9:27
  for our church to get to know me a little bit.
• 9:29
  And as I approach the end of my Philippian series, Folk God
• 9:33
  saying, no, you need to make clear, like, what direction have
• 9:42
  I given you for where our church is headed?
• 9:44
  And so I preached a series called Tabernacle DNA and went
• 9:48
  through the DNA of a healthy church from Third John, which is
• 9:53
  a church that loves truth, that loves each other, that does not
• 10:00
  like look out for its own. It's people that aren't trying
• 10:06
  to establish themselves as something great, but instead
• 10:09
  want to encourage and lift up others and and love Jesus.
• 10:14
  Went through our our church mission statement knowing Christ
• 10:19
  growing in his word and showing his love to others, knowing
• 10:22
  Christ obviously salvation and and knowing Jesus and the power
• 10:26
  of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.
• 10:29
  Even as Paul says there in Philippians 310 growing in his
• 10:33
  word. You know first Peter 2 as like
• 10:36
  newborn babies desire the sincere milk of the word so that
• 10:39
  you may grow in it and then lastly showing his love to
• 10:43
  others. But as shall all men know that
• 10:45
  you are my disciples If you have love for one another.
• 10:48
  And so looked at those. And then I looked at what the
• 10:51
  Bible says about church membership and about the
• 10:55
  responsibility that we are to have to each other and the
• 10:59
  actions that were called to as members of a local church.
• 11:03
  And then what the Bible says about spiritual leadership and
• 11:05
  went over elders and deacons and, and looked at what
• 11:09
  Scripture says about that. And so I, I went through all of
• 11:13
  those things and it was not what I had initially intended.
• 11:18
  Like 6 months. No, it was like 8 or 9 months
• 11:20
  prior to when I planned out my schedule.
• 11:23
  It wasn't what I wanted to do. Even a couple weeks ago, I had
• 11:27
  had a particular sermon series that I was going to do in the
• 11:31
  month of August and I was going to do it.
• 11:35
  But then one of our elders had asked, Hey, could we do like a a
• 11:39
  study of a book in Scripture for our small groups on Sunday
• 11:44
  mornings? And could you help with that?
• 11:46
  And I was like, yeah, absolutely would love to.
• 11:48
  So then I took that book that I was going to preach through in
• 11:51
  August. And we did that all together as
• 11:53
  our small groups. And then I was like, OK, well,
• 11:55
  now what do I do in August? And I was like, all right, I'm
• 11:58
  going to do this, this sermon series called offensive and
• 12:03
  going over counter cultural claims of biblical Christianity.
• 12:07
  And then actually I think it was just earlier this week felt like
• 12:11
  the Lord through through some counsel from some outside
• 12:15
  pastors even that had encouraged me in in some ways.
• 12:22
  Now the new sermon series that I'm going to do in August is
• 12:26
  called Fight Club and it's how to fight fair as Christians and
• 12:29
  looking at conflict within a local church and what are good
• 12:34
  things and good ways to fight and what are ways what are bad
• 12:38
  things to fight about or how we should not fight.
• 12:41
  And in doing that and looking at it from a variety of angles, but
• 12:45
  just seeing God continually like mess with my plans and the
• 12:51
  things that I had planned out long before has always been an
• 12:55
  encouragement to me that I'm like, okay, God, you knew long
• 12:58
  before everything that was going to take place.
• 13:01
  And so I'm just going to try and be open to you and say, God,
• 13:05
  whatever you want me to speak on you, you do it.
• 13:10
  And I'm sure that there are many times that that's happened for
• 13:13
  many of you, whether in business or in your home or in
• 13:16
  relationships, or, you know, with your job, that when God
• 13:21
  throws a wrench in your plans, we can either go like, God, I'm
• 13:25
  so bitter at you for changing what I wanted, or we can say
• 13:30
  you're the Lord, you're the master, you're the one in
• 13:32
  charge. And so I'm going to ask that you
• 13:34
  would take care of me and that you would give me wisdom.
• 13:37
  But God, this is all yours. And so I'm just along for the
• 13:41
  ride, if you will. Then verse 16, the opposite of
• 13:45
  saying like whatever God wants, if it's God's will, we'll do
• 13:50
  this or this. But instead these people, they,
• 13:54
  they were just boasting in their arrogance about how great their
• 13:57
  businesses were and all of their business plans.
• 14:00
  And he says all such boasting is evil.
• 14:02
  The church is not a place for you to network.
• 14:08
  You can bless other people. I'm not saying like, hey, if
• 14:11
  you're, you know, my buddy John Cooney works in a like as an
• 14:16
  electrician, not saying, hey, John, if you hear someone that
• 14:20
  they, they need a job that requires an electrician that you
• 14:26
  just have to like shut your mouth.
• 14:28
  But it's also not the place where you're just going around
• 14:31
  to everyone passing out your business cards and all of that.
• 14:34
  That is that is not the way that God has intended his church to
• 14:40
  work and don't don't try and lift up yourself.
• 14:43
  Don't politic that other people would look to you for you know
• 14:47
  all of their refrigeration needs thrown in a little quote there
• 14:51
  for my office fans verse #17 So what's the results of of all of
• 14:56
  this? He says so it is sin to know the
• 14:58
  good and yet not do it. He says now you know your plans,
• 15:04
  your life, they belong to God, not you, and so you have a
• 15:09
  responsibility. Now act on this and verse 17 is
• 15:14
  true of a variety of things in Scripture.
• 15:16
  It is sin to know that you need to love one another and yet not
• 15:20
  love each other. It is a sin to know that you
• 15:24
  need to that you need to follow the Lord in believers baptism
• 15:28
  and to reject being baptized. It is a sin because it's not
• 15:33
  just a sin when you do something bad.
• 15:35
  It's also a sin when you know that you should be doing
• 15:38
  something good and you do not do it.
• 15:41
  So I could go on with some other applications from verse 17, but
• 15:45
  I think you guys get the picture.
• 15:47
  So today, when it comes to your life, do you recognize that your
• 15:51
  life and your plans belong to God?
• 15:53
  And as a result, you can enjoy and love what he's giving you,
• 15:58
  but love and enjoy it with an open hand that allows God to do
• 16:02
  whatever he wants with it and that you won't become embittered
• 16:06
  or angry against him for doing what he wants with what is his?
• 16:10
  Thanks for tuning in. We'll be in Chapter 5 next time.