James 4:13-5:6, Who’s the Boss?

Good. Please open your Bible with me to James chapter five, James chapter four, actually. But anyway, we're already small, and so it takes us a sickness and somebody out of town, and we seem even smaller.

Although Shannon brought Samantha back, so she helps fill in. James chapter four, starting verse 13, beginning from chapter five, verse six. Hear the word of the Lord. 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 want 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. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin. 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 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. You have murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.

Who Is the Boss in Our Words and Plans?

Who's the boss? Who's the boss, Raymond?

He doesn't know.

Once a guy from one of the gym guys coming on Sunday night from Danville told me that he was wondering because there were some guys from Danville and there's some guys from Castle County, and he was wondering whose turf this is.

Which gang does it belong to? You know, since we're halfway between Yanceyville and Danville, is this Danville turf or is this Castle County turf? In other words, who's the boss? And I thought it's our turf.

You know, we're the boss here. Sometimes we got to make that obvious. You understand sometimes the boss has to make clear that he's the boss. Once I was when I was in college doing a cross country workout, our coach saw that we did not precisely follow his instructions.

And he was obviously he wasn't like he wasn't a shouter, but he could just tell he was not happy. And so he came inside the track in the middle of the field and just gathered us around and said, I believe this is almost if I remember rightly, this is precisely what he said.

It's my way or the highway. If you don't like it, you can leave. Your scholarship athletes, you ask how much power a college coach has over his athletes. He pulls their scholarship. I mean, you got to, you know, go find a job at McDonald's because, you know, you're done college.

But what we're saying was I'm the boss here. And he apparently believed that sometimes everyone needs to be reminded of who the boss is. So when it comes to a battle of the wills, you know, maybe the gym guys don't want to stop for what we call halftime and have the Bible study or maybe us runners.

We want to we want to do our own thing. We didn't we didn't like what the coach told us to do. Well, then the coach, the boss must win that battle. Giving in makes them the boss, right? If we let the guys do whatever they do, whatever they want, they don't want to hear the Bible.

Study.

Well, then they're the boss. It's their turf. Then my old coach thought he had to be had to remind us that he's the boss. And and I was the captain of the cross country team. And I thought, well, then it's my responsibility to apologize to the coach on behalf of the team, even though I personally was not one of those who had disobeyed the coach.

I tried to do what he said. The others didn't. And yet I had to apologize. I'm sorry, coach. But he was the boss. People ask rhetorically, of course, now, you know, who's the boss often after demonstrating that they are the boss, that they're in control?

You know, the basketball will stop when we say so. The things just work out will be done my way. I'll cancel your scholarship if you don't follow my instructions. It's a way to say, well, who's the boss here?

I'm the boss in case we've forgotten. So we say it and we show it so that it's clearly recognized. Someone might say, you know, you can't keep letting your employees walk all over you like that. You got to show them who's the boss.

A coach might rev up his players in a pregame speech. You know what you see in the sports page, what those guys on the other team said about.

You?

Go out there and show them who's the boss. Someone might advise often rightly, I think probably often good advice to to to parents. You have to show your kids who's the boss. You actually actually do.

If you say stop playing video games and it's time to go to bed. Then you cannot let them keep playing the video games. If it comes to a battle of the wills and they don't want to stop playing and go to bed, then you must win that battle.

Giving in then makes them the boss and next time they'll try it again. So now I think you should be careful what you say. Don't go around casually saying things where you don't really want to back it up.

Be careful what you say, where you draw that line. But once you've drawn that line, you must not let it be crossed. If you have to go in and yank out the video game from the wall and shut off the light yourself, well, you better do it because you need they need to know.

Who's the boss? It's important to know who the boss is. I think it's vitally important. But if if you, you know, we sorry, Rachel's father couldn't stay here, but he was in the military. I'm sure people in the military clearly understand.

You know, you got to know the chain of command. You got to know who gives the orders, right? It's just not we feel like the platoon feels like going this way. No, you got to know who the boss is. But if you listen to the way we we often talk and act, you'd think we think.

We're the boss. Oh, we might we might know better when we're talking doctrine in church. Sure, we're here and we guess, oh, God's the boss here. But but when we're being casual, letting our guard down and revealing kind of who we really are, what we really believe, what how what we live by, we listen to our everyday speech.

What do we show who we think is the boss? We see that here in two basic parts. First, what what do you say? Second, money talks. According to your own words, first, what do you say? Who's the boss? You know, what do you say?

Listen, listen to what you say.

This is your own words.

And here who you think the boss is often by omission. What we what we don't say, what what do we mean?

Listen to our words.

What do we mean about two things? This is sub points here. Two things first about ourselves and second about God. What do you say?

Listen to your words.

What are you saying? Verse 13. Come now, you who say what are you saying today or tomorrow? We will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. So this person here is planning a business venture.

He's planning the time to go today or tomorrow. Then the place such and such a town, maybe like Danville. Then the duration, spend a year there. And then the activity, trade, and then the outcome, make a profit.

It's all planned out. Now, is there anything wrong with making plans? No, planning itself is not sinful.

Obviously not.

It's not necessarily unbelieving to carefully plan how your life you want your life to go, how you want something to go. A good business person is a good planner. Takes everything into account that he can foresee.

If you're going to open a restaurant and you plan, well, what are you going to serve? How much are you going to charge? Who are you trying to appeal to? Are there the customers for this in this area? If you're not, you're going to be a bad business person.

How much, you know, how much are you going to spend yourself on the material, on the lease? What the atmosphere of the restaurant is going to be like. It's going to be more fast food. It's going to be more sit down and casual.

Everything is planned. It's wise to make plans, but it's how you talk about your plans that matters. How you hold on to them. Don't hold on too tightly. Because they might get yanked away. You know what happens if you're holding on to tightly to something that gets yanked away?

You know, it's not pleasant. Because that how you hope you talk about your plans, how you tightly you hold them. This shows a lot about you. What do you think about yourself? What do you think about God?

When I was living in Singapore, I planned on getting a master's degree in theology at a local seminary. And I was desperate for that to happen. I was sure my program was going to start soon in a couple of months.

And I then could then quit the job I was in and start studying. When suddenly I got a letter from the seminary saying that I had to start next year. Be like a year and a half until I could start. And it just destroyed all my plans.

And I was upset. I was really upset. The best laid schemes of mice and men often go askew. So if a good planner takes into everything into account and our best laid plans often go askew, then don't we need to take that into account too?

And say so? What do you say? Do your words show that you understand that, that your plans will go askew? Does it show by the way you talk that you know you can't take into account all the unknowns of the future?

Do you speak with certainty about the future that you don't really know with certainty? What does that say? If you, if that's what we do, it's what I was doing at that time. What does that say that you think that you think you can be certain about the future?

What does that say about who deep down you think the boss is? In verse 14, we're told that what we easily forget. You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is it that we don't take into account in our planning?

That we don't know the future. There's a big question mark there. Any plan, you better put a question mark. There's unknowns coming. Who are we? We like to think we're the boss, that we're in control.

We know it all. We have an, we're on top of it all. The first sin, you know, was served up to us with the promise that we will, if we take it, we will be like God. We'll be the boss that we'll know. We'll have the knowledge we need, but we don't know.

And we hate to admit that. We like to assert certainties, even when we're not certain. But our only certainties about the future are those few things that God himself has promised us about the future.

Really three, basically, that Christ is coming, that there is a judgment and that there is a resurrection. A reason that some Christians are attracted to, I think, to some teachings about the end times, you know, are popular out there that promises detailed plans about what will happen.

You know, the European Union, I remember this when I was a teenager, European Union consists of 10 nations. And it's going to be the 10 nation confederacy in the book of Revelation with the 10. Of course, now the European Union is like 25 nations.

So that one went by the wayside. Funny, the people that teach this never come out and say, I'm sorry, I was all wrong. I've never heard anyone come out and say that. But anyway, the stuff that's being put out there, you can know these detailed plans about the future, about everything that's going to unfold, when Christ will return and what will definitely happen leading up to it.

So you can basically plot it carefully. I think one of the selling point of that for many is that they love the sense of certainty that they can now be sure of things that are coming. They maybe they can even maybe set a date for Christ's return.

So that way they can quit their job, you know, a few months ahead of time. They don't have to worry about working more. You have to worry about paying the mortgage because by the time that, you know, they'll never be able to foreclose on them for Christ returns, that kind of thing.

They're sure they don't that's coming. But God doesn't offer that kind of certainty.

He doesn't.

He says here, God's word. You do not know what tomorrow will bring. Get used to it. There's things coming. You do not know what it is. He intends on keeping it that way so that we'll be humble and dependent.

That's what he's after. Not our certainty.

Who are you?

Here, maybe you're a business person. Nothing wrong with that. That's fine. You're out to make a profit. That's good. That's fine. Understand you want a sure thing, like maybe being the only Chinese restaurant in town.

Wouldn't that make it a sure thing? No competitors. Everyone wants Chinese food. They got to go to your place. But you weren't created just to do business, to be a money making machine. Sure, you may be called.

You may be called to do business. That is, I believe God can call you to do to open a Chinese restaurant or whatever other business you're doing. That's your calling from God. But you were made to do business, not just as an end in itself, not just just to make money, but to glorify God.

Now, hopefully you'll make enough money to support yourself and your family. Maybe your church, too. But you need to know who you are, that you're more than an economic animal. Here are the business person on a business venture is reminded.

What is your life? In the middle of verse 14, you're a mist. You're like a little morning fog that appears for a little time and then vanishes. It's there at the sunrise, but the sun quickly burns it away.

That's your life. You know, it's too short to spend only on money making. It will soon be over. And if all you have to show for it is a nice house and some some gadgets and some jewelry and some cash in the bank that the grandkids are all going to waste on video games and cell phone bills and mid trips to Florida.

That's it.

Don't do that. Don't waste your life on accumulating wealth. What is your life? It's very short, like a mist quickly dissipated by the rising sun. What do we say? What do we say? Maybe by example, you know, and how we live our lives, you know, we well can't make it to church on Sunday mornings because got to make sure the shop gets on his feet.

Got to squeeze a few more dollars out of our Sunday mornings. We're saying life is about money.

Give me more.

That's what I need. Success as the world defines it. Your life is more than that. What do you say about God and the way we talk? Listen to your own words, the way we plan our business ventures. How do you make God part of your plans?

He says here instead, instead of the way we have been talking, verse 15, instead of asserting that our best laid plans aren't going to go askew, we have it on. We have it under control. Instead of that, you ought to say not that you're the boss, that your plans are certain.

But if the Lord wills, he's the boss. You can go ahead and make your plans. That's fine. But understand if the Lord wills, they'll come out like you want them to. So what do you say if the Lord wills?

Notice it's not, by the way, if we submit to God's will or if we cooperate with his will,.

Then it will come about.

You know, we help God out to do what he wants to do. If we surrender to his will, any of these kind of slogans that people like to say today, as if God can will something to come about. Maybe he wills that you go to Danville and set up a shop and make money.

Maybe that's his will. But you think if I don't cooperate, his will won't come about. You know, that we can make, we can make his plans go askew. The best laid plans of mice and men often go askew. What about the best laid plans of God?

Do they go askew? Instead, we think we can make his plans go askew. If we don't do our part as if his will depends on us. No, obviously that's not what he's, James is thinking here. Notice clearly the assumption that James is working with when he says, instead, you want to say if the Lord wills, if the Lord wills that my plans for a business venture, my master's degree in theology in Singapore, my best laid plans be successful.

If he wills that, then that will happen, right? That's what he's assuming here, isn't he? If he doesn't will that, then it won't happen. Right? Isn't that just what he's assuming James is? That's just assumed because James assumes that all believers, at least theoretically, understand that.

Now, sometimes we may forget. And so we may plan and talk like we believe it all depends on us. Or that we can make it come about if we just plan it right, we work it right. Sometimes it might just be a doctrine that we intellectually agree with and makes no impact on our lives.

It hasn't shaped our heart. So, so that we see the sovereignty of God in all things. But that's what James is trying to do here to get that doctrine to shape how we see life. James absolutely assumes that God's will is always done.

We don't know what that will is until it is revealed in the actual events of our lives. But it is always accomplished. What happens today or tomorrow is what the Lord wills, right? So what do you say?

If the Lord wills, we will live. If he doesn't will that, we won't live. So the duration of our lives is in the hands of God. God governs how long we live. God will decide whether we make it to tomorrow and when we die.

Now, we often assume that we just kind of assume that we will live until tomorrow and through tomorrow because that's our experience. You know, so far we've always lived. You know, we've never had a day where the next day we didn't live so far.

That's all we know. We're all limited by our experience. Uh, one day though we'll be wrong. We do understand that. One day we'll assume that we'll wake up till tomorrow and we won't. So we're handicapped by our experience.

We've never died yet. I'm pretty sure none of you have. I didn't ask you personally, but I'm going out on a limb and making that wild guess. And we never experienced not living until tomorrow. We've never been through that.

And we never even talked with other people who've been through that. So, you know, maybe there's a lot of things we haven't experienced yet. We can talk to others and kind of get a sense of what it was like.

You know, we, I've never been to China, but some people have. You can talk to people who've been to China, what it's like and get a sense of what it's like. But we've never talked with someone who told us a story about how they were going.

You know, they were going to, I was going to open a store in the mall and I worked hard to do it. I had all my plans laid out. I put off a relationship with God until later the store was going to be my life.

And then I had a heart attack and died. And so I learned that business life isn't all about business, making a career. We've never gotten to talk to anyone like that. And so because we never got this, we never experienced it ourself, and we never talked to someone who has experienced it.

We could pretend that that those people do not exist. But they do. If it's the Lord's will, we will live. God is ultimately in control of life and death. We do not know how long our vapor-like life will linger in the air.

But God knows because it's according to His will. So what do you say? If the Lord wills, we will do this or that.

Think about that.

Think about that statement. We will do this or that. Basically, everything we do is because the Lord wills. Now, some people are afraid of the idea of the complete sovereignty of God over all things. So they will teach, well, OK, maybe God has a few kind of goals that he's determined to do, you know, like maybe saving the people he selected or, you know, rescuing Israel out of Egypt, those kind of these big goals.

But much of history, much of the events of the world, he kind of just leaves up to the randomness of, quote, free will. So what people eat for breakfast, what they watch on TV, or if a pass is completed in a football game, or if your business succeeds or fails, all of that is at the mercy of the chaos of human choices, they think.

That he's, that God is not, he's not a control freak. Sure, he's the boss, but, you know, he's he lets a lot of things slide. He's not a control freak. But notice here, James says that everything we plan in our business venture, the this or that.

We'll do this or that if it's God's will, this or that we thought to do, how much maybe how much sugar to add to our general child's chicken? How many customers will come to our shop? Everything, all the activities and accomplishments of our lives depend on the Lord's will.

He's the boss. So what do you say? Now, Christians used to commonly say something like, Lord willing. This will happen, I'm going to open a shop, Lord willing. I heard someone say that last week. So I'm just going to, wow, something back from the past, a blast from the past.

Somebody said, Lord willing. In Acts chapter 18, verse 21, Paul left Ephesus and said, I will return to you again if God wills. And first Corinthians chapter four, verse 19, he writes, I will come to you soon to Corinth if the Lord wills.

But he wasn't like legalistic about it. And so in Romans chapter 15, verse 24, he wrote of his plans. I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain. He didn't say God willing there or anything. He planned to go to Spain.

Now, we don't know if he ever made it, if his best laid plans were to skew or not. The point isn't to mindlessly tack on that phrase, if the Lord wills, to all our future indicatives. You know, the I wills.

Every time you say I will, you got to, Lord willing, without thinking about it. The point is to acknowledge first in your heart that our lives are entirely in his hands. Even the little details, the this or the that of our business dealings, all of that is determined by him.

So acknowledge then who you are, that you're not just an economic animal, that you're not, you're not the boss that God is. If you don't confess that, if you talk certainly about your plans, then in verse 16, you are boasting in arrogance.

And he says, all such boasting is evil. Now, notice the root problem there is not the failure to say a little tagline onto all your statements about the future. It's the arrogance that makes us think we're the boss.

Our plans won't go askew. The expression of that attitude is called boasting. It's arrogant not to believe with your heart and acknowledge with your mouth that it's the Lord's will that determines how long you live and what you do.

Every this or that. Boasting does not acknowledge. Boasting, the opposite of that, does not acknowledge that our life is vapor like. Boasting does not say that God governs the length of our lives and everything that we manage to do with it.

So in verse 17, it could be translated as, therefore, it's temptation to be verse 17 is sort of this theological principle kind of just standing there all by itself. But it begins in Greek, just like you're in English.

It's translated with with so or with. Therefore, it could be translated. Therefore, it's the same word in Greek. Therefore, so this is a connection to what comes prior to it. In other words, because it is arrogant to not believe in the heart and confess with the lips that how long you live and whatever you do is in the hands of God, that he's the boss.

Then therefore, here's a logical application of that principle. So therefore, again, since the Lord determines whether we live or we do anything, whether our business succeeds or not, whether we get rich or we don't even manage to earn a dollar, then this.

This is not just a piece of theological dogma that we debate. Maybe we intellectually accept the Calvinist creed of the full sovereignty of God over all things. Maybe we're convinced of it doctrinally, but then once we're done playing with our doctrine, we go on living and talking as if we were the boss.

That's not James wants to blow that away. So because we believe this about ourselves, we're in God's hands. Every this or that we believe God is in control. It acts according to his will. In verse 17, then whoever knows the right thing to do, what's the right thing to do?

Acknowledge that God is the boss in your heart and with your lips. Whoever knows that and fails to do it for him. It is sin. Failing to do something can be a sin. You know, there are sins of commission, what we actively do and sins of omission, things that we we've we failed to do that we were supposed to do here in this context.

We were supposed to acknowledge in our daily plans versus our hearts and our lips that God is the boss, that that that will everything we do, whatever we do won't necessarily be by our plans will be by his will.

We're supposed to acknowledge that. And if we don't. We've sinned. So chapter five, come now. Same way he opened chapter verse 13. Come, he's inviting people. Come to the boss. Let him remind you of who the boss is.

Money Talks, But the Lord of Hosts Hears the Cry of the Oppressed

What do you say?

Some say, come on, you know what they say? You know, they say money talks. Comedian joked, if money talks, all it ever says to me is goodbye. But we all know that money talks. And what it what it says to us is this is why we love it so much.

This is why we love money so much. You know what money says to us?

It talks. It does.

It says you're the boss, right? Other people, you tell them to do stuff, they could disobey. Money does exactly what you want. You spend $20 on something, you get $20 of whatever you spend it on. It gives you what you paid for.

So that's why it's why we have the golden rule. You know, you know, the golden rule, he has the most gold rules. Money gives whoever has the most of it power, right? Money gives you power. And whoever has the most money has the most power.

The Chinese have a saying, if you have enough money, you can even make the demons grind your rice. I'm not sure how you pay off the demons, but I guess you can. So if we can be, if we can be wealthy, we think we can get nearly everyone to do what we want, right?

Come on.

If you're, if you're like some billionaire, people are falling all over themselves to, to do your bidding, to be, to be your friend, be on your good side, hoping you'll stuff a little $100 bill in their pocket, right?

Money talks. Then we'll be happy if we have it. It's what it says to us. We'll have everything we want. We'll have the best food, the best house, the best medical care. We'll have security and we'll live in comfort.

We'll drive in luxury.

We'll be the boss.

Come now, he says in verse one, you rich. He's inviting the rich. Maybe those of us who want to be rich, you've avoided coming and listening before too busy making your money, chasing those dollars too busy running your business.

You won't, you won't come to church now. You got to make more money. Maybe you think I'll come later after I have enough cash saved up after the business is secure, you got enough money in the bank. You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll see God then not yet.

After all, you want to be, you want to be rich. You want to make yourself rich today or tomorrow. I'll make money. But that's why James says here, come, come now, now weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

You think you're the boss or soon about to be about, about to become what you can tell everyone what to do because you have plenty of money to throw around, but wail for your soon coming judgment. Then, then James, I think is, here's, he's looking back from the, he's standing as if at the judgment seat, looking back from the standpoint of that future judgment, looking back to our age now, the future judgment, one of those, one of those events of the future, you can be certain of he he's there.

He's hearing what God will say then. And he's telling us now he's telling these selfish rich now what they will hear at the judgment. These, these unrighteous bossy, arrogant, rich, what they will hear at the soon coming judgment.

And they'll hear four searing verdicts coming down from the judgment seat. First, your riches, what you spent so much time chasing after have rotted. Your garments are moth eaten in verse two. Now all the stuff they piled up, the wealth they've hoarded, the Rolls Royces in their garages are all rusted and fallen into powder.

The Rolex watches, a different one for every occasion,.

Right?

Every day of the week, they got a new one. The newest gadgets, $5 ,000 silk, Italian suits, all moths have eaten them all up. Their designer purses, all the stuff they're so proud of. All of that is worthless.

Now this is, it's, it's, it's dust. It's, it's, it's garbage. Your gold and silver have corroded in verse three. Now they may have thought, hey, precious metals, gold doesn't rust, but eventually even it will turn to dust at the judgment seat.

James says their corrosion, their gold and silver, their corrosion will be evidence against you. It's like, like an exhibit in a trial, you know, in a court or a trial, here's an exhibit. Just prove something.

Exhibit A, judgment seat. You corrupt, wealthy person. Here's a pile of dust. This is, this is all that's left. Disintegrated from those gold coins you spent your life chasing.

Is that it?

Then weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. The corrosion will not only tarnish the gold and silver, but will consume the flesh of the rich, like fire consumes dry wood. Second, you rich, you bosses in this world, you laid up treasure in the last days at the end of verse two.

The last days being, being this age, this is the last days we're in right now. This is the time when the judgment is coming. John the Baptist said that the ax is laid at the root of the trees. Otherwise they, the lumberjack is just about to chop this thing down.

Judgment is right here. It's coming soon. And the kingdom of God is breaking into this world. So you should be seeking it. But instead of seeking it, you sought Porsches, mansions, the biggest HDTVs, the swankiest cruises, first class tickets to Europe, a vacation house by the beach, more money in your accounts.

That's what you sought. In these last days, the indulgent rich got their wealth, not by offering people a service that they wanted or needed. I'm actually doing something really useful, but by cheating, by not paying their workers.

They promised men a day's pay for mowing their fields. You know, come on my fields and going out. They went these these poor workmen with a swing blades, chopping down the crop or the wheat or the grass or whatever it was.

And when the day was over, the rich refused to pay them. Sue me, they might say to them. And what were the cheated workers to do? There were no courts that would hear them. The corrupt rich would just pay off the judges.

Today, some employers in America want to hire illegal immigrants because they know they can pay them less than minimum wage. They can make them work longer hours than the law is supposed to allow it. And if they cheat them, what are they going to do?

They're not going to go to the government for justice.

They can't.

That's why they want them here for that. They use fraud to make more money for themselves. But but the wages they refuse to pay.

And remember.

That money talks. Oh, it really does. But says something very, very differently than what these wealthy rich people, these these corrupt wealthy people were thinking here. Sure, money is talking. But listen to what it's saying to God.

The money is talking to God. It's crying out for justice. The cries of the cheated workers are rising, he says, to the Lord of hosts, to the other words, the Lord, the master, the boss host, the armies.