When God Changes Our Plans

Trusting God’s Sovereignty When Plans Change

Well, I would invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to the book of James. I know that it has certainly been our practice the last few months to study in Genesis. And late, late, late last night, as I was praying about today, and what I wanted to preach about today, even though I had written my sermon many days ago, I always write early in the week so that I can meditate on what I'm going to write.

This morning I, or late last night, early this morning, I was moved to change my message. And that is not something that I do on a whim. That is certainly not something that I do regularly. And so the title of today's message is When God Changes Our Plans.

And we're going to look at James chapter 4, verses 13 to 16. So if you have your Bibles open there, we'll read in just a moment. But I'd like to give a few words of introduction before we read. Many plans have changed this week in the lives of many people.

Many sports have ended their seasons early or postponed them indefinitely. Many businesses are having to adjust to supply shortages and customer losses. Many schools have extended their spring breaks, leaving parents unsure of how they are going to manage keeping their kids at home and watching over them and having to provide for them.

Some people are even trying to put together lunch programs so these kids can actually eat because so many of them rely upon the food that they get at school because they're not receiving the proper nourishment at home.

And, of course, many churches have suspended their services and have moved online. I saw yesterday one church that's completely canceled all services through the end of March. And this is all the result of the CDC calling for what is known as social distancing.

Social distancing means you're avoiding congregate settings, you're avoiding gatherings of more than a certain number of people and that when you are gathered with people, you are maintaining a certain physical distance from people.

And some people are praising our government for taking decisive action and praising the CDC for coming down with these rules. Others are indignant, feeling as this is an unwarranted inconvenience, something that is just an opportunity for people to grab power and demonstrate their ability to lord over us all and the power of the media to make people act in a way that they wouldn't normally.

But there is no debating one fact. And that is the fact that this is certainly not the week that many of us planned on. Amen. I mean, that's pretty clear. And moments like this remind us of what little control we really have over our future.

And whether or not this virus has any interpersonal impact on any of us is yet to be seen. But all of us have seen the effects of empty shelves at the store, a falling stock market, businesses closed, and others that are failing as a result of all of this change.

And this causes many of us a great deal of consternation and some even anger. I read just yesterday that a man in Georgia stabbed another man with the broken end of a wine bottle over a case of bottled water.

We like to feel like we're in charge until we are reminded that we're not. And we like to pretend that we have sovereignty in our lives until something comes along that reminds us that we're not really the ones who are in charge.

But there is one who is in charge. And in actuality, there is only one who is sovereign over all, and it isn't you and it isn't me. It is the one for whom nothing comes as a surprise, and certainly everything that's going on right now is not a surprise to God.

In the small epistle of James, we read an important warning about presumption and pride. James, for those who haven't studied James, I commend it to you. I have taught through the book of James. I've been the pastor here for 15 years.

I've taught through the book of James three times. I've taught through it once in Sunday school, once on Wednesday nights, and I preach through it at set free. This book is comparable to the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament.

You know how the Proverbs is just one wisdom statement after the other and one section of wisdom literature after another, reminding us of the important ways that we ought to live as believers in God?

Well, James sort of fills that gap in the New Testament. He provides to us wise counsel. He begins by telling us that we ought to take joy in our trials because it's in those trials where we learn patience and patience, endurance, and endurance, godliness.

And so James begins with a very difficult thing. Take joy in your trials, but yet it's a wise admonition. And he just follows up with wisdom admonition after wisdom admonition. He's speaking to the church of the dysphoria, which simply means the church that had been dispersed because of persecution.

The church began as a seed in Jerusalem, but it didn't stay in Jerusalem because it was under persecution, so it began to spread out. And as it began to spread out, they were called the dysphoria or the dispersed, the dispersion.

And James writes to the church in the dispersion, and he writes this book of Christian wisdom. It very much models after the Proverbs, but it also models Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. You can actually follow the pattern of thought in James and follow the pattern of thought in Jesus' greatest sermon, and you'll see that there's a lot of crossover, because who is James?

James is the brother of Jesus. He's the half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't have time this morning to go into the arguments as to why that is. I'm going to ask you to take my word for it.

If you need help understanding why I believe that, get with me later. I'll send you an email. But let me just tell you, I am convinced this is the pastor of the church of Jerusalem, which we read about in the book of Acts and in Galatians, and it is the half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why do we call him half? Because Jesus didn't have the same daddy. Jesus was the Son of God. James, I believe, would have been the son of Joseph. But that's who's writing, and he's writing wisdom. This is one of the earliest New Testament books to be written.

I believe actually the earliest, written somewhere in the 40s. James is writing to the church, the very young church, a book of wisdom. And we get to chapter 4, verse 13, and he speaks to those who would forget that God is sovereign over everything in their lives.

And when they make plans, they ought never to make plans without considering the will of God. So let's read the text. We're going to stand. I know we don't stand when we're reading, but we stand when we're going to read what we're going to study, because we give honor and reverence to it.

So we're going to read James, chapter 4, and beginning at verse 13. 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 and all such boasting is evil.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the truth of it. And I pray now that as I preach it, that you would keep me from error. I pray that you would open up hearts to hear the truth.

Believers, Lord, I pray that they would be convicted, Lord, to any need of repentance in their life, especially the repentance of pride. But Lord, for those who have come today who might not know Christ, Lord, whether they be young or old, whether they be man or woman, no matter who they are, Lord, that they might hear today the gospel of Christ and that you might, through your Holy Spirit, convert them and change them and draw them to yourself.

We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. One of the most colorful sports characters of the last century was a man by the name of Cassius Clay. Cassius Clay was a tremendous boxer and considered by many to be one of the greatest athletes of the last century.

Cassius Clay would go on to change his name when he became a Muslim to Muhammad Ali, and that may be the name with which you are most familiar. And if you lived during the time of Muhammad Ali, you probably remember that Muhammad Ali was a very boastful individual.

To say the least, he was a man who was very satisfied in his own grandeur, and he was willing to tell the world about it. He consistently said, I'm the best in the world, I'm the greatest of all time.

And one of the ways that he would go about describing himself was he would describe himself as Superman. I'm Superman! Well, one time when Muhammad Ali was on a plane, as the plane was preparing for its final check for the takeoff, the stewardess who was on the plane was walking down the aisle and she noticed that Ali was not wearing a seatbelt.

And she asked him to put the seatbelt on and then she went away and she came back and noticed he still hadn't put it on. And she said, Mr. Ali, would you please put on your seatbelt? And he said, listen, Superman don't need no seatbelt.

And she said, yes sir, but Superman don't need no airplane neither. Pride is certainly one of the most dangerous sins. In fact, as I was thinking about this last night, as I was jotting down notes and I was thinking about what I wanted to say this morning, pride is the mother of all sin.

In fact, if we really, really get to the root of all sin, it's pride and idolatry, it's those two things. And what is idolatry? It's pride. Thinking that we can make a God better than the God who exists, right?

And if you think back to Eve in the garden, Eve in the garden was tempted not by the taste of the fruit or even by the knowledge that the fruit would ultimately provide. She was tempted by this statement, you will be like God.

You will be like God. Beloved, that temptation still rolls down today. That is what men most want to be. And when I say men want to be like God, I'm not saying men want to be the good parts of God. Men don't want to be holy.

We want to be sinful. Men don't want to be loving. We want to be harsh and indignant. We stab each other over bottled water. I mean, look at us. But the one thing we want that only God has is control.

The one thing that we want that only belongs to God is sovereignty. I know you've heard that word a lot since I became the pastor here. I mean, we changed the name of the church. 2011, we went from Forrest to Sovereign Grace.

So you might think that I've maybe worn this word a little thin. You just can't. Amen. You can't outdo what this word reminds us of because it reminds us... This is what A .W. Pink said. He said, you can't give up the sovereignty of God because when you do, you give up the Godhood of God.

When you give up the sovereignty of God, you forget who God is. And certainly what happens when we give up the sovereignty of God is we begin to think we are sovereign. And then something comes along that reminds us that we are not even a little sovereign.

That we don't even have a little... We can't even control how much toilet paper is out there, y 'all. We don't have any control at all. And one of the most prideful things we can do as believers is believe that we are somehow the captains of our destiny.

That I am in control of my future. And therefore, God, you take a side seat, you take a back seat because we're going where I want to go. And that's exactly what James is going to challenge us today. I have an outline of four words here.

We're going to look first at the confrontation. And I don't always do it this way, but I do have an alliterated outline today. We're going to look at the confrontation in verse 13. We're going to look at the clarification in verse 14.

The correction in verse 15. And then the condemnation of verse 16. So that's the outline. You don't have to write it down. I'll give it to you later if you want. I always give you a copy of my notes later.

I don't have that many. But let's look first at the confrontation. The confrontation is this. He says, Come now, you who say... Now stop right there for just a second. If you go back to chapter 4, he is talking about how we use our tongue and how we misuse our tongue.

And it might seem that verse 13 kind of comes out of nowhere, but it's not because he's talking about what we say and what this person says. He says, 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.

The person who is in view here is the typical business person. Whether it be a man or a woman, it doesn't matter. It's a typical person of business. And this person is planning for his business in four areas.

He's planning in the area of time. Today or tomorrow. He's planning in the area of place. We'll go to such and such a town. He's planning in the area of duration. We'll spend a year there. And then he plans for the goal.

We'll make a profit. Now that sounds like a pretty good business plan. And any of you who own a business or maybe you work for someone who is... You're close with the manager of the business or maybe you're a manager of men.

You understand that those four things are kind of important in business. You need to know the timetable that you're working under. You need to know where you're going to be. You need to know the duration of time that this job is going to take.

And you need to know the goal of the job. And so right away, we need to understand that none of these things are inherently bad in and of themselves. In fact, the Bible actually commends careful planning.

Proverbs 21 .5 says this, The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty, meaning they don't plan, comes only to poverty. So there's an admonition from the old wisdom literature that we ought to be people who make plans.

And of course, we see the same thing in Proverbs 6 where the writer of Proverbs talks about the ant. And he says, look at the ant and how the ant makes its plans and how it prepares for the different seasons and how we ought to be like the ant who is preparing and making plans.

And even Jesus Christ would later, while He's preaching, talk about a person making a plan for a building. It's a lot like the person who is coming to salvation. He says you need to count the cost before you come.

You remember that? He said just like a man who's going to build a building, he needs to count the cost before he begins to know that he won't get halfway built and realize he ran out of money. So here is Jesus using the example of a good planner and He's saying here's someone who plans and it's a good thing.

So where does James kind of come in at the end here and say, you know what? You who say today or tomorrow we're going to do this or that. What is James denouncing? Well, we're going to see this in verse 14 because verse 14 is what I call the clarification.

Because the confrontation has come now. You who say I'm going to go here, I'm going to go there, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to make a profit. You who say that, that's the confrontation.

Now the clarification is in verse 14. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. You see, He is denouncing the one who makes plans as if He is sovereign. He's denouncing the one who makes plans as if He is the one whose will will be done.

He believes somehow He has the power to accomplish these things independently. And if anything, let me say this, just kind of take us out of the text for just a second. If anything this week has shown us, it's how dependent we are on each other.

In the sense of, like I said, the supply lines go out, what happens? This is why everybody's into prepping. You know what prepping is? It's getting ready for weeks like this when there ain't no toilet paper, and there ain't no bottled water, and there ain't no wipes.

And you got a baby. I mean, that's what preppers are all about, right? And the problem with, and let me say this, and I want to clarify, don't be sending me no ugly emails, catching me by the back door.

Don't shake my hand today. But the problem with a lot of this prepping is that it does, in a sense, kind of try to put us in the driver's seat. It puts us in that position of being sovereign. I'm not saying you shouldn't have some extra food, especially, you know, you live in Florida, you got hurricane season and those things.

But when your faith is in what you have stored rather than in God, you got a problem. Think about the man who built those silos. Jesus talks about it. He built barns, right? Because he had had such a crop.

And then he died. And then he just... This night your soul is required of you. You spent all that time building your barn. You spent all that time prepping. And yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Again, I'm not telling you don't be prepared. I've already said preparation is a good thing. Having plans is a good thing. But when you do it independently of God and when you do it putting yourself in the position of God, you are actually doing it in spite of God.

And you're saying to God, I've got this. And you really don't. Everything you have can be taken away from you in an instant. And if you don't believe me, ask Job. Job lost it all. And he said, though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.

So he says, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. None of us do. None of us knows if tomorrow is going to be the day we get the call from the doctor we got a bad test result. None of us know that tomorrow isn't going to be the day that our car veers off the road or somebody else's veers into us.

You know, I don't mean to be dramatic, but we talk about an 18 inch gap. You know, everybody always talks about the 18 inch gap between the head and the heart. There's also another 18 inch gap you need to be aware of.

It's the 18 inch gap between you and the other car that's going down the road. And you're going 55 miles an hour, unless you got that sweet ride out there. You might be going a little bit more than 55.

And you got another car coming 55 miles an hour. And at any moment a tire could go. A person could drop their cell phone. Spill hot coffee in their lap. And 18 inches becomes no inches. And your cars meet.

And in an instant you are with the Lord. Are you prepared for that? Because that's what he means when he says you do not know what tomorrow will bring. And how do I know that's what he means? Because of what he says next.

What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. You're a mist. I've done many funerals, of course, as you know. And I've talked about this text many times. I've done funerals for little babies.

And I've done funerals for men who lived over a hundred years. And I've got to tell you, I don't care whether you are six months old or a hundred years old, this life is a vapor. Because when you compare this life to the history of the world, even if the world is only a few thousand years old as we consider that it may be based on our understanding of Genesis, that it might not be millions and billions of years old as some believe, but even if the earth is only, let's say, 7 ,000 years old, and you live to 70 years old, you realize that that means for every year that you have existed, the world has existed 70 more than you.

And for every one of your years, the earth has existed an average human lifespan. This is why James makes the point, you're like a vapor. You're here today. You're gone tomorrow. Why is he making this point?

Why is James making this point? Because he's attacking our pride. Why do we get so prideful because we think higher of ourselves than we ought? And he says, look, you're a mist, man. Do you understand that you're a mist?

You say, I'm a child of God. I'm born again. I'm an adjoined heir with Jesus Christ. How can you tell me I'm just a mist? He's not talking about your value. He's talking about the brevity of your life.

It is here today. It is gone tomorrow. I'm going to turn 40 in just a couple of weeks. And I know for some of y 'all, you're only 40, you're still a baby. Let me tell you something. It's a big deal to me because I was just 17.

I've been married for 20 years. I barely know the woman. I'm just kidding. What I mean is it goes by so fast. She's hearing this at home. She's not feeling well, by the way. I love you. Okay. But the point is our life is so fast.

Our life is such a vapor. And how prideful we get thinking that we have any control at all. And how much more prideful we get thinking that it's all about us when our life is just a mist. So we see the clarification.

He's not telling us it's wrong to plan. What he's saying is it's wrong to plan without God. And now comes the correction in verse 15. In verse 15 he says this. Instead. Instead of what? Instead of saying I'm going to go here or there.

I'm going to do this or that. And I'm going to make a profit. But instead of saying that, what you ought to say is if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. This is really James' whole concern in this section.

He's not telling us not to make plans. But what he is telling us is that those plans must never be independent of God. And most of us verbally agree with this. But we don't live like it. Most of us would say, yeah, I agree.

I shouldn't make my plans independent of God. But so few of us live that life. Nothing is outside the sovereignty of God. And yet we don't live that way. I want to talk for a moment about the will of God.

Notice it says here, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. What does it mean? I hear people say it all the time. And I do appreciate it when people are so concerned. And you'll hear me say this sometimes.

Somebody will say, hey, are you going to be there Saturday? And they'll say if the Lord wills. Right? And I appreciate what they're trying to get across. I want to be there. I plan to be there. But ultimately, if the Lord wills, I will be there.

And so they're in a sense, they're submitting their language to that principle of being within the will of God. But what does it mean? What is the will of God? And how do we understand it? I want to just very quickly take you down a right turn theological thought, because as we say in the church, theology matters.

And it is important to understand certain theological paradigms, especially when we talk about the will of God. The Bible describes to us God's will in two different ways. And the first one is what we would call the revealed will of God.

And the second is what we would call the hidden will of God. Now what does that mean, revealed and hidden? Well, the revealed will of God is God's word. Thou shalt not commit murder. Is that part of the revealed will of God?

Yep. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Is that part of the revealed will of God? Yes. So if somebody comes up and says, is it God's will for me to cheat on my wife? I can clearly say, nope. Because you're asking me a question about God's revealed will.

And He has revealed His will as such. Do not commit adultery. Do not commit murder. And it is discerned through exegesis. What's exegesis, church? The study of the Word of God. Pulling out from the Word of God what it means.

That is how we discern the revealed will of God. Through exegesis. But the hidden will, the Bible says the secret things belong to God. The hidden will of God is distinct. Because the hidden will of God is how He works out His plan in the midst of a sinful world.

Do people murder? Is God not in control? So in some way He has a purposeful allowance in that, right? He has made a decree that He will allow for that thing. And we don't know what God's will is in regard to the hidden will.

That's why it's called hidden. So that's not discerned by exegesis. That's discerned by experience. I know what God's will is today, tomorrow. Because I can look back on tomorrow, or tomorrow I can look back at today and I can say, okay, that was what God had planned.

It wasn't what I had planned. I had a direction, I had a goal. God took me off. You ever been going somewhere and God sends you in a completely different direction to help someone and you didn't even know you were going to be in their life that day?

You didn't even know you were going to be helping them that day? But for whatever reason, that's where it was? That was the hidden will of God in that situation. And you didn't know about it until after it was over.

And therefore, it was learned not through exegesis of the Scripture, but it was learned through experiencing it in the moment. And you say, man, that's scary. Because I don't know what God's will is for me tomorrow.

That's James' whole point. What do we do when we don't know what tomorrow will bring? We trust the one who has the sovereignty over it. What do we do when we don't know what is going to happen? We step back and we trust the one who is over everything supreme.

And in the final analysis, I must submit my will to His will. What is the prayer of Jesus that He taught His disciples? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.

Now, we can understand that in one of two ways. You can understand that as, because He says, as it is in heaven, so on earth. We can say, God, Your prescriptive will is always done in heaven. Your revealed will is always done in heaven.

Therefore, I want Your revealed will done on earth. And that is true. So in that sense, we're calling on God to bring about change in this world. But there is also a sense in which when I say, Thy will be done, I'm praying in the vein of submission.

How do I know that? Because that's the way Jesus prayed the night before He went to the cross. Father, if there be any other way, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done.

It's a statement of submission. Therefore, when we say, verse 15, what we ought to say is, if the Lord wills, what we are saying is, I have submitted myself to the will of God. I have submitted myself to the sovereignty and the power of God.

That's the correction James wants us to make in our lives. You who think you are sovereign, realize God is sovereign. You who think you're going to make the plans independent of God, understand that God is the one who is ultimately making the plans.

You who will not submit, you need to bow the knee and submit yourself to the will of God in everything. It's hard, it's tough, it's difficult because oftentimes we are not driven by the will of God, but we're driven by the will of self.

And He's saying, get off the throne! The hardest part is we want to have the wheel. We want to be in the driver's seat. You ever see the old bumper sticker, Jesus is my co-pilot? If that's the case, you're in the wrong seat.

And He ends with a condemnation. He says, as it is, you boast in your arrogance and all such boasting is evil. What's He talking about? The one who says, I'm going to go here or there, I'm going to do this or that, I'm going to stay for a year and I'm going to make a profit, that person is arrogant to think that they're going to do all those things independent of God.

That person is arrogant to think that they are going to be able to accomplish those things independent of the will of God. I want to say something, and this might be the one thing that sticks out at you, and I hope that maybe it'll stick in your ribs, and maybe it'll hold on, and maybe it'll be a little bit of a pressure on you, because I want you to really think about this.

Many, many people, but I want to add this, many people who call themselves Christians live their lives as practical atheists. Many people who call themselves Christians live their lives as practical atheists because they live their lives, day in and day out, without consideration for the will of Almighty God.

And when things go bad, they have nothing but doubt and fear, because they've lived their whole life with self in control, and now they realize they have no control, and they don't know to whom to turn.

That is the very nature of pride. Some of you might think, Pastor, the world is such a mess right now, as Brother Andy always says, it's such a mess, and even more so this week, brother. It's just a mess on top of a mess.

And some of you might think, well, you know what, Pastor, I really wish you would have preached a message on how we shouldn't fear. With so much panic around the virus, shouldn't you have preached a message about being calm?

I know nothing greater to calm the soul than the sovereignty of God. There is nothing greater to bring peace to the troubled soul than to know that there is not one random molecule in the entire universe that is not under the submission of Almighty God.

And you know what George Whitefield said? George Whitefield said this, and do not for a second think this is fatalism. It is not fatalism, but this is confidence. He said this. He said, I am immortal until my work is done.

Do you know why he could say that? Because he trusted in the sovereignty of God. A group of pastors was once asked, and this was a group of pastors, seminary students, all preachers, was in a room and they were asked, can you write on a sheet of paper the one doctrine that gives you the most confidence for your ministry?

The one doctrine that gives you the most hope and that you rely upon the most. And this was a diverse crowd of ministers in a seminary classroom and almost every one of them, they didn't write love, and they didn't write mercy, and they didn't write grace.

They wrote sovereignty. That God will glorify Himself through me. And that God will not take His hand off of me. And that He will guide my life. This is why Paul can write, all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.

Why? Because God will make it so. Do you trust that today? Because I'm going to tell you this, if you want confidence for tomorrow, if you want confidence for this week, if you want confidence for the rest of the month, I'm going to tell you something, it doesn't come from prideful arrogance, but it does come from trusting in Jesus Christ.

If you want confidence, it does not come from looking within, it comes from looking up. Where is your confidence today, church? Is it in self? Or is it in Christ? May it be that we trust in Him. Let us pray.

Father, I thank You for Your Word. Lord, what a precious Word it is. What a precious reminder we have from James, who when extolling the virtues of wisdom to us, reminds us that, oh God, that we ought never to do anything.

That we ought never even think to do anything without considering what is the will of the Lord in this. And Lord, if we know Your revealed will commands us not to do something, Lord, we pray that we would be submissive to that.

And Lord, we know sometimes Your revealed will is not as clear. And sometimes we don't know whether we should go to the left or to the right. Lord, let us know that You are the one who directs our steps.

Many are the plans of a man's heart, but You, oh Lord, direct our steps. Help us to be confident and find our confidence in You. Amen. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.