Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
Proceed with caution
Sunday, 28 May 2006
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A couple of years ago, the Commonwealth Bank came up with a new ad slogan ‘Make it happen’, and like so many of these type of ad campaigns, it was designed to tap into one of our deepest desires as humans: to feel we are in control of our destiny.
The campaign was designed to say to us: you can make plans, work it all out and make it happen! You can do it! You can decide what you want to do with your life, no one else to tell you how you should run your life, you decide, you can do it, you can make it happen!
Of course, there’s a whole industry of motivational speakers who actively promote this sort of thing. America is the king of this sort of stuff, but there’s plenty of Australians getting in on the act. They write books with title like “You can do it” and “Believe and achieve” .
Anthony Robbins is one of the biggest gurus in this area. He has a TV program on most mornings at 4:00am, and he has his ‘Personal Power 2” program, where in 30 days he says, you can design the life you have always wanted. Greater success in business, more money, better health, real happiness, personal fulfilment. You can make it happen.
Now, you may already be thinking – well those things don’t really work with Christians, do they? Think again. Plenty of Christians do fall for this thinking. And in fact, we can make sound Christian and say things like “God really wants to bless you”, If God gives you more money, you can be generous and give away more… You should want to be more successful, and be wealthy and ‘make it happen’.
So much of our environment today, our upbringing , our job training is geared towards saying: ‘you can be a success’, you should realise your potential, you can do it, you can ‘make it happen’!
But how does God, and being a Christian tie in with this kind of thinking, with making plans, setting goals, and wanting to succeed and do well in our career and at work? What should our attitude be as people go to their work and career each day?
Do we push on, make our plans, keep pushing for success and sort of pray along the way that please God, make those plans happen ? What should we do?
Well, part of this passage today from James 4, has some very helpful things to say to us about these issues. It’s probably particularly helpful for people who are still working, as there is much in this short passage that speaks of being a Christian in the workplace. But there are wider principles that apply as well, and applications to our attitudes about life goals, and setting priorities in our lives as Christians.
But the first point I want to make is about work and business as Christians…
1. The worldly worker
V13 says: “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.”
What is James objecting to here?
Is it the one Bible verse that says we shouldn’t go on overseas trips, or other big holidays? Fortunately, it’s not!
So is the problem that James is speaking to, the problem of wealth?
I don’t that’s the case either, although that issue does get a mention in chapter 5 next week. I don’t think the Bible has any problem with wealth as such, but we’ll see what next week brings!
So, is what James looking at here the chasing of wealth? I mean, he’s looking at the first century worker, who in essence, is not much different to the 21st century worker. The worker who is looking to make money, as the verse clearly mentions.
But again, I don’t think James is speaking out against making money, or making a profit, so what is he picking up on here?
I think it’s actually to do with making plans. The problem that James is addressing here is the manner in which we make plans. The problem seems to be that we approach making plans for the future by saying: “I’m going to do, x,y,z and I’m going to make it happen.”
And this can even be in what we would see as quite mundane things. So we might say: I’m planning to go to work next year, keep paying off the mortgage and the car, go on holidays to wherever, aim for that promotion, pour money into my Super fund and so on. We make our plans.
So is there anything wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with making plans? Intrinsically, no.
But James is picking up on something else. He’s picking up on an attitude problem when it comes to making plans. And it’s a big problem.
Again, everything that we are bombarded with these days from the cradle until just before the grave, screams out at us: “You can make it happen! You can do it! You are in control of your own destiny, you can make your own future, you can make your own plans for your life, and achieve them , pull them off, and sit back and be satisfied.”
So, James is not saying it’s wrong to make plans, or to make money. But it doesn’t even take a Christian to realise that the stock markets might crash, a recession might happen, the economy might become depressed. People get sick, there are wars and natural disasters, people die suddenly and unexpectedly in accidents, trapped in mines, or by being in the way of a tsunami.
So even people who are not Christians can realise that even with all the ‘you can make it happen’ motivational hype, we aren’t in control. And we actually can’t ‘make it happen’. And The reason why is that life is uncertain. Which brings me to point two on your outline:
2. The uncertainty of life.
Read v14 with me: “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.”
We’ll see in a moment that James is actually saying that it’s arrogant to think that we can plan ahead like that and control our future, and not only arrogant, but foolish because tomorrow is so uncertain, and the truth is we have no idea what tomorrow will bring.
Life is so transient. Like James says, life is like a puff of smoke, than vanishes so quickly.
So the truth that James is echoing here is that we are not in control of our destiny God is.
Now I hear to saying, yeah, yeah, we know that. We know that God is in control of the future, we know that we are not the ones in control.
But again, a characteristic of this whole letter is that James is not only interested in what we think and what we may know in our heads, as he is in our behaviour and actions.
And so an outworking of James’ words here is to ask ourselves: “Do I live (in the workplace, and elsewhere) as if God is the one in control of my future?” Do we actually live that way, and not just think that way?
Life is uncertain, for you and for me, and our future is uncertain.
As I reflect on my own life, I have a mortgage, I have superannuation, and so on, and in the same way as most people, and I assume that will just keep on going until I retire. But is that a good thing?
I admit I don’t assume any more that I will keep working in the normal sense of the word until I’m 65, because Robyn’s health may demand a different arrangement. And I have to say that Rob’s health issues are, and continue to be, a big wake-up call in matters like this. When she first got sick 13 or more years ago, it was a rude shock. Like anyone in our situation, we just didn’t expect it. The new reality that we had to adjust to reminded us both of the truth of these verses: life is uncertain, there are no guarantees about tomorrow – except that God is there and in control.
Jesus raises this issue on a number of occasions, and you have one of those printed there in your outlines, from Luke 12 :14-21
The problem that James is addressing here is the confident arrogance that I am in control, that you are in control, that we can ‘make it happen’, that the future will go on just as the past has, that I can go on and make my plans, earning money, pay off the house, the car, go on holidays, and it will all work out just as I think it will.
And this connects back to last weeks passage that Tim led us through. James 4:4 – it’s worldly thinking. 4:6 - it’s pride. In the example James talks of in our passage, it’s the worldly worker, working away but leaving God out of the picture.
And I reckon we all do it or have done it at some time. Me included, as ministry is no exception. It’s probably worse when we are younger when we think that we will never get sick, or bad things won’t ever happen to us, and stuff will never go wrong. But many of us know that not to be true, as we have lived through sickness, or war, or economic downturn, or high interest rates, and so on.
So what is the problem with this? V16 gives us the answer:
We “boast and brag”, or a better translation is “you boast in your arrogance”. You boast in your arrogance and all such boasting is evil. Because in our arrogance we boast that we will ‘make it happen’. That we can push on, make money, continue on as if nothing will change. That we are somehow self-sufficient, that our future is all up to us.
So is James saying we should all be morbid pessimists, expecting the worst? I don’t think so. But I think he is saying that we shouldn’t just give lip service to God, in terms of how we approach our work and our future.
I think James is encouraging us to think through how our relationship with God impacts on our work and our thinking about the future. That we need to come to terms with God’s sovereignty and our work and life.
This is a big issue, because so many of us find that our identity is so bound up with our work and we need to check whether we are doing our job our way or God’s way.
3. God’s Sovereignty.
So lets’ take a brief excursion at this point and think through a bit of what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty and his control over all things – including our work and life, because if you go away with nothing else today from this passage but a deeper understanding and appreciation of how we can and should trust God for our future, you will do well.
We know one of the first things the Bible says about God is that he is the king, the ruler in charge of everything in this world. Check out Psalm 103:19 “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.”
And since God rules over all things and is in control of all things, he therefore knows the future, and has it planned out. And so there’s that great verse from Is 46:10 “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.”
So God knows what the future is, plans what the future will be. It’s all under his sovereign control – and that includes your future and mine. Ps 139:15-16 “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
God’s the one in control of your life. He has been since before you were made in your mother’s womb. He knows your future in every respect, and every detail is under his sovereign control and care.
And that means that my future and your future is not up to me to make it happen, it’s God who will make it happen.
Look at the two verses from Proverbs “In his heart a man plans his course but the Lord determines his steps” (16:9) “Many are the plans in a man’s heart but it the Lord ‘s purpose that prevails”. (19:21)
It’s God who decides what happens in your life and mine, he is the one who is running the show.
But what does that mean in practice?
Well, it doesn’t mean that we push on with our plans for the future and hope and vaguely pray that God goes along with them. Even if we try to plan with a godly and biblical framework in mind, there’s a good chance we will still be superimposing our will and our desires on those plans.
It may be that God does not want me to have that job, or that house, or my health or even my life. I have no right to expect those things to plan out smoothly and to my way of thinking.
God knows what he is doing and why. One of our number recently lost their job out of the blue. Why would God want that to happen? We don’t know, but God does. And that fact alone means that we have great job security! Not in the sense of being assured that I will never loose my job, but because if I do loose my job or if I keep it, that’s what God wants, and he has good reasons for it.
We will probably never know the reasons why some things happen, but God does, and has good reasons for things happening. It might be that someone’s job would cost them their faith, or dragged them away from church or family. That has certainly happened to more than one person here at our church in my time here.
See, if we live wanting us to be in control – which we all do to some extent, and I then loose my job, or my house, or health or whatever, then it’s tempting not to trust God. We can be tempted to be angry at God, or think that he has lost control, or that he doesn’t know what he is doing, or that he’s not even there!
But these passages and many others are saying that God is in control, and that is something that we should take great comfort from as Christians. That we don’t have to fret or worry about our work or our future. That God has done what he has done for a reason and that he knows what he is doing, and he loves us and has our best interests at heart.
And therefore there is no need for me to worry about my life and future as if I’m in control. There’s no need for me worry about my mortgage or my job and whether I’ll get it all together before I retire. God is good. He knows what we need, and he will provide for us.
Let me finish with a couple of great quotes from Jesus in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew 10 “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (10:29-30) Jesus is saying that he does all the intricate details of our lives and has us in his loving hands.
Matthew 6 , from the sermon on the mount : “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?... Who of you by worrying [or planning] can add a single hour to his life?... So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (6:29-33 parts)
We can stop trying to look after ourselves and our lives and futures when it’s at the expense of living for his kingdom and at the expense of being godly.
If we put god first, if we seek His kingdom, he will look after the rest – our future, our work, whatever it is that we need.
The huge question for us is: Do you believe that? Do you really believe that?
In so many ways, we could do much worse than make that our priority in our life together as a church: encouraging and urging each other to do just that. Not just in words, but in actions. So when bad things happen to one of our number, God works through the rest of us as we comfort them, and do whatever we can to meet their needs.
And when that does happen, we also become a powerful witness to our sovereign God, that others outside His kingdom might see his loving and gracious care for us and want to know more.
These few words of James hold so much challenge, but also so much comfort. Lets push on not seeking to ‘make it happen’ ourselves, but trusting in our loving, powerful, sovereign God.