If you would open your Bibles and turn with me this evening to the letter of James, the letter of James, between Hebrews and 1 Peter. We will be looking primarily at the text in chapter 4, verses 13 to 17, but I would like to read also verses 13 to 18 of chapter 3 for a little context. So we will begin in chapter 3, verse 13. Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, Then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. And then what follows, James expands on all the things he introduced here in these short verses. And he picks up a particular theme in verse 13 of chapter 4, which we're going to look at tonight. He says, now listen, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go do this, to this or that city, spend the year there, carry on business and make money. While you do not even know what will happen tomorrow, what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. Here ends the reading of God's Word. And as we consider this text this evening, I want to consider with you James' treatment of what we might call planning with Christian resolve. That's different than the title in your bulletin. Planning with Christian resolve. This evening we mark the end of another year. A year punctuated with joys and with sorrows, failures and successes, continuity and change, and lots of surprises. Tonight we will close the book on 2003 and turn open the first page of 2004. What will it bring? What will we do and face in the days ahead? Last year didn't turn out exactly like we thought it would. How are we to face the uncertainties of the coming year? Well, the turn of the year comes with awareness of the past and the hope of a fresh start. And it just seems natural to make plans for change in the coming year. This is the night for New Year's resolutions, resolving, for example, to exercise more and to eat less. But the list of resolutions is as diverse as all of you gathered here. And at the same time, it's as common as the lives of men and women everywhere. With the turn of the year, families look ahead. You plan for your priorities for how to spend the time you expect to have and the money you hope to earn to meet the needs of your family for another year. You may decide to switch health plans or plan the steps you need to take to change jobs or to move your family. You may need to put off buying a new car in order to pay your children's tuition or plan to start setting aside for retirement. Young people who expect to graduate from high school or college this spring, you're busy making plans, or you ought to be. What college would you attend? And where do you hope to find a job? There are many decisions that need to be made. With the turn of the year, many businesses start a new fiscal cycle. Owners and employees will start implementing plans to meet new goals and objectives set according to last year's performance and this year's expectations. It's the nature of business, to plan your work and to work your plan with the hope, if not the expectation, of a return. See, planning is a good thing. It's a necessary thing. It is an essential part of our being for we are created in the image of God with a will to choose and an intellect to apply our choices. All of us plan. And all of us follow plans. Even those among us whose plan is not to plan. We do it all the time, but at the turn of the year, it affords an opportunity to consider our planning in the light of Scripture and in the light of this text. In our text tonight, James does not address whether Christians should plan. I believe that that's a given. Rather, he addresses how we plan and what our planning reveals about us. Will our plans reveal progress in our sanctification or sin that still clings to us? Will our plans be in accord with the wisdom of heaven or with the wisdom of the world? James instructs us on planning with Christian resolve and he does so by warning us against arrogant independence, reminding us of our total dependence and calling believers to grateful obedience. James begins by warning us against arrogant independence. He calls for immediate and full attention in verse 13 with the interjection, Come now. 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. Listen. Now he's speaking directly to the businessmen in the church as the prime example of what he's getting at. This does not mean he's speaking only to businessmen. The charge he brings against him in verse 16 when he says, You boast and you brag. All such boasting is evil. It's intended to warn every Christian. So why does he make an example of them? Why? And why does he charge them with doing evil? Doesn't he know they have to make plans, commit time and money and resources to conduct business for the year? Doesn't he know this? Oh, of course he does. And is it wrong to carry on business with the hope of making a profit? Not necessarily. What the businessmen were planning to do is not the problem. Rather, the problem is revealed in how they spoke of their plan. It's revealed there. Jesus taught us in Matthew chapter 15 that the things that come out of our mouths come from the heart. What we say, and how we say it, reveals our heart. And anyone who makes plans in the manner that James condemns, whether they are businessmen, politicians, husbands, or wives, parents, or children, it will reveal the sin in their heart when they talk about their plans. The plan in this way is to boast and brag, more literally, to boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil. Listen again to the words of the businessmen as I emphasize the language. Today or tomorrow, we will go to this or that city. We will spend a year there. We will carry on business and we will make money. Do you hear it? The plans they have are all about we, a company of me's. And they speak as if they know and understand and control all of the variables and circumstances involved in accomplishing their plan. They believe the lie taught by the world today, taught in many a business seminar, all that the mind can conceive it can achieve. Just get out there and do it. But you see, to face the future with such self-confident resolve as if you will do everything by your own ability is to deny God. It is blasphemous. It is evil. And it warrants the judgment of God. Do you remember the account of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon? Daniel interpreted a dream that was God's warning for him to repent of his arrogant pride or to suffer the consequences. And according to Daniel chapter 4, the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace one day and admiring the wonder and the glory of his kingdom. And he declared, is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power for the glory of my majesty? You see, what he said revealed his heart. An arrogant and a blasphemous heart. We find in Isaiah chapter 14 the revelation of what was going on in the heart of the king. This is what he was saying in his heart, God says. I will ascend to the heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit enthroned on the Mount of Assembly at the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High. Now that's not what anyone heard. But that's what he said. See, Nebuchadnezzar's arrogance pictures the arrogance behind the planning that James condemns. He betrays allegiance to Satan instead of the Lord Jesus Christ. It reveals an attitude of independence from God's oversight and His authority. Now, at worst, it reveals a hard heart towards God, dead in transgressions and sins. At best, it reveals a regenerate heart that is still entangled by pride. And we must not think, brothers and sisters, that we are above the temptation to adopt such an attitude. James was writing to Christians in the church. The world tells us every day to just do it, to believe in yourself, to go for the gusto. And our flesh remembers and is comfortable with going it alone, for that's what we did apart from Christ. It comes natural. See, arrogance clings to us, And if we do not continually put it to death, it sneaks back into our lives. And such arrogant planning is an expression of the wisdom of Satan that James identified in chapter 3, verses 14 and 15, when he said, If you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly and spiritual of the devil. Well, James does not stop with this warning. He doesn't simply warn us against arrogant independence. He gives us good counsel for combating it by reminding us of our total dependence. Our total dependence. See, King Nebuchadnezzar was reminded of his total dependence by living with the wild animals out in the open and eating grass like cattle until he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and he assigns them to whoever he pleases. we, on the other hand, are reminded by way of James' rebuke to the businessmen in verse 14. Why, you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? I don't know about you, but when I read that, it just has a strange ring to it that doesn't sound natural. And I struggled over that, and I believe that this is a rebuke that is said with such sharpness and such terstness as if he were raising his voice to us that it's not proper grammar, so it gets compressed. So this is what I think he's saying. You who say, today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. You who do not know tomorrow, of what kind are your lives? You who do not know tomorrow, you forget who you are. And more importantly, who you are not. You do not know tomorrow. You have expectations for tomorrow. You expect the sun to rise as it always has. You expect to wake up in good health and a sound mind. You expect your business or that of your employer to be open for business. You expect that your car will start and that you'll get to work without incident. You expect a lot of things, but you don't know any of it. But there is one who knows all of them, and you are not him. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the first and the last. He is the beginning and the end, and he alone makes known the end from the beginning. He alone is omniscient, all-knowing. Theologian Louis Burkhoff explains God's all-comprehensive, omniscient knowledge this way. He knows himself, and in himself, all things that come from him, which of course is everything. He knows all things as they actually come to pass, past, present, and future, and knows them in their real relations. There's no illusions, no misperceptions. He sees not as man sees, who observes only the outward manifestations of life, but penetrates to the depths of the human heart. King David said it this way in Psalm 139, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. God knows what has been and what will be because God alone has determined what has been and what will be. He says of himself in Ezekiel 17, I am the Lord. I have spoken and I will perform it. there is a God and you are not him on the other hand you who do not know tomorrow what is your life you think too highly of yourselves to plan with such certainty the truth of the matter is that you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes your life is not only temporary it's fleeting it lasts only a little time we just sang from Psalm 39 in our Psalter hymnal a span is all that we can boast how short, how fleet our time man is but vanity and dust in all his flower and prime and more than that more than being temporary and fleeting your very existence is not of your own doing it's the doing of another the reason you have life at all is because you are made to appear for a short time and then made to disappear. We are beings created by the good pleasure of God for His purposes. Our very lives are dependent upon His sovereign will. So you see, the fundamental fact here is this, that we are creatures who are totally dependent on God, our Creator. There is no ground for arrogance. There is no place for boasting. But sin blinds us to the fact that we are born arrogant and that we do boast. If left to ourselves, we would still be enemies of God, dead in our transgressions and sins, totally unable and totally unwilling to think or to act in a manner that acknowledged Him. If left to ourselves, we could do nothing other than plan with arrogant and independent resolve. If left to ourselves, the only constraint on our arrogance would be God's providence, His control of every circumstance. But as Christians, we have not been left to ourselves. In accord with His plan for salvation, our God has saved us from ourselves. His perfect plan was fulfilled in the Son of God who humbled Himself and came in the flesh for the sake of arrogant and independent-thinking people like us. He came to live in perfect obedience to the will of the Father. The obedience we were created to render. He came to suffer death and hell on the cross, the eternal judgment we are due. And He came to rise again in the flesh into eternal life, the life that Adam failed to secure. And He came to be exalted in the flesh to the right hand of God, ushering all who trust in Him alone for their salvation into the very presence of God. See, God had a plan. A perfect plan. And He executed the plan because He controls all things. Brothers and sisters, you have been saved by grace through faith and even this faith was given to you by the sovereign will of God. There's nothing you could have done or can do to earn it. It's the gift of God by His sovereign choice so that there's no room for boasting. So therefore, brothers and sisters, not only your natural life, but also your eternal life is from the hand of God. And it's only in Christ that you have anything. So what do you have that you did not receive? Nothing. We are totally dependent upon Christ. He tells us, apart from me, you can do nothing. And Paul's prayer in Galatians chapter 6 verse 14 is appropriate for us. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. So we've seen how planning with Christian resolve involves at least two things. First, that we repent for our arrogant assertions of independence. And second, that we make our plans remembering our total dependence on God our Savior. But there's a third thing that's required. And that is our grateful obedience to the will of God. When we truly recognize our total dependence, we can understand James' injunction in verse 15, you ought to say if it is the Lord's will we will live and do this or that. Now we know from our experience that many of our plans do not pan out. They get sidetracked or blocked or changed by circumstances beyond our control. And this is what happens when we run up against the providence of God. This is what Proverbs 16.9 speaks about when it says in his heart a man plans his course but the Lord determines his steps. Planning with Christian resolve will result in, first of all, a godly response to God's correction, His redirection, His interception by providence, if you will. Instead of getting angry or bitter at the failure of our plans, we can begin to reflect on what it was in our plans that was arrogant or independent and done not in total dependence on God. And instead of beating our head against the wall over and over again, We can reconsider our plans before moving forward again. But how are we supposed to evaluate our plans? If the only standard we have or that we use is the providence of God, then we're left to a type of trial and error. Learning from past failures and successes to guide our plans for the future. Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. We need to learn this way. It's part of God's providence for us. But to live as if this is all we have is to neglect the distinct advantage that is ours as believers. There is another and better way to know the will of God for us. And that is in what He has revealed to us in His Word. In the Scriptures. Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, The secret things belong to the Lord. These are the things we bump up against in this providence. The things we can't see, we can't anticipate. They're circumstances beyond our control, but they're not chance. They're God's providence. They're secret, but they affect our lives. But, the text there goes on. The things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. You see, the things revealed are recorded for us in the Word of God. This is why James declares in verse 17, Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. It is only by the revealed will of God in His Word that we can know what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. To be saved by grace through faith in Christ is to have been given the Holy Spirit. He opens our eyes to the Scriptures. He gives us the mind of Christ to understand the Scriptures. And He renews our hearts to will and to do that which we find here. Now, can we hope to do this perfectly? Certainly not. Can we hope to gain salvation? Certainly not. But it doesn't change the fact that that's what we've been illuminated to do. So therefore, even though we seek to obey the revealed will of God, we are still very much dependent on His secret providence that keeps us on the way. But I fear that too many of us are content to go through life with little or no planning. Content to go through life bouncing off the providence of God rather than searching out His revealed will for our lives and working to apply it in our planning. We're called by James in this text tonight to plan with Christian resolve. And that requires growing in our knowledge and application of the revealed Word of God, knowing what we ought to avoid in order to avoid it, knowing what we ought to do in order to do it, and knowing when to apply what we know to the best of our ability in all the areas of Christian liberty that we enjoy. It's only through seeking out and applying the will of God found in His Word, corrected by the providence of God, that we can grow in wisdom. As children of God, we've been freed from slavery to sin to enjoy the freedom to know and to obey the will of God, to His glory and to our good. So let us resolve for 2004 to practice planning with Christian resolve, wary of sinning with an arrogant independence, acknowledging our total dependence upon God, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and diligently and gratefully seeking to obey the revealed Word of God for our lives. Making plans as best we can in the full confidence that the Lord will direct our steps and that His plan for our life will prevail. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this word tonight through the Apostle James. We thank you for the rebuke that we find there to our tendency for arrogance. For our tendency to forget who we are and who you are. And we thank you for the reminder of our total and complete dependence upon you in Christ our Lord. And Lord, we confess before you tonight that we are less than diligent in searching your word to find the will you have for us there. We too often go with experience. We too often go with what comes natural. We too often go with what's been handed down without consulting your word. So Lord, we pray that by the power of your spirit you would enable us, that you would prick our consciences to our neglect. That you would drive us to the word. Open our eyes, illumine our minds, Enable our hearts, Lord, to apply it. To submit to it. To obey it. To your glory and for our good. We pray, Lord, for this year that we would grow in strides in our wisdom. Not because we get older. Not because we have more gray hairs. But because we have sat at your feet. And heard what you have for us. And sought to obey you. For to love you is to keep your commandments. We ask this and pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.