Planning, Wealth, And The Will Of God
James 4:13-5:6
September 25, 2022

Title: Planning, Wealth, And The Will Of God

James starts this portion of Scripture off with perspectives on God’s will. His instructions include what we should not do and what we should do. We is also going to give a rebuke of the strongest kind to the rich.

The outline is as follows:

1. Ignoring God’s Will ¹
2. Disobeying God’s Will
3. Obeying God’s Will
4. The Condition Of The Rich Unbeliever

Ignoring God’s Will (4:13–14, 16)

• 4:13 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” — 14 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. (cf. Isaiah 40:6-8)
• James continues to address problems in the Church
• Hypothetical >> A year in business everything will be fine.
• There are extreme variables in life.
• Thinking and believing is no different than saying. (EBC)
• Two ideas are cited:
• # 1) the shortness and fragility of life is cited.
  • The frailty and fleetingness of human life is often alluded to in the Bible as:
    • a shadow (cf. Job 8:9; 14:2; Ps. 102:11; 109:23)
    • a breath (cf. Job 7:7,16)
    • a cloud (cf. Job 7:9; 30:15)
    • a wild flower (cf. Ps. 103:15; Isa. 40:6-8; 1 Pet. 1:24)
    • vanity or mist (cf. Eccl. 1:2,14; 2:1,11,15,17,19,21,23,26; 3:19; 4:4,7,8,16; 5:7,10; 6:2,4,9,22; 7:6,15; 8:10,14; 9:9; 11:8,10; 12:8; […]). (Utley)
  • Life is short: 1.9 hours here on earth … Day is like 1000 years = 1 hour - 41+ years.
• # 2) He implies that life is unpredictable
  • Spurgeon said, “Counting on the future is folly.”
  • Proverbs 27:1, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”
  • There are times when lives are changed radically in ways they could not have imagined from the day before.
  • I like the quote, “Life is what happens when we are busy making other plans.” —Unknown

ILLUSTRATION

Ukraine

Making a claim of of a life of predictability, of health and longevity is unwise. Look at what James says about these attitudes in verse 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

• Speaking and thinking that we determine our own future is boasting outwardly or inwardly, and it’s evil.
• Gk: word for boasting = ἀλαζονεία = posturing, false pretension, imposture (LSJ) generally empty; swagger^(Thayer) - Not only effects the talk but the walk.
• Again, we see “evil or holy”
• James speaks in black and white.
• We need to be critical.

Disobeying God’s Will (4:17)

• 4:17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
• James says basically, you know that you ought to have an attitude of “if it is God’s will.” Now you are responsible.
  • More knowledge = more responsibility
  • Just as in life: 25 year old acting like a 15 year old.
  • John 9:41, “Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”
• The sin of omission is what is in view here also.
• We often do not confess these sins.

SIDEBAR: Temptation: “I will therefore live in ignorance.”
APPLICATION

• Constable said that verse 4:17 is the central verse of James. I think he is right.
• Application of the Scriptures is key.
• Not hearers but doers.
• Faith without works is dead.
• There is a seriousness accountability to all knowledge we possess.
• God expects a return on His living word that goes out in the family.
• Every Sunday service, every Bible study we partake in, every time we read the Bible there is a charge of responsibility.

TRANSITION
Now that we see that we are not to disobey or ignore God’s will; let’s turn our attention to what we are supposed to do.

Obeying God’s Will (4:15)

• 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
• This lets keep us humble.
• This helps keep things in proper prospective.
  • God is God and I am not.
  • My very breadth depends on His authority.
  • “the using of the present is a duty.” (Spurgeon)
  • My life is His to use as He sees fit.
• “If the Lord wills …” in the NT makes it clear that we are not to repeat it after every sentence. Paul, for example, employs it at times but not at others when speaking of his plans.² (Burdick p. 197 in Constable)
• Compared to the Lord’s strength we are nothing: Isaiah 40:15, “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.”
• When we sin we are violating one type of God’s wills.
  • Theological determinism is to be rejected; God is not linked to evil, "tragedy, and random natural acts of violence. We live in a spiritually fallen and ‘cursed’ world. … [T]here is mystery in the how and why of individual actions and lives. (Utley)
  • “Every commandment in the Bible addressed to believers is part of the will of God and must be obeyed.” (Wiersbe, 878)
    • In these commands there is life.
    • John 10:10b, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
  • The flesh disagrees. Its desire is a selfish, boastful life–devoid of God’s instructions.

ILLUSTRATION from a famous preacher

Too many Christians look on the will of God as bitter medicine they must take, instead of seeing it as the gracious evidence of the love of God. … ¶ I was going through a difficult time in my own ministry some years ago, questioning the will of God. While on vacation, I was reading the book of Psalms, asking God to give me some assurance and encouragement. Psalm 33:11 was the answer to that prayer: “The counsel of the Lord standeth forever; the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” ¶ “The will of God comes from the heart of God,” I said to myself. “His will is the expression of His love, so I don’t have to be afraid!” It was a turning point in my life to discover the blessing of loving and living the will of God. (Wiersbe, 876)

APPLICATION

• You and I will never feel and experience more satisfaction than knowing that we are in the center of God’s will.
• Proverbs 16:3, “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.”
• We should commit the future and our plans to God, always remembering that they may not be within His purpose. (Barclay)

The Condition Of The Rich Unbeliever

• 5:1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
• James is speaking to the lost that were exploiting and abusing the Church.
  • We know this from James 2:6, But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?
  • Those that the Church honored usseemingly.
• James tells these people to “weep:” that verb form “speaks of urgency.” (Utley)
  • weep and “howl” = shriek (Strong); cry with a loud voice (LSJ); wail, lament (Thayer)
  • “howl” “This English term is used in the OT to describe the pain of certain judgment” ³ (Utley)
  • Miseries are coming and are assured.

2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

• “the Jews considered wealth to be an evidence of God’s acceptance and blessing” as we could see in Deut. 28:1-13, but often they ignored the responsibilities and warnings that go along with that wealth (Utley)
• Gold and silver have corroded. PAST TENSE
  • Their corrosion = waste
  • Their wasted wealth will be evidence against them.
  • It gets worse: “eat your flesh like fire.”
  • They are rich but their wealth is useless in the day of judgment.
  • God’s judgment is coming for them.

Charges Against The Rich Unbeliever

• CHARGE ONE: You have laid up treasure in the last days.

  • “The Last Days” “The last days refer to this period between the incarnation (God becoming a human) and the Parousia (Second Coming).” (Utley)
  • Think spiritually here = 2000 years is two days.
  • They hogged wealth. How?

• CHARGE TWO: 4 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.

  • Exploited and cheated the workers of their field.
  • There workers cry out to God and He keeps the best records!
  • The Lord hears; He knows.
  • Look at the name James uses here for God >> Lord of Hosts = Lord of SabaOth = Lord of the armies of Israel, as those who are under the leadership and protection of Yahweh maintain his cause in war. (OBU)
  • The General is keeping tract of the thefts.

• CHARGE THREE: 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

  • Poetic parallelism
  • Set up as a proverb.
  • Lived in luxury and in self-indulgence = Fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter
  • Idiom: fattened heart = fattened calf
  • fattened calf = bad news for the calf.
  • Irony: fattened themselves for the market (Utley) = better fit for judgment.
  • ILLUSTRATION
  • Luke 12:16-21, And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

• CHARGE FOUR: 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. COMMENT

APPLICATION

• No one is getting away with anything.
  • 5:3, “Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.”
  • Cries are heard
  • The General is preparing something severe for them based on the evidence.
  • God is being patient with the unrepentant for now.
  • God reminds us in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
  • Time will run out.
  • Everyone is one generation away from their preliminary judgement–“their’s”!
• Another applicational point? A caution against the rich’s mentality.
  • Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
  • 1 Timothy 6:10, For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
  • 1 Timothy 6:17-19, As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.
    … …

Notes

¹ Subtitles 1, 2, and 3 are from Warren Wiersbe’s The Wiersbe Bible Commentary, 877 f.
² Compare Acts 18:21 and 1 Corinthians 4:19 and Acts 19:21; Romans 15:28; 1 Corinthians 16:5, 8 respectively (Burdick p. 197 in Constable).
³ Cf. Isa. 13:6; 14:31; 15:2,3; 16:7; 23:1,14; 65:14. (Utley)

Bibliography and Works Cited

NOTE: These are helpful resources below. However, you are responsible for proper interpretation of the Bible. You must not relinquish your responsibility to any commentator. Therefore, one must use much caution in using the resources cited below. More mistakes are made the more humans speak and write. This author has not read everything published from the cited authors’ work. Therefore, authors may be quoted at times even though they may be heretical in some of their beliefs. This author is a true believer in “eat the chicken and spit out the bones.” One must use the Scriptures alone as the authority of all doctrine.

Please click here to access the web-page for all of the works cited–save those below under the “Other Works Cited” (if any). Most of the works cited on the web-page, correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of background information and other general reference citations, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with.

Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Other Works Cited

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