Warning Against Worldliness Boasting About Tomorrow.
Come now [and pay attention to this], you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and carry on our business and make a profit.”
Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen in your life tomorrow. [What is secure in your life?] You are merely a vapor [like a puff of smoke or a wisp of steam from a cooking pot] that is visible for a little while and then vanishes [into thin air].
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and we will do this or that.” James 4:13-15
INTRODUCTION
The author of this Epistle was probably the Lord’s brother, mentioned with Joses, Simon and Judah, and often in the Acts of the Apostles. See Mar_6:3; Act_12:17; Act_15:13; Act_21:18. He was bishop, or president, of the church at Jerusalem, and this letter was probably written from that city. The emphasis laid on the nearness of our Lord’s advent points to a date near A.D. 70. The Epistle may have been written in Hebrew, and was addressed to the Hebrew section of the Church. It lays great emphasis on the sublime ideal of character which Christianity had raised, and to maintain which demanded the constant diligence of all professing Christians.
OUTLINE OF THE EPISTLE OF JAMES
THE MEASURE OF A CHRISTIAN
The Grace of Humility
9. To what extent are our lives under providential control?
WARNING AGAINST WORLDLINESS
Believers, do not speak against or slander one another. He who speaks [self-righteously] against a brother or judges his brother [hypocritically], speaks against the Law and judges the Law. If you judge the Law, you are not a doer of the Law but a judge of it.
There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy [the one God who has the absolute power of life and death]; but who are you to [hypocritically or self-righteously] pass judgment on your neighbour?
BOASTING ABOUT TOMORROW
Come now [and pay attention to this], you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and carry on our business and make a profit.”
Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen in your life tomorrow. [What is secure in your life?] You are merely a vapor [like a puff of smoke or a wisp of steam from a cooking pot] that is visible for a little while and then vanishes [into thin air].
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and we will do this or that.”
But as it is, you boast [vainly] in your pretension and arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
So any person who knows what is right to do but does not do it, to him it is sin.
Comments by
F.B.Meyer
on
James 4:11-17
“IF THE LORD WILL”
When we speak evil of another, we usurp the functions of the only lawgiver and judge. If that other is endeavouring to model his life by the law, to speak evil of him is to question not his action alone, but the law he is trying to observe. Let us turn the light in upon ourselves and be merciless in self-criticism, while merciful to all others. When you see another doing wrong, always ask yourself whether the same evil is not hiding in your own character. Do not speak of men, but to them, when their faults confront you.
We are prone to make plans without reference to God’s will. Life is so transient and brief that if we are to make the most of it, we should ask the divine Spirit to choose for and guide us. Our one endeavor must be to discover God’s will and do it. If we are not constantly saying, “If the Lord will,” the sentiment it expresses should always be uppermost with us. “Thy will be done” in me as in heaven!
Choose a Sermon on
James
by
Pastor Jeff Arthur.
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