You did it because you're here, and I'm thankful for that. So it's good to see you this morning. Well, if you have your Bibles, let's go ahead and open to James chapter 4. James chapter 4. And by the way, James, thank you so much for that confession of sin, brother. I'm still waiting to hear the story about your uncle. I guess we'll hear that next time. But I really appreciate that. And Jim, thank you, brother, for reminding us that there is only one God, a God who hates lying, and a God who forgives liars who repent through the blood of the Lamb. A wonderful service. It just all comes together, doesn't it? It all comes together. So, James chapter 4, and this morning we're going to finally get into verses 13-17. James 4, verses 13-17. A section that I've entitled, The Evil Sin of Prideful Planning. The Evil Sin of Prideful Planning. As I told you, James continues to emphasize practical matters here by addressing the very practical theme of planning and the will of God. Planning and the will of God. As you know, we've spent the last couple of weeks kind of introducing this text. We got a bit of an overview of the will of God. First, we distinguished between God's decretive will and God's moral will, also known as His sovereign will and His perceptive will. And then I set before you six passages of Scripture that directly assert the will of God for your life. And we concluded from those passages that God's will is that you be saved, sanctified, spirit-filled, submissive, suffering, joyful, prayerful, and thankful. And then finally, last but not least, last time I set before you five very practical tips for determining the will of God in the tough decisions of life. I told you to search the scriptures, pray for wisdom, Seek godly counsel, consider providence, and then last but not least, do whatever you want. Because if you delight in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart, right? We talked about that. Well, having considered what God's will is, and how to determine the will of God, now we're finally ready to get into this very, very practical passage. Let me read it to you. James chapter 4, starting in verse 13. James writes, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor. that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin. As you can see from just a cursory reading of this text, This is a passage about planning and the will of God. James addresses here the evil sin of prideful planning. And as I've said, the basic lesson that he teaches us here is simply this. We must make our plans in light of God's will, and we must submit our plans to God's will. We must make our plans in light of God's will, and we must submit our plans to God's will. In fact, you could really see this as another test of saving faith, because the Bible teaches us constantly that the evidence that you're a true Christian is that you now do the will of God as a pattern of life. In Matthew chapter 12, verse 50, Jesus said, whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother." That is to say, the evidence that you are a part of the true family of God, the evidence that you are a part of Christ's true spiritual family, is that you now, as the pattern of your life, do the will of the Father. In Matthew chapter 7 verse 21, We read, arguably, the scariest passage in the entire Bible. There, Jesus says, "...not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter." That is to say, not everyone who thinks they are going to heaven will get there. Not everyone who says Jesus is Lord will get there. Who is it that will enter heaven? The one who does the will of the Father. Which means you should ask yourself, do you do the will of the Father? Is your life marked by obedience to the will of God or by a disregard for the will of God? And your answer to that question will determine whether or not you are a true believer. You remember in 1 John 2.15, the Apostle says, Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. For if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Which is to say, if you love the world, you do not love God. But then in verse 17 he says, The world is passing away, and also its lust. But the one who does the will of God lives forever. Don't love the world, John says. Don't live for the world. The world is temporal. The world is passing away. And those who love it will pass away with it. But who lives forever? Who has eternal life? The one who does the will of the Father, the will of God. Now surely there is no better example of one who did the will of God than Jesus Himself, right? Certainly there's no better example than Him. In John chapter 4 verse 32, Jesus said, I have food to eat that you know nothing about. What is that? What is that? Well, He tells us in John 4 verse 34, He says, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me. That is to say, Jesus hungered to do the will of God. That is what his true food was. That is what satisfied his heart, doing the will of God. In John 6.38, Jesus said, I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent me. And according to John 6.39, a part of the will of God for the Son was that He save the people whom He had given Him. He says, this is the will of My Father, that of all that He has given Me, I lose none of them, but raise them on the last day. That is an encouraging thing to hear, isn't it? Listen to this. Do you think that Jesus will ever fail to do the will of the Father? Of course not. And the will of the Father for the Son is that He save all of His people and lose none of them. Do you know what that means? Very simple. Your salvation is eternally secure. Because it depends on the Son's obedience to the will of the Father. In Hebrews chapter 10 verse 9, the writer of Hebrews records the words of Jesus to the Father. There he says, Behold, I have come to do your will. Jesus had come forth to do the Father's will. And then in verse 10 he adds, by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. That is what we might refer to as God's redemptive will. God's redemptive will. Jesus was obedient to the will of God even under the point of death for the redemption of His people. And it was by His obedience to the divine will, by His suffering on the cross, that He once and for all sanctified us, made us holy, and delivered us from divine wrath. So in the final analysis then, we are not saved by our obedience to the divine will. We are saved by His obedience to the divine will. However, Those who are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone will imitate Christ, and as a pattern of life, they will do the will of the Father. Let me put it another way. The basis on which we are saved is Christ's obedience to the divine will. The evidence that we are saved is our obedience to the divine will. Because those who are saved love God, imitate Christ, and do the will of the Father. Well, corresponding to that, here James teaches us that as those who profess to follow after Christ, we must make our plans in light of God's will, and we must submit our plans to God's will. And he teaches us this in four ways. Four ways. By exposing the problem providing a correction, issuing an indictment, and presenting a conclusion. That kind of serves as a nice four-point outline for us. The problem, the correction, the indictment, the conclusion. And you can find that outline, as always, in your bulletin. Well, let's start by considering the problem. We see this in verses 13 through 14. Look at verse 13 with me. Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." With those words, come now, James is issuing a summons. He is summoning to himself a hypothetical individual. It seems like a wealthy individual. someone who is making plans, someone who is planning his ways, a businessman, if you will. And James summons this hypothetical businessman to himself in order to rebuke him, in order to use him as an illustration of the sin of prideful planning. So he says, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, We will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. Notice the specificity of this planning. This is a businessman, and he's planning a business trip. And he plans when he will go, today or tomorrow. He plans where he will go to such and such a city, that is to some hypothetical city. He plans how long he will be there, spend a year there. He plans what he's going to do while he is there, engage in business. That is a Greek word that means to travel for trade, refers to the work of a merchant, someone who travels around for business, trading, buying, selling. And then finally, he plans what the result of his trip will be and make a profit. That is a very specific plan, isn't it? We might even say, this is a man with a plan. He has it all figured out. He has it all worked out. On the surface, this seems like a good thing, right? It's good to have it all planned out, isn't it? It's good to have all the details worked out before we go into something. In fact, didn't Jesus say in Luke 14, you ought to count the cost? Didn't Jesus say it is foolish for a person to plan to build something without first sitting down to calculate whether or not he can build the project and finish the project? Certainly our Lord would commend planning. And after all, even Benjamin Franklin said, if you don't plan, you plan to fail, right? Failure to plan is a plan to fail. And I would agree with Benjamin Franklin there. I think he got that right. I make plans every day, every week, every month, every year. I have in my phone an eventual to-do list. I have a daily to-do list, a weekly to-do list. I have a time blocking schedule where I block out literally every hour of my day. I have a calendar where I put every event that I have planned for the week or the month or the year. I believe in planning. We should make plans. We want to be as effective, as productive, as efficient as we can possibly be for the glory of God, right? According to Ephesians 5.16, it is wisdom to redeem the time, to make the most of our time, to capitalize on every opportunity that God has given us. Jonathan Edwards was a man who was very much aware of his limited time and who certainly wanted to capitalize on every moment. Jonathan Edwards wrote, Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs. Stamp eternity on my eyeballs. That's a good thing to pray, isn't it? Lord, give me an eternal perspective. Let me live in light of the brevity of time and the eternity of eternity." And Jonathan Edwards, living with that eternal perspective, he was one of the most productive men who ever lived. All of us should think that way. All of us should live in light of eternity. All of us should plan the little time we have as meticulously as we can to maximize every moment for the glory of King Jesus. Use every moment for the glory of God. You don't want to waste your life, do you? You don't want to waste your time. None of us do. You know, if you waste money, you can make more money. If you waste your material possessions, You can buy more material possessions. But the one thing that you cannot buy more of is time. Time. Once you lose it, it is gone forever. While it's yours, while you have it, it's yours to do with it what you want to do with it. But when it's gone, it is gone. You'll never get that hour back, that year back, that day back, that moment back. Once it's gone, it's gone. You don't want to waste your time. You don't want to squander away your time not knowing what you should be doing or what you're supposed to be doing. All of us need to understand what our mission is, what our priorities are, what we're supposed to be giving our life to. And then we need to plan our ways in such a manner that we can effectively accomplish those priorities. By the way, the Apostle Paul also made plans, didn't he? Let me give you an example. He planned to come to Rome many times, several times, and was providentially hindered. In Romans 1.13, Paul says, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you and have been prevented so far." So Paul was a planner. Paul made plans. And by the way, you don't need some epiphany from heaven to make your plans. You don't need a heavenly vision. You don't need some dream from God. Paul didn't need that, did he? I told you last time, you don't have to be paralyzed as you plan your ways and as you seek the will of God. You simply plan your ways based on the principles of Scripture, right? And you let the Lord take care of the rest. That's what Paul did. Paul didn't need an epiphany. Paul made plans that sometimes didn't come to fruition. In fact, he planned to go to Rome, and we're going to find this out as we continue to work through Romans on Friday night, but he planned to go to Rome. In fact, his plan as he wrote the book of Romans was that he was going to go to Jerusalem, deliver a financial contribution to the poor saints there, and then be helped by them to go on his way to Rome. That was his plan. And then eventually to leave Rome and go to Spain. But guess what? Even that didn't work out according to Paul's plan. Because when Paul got to Jerusalem, what happened? He was incarcerated. Eventually moved to Caesarea, and then a couple of years later, finally was moved to Rome. Paul's plans didn't always work out the way he planned them. And neither are your plans. You're not God. You're not omniscient. You're not omnipotent. Your plans are not going to perfectly pan out, but that's okay. Neither did Paul's. So there's nothing wrong with making plans. That's not the problem here. The problem is making your plans without giving any thought to God. The problem is leaving God out of your planning. You see, we don't want to misinterpret this text. We don't want to make it mean something it was never intended to mean. James is not rebuking capitalism here. He's not rebuking them for planning to make a profit. In fact, He's not even rebuking them for planning. He's rebuking them for planning without God. He's rebuking them for the sin of presumption and self-confidence. As Grant Osborne says, on the surface, this sounds like good business sense. But in reality, it masks a worldview that ignores God. That's exactly what this is. It masks a worldview that ignores God. And that becomes clear in the rest of the passage. In fact, look at verse 14. James says, Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You're just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. So James here points out two problems with leaving God out of our planning. Or you could say he gives us two reasons that we should not leave God out of our planning. First of all, because of the uncertainty of the future. The uncertainty of the future. James says, you're making future plans with self-confidence and absolute certainty? And yet, you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. How humbling is that? The Greek literally says, who not know tomorrow. You plan your future and you don't even know what the next day will bring. You plan the next 365 days in advance and you don't even know what's coming in the next 24 hours. Calvin said, James roused the stupidity of those who disregarded God's providence and claimed for themselves a whole year though they had not a single moment in their power. You don't even have control over a single moment in your life. Listen to your heart beat even now in your chest. You have no control over that at all. At all. And yet, do you plan without giving any thought to the sovereign God who orders all things according to His own will? Do you really do that? As Proverbs 27.1 says, Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. You may plan to go to such and such a city, and your car may break down tomorrow. We've all been there, right? You may have a heart attack in your sleep. Your flight may be canceled. You may slip in the snow and break your hip. You don't know what's coming tomorrow. What's even worse, you may die. You may not even be here tomorrow. And that brings us then to a second problem with leaving God out of our planning. And this is kind of two in one. And that is the brevity of life. and the certainty of death. The brevity of life and the certainty of death. He says, you are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. You're here today and gone tomorrow, as it were. Gone. Your life is a vapor. That's a word that means smoke, steam, breath, mist. We've all seen the mirror fog up as we've taken a hot shower. How long does that last? Well, I know sometimes it seems like it lasts forever. You get out of the shower, and you want to brush your teeth, and you've got to wipe the mirror, and it seems like you can't see yourself. But in reality, it doesn't last very long, does it? We've all seen our breath on a cold winter day. How long does that last? Not very long. So that's the point here. He's illustrating the brevity of life and the certainty of death. You are here one moment, and then poof, you're gone the next. You're gone. Your life is short. Life is uncertain. But death is a guarantee. As Ray Comfort says, 10 out of 10 people die. Did you know that? That's the ultimate statistic. Unless you are fortunate enough to be Elijah or Enoch, 10 out of 10 people die. People say there are two things in life that are guaranteed. What are they? Death and taxes. But that's not true because people cheat on their taxes. But you will not cheat death. You have an appointment with death and you will be right on time. You may be late to everything else in your life, but you will be right on time with your appointment with death. Right on time. Job chapter 14 verse 5, speaking of man, says this, His days are determined. The number of His months is with you, and His limits you have set so that He cannot pass. That is to say, you will die the exact year, the exact month, the exact week, the exact day, the exact moment that God has determined. That is an encouraging thing in one sense, because God is the one who numbers your days. God is the one that holds your life in His hands. And as believers, we take comfort in that, don't we? In fact, George Whitefield said, You are immortal until your work on earth is done. In other words, you are immortal until God is done with you. And then you'll die. So that's a comforting thing for the Christian. And yet at the same time, it's a sobering reality. Because you don't know when you're going to die. No one can make plans with absolute certainty because of this. Matthew 10, 29 says, not even a sparrow falls to the ground without your father. Not even a bird dies without God determining when he dies. And so God has determined when you will die. But you don't know when that's going to be. Your death date's not written on the calendar, is it? Because you don't know when it's going to be. And that is why it is so foolish to plan your future without giving any thought to the very one who has numbered your days. You're not in control. That's the problem here. It's a failure to recognize that you are not in control. God is. God is. And we often think this way, don't we? We plan like we're in control of our destiny. We plan our ways like we have forever. In fact, I don't know if this is true, but I heard somewhere at some point that if you were given a lie detector test and asked if you thought you were going to die one day and you said yes, the lie detector test would say you're lying. We just don't think that way. We don't think we're going to die. We think we're going to live forever. We feel that way. But dear friends, that's not the case. We're going to die. Death is certain. Life is short. We don't know when it's going to be. And so we must consider God as we plan our ways. To plan your ways without giving thought to God, do you know what that is? That is being a practical atheist. That's what it is. It is to plan as if God doesn't exist. Even worse, it's self-theism. It's to plan as if you are God. As if you are in control of your destiny, when in reality you are not. You can't make a single hair on your head grow. You can't make a single hair on your head change its color permanently, for sure. You're not in control of any moment of your life. Why would you plan your ways without giving any thought to the sovereign God? That is foolish, right? Foolish. So plan your ways according to God's will. That's what James is going to teach us next, which brings us, secondly, to the correction. The correction. Look at verse 15. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that." So he makes a contrast between what they were saying and what they ought to say. The one who says, I will go do this or that, instead, he ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that. We will only live to see tomorrow, if the Lord wills it so. We will only be successful in our plans if the Lord wills it so. And so, that's a matter of fact. That's not up for debate. That is just a matter of fact. But the point is, you must acknowledge that as you plan your ways. The correction then is this. You must submit your plans to the will and providence of God. Submit your plans to the will and providence of God. The correction simply is that you must recognize you're not in control, God is. You are not sovereign, God is sovereign. Right? That's really the heart of every sin, isn't it? We want to rip God off the throne. We want to undeify God and we want to deify ourselves. We want to rob God of His sovereignty and ascribe that sovereignty to ourselves. But friends, the correction is you need to recognize you're not sovereign, He is. And again, there's nothing wrong with planning. But there is something wrong with planning that leaves God out. Planning that ignores God. So certainly, make your plans. But make them in light of the will of God, and submit them to the will of God. Let me put it this way. Make your plans in light of God's moral will, and then submit your plans to God's sovereign will. Commit your plans to the providence of God. Jesus himself modeled this perfectly, didn't he? You remember in Matthew chapter 6 verse 10, in what we call the Lord's Prayer, Or what might be better called the model prayer. Jesus tells us to pray this way. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Right? That's how you should pray. God is not a cosmic vending machine. We just push all the buttons and make our demands and get what we want. Prayer is not so much about you demanding God to give you your will as it is about you aligning your will with His will. Right? Your will be done. I told you in John 434, Jesus said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me. In Luke 22, 42, Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prayed, Lord, let this cup pass from me, but not as I will, but as you will, your will be done. Jesus was a perfect model of this. And you should imitate him. You should submit your entire life to the sovereign providence of God. And the Apostle Paul, as we've already noted, was a wonderful example of this. In Acts 18.21, he told the believers at Ephesus, I will return to you again, if God wills. If God wills. In Romans 1.10, he told the Romans, I always in my prayers make request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God, I may succeed in coming to you. And as I told you in Romans 1.13, he said, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you and have been prevented so far. So Paul made plans, some of which did not come to fruition. But here's the key. He did what you and I should do. He made his plans in light of biblical principles, and then he submitted his plans to the sovereign will of God. He wanted to come to Rome to minister the Word of God to them, to strengthen them, to encourage them, all biblical goals. But he knew that in God's providence he may not make it to Rome. And so he subjected his plans to God's plans. Another way to put it is this, you need to consider God's plan as you make your plans, right? You need to consider God's plan as you make your plans. If the Lord wills. That's the key. And we often say that. We say those kinds of things all the time as Christians, don't we? Lord willing. I want to do that. In fact, our brother Jim, when he sent the email out this week, it was a perfect transition into the sermon. He said, Lord willing, these are the things we're going to be doing this week at Providence Church. That's a wonderful thing. We submit all of our plans to God's will. But the important thing to keep in mind here is that it's not simply about uttering the words, because you can say those words and yet not be submissive to the will of God. You can say those words because you're just used to saying them, or because it's the right thing to do, or because you want to sound religious and pious. It's not so much about the words as it is about the heart. You must be surrendered to the will of God in your heart. Is this how you make your plans? If the Lord wills? What does your daily schedule, your daily to-do list, your monthly calendar, what does it reveal about the priorities of your heart? Does it reveal that the priorities of your heart are your own selfish priorities? Or does it reveal that your priorities are God's priorities? That's the question. So carefully make your plans based on biblical principles and submit those plans to the will of God. Well, that's the correction. But thirdly, notice the indictment. The indictment, verse 16. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, all such boasting is evil. So he goes from what they should say in verse 15 to what they were saying in verse 16. But as it is, in reality, what you're really doing is you boast in your arrogance. The indictment is that they were arrogant. To plan your ways without giving any thought to the will of God is arrogant. Who do you think you are? You don't even know what tomorrow will bring. You don't even know what the next hour will bring. And do you ignore God in your planning? How arrogant must you be? This is arrogance. It's pride. In fact, he says, you boast in your arrogance. The word boast has the idea of glorying or exalting proudly, even to praise. You praise yourself, he's saying. You're bragging about yourself as if you are God. As Greg Osborne says, planning and investing are not wrong, but arrogance, self-confidence, and boasting are. Douglas Moos says, the people that James criticizes are bragging about their control over their lives instead of acknowledging that the Lord is in control. That's what this is. It's a boastful self-arrogance. The word arrogance literally means pride. Pride. You're prideful. You're full of pride, he's saying. Anyone who thinks the way this hypothetical businessman does in verse 13, who plans out all the details of his life, as if though he is certainly going to accomplish everything he wants to accomplish, first of all, he's going to be a very disappointed man, isn't he? Because all of us know, at times, providence frustrates our plans, doesn't it? So he's going to be very disappointed. And ultimately, he's very prideful. He's very prideful. From 1 Corinthians 1.31, we know that if we are to boast, we must boast in who? The Lord. Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. We're to be Christ-confident, not self-confident. We boast in Him. But those who plan their ways with giving no thought to God, they boast in their own arrogance, their own pride, their own selves. They give God no place in their itinerary, no place in their agenda. Well, who are you to boast as if you are omniscient, as if you are omnipresent, if you are omnipotent, when you don't even know what the next 15 minutes have planned for your life? It is nonsense. It's nonsense. To these kinds of people, Paul would say, as he did in Romans 12, 3, That is to say, make a humble, sober, self-assessment. Assess yourself rightly and humbly. But on the contrary, These self-willed presumptuous planters, they boast in their arrogance. And James would say here at the end of verse 16, all such boasting is evil, paneraz, wicked, malicious. It's morally wrong. It's contrary to God's word, God's law, God's will. It's sin. To plan your ways without giving thought to God simply is sin. And that is exactly what James tells us next, which brings us in the fourth place to the conclusion. The conclusion, verse 17. Therefore, now that's a word of conclusion. James is drawing a conclusion based on everything he said so far. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and in the context, what's the right thing to do? To plan your ways in light of God's will. In light of God's sovereignty. To consider God in your planning. James' readers knew that this was the right thing to do. You know that this is the right thing to do. We all know this. And for the one who knows that the right thing to do is to plan your ways in light of the will of God, and does not do it to Him, it is sin. It is sin. This is what we call the sin of omission. Right? The sin of omission. Not only is it sinful to do the wrong thing, it is also sinful to fail to do the right thing. Sins of omission and sins of commission are equally sinful. For example, if you know that you're supposed to go to church and you don't go to church, it's sin. If you know you're supposed to read your Bible and you don't read your Bible, it's sin. If you know you're supposed to share the gospel and you don't share the gospel, it is sin. It's a failure to fulfill your duty from God. And so here, if you know that you're supposed to plan your ways giving thought to the will of God and you don't do it, for you it is sin. It is sin. John Gill says, "...it is not enough to know what is right and good, unless it is done, and that such knowledge is but an aggravation of the evil of sin committed." Let me explain what Gill means there. Gill is saying, look, it's bad enough to sin, but when you have a knowledge of what is right and you sin anyway, you aggravate the sin all the more. It's a worse sin, an aggravated sin. In John 13, 17, Jesus said, if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. If you do them. There is no blessing in knowing the truth, knowing the right thing to do, knowing the will of God, unless you also do the will of God. Unless you do the right thing. We're not to be mere hearers of the word and knowers of the word. Or to be what? Doers of the Word. And the one who knows the truth and does not obey the truth, for him it is sin, an aggravated sin, a worse sin. Calvin said, they did not sin through ignorance, but through contempt. This was willful rebellion, willful sin, not ignorant sin. In Luke 12, verses 47 through 48, Jesus put it this way, "...the slave who knew his master's will, and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes. But the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, he will receive but few." Notice that. Both of these people committed crimes worthy of flogging. And both of them received punishment. But the one who knew his master's will was to receive greater punishment, more lashes. And then Jesus adds in verse 48, From everyone who has been given much, much will be required. And to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more. That is to say, the more knowledge you have, the more accountable you are, the greater your sin is. According to Romans 1 and 2, all people know that God exists. All people know the law of God. Everyone is without excuse. Everyone deserves the wrath of God by nature. But for those who have the greater light of special revelation, for those who name the name of Christ, for those who know the right thing to do and do not do it, for them it is a greater sin. And they are susceptible to greater punishment. And friends, you and I know the right thing to do, don't we? If for some wild reason you didn't know it, now you do after this morning. But I think you already knew it. In fact, I think every man by nature knows that there is a sovereign God in the universe and he ought to plan his ways in light of his will. You know that. And so if you do not do it, James' conclusion is, that is an evil sin. So the problem, they were planning their ways without giving any thought to the brevity of life, the certainty of death, and the sovereignty of God. The correction, if the Lord wills, make your plans in light of His will and submit your plans to His will. The indictment, they were prideful, they were arrogant, they had deified themselves. And then finally the conclusion, if you do not plan your ways in light of the will of God, since you know it's the right thing to do, for you it is sin. Just to kind of sum this up in one sentence, you are not in control, God is. So dear friends, make your plans and submit them to the will of God. Let me close by reading the words of Hebrews 13, 20 to 21 to you. It says, now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, Through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus, our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." Indeed, may it be. May it be. May God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, equip you to do His will for His glory. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time that we have every Lord's Day to open the Scriptures together and to consider what you have said to us from heaven via the Scripture. And we know, Lord, that your will is made clear to us. We've talked about that the last few weeks. We cannot plead ignorance. That would be to accuse you of being unclear in what you have said. We believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture. You have made Your will known to us, and it is our great sin and folly to ignore that will. It is our great sin and folly to plan our ways as if we are in control when in reality You are. So I pray that You would give us grace, that You would humble us, and that You would enable us to do Your will. I pray that if there's anyone in this room this morning who may be unsaved, unconverted, maybe they think they are converted. Maybe they have professed faith in Christ. Maybe they've been baptized. Maybe they've been in church their whole life. But Lord, if they took an honest look at their life, they would conclude that there is no obedience to the divine will. Jesus would say, that person's not headed for heaven, that person's the Matthew 7, saying, Lord, Lord, not doing the will of the Father and not entering heaven. I pray that today you would draw that person into your kingdom, that you would open his heart, grant him faith, grant him repentance and save him. And for us who have been converted by Your grace, for us who love and know and seek to do Your will, keep us in Your will. Hold us fast in Your hand that we might do the will of God until the end. And having suffered patiently in this life, having done the will of God from our heart, we will then receive the crown of glory. And how we long for that day, and we pray all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.