Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our service this evening. Happy to see you. A beautiful day the Lord has given to us and we rejoice in that. We look forward to our time together tonight. Let's ask his blessing upon our service, shall we? Our Father, we thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together on this Sunday evening. We thank you for Our brothers, our sisters who are here and those who may be watching from home, we pray your blessing upon them as well. Lord, we do pray that you would encourage us as we spend time in your word, as we think about James, as we think about a challenge that he brought to the believers of his day that is just as appropriate for us today as it was for them. I pray, Lord, that you would help us to gain a good perspective so that we might live our lives in light of eternity. So, Father, we commend our service to you now, and we pray that you would be honored in each of our lives. We pray this in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. All right, you may be seated. And I'll invite you to turn in your Bibles to James chapter 4. James chapter 4. That's where we are this evening. I'm going to look at a passage that is very familiar to us, and this is also connected, if you will, to the introduction this morning, thinking about all the men and women who filled these pews, who sat in specific places that we all probably can think about, who ministered in our church over the past 60 years, some portion of it. Men and women that God used to build a church, to literally build the physical church, but more importantly, to touch the lives of men and women and boys and girls. So much that they did that you and I enjoy today, the fruit of their ministry. And with that in mind, I want us to think this evening about living in light of eternity. What does it mean? What is the mindset that is necessary for you and me to live in light of eternity? And I think that James has something to say about that here, beginning in chapter 4 of his epistle, verse 13. So let's read, beginning in verse 13, as James writes, Go to now, ye that say, today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow, for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings, and all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. living light in the life of eternity. Life is like the morning mist. It is there. We see it. We note it. But then in a very short period of time, it dissipates and it's gone. The reality is there are no guarantees about tomorrow. If there are no guarantees about tomorrow, there are no guarantees about a year from now or 10 years from now. I'm reminded of something that happened this past week. In Louisiana, there was a gentleman who died suddenly, unexpectedly from a heart attack. His funeral was on Thursday. His co-worker attended his funeral. The very next day, his co-worker died in a car accident. Now, neither of those men a week ago were thinking I'm in the final days of my life. Surely, when the co-worker was at his friend's funeral, he wasn't thinking, well, tomorrow I'll be the one laid out. But the reality was, neither of those men had any guarantee of the next day, or the next year, or the next decade. That's a reality for each and every one of us. And to be ignorant of that, to live our lives without an awareness of that, will, I think, lend itself to our living life improperly. Because we're not living properly in light of eternity. We have to recognize that we have today. That's why the Bible says today is the day of salvation. Because today there is an opportunity. If you're speaking to an unsaved person, they have an opportunity at that moment. But it's a dangerous game for that unsaved person to say, not today. Maybe next week. Maybe next year. Maybe when I'm older. Maybe when the kids are grown. Maybe after I retire. because they have no promise of tomorrow. James wants us to know that because life is a vapor, we should humble ourselves before God and obey His will. In fact, when we look at this passage of Scripture, and I'm going to give you something to bear in mind when you're reading through James' little epistle, and you're looking at chapters 4 and 5, here's a word that you should keep in mind. Humility. Humility. You should read chapter 4 and 5 of James with that idea in mind because James, though he's beginning a new section here with verse 13, the connecting theme of chapters 4 and 5 is humility. James is challenging that true faith judges pride by humbling itself before God. His challenge is, and even from the very beginning, whence come wars and fighting among you? He is challenging believers that rather than operate in pride, They need to judge their pride, and they need to exercise humility. Humility among themselves, among brothers and sisters in Christ, and humility, obviously, before God. The first 12 verses, then, James hits the need for humility to resolve conflict and to have harmonious relationships. Humility. He then turns to the future. And his argument, I think, is very simple. When we think about the future, we have to regard the future with humility. Still the idea of humility is just kind of changing his focus a little bit, his nuance on humility a little bit. In our personal relationships, we need humility. When we think about the future, five minutes from now or five years from now, we need to exercise this same spirit of humility. He is confronting an arrogant spirit that he had observed in the churches. We see it earlier in the chapter when he's talking about those interpersonal relationships. Here's another aspect of that arrogant spirit. Although these people professed to know Christ, they were living with a worldly attitude. John, the Apostle John in 1 John 2.15, he referred to that worldly attitude as the boastful pride of life. It is a problem that we all face. Each of us has a tendency, though some may voice it more loudly than others, each of us has a tendency to harbor a certain amount of pride in our hearts, don't we? And sometimes we're boastful because that pride comes out even when we're making statements about the future. This is what I'm going to do. This is what's going to happen. And that lack of humility, that pride of life, will keep us from living a proper life, a godly life, in light of eternity. So these men that he is referring to here, beginning in verse 13, are making plans without taking into account, number one, their own mortality, and number two, God's sovereignty. Who actually is in control of our lives? Are we in control of our lives? This is where the pride of life comes in. Pride of life says, yes, I'm in charge of my own life. Reality is, there are far too many aspects of where we live and how we live that we cannot be in charge of everything. One of the main things we're not in charge of is, what will tonight bring? What will tomorrow bring? It's like the prosperous man that we read of in Luke chapter 12. You're familiar with him. In Luke chapter 12, verses 19 and 20, here's a familiar statement. Our Lord is speaking about this man, and He quotes him saying, And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? It's a sobering thought, isn't it? Here's a man who worked hard. He was successful in his business venture. He was able to put up many goods for many years. He had reached a place in life where he could say, you know, I can just kick back and I can just enjoy these years of life, eat, drink, and be merry. And what was God's pronouncement upon that? You've made your plans. Now let me introduce you to reality. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. And then whose shall those things be that you have worked so hard to gather and to put back? You had a good business plan, but you forgot one thing. You're not in control. And so a very sobering thought. James makes four points. We're going to look at two of them tonight, all right? So we don't belabor the point. We're going to look at two of these points tonight. What is James saying when it comes to this humility about the future? Well, the first thing he says is, life is a vapor. Life is a vapor. By that, he means three things. Number one, verse 13, go to now ye that say today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. The first thing that James wants us to understand is that life is frail. Here's how we could encapsulate verse 13 at the beginning of verse 14. You don't know what will happen tomorrow. I mean, that's the essential message. You do not know what will happen tomorrow. We don't even know what's going to happen in the next 10 minutes, let alone tomorrow. I was reminded of this. Rick, the third, and I had lunch together Friday. We actually spent close to two and a half hours together, I think. We had a good time, a good time of fellowship. We're sitting outside at a restaurant near Galleria Mall. And part of the way through our being there together, we started hearing sirens. And then right next to where we're seated, all these police cars, seven different police cars, come speeding into that parking lot. One almost hits another car because he's going so fast that he's got to take a right-hand turn in the parking lot. And he kind of really was going too fast to make that turn without hitting a car that was stopped in front of him. And then we saw some guy out in the middle of the parking lot in front of Jared's jewelry store there, laying face down on the asphalt with his hands behind his head like this. We kind of figured what might have been going on. It just suddenly happened. And of course, Rick and I are teasing each other about, wow, this is great. We got to enjoy a good meal and have a show. So dinner and a show, that's pretty good, right? Now, we enjoyed that, we chit-chatted about it, and then yesterday, I was with Rick and some other church folks at the wedding, and someone mentioned something about Rick and messed up, and I thought, what? What did I do to Rick? We had lunch together. I didn't realize what they were saying until they told me a little more. Shortly after Rick and I left, he was in a car accident. Now it's okay, car is bent up a little bit, but it just struck me. We're sitting here, we're laughing about watching the police come in, we're having a good time of fellowship together, and then we go our separate ways, he has a car accident. We don't know what the next 10 minutes will bring. That's the lesson. It's like, wow, this is really pretty close to what I'm going to be talking about. Because that was the last thing that I expected anybody to say that Rick was in a car accident. Could have been far worse, couldn't it? We thank God for His grace and His mercy in that. But to me, that was just a really close-to-home graphic lesson, if I needed another one, of this reality. Life is frail, and we don't know what the next 10 minutes is going to bring. And if I can't tell you what the next 10 minutes is going to bring, how can I forecast not only tomorrow, but next year, or the year after that? These businessmen were arrogantly assuming that they would wake up tomorrow, that they would successfully be able to complete their journey to another city, that they would do so safely, that they would enter into a business venture in the other city, that it would be successful over the course of a year, and that no one would rob them of their income. no negative thing would happen. Everything was under control and they could arrogantly assume that everything they were planning would work out exactly the way they said that it would. They were presuming about an unknown future that they had no control of and no guarantee about. That's the reality of what you read here in verse 13 at the beginning of verse 14. They don't know the future. They have no control over the future. They have no guarantee about the results of the future. But here they are boasting and bragging and presuming. The reality is the most healthy person among us cannot boast about tomorrow. In working on this, I didn't have to look far to find illustrations. In Alabama, Friday night, a high school player in football, the quarterback, was injured. It was a head injury, and he passed away. A high school boy. Who would have considered such a thing? But it's just another illustration of this fact. There are so many ways, we don't need to list them. Now, I know you may say, wait a minute. I didn't come to church to hear a morbid message. This is depressing. Well, I'm not saying that we should obsess on these things. In fact, The very point that I'm trying to make would argue that we should not obsess over these things. It's not obsessing over the reality that I have no control over the future and then being depressed and down. It is recognizing that I absolutely have no control over the future, but I can depend upon one who does. And that's really the point. These men are trusting in their own ability to make plans and bring them to pass and they have hearts full of pride and not the humility of yielding themselves and their futures into the hands of God. That's really what this challenge from what is in these verses is saying. We have to recognize the realities and then we have to allow them to move us to trust in the Lord. The fact is if we don't do that and we proudly make our plans and we go about life as if we're always going to be young and we're always going to be healthy, verse 16 here in this chapter, but now you rejoice in your boastings and all such rejoicing is evil. It is sin for me to live my life and for me to boastfully say, hey, this is what I'm going to do. I have no control over the future. I have no promise of tomorrow. But what I can do is say, by the grace of God, here's what I'm planning. And I pray that God blesses my plans. But if He doesn't, and if there's a fork in the road that I don't see, then my prayer is that God will direct my steps onto the proper branch of that fork. Right? Lord willing. That's what this passage is talking about. So, yes, life is frail. Life is short. And we just touched upon that. Vapor is short-lived. You see mist for a moment, and then it's gone. Another illustration, some of us drink coffee. And if you get it in your cup at the right time, you can see just a little bit of steam coming up out of the cup, right? But how long do you see that steam until it's gone? Well, that's life. Life is short. In fact, this is how Moses laments this same idea. In Psalm 90, Moses compares life to the grass of a field that sprouts in the morning and by evening it is faded under the hot sun. He says in verse 10, and you're all familiar with this, the days of our years are threescore years and ten. and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is yet soon cut off, and we fly away." You know, we sing a song, I'll fly away, oh glory. Have you heard that song? Did you realize that was biblical? Flying away, that's what verse 10 says. You know, 70 years, maybe you might eke out 80 if you're strong enough. Now, by God's grace, get into their 80s, some reach 90. Some are in their 90s, some reach 100. But the reality is, sooner or later, everybody flies away. Hopefully you're flying to the right place, right? But we're going to fly somewhere, and the point that Moses is saying is, it's going to happen. And because of that, he says in verse 12, He says, so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Because 70, 80, 90, 100, sooner or later, each of us will fly away. Because of that, Lord, help me to number my days. Help me to recognize I don't have so many days. There are only so many days. Only God knows how many there are. You know, it's interesting. I was talking to one of the brothers this morning after the service. He had no idea that this is what I would be talking about tonight, but he's telling me that, you know, the Lord knows that there is a given day that I don't know about when He's going to call me home. And I'm just happy that I'm ready to go when my day comes. You know, these are His words, not mine. And I'm thinking, exactly. It should come tonight, because that's what we're going to talk about. Number our days. Lord, however many days I have, give me the wisdom to apply my heart to use those days to bring glory and honor to You. That should be the desire of each of our hearts. Only God can give us wisdom to spend these days profitably in light of eternity. That's my point. Living life in light of eternity. We need the wisdom of God to do that. Why? Because death is certain. George Bernard Shaw, I've used this quote before, observed the statistics on death are quite impressive. One out of one people die. and argue that, can't we? Now you would think because this is absolutely certain, and that it could happen at any moment, that every person then must stand before God for judgment, that every person would be desperate to know how to get right with God. I mean, doesn't that sound like the logical thing to do? There is an appointed time. I don't know when it is. I want to be ready. I think every one of us in this room this evening, we are ready. We want to be ready. It's sad that so many people put it out of their mind and they go about their lives as if they're going to live forever. That's the pride this passage is talking about. I'm just going to live my life the way I want. I'm just going to do my thing. I'm in charge. The sad thing is they aren't. It's amazing, actually. Jesus taught us how to think when we hear of such disasters. In Luke 13, He made this statement, beginning in verse 2, "...suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things." There was a catastrophe. Pilate, basically caused the tower to fall and some Galileans were killed. And Jesus is saying, were they greater sinners than anybody else because they suffered this catastrophe? And he says in the next verse, nay, but except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. He says, you know, that's a sad thing. And then he goes on and gives another example of a tower that fell in Siloam. The point is, there are bad things that happen. and we hear about them, and we may shake our heads and say, boy, those poor people, that's sad that that happened to them. I'm glad I don't live where there are hurricanes. By the way, I'm glad I live where there aren't hurricanes. But at the end of the day, the prescription is the same whether we live in Florida or Buffalo, whether we face hurricanes or we face blizzards. The prescription is the same. except we repent, we will always likewise perish. It really is as simple as that. We need to be ready. That's the thing about a hurricane. That's the thing about a blizzard. We can't sit here today and say, you know, on January 17th, 2025, there will be a blizzard and we're going to have four and a half feet of snow in Buffalo. Now somebody write that down and see if I'm a prophet. Chances are very good I'm not. The point is, we don't know, do we? The power's going to go off, it's going to be off for days. Has that happened before? That the power's been off for days? Yeah, unfortunately it has. But, though I may not be able to forecast the future and issues in the future, I can say this much. God is in control. And I don't have to worry about A blizzard. If it happens, it happens. Now, can I take steps to be prepared if it happens? Yes, and there's wisdom in that. But at the end of the day, I'm trusting God. I'm trusting Him. And I'm not boasting in myself that I have it under control. So the first point is, life is a vapor. Now let me touch the second point very quickly this evening. So, life is a vapor. Life is short. Number two, God is in control. The problem was not that they were making plans for the future. The problem was not that they were capitalists. This is not a verse that is condemning the idea that they're engaging in business for profit. That's not a bad thing to do, is it? The problem is not that they were planning and putting together a business model. the Bible commends hard work and being rewarded financially for it. The problem that James is dealing with is that they were planning as if they were in control. They were not bowing before God and yielding themselves to what His will might be. They were arrogantly making plans for their future financial security. And by the way, not wrong for you to do that. but their plans didn't include God. I hope whatever plans you have for your financial security in the future, that you have factored God into that. Right? Here's my plan. And we work our plan. If it's biblical, if it's not immoral, at the end of the day, we yield that plan to God. It's in God's hands. So their trust was not in God, it was in their business venture. It was in their money that they thought they would make. They were assuming that they were in control of their future and everything would go according to plan. And instead, verse 15 says, they needed to acknowledge If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or do that. Now, James is not giving us a trite formula here. I use this probably more often than I should. Hey, Lord will and I'll see you tomorrow. Lord will and I'll see you Friday. Lord will and I'll see you Wednesday night. I don't do it all the time, but I probably do it more than I should because it can become trite. It's just formulaic. We say it only because, well, you know, that's what a good Christian is supposed to say. It isn't saying that we should always verbalize those words. Now Paul did sometimes do this in Acts 18 and 1 Corinthians 4. Paul said, if the Lord wills, as he talked about the future. But at other times he did not say it, but we can say this about Paul. He always depended on the Lord and bowed before the Lord with regard to the future. Whether he spoke those words, if the Lord wills or not, it was his mindset. And that's what I'm challenging about tonight. There's a mindset that you and I need to adopt. It is a mindset that should permeate our lives. It is a mindset that is continually aware that we are finite, and that we are absolutely dependent upon God and upon His purpose for our lives. We may sometimes say, if the Lord's will, but if we don't say it, we should be thinking it. Because it should be our mindset. So if I were to say, hey Jan, in September, let's go do such and such. She and I both will have the mindset, well, if God wills, we can plan on doing that. But we each have the mindset, if God doesn't want us to do that, He will change the circumstance. And that's okay. Because if God says, no, September is not the right month for you to do that. I have something else for you to do. Great. I want to be where God wants me to be. God is in control. I am not in control. He controls the future. I do not in any way control the future. We can put our confidence in some kind of something that, well, this will be my insurance policy against the future. But we can't guarantee that, can we? Our savings, our investings, we really don't know that something horrible could happen to our economy. We could talk about, well, what could that be? And there could be a number of things that could hit the economy at any time. And again, I'm not trying to be gloomy Gus. I'm simply saying we have to acknowledge the reality. I don't control the future, but God does. and I can yield myself to him. I can trust in God as the only source of security for the future. And that's what I'm challenging this evening. Now, note that James assumes that we will acknowledge that God is in control. The idea that the church is one sphere and the business world is another sphere, our work life, our vocation, that's not biblical. That's why this morning I used air quotes, you know, regular Christians and those in ministry. I did that because there is no such thing. And that was one of the points this morning. Every member ministers. Well, that's what we recognize tonight. It isn't I have a vocation and then I have time in the church. It is I am a child of God. And whether it's Sunday morning and I'm in church or whether it's Monday morning and I'm at my place of employment in either place, My faith and my confidence hasn't changed. I'm trusting in God. And I'm trusting that He will direct my steps and that I will be where He wants me to be. I am dependent upon Him. So we conduct business, we conduct all areas of life with that in mind. So James says, life is a vapor. It's short. If you get a hundred years, it's still short. I want to live whatever time I have left. Now, my kids will tell you, I still have quite a few years to go, because I told them when they were young. Matter of fact, it was on my 33rd birthday. I told my three children, I'm a third of the way through my life. Because I'm going to make it to 99, and then I'm just going to gut out that last year to 100, so you guys better be ready to take care of me in my dotage, in my old age. So I've got a lot of time left. Well, those are my plans. I have to amend that, children, and say, Lord willing, I have all those years. But I don't know how many years I have. I don't know how many days I have. But I can say this. I am dependent upon God for every day. And my prayer is that I will live the days that I have left with wisdom, with his wisdom, to make the most use of the time I have left to be the most effective that I can be for the glory of God. If that's the Lord giving me all those extra years, praise His name. If, however, He says, no, I have plans for you to come home, well, can I really complain about being in the presence of my Savior? I think not. So whether you use Paul's words, whether I live or whether I die, I live and I die for the glory of God. And that should be the mindset that motivates each one of us in life. May God use us to make a difference for his glory in the time we have left. Let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you for the opportunity we've had this evening to spend this time together. I trust, Lord, that you would help us to take this challenge and to recognize the spirit in which I've tried to deliver it. Not being morbid, not trying to be depressing, but simply acknowledging reality. But with that, as a springboard, to challenge our mindset. Help us to have the mindset James is arguing for here. The humility of heart. to acknowledge that we can't control the future. We can make plans, but those plans we cannot guarantee will happen. But that we can yield those plans to you. We can make plans, we should. We can make provision for the future, we should. But at the end of the day, we yield all of that to you. And my prayer is, for my own life, for my family, for our church, that we would live with this mindset, with this humbleness when it comes to the future. Lord, though we may not control it, we know that you do, and we yield ourselves to you as living sacrifices. Use us, Father. I pray you would use us to bring glory to yourself. We ask this in Christ's name and for his sake.