James: Implications of Walking Humbly with God

Well, good morning.

We're nearing the end of the book of James.

We have three more weeks this week, and then I think two more, and then we'll be into the season of Advent, moving toward Christmas.

And so this morning, James just fires away at a handful of hot topics.

Kind of a hot topic Sunday morning.

How do we best use our words?

How do we think about our plans, our future?

And what about our money?

Our words, our plans, our money.

All right, so let's break down this passage.

James 4, 11 and 12.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.

The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

So point number one is this is we are called to walk humbly with God with kind words.

This is why James is going after this topic.

James is speaking about defamation in this passage.

To defame it means to talk down to someone, raising ourselves to a superior position.

So a famous defamation case was back in 2005.

Cameron Diaz ditched her boyfriend Justin Timberlake.

I remember this.

I was born in the 1900s, and as well, this is my celebrity crush.

I can remember this case.

I was devastated.

I was crushed.

She had an affair with a married man, walked away from JT.

Well, it wasn't true.

So she sued them.

She won.

And defamation's not over.

It's not new.

It wasn't new then.

It's still not new.

Kanye's being sued right now.

Our public and political discourse is filled with defamation.

A lot of it mainly is just defamation the whole time.

Just talking down about other people to become more superior, appear to be more superior.

We lower the other person as to appear that way.

We can do it aggressively.

He's a moron.

She's a brat.

He's worthless.

She's worthless.

We can do it more passively.

Like let's pray for Cindy Joe and all of her horrible parenting decisions.

Well, before we pray, let me tell you all of them because I really want you to be informed of how you can pray for her.

Let me just really list these out.

Horrible, horrible decisions this lady has made.

Let me just tell them to you in a spirit of prayer.

To defame.

Right?

To speak down about somebody else as to appear superior.

And James says, when we do this, we actually are speaking against the law.

When he says that, he's talking about this royal law that he keeps revisiting throughout the book.

And for him, the royal law is to love your neighbor.

Verse 12 says there's only one lawgiver and judge he who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

I mean, it's just a great reminder.

Hey, you're not God.

We just need to be reminded of that, kind of over and over again.

You're not God.

James remind us, there's only one.

Meaning we are relieved of trying to pretend we are God.

We're relieved of thinking we should be judging other people.

Or need to be in judgment over other people to be somebody.

So we're free from judging other people as to be free to love them.

So that's our words.

Now our plans.

James 4, 13 through 17.

Come now, ye who say, 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.

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.

Instead, you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance.

All such boasting is evil.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

So point number two is this we're called to walk humbly with God with openness to the future.

Walk humbly with God with openness to the future.

Two weeks ago, our family and a few other Redeemer families, we went and served at Blue Skies Camp at Dollywood.

Here we are on this weekend of service.

And we hosted 11 families who a child in that family has cancer.

That Friday night we got up there, we had a costume party, it was Halloween weekend, had a costume party and pizza and some more's, and then Saturday morning we had a chapel service.

And after chapel service, the volunteers took all the kids to go do crafts and games.

And my wife and I, we sat in a circle with these parents.

And we asked this question How has cancer impacted your family?

And do you see God at all?

Maybe not, but do you see God at all in your story?

And some of these parents had never told their story out loud.

They had never even told the story.

Maybe they never felt safe enough, right, to tell the devastation, the hurt, the anger, the and for some of them had like some incredible stories, God stories, of what God was doing in the midst of it.

But I know this, and I didn't have to take a poll in the room, I didn't have to send out an email.

I know this.

Nobody, nobody planned to be in that room.

Now, that's extreme, right?

It's true, it's real, but it is extreme.

But maybe you didn't plan like to live in Mariana.

You always thought you would be somewhere else.

Maybe you thought you were finished having kids, and then you got an extra one.

Or you thought you would have kids.

And it's just been a battle.

You didn't plan on being on your second husband.

Or fourth.

You didn't plan on being on a second bout with cancer.

You thought just once would be enough.

And then there's also an upside.

Because you never would have thought you could have had the amazing job that you have.

You never could have thought or planned out the fun, loving family you have.

Or how that sweet person, that someone, just came upon you.

Right?

We think peace will come by control, so we presume our lives.

That's what James is talking about, the sin of presumption.

In verse 13, James says there's one plan giver.

So he already talked about there's one lawgiver, and now he's talking about that there's one plan giver, which I don't really like because I love to form a plan.

I can, I love it.

I can calendar with any of you.

Like there's no date.

There is no date in the future I can't talk about and plan it out.

We can sit down, you and I, if you're a calendar planner, you know it.

We can circle up with our calendars and just let's just click on dates and plan stuff out.

I love it.

I'm getting excited thinking about it.

They just because I just want to control it, right?

Calendar, get it all right, chart it out.

God, man, I love that.

Because the fear is if I if I don't control it, I'll be left out in the cold.

So I want to so I control more.

And all of us control freaks, raise your hand.

Yep.

And what do we all know?

As we control more, our anxiety increases, right?

We want to control more than reality allows us.

I ran into this cartoon this week.

It takes a moment, right?

Like you're like, okay, this is what the world yells at us.

Like, just control more.

Focus on what you control, right?

And this is great advice when everything is going good.

Just focus on what you control.

But when you are in need or hurt or something bad happens, when you realize you don't have as much control as you thought you did, all of a sudden control just doesn't mean that much.

We need something else.

We need openness.

We need help.

See, James connects the idea of presumption to arrogance.

In verse 16, the word to boast means to exalt, abound with joy in something.

But it's out of an arrogance that we think we can control everything in our life.

So it's a very unreliable sense of joy because it's out of our arrogance.

It's insecure because we're actually more limited than we want to admit.

That's why James says, hey, you're actually, you're actually just like mist.

That's what we're like.

There's a great hiking trail in Yosemite National Park called the Mist Trail.

It hikes up along a river up to Vernal Falls.

Here's what my family got to do it last summer.

Here's a picture of us.

My children are somewhat happy as I woke them up at 5 a.m.

to do this trail.

Um so they're looking pretty, they're hanging in there at that moment.

And so we hike, you hike up along this river and you work your way up to that waterfall that's in the back.

And once you get up there, you hike up this narrow stairwell that's been carved into the cliff besides the fall.

All the water is coming down, and mist is just engulfing this entire area.

And you just go up step by step, huge drop-off, trying not to fall and die.

It's a wonderful family activity, just good summer family fun for everybody.

And the mist is just everywhere.

And while you're in it, you can't really imagine uh the mist disappearing.

You're just in it, it's everywhere.

But an hour later, you're on top of the falls, and here's a picture from the top of the falls.

An hour later, you're on top of the falls in the upper valley.

No mist.

Not a droplet.

Right?

Not a single droplet of mist.

The mist is limited.

The droplet's there, it's real, it rises, it lands somewhere, but it's just incredibly limited, and then it's gone.

And James says, that's it.

We're more like mist.

Like we need to come into some awareness that we're temporary, we're fragile, we're frail, we're more limited than we want to admit.

And yet there's a freedom in that.

Because the freedom is that everything is not up to you.

We can be brilliant planners, and yet we need to have an openness with our plans.

Verse 15 says, okay, what do we do?

What should what should we be like?

Verse 15.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

If the Lord wills.

I can remember being in college and a Sunday school teacher.

I've always said that.

Lord willing.

Lord willing.

Yeah, I had somebody, Lord willing.

I thought it was so religious.

I couldn't stand it.

I was like, this is so religious.

I was like, you're so fake.

I don't think he was fake.

But I thought it was then.

I just thought it was so religious.

Oh, Lord willing, Lord willing.

The thing is, now I'm older.

I'm getting older.

And I'm tired.

And so now this just feels like an incredible resting place.

Like to be able to say that, to be able to rest in something like that, if the Lord wills.

That just sounds like an incredible rest for my weary heart that wants to plan and chart and have everything figured out.

That we can have our brilliant plans and yet we can be open-handed with them.

And what I have found is when I'm in that space of being more open, my prayers for myself and my family and my children and my future and our church.

They're tending to shift away from like, hey, God, here's the list, which is just my control, like put into my religious prayer, right?

And it's tend to be a little bit more like, Lord, help me to be open to what you have.

Lord, help me to be open.

The Heidelberg Catechism, which is a theological document from the 1500s, it makes this clear from the very beginning.

The first question, what should be the first question?

You see a bunch of theologians sitting around trying to figure out what should be the first question.

What is your only comfort in life and death?

That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

I am not my own.

So our words, our plans, another hot topic, James lays in to us about our money.

James 5, 1 through 6.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

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

You have laid up treasure in the last days.

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.

You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence.

You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you.

So point number three is a calling that we walk humbly with God with generous hearts.

You remember how money idolatry works?

It works like this.

If I don't have, fill in the blank, if I don't have that amount, then I will not be whole, safe, joyful, respectable enough.

And in this way, money becomes our functional savior.

We think we need it.

And James says we can sinfully end up in behaviors like this list of what was going on here at the time: fraud, self-indulgence, greed.

Because the heart's crying out, I have to have more money in order to be enough.

I won't be happy without it.

This week I read an article, Does Money Buy Happiness?

It's from the Wharton School at Penn, a 2021 article.

And it was citing back some research in 2010, came out of Princeton.

And this research said that in our culture that there was no increasing happiness once a household income hit$75,000 a year.

So back in 2010,$75,000 a year.

And the research basically said once your core needs, once your core needs are covered, as money increases, happiness really doesn't increase.

But then this new research came out in 2021, and another researcher found like, no, actually, happiness does increase as money increases.

And so these two researchers, they get together, they nerded out of their data to figure out like what is going on here.

What they found out is that in every income bracket, they kept finding subgroups of unhappy people.

And here's the conclusions they came to looking at their data.

For the least happy people amongst us, least happy people, happiness rises with income until$100,000 a year and then it stops.

Core needs and a little bit of comfort is paid for, and then happiness doesn't increase for the least happy people.

For middle range of happy people, happiness tends to increase linearly with income as income increases.

And then for the happiest group of people, money accelerates their happiness even above$100,000 a year.

Now, isn't that fascinating?

What this means is, it just confirms what we already know, money can't create happiness that is not already there.

Money only serves what's already inside of you outside of the money.

This is why Jesus says, hey, it's not a treasure.

It's a resource.

It's not a treasure.

It can't create it.

It can only serve what's already there.

So if you're selfish and unhappy and greedy, if you get a whole bunch of more money, you will still be selfish and unhappy and greedy.

But if you're at peace and content and happy and generous, and then you get more income for whatever reason, your happiness will actually increase because you're already those very things.

And this is where the Christian has an edge on the entire world because we actually already know this.

And we know how to be at peace before money.

Jesus says, don't treasure money.

It's a resource.

Find your refuge, find your joy, find your treasure, your identity, your wholeness apart from money.

Find it in your identity in Christ.

Theologian Albert Barnes writes this about this passage.

There is no sin in merely being rich.

Where sin exists among the rich, it arises from the manner in which wealth is acquired, the spirit which it tends to engender in the heart and the way in which it is used.

See, seeking poverty or seeking prosperity are both mistakes if you're seeking them to be whole or forgiven or righteous.

Both are attempts to control outside of Jesus.

Where our real freedom and generosity comes as we grow more secure in Jesus.

Now here's what we learned today.

Point number four, kind of summing up these three different points.

We walk humbly with God as we are astonished by God's validation, his providence, and his provision for our lives.

Our words, God's validation, our plans, his providence, our money, his provision.

James sets up a contrast for us in these verses.

Life by the flesh and the world, or life by the spirit and the gospel.

And here's what James lays out for us what life by the flesh and the world looks like.

Increase your status by belittling others.

That's James 4, 11 and 12.

Increase your peace by maintaining control, James 4, 13 through 17.

Increase your happiness by greed, James 5, 1 through 6.

Now remember, James always assumes the gospel and he's writing of the effects.

And so what we know, the gospel contrast is this life by the Spirit and the gospel.

To do with our words, rest in secure status, our secure status as the beloved through God's lavish love in Christ.

That's the grace of imputation.

For our plans, live in abounding peace by trusting your life is God's.

That's the grace of providence.

And for our money, grow in contentment and generosity by knowing a deeper currency for happiness.

And that's the grace of a citizenship that we have in God's kingdom.

See, as we grow in the lavish love of God for us, we grow more secure.

As we grow more secure, we're not as needy.

We're okay.

We're loved, we're enough.

And so we can use our words and our plans and our money not to be somebody else, but we can speak kind words.

We can be open with our future, and we can be generous with the provision we have.

I ran into this quote this week, and I close with it.

Michael Spencer, who is a great spiritual writer and teacher, he wrote this 10 months before he died.

So 10 months.

He knows he's dying.

And here's what he writes The big issues that face me as a dying teacher, writer, husband, father, and employee all, all about grace.

Grace in everyday life, grace to people who don't deserve it.

Grace as a way to live in the power of the gospel when I'd rather be controlling things and determining outcomes.

All day, every day, I have to live in an atmosphere where the use of law, guilt, manipulation, and punishment are the standard ways of doing business.

But I want my life to be more and more and more about grace.

So the question for me today and from now on is has grace made me gracious?

Let's pray together.

God forgive us for the ways that we have spoken ill of people and withheld kind words.

Forgive us for the ways that we have increased our control with tight gripping hearts, without an openness to your providence.

And forgive us for the ways that we think money will make us joyful or whole.

Would we live by your spirit and the gospel, growing more secure in our belovedness?

That we are already validated and whole, fully forgiven and fully righteous.

May our words bless people.

May we grow with an openness of heart, with open hands for the future.

And may we grow generous with the provision you give to us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.