James 4:4

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Why such a strong dividing line? Because the world will draw you away from God. You can’t please the world and God at the same time. Much as you might like to, if you please God the world won’t like it. If you please the world you’ll fall into sin. 

It comes down to this. You have to make a choice. You have to decide. 

And not making a choice… is a choice. Much as we may like to have it both ways, reality doesn’t work like that. 

Are you a friend of the world or a friend of God?

James 4:13-14

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”- 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.

James is not talking about not making plans in life. Planning is wise – if we don’t plan to do things, we probably will not do very much. James is not suggesting for one minute that we don’t make plans… but against boasting and against arrogant planning. It’s more a question of how we make plans – what we consider when we make them and where we recognise our place in these plans.

The question is, are your plans mindful of your place in the world? Are you saying “I WILL” or “IF THE LORD WILLS”?

This might not seem like a big difference, but these 2 statements show a vast difference in your worldview and indicate the place that God has in your life.

We are not in control of tomorrow. We don’t know what it will bring. But God does. That’s why it is wise to say, “if the Lord wills”. He knows all about tomorrow. We don’t.

James is very keen we get some perspective on this. He asks us a question – what is your life? Everything we take as so sure and solid – he’s challenging us and asking just how sure is it?

He tells us it’s like a mist, or a vapour that appears for a little time and is gone.

This may seem familiar and it is, James is harking back to the book of Ecclesiastes.

Solomon said, “Vanity, vanity – all is vanity” or in some versions, “meaningless, meaningless”… The word used here word in Hebrew is Hevel. It means vapour. James uses a similar term, mist.

We are like vapour. Here a moment then gone.

Vapour doesn’t decide its direction or its span. It’s not even leaving a legacy…  it’s so temporal.

Psalm 39:5 says: You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.

We may know what we intend to do and what we intend to be, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. A thousand things may happen to prevent those things..

Like vapour our lives are easily scattered and gone.

We know what time the sun will rise tomorrow – we can track the rise and fall of the stars in the sky. We can even predict the weather to a certain degree. But we don’t know if we will wake up to see it.

The providence of God is everything.

You have no guarantee beyond your next breath. To think you have any more control than that is foolish and arrogant. Not only do we not know what tomorrow holds, we don’t know what 10 minutes from now holds.

Any boasting about our plans and our control comes from a place of arrogance and a total lack of understanding. It’s an arrogance that has nothing solid to back it up… just more vapour.

He is our source – he is our provider. To go outside of Him is pointless… 

We have no guarantees beside Him. Nothing that cannot be taken away other than Him. But He is our sustainer. This isn’t a bleak thought – it’s actually rather comforting. Nothing can take away Him. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.