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Teaching Text: James 4:13-5:6

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James
God Will Set Things Right

Formation

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

What areas of your life is it easy for you to be a control freak?

James is New Testament Wisdom literature.
- It is direct. At times, it feels abrupt. It is meant to lead to practical action.
- This is our 8th week moving through this relatively short letter. And we have been saying that James is like New Testament wisdom literature.
- This letter is a cousin to the Proverbs or parts of the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes.
- It is trying to grapple with how people who have trusted in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection should live.
In this text James is pressing in on something that he has been addressing at several points in the letter and here as well.
- Watch out, you are in very perilous place when you start trying to play God. When you see all the gifts of your life as something you have just gotten for yourself, or you imagine that because your ability and resources you can steer you life wherever you want it to go.
He says “Now, Listen” and here is some of what I think he is saying to us.
- Fire yourself from the role of God
- Take on fully the role of image-bearing human being
- There are inescapable time limits for injustice

We have to fire ourselves from trying to do God’s job in the world - this is humility that needs to show up in how we pray and how we plan
But there are still certain things we absolutely can do. We shouldn’t imagine that because we aren’t God, there aren’t meaningful choices we need to make and actions we need to take. - this is humility of doing what we can with what we have
And then look where we are going to give an account for our lives. James keeps reminding us of this. Even the moist ingrained and established injustice has a time limit. God will set thing right. This is the humility to acknowledge that and look towards that day with our lives.

Fire yourself from the role of God
- “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”
  – James 4: 13-17
- Is God against you making plans? Is God against your vision board? Is God against a sound strategy?
  - Of course not. There are plenty of other places in the Proverbs and in Jesus’ teaching that show the wisdom and fruitfulness of planning ahead.
  - The trouble here is that God is an afterthought if anything
- James is not against praying and planning. He is saying the essence of friendship with the system of this world, the essence of sin, the essence of us living with the illusion of control like we are God
- “Don’t you realize what your life is like? Think of the mist you see out of the window on an autumn morning. It hangs there in the valley, above the little stream. It is beautiful, evocative, mysterious; yes, just like a human being can be. Then the sun comes up a bit further, and … the mist simply disappears. That’s what your life is like. You have no idea what today will bring, let alone tomorrow... Learn to take each day as a gift from God, and to do such planning as is necessary in the light of that.”
  – N.T. Wright
Take on fully the role of image-bearing human beings
- At the end of this paragraph James almost seems to change directions. He says …
  - “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. “
    – James 4: 17
  - A prayer:
    God, I don’t want to make plans without you, but I also don’t want to skip this wonderful adventure of life you have called me to.I want to walk in the humility of Jesus and the authority of Jesus. The Lion and the Lamb.
    Amen.
There are inescapable time limits for injustice (or money sometimes tells a great lie)
- “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. u 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”
  – James 5: 1-6