In reading
this week I saw the word “tent” in Psalm 84:10-11 Amplified Bible: 10 for a day
in Your courts is better than a thousand [anywhere else]. I would rather be a
doorkeeper and sand at the threshold in the house of my God than to dwell [at
ease] in the tents of wickedness. 11 For the Lord God is a Sun and Shield; the
Lord bestows [present] grace and favor and [future] glory (honor, splendor and
heavenly bliss)! No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
How many
want to live among the wicked in these days? Here the author mentions he would
rather live at the threshold of the house of God than to dwell among the
wickedness in the tents. Then in verse 11, he mentions the Lord God is a Sun and
Shield. Jesus is our Shield. He bestows on us grace, favor and future glory
with added glory which is the honor, splendor and heavenly bliss of God. No
good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
In this
21st century terminology one sees rebellion that is made of murky
and confused thinking. It is one that is “a world separated from its Creator”.
This is seen as the counterfeit pursuits that has nothing to do with God, but
everything to do with man & his plans. Yes, it has everything to do with
the world indeed. Whether it has to do
with what gender you are, it matters to God that he made us each either male or
female. What you came equipped with is who you are today! God does not make mistakes. Today the
psychologists are trying to remove guilt from our thought life in the very
words that we speak in daily use and in our working environment. People want
pronouns and God wants obedience to His commands!
No Hormones
nor knives can cut away what God has placed in me. No amount of speaking,
gender pronouns, no manipulation on man’s part can change what God has purposed
for the life of people on earth.
Nothing can
change who I am. Nothing in man has any power over me or over men. I can and do know
the will of God and have His ways and thoughts lead me. But man can do nothing.
He is vapor. James 4: 14 Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For
what is your life. It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then
vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live
and do this or that.”
Psalm 39:5
Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before
You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah
6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow; surely they busy ( make an
uproar for nothing) themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know
who will gather them.
Many things
can make one angry! But once you gain a look on the closing door, death’s final
blow, you find that life is short indeed. And what was that which made me
angry? Are they even alive today? Did I really say that?
James is so
right: Life is a vapor! Like a morning mist that soon vanishes, so life is
short and uncertain. There are no guarantees about tomorrow, let alone next
year or ten years from now. Certainly in the last twenty years, we have seen
the Twin Towers come down by people who were nothing more than suicidal. Heard
of a man of another country who took the life of about thirty-three children
who were pre-school age and then went home and finished his work on his wife
and two children. What glory did he gain? Did he find dignity? No to both
questions would be our answer.
Did God
plan this? No! It is many people who have
help from the Bible to see and hear clearly. Yet they take no advantage of His truth! You may be young and healthy this
morning, but you easily could be a corpse by sundown tonight. You may be
thinking, “ Well, That’s a morbid thought! I don’t want to think about such
things!” But if you ignore these things, you will not live your life properly
in light of eternity. James wants us to know that…
We are in
His hands, holding to the hope of Jesus Christ in us, glory!
Gods thoughts and ways leads us home to Him! So, because life is a vapor we should
humble ourselves before God and obey His will. James lights on our short life
and the humbling oneself before God: In
4:1-12, James hit the need for humility to resolve conflicts and have
harmonious relationships where he teaches, that humility with regard to the
future and where is confronted an arrogant spirit that he had observed among
the churches.
To call
anyone a name other than their first
name, is criticism. And that criticism is malicious. It brings judgment to them
quickly! Here James in his daily dealings, he wrote that these people professed
to know Christ, but they were living
with a worldly attitude that the apostle John calls “the boastful pride of
life” found in 1 John 2:15. They were making plans without taking into account
their own mortality and God’s sovereignty. Like the prosperous man in Jesus’ parable,
they were saying, “I’ll build bigger barns to store my goods,” and “I will say
to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take
your ease, eat, drink and be merry.’” “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This
very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have
prepared?’” (Luke 12:19-20).
James makes
four points that we must keep before us: that life is a vapor, that life is frail written in James 4:13-14, “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.” Or, the
text may read, “You do not know what will happen tomorrow.”
How can we
know what will happen ten minutes from now, let alone tomorrow or next year? These businessmen were arrogantly assuming that they would wake up tomorrow,
start all over and do the same again, that they would safely get to the
city, that their business venture would be successful within a year, and that
no one would rob them of their income. They were presuming all of these things
about an unknown future that they had no control of and no guarantees about!
I thought
of those who went by way of a virus. Some just barely coming to know their
neighbors and they go unexpectedly into eternity. Again, you may protest that
to think about such things is morbid and depressing but we must understand that
people make plans all the time and what do they include? Is it for life and
trusting in God or is it for trusting oneself? Is it expecting the world to
prepare a table for them with goodness? It will not happen in the end!
For you and
I, we should be proudly going about our plans and life as if you will be
forever young and healthy. James says (4:16) that “all such boasting is evil.”
Yes, that is so evil to speak of indeed! God should be in our thoughts! God
indicates the course of our Life!
Life is
short, like a vapor, or a mist if you will. I think of that anytime I pop open
a can. We are here in one moment and gone the next. You see the steam coming
out of your coffee cup and in just a second, it disappears into the air. Life
is like that would you not say? Or how about that mist of your drink from the
can, a mist in a moment and then nothing!
You would
think that because death is not just probable, but absolutely certain, and that
it can happen at any minute, and that each person must stand before God for
judgment, every person would be desperate to know how to get right with God.
But, strangely, people put it out of mind and go on about life as if they will
live forever. They can watch the catastrophe of Hurricane Ian on TV, and maybe shake their heads in disbelief! But truly the next day, the door swung open
and those alive knew the potential within them. They went out the door to their
daily routines without getting on their faces before God and repenting of their
sins!
People
today in big arenas prophesy health, wealth and success on every corner, but we
know that to not be truth at all. They speak those who get disasters is not
truth either. They speak they “deserved” that because…… ( and you fill in the
blank) Yes, this is the world but we live for the Lord. Our hearts are set on Him. Amen.
Jesus
taught us how to think when we hear about such disasters. And we will hear of
disasters every day. Some people reported to Jesus about some Galileans whom
Pilate had slaughtered. Jesus responded this in Luke 13:2-5:, “Do you suppose
that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they
suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all
likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in
Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in
Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
We should
understand that these men’s sacrifices specifies that their deaths took place
in the southeastern part of Jerusalem. Jesus questions the sinfulness of the
Galileans and those killed by the tower was apparently inspired by widespread
opinion that such things only happen when punishment was for specific sins. But
Jesus countered them. He emphasized that every person must repent or else
perish spiritually for eternity. How sad indeed?
So when we
hear of disasters, or those human caused like the schools or elsewhere, and due
to hurricanes, then we must make sure we have repented of our sins. Because if we
do not repent, then we will die in our
sins and will perish. James’ first point is, life is a vapor.
We know God
is sovereign. This means, we are not sovereign but only human! Financial
planning is good stewardship if it is done in dependence on God and with regard
for biblical priorities. It is wise to have a will or living trust. It is wise
to have some savings to cover possible future expenses or the potential loss of
a job. The Bible commends hard work and being rewarded financially for it. These people were not planning under
God’ s sovereignty. The arrogant was making plans for their future financial
security, but their plans did not include God. Their trust was not in God, but
in their business ventures and in all of the money that they supposed they
would make. They were assuming that they were in control of their future and
that everything would go according to their plans. Instead, they needed to
acknowledge (4:15), “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”
Any
boasting in oneself is evil. We are not to do that ever! “God
is God; I am not God!” He is sovereign; I am not sovereign. He controls the
future; I do not in any way control the future. I believe in saving and
investing as I’m able towards the day when I may be too feeble to work (Prov.
6:6-8), but there is simply no such thing in this world as financial security.
It is impossible to cover all possible contingencies. Our economy may crash.
Our country may be overrun by terrorists. THE retirement investments may fail but it is trusting in God that is the only true source of security for the future.
In this
list is vapor and God’s sovereignty. Another would be added as that of pride. It
is a great sin indeed. And it covers everyone born on earth! That pride can
promote strife. James 4:1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they
not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?
Yes, that
pleasure thing. We love the admiration of our parents, our grandparents, but we
also pay attention to what they like in us. For one older gentleman yesterday,
his grandmother loved he dressed up in purple dresses, and he was only four. It
got his “attention”. And that is what parents and grandparents are doing today.
They will “applaude” the purple dress on a four year old boy. They give
accolades to that which is not truth, but far from God. They set their tents
far from him for their own pleasures and we use them for our own. The four year
old grows up and is undecided about his life, he is drawn to accolades and
purple dresses where in this life he had lived as an engineer for a well know automobile
company overseas! What a struggle, but he knew himself to be a man!
Another
truth found in James 3:14 NKJV 14 But if you have bitter envy and
self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.
James
focuses on "bitter envy." If "envy" is desire for what
another has, "bitter envy" must mean a person wants something so much
that he is angry and hateful over it. And this is so true: Bitterness is a child of
anger and resentment. Satan takes great delight in burdening our hearts with
these harmful emotions. Unprovoked or quick-tempered anger is a hallmark of our
modern cities, which resound in the night! It is midnight and there is heard
gunfire and then there comes those howl of sirens. No not the quiet of the night for this city. They hear what is not the
quiet atmosphere of nightfall but the atmosphere of hate. The envy has started
a war and it grows daily.
Bitter envy
takes jealousy to the next step by adding resentment and anger, and from it
emerges words that stab, cut, tear down, refute, and diminish. REMOVE! Take them out and it reduces the stature of
that someone to make us appear as the “taller” indeed. But we are not taller.
No we become small, we become ants, or grasshoppers in eyes of those taking
over this nation. If a talebearer or even a gossip wants their listener to
think less of another so that we might
think more of him, then we lose everything. We choose envy, pride, our own
way and leave God.
Envy often
springs up when we receive unwarranted correction and someone else, who
deserves it, does not. We can feel envy when one receives attention we desire
for ourselves or when we fail to receive hard-earned recognition. And those
envious words, those bitter weapons are pointed and they are sharp. But the
target is subtle, for on the surface, they sound oh so righteous, but in truth,
they manipulated in the speaker’s favor.
James also
talks of the “tongue”. And it is the un-tamable tongue. Unruly evil of the tongue must be changed to
the word of God. We are to gain His wisdom and not the world of pronouns. Our
identity is in the Lord Jesus Christ. James 3:17 But the wisdom that is from
above is first pure, then peaceable, gently, willing to yield, full of mercy
and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
From James
3:17 the fruit of righteousness is sown…..as
to The whole is the principle of righteousness in the soul, and all the virtues
are the fruits of that righteousness. Peace sown, when God rules the heart…and
the virtues and graces grow. The
peace-makers are continually recommending this wisdom to others, and their own
conduct is represented as a sowing of heavenly seed, which brings forth divine
fruit. It is not trying to cover ourselves when we choose to not do something.
Practicing peace will always involve giving truth, and that is God. To enjoy
the peace of God in the conscience is promoting peace among men. Those who
continue to have brawls will have the wretched life; who love the life of the
salamander who will share no small portion to the demoniacal nature.
Let us wipe
down our faith shield with Jesus. Let us use the oil of the Holy Spirit to have
faith for our future. Let us be prepared for the gathering with Jesus, He is Gathering for His coming that
will appear. In truth we are to overcome any doubt in God, to His Word, and
remember His faithfulness carrying His Word and His presence to others as we
look toward our future with Him!
At the end
of James is the prayer of faith. There are commands to pray and to worship like
James 5:13-14. The prayer of faith will echo James 1:5-8 If any of you lacks
wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach and
it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, without doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea
driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will
receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all
his ways.
It is no
hormones or knives, it is not pronouns but the word of God will cause us to
stand and be ready. For tomorrow we must know the spiritual understanding of
the purpose of any trail or tribulation, any sickness or hurricane, we do it
with a repentant heart trusting the Lord has His way in our lives this day in
Jesus’ name. Amen.
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