Do you recall those times when people “wanted” to follow Jesus, but they had more pressing business they had to do first? Some wouldn’t follow Jesus because he couldn’t offer comfort. Jesus said, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58). Another person insisted he go bury his father first. Jesus tells him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60). Still another wanted to go back and say goodbye to his family. Jesus tells him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62). In Luke 14, one may says “Sorry Jesus, I just bought a field.” A second says, “Sorry Jesus I just bought five yoke of oxen.” A third says, “Sorry, just got married.”
Perhaps you recall the thorny soil in Jesus’ parable of the sower? “The seed sown among the thorns—this is the one hears the word, but the worries of this age and seduction of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” (Matthew 13:22). There is a certain urgency to Jesus’ call upon a man’s life. If you keep kicking the can down the road, you’re liable not to catch up with it. And worse, every time you kick the can down the road you defer all that God has for you and has for others!
In James 4 we find yet another case of deferred discipleship. Listen to James 4:13-17, “13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. 15 Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.”
It’s an arrogant and boastful thing to defer commitment to Jesus. In fact, James characterizes it as evil. It’s arrogant because do we not know Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. How dare we say, “no, not yet, not now. I’ll get baptized later. I’ll follow you when my schedule opens up.” If you have that attitude do you even know who God is?
It’s boastful because we do not know who we are, mere mortals. James rightly tells us, “we are a mist, a vapor, here a little while, then vanishing.” How do you know you’ll have tomorrow to get right with God?
For a time, when I first started preaching, I also worked bi-vocationally at Christian Homes, in marketing. It was awesome helping seniors find what they needed for their next season of care. After a while they inevitably discovered I was also a preacher, and so I’d have the pleasure of evangelizing 80 to 90-year-olds!
But I remember this couple that came to me. They were in their nineties, and the wife had all sorts of end of life issues. She told me how she has trusted Christ, and been baptized, and part of the church. But her husband had never given his life to Christ. He sat on the couch telling me how healthy he was. “Look he says, never go to the doctor, full head of hair, full set of teeth not a single cavity, my doctor says I’m one of the healthiest 90-year-olds he’s ever known!” I remember asking him whether he too had a desire to trust Jesus. And he deferred, “Ah, we can talk some time, there will be plenty of opportunities for that.” That next week his wife called me with sad news. He’d kicked the can down the road one time too many. The Lord demanded his life of him that very weekend.
Deferring Discipleship is arrogant—we don’t know God as Lord. It’s boastful we don’t realize our mortality. It’s evil—we don’t embrace the good works God wants to do in us and through by his Spirit as his people. In other words, we’re robbing ourselves and others by not becoming what God wants us to become. In James’ lingo, we flatter ourselves as being religious, having faith, and all these things. But by our excuses we’ve become practical Atheists! A practical atheist is a person who never actually ever trusts, follows, serves, or obeys Jesus because everything else is more important. We’re professional excuse makers.
Here is something I’ve observed about excuses. Excuses are rarely solitary. Take for example a family matter. Is Jesus asking me to dis that family funeral, our own wedding, or real-world responsibilities to follow him? The issue isn’t the legitimacy of any one excuse… It’s the de-legitimacy of serial excuses. Because where there is one, there are many. If it’s not a funeral, it’s a marital excuse. If not marital, it’s a family excuse. If not a family thing, it’s a business thing. If not a business thing it’s a health thing, school thing, calendar thing, scheduling thing, work thing, sports thing, vacation thing, traveling thing, weather thing, vacation.
But at the end of the day, the reality is, we never actually follow Jesus. The two words I mindlessly blew over in James 4:13-16… do you know what they were? It was the two very first words. “Come now. . .” When I first read these words, I read them in my wife Lara’s voice, as she calls out to our dogs in the backyard. You know how it is, as it gets warmer, the dogs like to piddle around, eating stuff they shouldn’t, only later to vomit sticks/leaves/bird parts up on our carpet. So, at first, its niceness, “Come on pups, get your business done, come in.” But then if they tarry, the LARA says in a completely different tone, “COME NOW!” They ignore her nice tone, but when they hear the change in her tone, they come skedaddling.
When the Lord calls, there is clarity “Come!” and urgency, “Come now!” It isn’t that God is impatient—it’s that the days are evil, and our life a vapor. I was wrestling with how I should preach these verses. The truth is that to a degree we are all serial excuse makers… and Christ is calling us to be legit disciples. I wonder, do you see yourself in the James 4:13-17 excuses? Listen again: James 4:13, “13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”
This is the mirror of God’s Word! How could words written thousands of years ago be so descriptive of modern families and people today? The more healthy and able-bodied we are, the more ambitious we tend to be. Would you describe yourself as ambitious? Most everyone these days is chasing some dream, or some goal. Who among us doesn’t want to make something of ourselves, or see their children realize their fullest potential? What’s your dream?
There are many types of dreams. There are personal dreams. For instance, maybe you want to perfect a talent, or develop a skill, or work on an ability. So, every waking moment is given to self-development. Maybe it’s an educational dream—to attain a certain GPA, scholarship, or degree? Maybe it’s a dream to get on a certain career track? A business dream. A family dream—to be married, or have a big family. Maybe it’s a sports dream? If there is one dream driving young families, it’s sports and activities. Everyone wants to see their kids excel athletically and become that star! At the time James was written, the Greek Olympics had been going over 150 years! Sports have always been an obsession. Positively, Paul uses athletic imagery throughout his epistles to teach about discipline and endurance. But he also cautions us about the limits of physical training. It has value but should never become ultimate. Whatever your ambition, your whole identity becomes wrapped up in it. Are you a person of great ambition?
Either way, the calendar is full today, and tomorrow. And we’re so hungry for success. We travel to this city, and to that city, chasing our dreams. One thing I notice more than anything about the Springfield-Chatham culture… we’re always on the road hoping to advance ourselves, advance our dream, our child’s dream. By every measure, we’re the most affluent people the world has ever known—we can afford our always-on-the-go, ambitious lifestyles. And even if we can’t, we can charge them to Visa or Mastercard. But the James 4 person has a scheme for making a profit, he knows how to make it rain to subsidize his life, and that’s what drives him day and day out… and it’s what drives us.
So, what is the downside of such a lifestyle? Just an observation. If you’re always too busy, and never available. If your answer not just to Jesus, but everyone around you is, "no, but maybe later…” There is a huge toll paid in your marriage when one neglects the other. When dad or mom is always away on the road. When the family is always busy and away. The more you travel, the less rooted you become. The less rooted, the more alone, isolated, away and unaccountable you become. The less rooted, the less you can in engage in truly loving, reciprocal, life-giving relationships. The less rooted you are, the less available you are to serve God. The reality is our always-on-the-go lifestyles leaves everyone around us impoverished starting with our own families, and what our Church can be, and what the Kingdom of God can be.
The Arrogant, Boastful, Evil part is that we keep giving God a diminishing fraction of our life until God practically gets nothing of us. James 4:14, “Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.”
James mentions our presumptuous, boastful nature…our gamble that we will always have time to get the big things squeezed in somewhere, sometime. I’ll spare you the elaborate rock, pebble, sand illustration. If you fill up your life with small things, there is no room for the truly larger things (like loving God, loving people, loving family). But if you fill up your life with the truly big rocks first, all that other stuff can fill in the crevices. Jesus (and now James) taught that instead of worrying about daily life or business profits, our primary focus should be on God’s reign: "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you." (Matthew 6:33)
What does it look like for the modern family to seek first the kingdom of God? It’s the alternative to our self-ambition, arrogant, boastful, serial excuse making. James 4:15-17, “15 Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.”
Don’t you want to change “as it is”? How is “as it is” working. What it can be is we humbly say first to God, “How can it be? How can I start first with the Kingdom priority… with the urgency Christ’s call and His Kingdom deserve… and then let everything else fall where it may?” James minces no words… the evil we are most guilty of isn’t the evil that we do… it’s the good that never gets done because our excuse making lifestyles can’t afford to make time or priority for it!
How do you hear Christ’s call? Come Now {meek or weak}… or COME! NOW!