SERIES: The Book of James
TEXT: James 4:13-17
MESSAGE: “What Is Your Life?”

“Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavour, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever.” ― Timothy Keller

TEXT: James 4:13-17

Q: What is your life? Let’s examine three words that can help us understand James’ answer — (1. Gain 2. Gift 3. Good)

1. Gain (v. 13)

“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.”

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” — Ecclesiastes 1:14

2. Gift (v. 14-15)

“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. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

“Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!” — Psalm 39:5

“O Lord, what is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.” — Psalm 144:3-4

“…human life is insubstantial and transitory, here one minute and gone the next. Illness, accidental death, or the return of Christ could cut short our lives just as quickly as the morning sun dissipates the mist or as a shift in wind direction blows away smoke.” — Douglas Moo

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…” — James 1:17

“James isn’t saying that before we do anything, we always need to say out loud, “If the Lord wills” (though saying it often wouldn’t hurt us). The point is to have a mind-set that says, “I need the grace of God, and I am dependent on the will of God in every facet of my life.” — David Platt

3. Good (v. 16-17)

“As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

“…when God made the world, he made it good, and no amount of being a Christian, being spiritual, ever changes the fact that God put you in a physical world with hands and food and drink and culture and relationships and beauty. Sin fractures everything, distorts everything. It means we cannot understand everything. But sin does not uncreate every-thing…Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all you have. One day, working and planning and knowledge and wisdom will cease, so do them now while you can. Dying people who truly know they are dying are among all people the most alive. They are not here to live forever. They are here to live for now, for today-and most of all, they are here to live with and for others.” — David Gibson (Living Life Backward)

TAKEAWAYS: Questions for self-examination…

1. Am I living for God’s reality?

“If we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned…” ― C.S. Lewis

2. Am I living with a sense of God’s grace?

3. Am I making the most of every opportunity?

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” — Psalm 8:3-4