James 4:13-17 Go to now, you that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:… I. THEY PRACTICALLY MAKE SELF THE END OF THEIR LIFE. It is this, in the resolution of worldly men, that is here condemned. 1. Not their industry. That is right. The rust that settles on inactivity — such, for instance, as the weakness of an unused limb or intellect or affection — is God's brand on indolence. 2. Again, the condemnation here is not upon their working for profit. It is well to accumulate what will be for our own or others' comfort. To amass wealth is a better as well as a wiser thing than to squander and to lose. 3. Nor is working for profit with forethought condemned. It is well to "go into the city," for there the stagnant pulses of our whole life are often quickened. It is well in the city to put forth the earnest industry of persevering men. A Christianised commerce may become one of the truest educators of the individual and efficient harmonisers of the race. But the reproach is when this working for profit with forethought is all for self. When the streets of the city are busily trod and all the details of commerce earnestly carried out merely for gain man wrongs his fellows, degrades himself, and dishonours God. II. THEY PRACTICALLY DISREGARD THE TRANSITORINESS OF THEIR LIFE. The swiftness with which our life passes defies adequate description. It is well when we regard it as Job did. If he looked on the road he trod he recognised as a symbol of his life, not the slow caravan richly laden with merchandise, but the rapid courier, who urged on the swift dromedary as he promptly carried the royal commands, scarcely deigning to look at the traveller he passed, who might sadly muse, "My days are swifter than a post." And as he gazed on the sea "the swift ships" — canoes of reed, and not the ponderously built and heavily freighted merchantmen — reminded him of his life. In the landscape he read types of himself, not in the rock, nor even in the tree, but in the frail grass and the fragile flower; and in the heavens, not in the enduring moon, nor even in the trembling stars, but in the vanishing cloud and the flimsy mist. Seeing the fact just as Job had thus seen it, James asks, "What is your life? it is even a vapour." A vapour is an exhalation from the earth. We are dust, and at death our bodies only return to what they were. A vapour passeth away utterly. Though we can find the powder of the crushed rock, and even the faded leaf of the dying tree, there is no trace left of the mist that is exhaled by the sun or borne away by the breeze. So the places that now know us shall know us no more for ever. III. THEY PRACTICALLY IGNORE THE GOD OF THEIR LIFE. Not that the men of the world of the first century, any more than the men of the world of the nineteenth, could profess atheism. But whatever may be the language of the creed, the more convincing language of his conduct convicts every worldly man of this heresy. Such heresy ignores the teaching of our text that — 1. The God of life has a will. "If the Lord will." The Supreme Being has both desire and determination; and these two constitute will. But beyond this the will of God is distinguished by intelligence, force, benevolence. A God without a will would be a God without a sceptre, without a throne, without any moral attributes. Yet such is the God conceived of by multitudes. 2. God's will relates to individual men. "Ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we," &c. Whenever men conceive their plans and toils and life too insignificant for the control of the Divine will, they limit the Holy One. 3. God's will refers both to the life and activity of every man. He has a will about your life, though the plans of that will are unknowable by you. It can as easily withdraw your life as it can wither the blade of grass or scatter the morning mist. So your life hangs upon that will. And if you live, your activities depend on that will. The path of enterprise may be blocked up by a hundred unforeseen obstacles, or your power to tread it may, through a weakened body or enfeebled mind, be withdrawn. IV. THEY PRACTICALLY PRIDE THEMSELVES ON THE VERY EVILS OF THEIR LIFE. "Now ye rejoice in your boasting; all such rejoicing is evil." "We have glanced at the boastful speeches that indicate a boastful spirit. Do you inquire, What boastfulness, what vaingloriousness? The boastfulness of making self the end and aim of all; of disregarding the transitoriness of life; of ignoring the great God. What worse boastfulness could there be? It is glorying in shame. (U. R. Thomas.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: |
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