Facing A New Year

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Isn't there a resolution assuming all the tomorrows?

Don't you just assume them? I've got another year, here's what I do. Just think of what tomorrow might hold. If you were an American on December 7, 1941, how'd tomorrow go? Did it change anything? See, it changed everything. Tomorrow you could get a diagnosis.

Change your life forever. Tomorrow you could be in an accident. Tomorrow. You see, tomorrow, he said, you don't know anything about tomorrow.

How can you make these resolutions that what you're planning to do when you don't know anything about tomorrow at all? Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. I'm going to ask you a question this morning.

It may seem simple at first, but it's important. In this next year, are you going to follow Jesus or are you going to ask Jesus to follow you? Because that's what most of us do. More often than not, what we end up doing, we make our own plans, whatever they are, and then we ask God to bless them. We say, God, this is what I want to do now. I want you to bless what I'm doing.

In other words, I want you to follow me as I go forward in my life. It's not new. It occurred all the way in biblical times. This idea of making your own plans and excluding God, but wanting his blessing. I want you to open your Bibles to James Chapter 4. James, the Lord's brother, wrote this epistle. It's a very confrontational epistle. He wrote it to Jews who were believers in Jesus who were part of the diaspora.

The diaspora was those who were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. And in Chapter 4, James doesn't mince any words at all. He goes right after them. To say the very least, he's talking about their worldliness and what God thinks of it. So he begins the chapter and he says, what is the source of your quarrels and conflicts among you?

It's not the source. He said, your pleasures, the wage war and your members. You lost. You don't have. So you commit murder. You're envious and do not obtain. So you fight and quarrel. He says you do not have because you do not ask and you ask and do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives.

You want to spend it on yourselves. Now, he uses a little bit of hyperbole there. I don't think he's accusing them of actually murdering, but a lot of anger, a lot of fighting and a lot of quarrels. He said this is all part of who you are. And he said you don't even know how to pray. You pray for you, for your own pleasures.

Now, let's be honest. Any of us do that? How many times does me or I come up in my prayer? He said that's the wrong motive in prayer. Prayer is designed to glorify God just like our lives are.

He then says, you adulteresses. That's about as confrontational as you get. Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility to God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James saying, look, your whole perspective of life makes you an enemy of God, whether you think you are or not. He says, do you think that the scripture speaks with no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell on us. But he gives greater grace.

And then he says something insightful. Therefore, it says God is opposed to the proud and he gives grace to the humble. The motive of all these sins and the motive of excluding God from your plans is your pride. That's the sin.

That's what he's after. He says, look, don't you understand how opposed to the proud I am? In fact, if you look at the Bible, that's what the Bible is. The Bible is a story of God opposing the pride of Satan and the pride of man. And when you get to the end times, when you get to the very end of the whole story. He puts pride down finally and forever.

That's how important it is to God. He goes on and he says, here's the solution. He says, submit therefore to God, resist the devil. He'll flee from you. Draw near to God.

He'll draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep and let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and he'll exalt you.

His illusion is interesting when you look at this. He says, submit, resist, draw near, be miserable and mourn over your sin. Humble yourselves before God. He said, that's how long you are now. You go down to 13, 11 and 12. He talks about don't judge each other.

And then the 13 we come to the text. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a city and spend a year and engage in business and make a profit. Now, when you read that verse, I'm guessing, does that offend you at all? Or does that just sound like business? What's wrong with any of that? First of all, that's what they're saying.

Secondly, there's a context here, by the way. These are Jewish believers, but they're also Jewish merchants. They're very, very good at making money. They have always been, as a people, very good at making money.

And they're taking advantage of this. The context is the Roman Empire with the Roman Empire would do it. It set up cities and towns within the empire. They would make the key population patriots of Rome. And then they would invite merchants to come in to do business and they'd give them incentives if they do business.

It sounds just like a lot of American cities or American states. Don't we try to lure business into the state? Don't we give them incentives? Don't we say it's an advantage if you would come here? And so that's what the Romans were doing. So the Jews said this is a great chance to make a lot of money.

This would be good for us. So notice how specific they were. They say, first of all, they said today or tomorrow.

So that's pretty specific. We will go to such and such a city, a very particular place, and spend a year. We'll give them a one year effort and we'll engage in business and all for the last reason. And we'll make a profit.

We're going to make money. Now, please understand here. This is all occurring in a context of a chapter where God says, I hate the way you're living.

I hate it. He calls them adulteresses. He'll tell them what they're doing here is evil in God's eyes. He's talking about this. And he just throws this verse in.

And at first, when you look at it, you think, what's really going on here? Then he goes to the next verse and he says, look, I want to say something here. He said, I want to give you two reasons why this perspective is so wrong. The first reason we find in the first part of verse 14, he says, yet, he says, yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.

Anyone know what their life is going to be like tomorrow? This is one of his reasons. Wait a minute. You're saying what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to a particular city. I'm going to do business for a year, you see, and then I'm going to make a profit.

This is my plan. God has nothing against plans, but you'll see what he wants in a moment. But his whole point here is that he says, don't you understand? You have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. And we don't. Isn't it a resolution assuming all the tomorrows? Don't you just assume I've got another year?

Here's what I do. Just think of what tomorrow might hold. If you were an American on December the 7th, 1941, how'd tomorrow go? Did it change anything? See, it changed everything. What about 9-11? Change anything? You think anybody in the World Trade Center had their own resolutions and their own goals, assuming how they were going to climb the business ladder and what was going to happen in their lives? You think they had it all planned out?

It didn't work that way, did it? Tomorrow, you could get a diagnosis. Change your life forever. Tomorrow, you could be in an accident. Tomorrow, you could find out your company's downsizing and starting with you. Tomorrow. You see, tomorrow, he said, you don't know anything about tomorrow.

How can you make these resolutions that what you're planning to do when you don't know anything about tomorrow at all? Yeah, that's kind of the way we are. There's another thing that he says here, though, that's quite fascinating. He says in the second part of the verse, he says, You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then you vanish away.

You want to know what God thinks about your life? There it is. You're a vapor.

You're gone. It's just the way it works. You and I have no control on the brevity of life. Happens over and over again. You know, when you get to Genesis four, the great theme of that wonderful chapter is three words and he died and he died and he died and he died.

Just goes on and on ever since the fall. That was the chapter that talks about our fate. And he died. This is a time of year, by the way. And my my wife, she doesn't like this part of the entertainment business, but she happened to see it and mentioned it to me. I was fortunate enough to miss it. This is the end of the year when they always tell you on TV, all the celebrities had died last year.

You ever notice that they just go through celebrity after celebrity after celebrity? He died. She died. He died. She died. He died. She died. But think how many of us in our celebrities died this last year. A lot of people died in this church last year. And he died. He said, don't you understand that? That's what life is like.

You find us all the way through the Bible. First Chronicles 29, Job 7, Job 9, Job 14, Psalm 39, Psalm 102, Psalm 103, all talking about the brevity of life. Job said it's faster than a weaver shuttle. That's the fastest thing he ever saw move. He said life's faster than that. David said, you know, I think my life's like just the width of my hand. That's life.

That's your life. You see, we have no we have no understanding or no guarantees of how brief life can be. And we think when we're young that it's not brief. You see, when you're young, you just keep thinking, man, it's just way out there. You know, I mean, you've got grandparents, maybe great grandparents.

It's way out there. The older you get, the more you understand how short life is. You see, it's just a vapor and it doesn't really matter.

We think that if you really live a long time, it's great. It is in that sense, but it's brief. This this concept that you have, he said, it doesn't make a lot of sense at all. Hold your place there and go with me to Luke Chapter 12. Let Jesus speak to this. Luke 12, verse 16. It says he told them a parable when he said this on land, the land of a rich man was very productive.

That's how you measured wealth in those days. And he began reasoning to himself and he said, now, what's the pronouns here? What shall I do? Since I have no place to store my crops. In other words, I got more money than I know what to do with.

What should I do? Then he said, this is what I will do. This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will store all my grain and 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.

What is Jesus describing here? The American dream. That's the American dream. You just keep working. You keep investing. You keep saving. You just keep going, keep going.

And if you keep going and you get enough, then you can retire and splendor and then live out your golden years. Maybe. Maybe not. You don't have any control over that. Notice that Jesus said God said to him, you fool. That's what God. Now, you know, he's not a fool. He's a bright man.

He's made a lot of money. God says, you fool. He said this very night, your soul was required of you. And now he says, who will own what you have prepared? Spend your whole life accumulating stuff for yourself. That's your plan. And then you're dead. And then the kids and grandkids fight over it.

Spend it in Vegas. And that's that. I mean, it's just life. And notice God calls him a fool. Now, God's not saying he's a fool because of the way he did business.

He's a fool because he excluded God from all this. I, my, I, my, I, my, this is what I've done. This is what my, this is mine. God says, you don't get it.

You don't get it at all. Those I's and my's in Isaiah. When Isaiah is describing the fall of Satan, he says five times, I will be like the Most High. I will sit on the throne.

I. That's exactly what happens when you plan without God. You're just sitting on your own throne.

You're assuming things you can't possibly assume. Now back to James. I'll skip and go to verse 16 first. He says, but as it is, you boast in your arrogance.

Notice what God calls planning your future without God. You boast in your arrogance. The word boast, by the way, is an interesting word. It's cow chamae, cow chamae in Greek, and it means to be loud mouth. He said, you boast in your arrogance.

Alazonia is the word. It means to wander about or an empty pretense. You boast in your empty pretense. What you're going to do, he said, as it is, you boast in your arrogance. Now watch, all such boasting is evil. What an amazing word for just describing some guys that said, we're just going to go to a city. We're going to do some business.

We're going to make money. God said it's evil. In fact, when he talks about all the other sins from chapter four through that verse, he doesn't call any of them as evil as he calls this. How evil can you be? It's amazing. It's the word punaris, and punaris is the word to describe the evil one, which is Satan.

He said, that's what your boasting is. It's evil. It's like, golly, I had no idea. You see, it's all rooted in our pride. And it affects all of us for all time. I mean, Sinatra saying, I did it my way. And people love it. And I like the song myself. But the point is, the message is extremely anti-Scripture. I'm doing it my way.

And we applaud that. Think of William Ernest Henley's tremendous poem in our culture called Invictus. You'll know it when I get to the end.

This is what he wrote. He said, out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my soul. That's exactly what's described here.

We champion that. And see, for an unbeliever, I understand it. But for a believer in Christ, there's no place for this whatsoever.

And it's not new. Turn with me back to Isaiah 47. Isaiah wants to write about the great Babylonian empire. The great Babylonian empire. The greatest empire in the world.

And guess what it said about itself, what Rome said about itself, what all of us in every great civilization will say. We're unconquerable. Nothing can stop us. There is no force on earth that can stop us. We're the Babylonians.

So Isaiah, 700 years before Christ, starting in verse 7, says this. Yet you said, I shall be queen forever. These things you did not consider. Now remember the outcome of them.

You forgot something. Now then, hear this, you sensual one who dwells securely, who says in your heart, I am and there is no one beside me. I shall not sit as a widow, nor, he said, know the loss of children. But these two things shall come on you suddenly in one day.

Loss of children and widowhood. They shall come upon you in full measure. In spite of your many sorceries, in spite of the great power of your spells, you felt secure in your wickedness and said, no one sees me. Your wisdom and your knowledge, they have deluded you.

For you have said in your heart, I am and there is no one besides me. And the Babylonian empire collapsed. This happens on the macro. But even on the micro, we struggle with the same idea. Now let's go back to James. And the solution is very simple. It's just one little verse. And it starts with the word instead in verse 15. Instead. He said, let me offer you the solution to this.

Instead, you ought to say. If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that. By the way, you can't use this as a cliche. OK, I'll start it. If the Lord wills and OK, that'd be fine. And I did it.

Now you have to believe this. I make no plans other than his. You see, if the Lord wills becomes an extremely important thing. Remember Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane? He knew exactly his plan.

He knew where he was going. Then he had to face the idea of being judged to sit on the cross by a holy God. And he said, Father, let this cup pass from me. But not my will be not yours. You see, if the Lord wills, he said often, he said, I've come not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. You see, and for us as children of God, that's what he is saying. If the Lord wills. You see, if the Lord wills. He says, we will live and we will do this or that. One thing I find interesting in his past week as I was reading in the Book of Acts and in some of the Pauline epistles, and every time Paul had a decision or a choice he made, he always used these words. If he's saying to the Church of Philippi, I'd like to come and visit you if the Lord wills. If there's something he wants to do, he said, I'd like to do this if God permits. In other words, he lived by that code. He made his plans, but he never made any of them without the exclusion of God. If the Lord wills. You see, if the Lord wills. That's the way this works in his point. And by the way, it covered him this whole way in his life. The first time he was arrested and could have been beheaded then, he had total peace because his whole view was, look, I know you have the authority to execute me and you will if the Lord wills. But if he doesn't, you won't.

And they didn't, and he went out again. It's if the Lord wills. You see, these are my plans, if the Lord wills.

This becomes extremely important. As I face a new year, here's my resolution for the year. I resolve that all my resolutions will have the words, if the Lord wills in them. If the Lord wills.

There's something else too about this that I find interesting. Once I understand if the Lord wills is the most important thing, my resolutions are already made. You see, what do we mean by that? He speaks to me through this. He speaks to you.

Guess what he tells me in this? What he wills. You see, he tells me what he wills. There's my resolutions right here. They're all of the commands of Scripture.

That's my resolutions. He tells me everything I need to know. He tells me what kind of pastor I need to be, what kind of husband I need to be, what kind of friend I need to be, what kind of father I need. He tells me everything. He said, this is what you can have. This is my will for you.

You see, he tells me what I can watch and not watch, what my conversation should be He tells me all those. And the blessing of it all is that if I do all those, I don't get shortchanged. I get what Jesus called the abundant life. I get a great life out of this. You see, it's an easy thing. You want to have a great life that the Lord will in your life.

And it's more than that. It's not just that the Lord wills it, and then somehow you have to have the internal fortitude to figure out how to do it. If you think that, you'll fail for sure. It'll be like all other resolutions.

You'll fail. But in this case, he says, and by the way, I will give you the enablement to carry out my will. That's why Paul said, I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

So God not only tells me what to do, he gives me the power to do it. Those are resolutions worth keeping. You see, that's the resolution worth keeping. If you keep those resolutions in the next year, I guarantee you, from a spiritual point of view, and a point of view of joy and peace and hope in your life, it'll be the best year you've ever had. Kind of end right where I started. Are you going to follow Jesus Christ in the next year? Are you going to ask Jesus Christ to follow you? Are you going to follow Jesus Christ? Are you going to follow Jesus Christ in the next year? Are you going to follow Jesus Christ? Are you going to follow Jesus Christ?