THE BOOK OF JAMES
BOASTING
DR. JIM DIXON
MAY 26, 1985
JAMES 4:13-17
According to Hindu legend, six blind men, never having encountered an elephant, were asked to examine an elephant and describe it. The first blind man took hold of the elephant’s ear and he said, “An elephant is very much like a fan.” The second blind man grabbed hold of the elephant’s tusk and said, “An elephant is something like a javelin or a spear.” The third blind man took hold of the elephant’s trunk and he said, “No, an elephant is like a snake, a large snake, perhaps a python or an anaconda.” The fourth blind man touched the elephant’s side and he said, “No, an elephant is like a great wall.” The fifth man grabbed hold of one of the elephant’s legs and he said, “No, an elephant is like a tree trunk.” The sixth blind man took hold of the elephant’s tail and he said, “No, an elephant is like a rope.”
Such are the partial and distorted perspectives of blindness. The Bible tells us that we live in a world of blindness—spiritual blindness—and the people of this world in their spiritual blindness have a partial and distorted perspective on life itself. In our passage of scripture for today, the Apostle James gives us two teachings, which are designed to help us have a balanced, complete perspective on the meaning of life in this world.
His first teaching concerns our quantity of life in this world. James tells us that, if we would have a balanced perspective of life, we must understand that our life is short on this Earth. James says, “What is your life? You are like a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Our lives are short. I’m sure that most of you have been to Yellowstone National Park. You’ve seen the geyser called Old Faithful. Old Faithful is only one of 200 geysers in Yellowstone National Park and one of thousands of geysers around the world. Old Faithful erupts every 65 minutes (or thereabouts). Cold water descends into the earth and interacts with very hot subterranean rock and the water begins to heat up and pressure begins to build. And finally, the geyser erupts in a great explosion of steam, the mist rising 120 to 150 feet above the Earth. And when you stand there and you look at it, it looks beautiful. You feel like you could reach out and touch that mist. But that vapor, that mist, is never there longer than four minutes’ time because the mist evaporates into the atmosphere and some of it returns to the earth and forms lime carbonate or silica deposits. It’s gone. James is telling us that our lives are like that. They’re a mist. Perhaps they are beautiful for a time, but then they’re gone. And when compared with a great span of eternity, they last no more than a few minutes, perhaps a few seconds.
On July 13th, 1965, Adlai Stevenson was in London, England. He was the ambassador to the United Nations. That afternoon of July 13th, he called his good friend Eric Sevareid. He said, “You know, I want to retire. Or, at least, I’m considering it. I just want to sit in the shade, hold a glass of wine in my hand, and watch the people dance.” That’s what he said. Later that night, Adlai Stevenson went to an embassy party there in London and people said he was more jolly than normal. He looked fit and trim. The next morning he woke up. He felt great. He met with a British diplomat that morning and then at noontime he had lunch at Claridge’s there in London with a man named William Roberts.
Roberts tried to convince him to quit his UN post to take a job for Encyclopedia Britannica. He promised him a massive salary, prestige, and influence. Adlai Stevenson said he’d consider it. After lunch, he returned to the US Embassy and he was there interviewed by a BBC reporter for a television slot that would be shown on TV that night. Stevenson defended United States foreign policy in Vietnam. Then at four o’clock he asked a woman named Marietta Tree, a friend and colleague at the United Nations, if she would take a walk with him in Hyde Park. She agreed, and so they began to take a walk. Stevenson felt great. He felt like the whole world was before him. He could retire and just relax and have a great time, or he could take another job with any one of many outstanding corporations. He could take a position of great income and great influence. He felt great.
As they walked towards Hyde Park, he told Marietta that he was kind of frustrated that he hadn’t been able to schedule a tennis match. They reached Grosvener Street. They turned right. Stevenson complained that she was walking too fast and so she slowed down. The time was 5:10 PM. A few moments later, Adlai Stevenson said, “Hold your head high.” Marietta Tree didn’t know what that meant. She couldn’t understand it. It seemed strange. She turned to look at him. He said, “I think I’m going to faint.” Those were the final words Adlai Stevenson spoke. 20 minutes later, he was pronounced dead at a major London hospital. It was July 14th, 1965.
What happened to Adlai Stevenson will one day happen to each and every one of you. It’ll one day happen to me if the Lord tarries. Death is the final reality in this world. Every year, 60 to 70 million people die on this Earth. Every second, two people die. During the course of this sermon, 4,000 people are going to die. Hopefully none of them will be in this room. 200,000 people die every day and one day will be your day. One hour will be your hour. One minute will be your minute because life is a vapor. It’s a mist. It appears for a second and then it is gone. The Bible says, “All flesh is like grass. All of its glory is like the flower of the grass. The grass withers, the flower falls, and only the Word of the Lord abides forever.”
We know as Christians, those who love the Lord, that life is a mist. It is short. A couple of weeks ago, Drew came up to me. He’s been collecting pennies. He has these little penny books that you place the pennies in. He’s having a hard time finding the old pennies. Most of the pennies he finds are 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s. Occasionally he’ll find a penny in the 1950s. He came into my room all excited because he found a penny that said 1944. And he said, “Look, dad, I found a penny that says 1944.” And I looked at it and I said, “Wow, son, this penny is older than I am. This penny was made before I was born.” Drew says, “Yeah, and Mom wasn’t born yet either.” I said, “That’s right.” And then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Drew says, “Dad, was Abraham Lincoln born yet?”
I thought that was kind of an interesting question, since Lincoln’s image is on the face of the penny. But I explained to Drew that Abraham Lincoln had been born and died long before the first Lincoln Penny was first minted in 1909. Drew didn’t have any trouble understanding that. He already can understand birth and death. He knows that throughout history people have been born and people die. He knows that life is short. He knows that history is a never-ending sequence of life and death. And he understands that, when compared with the great span of history, the average person’s life is but a mist. The average life has very little impact on the course of history itself. Sometimes he asks questions about death. Drew has at times asked Barb and I if he’s going to live longer than us or if we’re going to live longer than him. He’s asked us if we’re going to live long enough to see his grandchildren or perhaps his great-grandchildren. He thinks we know the answers to those things. And I always tell Drew that we don’t know. We don’t know that. Only God knows.
But we honestly believe that Drew’s not too upset about death (and neither is Heather) because they have a childlike faith. They honestly believe with all their heart that death is a door that leads to a far better life, a life in heaven with our Lord Jesus Christ where we will all be gathered together and united once again for all eternity. You see, the world struggles to cope with this vapor. The world struggles to cope with the shortness of life.
It struggles to cope with death. In Brazil, there’s a 39-story skyscraper cemetery. It has 21,000 tombs in it. It has room for 147,000 tombs. It has a heliport so bodies can be flown in quickly. It has two churches in the 39-story cemetery. It has 21 chapels. It has comfortable beds where grieving loved ones can lay down and hear piped-in music. And it’s all designed to help people cope with death. But it doesn’t really help. There’s little men can offer to help us cope with death. No matter how sterile the tomb, no matter how soft the music, it doesn’t really help. Only God has the answer for death and for this mist called life. That answer is given in His Son Jesus Christ.
Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live. And he who lives and believes in Me will never truly die. Do you believe this?” She said, “Yes, Lord.” Jesus said to John, “Fear not. I am the living one. I died, but I am alive forevermore.” And He says to all who believe in His name, “Because I live, you shall live also.” The Bible says in John 3:16 (perhaps the most famous verse in all the scriptures), “God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”
There’s an undertaker in Washington DC who signs all of his correspondence with the words, “Eventually yours.” I suppose that’s true. Death is eventually ours. But you see, as Christians, we ought to realize that life in this world is short. Death is a reality. But the Bible says that, for the Christian, death has lost its sting. We still grieve because for a time we’re separated from loved ones. But in essence it has lost its sting because Christ has risen from the dead and promises eternal life in resurrection bodies to all who believe in His name. We view life as short. We understand that. But this life is just a classroom, a time of preparation for all of eternity to come. So we do not grieve as others grieve.
James has a second and final teaching for us in terms of our perspective on life. It concerns not the quantity of life that we have in this world, but the quality of life. It concerns what we are to do with whatever time is given to us and what God expects of you in whatever years you have on this Earth. And the second teaching is this: James says, “Seek God’s will in whatever time is given to you.” Trust God’s will. Seek God’s will. James tells us that our lives are short. When we look at the future, we should confess that, if the Lord wills, we will live and we will do this or we will do that.
To some people, this seems like the ultimate in passivity. Que sera, sera— “Whatever will be, will be.” But that’s not what James is saying at all. He’s telling us that as we go through life in this world, no matter how short it is, we’re to have a different heart than the world has. Our heart’s attitude needs to be one of relinquishment, submission, and trust. Our hearts and minds need to be given over to the very will of God. In verses 13 through 15, James tells us that God is sovereign and He governs the universe by His will. In verse 16, James tells us that when we live according to our own will we are arrogant in the sight of God. In verse 17, James tells us that if we know the will of God and we do not do it, that is sin.
There was a book written not too long called A Chance World. It’s a strange little book. It describes a world where sometimes the sun rises in the morning, but sometimes the sun doesn’t rise. Sometimes the sun rises in the afternoon. Sometimes the sun doesn’t rise at all. Sometimes the moon comes up instead of the sun. Sometimes children are born with one head. Sometimes they’re born with 12 heads. Sometimes they’re born with heads placed on their shoulders, but other times the heads are on other parts of their body. Sometimes in this chance world a child will jump up and he’ll come right back down. But other times he’ll jump up and just keep right on going, never to be seen again. It is a world where everything is up to chance.
Now, a lot of people think we live in a world of chance, but obviously we do not. James wants us to understand that we live in a world governed by God. God is sovereign. He controls the ultimate destiny of the Earth. He controls the ultimate destiny of the universe. He governs this world by His will and by His will He has established certain physical laws. The study of those laws is the domain of science. By His will, God has established certain spiritual laws in the universe. He has established spiritual laws such as “the wages of sin are death.” He has established spiritual laws such as “he who has the Son has life and he who has not the Son of God has not life.” The study of these spiritual laws is the domain of theology.
God in His sovereignty has granted some measure of freedom to us. We are free to choose our own sovereignty or God’s sovereignty. We can choose to live in accordance with God’s laws or in accordance with our laws. We can choose to live in accordance with our will or we can choose to live in accordance with God’s will. But a Christian is someone who has decided, above all else, that they are going to live in accordance with the will of God. A Christian is somebody who has, above all else, stepped off the throne of his or her life and invited Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to come and sit on that throne. That is why as Christians we call Jesus Christ Lord and King. That is why we are called His disciples and why we are called His servants.
A lot of people in this world think that they can govern their own lives, that they can live in this world by their own will and they can be successful. The Bible says that’s just not so. In fact, the Bible tells us we’re not smart enough in our fallen humanity to govern our own lives. We think we’re pretty smart. Perhaps in comparison to the animals we are. A month ago or so, I saw a Walt Disney movie called Baby. I don’t think it was particularly good. It was about a baby Brontosaurus, sometimes called an Apatosaurus, that somehow (though it was thought to have been extinct for 150 million years by paleontologists) had survived. It and its parents and its forefathers had continued to flourish in a remote jungle beyond the knowledge of humankind.
In this movie, this family of Brontosauruses was portrayed as big, kind of cute, and somewhat clever. Scientists tell us that Brontosauruses were indeed big. Perhaps they were cute to other Brontosauruses. They certainly were not clever. The Brontosaurus was so big that its head rose 26 feet above the ground. Its body was 82 feet long. The Brontosaurus weighed 66,000 pounds. That’s a big body, but its brain weighed less than 14 ounces. It was virtually intellectually bankrupt. But it was not unlike the other dinosaurs. Indeed, the Stegosaurus (and I know many of you have seen pictures of a Stegosaurus) has two rows of bony plates going over its back and four sharp spikes coming out of its tail. It’s a ferocious beast. The Stegosaurus was 26 feet long. The Stegosaurus weighed 13,500 pounds. But the Stegosaurus had a brain smaller than a walnut. Indeed, scientists tell us that it’s hard to believe that that animal could function at all. The Stegosaurus was ferocious, but it spent most of its time attacking trees. Apparently, it mistook these trees for enemy animals. Incredibly, many times the Stegosaurus lost the battle and the tree fell on it, taking its life. It is no wonder that the dinosaurs became extinct.
But you see, the Bible tells us that fallen humanity in the sight of God has become like animals. We’ve become futile in our thinking. It says in Romans 1 that our senseless minds have been darkened. Claiming to be wise, we’ve become fools. We’ve exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men. The Bible tells us that mankind, left to its own devices, would ultimately become extinct on the Earth. Just like the dinosaur, we would literally do ourselves in. If left to our own devices—our own governing, our own will—we would annihilate ourselves and this world with us if Jesus Christ were not to come at the close of the age and rescue this Earth from us.
It takes a certain humility to accept that, to acknowledge that we are not wise enough. We are not intelligent enough to govern our own lives. We desperately need the council and wisdom of God. We need to seek the will of God day by day, every day of our lives. Frank Sinatra once wrote a song called “I Did It My Way.” I don’t know all the words to this song, but I know that in that song he said that when he faced life’s final curtain, he wanted to be able to say, “I did it my way.” A friend of mine named Ken Johnson, who used to be the music minister at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora, was once asked to sing that song at a funeral. You couldn’t have a worse epitaph. There couldn’t be a worse eulogy ever given: “He did it his way.”
You see, a Christian is one who has decided to do it God’s way. A Christian is one who has decided to do it Christ’s way, who has said, “Come into my life, Lord Jesus. I want to live for You.” It is someone who seeks the will of Christ every day, day by day. That is why we say the Lord’s Prayer. That is why we say, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”
This past week, Barb and I, Bob and Ali, Bo and Gary, and Doug Nuke and Dan Sadler from my youth staff all went to a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Barb and I came home Friday night because I needed to prepare a message. Bob and Ali stayed and came home Saturday. The conference was on signs and wonders. I went there thinking perhaps I’d be able to come back this Sunday and share a message on what I experienced. But it is so hard for me to process what I experienced. I have such conflicting thoughts regarding what I experienced that there’s no way I could summarize it now. I do have mixed feelings. What I saw at this conference on signs and wonders reminded me so much of what I experienced in my youth at certain Pentecostal churches. I have to honestly say some of what I saw seemed strange. Some of it seemed even a little flaky. I didn’t always feel comfortable. I sometimes felt on the outside looking in. I have to acknowledge that there was among many of those people a beautiful, childlike faith in the power of God for ministry in this world. On Thursday night, John Wimber (who was leading the conference) gave an invitation for people (there were 2,500 people there) to come forward who wanted to receive the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit in their life.
I kind of struggled with that, but I went forward. I didn’t know whether God had anything more for me or not, but I do want everything God has to give to me by His will. So I went forward. I remember standing there in the aisle. There were hundreds of people there and around me were some people wailing. But I didn’t really notice them very much. I felt like there was a cocoon about me and it was just me and the Lord. It was kind of an interesting experience. I don’t know that I received any new gifts. Of course, that’s kind of hard for the Lord because I’m only one or two shy, except for the gift of humility.
But I had this real peace that just came over me from the Lord. I felt an affirmation of my ministry. I felt His call upon my life again. I don’t know what God’s will is for the future in my ministry or in my life or in the life of my family, but this I know: whatever His will is, I want it. And that’s what He asks of us. Whatever His will is, He asks that we want it. By His will, He wants us to be open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. By His will, He wants us to seek the fruit of the Spirit in our life. By His will, He calls us to go forth into the world and serve the kingdom of Jesus Christ and proclaim the good news. He sends us to our neighbors and to people at work. By His will, He calls us to sanctification and to a great struggle for obedience in this world, that we would not be conformed to the world but to the Word of God. By His will, He calls us to be conformed to His image, the very image of Christ Himself.
One of my favorite passages of scripture (and with this we’ll close) is from the 21st chapter of John and it describes the Apostle Peter after our Lord Jesus Christ had died and was resurrected from the dead. Jesus had appeared to the disciples twice, but they were still confused and they didn’t know what God’s will was for them in this world. The disciples were out fishing on the Sea of Galilee, sometimes called the Sea of Tiberias, and suddenly they saw a stranger standing on the beach as they looked back to the land from their boats. It was too far away to recognize who the man was. But the stranger called out and He said, “Children, have you caught any fish?” And they yelled back and said, “No.”
The stranger said, “Take your nets and cast them on the right side of the boat,” and they did this. They were amazed to see that they drew in so many fish that the very nets could not bear them. Peter looked back towards the shore at that stranger. He wondered who this was, and he recognized Him. It was Christ, risen from the dead. Peter dove into the water. The other disciples brought the boat to shore. They gathered around and they made a fire there on the beach by the Sea of Galilee and they ate breakfast together.
Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Peter, do you love Me?” Peter said, “Lord, You know that I love You.” Jesus said, “Feed My lambs.” Again Jesus said to Peter, “Peter, do you love Me?” And Peter said, “Lord, You know that I love You.” And Jesus said, “Tend My sheep.” And the third time Jesus said to Peter, “Peter, do you love Me?” Peter said, “Lord, You know everything. You know that I love You.” Jesus said, “Peter, feed My sheep.”
Then Jesus and Peter took a walk away from the others. And as they talked, Jesus actually revealed to Peter how Peter would die. He told Peter that he would die a death of crucifixion. He said, “When you were young, you girded yourself and you went where you would. But when you are old, you will stretch forth your arms and another will gird you and you’ll be carried where you do not wish to go.” Peter understood these things. He turned around and he saw the apostle John behind them. He turned back to the Lord and he said, “Lord, what about John? What’s going to happen to John?” Jesus simply said, “Peter, if it be My will that he remain until I come again, what is that to you? You follow Me.” You see, that’s the message He has for you. That’s the message He has for me. It doesn’t matter how long we live in this world and it doesn’t matter how many years we have on this Earth. The message is the same: follow Me. Give yourself to the will of God and seek to follow Him every day of your life. Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, You are sovereign. You laid the foundations of the Earth in the beginning and the heavens are the works of Your hands. They will grow old like a garment. Like a mantle, You will roll the heavens up, but You are the same. Your years never end. You sustain all things by Your word of power. We worship You. Lord Jesus, We trust our tomorrows to You. We believe that You’ve prepared eternity for us. Help us to be faithful in this world. If we live here another week, another month, or 50 or 60 years, however long is our lot, help us be faithful. Help us to serve You with all of our strength, to seek Your will and to submit to it, to obey Your word, and to go forth in Your power. Be with us as we go from this place. We pray these things, Lord, in Your great name. Amen.