March 22 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 81—James 4:13–17

¹³ Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"—¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Devotional:

Presumption is sinful, but it is also stupid. "…yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." (vv. 14–15).

Notice the three verbs — "you do not know … you are … you ought." These three things expose the folly of the practical unbelief of presumption.

First, the practical deism of presumption is stupid because there is so much that you do not and can not know — "yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring." (v. 14). Do you remember what you were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001 when Al Quaida operatives hijacked planes and used them to attack our country? I was on an airplane, with plans that fell completely to pieces.

Second, presumption is stupid because you are so fragile. "What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (v. 14b). How many plans have been cut short by an unintended heart attack or automobile accident? Blaise Pascal wrote, "Between heaven and hell is only this life, which is the most fragile thing in the world."

Third, imagined autonomy is foolish because it can only be imagined; it isn’t real. "Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'" (v. 15). God's Word is very clear — God upholds all things by the Word of his power. In him we live and move and have our being. In other words, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly and completely dependent on God.

Cornelius Van Til said that human sin is like a little toddler cradled in his father's arms slapping his father's face and saying, "I hate you," never realizing how totally he depends on his father to even be in that position.

Again, this is not an exhortation against planning. It is an exhortation against planning in presumption. You ought to plan, but you ought to plan in faith, not presumption. "Instead you ought to say,'‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'" (v. 15).

Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.