The Man and His Plan :: James 4:13-17

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Woody Allen once observed, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.” I don’t know if he knew it, but his words agree with our epistle. Come now you who say Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that city and we will produce there a year and trade and gain. Yet you don’t understand the things of tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and vanishes. (vv 13-14).

Men’s plans always seem to revolve around proving to God, or at least the world, how good they are. But God’s plan always puts such vanity to shame in order to remind us we are not god, our ways are not His ways, and He is always gracious to forgive and deliver us from our mistaken ideas of what is good and give us what is truly good, that which truly lasts, and that which truly gives life.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they brought a curse on all of creation. They expected punishment. They ran and hid. They did not expect God to promise a seed who would crush the serpent’s head (Gn 3:15). I would have expected God to erase creation and start over. But he didn’t. 

Instead, He sent us a Redeemer. Even the way that the redeemer ... our Lord Jesus Christ ... did the redeeming did not fit the expectations and plans of man. Man’s plans expect a redeemer who makes and enforces laws, not one who lives under the law (Gal 4:4-5). 

Although the prophets told us the Suffering Servant of God would come as a Man ... the Man ... the God-Man ... no one expected Jesus to suffer and die. Peter even tried to prevent it. We have other ideas for tomorrow, and our boasting about it is nothing but arrogance (v 16).  

But God sticks to his plan (Gal 3:13). If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans for tomorrow. “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). Fortunately for us, it is a good plan for us to spend eternity with Him. His plan is to bring about your salvation. “He chose us in (Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph 1:4). He chose us in baptism to be one with him. He chose us and continues to call us. It is his plan. And ... 

THE MAN WILL KEEP HIS PLAN

(Because) if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that (v 15).