Life is a Vapor | James 4:13-17 | Faith That Works

We often operate under the illusion of control. We plan our careers, our vacations, and our retirements with meticulous detail, but James 4:13-17 reminds us of a fundamental truth: we do not even know what tomorrow will bring.

In this sermon, "Life is a Vapor," we look at the danger of "practical atheism"—living as if God exists but planning as if He doesn't. James uses the vivid imagery of a morning mist to describe our earthly existence. It is here for a moment and then gone. This isn't meant to lead us to despair, but to a deeper, more robust faith in the providence of God.

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

I'm pretty confident that I personally never owned an Etch-A-Sketch as a kid. I did have several friends who had one. But not being the most artistic person, I never really spent too much time with one. Not only was I not talented enough to make anything of significance, but I realized that the whole process was so inherently temporary. You could labor over a drawing for a long time, turning the knobs on this toy, but if it slips out of your hands or someone comes and bumps you, all your work is immediately gone. Even if you were to get to the end of your project, what were you going to do with it? Make sure it stood really still, hope there was never an earthquake, or you never had to move to another house. It was inherently temporary. Now I've come across some pictures and some videos where people have made some really impressive drawings with one of these things. But still, whatever is made is going to be temporary. That's just the nature of the device.

Well, our passage this morning from James reminded us of just how temporary our lives are as well. We can spend significant time working out details of our life. We may have a five-year plan of how we would be successful. But not even your next breath is guaranteed for you. We are fragile creatures, and our lives can easily be shaken, and at that point, all of our plans can disappear.

Now, as we've made our way through the book of James, the theme that we've been coming back to that we've been seeing here is that faith without works is dead. We are called to be more than just hearers of the word, but we are also to do the word of God. And in this last part of chapter four, that theme continues because we encounter James telling us that one way that we put our faith into action is that we put our trust in God and in his sovereign will instead of our own fallen and fragile plans. And James does an excellent job here, drawing out how we perceive our lives. We make plans, even though we don't know what the next day will bring.

James isn't speaking here against the idea of planning, though. It isn't the act of planning that James is concerned with. The suggestion here is not that the person who flies by the seat of their pants is somehow more virtuous than the person who plans out their life to the smallest details. That's not the point. In fact, you could say that Scripture often points out the wisdom of being deliberate about sorting out the things of our life. There's several passages in Proverbs that speak against being foolish with time and encourage us to plan things out. Planning is a good thing, but we need to do it while confessing that God is sovereign and that He is the one who is in control.

It is essential that we make plans for our lives, that as we do that, we remember the frailty of our lives and remember that our ultimate dependency is in God. While planning is good, it is so easy to find ourselves obsessing over trying to control every aspect of our lives. And in doing that, we lose sight of the fact that these lives of ours are temporary and that we are to live glorifying God and that we are going to enjoy him forever. And while we know that we are not God, and we acknowledge that we will die someday, it is so easy, so easy to still find ourselves acting like we think we will live forever and that we are in control.

There's a classic story told by Leo Tolstoy that reminds us of the futility of struggling after the things of the earth. So in this story of Tolstoy's, there's this peasant named Peleg, who became obsessed with acquiring land. So he goes to a distant land and he is offered an amazing deal. For 1,000 rubles, he can have all the land that he can walk around in a single day. But he must return back to the starting point before the sun sets. Well, Peleg sets off sprinting. He's driven by greed and a plan to have the largest plot of land that he can fathom. And so he pushes himself as hard as he can. His thought is that he can just get one more acre. If he can get just one more acre, if he can run a little faster, he will be set for life. And so he's pushing himself to the absolute limit.

And as the sun begins to set, he comes to the realization that he's probably gone too far. So he heads back and he pushes himself as hard as he possibly can, sprinting like he's never sprinted before to get back to the starting point. And as the sun disappears over the horizon, he makes it back just in time to where he began. But when he gets there, he drops dead of exhaustion. And as he lays there, his servant grabs a spade and starts digging a hole. Peleg was six feet tall. The hole was six feet long from the top of his head to his heels. He was consumed with acquiring as much land for himself as he possibly could, but it turns out he only needed six feet.

Now, I don't have to explain the point of that story to you because it so deeply resonates with us. There's a difference between planning and working hard and planning and working hard with eternity in mind. There's a difference between living for the glory of God and being selfishly bent in on ourselves and obsessed with possessing what we can, obsessing with being completely in control of the future. Ultimately, Peleg's plan worked really well right up until it didn't. He succeeded, but it was for nothing, because for him, tomorrow never came.

And as James says here, you do not know what tomorrow will bring. And with that truth in mind, it is best for us to approach each day as a gift from God and aspire to live for His glory in all areas of our life. And this doesn't mean disengaging from culture or lazily avoiding work. What it means is remembering not only that we are not promised tomorrow in the near term, but we are assured that there will be a day where for us there is no tomorrow. We will die. James is telling us that we need to labor with eternity in view, and that we need to trust in the sovereignty of God.

And James has been blunt here in the way that he's talking. But as he continues, he doesn't let up when he challenges us to consider our lives against eternity. He asks, what is your life? He says that we are but a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. A mist or a vapor is a very vivid word here to describe this idea. I'm sure that each and every last one of us has set a spray bottle to mist and you pull the trigger and you can see the water, but it's just for a moment. Even the darkest colors of smoke are absorbed into the rest of the atmosphere. Even that blackest of smoke didn't last for very long.

There's a song by the band Skillet about this idea. The name of the song is called Vapor. And so the chorus starts by saying, I'm a beep, I'm a vapor. So I was thinking about this passage. I remembered that song. I went back to their 2001 album, Alien Youth, and listened to it. Well, then, of course, it was stuck in my head for the rest of the week. That's how these things work. Well, as it was stuck in my head, I really thought about that. I'm a beep, I'm a vapor. How much as a modern 21st century person does that idea of a beep resonate with me on this idea? How often do we hear beeps? All the time. Now sometimes we know what that beep means but have you ever been walking through your house and something beeps and you have no idea what beeped or why? There may have been a purpose for it but we don't know what it is. For all we know our refrigerator is going to explode. I'm a beep. That's how short it is. I'm a vapor.

And while a beep and a mist help us to understand the temporary nature of life, we are blessed to know that we don't have to look at the mist or the beep of our life and wonder about its purpose, wonder what it means. It may be short, our lives, but we know that our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. While life is short and we should cherish it, we also know that we have eternal significance that comes from being created in the image of God. And we have eternal significance in being redeemed because we've been united to the Lord Jesus Christ. By itself, the idea of being a vapor would make someone think that it's all meaningless, and that the only way to have any sort of purpose in life is to extract whatever pleasure that we can for ourselves before the vapor of our life disappears into the vastness of time.

But James doesn't write from that hopeless perspective. He writes from an understanding of Christ's saving work and the purpose of serving the kingdom of God. What James is trying to do is to foster not hopelessness in us, but instead he wants us to live purposefully. He wants us to live in light of God's sovereign will for us as his people. And we see this as we come to verse 15 here. Because without our loving Creator and Savior, the beep of human life is nothing but random noise. It's just a beep. But James wants us to know that our noise is more than just some random note of sound waves vibrating. He wants us to know that our lives are a symphony that is written and conducted by God.

He tells us that we ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will do this or that. But this isn't a phrase that we should say because we are afraid of God. Instead, the idea that he's expressing here is that we should have a deep understanding that God's plan is better than our plans and his ways are superior to our ways. And we aren't supposed to just say this to sound more pious and holy than other people. Oh, we'll do this if the Lord wills. That's not the point of this. James tells us this to give us a greater perspective on our lives, to help us to daily align ourselves with a purpose greater than our own advancement. A goal more significant than filling a bank account or accruing power for ourselves. We find our meaning and our purpose when we realize that what we do brings glory to God and it advances His kingdom.

That's the point of this passage. Seeking what matters, desiring to serve God, putting His will and purpose above our own. And once again, it's time to be honest about how hard it is to do what James is asking us to do. Because it's so easy for us to focus on that which is in front of our faces, what is accessible and tangible. It's so much easier to prioritize a large number in your bank account than focusing on the riches of the kingdom. It's easier to plan out our five-year plan than it is to live in light of eternity. But the way that we do this is to be mindful of what James has told us in this chapter about life being a vapor and then remembering that even though we are small and even though our lives are short, Christ died for us.

His life, death, resurrection, and ascension helps us to see that our lives are not without meaning. We find our meaning in the fact that God the Son stepped into history to redeem us. Even though we were creatures of the dirt who had rebelled against him, he came to redeem his people, those made in the image of God. And because of the gospel, we know that eternity matters. When we center our lives on the gospel, we are able to have this perspective that James calls us to. That perspective that says, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. Because we know His will. His will was to redeem us and to save us. And so we can desire to align ourselves with His will.

But if this is so plain, this is so straightforward, why is it hard? Why do we struggle to live this out? Well, as we move to the final two verses of our passage today, we see that it's about our stubborn pride. We slide back into arrogance and boasting. We are desperate to find significance. We're desperate to find importance within ourselves. Our desires are to build ourselves up and to do it by our own strength. But because of the truth of the temporary nature of our lives that James has drawn our attention to, we find that when we boast, we are boasting about a future that isn't promised. It's like bragging about a drawing on an Etch-A-Sketch like it's a masterpiece that belongs in an art museum without realizing that the slightest shake of that can dissolve what was drawn before the hour is up.

And the final verse of this passage then comes. And this verse is a gut punch for us because James tells us that whoever knows the right thing to do but doesn't do it sins. And this kind of seems a little out of place here, but when we stop for a moment and think about it, why do we do what we call sins of omission, things that we know we should do but don't do? Well, we do them because we value our own agenda over other people. We keep silent about something because we don't want it to harm our image or affect our bank accounts. We want to be in control and helping others so often messes with our plans and our ideas of how life should go. And doing the right thing means that we are trusting in the sovereignty of God. It means that we know that regardless of what happens, we can trust that God has ordained for us to be a servant in that moment, to love our neighbor. And when we do that, we show that we strive to do the will of God and not our own will.

And so as we navigate this life as the people of God in Christ Jesus, we are called to strive to do his will and not our own will. And a vital part of that is doing what is right even when it isn't convenient or popular. So as we close up with this very practical section of Scripture, I want to once again bring us back to the confidence and hope that the gospel gives us. In our time, there are so many that are seeking purpose and meaning because they can clearly see that life is a mist, that it's short. So much of our modern life is just a distraction from dealing with our mortality. But in the end, it's unavoidable. Tragic accidents happen. A difficult diagnosis comes. Or you lose a loved one. We're reminded that life is but a mist.

But because the eternal Creator of all things holds us, we know that this life is not meaningless. There is purpose and meaning in all things. When we are shaken, all is not lost. Instead, we trust that God will be glorified in all that He wills. And as the covenant people of God, our lives are hidden in Christ. They're not hidden in the temporary stuff of this world that we strive after. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God. Our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life where no one can ever erase it. And while the world is a mist, it's a vapor, it's a beep, the Lamb's Book of Life is forever.

So as you step into the world this week, don't stop planning. Don't stop having to-do lists or goals you hope to achieve. Instead, prayerfully trust the will of God and hold your plans loosely with a heart that trusts your Savior. Remember, while human plans are vapor, our purpose is eternal. Live with confidence. Know this to be true: you were created to bring glory to God and enjoy him forever. Let's pray.

Great and merciful God, we are so blessed to have your word. Because as we look out at the world, we know that what it says here in James is true. Our lives are but a mist. They're short, they're temporary, they're fragile. But because of your holy word, we know of the truth that we were made in your image. And even though we rebelled against you, you redeemed us and you made us a people for yourself. And so we pray, oh Lord, that we would live these lives that we know are temporary in light of eternity. That we would rise each and every day being able to say that we trust your will because we know that your will for us was to save us to conform us to the image of Christ, to be servants of your kingdom, and enjoy you forever. Grant us this grace in our daily lives that we might find joy in our salvation and serve loving you. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website: edgertonfrc.org

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