Time and Money | James 4:13 - 5:6 | Troy Nesbitt

Guest speaker Troy Nesbitt continues in the book of James, walking through what James says about our calendars and our money.

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Transcript

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Well, I feel I need to get this out of the way first. I am five foot nine. And then in the words of Pastor Jared, why don't you meet me in the book of James? We're going to continue our series in the book of James. Today we're going to be looking at a handful of verses in chapter four and chapter five. And it's interesting to me that James just wrote one book, one sermon, and it'd take about 20 minutes to get through it. And here at Ambassador Church, we're going to take seven and a half hours. And uh we're not going to cover it all. I'm just telling you right now, you'd probably take 70 hours in this book, and there's still going to be things that you're going to discover. As Jared said, I do work with the SALT Network, and we started SALT Company in 1987 and started the first church in 1994. And we planted our first church because Trisha went to go play basketball at the University of Iowa. She ended up meeting and marrying one of the men's players who's now your pastor, but I approved her wanting to date and marry him because he didn't want to be a pastor. So here we are. God has different plans, does he not? Ambassador Church is the 39th church in our network. We have 30, 40 churches now in 28 different states. Weekly, weekly, just so you know, in Salt Company, we have over 18,000 students that attend Salt Company every single week. And uh this year is going to be our first year. We're going to baptize over 3,000 people in our 40 churches. So that's pretty exciting. Easter Sunday, in case you're wondering, um, over 67,000 people attended one of our churches on Easter Sunday. So that would my biggest dream ever was to see Jack Trice Stadium filled with worshipers, and it only holds 61,000. So we're beyond that. Um so in case you're wondering, how is Ambassador Church doing? Because you're an American and you like the comparison game, doing great. Okay. The average church plant in North America, just so you know, after three years is 65 people. And if you baptize more than five adults in any one given year, you're a top 5% church in the country. Right? And you guys have already baptized 21 people. So I would say, I would say you're doing great, and God is really at work here. Um I love how Jared started off this series, and I just wanted to remind us of James 1-1, because James, the brother of Jesus, who wrote this book, is going to call our attention to the kind of life that he wants us to live in response to his big brother Jesus. And he started by calling himself a servant or a slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Two words that mean the same thing, literally. A servant or a slave means you have a master. And Lord literally means master. Can you imagine this? Little brother calling his big brother Lord. Now, my big brother, I have a big brother. He wanted that out of me. And whenever he would try to tell me to do something, I would say, Who died and made you king? Because I'm not gonna do what you say. And in fact, if you try to make me, we are gonna fight about it. We used to fight all the time, and he was three years older and way bigger, and so he beat me up most of the time. And every once in a while he'd have my arm behind my back, and he would say, Do what I say, I'm gonna break your arm. And I would say, Break it, break it. When I get up from here, I'll beat you with this left hand, right? So, no. What an amazing apologetic. None of us worship our brothers, we know them, they're not worthy of our worship. But yet, James starts this book and says, I'm gonna tell you something. I'm a slave to him. He's my Lord, he's my master. And I'm gonna call you to be a slave to him, that he would be your Lord and your master. I listened to the whole series this week. It was a really fun study. Maybe you should just do it when you get done with the series. Go through James all over again. And I have some confessions that I need to make as a part of ambassador going through this series in James. Here's my first one. I am a yard guy. You live in my neighborhood, I will try to put the domination line on you. But my whole neighborhood is working on that domination line, so you have to work really hard. I get to Jared's house, and I'm telling you, he is not a yard guy. He's like my dad. My dad had the worst yard in town or on the neighborhood, and whenever the neighbors would complain about it, he said, We're growing kids, not grass. I thought, I'm gonna be a yard guy. This is embarrassing. So I am currently in a furnace moment that's lasted 25 years, um, related to one of my children, and there's not a lot of joy in it. So consider it all joy. Okay. However many years. I haven't been quick to listen, ask any of my kids, or slow to speak, or slow to be angry. I used to use that as a parenting verse and a marriage verse. But I loved Pastor Marcus because he said it's it's okay if you use it for parenting in marriage. He didn't actually say that, but I heard it. He said it's all he's talking about God. Be slow to speak in opposition to God, be quick to listen to his word, and don't let what he says make you mad. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because this morning, what God says might make you mad. Today we're gonna look at the two most confronted passages in all of James, and they're both correctives. And in my opinion, we're gonna look at maybe the worst verse in the whole book today. Maybe this is why Jared gave me this text. Twice. What James is gonna say, and he's getting all the way to the end of the book. He's gonna say, Hey! Or listen. Because he begins both of these sections with this emphatic phrase, come now. Pay attention, listen to what I'm about to say in verse 13 of chapter 4 and verse 1 of chapter 5. And just a heads up, here's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about your calendars. And if God is controlling your calendars, and if that's not bad enough, we're gonna talk about your cash. James wants to press deep into our desires for control and deep into our desires for comfort and for security. And he's gonna call us out because there are two ways that we tend to drift away from God. We tend to trust ourselves over him, we tend to trust our plans over his plans, and we tend to value our stuff and our money and our possessions more than we value him. And James is gonna say that is a bad road. In fact, he's gonna say that's a wasted life. And he's gonna call us not to a wasted life, but an invested life. Let's look at our verses together. Start with chapter 4, verse 13. If you don't have a Bible, I think it's gonna be up here. Hey! That's a come now. Listen! Is this you? Are you this person who says today or tomorrow we'll travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do some business there and make a profit there? You don't even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Or what will it be? I'll tell you what you're like. You're like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you should say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil, and then here's this terrible verse. So it's sin to know the good and not do it. Are you a calendar person? You got it all planned out. This is not so convicting to me because I wake up in the day and think, what am I gonna do today, right? But I'm telling you, my wife, she's a calendar girl. If you're married, you if you're if you're not, you need one, right? So she she plans our life. When we were engaged, we were going to the same college, we took some of the same classes. And she would on a date say something like, Have you been studying for the test? And I'd go, We have a test tomorrow. She'll say, No, but it's on the calendar. It's like in two weeks, it's gonna be hard. I said, tell me the night before. I have showed up to classes before and thought, we have a test. Uh maybe that's you too. But here's the thing about calendars: they give us the illusion that we're in control. That we establish our paths. If I were to look into your life and just tell the truth about it, who would I say is your controller? See, it's it's not a sin to plan. In fact, it's good to plan. It's not a problem to plan, it's just a problem to plan apart from God. It's a problem to plan without thinking first about God's plan. Proverbs 16, 9 says this a man plans his ways, but the Lord establishes his paths. I bet if you were to think about your life, it is often those unplanned things that happen to you that you could have never planned that mark best the fingerprint of God moments on your life. And you were just going about your business that you planned to do, and all of a sudden God interrupted your calendar and he changed literally the course of your life. And that was God being good. But what if James is saying you decided to give all of who you are in the future, whatever that is, to God. Look what he says in the text. You don't even know what's gonna happen tomorrow. But God knows your last breath. You don't know who your spouse is, or how many kids you'll have? Or what's gonna be the biggest contribution you will make in life, or even why specifically God created you? Can you see what James is saying? Hey, hey, hey! Stop trying to direct yourself! You have no idea where you're going. You don't have a map quest for life. What is your life? Oh, I'll tell you what it is. A vapor. You see that verse? For you are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. You like wildlife? I love wildlife. Just curious. Anybody know the shortest lifespan animal? Help me if you know it. Gee. Housefly lives way longer than this thing. It is a fly though. Well, yeah, dry. Uh no, it's a mayfly. Their lifespan, adulthood, they're a nymph for a while, but we just call them nymphs. But once they become a mayfly, 12 to 48 hours. They don't even have a mouth. Because they don't eat. They live to breed, to die, to lay eggs, to be nymphs. For sometimes for years, nymphs. But once they become a mayfly, 12 to 48 hours. A vapor. It longest. Anybody know longest living animal? Help me, what'd you say? A torten? They live a long time. That's good. That's good, but it's not them. Good guesses. I love wildlife stuff. You know, in the network, this is an aside. I have ADD, and so I take sides every once in a while. So just here's an aside. I can't stand it when pastors who don't know anything about wildlife give wildlife illustrations because they're almost always wrong. For example, one of the pastors in our network said, you know what, the frog in a kettle, you know, you turn the heat up ever so slowly and you can boil that frog to death. But, you know, if you throw him in boiling water, he'll jump right out. Have you heard that? It's a lie. Once their body temperature gets hot, they jump out. Frogs jump out. And there's not boiled frogs all over the universe. And if you have a boiling pot, you put an amphibian in it, he dies immediately. Greenland shark lives upward of 500 years. Doesn't even begin to reproduce until it's 150 years old. A young one is 250 years old. And what is your life? It is it's a little longer than the mayfly, but way shorter than the Greenland shark. And all of your life needs to be lived for Christ. And all of your calendar needs to be oriented around Christ. Because I'm telling you, what you value makes it in your calendar. And if God is not in there, if he's not controlling it, you need to wake up. You need to listen. Because God, who has made you and created you, he's given you a purpose to establish in this life, he's given you value, he has given you life forever, and you have a short window of time in which you can live to make a difference for him, which matters for all of eternity. The impact you can have, it might just be one conversation that God wants you to have that will literally change the directory of eternity for thousands upon thousands of people. Have you ever thought about that? We should wake up every morning and say, Lord, here I am. Your sermon. What do you want me to do today? Then you get to this worst verse in the Bible. So it is sin to know the good, and yeah, not do it. You know, I finally got to the place in my life where I was I felt bad for sins I committed. Are you at that place? You know, you do something stupid, you get angry or lust or whatever. Whatever it is. You be greedy. I mean, we talked about envying and fighting and bitter envy, and you say, I feel bad about that. I feel bad about sins I commit, don't you? The Holy Spirit bugs you on the inside, and you're like, why'd you do that? I'm a I'm a bad person, right? You knew that. But how many of us feel bad for the things that we should have done we didn't? That's next level. And that's what James is saying. Hey, it's not just wrong to do bad things. You should repent of that. It's wrong to not do the right thing, and it's particularly wrong for you, vapor of a person, to wake up every day and make your own plans as though you are God. Instead, you should wake up to the God of the universe and said, My plans are oriented around you. What do you want me to do today? What's the good thing I need to do today? And I will get that done. So many of us, I'm telling you, here's what Christianity is about. It's not about reading your Bible and praying, it's about listening to the master and doing what he says. I can tell you what it is for me sometimes, and I'm a little embarrassed about this. I get frustrated when I go into a convenience store bathroom, and it is nasty. And I think, these, they don't work. They're on their phones. Get in here, clean the bathroom. Right? Years ago, I'm in one, it was bad. And all of a sudden, I had this thought that wasn't for me. I promise it wasn't for me. Here was the thought. Well, why don't you clean it? Because I'm not the janitor, and nobody's paying me for being here. And you remember Jared talked about the WWJD. Oh my goodness, I remembered that. Guess what I did? I cleaned the bathroom. You know what I do often now is I pray, oh God, please let somebody be in there. Because then I don't have to clean it. Or pick up the trash. Sometimes that's what God wants you to do, just so that you demonstrate that you are under the master's authority. And when you'll pick up trash, guess what else you do? You'll share the gospel. Guess what else you'll do? You'll confess your sin. Guess what else you'll do? You'll start living with the voice of the Lord with you all of the time. A lot of us, we have our quiet times in the morning. We read our Bible, we say our prayer, and then we shut God out for the rest of us. See you tomorrow. James says, Don't do that. Here's what he said. Look what see what the word there? It's evil. Bottom line, James writing to believers, if your calendars don't reflect the mastery of Jesus, you need to change your calendars and reorient your life. Because he wants your good. Hey! Listen, Americans, chapter five's coming. Look what it says there. Hey, you rich people, and you think, whoo, I'm not rich. Yes, you are. If you're in this room, you qualify. You have more than one change of clothes, more than one pair of shoes, you have food to eat. You probably have a phone in your pocket, a computer in your pocket, you have a roof over your head. You know what that makes you? That makes you a top 10%er in the world. So let me just address you as you are, rich people. Hey! And if some of you think you're rich, and this one, I'm gonna give you a hey! If you're really rich, you need to weep, you need to wail. Because the miseries that are coming on you, well, I'm let me tell you about it. Your wealth has rotted, your clothes are moth eaten, your gold and your silver is corroded, and their corrosion will be witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasures in the last days. Look, the pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your field, crossed. And the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of armies. You have lived in luxury on the earth, and you have indulged yourself. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and you have murdered the righteous. Who does not resist you? Are you a comfort person? Are you that person that thinks, if I just had some more money, my life would be good? If I just had some more money, I just I feel so I'd I'd feel so much more security. What makes you feel secure? What makes you feel safe? What James is saying is, hmm, I think God's enough. I think the sovereign Lord of the universe, who I serve, who is my master, that's enough. And money is not the problem. Look what he says, it's how you get it, or your desire for it, or what you do with it. Money is actually really good, and God gives us wealth to enjoy those things, to enjoy what God has given us. Jesus said it like this hey, don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal instead. What? Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Where the moths don't eat your stuff, there is no rust, and the thieves stop stealing, right? But then he says, why, why, why? Because where your what treasure is, there your heart is. And what is James calling us? He said, I want your heart to be for God. I want God to be your greatest treasure, I want him to be your greatest value. Listen, my son-in-law does not fish. So Bass Pro Shop does nothing for him. He can walk in there with a stack of Hundies and keep them in his pocket. You put me in Bass Pro Shop, I'm gonna go out broke. And he's gonna think I waste my money. Man, I spend money on fertilizer and weed killer because I'm a long guy. I value that green grass. I'm gonna put the domination line on you for him for sure. Why? For some crazy reason, I value those things. Because if you look at my finances and you can't see the highest value for the Lord Jesus Christ, I am messed up. And that's what James is saying. You live with luxury, like extra clothes and a roof over your head, and food in your mouth, and a phone, transportation. You indulge yourself. It's an American dream. You think that's what God you think God just wants you to give your best life now? You should read the Bible. Read about great Christians of history. They did not have their best life now. You know why? They weren't even looking for the best life now. Hebrews chapter 11 is all about faith that transforms your life, that gets you to live for something other than life now. Tries to get you to live for life that is to come. You will die. And you're not a Greenland shark. You're not gonna live 500 years. You're a mist, and then you will be gone. Trust me, I'm in the fourth quarter of my life. And it was. But then there's eternity. I remember when I went on my first mission trip, left my wife at home with five kids, five weeks, and uh she was supportive. Tell you, some of you ladies should learn lessons from my wife. I'm telling you, she, oh yeah, you gotta go change the world. So I went over there. Came back, saw kids that didn't have toys, kids that were playing in the dirt, kids that were way happier than my kids, and they had everything. So, you know, one of my kids foolishly asked me when I got back from a mission trip for American Girl Doll. So I got mad. You know, dads get mad, right? It's like, what do you want another doll? So I had all five of my kids round up all of their babies. I have four daughters, one son. I don't know what I got him together because I sure didn't get him any baby. Right? He said all the babies, pile in the pile in the living room. And if I knew the story, I told the story. You wanted this one, you don't even play with this pow, right? And uh, you know, if I didn't know the story, I made one up. I'm a storyteller. We're not getting you no American girl. Oh, I just went overseas, those kids are so happy they had nothing brought up, right? That wasn't a good response. But you know what is the source of your desires? Isn't it all these other things that James has been taught? There's something in us that needs to get out of us that makes us covet stuff that we don't need and buy stuff that we won't use that adds no value to our life. With my grandkids, I'll never forget when I had a handful of them. I got a stack of pennies and a hundred dollar bill, and every one of them wanted the stack of pennies and not the hundred. Here's what the Bible teaches about money. You should work hard to get it. And once you have it, the first thing you should do is give it. Whatever will advance the kingdom of God, do that first. Secondly, you should save it because you never know what's gonna happen tomorrow, but it's a good thing to save. Thirdly, you should only live on less than what you have rest. You should not be in debt to anything. No bad dad, nothing that depreciates. The average American has so much money on a plastic credit card. You know what a credit card is? Money you don't have to buy things that you don't need at prices you can't afford. And uh he said, Well, God wants me to pay my bills. What's more important for me to give or to pay rent? He thought he had me. You know. He didn't know how to break the arm, right? So actually, one of our other elders said, You should move. Because if you're living in a place that keeps you from giving, you should move. Every Christian should be a giver. I don't know where you are, but you need to get started because money only has value as you invest in the kingdom of God. So, what's the conclusion? All right, I don't know. You pick. You a calendar person, you a cash person. Maybe you got both problems. You want to waste your life? Then make your plans, dream your dreams, and pursue them with all your heart. At the end of the day, you'll have a wasted life. Ask anybody who's got everything they wanted. Jesus said this, there's a rich fool. So who's gonna get your stuff when you're gone? That's how it is with anybody who's rich in this world and impoverished toward God. You want to waste your life? Just just live for stuff. Just live for money, live for possessions. Or you want to wake up in the morning and say, Lord, here I am. You got it. I want to live for you today. I want to listen to you today. If you want me to clean the bathroom of a come and go, I'll do it. You just want me to be kind. You just want me to greet people, put my phone in my pocket, look people in the eyes and say hello. That feels more like you. So pick. You a calendar person or are you a comfort person? You like control or like security? Here's your application. If you pick planner, go home today and take your calendar, open it up, and maybe at the top of every page say, God is yours. God is yours. If you're the comfort person or money's the one that James is saying, hey, hey. You go home today and you get out. I wish the checkbook that's kind of old. Doesn't even have that anymore. Get out whatever indicates what you do with your money. And maybe you would say, God, this is a mess. But I heard you today, and I'm gonna I'm gonna change that. Because I'm gonna demonstrate with my money that you are my God. First. And Lord, I pray for all of us because we're in the time and space of this planet, this country, this world, where all of us are gripped by our calendars and driven toward cash. And we hear you this morning, Lord, and we want to say yep. Yep. And we want to be wise and take the vapor of our life that's more mayfly like than green shark. And live it all for you. Help us, Lord. We pray in your name. Amen.