What Is Your Life? (Linton Hall Sermon)

James 4:13-16 NIV – Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.

The Brevity of Life

James 4:14b CSB – What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Psalm 90:10 CSB 

Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

The Uncertainty of Life

James 4:14 CSB – Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

James 4:13-14 CSB – Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

James 4:15-16 CSB – Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.

Acts 18:21 CSB – [Paul] said farewell and added, “I’ll come back to you again, if God wills.”

1 Corinthians 4:19 CSB – Paul promises: But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills

1 Corinthians 16:7 CSB – I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord allows.

Proverbs 19:21 CSB – Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the LORD’s decree will prevail.

The Inadequacy of Life

James 4:14 CSB – What is your life? You are a mist that appears…

The Transience of Life

James 4:14 CSB – You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.               

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

–Robert Frost

Jesus is the Solution

John 11:25 CSB – Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.

Philippians 1:22-23 CSB – For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²² Now if I live on in the flesh, this means fruitful work for me…. ²³ I am torn between the two. I long to depart and be with Christ—which is far better—

1 Corinthians 15:58 CSB – Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Matthew 7:24-26 CSB –  “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.²⁵ Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. ²⁶ But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. ²⁷ When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”