Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2242
“Come now, you that say, today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. For that you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we shall live, and do this or that. But now you rejoice in your boasting: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:13-17
[“It is remarkable that the sermon selected for this week should be so peculiarly suitable for the present trying time. It ought to be read with special solemnity. Oh, that it may be the means of leading many to make the great preparation for the future which only Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have made!”—Words noted at the bottom of page one
of this sermon—read to the congregation at the Metropolitan Tabernacle the Sunday after Brother Spurgeon died—EOD.]
MEN, today, are just the same as when these words were first written. We still find people saying what they are going to do today, tomorrow, in six months time or at the end of another year and, perhaps, still further. I have no doubt there are persons here who have their own career mapped out before them pretty distinctly—and they feel well-near certain that they will realize it all! We are like the men of the past, but this Book, though it has been written so long, might have been written yesterday, so exactly does it describe human nature as it is at the end of this 19th Century!
The text applies with very peculiar force when our friends and fellow workers are passing away from us. Sickness and death have been busy in our midst. Perhaps in our abundant service we have been reckoning what this Brother would do this week, and what that Sister would be doing next week, and so on. Even for God’s work we have had our plans, dependent in great measure on the presence of some beloved helpers. They have appeared among us in such buoyant health that we have scarcely thought it possible that they would be struck down in a moment. Yet so it has often been. The uncertainty of life comes home to us when such things occur—and we begin to wonder that we have reckoned anything at all safe, or even probable, in such a shifting, changing world as this! With this in full view, I am going to talk about how we ought to behave with regard to the future—and attempt to draw some lessons for our own correction and instruction from the verses before us.
Following the line of the text and keeping as close to it as we can, we will notice, first, that counting on the future is folly. Then we will observe what is clear enough to us all, that ignorance of the future is a matter offact. In the third place, I shall set before you the main truth of this passage, that recognition of God in the future is wisdom. Our fourth point shall be that boasting of the future is sin. And our final thought will be that the using of the present is a duty.
I. To begin with, it will need but few words to convince you that COUNTING ON THE FUTURE IS FOLLY. The Apostle says, “Come now!” as if he meant, “you are acting absurdly! See how ridiculous your conduct is.” “Come now, you that say, Today or tomorrow we will do such and such a thing.” There is almost a touch of sarcasm in the words. The fact of frail, feeble man so proudly ordering his own life and forgetting God seems, to the Apostle James, so preposterous that he scarcely deems it worthwhile to argue the point! He only says, “Come now!”
Let us first look at the form of this folly and notice what it was that these people said when they were counting on the future. The text is very full of suggestions upon this matter.
They evidently thought everything was at their own disposal. They said, “We will go, we will continue, we will buy, we will sell, we will get gain.” But is it not foolish for a man to feel that he can do as he likes and that everything will fall out as he desires—that he can both propose and dispose—and has not to ask God’s consent at all? He makes up his mind and he determines to do just what his mind suggests. Is it so, O Man, that your life is self-governed? Is there not, after all, One greater than yourself? Is there not a higher Power that can speed you or stop you? If you do not know this, you have not yet learned the first letter of the alphabet of wisdom! May God teach you that everything is not at your disposal, but that the Lord reigns, the Lord sits King forever and ever! Notice that these people, while they thought everything was at their disposal, used everything for worldly objectives. What did they say? Did they determine with each other, “We will today or tomorrow do such and such a thing for the glory of God and for the extension of His Kingdom”? Oh, no, there was not a word about God in it, from beginning to end!