MEASURING LIFE

It’s important to understand how God measures our lives.

(James 4:13-17) 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.” 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. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

1. Life is FRAGILE

(4:13-14a) 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.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

A. Remember life is fragile:

* as we plan our calendars

* as we do our business

* as we earn our money

B. To ignore our frailty in these areas reveals our “arrogance” before God.

(4:16) As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.

(Psalm 38:10) My heart pounds, my strength fails me.

(1 Samuel 21:3) There is only a step between me and death.

(Psalm 49:12) Man, despite his riches, does not endure.

2. Life is FLEETING

A. We’re not going to live very long.

(Psalm 90:10) The length of our days is seventy years - or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

B. A 100-year long life is still a fleeting life.

(14b) You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 

(Psalm 39:4-5) Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before You. Each man’s life is but a breath.

(Psalm 144:4) Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow.

(Psalm 102:11) My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

(Psalm 89:47) Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility You have created all men!

3. Life is FABULOUS!

(15) Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

A. Life is God’s choice – alone!

“If it is the Lord’s will, we will live…”

B. Life is God’s fabulous gift.

(John 10:10) “I have come that they may have life, and have it TO THE FULL.”

(Romans 6:23) The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

C. Life is fabulous - when it’s lived in God’s will!

“If it is the Lord’s will, we will live…”

I trust in You, O Lord;

I say, “You are my God.”

My times are in Your hands.

(Psalm 31:14-15)