Faith in Planning - a podcast by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

Sermon preached on James 4:13-17 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 05/02/2021 in Novato, CA.















Sermon Manuscript







If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. Today’s passage draws our attention to a common topic among Christians. It’s the topic of planning and decision making and how that relates to the will of God for our lives. And yet it is so often the case that when Christians delve into that topic that they spend most of their time trying to figure out what can’t be figured out – to know the secret things of God. I mean that often Christians in decision making and planning get consumed wanting to know what God’s secret will for their life is. God’s secret will is in contrast to his revealed will. God’s secret will is what will actually come to pass, as it flows out of God’s eternal decree whereby he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. But God has not told us his secret will. Instead, he has told us his revealed will. In the Word, he tells us certain things that will come to pass. And he tells us, in general ways, how he wants us to make decisions and live out our lives. So then, on the one hand, we’ve been given certain revealed things by which we should be trying to base our decisions upon. Yet on the other hand, it is an exercise in futility to try to make decisions based on trying to discern the secret things of God because those things are not knowable. It is this fact, this truth, that today’s passage gets us to deal with. Today is not a passage that talks about making decisions and plans in light of God’s revealed will. That’s a lesson from other passages. Today’s passage wants us to think about decision making and planning in light of the fact that we don’t and can’t know God’s secret will. In fact, every decision in life, every plan made, has this hearty element to it: that we don’t know God’s secret will in regards to our plans. Let us then look at what James has to tell us in light of this sure truth.







We’ll begin in our first point looking at verses 13-14 where we see he introduces today’s topic. He begins in verse 13 addressing a hypothetical person. He says, “Come now, you who say,” and then describes the person who’s planning a one-year business venture. James here uses a rhetorical technique known as “apostrophe” where you interrupt your speech to suddenly address a third party, in this case these people who are making business plans. Interestingly, he does the very same thing again in the next passage, starting in chapter 5, verse 1. There he addresses rich people who have been trusting in their riches and persecuting the poor. The close proximity and parallel structure might suggest at least some connection. While the next passage will go on to address unsaved rich people, here maybe he has in the mind Christians who would presume to become rich by their business ventures. Clearly there is a financial component to this when he describes their interest in making a profit in verse 13.







Yet, James’ here doesn’t say that making a profit is bad nor is that his concern in this passage. For that matter, he doesn’t speak against planning, per se, either. But he is speaking to people who are making plans. In this case, it is business plans, though certainly his words have application to all sort of plans we might make. So then, while he pauses to address this imagined third party group of planners, I think we should all listen up. Some of us, myself included, especially pride ourselves in being planners, versus the more spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment, sort of people. People who are especially planners need to be reminded of the truths that James is bringing to our attention today. But surely all of us make plans of various sorts and need to hear what James is teaching here today....

Further episodes of Reformed Sermons and Sunday Schools at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Petaluma, CA

Further podcasts by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

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