Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to the Kingdom Perspective.

The Gospel of Jesus calls us to rethink the arrogant assumptions of our lives.

For example, as we’ve seen over and over again with tragedies near and far, it doesn’t take much to expose both our frailty and the foolish of our assumptions about life. The fact that a mere virus—something so small, unseen to the naked eye—can not only kill me but also bring modern civilization to a standstill ought to be a warning to us all.

Your life is not your own. You belong to God. You were made by Him. You were made for Him. You will give an account to Him. Your life is in His hands. Not to recognize this, both deeply and continually, is what the Bible calls “worldliness”—and “worldliness” is the height of foolishness.

This foolishness is what the New Testament writer James (echoing both Jesus and the Old Testament) goes after in James chapter four:

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

~ James 4:13-17 (ESV)