The Lord’s Will – James 4:15-17
Are there times the Lord’s Will doesn’t happen? Can we know the Lord’s Will? Does the Lord Will evil? In this sermon pastor David answers all these questions and explains how we can understand the Lord’s Will by seeing the Bible uses the phrase “the Lord’s Will” in more than one way. It can refer to what will certainly take place. This is the Lord’s Sovereign Will, but it can refer to what God commands. This is the Lord’s Commanded Will. In this passage James addresses both what God determines will take place and what He commands us to do.
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”
14 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.
15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13-17 )
For Further Study
1 Pet 3:17; Dan 4:35; Job 42:1-2; Matt 7:21; 1 Thess 4:3, 5:18; 1 Pet 2:15; 1 John 2:16-17; Deut 29:29; Rom 8:28; Gen 45:5, 50:20; Job 1:21-22; Acts 4:27-28; John 4:34; Matt 26:24, 39; Isa 46:9-10, 53:10; Ps 33:10-11; Eph 1:5-11, 5:15-20