James 5:7-11
Our reading is from James chapter
five, seven through 11. And James says to the scattered
people around the world and also to us, even the voice of God
says to us, be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of
the Lord, see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit
of the earth. being patient about it until
it receives the early and the late rains. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the
coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another,
brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge
is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and
patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name
of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed
who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness
of Job and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the
Lord is compassionate and merciful. Amen. This is the word of the
living God. You’ll remember from last week,
of course, at least those of you who were here, it was a rather
nasty passage. It was a nasty passage of the
scripture. Come, you rich, weep. and how for your injustices,
the wages you have kept back from the laborers are crying
out against you. And so God is coming and he will
judge you for what you have done. So he spoke last week to the
rich, to the unjust people. Tonight he’s speaking, well,
to the harvesters, to those who worked a day and did not get
their day’s wages. And maybe in your mind and your
heart, you can think of a day, you can think of a time, maybe
recent, maybe not so distant past, maybe long in the past
and the hurts are still there where you knew you were doing
the right thing. And you were just trucking along,
ticking off the boxes, doing what God had put in front of
you. And you were done wrong, right? The rug pulled out from
under you. People piled on you, they heaped on you injustice.
This is a good word for you tonight. This is a good message. Or think
maybe bigger picture, the persecuted church. Persecuted in China,
persecuted in some countries in Africa, persecuted in the
Far East in various places. Now we always think here, oh,
we’re persecuted. They tell us, you know, what
to say to our children and all that. We’re not persecuted in
America, maybe intellectually. Maybe we’re made fun of a little
bit, but yeah, we’re still having church, right? We’re still able
to raise our children as we ought. We’re pretty good. It’s probably
coming and it’s coming with both feet, but we’re doing all right. So don’t think too much of us.
But you know, they’ll, one day not post our sermons on the internet. They’ll one day take down our
church websites or freeze our bank accounts or something. Maybe
that will come. Maybe some of you are young enough
or perhaps God has spared you and you’ve not been through hardship
just yet. I mean a big one, a whopper.
Maybe this will help you prepare for that. Be patient, therefore,
brothers. He says this so many times. Look
in verse seven, be patient, therefore, brothers. Look at the end of
verse seven, be patient, being patient about it. He’s speaking
of the farmer. And then in verse eight, be patient again. And
then in verse 10, patience. And then he uses a different
word than patience. Twice in verse 11, you have heard of the
steadfast. He says, remain steadfast. the
steadfastness of Job. And so what’s tonight’s message
about? It’s about bearing up under hardship, bearing up under
hardship. Here it’s injustice. It’s the
injustice of the rich on the poor. But you can in some way,
shape or form, insert your own life, the life of the church,
the life of believers around the world. And over and over
and over, James, God is going to say, be patient. Be steadfast,
persevere, don’t lose heart. And we want to think through
this passage. I think it’s best to go verse by verse. And you’re
going to see a couple of times the exhortation, be patient.
And then a couple of times after the exhortation to be patient,
you’re going to see an example. It’s the farmer, it’s the prophets,
it’s Job. And then he’s going to give you
the basis for that patience and that steadfastness. And it’s
always the coming of the Lord or the compassion and the mercy
of God. So begin with me, if you will,
at verse seven, be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of
the Lord. You know, sometimes we go on
a car trip and the kids are in the back seat and they say, are
we there yet? Five minutes later, are we there yet? Another five
minutes, are we there yet? Nope. Are we there yet? Nope.
Are we there yet? And the question for us children of God is, is
he here yet? But you know what? We’re not
very obnoxious asking and we ought to be because the whole
of the Christian life is to see the vision of God, the glory
of God, and to see the vindication of God on all injustice on this
earth. You turn on the evening news
and you see all this mess. You know, you see people picking
on others, whether it’s in Chicago or In Ukraine, it’s all some
form of picking on other people, right? It’s all the big people
versus the little people and wickedness. And what will clear
all that up? It’s not America to the rescue,
right? Because we don’t always come, especially anymore. It’s
the coming of the Lord. Jesus Christ will come and make
all things new. He will come and vindicate. Every
wrong will be made right. And so be patient therefore brothers
until the coming of the Lord. So you might better ask, is he
here yet? Is he here yet? Is he here yet?
Watch the skies, look for the signs. We think of the book of
Hebrews longing for heaven and looking for Jesus. That’s the
message of Hebrews, isn’t it? We long for heaven and look for
Jesus, but you know, we like it down here too much. We’re
busy working. We’re busy building and we’re
busy storing. And you know, if it really came
down to it, a lot of us would say, I’m having a pretty good
time here. We like the pleasures of this life. And I think of
what we studied the other night in Exodus on Wednesday evening,
Moses was willing to give up the fleeting pleasures of Egypt
and be identified and mistreated with his own people, the people
of God. And they longed for the coming of Jesus to rescue them
from Egypt. And so God did so in the Exodus.
So what do we do? We’re patient. What is patience? You might say it’s this, having
a long fuse. You can handle the pressure.
You can handle the struggle. You can handle the hardship.
Being patient here in James is a Bible word that’s not used
anywhere else in the scriptures, and it’s not used anywhere else
in Greek literature. This is James, like Paul, making up a
word. And isn’t that neat? He makes up a special word just
for the readers of this little epistle and for you. Now, there’s
a reason behind that. He wasn’t trying to come up with
a new word for Oxford to put in the dictionary, like meme
or text or, you know, all these funky words that are now going
in the dictionary. The reason he gives a new Bible word is
unless you’re a Christian, you can’t be patient in this way.
It’s a fruit of the Spirit. Right? And you can’t say to the
world out there, be patient. They can’t do it. It’s a fruit
of being a new creation in Jesus Christ. And so dear Christians,
new creations, this is a command for you. Be patient until the
coming of the Lord. He is coming and that’s assurance
for each of us. Is he here yet? Is he here yet? That’s a good thing to say when
you’re watching the evening news. or listening to the cries of
all the mess that is in this world. Move on, if you will,
to the second part of verse seven. He gives an example. See how
the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient
about it until it receives the early and the late rains. When I was a teenager, one of
my best buddies would take me and some others with him down
to Eastern North Carolina. They had a family farm down there,
and when I say farm, it wasn’t, you know, 50 acres, 100 acres. It was thousands of acres of
tobacco and soybeans and cotton. And it was along the Roanoke
River, and we would go down there. We’d go down there in the spring
when the shad were running and fish. We’d go down there in the
early fall and dove hunt. We’d go down there in the late
fall and winter and deer hunt. do some other things I can’t
tell you about in church. But we would always stay in one
of the uncle’s offices. It was the old farmhouse. They
now lived in a new farmhouse. But in his office, you know,
he had his file cabinets in his desk. And this was a long time
ago. This was pre-internet. He had
a satellite on the building, a big dish, and it fed right
into a computer and it told him the weather. And every day that
we were down there, he’d come in there about six in the morning
with his cup of coffee, you know, rise and shine boys. And he’d
sit down and he’d look at the weather. Now, what does a farmer
do? You know, the farmer doesn’t
just stand at the farmer’s market on Saturday and charge you an
arm and a leg for his cucumbers and his free range this and his
organic that, right? He does the hard work. He tills
the ground. He lives through tornadoes and
hailstorms. He has good seasons and bad seasons,
but he tills the earth, he puts in his seed, he prays for rain,
he prays for sunshine. And I think we know a little
bit more than James here. We know about sun and water,
and we know about photosynthesis, and we know about germination,
and we know a little bit more, but it’s the same. The farmer
plants his seed and he waits and he prays and he lives through
every up and down, every dark cloud, every pestilence, every
bug. And he waits for the precious
fruit of the earth. Doesn’t James turn a phrase so
well? Why is the fruit so precious?
You see a farmer go out and admire his crop. You know, there’s green
sprouts coming out of the ground. There’s a, there’s a vine growing.
There’s a flower budding. There’s fruit coming. The bugs
are gone. The sun is out. The rain is coming.
Not too much rain, not too little rain, just right. The farmer
waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about
it. And it speaks here of the beginning
and the end of his farm cycle, the early rains. And in Palestine,
those were October. For us, that would be harvest
time, right? But the early rains would be October. The late rains
would be in May. And so their season produces
the fruit of the fields. One of the things my buddy’s
farmer uncle told me one time when everybody was lined up outside
his office at 5 p.m. on Fridays, he said, there’s
only one thing you can count on in farming. The farmhands
want their pay on time, Friday at 5 p.m., and it doesn’t matter
if he had been paid. It didn’t matter if the equipment
was working or not, or if the sun had been out, or the rain
had been too much, or a hurricane had come off eastern part of
the state. They always wanted their payday. And sometimes I
wonder if we have enough angst in our life to be patient. I wonder if we have enough trouble
in our lives to build up that endurance. You know, we got microwaves. We got instant coffee, though
I think that’s sinful to drink it. We love the Chick-fil-A drive-thru,
because they’re fast. And we don’t go anywhere else.
You can get through a 30-car Chick-fil-A drive-thru, but never
a 10-car somewhere else drive-thru. We don’t like waiting. We tap
our toes. We don’t like bad service. And so I think even in our spiritual
life, we don’t like waiting on the Lord. Think of those who
came back to church today. We’ve missed some of them for
like three months. I know how I’d feel three months without
church. But can you imagine all that God has done in them, all
they have learned, all they have faced. And verse eight says,
you also be patient. This is another round of him
giving us the command. Be patient. And he adds a little
phrase, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is
at hand. He’s saying to us, stabilize
your thinking, settle it down, quit falling apart. You know,
we unravel, don’t we? We unravel when our checking
account gets too low or our health gets bad. We unravel when our
emotions are tanking. And God is saying to Christians,
be patient. Jesus is coming. Establish your
heart. Firm it up. Stand on your own
two feet. Stand your ground with the wind
in your face. How do we do that? Well, we ask
God. We pray, Lord, when all around
my soul gives way, he alone is my hope and stay. That’s right. And so we come to church. We
sing the hymns. beneath the cross of Jesus. We sing Rock of Ages, Clef for
me. We sit under the word. We soak
in the word during the week. I hope several of you have taken
up the advice. And if you haven’t, there’s still
time to catch up. Those new Sinclair Ferguson podcast every day, they’re
just five minutes. Things Unseen. It’s the most
wonderful thing I’ve heard in a long time. And if you miss
one or two, you can, you can listen to them. They’re short.
And on Friday you can listen to them all at once. And I’ll
just tell you from personal experience. And of course my personal experience
means it’s going to translate to all of y’all just the same,
right? That’s how it works. They’re really good. They’re
really soul feeding. And in this world we live in,
we need all the Wheaties we can get, don’t we? We need all the
protein, all the zinc, all the vitamin C. There’s so much thrown
at us. disease and distraction and whatever
else. Our bodies are sin sick and we need to establish them.
But the great basis again is not just as verse seven tells
us until the coming of the Lord. Here he says, for the coming
of the Lord is at hand. Is he here yet? Well, it could
be soon. It could be today. It could be
tomorrow. A day though with the Lord is
like a thousand years and he’s tarried these 2000 years. He
may do fat, but it is at hand. And that gives us hope. Eternity
is way longer than our lifespans. Eternity is way longer than any
of our hardships and our struggles. So be patient. Establish your
heart. Keep your eye on the sky for
the coming of the Lord Jesus. And then verse nine, he gives
an interesting command, but I think you’ll see why he gives it. He
says, don’t grumble. One of my family friends growing
up had this thing, I guess it was an apron or something hanging
in the kitchen and across it, it said in one word, quit your
belly aching. It’s one word, quit your belly aching, right?
We need to hear that in the church sometimes, don’t we? We need
to hear that sometimes in our daily lives. Do not grumble against
one another. James has spoken of that before.
Remember grumbling is saying out loud, I don’t like what you
have provided for me, God. And who grumbled? And they paid
for it. The Israelites in the wilderness. They said they’d rather go back
to Egypt and be slaves again, because at least there, there
was leeks and there were onions and there was garlic. Lord have
mercy. But we get there, don’t we? We
grumble. And here’s the danger. You say,
well, it’s cathartic. You know, we sit with our best
friend and we just let it spew out of us. And we say it’s cathartic.
No, it’s actually sinful. It’s actually sinful because
it is against God who has provided everything for us so richly.
He says, do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that
you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing
at the door. I’m wondering here if he’s saying
to the harvesters who’ve worked and not been paid and they’re
in church with their bosses. And he’s saying, don’t worry
about it. God is going to pay you. God is going to take care
of you. He sees and he hears, and he will rebuild your life
in ways you can’t imagine. And these unjust landowners will
get their due. I wonder if that’s something
of what he’s saying. Hey, yeah, you got something to grumble
about, but I’m going to take care of you. Grumble. Do not
grumble so that you may not be judged. And then in verse 10, he goes
to the granddaddy of all examples, you might say, and he gives to,
as an example of suffering, that’s the context here, right? It’s
the first time he uses the word. He should have stuck it up there
in verse seven. Hey, y’all are all suffering, having a hard
time, but he just sticks it here. As an example of suffering and
patience, brothers, take the prophets. And then he says, oh
yeah, and there’s the patriarch Job. Let’s think about the prophets
for a second. They spoke in the name of the
Lord. Remember Isaiah, Lord, who shall go and speak for you?
What does Isaiah say? Here I am, send me. Oh boy, what
trouble. Your call is going to be to people
who won’t see. They won’t hear. They won’t believe. They won’t perceive. And they’re
going to yell at you for what you tell them. Right. Or how
about Elijah? By the end of his life, Jezebel
was pursuing him to death, but that man went through everything
possible. And by the end of his life, he
says to God, kind of like Moses does, just kill me. I’m tired
of this ministry. Or there’s Jeremiah who was dumped
in a cistern and left to starve. Or how about Amos who was accused
and run off. Or we think of Hebrews 11 in
a, I don’t know, a generic way. says that of the prophets of
old, they were sung in two. They were living in caves. They
were destitute. They wore the skins of animals
for their clothing. And yet the world was not worthy
of these. So as an example of suffering
and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the
name of the Lord. We consider them blessed who
remained steadfast. or you might feel in the word
there, they endured to the end. They gutted it out. They sweated
it out. They made it across the finish
line. Think of the apostle Paul. We’re just in Acts 16, but by
the time we get to Acts 28, that man is going to be beaten and
shipwrecked and left for dead. I don’t know how many times accused
and persecuted and whatever else has happened to him. But his
eye was on the prize, the coming of the Lord Jesus, but the salvation
of his own people and the salvation of Gentiles. And we have to keep
perspective along the way. Yes, we’re going to get some
thorns and thistles and briars in us along the way. There are
going to be some pains and hardships, even some headshots. And God
is saying to us, remember the prophets. And don’t forget Jesus
is coming, but then he’s going to speak about the steadfastness
of Job. You have heard of the steadfastness
or fill in with endurance, the endurance of Job. Why is it that
Job takes 42 chapters? You know, there’s chapter one,
Satan comes and says, you know, Job just, he just loves you because
you give him riches. And God says, okay, take away
some of his stuff. And so Job does, and Job still
worships God and holds fast his righteousness. There’s no one
like him. He’s blameless. Chapter two, Satan comes back
from, you know, wandering around on a Friday night, like teenagers
do, going to and fro, getting into trouble. Job, where you
been? Oh, you know, this and that. Job serves you only because
you give him stuff. take away his health, skin for
skin, everything for this life. You know, he’s sitting there
scraping himself with pottery. And then 42 chapters of divine
browbeating and worthless friends. And we come to the end and Job
says, okay, God, you’re God. Your purposes are righteous.
I see now through my hardship. As one of y’all prayed earlier,
we need God every day. Lord, help us if we ever have
to go through what Job went through. You have heard of the endurance,
the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of
the Lord. Until Jesus comes, until the
judge of the earth makes all things right and new on this
side of heaven and outside of Eden, east of Eden in the jungle,
We’re gonna face all kinds of dangers, toils, snares, hardships,
sicknesses, diseases, losses, crosses, whatever else. And they
may come at us constantly. We may have seasons of respite.
We may get through some of them. Others of them may kill us. Could
be the way. And we’re in good company. We’ve
got farmers, we’ve got prophets, and we’ve got Job. But I think
we have to see in the last little phrase of our passage at the
end of verse 11, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. You might could say to any other
God, as if there are any, right? What do you know about this life?
But we just got through Christmas. We just got through the incarnation.
We just got through observing through the Bible and through
our Christian traditions of hymns and lullabies that the almighty
God of heaven and earth, just like Moses, didn’t consider the
riches of heaven, but he came down and made, for our sakes,
he who was rich became poor. And he was born that in a low
condition, our catechism says. He lived with poor parents, they
could hardly purify themselves after his birth. They could only
afford the turtle doves. They lived in a poor city, a
poor town. He was born in, you know, who
knows where, and he endured the wrath of God.
He endured the curses of this life, the temptations of Satan.
And so when we say the Lord is compassionate and merciful, he
is that in his being, right? God is compassion. God is merciful.
But he also knows exactly how he feels, how we feel. We have
a high priest who knows our infirmities. He’s had to establish his heart
in the garden of Gethsemane. He’s had to patiently endure,
well, three years of rough ministry that ended in a horrible week
for him. That ended at the cross, the scourging, the pain, the
insults, the struggles, Jesus we saw in his earthly ministry
is compassionate towards those without a shepherd. He’s compassionate
towards those who are sick and in hardships, but he’s merciful.
He’s benevolent. And I think each of us could
say tonight, Oh, I’ve been through my hardships. I’ve been through
my pain, but I have seen God and I’ve seen these two pieces
of his character and I wouldn’t trade it. And I will ask every
day, is he here yet? Cause that’s going to make it
all better. Let’s do pray together. We ask, Lord, that you would
write these truths in each of our minds, write each of these
practical things in our hearts so that we might be steadfast
by your strength, by your word. Lord, so much comes our way,
but you know it and it’s part of your purpose. And through
it, you are compassionate and you are merciful and you are
a great God to us. So hear us and help us as we
make our way through this next week with these truths. We pray
in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.