Continuing in the book of James This time at chapter 5 James 5 we’re reading verses 7 to 12 this morning Before we hear from the Lord Let’s go to him once more in prayer and ask his blessing upon the reading the preaching and the hearing of that word. Let’s pray Our Heavenly Father we come again before you Lord we confess that you’ve told us, that you have spoken to us in various times, in various ways, to us, your people, throughout history, but in these last days, you’ve done so in your Son, the incarnate Word. And we pray, Lord, that you would open the mouth of your servant now, this morning, to proclaim that Word and the power of the Spirit. Father, we pray that it would go forth and that your people would receive it with willing hearts, Lord. Pray that you would give us all eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts that are open to receive that. Father, we pray that you would have your way with us, Lord, even as it goes forth. Lord, we confess that we do not live by bread alone, but indeed by every word that comes forth from your mouth, and so we pray, Lord, give us an appetite for this word. We ask all this through Christ, our Lord. It’s in his name that we pray, amen. Amen, James chapter five, starting verse seven, James 5, 7, please give your full attention. This is the word of our God. 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 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’ve seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. But above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth, by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so you may not fall under condemnation. So for the reading of God’s word. As I was thinking through this text and preparing for this passage to preach this morning to you, I was reminded of a story that I had heard about a seminary student that was late for class. And the seminary student tells this story, and this is in the 19th century of old Princeton. And the seminary student was late for class, and he went to the dean, and he was passionately explaining why he was late. And he was telling the dean that he was almost forced off the road on the ride to school down a dangerous canyon gorge. And he was telling him how the Lord spared his life, and he was spared by the Lord’s merciful providence, and he’s praising God for his sovereignty in the student’s life in saving and protecting him. The dean, rather than high-fiving the student and giving him an amen and agreeing with him, the dean chastised the student for taking God’s sovereign protection for granted every other day. that the student didn’t almost get ran off the road down a canyon, and for taking for granted God’s sovereignty in his control and keeping the student safe. And we get the humor of this, but also the point, right? God is sovereign, right? Not only in the big sensational things of life, but in every mundane detail of our lives. And of course, when I think about this story, my mind goes to the fact that the accident that almost happened that the student avoided was a traffic accident, right? And that makes me think of the truth of God’s sovereignty extending even into the traffic that I find myself in every day. And that has been and is one of the most challenging things for me. The great reformer talked about our spouses being put in our lives, and we are a source one another for our sanctification. And this is certainly true that we are sanctified by the Lord in using other drivers, bad drivers on the road. And it’s because traffic is where the Lord challenges at least me most and reveals my lack of patience. And patience is key for our text this morning, right? The Lord through James has been giving us a warning against indifference, right? You recall last week, he’s been warning against this apathy of the eternal, indifference towards ultimate, right? Eschatological things, eschatological indifference. And he’s warning them to keep an eternal perspective and to not lose, not to lose sight of the end, last, ultimate things in their lives. This is not all there is, right, is the point that he’s making. He’s trying to drive this home. The suffering that we go through is not our final chapter. It’s not the final chapter of our lives. These bodies which break down and decay day by day, moment by moment, seemingly at an accelerated pace, they are not our end. They are not our final condition. And those of us who suffer in these bodies, praise God and take great joy in that reality as we’re reminded of them. And you know, even the greatest joys that we have here, they’re not the greatest joys that we will ever have, right? There is more. There is more. There is freedom from this suffering. There is freedom from this busted, broken down body that we have. There’s freedom from oppression and mistreatment in this world. There are joys beyond our ability even to imagine that await for us in the eschaton, right, the n-word and upward final state in glory with Jesus following his glorious return. And in his warning, James, for us this morning, he’s giving an encouragement to suffering believers. in encouragement to believers who suffer. In verses seven to 12, he turns to the suffering people of God, the poor of the earth, and he turns to those who need to be encouraged. They need to be encouraged to take on an attitude of humility and patience in their suffering, in their endurance. And he turns to those who need to be encouraged, and he talks about this humility and patience that must attend the lives of the believers that he’s talking to. These are qualities that are in glaring contrast with what he’s just talked about in the passage before this. Glaring contrast of the earthly-minded perspective of the rich. And in verses seven to 12, the poor believers, right, who are suffering at the hands of the wicked rich, they’re also tempted, right? And he’s warning against them as well. They’re tempted towards like the rest, eschatological indifference, indifference or apathy for the eternal, for ultimate things, either by wanting to take vengeance, take revenge upon the rich or oppressing them, or by grumbling, grumbling against one another, their brothers in Christ. Instead, we read that they are and we are in need of being patient until the coming of the Lord. And that’s how this passage unfolds for us. this morning, verses 7 to 12. And you see how the argument, right, as we’ve been going through and as we’ve been dutifully tracking verse by verse, how this argument has been escalating and gaining momentum. James, in the last section of chapter 4, verses 13 to 17, he began by warning the wealthy merchants, remember, who are believers. He’s warning them against the temptation of trusting in their own ability. and their own planning for the future. And they’re putting all of their hope in the future, their lives that are a vapor in a future that isn’t out of their control. And he reminded them that they are unsovereign, right? They are not sovereign. They are not ultimately in control of those things, and that they need to hold their plans in their life with a loose grip, with an open hand, because the Lord will change that grip. They must be reminded, in light of the eschaton, right, the end things, an eternal perspective, that their life is but a vapor on this earth. And then in verses one to six of chapter five, recall, he turns up the eschatological heat, as it were, right? He turns it up a couple of notches, right? They are not to boast in themselves, right? The word comes to these unbelieving rich, right? They’re not to boast in themselves, right? And they’re not only not to boast in themselves, but their hearts have become, what? Remember, idolatrously wicked. and idolatrously wedded to their finances, right, to their money. And they’ve taken advantage of the week, they’ve withhold their pay, and they’ve even murdered the innocents. And now James tells us, Now that he’s reminded us about ultimate, last things, and he’s restored our perspective in telling us about the destruction of the wicked in verses one to six, he returns now to exhorting believers to be consistent, to endure, to be patient. right, having roused our awareness, right, having roused the awareness of our eschatological consciences, right, our consciences related to end things, to ultimate things, we’re now encouraged, right, through James, as those who are suffering at the hands of the wicked rich, to be patient until the coming of the Lord, until the last day, until the day of the Lord. We must not take matters into our own hands. He says, we must wait for the Lord to come and to set things right because that is his promise that he will do so. And we look at this passage and we see that that word patience, right, that indeed is a theme of this whole section. He uses it four times in this paragraph. Endurance, he uses half as many times, twice. And these two ideas, patience and endurance, are thematic of the whole paragraph. They are the theme. And indeed, James began his letter with this very theme, and now he’s returning to it at the end, so to speak, to bookend, right? To open and close with this idea of patience. And he says in verses seven and eight, be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. And he points to the farmer, he says, see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and late rains. You also be patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand, right? The farmer can prepare the field, he can sow the seed, but ultimately what? Ultimately, he must wait upon God for the rain to come, the early and the later rains, which are so essential to a good harvest, as I’m told by those who know such things. And on what ground does he say we are to be patient and to endure like the farmer? What is the ground or the basis which we are to do so? On what basis are we to strengthen our hearts, establish our hearts, The motivation for patience, you see, is the certainty of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We do ourselves a disservice when we let this be pushed out of our mind. When we don’t have this always in the front of our minds, the reality and the truth that Christ is coming again. He is coming. to usher in the final stage, right? Everything happens when he comes, right? That’s the eschatology that we have. When Christ comes, everything happens. It is glorious indeed, right? The motivation for that patience is the certainty of that second coming of Christ. And we see this in verse eight, where he says, for the coming of the Lord is near, is near, right? And this is encouraging. I don’t think just for myself, but I think if you were to think about this for any amount of time, you would confess and acknowledge that our hearts are so often weak. We’re weak, we lack courage and strength, right? We are fearful and feeble to continue on slogging through the repetitious, tedious parts of life, the seemingly unproductive, unhappening things of life, like the task of the farmer just trudges away. And it can be discouraging, it can even be defeating. from an earthly perspective, right? From an earthly perspective, or blind or indifference to the last day, the glorious time, the end time, the ultimate time. It seems like what’s the point of life? Right, I’m just like Sisyphus, killing myself, painfully pushing that rock constantly up the hill, only have it roll back to the bottom again, and just start all over. And all of this, right, with the collapse of civilization, it seems, and record high rising, crushing inflation, and all the rest. And it can be brutal at times. It can be brutal, brothers and sisters. And it doesn’t take special talent to feel defeated when our vision is locked in to this life alone. When our vision is locked in to this life. When we’ve allowed ourselves to have eternal apathy, right, apathy for the eternal. It can be painful and it can be discouraging. But if we only what? If we only remember that the coming of the Lord is near. It is near, Scripture tells us. Then we can strengthen our hearts and we can press on with renewed energy and joy and zeal, laboring with joy in the harvest fields of the Lord. What a life-saving, truly, difference an eternal perspective makes. when we have our perspective corrected, right? And awareness and grounding and ultimate things. We have our minds so tethered to this earth that we forget these things. We allow ourselves to believe that this is all there is, that it’s not all that there is. the Lord will return. This broken down painful body that I live in is not the final state of this body, right? Nor is it for you. You’ll have a glorious resurrected body when the Lord returns. What a glorious truth for us to remember. Life-saving difference indeed. And what is the nearest of the Lord actually coming? What does it actually mean? It’s about chronology. We talked about eschatology, end things. We erroneously think that that’s just merely the last part of a timeline of history, but it’s not. It’s also ultimate things. It’s inward, but it’s also upward when we talk about final, ultimate things. And it’s not merely the nearness of the Lord’s coming, not merely chronological nearness. It’s a spiritual nearness. And this is due to the overlapping two-age construction of the New Testament we talked about. We live in the overlap of the ages, the time between the times. It is the absolute certainty, the knowledge that this present age is already on its way out. It’s already on its way out. And that the age to come has already been set into motion. This is what spurs us on in our service to the Lord, the reality of these things. We have something that the farmer never had, and that’s 100% certainty of the coming of the Lord. It will come. We know what will happen. That farmer has a lot of faith. He does not know whether the Lord will bless that crop and whether it will come up as he plans and desires and works so hard for. But we know because we have the promise that the Lord will return and that all of this will be made new, right? And we have that promise from Revelation, the end of Revelation, that the new heaven and new earth will come and all suffering and mourning and crying and tears will be wiped away, eradicated forever. What a glorious reality for us who suffer And that is all of us. The refreshing rains are coming, 100% certainty, they are coming. And the seed that we have planted will produce a certain harvest at the end of the age. And then in verse nine, James applies the certainty of the second coming in another area. Whenever we face difficult circumstances and trials, what do we do? We often grumble. We often grumble and we often do so against those closest to us, right? It is a sad fact that we easily hurt those who are closest to us, right? And we hurt them the worst. We grumble against those who are close to us, particularly our brothers and sisters in Christ, right? And James warns against this by reminding us that the footsteps of the Lord Jesus can be heard already coming down the hallway to knock on the door and to wrap it all up. That’s a glorious thing. He reminds us and he warns us against this grumbling, this complaining. And when he comes, what will Jesus find? Will we be ashamed of the quarreling and backbiting that he finds in our midst? May we not be a congregation of people who grumble against one another, who fight and badmouth one another. Let us always, brothers and sisters, submit to Scripture, right? Matthew 18 in particular. in this regard. And this, sadly, is a chapter that far too many professing Christians totally ignore when they find offense or feel they need to blast another believer. Let us follow that passage which tells us if we have offense to go to our brother, go to them, not run away and badmouth them. This is not to be. People who belong to Christ, who identify with Christ, we are to have integrity with one another before the Lord for his glory. Let us go to our brother and seek reconciliation between one another, not grumble against one another. This is not only good for us, ourselves, and for our own growth, but far more importantly, it brings glory and honor to the Lord Jesus. And then verses 11, 10 and 11, James gives us the example of the prophets, right? The example of the prophets. When James refers to the prophets, Right, we should be thinking about those righteous men who suffered, remember, at the hands of the wicked Israelites, precisely because why? Because they proclaimed that the Israelites were going to be judged severely because they had severely broken the law of God. They turned their back on the Lord. They committed adultery against the Lord with other gods. Right, think of Elijah, right? The great prophet Elijah was persecuted by Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. Because throughout Elijah’s ministry, what did God do? He brought the covenant curse of drought upon the northern kingdom for worshiping Baal. Or think of Jeremiah the prophet, right? He was imprisoned, you’ll recall, because he said that the Lord would wipe out Jerusalem. And this is not the message that the king or the rulers wanted to hear. And the implication is what? James is making this connection. The implication is that the Christian church is to view itself as having a prophetic stance, a prophetic posture towards the unbelieving world. The church warns of coming judgment as it preaches the gospel, as the word goes out. It warns against the coming judgment. And because we do so, we suffer at the hands of unbelievers. It’s the last thing in the world that anybody wants to hear. It’s the truth of the Lord. And it goes along with the message that there’s hope, there’s escape from that judgment, if they would but believe. But like the prophets who went before us, we must be patient until the coming of the Lord. We must not have a chronological myopathy, right? Such close vision chronologically, must see things in light of eternity. And when the Lord comes, our message will be proved right, and we will be vindicated. And it’s interesting, you know, James adds here this, he mentions Job, right, this Old Testament figure, Job. And we think he’s not the most likely candidate, right, for patience, given the fact that he complained bitterly against the Lord for what he saw to be injustice in his sufferings. He complained bitterly. Why should we imitate Job, right, we might think. It’s because, yes, even though Even though his faith was severely tested, and he succumbed at times to deep depression and doubt and complaint, nevertheless, he never completely gave up in his trust in the Lord. And in the end, what happened? When the Lord confronted Job in the whirlwind, what did Job do? Job repented. He repented of the bitter things he had said, and he humbled himself before the Lord. And as a result, the Lord showed himself to be, as James says, full of compassion and mercy towards Job. The Lord did not punish Job. Ultimately, in the end, he did not punish him. But what, he restored to him his previous wealth, position of wealth and honor, right? Even double, doubly so. And Job’s end, it says, was greater than his beginning. In this too, is the case, and we are to learn from this, dear Christian. We too often, we are on the verge of giving up and calling it quits. I know that this is true. We are weak, we are feeble, forgetful, foolish, and fearful. But we take comfort from the example of Job, whose ultimate restoration is interpreted by James in what? In terms of the ultimate things, last things. as a picture of what the Lord will bring about for his people at the very end. A beautiful, encouraging picture, when he returns and redeems our bodies from this fallen world, and he grants us eternal glory in heaven with himself forever. The Lord knows we are weak. He knows we are earthen vessels, and that we often crack under pressure. But He is, what, full of compassion and mercy. And at His return, He will graciously reward us more than we can possibly think, ask, or imagine. Not on the basis of our faithfulness, but what? On the basis of Christ’s faithfulness. Let us, dear Christian, not fall to the temptation of eschatological indifference. This is the warning from James here. Let us not fall into this temptation, but let us take on a humble attitude as the Lord’s servants who stand at His beck and call with joy, ready to serve, ready to stand for Him, ready and eager to serve Him in whatever way, whatever capacity God in His providence should call us to do. Let us be patient until the coming of the Lord. And as James said in chapter one, What a joyous thing, dear Christian. As we go back into the world, let us remember these things. Let us have an eschatological perspective, right? A posture towards the world that is informed by the reality of our final state, the glorious reality of the soon coming of Jesus Christ. Not in sensationalistic terms, but oh, it will be sensational, right? Oh, it will be sensational. And let that drive us and inform us through all that we go through. Glorious indeed, and let us give him praise and joy as we spread his name, even inviting people to come and hear and encounter and be challenged by the word of the gospel and feel the love of his people, even here at church. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your mercy. We thank you that your strength shines powerfully through in our weakness. Father, help us to indeed submit to you in all things. Lord, we thank you that we are weak. Lord, we are so, so fragile that you are strong and that you are sure and that your promise is sure. And Lord, we praise you for the promise of our true home in heaven at the last day. And Lord, we thank you for the down payment of the spirit in that regard. And so, Lord, we pray that you would be with us throughout the remainder of this week, that we would indeed bring you glory in all that we do, that we would endure and be patient as those whose eyes are fixed on our Savior Jesus in glory, our true home, that which awaits us until that last day. We ask that all in Christ’s name, amen.