One of the things I’ve discovered when it comes to preparing a series of sermons on a specific book of the Bible—like James for example—it is that it can be difficult to know how to divide the text. I mean, you can’t just start preaching through a book of the Bible. At least I can’t. I have to sit down first and plan how many weeks it’s going to take. Sometimes it’s hard to make that plan. It’s hard to decide where to start and where to stop when it comes to planning which texts will be the basis of each message. You could say that preaching through a book of the Bible involves RIGHTLY dividing the Word of Truth in a literal sense. I’ve learned that before I can make my preaching plan, I first have to sit down and study the entire book and then, based on my study, rightly divide that book into “sermon-size” segments. For example, I might decide to get three sermons out of one chapter and ten out of another.
This kind of sermon planning can be challenging because the writers God used to put the books of the Bible together usually didn’t have sermons in mind when they did their writing. They didn’t always plan on their material being preached from pulpits like ours here at Redland. I say all this—not to complain—but to help you see that the text I want us to study together this morning really belongs right alongside the text we used last Sunday. You see, the verses in James 5:1-12 are really just one long paragraph dealing with different facets of the same issue.
The truth is, I COULD have preached one long sermon on these twelve verses—but due to time constraints it had to be done in two. In any case, in order for us to understand the verses I want to look at THIS MORNING, we need to remember all that we learned about the verses we focused on LAST WEEK.
So, let me give you a quick review. You should recall that in the FIRST six verses of chapter 5, James rebuked wealthy people who hoarded their possessions. Remember? I said that in a very real sense they were the “bad guys” because they allowed their love of money—their passion for possessions—to lead them to commit sinful acts against the “good guys.”
For example: these wealthy people ignored the needs of their hungry neighbors, closed the doors of their estates, and continued to live in the lap of luxury. They also cheated the people who worked for them by not paying them their wages. Finally, they condemned innocent men. These rich guys went to the local officials with trumped up charges against their poor neighbors. Then, when the neighbors were jailed or even executed for crimes they did not commit, these evil rich men seized their property and added it to their holdings. So, basically in the first six verses of this chapter, James addresses the bad guys—those people Charles Swindoll says were RICH WITHOUT but POOR WITHIN. That is to say, they had great MATERIAL wealth but little or no SPIRITUAL wealth. If they had a relationship with God, it was a poor one indeed.
Okay—enough review—this week I want us to look at the NEXT six verses and in these words James turns to address the “good guys”—the VICTIMS of all these crimes—those people who were enduring highly UNFAIR treatment at the hands of the rich. In this text James is essentially saying, “Having addressed the rich, now I want to talk to you poor people—you guys who have been condemned and unjustly treated.”
Okay, with all that in mind, take your Bibles and turn with me now to James 5, verses 7-12 and let’s see what James has to say.
7 – Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.
8 – You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
9 – Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
10 – Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
11 – As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
12 – Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by Heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, or you will be condemned.
I believe this second part of James’ fifth chapter is an important text for you and me to study because, like those victims of the rich in James’ day, you and I live in an unfair world—a world where the nightly news is filled with stories of UNFAIRNESS.
- For example, it was UNFAIR for people to be killed or injured in the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
- It was unfair for that man in Florida to set fire to his apartment this week and then shoot and kill six people.
- It was cruel and unfair for that man in Cleveland to kidnap those three young girls and hold them captive in his house for all those years.
- It was unfair for that church bus to crash in Indianapolis taking the lives of the youth pastor and his pregnant wife and another counselor.
I could go on and on listing stories like that because this is a fallen world where unfairness is everywhere.
And, to bring it closer to home I’m sure you have no trouble thinking of times when you or your own family had to endure unfair hardship whether it’s your children coming home from school in tears after being snubbed by their supposed friends or your having to work weekends due to a tyrannical supervisor or having to find money for an unexpected car repair or trying to make ends meet while being subjected to unfair furloughs. I mean the truth is UNFAIR trials big and small are indeed an inevitable part of life.
If you’ve spent any time talking with me you know I have a phrase that I use frequently when giving an answer to a question that is obviously “YES.” For example if you were to ask, “Mark, do you love your granddaughter?” I would reply, “Do bears sleep in the woods?” because YES—I love Lydia and YES bears sleep in the woods. Well, I have been thinking lately that I may need to make a change because bears don’t always sleep in the woods. Some of them sleep in zoos. Polar bears sleep in the snow and so on. With that in mind I’m thinking of changing my standard answer to questions with an obviously positive answer to: “Is man born for trouble?” Because as Job 5:7 says, “Yes—man is born for trouble as sparks fly upward.” We ARE born for trouble—born for unfairness—because we are fallen and this is a fallen, unfair world. Jesus Himself lovingly warned us about this sad truth as well when He said, “In this world you WILL have trouble.” In fact, being a Christian can insure that we will not only have to deal with the NORMAL unfairness of life—we will also have to endure tough, UNFAIR times that come BECAUSE of our faith in Jesus. As Paul said 2nd Timothy 3:12, “All who desire to live Godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” It’s not fair—but it will happen, Christian!
Well, how can we endure unfairness? That’s where this text from James comes in because in his advice to those suffering Christians of his day we find the answer to this question. God has used James to tell us there are two parallel ATTITUDES that we must embrace in order to endure the tough times of life.
1. The first is PATIENCE.
Now, the truth is patience is a characteristic that most of us are not very familiar with because these days we don’t get much personal experience in this area. It’s not that we don’t value patience. We just don’t like to practice it. Let me put it this way: we want others to be patient with us but we don’t want to be patient with them because usually we’re in too much of a hurry getting our own lengthy “to do lists” completed to be patient.
Plus, our culture tends to DISCOURAGE patience. One way we see this is to look back and see the spread of fast food restaurants…restaurants that require their patrons to hurry through their meal so they can sell more meals.
Here’s a fast list of some fast food restaurant stats I came across this week. In 1960 McDonald’s operated 200 restaurants. By 2012 they had 31,000 restaurants but of course they weren’t the only fast food restaurant in town. In that same year there were more than a quarter-million fast-food restaurants of various types in America, and on any given day one in four Americans will eat at least one meal at one of them. For many people around the world fast-food symbolizes speed, efficiency, and convenience. Well, Sanford DeVoe, a researcher at the University of Toronto, wanted to see if our “fast-food culture” was changing our lives in ways beyond just our eating habits. So DeVoe and another colleague conducted a series of experiments in which researchers subliminally flashed corporate logos for McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Burger King, Subway, and Wendy’s. A control group saw other images but no fast-food logos. When the two groups were asked to do an unrelated task, the fast-food group tried to complete it much faster than the non-fast-food group. In another experiment, flashes of fast-food images made students less able to sit back and enjoy music. A third experiment found that people exposed to fast-food logos showed a greater reluctance for saving money.
Based on these experiments, DeVoe has concluded that fast food helps us save time, but even thinking about fast food restaurants makes us live with more speed and less patience. DeVoe said, “Fast food culture doesn’t just change the way we eat but it can also fundamentally alter the way we experience our time.” DeVoe claims that the impatience promoted by our fast-food culture and mindset “stops us from smelling the roses” and I’m sure he’s right. I’m also sure that all of us are affected by this aspect of our culture—because we all eat fast food. Don’t try and deny it because if we went out to our parking lot and looked, I’m sure we’d find dried up MacDonald’s French Fries in the crevasses between the seats of every mini-van out there. That’s what the mini-van is for—a place where families can eat on the run—and that helps encourage us to hurry when we do pretty much everything else. This kind of eating DISCOURAGES patience and ENCOURAGES the opposite.
Well, in light of our lack of personal experience when it comes to practicing this attitude, let’s stop and remind ourselves exactly what patience is. The Greek word for patience that James uses here is “makrothumeo” and it literally means “long spirit” or “not losing heart.” It would be better translated as “steadfastness” or “endurance” because it suggests SELF-RESTRAINT instead of some sort of patient resignation to one’s fate. In this text it refers specifically to the need to refrain from striking back at the unfairness of life. I like how the King James Version puts it—for it says this word should be translated as “long suffering.” That’s a great way to put it because patience is an attitude that enables us to SUFFER unfairly a LONG TIME and not strike back. In short, patience helps us to endure the unfairness of life without responding in a non-Christian manner. With patience we can suffer for months or even years under the mistreatment of others without growing resentful or bitter.
James says if we are to endure the unfairness of life, we must learn to apply this PATIENCE in two areas.
A. First of all he says that we must be patient when it comes to our relationship with GOD.
This is what he is referring to in verse 7 when he says, “Be patient then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming.” You see, the Christians of James’ day believed that Jesus Christ would return again within their life time. They eagerly anticipated this wonderful day because they knew that when that day dawned on which Gabriel’s trumpet would blow, Jesus would come back to rule, and all evil would be punished once and for all. On that day the unfairness of life would cease and these evil rich guys who were persecuting them so, would be punished for the wrongs they had committed.
Well, they were right to eagerly anticipate Jesus’ second coming for it will indeed be a GLORIOUS day. It will initiate an eternity of uninterrupted fellowship with the Lord. We’ll be reunited with our loved ones who have died—not to mention Biblical heroes like Moses and Paul and James. On that day we’ll also receive new, glorious bodies that will never tire or age. All wrongs will be righted and the perfect holy goodness of God will reign forever. When that day dawns there will be no more unfairness.
And while we’re on the subject, let me remind you that as I told you in our study of THE STORY a few months ago, Jesus IS coming back! The Bible has not told us WHEN but it has told us it WILL definitely happen someday. God has promised us this repeatedly! Just as the Old Testament abounds with prophecies of Jesus’ FIRST coming, so does the New Testament overflow with promises of His return. Our text is a great example, for James says that as surely as God always faithfully sends the rains in the spring and the fall—water that farmers patiently wait for each year—God will just as surely one day send His Son back to earth.
And you know, the older I get, the more I yearn for that day to dawn! I have a lot of friends and family members in Heaven and I’m looking forward to seeing them again. Plus, like the Christians of James’ day I too grow impatient amidst the unfairness of life and when I do, I pray, “Come on God! What are you waiting for! Send Jesus back to get us. Zap all these bad guys who are making our world so miserable. Show them Who’s Boss GOD!”
This reminds me of a story I once read about the famous New England preacher of yesteryear, Philip Brooks. One day Brooks was pacing the floor like a caged lion and one of his friends asked, “What is the trouble Dr. Brooks?” Brooks replied, “The trouble is that I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t!” Have you ever felt that way? I mean, have you ever wanted God to hurry up and do something in your life? Perhaps you were dealing with some sort of unfairness and you prayed and prayed but nothing seemed to happen.
Maybe you lost your job a while back and you want God to HURRY up and get you a new one. Or perhaps you are enduring marital problems and you have prayed and wonder why God is taking so long to heal your relationship. You may be a young single and you desperately want to get married. You pray and pray and God doesn’t send Mr. Right or Mrs. Right your way. You wish He would hurry up and do so! Sometimes when we have been given a grim diagnosis by the doctor we wonder why God doesn’t respond to our prayers and heal us quickly. I could go on—but the truth is, when times like this come, we need to learn to have patience and trust God’s perspective and timing. We need to trust His wisdom. You see, unlike us, God is able to see ALL of our life—from our first breath to our last—at the same time. He knows what’s ahead.
He knows our needs better than we do—and loves us more than we can possibly imagine. We need to learn to TRUST His love—believing that He will not allow any unfairness to come our way—any trial or tribulation—that He does not know is not somehow for our good or for His glory. Jerry Bridges writes, “If God’s love is sufficient for my greatest need, my eternal salvation, surely it is sufficient for my lesser needs, the adversities I encounter in this life.”
So, in tough times we must do as it says in Psalm 27:14: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
But let’s be honest. It’s hard to wait for God to work. It’s hard to trust Him when we do not fully understand what He is doing. Oxford philosopher Basil Mitchell dealt with this issue in something he wrote entitled, “The Parable of the Resistance Leader.” Mitchell writes: “Imagine you are in German-occupied France during World War II and you want to join the resistance movement against the Nazis. One evening in the local bar a stranger comes up to you and introduces himself as the leader of the local partisans. He spends the evening with you, explaining the general requirements of your duties, giving you a chance to assess his trustworthiness, and offering you the chance to go no further. But his warning is stern: If you join, your life will be at risk. This will be the only face-to-face meeting you will have. After this, you will receive orders and you will have to follow them without question, often completely in the dark as to the whys and wherefores of the operations, and always with the terrifying fear that your trust may be betrayed. Is such trust reasonable? Sometimes what the resistance leader is doing is obvious. He is helping members of the resistance. ‘Thank heavens he is on our side,’ you say. Sometimes it is not obvious. He is in Gestapo uniform arresting partisans and—unknown to you—releasing them out of sight to help them escape the Nazis. But always you must trust and follow the orders without question, despite all appearances, no matter what happens. “The resistance leader knows best,” you say. Only after the war will the secrets be open, the codes revealed, the true comrades vindicated, the traitors exposed, and sense made of the explanations.”
The point of the parable is that from our perspective we can’t know all that God is up to because we can’t see all that God can see…so we must be patient in the unfairness of life patient enough to pray with the Psalmist, “I don’t understand everything that You are doing but I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hands.” (Psalm 31:14-15a) Patience enables us to cling to Jesus’ promise in Luke 18:7 where He said, “God will always give what is right to His people who cry to Him night and day, and He will not be slow [according to His perfect timing] to answer them.”
As we eagerly wait for Jesus’ return we must remember 2nd Peter 3:9 where it says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance.”
B. So, James says we must be patient with God—but we must also be patient in our relationships with EACH OTHER.
In our text James infers that some of the Christians of his day were breaking under the pressure of their unfair persecution. They were grumbling and complaining and even making false promises to each other—giving their word and then not keeping it. In short, their persecution was leading them to persecute each other.
You and I are like this as well aren’t we? When times are hard and we grow weary, we often lose our cool and strike out at those closest to us—fellow Christians—even family members. In our fast-paced society you and I endure a lot of mistreatment and unfortunately we often stuff our feelings about this unfair mistreatment all day long, until we get home that is, and our kids are a little too loud or our spouse spent a little too much money at the grocery store or something and when this happens we explode. We mistreat our family in the same way we have been mistreated. We vent our feelings about the unfairness of our lives on them. Don’t raise your hands, but have any of you ever done that to your loved ones? Unfortunately this is our natural sinful tendency but James is saying, “Don’t give in to it. Don’t let the pressure that is brought to bear on you from the outside cause you to be unchristian with each other. Be patient.” We must obey God’s Word in this for there is no excuse for Christians to attack others—EVEN THOSE BELIEVERS WHO WRONG US. I mean, no matter how bad we are treated, we have no excuse to lose our cool. Anger like this can lead to sin and James reminds us that sin is never justified—even those sins we commit in an effort to get back at those who have sinned against us. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
We must be patient with other people. And if you find that difficult, remember that God has been—and continues to be patient with you. Psalm 103:8 says, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, SLOW to anger, abounding in love.” Let that fact motivate you to obey Ephesians 4:2-3 which says, we must, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, BEARING WITH ONE ANOTHER IN LOVE. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” In verse 7 James infers that no Christian would want Jesus to return to find us damaging our unity by mistreating each other—no matter how unfair our lives are. In short James is saying we must live HOLY lives—such that we are always READY for Jesus’ return.
This week I learned that one year during his presidency Dwight D. Eisenhower vacationed in Denver. One morning he came across an article in a local paper about a six-year-old named Paul Haley who was dying of cancer. The article said the boy expressed the wish to meet the President of the United States. So, in one of those gestures remembered much more than carefully crafted speeches, the President decided to grant the boy’s wish. Unannounced, one Sunday morning in August the presidential limousine pulled up outside the Haley home and out stepped the President. He walked up to the door and knocked. Mr. Donald Haley opened the door wearing blue jeans, an old shirt, and a day’s growth of beard. Standing behind him was his son, Paul.
Can you imagine Haley’s shock when the president looked down at the boy and said, “Paul I understand you wanted to see me. I’m glad I could pay you a visit.” Eisenhower shook hands with Paul, picked him up, and took him out to see the presidential limousine. They talked for a while and then Eisenhower left. The Haley’s and their neighbors talked about the kind deed of the President for the rest of their lives. Only one person was not happy about it all—Mr. Haley. He never forgot how he was dressed when he opened the door and I’m sure you can understand. I mean, think of meeting the President of the United States in a pair of old jeans, a dirty t-shirt and an unshaven face!
Well, as embarrassing as that would be it’s nothing to how we would feel if Jesus returned to find us breaking His law of love in our poor treatment of others. We must live in such a way that we are ready for Him to return at any moment—because He COULD return at any moment! C. S. Lewis said, “It is the second coming of Christ that is the medicine our condition especially needs. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.”
So, to endure the inequities of life, we need to be PATIENT—patient with God and patient with each other. Then, the other attitude James says we need in tough times is…
2. …PERSEVERANCE.
In short, when unfair times come he says we need to hang in there and to stick to it. We must keep on keeping on—keep on being faithful! James says we must emulate the great prophets of old who persevered in speaking for God, even when that meant they had to go through times of suffering—like Job who held on—in the midst of unfairness after unfairness after unfairness—and never gave up on God saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” (Job 13:15)
This principle is what Jesus was teaching in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God.” I say this because the Greek text in Matthew’s gospel states a continual command and literally says, “Keep on continually seeking…the Kingdom of God.”
Jesus was talking about determined perseverance—hanging tough at seeking to become all that God wants us to be and to do all He wants us to do—regardless of how tough it is to do so.
When I think of spiritual perseverance I think of running—because as you know I am a runner and you can’t run any real distance without perseverance. I mean, from the moment I turn the treadmill on and start my daily jog I hear one word in my head over and over again. It’s the word, “STOP.” As I run along I constantly fight the temptation to quit or at least quit before I reach my goal for the day. On Memorial Day I ran in my first 10K—six point two miles. I hadn’t run that far in several months and from step one until I crossed the finish line at the top of that hill I heard a voice saying, “STOP. You don’t have to do this Mark. STOP. At least take a break. Walk a bit. No one you know is watching out here in the boonies of Olney. Just STOP. ”
Well, all of us hear that word in our heads all the time because in a very real sense the Christian life is like a long run—not a 10K—more of a “spiritual super ultra-marathon”—a “race” that lasts your entire life. And it’s hard to run that race. It’s hard to keep on keeping on. It’s hard to follow Jesus every day because that means living differently than others. It means standing out because we are to be fair—righteous—in an unrighteous, unfair world.
At work when we are tempted to stop running…stop obeying Jesus…and COMPROMISE like everyone else, we hear that word in our head saying, “Stop. Just stop. Be like everyone else.”
It’s hard to WITNESS—hard to put yourself out there and share your faith—and when God gives us an opportunity to tell someone about Jesus, we hear that word again, “STOP. Stop right there. Don’t embarrass yourself by being so open about your faith. Stop. Someone else will do it. In fact, that’s what we pay pastors for.”
It’s hard to TITHE—so when it comes time to write that check, there’s that voice again, “Stop—you’ve given enough already. You can’t afford to keep doing this. Look at all these bills. Stop.”
It’s hard to be a GOOD PARENT. You come home from work tired and wanting some “me time” and then here comes that little one demanding some of your precious energy. When they do you hear that voice saying, “Stop—you’re tired. Just put on a kiddy video or something so you can go rest. Stop. You’ve worked hard. You deserve a break.”
I could go on and on because we all hear that word in our heads all the time. James says we must ignore that word and persevere. We must keep running the race…keep obeying Jesus…keep learning to be more like Him. We must keep “running” no matter what. As Paul put it,“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead…DON’T STOP! GO! PRESS ON toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.” If we are mature, we WILL take such a view of things. We will persevere in walking with and serving God, even when it’s hard—even in the midst of the unfairness of life.