Be Patient

Sermon  •  Submitted
0 ratings
· 6 views
Notes
Transcript

7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting 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 one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!

10 Brothers and sisters, 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 count as 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 and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.

Introduction:
Welcome to 2020! It is the start of a new year and of a new decade. The New Year is a time when the darkness is fading and we are looking forward to new light. As many of you know, this is the Price family’s first winter in Cardiff. The days seem far too short, so I keep telling myself, alright, today was a minute or two longer than yesterday!
As we enter a new year, it is worth reflecting on what we want for the future of our church and what we can pray God will do in us as we move forward.
With this in mind, I want to turn our attention to the end of the book of James. For those of you who have been at our Wednesday prayer meetings, we have spent quite a lot of time lately working through the book of James. As I was thinking about expectations and the new year, these verses come to mind. Most of us look at a new year as a new start.
Many of us do this through a New year’s resolution. A few statistics:
Approximately 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions have dropped them by the second week of February. Another study found that roughly 55% of New Year’s resolutions were health related. This study also found that roughly 8% of people keep their resolutions.
It is easy to focus on how high that percentage is of those who do not keep the resolution.
What does it take to be a person who keeps to a resolution? Well, it certainly takes patience and perseverance. For our message this week, I want to turn our hearts and minds to James chapter 5. I have two P’s for you this week:
I. Patience
II. Perseverance
I. Patience
What do you think of when you hear the word patience? For some of us, maybe your mind goes to the list of the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace patience...
I have thought about this a lot this week in the context of being a parent. If we are self-aware, it is so incredibly easy to be impatient.
We may be able to recognize when someone is not being patient, but, what exactly is patience? Surely it is more than waiting in a long queue without grumbling.
First of all, think about how we use this word. Sometimes we think of the fruits of the spirit as virtues to be cultivated. This is how many of the Greeks thought of ethics: as the inculcation of virtue. To achieve the virtue of patience, you practice patience over an extended period of time and it becomes part of who you are.
Yet, patience in the Bible is more than this. Patience is first of all, a divine disposition. It is God who has shown patience towards his people, and this patience serves as an inspiration for us.
To give but one example among many in the Old Testament,
When God passed in front of Moses at the giving of the 10 commandments, here is what God said, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”
Here, the act of being slow to anger represents God’s patience. As we will see in our verses today, patience is often seen through an example. If you look at someone sitting at a table, they might not be patient, they might just be bored!
Illustration: The American Robert Ingersoll was known in the 19th century as “The Great Agnostic.”

When Robert Ingersoll, the famous atheist, was lecturing, he once took out his watch and declared, “I will give God five minutes to strike me dead for the things I have said.” The minutes ticked off as he held the watch and waited. In about four-and-a-half minutes, some women began fainting, but nothing happened. When the five minutes were up, Ingersoll put the watch into his pocket. When that incident reached the ears of a certain preacher, Joseph Parker, he asked, “And did the gentleman think he could exhaust the patience of the Eternal God in five minutes?”

In a similar vein, Cyril of Alexandria, writing in the 400’s said, “If God delays the punishment of sinners, waiting for them to repent, it is not because his character has changed, so that now he loves sin. Rather he is giving them time to repent.”
God has shown us extreme patience in our sin, and we pray that this kindness would lead to repentance. We try to have a biblical worldview. This simply means that we let the Bible critically inform how we view things around us. With this in mind, patience is not first of all a virtue achieved, but a gift received.
I.
Let’s begin then, with the words of : “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.”
Before we dive directly into this passage, some context has to be provided. We cannot read apart from . In these verses we see momentary oppression as well as God’s vindication. If you take 20 or so minutes today to read through the books of James, you will see a congregation that has suffered and yet is given ways to deal with the sin-stained world they are in.
speaks not to the oppressed, but judgment upon the oppressors. Despite this, there remains the keen reality that a person is still oppressed! Notice the shift in tone between 5:1-6 and what we find in verse 7. The use of the word “brothers” or “Brother and sisters,” makes a natural division between the rich oppressors in the first few verses and those who are being oppressed in the church.
How long are we to wait? Until the Lord’s coming. And what does it mean to be patient for this season? It means to do what God has been doing all along: enduring human evil for a season.
It is also worth noting that patience and endurance are not the exact same thing. Patience is a long-suffering attitude, that we are often supposed to adopt towards other people, whereas endurance is the strong, determined fortitude we need to face difficult circumstances. This distinction can be helpful, but it is not always neatly divided up in the way James uses it.
Ex. Curtis Flowers?
One way to think about this is that we are patient with other people, and we endure difficulties. They are also not mutually exclusive. In , Paul encourages his readers to both patience and endurance.
So first, we are called to to be patient with those troublesome people in our lives in an indefinite measure. Easier said than done! Here is the example James provides: “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
I think we all have an idea of what this analogy means- change does not come over night. I think this is helpful because it is not easy to live through those periods where we are called to simply wait patiently.
If we are told to wait patiently, and then asked for how long? I could see someone rolling their eyes if the answer is “Well, until the Lord returns.” Is there any level of practicality to this? And what are we waiting patiently for? Even children at Christmas have an end date for which they no longer have to wait to open their presents. Is death the only end date?

The small farmer plants his carefully saved seed and hopes for a harvest, living on short rations and suffering hunger during the last weeks. The whole livelihood, indeed the life itself, of the family depends on a good harvest: the loss of the farm, semistarvation, or death could result from a bad year. So the farmer waits for an expected future event (ἐκδέχεται); no one but he could know how precious the grain really is

He must exercise patience no matter how hungry he is (μακροθυμῶν), for he waits with a view toward the coming harvest (ἐπʼ αὐτῷ). This patience must last “until he receives the early and late rain

In verse 8 we are told again to be patient, but this time there is the added phrase to “Stand firm.” The word used for this phrase literally means to “Strengthen your hearts.”
I think this is an important addition because patience is not just a passive thing. You do not just absorb the abuse of other people and the world around you without it having any effect.
To be patient until the Lord returns is a purpose and a goal. The Christian is to wait for a time when Christ will set the oppressed free. This implies that he or she will be set free from the oppressor. The farmer knows there will come a time in which the harvest will bring forth fruit.
This period of patience and waiting could include hard times and indeed hunger. Yet, the farmer waits.
James also adds this phrase in verse 9, don’t grumble against one another. The problem here is not pouring one’s heart out before God, but rather sinful speech.
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Letter of James C. Patiently Enduring Trials Earns God’s Reward (5:7–11)

But grumbling against those who are close to us is particularly likely to occur when we are under pressure or facing difficult circumstances. We vent the pressure from a stressful work environment or from ill health on our close friends and family. So it would be quite natural if James’s readers, under the pressure of poverty and persecution (cf. 5:1–6), would turn their frustrations on one another. Moreover, the exhortation to be patient with the circumstances of suffering that the readers face could easily evoke the need for patience with fellow community members as well. Paul links patience with the need to “bear with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2) and with a refusal to “pay back wrong for wrong” in 1 Thess. 5:14–15.

James links this call to not complain with the fact that one day we will be judged. “You will be judged. The judge is standing at the door!
Think about this: In we are told to be patient until the Lord’s coming. In a sarcastic way, that is saying, be patient until you die.” What is he saying here: the judge is at the door!” The Lord’s coming could be no nearer than it is now. That is the great irony of not knowing the future. We are all living on borrowed time. How are we using that time?
There is also another aspect we must add: this patient endurance, whether it be of how we have been treated and wronged, or of our life circumstances is not to be borne alone. The church is in this together. Indeed trials are better suffered in the context of community rather than solitude.
Where is your patience not only being tested, but you do not know when a resolution may come? Maybe there is a past offense where someone has done you wrong, and that is a real possibility that you will not receive vindication in this lifetime. We also need to keep in mind the larger context of these verses. They are going through some type of suffering.
A foundational text for understanding suffering when oppressed is .
In much the same way as this text, the believers in James’ day needed to remember the Lord’s concern for them and to not fail to uphold each other in faith. I think the fact that Paul has to remind them not to grumble against one another could be a hint that some of those rich ones who James opposed at the beginning of this chapter are a part of this church. We all have patterns of sin that need to be eradicated. The rich must stop oppressing, and those who are oppressed much look to God as judge.
The New American Commentary: James 1. Patience among Friends (5:7–11)

Judging wrongly, or the failure to control the critical tongue, was a great problem for James’s audience (cf. 2:12–13; 3:1; 4:11–12; 5:12). Humility (cf. 4:6, 10) and joy before God should characterize their relations in order to produce a solidarity in suffering injustice until the Lord himself delivered them. Believers should not speak to each other as if the causes of suffering arose from within their own fellowship

Groaning and grumbling is the opposite of being joyful and thankful. There are certainly things that we may wish to groan and moan about, but it be become detrimental when those groans and moans are about others in your community of faith.
Example: staying at a friend’s house on holiday. First you are enviable, and then you notice things about a place you do not like. We are always in a position where we can choose to be be content and choose to be discontent.
How do we practice patience? James gives us two examples; one general and one specific:
The prophets. 2. Job
II. Perseverance
In both of these cases, James argues for perseverance. Earlier we mentioned the difference between patience and endurance. Does anyone remember? Patience is the ability to wait and forbear in the context of other people, whereas endurance is being able to make it through a situation. I am going to use endurance and perseverance interchangeable here. It is not just making it; it is making it despite difficulty and suffering. Two examples of how Paul uses this word:
- I endure everything for the sake of God’s people
- Here Paul speaks of the persecutions he had to endure
Prophets: enduring suffering for speaking the truth.
With Job, he did not suffer at the hands of any one person, but rather human suffering in its most extreme form. This is in fact the only direct mention of Job that we have mentioned in the New Testament.
What can we learn from these two examples of endurance?
From the prophets: they were treated harshly at the hands of men for speaking the truth. The truth of Christianity is indeed a radical truth.
Job: we live in a fallen world. Maybe you suffer some type of physical ailment that you feel like will never go away. I myself suffer migraines. Some mornings I wake up and there seems to be little relief.
What did this perseverance finally bring about? A reminder that “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
The prophets were those who understood that they must forego the benefits, even of religious success, in order to gain the promised benefits for those who persevere under trial.
What should we make of the example of Job? He is an imperfect man, but in the end much of what was taken from him is returned. Is God’s compassion and mercy shown only when was has been taken from us is returned? I think not.
St. Augustine said of this verse: “James means: ‘Bear your temporal misfortunes as Job did but do not hope for temporal goods as a reward for your patience, such as were returned to him double. Rather hope for the eternal goods which the Lord went before us to secure.”
In the midst of our pain, and in the midst of our hurt, endure and see God’s compassion and mercy towards us. The implication of these verses is clear: endure and you will be blessed.
It is also worth a reminder that Job is not perfect. Why did James choose to use Job as the example? Job questioned God and his circumstances thoroughly. He was a human as are you and I. Despite this questioning, he choose to continue to trust to the end, whatever that end may bring. James faces an issue that the Old Testament saints dealt with, that his church was dealing with, and one that we deal with today. Why do the righteous suffer?
I read one commentator that said the word James used for compassion here could have very well been either created by James, or by the church as it is not used in other Greek material. It is an intense, active kind of compassion.
(Provide encouragement here in regards to all things being in God’s hands)

Endurance (hypomonē) in this context is to be understood in the same way as in 1:2–5, 9, 12, 19; 4:6, 8, 10, where James sets it against the background of God’s sovereign control of events and the need to wait for him to act in his own time and way. It is a rugged determination not to renounce one’s faith and not to fall out of the race. Moreover it is an activity demanding strenuous courage and firm fortitude, once we are persuaded that our lives are in God’s hands even though outward circumstances seem to overwhelm.

What do these verses have to say to us as we enter a new year? I am encouraging you to patience as well as well as endurance. If you worry about the Lord’s timing, then remember, it is indeed the Lord’s timing, not ours. Be patient until the Lord’s coming. If you struggle with making it through the day to day, look to those who have gone before you. And most of all, look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
V. 12 “Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.
Before closing today, we need to figure out where these verses fit in.
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more