Be Patient, the Lord Is Coming (Part 1 of 4)

Welcome to Truth for Life where today we begin a new study in the book of James. A practical book that provides great help for Christians about how to live God-honoring lives in an unjust world. When we're confronted with personal challenges and world tragedies, it's often tempting to think why isn't God doing something? Alistair Begg helps us today think rightly about God's work in our world. James chapter 5 and verse 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. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the LORD's coming is near. Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged.

The judge is standing at the door. Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the LORD. 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. Amen. We thank you that we're able to read the Bible here and realize that you are the Lord, full of compassion and mercy. And for ourselves, we pray that you will make us students of the Bible, that we might be diligent in our investigation, that we might be clear in our exposition, that we might be humble in our response, and that in everything we might be conformed to the image of your Son Jesus, in whose name we pray.

Amen. Well, we're turning to the seventh verse of James chapter 5. I found in reading the passage this week that I was wondering whether the recipients of this letter—that's the initial readers of the letter—in light of the oppression and injustice that they were enduring, and to which James has referred in the first six verses, whether they may have been tempted to ask the question, Why doesn't God do something? Why doesn't God do something?

It certainly would be no surprise if they did. Because it is a not-unfamiliar refrain, and one that we hear on the lips of people almost routinely, often in response to some event either in their private world or in the world at large—disappointment or bereavement or tragedy of some kind—often calls for this kind of reaction. And we need to be able to look into the Bible and give the answer which the Bible quite clearly and simply provides—namely, that God has done something, that God will do something, and that God is doing something. And it is, of course, as you will note, looking at the text, in pointing forward, that James seeks to address the present predicament of his initial readers—"Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming." And again, he mentions it in the eighth verse, the Lord's coming is near.

In the ninth verse, the judge is standing at the door. And as I read this this week in anticipation of these studies, I found myself stopping for just a moment and acknowledging the fact that while I, as someone who believes the Bible, who has come to trust in Jesus by his grace and goodness, while I can come to a phrase like the Lord's coming and immediately absorb it and put it, as it were, within the framework of my understanding of things, I recognize that to affirm in our contemporary culture what the Bible makes clear—namely, that history is moving towards a final event—is actually regarded as bizarre. To affirm, as C. S. Lewis does in one of his essays, that when the author walks onto the stage, the play is over. To make clear that history is not cyclical but it is going somewhere, and that somewhere it is going can only ultimately be understood by those who read and believe the Bible.

When we affirm these things, we find ourselves immediately at odds with our culture. C. S. Lewis, writing concerning this in one of his essays, The World's Last Night and Other Longings, he makes the point very clearly, the doctrine of the second coming is deeply uncongenial to the whole evolutionary or developmental character of modern thought. We've been taught to think of the world as something that grows slowly towards perfection, something that progresses or evolves. The Bible offers no such hope. It does not even foretell a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without.

An extinguisher popped onto the candle. A brick flung at the gramophone—he's writing a long time ago—a certain curtain rung down on the play, and the voice calling out from the wings, Halt! Now, I do have an outline for the exposition of these verses. I should just tell you this in case you disbelieve me. We're going to notice eventually that there are here three temptations to be avoided, that there are three examples to be followed, and there are two overarching truths that need to be taken to heart. But long before we get there, I want to include you in my own process of thought. I do so purposefully, humbly, and, I hope, helpfully. Because as it occurred to me that when I affirm these things amongst the people with whom I spend time and find their reaction, I am not unusual in that respect.

Therefore, I need to be better prepared, and perhaps you along with me the same. In other words, we need to realize just how countercultural it is for us to affirm that creation is a divine act and not a continuing process. That's what the Bible says. To affirm that the universe, time, and history are the work of a sovereign, triune God, and to affirm that the meaning of history is established in terms of that sovereign Creator God. Those three facts alone are so radically in opposition and opposition to much of contemporary thinking that it is imperative for us to think them out. And what I want to do is to pause for a moment and put, if you like, the reality of the second coming of Jesus within the overarching framework of a biblical view of history itself. This runs the risk of being unduly simplistic—I don't mean it to be dismissive in any way—but secular philosophies of history are by and large marked by either, number one, pessimism. Pessimism. A completely gloomy approach to life that holds out the only possibility in a cyclical approach, whereby, in terms of classical paganism or Eastern thought, we may get another go at it, but if we don't, it's a dreadful predicament that we face. And so people's lives, as they review history, as they look at their circumstances, and then as they look to the future, are, at their core, increasingly pessimistic.

They find themselves, in the words of the old country western song, rearranging chairs on a ship that's going down. They look at things, and they're just pessimistic. Or secular philosophy is bizarrely optimistic—the optimism of Marx, who determined that if he could only put the social constructs in place and deal with the dialectic, if he could only put together the issues of economics in such a way as to redistribute wealth, then there was a tremendous future awaiting everybody. And buoyed by the optimism of that view of history, he launched his crusade.

Well, of course, he's dead and buried, and Marxism is pretty well dead and buried along with him. In the same kind of optimism, Harold MacMillan, the prime minister in the 1960s, stood on the stage of the British framework and declared the fact, We have never had it so good. And his optimistic perspective ran up the stock market and encouraged everybody.

But, of course, if he could have seen life in the nineties, or the closing embers of the twentieth century, if he had lived into the mayhem of the twenty-first century, then his optimism would have had to be somehow or another reconfigured. The third category that secular philosophy finds itself under is that of simply cynicism. Cynicism. Because there is, in the highest realms of historical analysis in our colleges and universities, an increasing skepticism about the possibility of finding any meaning of history at all—neither optimistic nor pessimistic, just completely cynical. History teaches us that history teaches us nothing. There's no point to it in looking back.

There is nothing to look forward to. And frankly, in the present, all that we can hope to do is muddle along. Now, you can test these things as you just listen to people talk.

You will find that they will drift in one direction or another. And unless you and I find ourselves under the tutelage of the Bible and under the gaze of a sovereign God about whom we've been singing, then we will vacillate between these three poles—optimism, pessimism, or cynicism. That is why, you see, it is vital for those who believe to be constantly going to the Bible in every realm of our lives, so that when we turn to the Bible, we can look for a realistic Christian understanding of history, or a biblical understanding of history. One of my friends who's in politics in Washington, D.C., often asks me when we're together, As a Christian, should I be optimistic or pessimistic?

And I always answer him, I think you ought to be realistic. Because when you read the Bible, you discover that it introduces us to the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn't seek to sweep the ugly and the bad aside in some false, optimistic, pie-in-the-sky dream. Nor does it bury itself in the despair that accompanies the pessimism of a world without God. Nor is it cynical because it recognizes that the God who made the world is the God who will fulfill his purposes in the world, and therefore, it introduces us realistically to things. The Bible takes into account the fact that God has made the world, that he is the one who has established history—that it is, in every realistic sense, his story. And it also takes into account the brokenness of human history—that when we read history, we realize that, yes, there are tremendous signs of encouragement, there is much for which we can be thankful, but there is so much that is shameful, so much that is absolutely dreadful. And in our contemporary experiences—in the picking up of newspapers and magazines, in the reading of books, in the viewing of contemporary films and seeing plays—we realize that so much of that which is representative of our present history is equally vile and bad and reprehensible. And it will not do for people simply to tell us, Well, you know, it's all going to get better if we only have a little more of this or a little more of that.

I'm sure we will be able to shake this off and move on. That's why the Bible is so tremendously encouraging. Because it not only tells us that our history is broken, but it also tells us what God has done in time to deal with that brokenness—that the God who made time, who established the universe, comes in the good news, in the gospel, in the past historic event of the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus, to sound, as it were, a megaphone down through the centuries concerning the good news of his intervention so that what is broken may be by his goodness repaired, fixed, transformed. And the good news of the gospel is the good news of an event that took place in time in the historic person of Jesus, whereby he did for us what none of us could ever do for ourselves.

The good news of the gospel is an historic story of the activity of someone other than ourselves who comes into the brokenness of history, lives the perfection of his own life, pays the penalty for our broken lives, and thereby opens up the way of access for those of us who cannot find the missing pieces in the box of the jigsaw puzzle of our lives so that we might understand with a gust and that our hearts are restless and they remain restless until we find our rest in God. Jesus, says the Bible, has lived for us the kind of life we should live but can't. He's lived for us the kind of life we should live but can't.

And he is paid fully the penalty we deserve for the life we do live but shouldn't. Jesus is the perfect servant, obeying the Father, keeping the law, living in perfection, and he is the perfect substitute doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. In other words, the good news is the good news of that which has been accomplished. And it has been accomplished. And the prospect of what is yet is built upon what has passed. And until we understand the foundation upon which the future hope is built, the future hope will seem bizarre and perhaps forlorn to us. Therefore, it is for the Christian, in relationship to history, to understand and affirm that in the cross we have the pivotal event of human history. We have the place in time that makes sense, if you like, of all of the fracturedness and all of the mess and all of the disappointment and makes possible all of the restoration and the repair and the transformation and the new. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about this, he put it in a verse that I found to be very difficult, and I read it every so often.

In fact, I read it a great deal, and I hope one day to fully get an understanding of it. This is how it goes. God made him—that is, Jesus—who had no sin. The only person who never sinned—Jesus. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. Wouldn't make any sense for him to make him sin, full stop.

Luther referred to this as the Great Exchange. The prophets had already made it clear that all of our best attempts at making ourselves acceptable to God are just like filthy rags. That's not a very nice thing to hear, is it? Especially when we're trying to be a good person, trying to run the show properly, obey things correctly, take care of business, and so on. Beginning to preen ourselves and think how well we're doing, and then we turn to the Bible, and the Bible says, On your best day and with your best deeds, they all look like rags. Well, the person says in that case, if when I've done my very best I'm in rags, there is no hope for me at all, is there?

Well, no, actually, not unless someone has provided for you the clothing necessary to make entry into the presence of God. And that's the story of the good news—that to be covered over with the robe of Jesus' righteousness is to be redefined not by our own failed histories but by his perfect history. You see, think about it in intensely personal terms.

We review our lives, and as in the review of history, so in our personal histories. There is that which disappoints, brings us to potential despair, leaves us feeling bereft of hope, sad, in many cases crying out with share, If I could turn back time! If I could just turn back time! And yet we know we cannot turn back time. Therefore, we cannot go back to that place. We cannot go back and make that repair.

Our histories are fractured and broken. Therefore, what are we to do? To despair?

Or simply to turn the radio up, plug the earphones in, and blow it off in optimism? Or shall we become skeptics and cynics and deny that there's meaning in anything? Or shall we go to the place that holds the answers to our deepest longings and provides the answers to our most profound questions, and confronts us with the fact that our felt needs, whatever they may be, are only representative of our great need—namely, that we would have someone take all of our filthy best endeavors and provide for us clothes that we could never purchase for ourselves? You see, that's what Paul means when he says, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. But what the Bible means by that is that when we are united to Christ, by grace through faith, when we hear the word of the gospel and all of its truth, when it comes home to our hearts and minds in a way that arrests us and confronts us and convicts and convinces and changes us, when by God's mercy we open, as it were, chapter 2 of our lives, or volume 2 of our history, turning our backs on the brokenness of our history and opening up the volume which is there as a result of what Christ has finished on the cross, then in Christ, all that is Christ's is ours.

We are ontologically related to Jesus. That is the meaning of the song. What did you mean when you sang, One with himself I cannot die?

You say to yourself, What am I singing about? One with himself I cannot die. I will die. No, you will go through the valley of the shadow of death, but if you're in Christ, you will not die. You will experience the journey of the separation of soul and body, but the you of you will never be separated from Christ. It is impossible, because you are ontologically included in Christ, and therefore all that is Christ's is yours. All that is Christ's is imputed to you, or is accredited to you.

That is not a fiction, that is a reality. You're listening to Truth for Life, that is Alistair Begg, on the security that is ours in Christ. We'll hear more from Alistair on Monday. Today's message makes it clear why it is so vital that we look at history through the lens of the Bible, and that is why here at Truth for Life we teach God's Word every day. You should know we are always striving to expand our reach through radio and various online channels. We trust that God will use the teaching of his Word to convert unbelievers into committed followers of Christ, to grow the faith of those who already believe, and to build up his church. And we want to invite you to partner with us in this endeavor. There's a team we call Truth Partners, a small but vital group of listeners like you who give each month to make the Bible teaching ministry of Truth for Life possible. Their combined giving helps care for the cost of producing and distributing this daily program throughout the world.

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I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for studying the Bible with us. Hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with your local church. And then join us Monday as we'll find out why we need to look back before we can confidently look forward to Christ's return. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.