Be Patient, the Lord Is Coming (Part 3 of 4)

The Bible makes it clear that Jesus will return and it's equally clear that no one knows the day or hour of His appearing. So what are we supposed to do while we wait? Today on Truth for Life we'll explore the advice James provides concerning temptations we ought to avoid and examples we ought to follow while we wait for Christ's return. Alistair Begg is teaching from James chapter 5. As we prepare to turn to the Bible, gracious God, we ask that you will give to us clarity and a deep sense of understanding so that in finding out the truth of your Word we may bow before it and live in the fullness of it.

For Jesus Christ's sake we ask it. Amen. James 5 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. Well, as we return to this, I say again to you, let us beware the paragraph break that is there in most of our text between verse 6 and verse 7. It is vitally important that we recognize that what James goes on to say, beginning in the seventh verse, he says in the context of all that he has just said in verses 1–6. In other words, the response of these believers to oppression and to injustice is to be governed by their understanding of God's sovereignty and particularly understanding of the fact that the next thing on the calendar of God, if you like, is the return of Jesus himself. That is the significance of the third word in your English text there in verse 7, be patient then. Or it could also be, be patient therefore, allowing us to make sure that in our study of this call to patience, we do not divorce it from that which has already been said.

The cries of the harvesters, we have learned, have reached the ears of God, and he will in his time ensure that the oppressors will be punished. And so James says, in light of the fact that you know that this is a dead certainty, you must guard against becoming impatient, faint-hearted grumblers. Now, I want to look at this with you, because I think that here we have three straightforward temptations that he urges his readers to avoid.

The first is obvious, isn't it? The temptation to impatience. Impatience. So, when the Bible gives a positive and imperative like this, be patient, what he's saying is, don't be impatient.

He could have said it either way. The temptation is to impatience, and the requirement is of patience. He mentions it consistently here, twice in verse 7, then again in verse 8 and in verse 10 and in verse 11.

And although he bounces between two Greek words, and in certain instances you will find it as perseverance and elsewhere as patience, the inference remains the same. And what James is alerting his readers to is something that we're all familiar with, if we're honest, and that is the danger that is represented to the people of God in the face of injustice. One of my great heroes politically is Winston Churchill. And in the most recent work that I read of him, written by someone else, they said that one of the things that marked Churchill out more than anything else was his absolute hatred of injustice in any shape or form.

It absolutely fried him. And it caused him to intervene in causes most unlike him, and yet all because of injustice. And I don't think any of us like injustice. We don't like it when we see it.

We certainly don't like ourselves if we're ever involved in it. And the temptation to try and take matters into our own hands in the face of injustice is as real for us today as it was for the initial readers of this letter. Be patient, impatient. Impatient with whom? Well, it's possible that they were growing impatient with God, isn't it? Because they had a time scale, and God wasn't operating according to their time scale.

Have you ever felt that way? You're impatient because God has made a promise, but he doesn't seem to keep it in the time that we would like. And so we find ourselves completely wrongly growing impatient with God.

He needs to do something, and he needs to do something immediately. In the same way, we may grow impatient with those who are the source of injustice, which is probably the most likely element that is represented here, faced by the rich oppressors, hypothesizing how well they seem to be doing and how poor these believers were doing. They would be tempted very severely to take matters into their own hands and for impatience to reveal itself in their becoming avengers and retaliators. They had read the Psalmist, who prophesized that the rich are going to be set down from their seats and the mighty are going to be disrobed of their evidences of power. And now a circumstance like this confronts these believers, and they find themselves saying, If God is not going to bring these people down, maybe we should just go and bring them down. If God is not going to do something here to deal with his oppression, maybe we'll just go and do something about it. Now, that's not so far removed from the twenty-first century, is it—the bombing of abortion clinics, the intervention in the civil processes of life, the attempt to forestall justice or to initiate a form of justice that runs around the rule of law itself.

No, we understand that this has a particular ring for the believers who are reading it, but it is a real ring for us as well. Loss of patience far too easily gives rise to vengeance and to vindictiveness, produces a form of vitriol and anger which is not to be any part of the Christian believers' testimony. Or, I suppose the other side of the coin would be that instead of it producing anger, it simply produces apathy.

The people become unbelieving, they become despairing, and they are completely disinterested in what is going on. Well, that's the first temptation, to avoid impatience. And along with it, secondly, faint-heartedness. If you look at verse 8, you too be patient and stand firm. If you have an authorized version, it says something like, And stablish your hearts. Or establish your hearts. Be patient and establish your hearts.

Now, the issue is obvious, isn't it? Because what is it that strikes fearfulness into the human heart? What is it that brings anxiety to us if it isn't uncertainty about eventual outcomes? It is the uncertainty about the eventuality that makes us faint-hearted in the experience of the condition. So, for example, if you knew for sure that the diagnosis you were about to receive would result in treatment and complete healing so that you would live for another hundred years, the diagnosis would ultimately hold no alarm for you. The inconvenience, the fearfulness attached to whatever the condition was or whatever treatment was necessary would actually be lost sight of because of the fact that at the end of the line, we knew guaranteed, certainly, that we would be cured, that we would be healed, and that all would be well for the foreseeable future. But given that we have no knowledge of that, then the anxiety may produce the kind of faint-heartedness that James warns against here.

The verb in the Greek actually conveys the idea of tying something down or making something secure. Phillips paraphrases it, resting your hearts on the ultimate certainty. Resting your hearts on the ultimate certainty.

So you see what James is doing. He's saying, although right now you may be oppressed, although right now things may not be the way that you would wish them to be, you need to rest your hearts in the ultimate certainty. I'm warning you, I'm urging you to make sure that you don't grow faint-hearted, that you don't grow weary. And the way to handle this is to look to that which is absolutely certain. And what is absolutely certain, he says, is that the Lord will come. He will come in power, and he will come in glory, as his colleagues say in the rest of the New Testament letters. And what James is doing is reinforcing, really, what the writer to the Hebrews does quite frequently in the course of Hebrews—Hebrews 10 and verse 35—"So do not throw away your confidence," he says to them.

It will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. You need to know that you will receive what he has promised. And then he goes on, and he says, He who is coming will not delay.

That's the certainty. But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But he says—and this is the come-on, you see, of the leader. This is the encouragement of the pastor. But we're not of those who shrink back and are destroyed—brackets, are we?

No, we are those who believe and are saved. And in the midst of such affirmations, the temptation that accompanies the temptation to impatience is the temptation to a loss of heart. And what James is affirming is not that we should get caught up in various theories concerning the timing of the return of Jesus—and we'll come to that in a moment—but rather that we should focus on the promised fact.

He, the Lord of glory, will return. Third temptation to be avoided is grumbling, grumbling. Be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. Don't grumble against each other, brothers or brothers and sisters. It happens all the time, doesn't it? Everyone from the outside comes to a family or to a business, and suddenly, the people frustrated by their inability to tackle the oppression that comes from without start to blame everybody within. Well, I think that's all if you hadn't—well, why didn't you—well, if you had, and all of a sudden, the cats among the pigeons and all the people who are supposed to be united against a common enemy have started to grumble against one another.

That's one of the roles of parents, to constantly—however many children you have—frankly, you only need one. But if you've got more than one, they may grumble not simply to themselves but to grumble against one another, and they will grumble about one another, and they will grumble in front of others as well. And it's not nice. It's ugly. It's distasteful. It's usually unfounded.

And it certainly is not the kind of thing that encourages people to come back for another visit to your home on a Tuesday night. Just recognizing the problem is to get a jump start on it. Because you see, whenever the tide turns against the people of God, there is a strange dimension in humanity that even finds a weird comfort in blaming those who plainly aren't responsible for our predicament.

We know that it wasn't you, or it isn't you, but we can't get to them. And so it just makes me feel better to get to you. Well, no, says James, you mustn't be doing that. And the warning of James is akin to the words of Jesus in Matthew 7. Judge not that you be not judged.

Don't get into such a grumbling affair. And he said much, hasn't he, in this letter about the tongue? And grumbling is one of the misuses, the abuses of our tongues. I wrote down in my notes a quote with which each of us are now familiar. It just seemed to me apropos, where the writer—whether it was Charles Simeon or John Newton or someone like that—he wrote in his journal, I resolved never to do anything that I wouldn't do if I knew it to be the last hour of my life.

And I made a mental note to say to myself, I need to change this or put an addendum to it for me, which reads, Resolve never to say anything I wouldn't say if I knew it to be the last hour of my life. Those of us who are verbal, those of us who are vocal, face this temptation daily and gravely. And so James utters this straightforward directive, because God takes grumbling seriously.

And I'll just give you one cross-reference to reinforce this. I'll quote to you from 1 Corinthians 10, and I'll read the preceding statement so that we have an idea of the location of God's concern about grumbling. This is 1 Corinthians 10.7, Do not be idolaters, as some of them were, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry. We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test the Lord, as some of them did, and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroying angel. It's interesting, isn't it? They say, Well, I'm not an idolater.

I'm not involved in sexual immorality. How about grumbler? You see, there is both a warning and an encouragement in directing us to these temptations. I know you're very tired of me saying, In Scotland we used to sing. They perhaps put that on my tombstone.

I have a little player, an iPod, and you can hang it over it, and people can just plug it in. And to all the hymns they wish I'd never told them about. But I'm constantly amazed at how much essential biblical truth was reinforced for me in my growing years by little songs—not all genius songs theologically, but the song that immediately came to mind went like this, and we would sing it as children.

Come leave your house in Grumble Street and move to Sunshine Square, for that's the place where Jesus lives, and all is happy there. Teach your children songs. From the temptations to be avoided, then, to the examples to be followed. Three examples, they're there in the text. Number one, the farmer.

Having given the exhortation to be patient, he then gives the illustration. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its precious, valuable crop, and how patient he is as he waits for the rains to come. There's a lot of hard work involved in arable farming. Some of you have grown up on farms, and you know that to be the case. The farmer and his helpers do their part.

They work as hard as they possibly can. But when all of their part is done, they have to wait. And they have to wait, in this instance, for the rains to come in autumn so that the seed will germinate, and then in the springtime for further rain so that that which is germinated and sprouted may now be brought to maturity. And what they're waiting for is valuable, you will notice.

It is precious. They're waiting for a crop which, in subsistence-level farming, is peculiarly precious, because life depends upon it. They're not just growing multiple crops for the well-being of the community. But for the small farmer, that which he grows will in part be the food for his own table. And so he waits, and he waits patiently.

And so the point of application is clear. And you, believers, says James, you need to wait also patiently. You need to wait in confident expectation that Christ will return just as he has promised. And then secondly, the prophets. The prophets. Verse 10. Brothers, as an example of patience, particularly in the face of suffering, take the prophets.

What did they do? We're told, who spoke in the name of the Lord. There were, of course, false prophets who did not speak in the name of the Lord. They healed the people's sins lightly, or at least they tried to. People liked them. They would ask them to come and speak and sing to them and so on.

Tell us more of this material. But the prophets, the true prophets of God, who spoke in the name of the Lord, they were not popular. They were not raising the huge crowds. They were saying what God told them to say. And as a result of that, they are a classic example of the suffering which comes from such obedience and of the patience that James calls for in their experience. I won't turn to these passages, but if you're making a brief note, let me just give you, for example, for your homework, Elijah in 1 Kings chapter 18, the response of people to Amos in chapter 7, and so on. In fact, it's so comprehensive was the reaction of people to the prophets that when Stephen gives his great historical sermon before he is martyred, he actually looks the Jews in the eye and he says to them, Was there ever a prophet your fathers didn't persecute?

Was there ever a prophet that they didn't persecute? He said, Think about it. And so James employs this. And once again, the echo of the words of Jesus when you look there at verse 11. As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. Where do you think James got that from? Well, probably just from Jesus, don't you think? Again, Matthew 5, Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. And then the third example is the example of Job.

We've all grown up, haven't we? Knowing about the thing that's usually said at weddings—I haven't heard it said here, but in the UK, if somebody's offering a blessing, as it were, to the couple, they say to them, And as you step out into life together, we wish you the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the children of Israel. Well, it's the patience of Job which is our example here. But if you go to the book of Job and you just dip into it, you will find with relative ease that jumping out at you are all kinds of soundbites that will reinforce the reason for James employing Job as an illustration of patience. For example, Job chapter 1, and Job tore his robe and shaved his head and fell to the ground in worship. And he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall depart. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. May the name of the LORD be praised.

And in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. What a wonderful example of patience. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life and we'll hear the conclusion of this message tomorrow. In addition to the daily messages you hear on Truth for Life, you can listen or watch or download or share any of Alistair's messages from his entire teaching library for free simply by going to truthforlife.org. And it's because of the faithful giving that comes from your fellow listeners that Alistair's books can be purchased at our cost.

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