Books of James & Jude - Godly patience's and endurances Part 1 - James 5:7-11
James 5:7-11 · JD McCulley · Sep 8, 2013
James & Jude, No. 35
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492640497640

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so picking up from last week, we're in chapter 5. We covered verses 1 through 6 last week, and it was a little bit of a technical challenge as we had various issues come up, but I'm hoping to knock some of those out with a little different approach this week, so maybe we can stay a little more focused.

That's my hope anyway. So we're going to move from the first six verses and start with verse 7 and go through 9 today, and then I believe it's It's going to be actually Jeremy's actually, because Bob, they swapped. Okay, they swapped, okay. So I think in the schedule it said through 11, but I think it's actually through 12. We'll just make sure we get that cleared up.

So these are the first three verses in this section, 7, 8, and 9, and then 10, 11, and 12 actually cap out in my understanding of this section regarding godly patience and endurance is what we're calling that. So this is part one, and then part two will be next week with Jeremy. If you want to follow along with me, I'll just read these three verses and we'll get started.

It says, Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it until it gets the early and late rains. You, too, be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing right at the door.

So I've got an outline for these next six verses, as we're calling them, again, Godly Patience and Endurance. So the first part, 7 through 9, which we're going to cover today, the way that I looked at it was that we are to be patient like a farmer. So James uses the imagery of the farmer, a Palestinian Old Testament farmer. and brings that to light and uses that analogy for us so that we could relate that to what the Jewish believers that James was speaking to about. And then in part 2 or B there, we are to be patient like the prophets, and then finally we are to be steadfast like Job. And so through these next six verses, James is establishing this godly patience and endurance through three different examples. And we're going to look at the farmer today and see how that relates to the issues of endurance and lung suffering and stabilized heart and also how it relates to judgment because that's the big theme in the last two verses that we'll cover today.

So James is referencing a reoccurring Old Testament theme seen clearly in Psalm 37. I thought we'd look at that theme because the imagery is very clear and we want to have that in our minds. So if someone could read Psalm 37 for us, that would be great.

Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, and trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the new day. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it only causes harm.

So what we have here is obviously the same theme in an Old Testament context and obviously in an Old Testament frame of mind with regards to blessing and desires and so forth in the land. And we talked a little bit about the difference for us in the church age with regards to that. James, again, he's on the very forefront of the church. This is the spearhead. And so, using Old Testament imagery to bring about the New Testament truths that James is starting to establish is a very natural way for these Jewish believers to start to understand.

Yes, Al? I liked what Psalm 37 said. to clarify this idea of patience, because it says do not fret. The opposite of patience is that restless fretting over things that you can't control anyway. You're still all upset about them. That's right. Exactly.

So in verses 1-6 we had the situation where we had the wicked rich. And obviously the Jewish believers in that day were struggling with how these wicked rich could be in a situation like they are. And James says, well, wait a minute. There is a situation where the wicked rich are going to reap. decay and rust, and we looked at all the different ways that they would weep and howl because of what was going to happen in terms of the last day judgment according to the way that they treated the wealth that they had, and the way that they used it, and the way that they misused it, rather. And so this theme of encouraging the oppressed people of God to take comfort from the fact that God will judge those wicked and that they should endure patiently and faithfully in the light of His coming judgment is something that was present in the Old Testament, and James was renewing that perspective as a beginning way of thinking for the New Testament. So again, everything that James is saying is really beginning laying a foundation for what Paul will explain later. And we're going to get into a lot of that today because there's a lot of firsts, I think, that we'll see here. So this theme is very present in the Old Testament and James is bringing it back to drive home the motivations for the believers in this day, in his day.

So patient is imperative here. So brethren, you must be patient. It's not an optional thing. You must choose patience. It's an imperative. And so it conveys, this word conveys a long suffering as opposed to this hasty anger or even revenge. And so there was a desire to fret, as you mentioned in Psalm 37. But even more so than just fret, there was the idea of wanting to even take revenge or be hasty about how you satisfy the frustrations that you have with regards to the wicked rich.

But he says, or James says, the long-suffering attitude is what represents the Christian motivation towards what you see. There is a perspective that is different for the believer, and it has to do with patience and long-suffering, and not, I need to make sure that each person gets exactly what they deserve, when they deserve it, and how they deserve it. That's not the perspective of the long-suffering believer.

Besides this idea of action on our part, this impatient, think back to what you and others taught earlier in James about bridling our tongue and being quick to, it's just so human, as soon as someone says something, I know with me, that's one of my big weaknesses, I want to flare up and respond right away. No, no, that's wrong. Well, it's interesting, verse 9 deals with the tongue, and so we're going to talk about some of the themes that James has already introduced. He's going to introduce yet another imperative about the tongue, and so we'll look at that for sure. So this is one of a believer's spiritual reactions to mistreatment by people.

So when we think about a believer's spiritual reaction to what they see with regards to the example of money being used in a wicked way, even Galatians 5.22, Paul goes on to explain that this is a fruit of the Spirit. Patience is part of the way that we, when walking with the Lord, the Spirit produces patience in one's life. And James, again, he's not explaining how the Spirit works to produce patience. He's simply saying that you must be patient. Again, James is about doing. Paul is about how that doing gets done.

So we need the full context of the New Testament to recognize how that gets done. If we run into James and miss out on the progressive revelation of this New Testament truth, then we're going to have each other having a checklist of how patient are you being today?

And you better gird up your patience and pull up your boots and get it done, because that's all we get at this stage. But we know as we look at the attribute of patience for the believer, we learn that that gets done by a rest in the very Lord Himself. And so that fruit of the Spirit happens as we are beholding the Lord through His Word.

But nonetheless, James is driving home this reaction to the wicked rich and the way that they use their greed for mistreatment of others, and even for themselves, that there's impatience, so long-suffering, hang tight. And there's a reason here. It's not just hang tight and there's no reason why. We're going to talk about the motivation and where that all leads to. And guess what? We're going to see that long-suffering is not a permanent attitude of the believer. It doesn't happen forever. We're going to see why.

So the idea is to set the timer of one's temper for the long run. In other words, we've got a marathon of patience, but there is an end to the marathon, interestingly. So think long. Focus on the final lap in the race of life. Have a long fuse. I like the way the Bible Knowledge Commentary kind of brought that terminology out. Have the long view. You see injustice, you see the misuse and mistreatment of the poor, and you see that happening in our own money-driven society today. But James is saying, have the long view, and here's why. So we'll go into that.

Therefore, it says, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. So longsuffering has an end in sight. It's the coming of the Lord. So coming translates parousia, a word used in the New Testament for the appearance of Christ in glory. So this basically means presence, and it was used in the secular Greek to depict the arrival of a king or a dignitary. So, they would have been familiar with this idea of coming. The question is, what coming are we talking about here? Christ had his first coming, and they would have known that.

Although the gospel books had not been written for the audience in James, they didn't have a written record of all that Christ did, right? Because James was the first book written in the New Testament, chronologically speaking. And that actually is going to play out into some important perspectives on this passage, I think, today. But they did have the oral communication of what had happened throughout Jesus' life, death, burial, and resurrection, but they didn't have the written record yet.

And so they're referring back to what they had heard from the disciples and what was being taught, but what had not been recorded. So the question is, did they have a clear understanding of what coming this was? Well, I think James starts to lay down some very interesting perspectives on this, but it's for the first time. And they would have not heard some of these things, and we're going to talk about that.

But the question that comes up in my mind, and I quickly thought of, is this word is both used for the rapture as a coming, in 2 Thessalonians 2.1, as well as the second coming of the Lord.

And so James 5.8 will help us better understand which coming Jesus had in mind. We're going to get to that. But right now we just see that the patience and the long-suffering is encouraged for the believer until the coming of the Lord. So again, that long view has its end in sight.

So we want to talk about what the coming of the Lord is and get a little bit of perspective on end prophecy and what did James have in mind when he communicated this and then what does Paul tell us in addition to this that we can have the advantage of seeing the bigger picture of. So I've got this chart here and I borrowed it from a friend of mine named Jeremy Thomas. And what you'll see, and I'll just kind of try to use the laser pointer here a bit, you see we've got the time of the church up until the point of the rapture. And so we're talking about, is James talking about this coming?

And then we've got this day of the Lord, the wrath and darkness, and it's characterized by a number of different terminologies that we use for this seven year period. We've got the day of the Lord and wrath and darkness. So the day of the Lord is not a day, 24 hour period in scripture. It actually refers to the entire tribulation period. We also refer to that as Daniel's 70th week. And then we've got, of course, the last three and a half years called the Great Tribulation. And then that final day, that final coming, is referred to in Scripture as the great and terrible day of the Lord. And I circled that in red. So what we're looking at is we've got the rapture where the Lord comes for His own. But again, James' audience, we've got to think from their perspective.

What did they know? Did they have a clear teaching and perspective of the rapture yet? They would have potentially had one verse or one set of understanding from what Jesus said, and John will look at that, but it wasn't written, it wasn't recorded, so it would only have been communicated through the disciples' teaching. But they had a ton on this, didn't they?

So, what James is doing is he's introducing some new concepts for the first time, and I think it's a really neat perspective to begin looking at it from the way James' audience understood it, and then also, from our perspective, be able to look back. So we'll talk about that. So we've got this question, we need to continue to try to define what the answer is. Before we do that, let's get the imagery in our mind. The second part, or the third, I guess, aspect of verse 7 says, The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it until it gets the early and the late rains. So the reference to this early and late rains, it's important.

The Palestinians, the Palestine as a land rather, had two seasons. There was this October to April. season where they got the rain, and then there was the May to September. And so the first period brings the early rains, and the second period brings the late rains. And so they knew these periods. Every farmer knew the seasons of the early and the late rains, and that's how they referred to that.

In the Old Testament, the coming of the seasons was a reflection of the faithfulness of God. So let's look at Deuteronomy 11, 13 and 14, and just get that Old Testament perspective in mind. 13 And it shall come about, if ye listen obediently to all my commands, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God, to serve him with all your heart and soul, that he will give the rain for your land in its season, early and late rain, that ye may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil. So patience for the Old Testament believer in the land, needing to have the blessing of produce and harvest, was to look at patience as a means to the faithfulness of God. So God would be faithful in return for your patience and trust in Him. And so again, this is an Old Testament perspective. This is the law. We're in Deuteronomy. And so what is it that's different for us in terms of beginning a New Testament perspective? There are things that are unique for us.

But again, James was not responsible for fully explaining the new life of the believer and how God's faithfulness as a result of patience, there wasn't this trade concept as there was in the Old Testament. Now remember, law had a purpose of leading one to the Lord, right? I mean, that was really the goal. There was still the spirit in terms of coming and going and being a part of the Old Testament believer's life, but they didn't have the permanent indwelling. And so patience would have had to been, it was a different way of being motivated at that particular point in time, and the means to patience was different.

So we're not saying that, we look back in Deuteronomy and say, oh, this is just a rubber stamp, and we take that same set of verses and apply it in the exact same way that the Old Testament believer did, but James is definitely pulling on this imagery from the Old Testament to drive home this point. And so we have a principle of patience, we don't have the law of patience, driving the result of faithfulness from God. That was an Old Testament perspective. In this case, we have a principle that's being repeated from the Old Testament, and that James is renewing, and Paul will explain how that gets done in later revelation.

Is that making sense? I'm being careful not to say that James is saying the exact same thing that was being communicated in the Book of Deuteronomy. Although the principles are very similar. Today's but the hungry heart has that same sort of thing embedded. It says our walk. by faith is not Christ plus our effort, but Christ plus our receiving of His grace in our lives. That's right. So exactly the same idea here. That's right.

And I think it's very hard for New Testament teachers in our day and age to teach the book of James and keep in mind the fact that Paul explains how that gets done. If there's anything that I've learned from this book and teaching in this book is how wonderful it is to have the entire revelation of the New Testament. It's such a critical thing for us that we cannot run into James and take it from a flat perspective and just teach it as it applies exactly in the same way. We have to continue to understand the revelation that Paul gives to us on how these things get done. And it's a real challenge for teachers in today's age to not look at James that way. I mean, we have the historical challenges of even Martin Luther and so forth.

We've talked about those. Bob, you had some thoughts? Yes, Jim. I think your interpretation here is really, really excellent, the way you put James in context in terms of when it was written, to whom it was written, and what the understanding was. But what we can best simply look at the book of James as, this is what the life looks like. And that life is a new life. That's Jesus, right? And this is what it looks like. It's exactly what it looks like.

This is not to try harder to be patient. In fact, I think patience here is a long-lasting patience. It's a dependency. because we're citizens of a different kingdom, right? And that patience relates to his timing, not the things that are immediately before us.

So I think he did a great job putting that in context as to where James fits. Great. I think that's a good way of putting it. I mean, we're looking at what the the walking believer's life looks like, and James is conveying that to his Jewish-believing audience, and we get a much fuller perspective as we continue to read throughout the New Testament.

But patience is a real critical motivation for these believers, and it's an imperative. I mean, he's using big words. We're going to see the word behold in a moment. It's like, look, listen, stop. Let's talk about that. He's using some big imperatives and some emphasis here. There's repetition, there's things going on here to drive home what this life looks like and why this life is motivated by the coming of the Lord. So we'll look at that.

But real quick here, just a picture of the modern harvest near the Dead Sea. So this idea of being able to harvest based on the faithfulness of the early and the late rains. Just trying to bring some of that historical context. To this day, they still depend upon these early and these late rains. One of the things about Christianity is it is grounded in history. This is different.

We can go back and we can continue to look about where this happened and what even is still the same today in the land. I was listening to Vernon in the book of Acts and we talked about Acts being really a historical document in terms of how the church grew up.

You don't have that in other spiritual belief systems. You can take Buddhism without any historical reference to Buddha. You can take Hinduism without any historical reference to Hinduism. But you can't take Christianity without an understanding of the historical reality of it. In other words, if Jesus didn't die in history and raise from the dead, then all of this is for nothing.

That's what Paul says. This is a historical system of belief. It's grounded in a real place and in a real time that has people really gathering harvest. And your understanding of the Christian faith is based on the historical reality of these things. We can go back and look at that. So verse 8, let's move into that. It says, you too be patient and strengthen your hearts. So it repeats patience, right?

So based on the Old Testament imagery of the farmer, These believers are imperatively told again, and this is the biblical form of emphasis. Remember, we don't have the exclamation points and bolds and underlines in scripture, so when we see an author repeating something, especially back-to-back, he's emphasizing it.

He's almost at the top of his lungs, not in the sense that he's angry, but he's saying, you cannot miss the fact that I'm communicating this imperative of patience. patiently enduring the mistreatment of others, restraining their soul from the passion of anger. That is not easy, and these believers, they knew what mistreatment was, more so than many ever will in the faith. They were on the very outskirts of having to establish this new Christian church, this new movement that the disciples had been communicating to them, and they received a great deal of persecution for that, from the Roman government and from the Jews themselves. They knew what it was like to think, man, I just want... if I could only just handle this situation the way I used to. And James is saying, nope, long-suffering.

Nope, mistreatment of others is not the game that we're involved in. That's not what we're a part of. You restrain your soul. You must restrain your soul. from the passion of anger. Anger is not the perspective of the believer who is dealing with the wicked rich and the way that they steal from you and the way that they use their riches for their own gain. That is not your job. Revenge is not in your hands.

And he goes on to not only communicate the issue of patience and long-suffering, he talks about this idea of strengthen your hearts. And as you look at the word strengthen, you see this imagery of stabilization, fixed firmly, be unchanging in your hearts. So, it's about your patient endurance with a stabilized heart. In other words, the way that James was communicating patience was not this wrestling within yourself in order to be patient. You were stabilized. You were fixed. Your heart was at rest in the strength of where their mind was to be set, and we'll talk about that. It's like you said here, the long-term view helps you keep from fretting, grumbling, being angry about the daily ups and downs that life shows up.

We are called on to have that long-range view of God's sovereignty, God's ultimate judgment, God's blessing, etc., etc. Think, what's the point of prophecy? Because there's prophetic aspects here. We're talking about the coming of the Lord, and we're going to talk about it even more in the next couple verses. One of the major perspectives of eschatology or prophecy is to provide hope for a long view.

Without it, there's no hope. We do not know what's happening. We cannot have a long view because we don't know what's actually going to happen. But the God of the scripture is one who says, I am in control of this entire plan, and I'm telling you the way this thing's going to end. And because of that, a long view is even possible. Is there a long view in any other system? There's not.

You never know who's going to ultimately be in control. Maybe being one with the universe gets broken down at some point and you can't do that anymore. You just don't know. You don't have the stability of a sovereign creator who actually maintains his creation in a way that cannot be thwarted.

We talked about the way that the Greeks constantly looked to different gods, but at any given point in time, one of those gods could get overturned by another. Could they have a long view? No. All they could do was follow who was in control at the particular point in time that they were in control. Question somewhere?

I like the idea of rest, because that seems to be, I mean, you mentioned it, and that seems to be the idea here, you know, strength in your heart, being stabilized in Christ, and having that prophecy. I was just thinking about, you know, what was it, Two weeks ago was the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's speech, and I'm thinking about that, and certainly there is a religious aspect to, you know, we need to endure, and we're going to come through this time of oppression, but, you know, Vern has said before, there's no sense to have, there's no reason why we should have faith in something God hasn't explicitly laid out. And that, you know, even though that was a terrible time and we did overcome, the fact that, you know, their faith and, well, we can overcome this, and they had a lot of faith in God, but it wasn't necessarily something God had promised. God never said, you know, you're being oppressed, I'm going to remove the oppression. And so that's such a... earthly view, but what we have here is that heavenly view.

We see, as you said, Paul goes on to explain so much more. In Romans 8, all things work together for good. I have this plan for you to be conformed to the image of my Son, and I'm going to carry it out so we can rest in that. But even here, from the very beginning of the book of James, he's talking about endurance.

And like I said, the idea of resting in what God has promised us and knowing what he's going to accomplish with us is, I think, exactly what he's talking about here. We know we have that prophecy. We know the end. We know the end of the book. And so it's just a matter of resting in what God has said. That's a really good point.

That earthly view, I usually use the term human viewpoint. We as Americans, we think about patriotism. To what end do we have hope and faith in our government, in our way of living, in our land? Did God specifically say that we would have the kind of freedom and peace as a country that we all hope for and fight for? So as we fight and as we protect and as we hold the perspective of the land that we hold, is that to trump or to be on equal par with the perspective of where we're headed in terms of the Lord's prophecy?

Maybe your fight for freedom fails. Does that change what God has said about the injustice that he will handle in the last... Everything, every injustice and every hope that is not fully realized in the human viewpoint perspective will be settled in the last days. And that's what James is saying to his believers.

And we can hear the exact same words because we still stand in the same time. And we'll talk about the fact that the Lord's coming is near. Guess what? It still is. What they heard is still the same truth that we hear today because he has not returned for his own yet. So James is driving home to these believers their need to be established in the truths contained here.

We might say rooted in this doctrine. We don't use the word doctrine a whole lot, but I think it represents teaching. We have a teaching about the coming of the Lord and the attitude and the motivation that we have towards that and how it stabilizes us and how it gives us the reason and the view to be long-suffering and not seek to have revenge or this idea of giving them what they deserve. God's going to handle it and it will happen in the coming.

Okay? We talked about how, you know, in the previous verses, they're going to, to just kind of say it a different way, they're going to reap what they sow. It's not our job to make sure that they reap it in the exact way that we want them to, right? So let's move on.

So we're saying, you too be patient, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Again, he says the same thing again, but he adds something to that. So we had the coming of the Lord in the previous verse, and now we've got the Lord is near. So patience and a stabilized heart is exhorted on the fact that we know the coming of the Lord is near. This is a long view, but it also has a qualifier to it.

And this word, near, is something that's been used in James 4.8. Draw near to the Lord, James said. Here, this word, we've talked about it before in a previous verse, but the idea is at hand. It's imminent.

It could happen at any point in time, and you don't know when it is, but it's near. And so, your attitude is to be, your attitude of patience and a strengthened heart or a stabilized heart is to be is to be honed in on the fact that the Lord's coming is not only going to happen, but it's near, it's imminent. In other words, it could happen at any point in time. If you happen to know that the Lord's coming was in, say, a hundred years, would that change the way that you chose to endure, potentially? It might. You might say, well, you know, my kids and my grandchildren are going to have to be a lot more patient than me. You know, this thing's out a distance from me. So, you know, I might.

But the Lord communicated to James that his coming was near. And this is new. This is brand new stuff. for the believer. They'd never heard it in this way. This is the first New Testament mention of the pre-tribulational rapture because it's presented in verse 8 and 9 as being imminent. It can happen at any moment.

Do you think the audience to whom he's writing is maybe perceiving still that Christ is coming as King? I mean maybe these are still milk drinkers to some extent. Hold that thought. Let's look at one verse that they would have had in mind. Before I do that, I'll just mention this last point.

There are no prophesied events which must happen before the rapture. The second coming, on the other hand, is not imminent and it cannot happen at any moment. So the rapture can happen at any moment, it's near. And we know that from the future teaching that we're going to get from Paul in the 1st and 2nd Thessalonians and so forth. So we know that there is a very strict order of things to happen once the rapture kicks it all off. And you have the Antichrist come on the scene, you have the seven year period beginning, you have Daniel's 70th week. So we can go back to Daniel, we can look at all of these events that must happen the moment the rapture occurs, everything kicks off and nothing is imminent anymore. But the rapture itself, we know from other teachings that it is. But these New Testament believers, James' audience, did not fully understand that. Let's talk about what they did have. This is a chart, and you might be able to see it. I chose to only print one supplemental handout.

But what this says, and I'm going to summarize it for you, and I apologize for being small. But what this is, this is all the passages on the rapture. And what Vernon did is he took some studies out of Mel Couch and Tommy Ice and he created a chart out of it, summarized it all up. It's really actually quite handy. And unfortunately we've got some funky looking formatting on the screen. But what this says is, here's all the passages on the left. And these are the things that these passages talk about and the commonality amongst those passages. So that's an interesting study. However, James 5, 7-9 is one of those passages on the rapture. And there are several common factors that it shares with other verses.

And so hope and comfort is one of the big aspects that the rapture The rapture and the looking to the rapture should produce hope and comfort. Another way of saying comfort, rest, like you mentioned earlier. So the imminent return of the Lord, the fact that he is coming and it is near, should produce hope and comfort.

There's other passages that communicate that same thing. Out of 1 John, we looked at those in the past. Titus talks about it, 2 Thessalonians, and so forth. There's a number of verses that teach that, but this passage that we're looking at today communicates hope and comfort, and that is the common factor related to rapture passages, and this fits that factor. Another one is taken directly by the Lord himself or immediately facing Christ that is coming. So it talks about that.

We can look at other ones. But one of the things that's interesting about this chart, and I talked about this earlier, is this is not organized chronologically in time. This is organized in terms of how the New Testament presents these verses in the order that it's written. presented in your Bible. So what we can see is that the James 5, 7, 9 is actually, if you put it in chronological time order, goes at the very, very top.

And all these other things were written later. So in other words, they had nothing by way of writing, written, recorded scripture at all except for this verse, but this John 14, 1-3, they had an oral, because it happened prior to the James historical period. Does that make sense? So, let's read it. That's the point. We've got to figure out what they knew, right? What did they know? Let not you be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. So I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. There's a receiving that there would be a place prepared for them, and that he would come and receive those who believed to himself. So what is this receiving? It's the rapture.

Now, we don't know fully all about what that looks like until later and later, but this James passage builds on this truth. Again, they didn't have it in writing, but they would have had it through the disciples' teaching. And it's reasonable to assume that James being the brother of Jesus Christ, right, would have been maybe more credible in terms of transmitting this message. Very much so. There's a lot of assumption there. That's interesting. That's what I put here. I said, James, Jesus' half-brother, is recording the first New Testament mention. No, I know, but you're following the same lines of thinking. Here's the half-brother who wasn't even a believer when that John passage was written, or communicated, rather. He was when it was written, but not when it was actually communicated, when it historically took place. He wasn't even a believer.

That happened later. but we knew that he was with the disciples from the book of Acts 13 14 15 somewhere in there and he was with the disciples receiving this information and now he is taking that information and having additional revelation about the nearness of this and he's communicating it to his leader so These Jewish believers knew that Jesus was coming back to receive them to himself and that there was a place that was prepared by the Savior himself. So were they thinking King or were they thinking Savior and presence face to face with Him in a place that is not here?

It's likely that they had that view. They could have had that view, reasonably speaking, and it's likely that they did. So these Jewish believers would have likely heard the contents of John 14, 1 through 3, but James records this truth and adds to the idea of Christ receiving you to myself and tells them that it is both near and how this event should motivate you to live, that is, to be long-suffering with all men and stable of heart.

These are new truths. concerning the rapture. This is prophecy and the motivation that prophecy has in the life of the believer being extended by way of revelation. This is progressive revelation building on this doctrine of the rapture. And he's right at the spearhead of it. And Paul's going to explain a lot more about it. And he's going to establish the doctrine of immanency, but James is the one who mentions it first.

Additionally, near is in the perfect tense, meaning that this occurred in the past but produced a state of being or result that exists in the present in relation to the writer. So from the time that James wrote it to the point that we're reading it and it hasn't happened, it is present tense, or perfect tense rather.

Well, that also tells me being perfect. It tells me that it was eminent then, and it's eminent now. It blows your mind a little bit. You say, how could it be eminent 2,000 years ago, or whenever you wrote that? Well, it's near in the sense that it could happen at any given point in time, right?

And so, when God looks at history, he doesn't see things in the same way. You know, Vern always pulls out the pencil or the pen and is like, you know, we see it from beginning to end, and God doesn't have this beginning to end perspective. And so, Of course, he knows how that relates to our time-confined existence as creatures. However, it's imminent, and from the perspective of God, and from our perspective, it could happen at any point in time.

So, the question that would have potentially... I mean, I can imagine these believers hearing this from James, and then talking amongst themselves over coffee, as if they had coffee. Maybe they didn't. Turkish coffee? I don't know. It could happen today. They would have said it themselves.

And Vern mentions a number of... He says it all the time. And you think, why in the world is he saying that? Well, we'll talk about a crown that's associated with a person that thinks that way. We'll talk about that in a minute. But it could happen today. It could happen the day that James recorded this. It's imminent. It could happen at any point in time.

And when that happens, then the historical prophesied events begin. But until then we're in a parenthetical time period where God is being patient and long-suffering for the purposes of salvation. And that's what God has chosen to do. So we could translate it this way.

For the coming of the Lord has drawn near and remains near. That's what we mean by imminence. It's drawn near and it remains near. It's near of heart. It's near of reality. It can happen at any point in time. Yeah, the act of tense here too is interesting and it's an indicative. It's just going to happen and he's the one that's going to do it.

There's nothing you're going to do to modify the timetable. What do you do in the meantime? Be patient. That's right. Long surfing. Stabilize your heart. Hope. Rest. We talked about that. That's good. It goes on, another big do not. It's stopping. Don't, it's negative, not going to go here. Don't complain, or better grumble mutter under one's breath. We've looked at this word before. This was an issue of sin where these believers were allowing their tongue to be led by their sin nature and it resulted in a grumbling against one another. So here we have a body of believers.

They've had a lot of different exhortations in the book of James about how they should bridle the tongue, how they should be quick to listen, so to speak, and all of this. And here James is just establishing, again, but he's establishing it in the context of the wicked rich and the idea that they need to get what they deserve. The Old Testament talks about that, but here we're gonna have patience and long-suffering. And later Paul will tell you how that gets done. But one thing that you, when you're patient and long-suffering, you're not grumbling. And obviously they were.

They were, I can't believe that this guy had doing this and doing that and he stole my wages. Can you believe that? And I mean there's just, can you believe what that guy thinks or that guy does or says? And there's just grumbling and muttering and complaining amongst the believers.

And James is saying, do not go there. The way that your attitude should be focused on one another is not in a spirit of grumbling or an attitude of grumbling. He's saying this issue must stop. It's not the way that walking believers behave with one another. And I put the word walking in there because obviously they weren't walking at times. And we know that when they were not walking by the Spirit, we learn that from Paul, that it produces the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit, right? And so we know by having lay revelation through Paul that they were not walking with the Spirit. and therefore they were complaining and griping. But James has already told them how they should live. He didn't tell them how they should love one another, but he told us in James 1 that they are to have love for one another and that that was the royal law. Do you remember us reading that? It has a 2-8. 2-8? Yeah. Okay. 2-8. Sorry about that.

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So remember that James is all about the doing and Paul is about how the doing gets done. But they knew that if they were complaining amongst one another that they were not fulfilling the royal law that he talked about just a few minutes earlier.

As he would have been communicating this. I just thought of an analogy. Let's say this guy wins a million dollar lottery. He's going to get that check in a week. He's grumbling all the time about his neighbor who didn't return the wrench. He's got a million dollars waiting for him at the end of the week. We're kind of in the same situation. We've got all this waiting for us. It's a matter of focus. Yeah. It's a matter of focus. Now, it's a great analogy.

One of the reasons why, and this is a key to this doctrine, one of the reasons why we grumble and complain is that we forget to think about what's coming and what has happened, which is why when you don't teach, prophetic perspective of hope and comfort as it relates to how God will settle injustice in His way and in His time. When you lose sight of that and you don't focus on it in teaching, you get wrapped up, right, in the world. And it's like, what's going to happen ten days down the road doesn't have any bearing on really what's happening right now. I'm just upset and ticked off.

But God has established not only what has happened in the past for us to go back and look at, but there's a progressive revelation. As we learn that, as we begin to look into how that relates to our hope in the future, we have something so amazingly different than any other body of belief out there. Hope is real for us. This we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven. How's that for groaning? Yeah. I mean it really fits here in terms of groaning. We groan for that habitation.

So when we see things that are happening that are unjust, does that mean that we don't have a reaction to it? It doesn't mean that we don't say, that is not fair. That is wrong. And there's no way in the world that that, from a biblical perspective, that there is justice in what just happened in terms of human justice. It doesn't mean that we don't have a biblical perspective or a divine viewpoint on the injustice that happens. It doesn't mean that we just say, oh, you know, whatever, we're going to get pulled out of here at some point anyway. We still have the perspective of injustice. However, it's not our job to necessarily settle all injustices, but rather to be patient and long-suffering with men. That's the perspective of grace. Long-suffering cannot be accomplished without grace. They're going to get exactly what they reap.

This sounds like Syria. Our discussion about Syria. Really, it does. How wrong all of that is. But we're in a sinful world. What do people expect? that these rulers are going to treat their people or other people with respect and the way the Lord would expect them to?

No. We were standing at a bus stop last night with a guy from Ukraine. He was just reflecting on all the government-based murder that has occurred in the past of the Union, even more recently in Chezmen. He said Syria. He wasn't dismissing Syria. He was just saying you wouldn't believe that under the current you know, leadership in Russia to prove that people are being murdered left and right across the country.

And the world respects him. And he's part of the conversation. He has a vote. And so he was just saying, put this in perspective. But of course, not from a Christian angle. We were thinking, well, you know, from a Christian perspective, from the world's perspective, The world is a sinful place. That's right. And it doesn't mean that we don't react, right? Right.

But it does mean that we endure those attempts at trying to solve a human situation with the perspective of long suffering and recognizing that justice may not be satisfied on this earth in a way that we can execute it. Ultimately, that is not our role. However, we do have the divine institution of government and the right to bear the sword, as we put it from the book of Revelation. We do have the right to inflict justice, however, this passage would remind us that ultimately We can't get caught up in a grumbling and a frustrating complaining amongst one another to the point that we don't rest in hope and comfort ultimately because of the future things that are yet to come.

Right? So it is a balance, but it is not one where we are finding ourselves in conflict, especially as believers with one another. Okay? That's a good point. I think that's what becomes really important when it comes to the church and doctrine and how we interact with one another. Yes, God's the one that's going to teach us, ultimately.

But that doesn't mean that if we have a brother who is clearly incorrect on a view, we don't just say, well, we leave it to God. We still have that. We can still engage and say, let's talk about this and try and arrive at the truth. And so this definitely applies to our interaction with the church. We don't grumble, oh, that person is so wrong. We can still have that. I don't want to say contention, but we can still have that disagreement.

But it's still within that perspective of, OK, let's look to what God has for us. One thing that God has for us is He is going to continue to grow and teach us. And we can rest in that, and that can motivate how we interact as a body of Christ. I think that's important, and I'll just maybe touch on that real quick.

The idea of complaining and grumbling is to no end. You're grumbling and complaining for the sake of grumbling and complaining. As a teacher, as we see as we get more revelation regarding the role of teachers and the elders and so forth, looking into the New Testament, there is the perspective of correcting, but there's a spirit with which one corrects, a graciousness. Complaining doesn't produce anything, you're just arguing. But to present an argument for the purposes of correcting in a way that is gracious has its place in the New Testament as well, right? And for the Church, it's important that we correct one another based on the Scripture in a way that is gracious.

So we could go on to talk about the way that works, and it's a really exciting realization that we have the only organism and way of which that organism functions that is clearly taught in the Bible. How to run a business, how to run a paraministry, or whatever you call them. We don't know exactly how a lot of that stuff works, and I found myself in a lot of frustration with not understanding how certain ministry situations work. But when we're talking about the church, we've got clear clear revelation as to how that works.

And we know the structure, and we know the head, ultimately. And that's the focus, right? It's the head. So this goes on, it says, Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be judged. So the reason to not take part in the sin of complaining is so that you may not be judged. And I've got just a short amount of time, so I'm going to try to boogie through this. Hold on.

This judgment should be seen in contrast to the judgment imagery seen in the previous six verses. where the last day judgments for the unbelievers, wicked greed and hatred are consumed, literally the day of the Lord. That's what a lot of those references are pulling out of in Isaiah and so forth, is the day of the Lord, where they're going to get the actual justice in the day of the Lord.

But this is the believer's judgment, what is known as the judgment seat of Christ, and we learn about that In 2 Corinthians 5.10 and other passages, we get a fuller picture, but here, just as with the rapture in verse 9, we talked about these Jewish believers are learning from James about the very spearhead of a believer's judgment. They're understanding they are going to be judged, and they're going to learn a little bit more about the nature of the judge in a moment, but this is something that is new to them, and they need to understand further about what it is. But he's talking specifically to believers here, and this judgment, the only judgment that we see as yet future, as a result of this complaining and grumbling, is one where it gets fully satisfied at the judgment seat. So both of these doctrines are fully explained by Paul later.

But let's look at the judgment seat of Christ and the unbeliever judgments. Here we've got the rapture taking place. This is the coming that James is talking about, I believe. And this is the judgment that James is talking about, I believe. So this is all in context to what is being communicated in some ways for the very first time in this way.

And then the judgment that the wicked rich are going to receive is all taking place in this tribulation period and ultimately the great and terrible day of the Lord, the white throne judgment, when everybody that is not present in life during the tribulation period is resurrected for the purposes of judgment. So everything gets settled in this day of the Lord period. These are different judgments, however.

Vern provided this Biblical Judgments and Resurrections supplement. You should have that. It's still small, but you should be able to see it. It's this box right here, the singular blue box underneath these others. These are judgments that occur for the believer in the life.

We know that there are certain judgments that we reap. We do end up reaping what we sow in many instances if you drive too fast and hit a hit a pole and hurt yourself. You find yourself in a situation where you're in that boat. But even more so, we talked about God taking men and women out of the world based on the judgment of a sin, greed. We look in the book of Acts at Ananias and Sapphira, and we see that greed and lies led them to a judgment on this earth, but they're still going to be judged at the judgment seat of Christ.

So this box represents what James is starting to establish. As a result, we need to keep in mind that there's going to be a lot of communication about crowns as well. And I thought this was important just to throw in here in the sense that these judgments are for the purposes of reward. and there's a loss of reward, but the judgments are about rewarding believers for their long-suffering, for their stabilized heart, for their hope. And so, as we will continue to learn, again, James didn't have in mind all of these crowns. It was not his job to communicate all that. It was more Paul and John to communicate that. However, James provides a reward and in relationship to the coming of the Lord and the judgment seat of Christ with regards to the rapture.

I think both of these verses fit in two different areas of the five crowns. You've got the victor's crown, you've got the church founder's crown, and you've got the rapture lover's crown. And that's the passage that we're looking at today. You have a hope fixed on the coming of the Lord for yourself that is imminent. It could happen any day. And you communicate that and you think that way. And I think Verne, you know, he thinks that way and he communicates that way. And we would be reminded that this is a crown.

And 2 Timothy 4.8 talks about that. Also, we have the elders crown for service.

And then James 1.12 talks about the trial crown. Again, these are spearhead truths that are later developed out in the book of Revelation and the book of 2 Timothy. However, some of the very first communication about them happens here in James.

Look, listen, pay attention, come now, this is a big word. So James pictured Jesus as judge, poised, standing at the door of heaven, ready to step back onto the stage of human history momentarily. So the hope of his imminent, at any moment, return should strongly motivate us to live patiently and sacrificially. The judge is obviously Jesus Christ because John 5, 22 and 27 as well as Acts 10 all say that the Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son. So we know that's who that is.

And the next event on Christ's prophetic calendar is the rapture of the church and to take her to the judgment seat of Christ. That's the next prophetic event and to have a hope and a focus on that based on long-suffering, and a stabilized heart, you will find yourself potentially receiving the crown of the rapture lover, as well as a trial crown, because you're probably going to endure many trials in that process.

Hasn't buzzed yet. I keep waiting for... Did it buzz? Actually, he's gone. He's gone this week. That's great. Then there's no buzz. No buzz. Well, I'm going to read this because I'm excited about this passage and I think there's a lot of new perspective that I've learned. So I want to just kind of go through Weiss and get the big picture and then we'll stop.

So it says, Be long-suffering, patiently enduring the mistreatment of others, restraining your soul from the passion of anger. Therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord, consider this, the farmer waits with expectation for the precious produce of the earth, patiently waiting, longing and hoping over it, until that time in which it, meaning the earth, may receive an early and a late rain. As for you, you also, be long-suffering, patiently enduring the mistreatment of others, restraining your soul from the passion of anger. Notice the repetition here. Stabilize your hearts, because the coming of the Lord has drawn near and is imminent. Stop complaining, brethren, about one another, in order that you may not be judged. Consider this, the judge has taken his stand before the doors."

Some really amazing imagery that drives our perspective today. Our hope and our perspective on patience and longsuffering. So that's James 5, 7 through 9. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for these passages and for the truth that we gain from them and how we can look and know that your return for us is imminent. It could happen at any point in time. We hope it's today.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for the truth that you've given us so that we can have the long view. and that we can be stabilized in a very unstable world. We thank you that you chose to communicate these things, that you're not hidden and secretive, but that you have shared all that we need to know in order to live this life in a way that is glorifying to you. And we thank you that you want to do it through us as we trust you to live your life through us. In your name we pray. Amen.