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Thank you for that. So, welcome to Red Village Church! If I have not met you, my name is Aaron, and I’m the preaching pastor here. I’m glad you’re with us this morning. It’s actually my first time back in the pulpit in a number of weeks, and the church, the elders, and you all are so gracious to give me some time away to focus on some other things in church life.
I get to pick up where the guys who so faithfully preached God’s word for us the last several weeks finished in James five. While I’m glad everyone’s here, Josh, we’re really happy that you’re here. It’s just so good to see you. If you don’t know Josh, a few weeks back, he had brain surgery and has had a hard road. So, Josh, we really are grateful that you’re with us today. We really, really are.
With all that being said, if you have a Bible with you, open up to the book of James. I’m going to be picking up where the guys left off. Today, we’re in James five. There are a couple of sermons left in James that I’ll be finishing out for us. We’re going to do, actually, a passage in Acts, and then I’m going to get back to the Hebrew study that we’ve been going through before I stepped out of the pulpit for those weeks.
So, James five. If you don’t have a Bible with you, it’s on page 587. As you know, I really do want to thank the guys who filled in and preached; they did such a great job. It’s just a great reminder for everyone that the power is in God’s word. They did such a faithful job expositoring God’s word for us, and it was so good for my own soul to be fed so fully all summer long. Thank you, guys.
Let me read our passage of study, and then I’ll pray and ask for the Lord’s blessing in our time, and then we’ll get to work. So, James five, I’m going to read verses seven through twelve, and I’ll be reading out of the English Standard Version. If you want to follow along with me, that’s what the Bible says:
“Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and late rains. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. An example of suffering and patience. Brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You’ve heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you’ve seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. But above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth, or by any other oath. But let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”
Okay? That’s God’s word for us this morning. Would you please pray with me?
Lord, it’s good to be here this morning. It’s good to be around your people, your church, the bride that your son purchased with his blood. Lord, we’re thankful for your holy word. Thank you for your Holy Spirit, who opens up your holy word. Lord, we do pray that your Spirit would be active in our hearts this morning. Please keep me from error. Help me to communicate your truths clearly. Please also be with the listeners to help them to listen, to hear what the Spirit is saying. And Lord, in this time, please bring glory to Jesus. That’s why we’re here. We’re here for Jesus, in his name. Amen.
So, back when I was in seminary, one of the more practical pieces of advice I received, which I actually thought about pretty often, was the advice to have planned patience. After seminary, I entered into the ministry of church planting, which brought us here. A real part of my overall strategy—my overall plan, how I was to budget, how things would go, at least in my mind—was that I was to minister with patience, understanding that God is a patient God. Because he’s a patient God, he often moves and works with his patient plan, one that develops and is realized over time.
It was stressed to me that I was to be patient, to wait on the Lord, to not get ahead of myself, to not try to force things to happen, but to patiently seek the church plant according to his timeline, trusting that God’s timing is always what’s best. I know planned patience is not just something for those who are pursuing vocational ministry or church planting, but planned patience is really something we all should seek to do as we go through life.
That God is at work around us, that he’s worked within us. Often it’s like it’s over time. It’s done with his perfect patience. Even though we know this truth, at least we should know this truth, we also know how difficult it is to be patient. We know how hard it can be to wait upon the Lord because our timing—the time that we work with, the time frame we work with—is often a timeline that’s much shorter than the Lord’s. Because of that, we are often not patient. Rather, we can find ourselves impatient, twisting around with things like worry, fear, and anxiety, or twisting around trying to control everything and everyone around us, or twisting around trying to manipulate things so they go our way, or maybe just twisting around to make very unwise, impatient decisions.
All these things, they’re all linked just to being impatient. We’re doubting his goodness. We’re doubting his timing, which leads to our text this morning, a text that’s grounded in the wisdom of patience.
Now, before I review where we abandoned our study of James, I do want to be clear on what Scripture is getting at when it comes to being patient. Let me first do that by explaining what patience is not. Patience is not like being passive. I think sometimes we might want to get the impression that we’re being patient, but in truth, we’re just being passive. We’re kind of like sitting on our hands, and we’re not trying to make a decision. Even though a decision needs to be made, we’re kind of tied to that passivity.
It’s also not being presumptuous, where we’re not really doing anything because we’re presuming everything is going to work out on its own. Presuming like this is actually where we may be testing God. So we’re not waiting on God; we’re actually testing him.
Maybe it’s an example to help clarify what I’m trying to say here: they say you need a job, and so you presume that God’s going to give you a job. Because of that, you actually never look for a job; you never apply for a job. Rather, you sit and play video games all day long and label it as being patient, as if you’re patiently waiting for God to provide. That’s presumptuous; that’s like testing God, believing he’s going to provide you with a job in ways where you’re not walking in any of your own responsibilities.
So that’s not what we’re getting at when we’re talking about patience. Rather, Scripture teaches that when it comes to patience, it’s like walking in responsibility. It’s moving by faith, but we do so in ways that are in line with God’s word, trusting the timeline by which God will move and work within our movements of faith, right? Trusting that his timeline is always best, even if it doesn’t always seem best to us; it’s always the right time.
Now, before we work through our passages, let me set the context for us. The guys did such a great job of helping us understand the context of James, which is so important for us to do when we read God’s word. Without understanding the context, we can get ourselves really off track and have some really wonky thoughts about God’s word. Context is critical.
So let me remind you what we’ve been learning throughout the summer. The book of James is actually a very early book in the New Testament. It was written to Jewish Christians who were forming their early Christian church. As they were forming the church, based on the context, it seemed like they were having a lot of struggles, which from the start of the Christian faith, all churches do. All churches struggle. All churches are made up of people. From now until the Lord returns, there’s going to be struggle in church life.
In the book of James, the struggles that the early church was facing are struggles that we still struggle with today, which reminds us that Scripture is so true: there’s nothing new under the sun. In our study this summer, we learned that the early church was struggling with what to do when trials came their way. They were struggling with pride. They were struggling with talking a big game about God’s word, giving lip service about God’s word, but actually not doing what it says. They were struggling with showing partiality or favoritism to those who are wealthy or those who they deem better than others.
They struggled with bragging, as they bragged about their faith, even though their faith was not tied to any type of real good works done for Jesus. They struggled with their tongues in ways that they were kind of speaking out of both sides of their mouths, depending on who they were talking to. They struggled with issues of jealousy and selfish ambition, which, by the way, are often tied to the struggle of being patient—jealousy with selfish ambition. Because of that, we’re impatient.
They struggled by embracing worldly, sinful behavior. They struggled by making boastful assertions about things they were going to do, filled with arrogance. We learned last week that they were acquiring wealth in ways that not only were evil, but they were acquiring wealth in ways that were actually harming other people.
As mentioned, even though this is an early New Testament letter written to the early Christian church, it sounds like a lot of the same issues that we can still face today. These are common issues, even for us today, which is why James is often referred to as the New Testament book of wisdom—just how timeless and relevant the things are that James addresses in his book.
Now, for us today, as mentioned at the start, James is going to be focusing on the call to be patient, which is clearly a struggle for the early church and probably clearly a struggle for us as well. In fact, maybe even more so for us today, as we can struggle with patience. We live in a world where we’ve been trained to not only seek immediate gratification but also almost feel entitled to it. So we can really struggle to be patient.
Okay, so without further introduction, please look back with me again at our passage, starting in verse seven, if you’re with us.
What I’m going to do is walk us through the passage. If you have a Bible open, please keep them open. We’re just going to kind of walk back through James five, seven through twelve.
So, verse seven, this is where we read the command to be patient. That’s how our passage starts out. Now, this command is a universal command that we see in Scripture: we’re to be patient. In fact, patience is not just a command; it’s actually a character trait of love. Remember 1 Corinthians 13? It gives a handful of character traits of what love is, and the first trait listed, perhaps the primary trait of love, is that love is patient. Likewise, patience is also a fruit of the Spirit of God at work in our hearts. It’s an indication that God is in us, doing things within us—the fruit of the Spirit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience.
While this is a universal command that we see throughout Scripture to be patient, in the context of our passage today, this command to be patient is coming on the heels of what we looked at last week. Based on what we see in the text this week, it feels like James is maybe changing who he’s talking to. Last week, he was talking to those who were wrongly acquiring wealth from others by misusing others. Now, today, it almost feels like he’s changing the people in the church who are suffering, who are in trial, as the victims of those who are wronging them—the ones who are being harmed by those who are sinfully acquiring wealth.
In fact, today, those people seem to be victims. They were suffering at the hands of evil people, yet they were commanded through it all to be patient. Patient even in suffering, patient even though they’re being severely wronged. For us, right? It’s hard to be patient, particularly in a society that promotes and pursues immediate gratification. But think how much harder it is to be patient when you’re suffering, when things are not going well—maybe suffering at the hands of others, or maybe someone’s actively wronging you, with no indication that they’re going to let up anytime soon.
In our text, for us, the call is to be patient even in that setting. We know this: that’s really hard to do. What’s easy to do when things are hard, when things are not going the way we want? It’s either to try to control the situation, try to take matters into our own hands, or maybe what we try to do is collapse in on ourselves in some forms of depression. Or maybe we just get angry and bitter—not just towards the people who are causing us harm, but maybe angry and bitter at God. After all, where is God in these situations? Does he not care that we’re suffering? Is he not able to do anything to rectify the situation? Could he really be good to let us suffer, to have to endure this?
Friends, when we’re suffering, the timeline that we want God to operate on is an immediate timeline. However, for God’s purposes, purposes in chapter one, our purpose that builds character inside us to be steadfast with perfect, complete faith, at times God might allow suffering to persist. As hard as that can be, the command is to be patient—patient to wait upon the Lord to fulfill his purposes.
In our text, we’re not only to be patient in the moment that we’re suffering; our text even tells us to be patient, brothers and sisters, all the way until the coming of the Lord, which is a timeline we don’t know when that will be fulfilled. All we know is that one day the Lord is going to come back for his people, but we don’t know when. As I think about that truth this week, I just thought about how difficult it can be for us—in a sense—to know that the Lord is coming, but not when.
At least for me, while it’s always hard to be patient, it’s always hard to stay steadfast when things are not going my way. But if I have a date on the calendar I can circle, when that circle date comes, then I know all the suffering, all the heartache will go away. I’ll have relief. While it’s still hard to be patient with a known date, it’s so much harder when I know the date is coming; I just don’t know when. That’s much more difficult. Yet that’s the call of faith for us in this life.
In this life, we know we’re going to face and continue to face trials of various kinds—trials that are difficult, that are painful, including maybe being taken advantage of by others who are bringing us harm. Yet we don’t know when the relief will come. That’s why I think we can get so discouraged, maybe even cynical about life. We may just be tempted to throw our hands up in the air, taking on a mindset of almost a defeated mindset: things are never going to get better. So we live with defeat or underlying frustration, always questioning or doubting God in any of his promises, where we’re tempted to take control rather than to trust in him.
I wonder, because of how hard this is for us, if James decided he needed to give us a couple of illustrations to help us on this end. The first illustration in our text is that of a farmer, which you see in the back half of verse seven. James tells his readers, “Listen, I know this is hard. I know it’s hard to be patient. So in your mind’s eye, see the farmer, and see how the farmer has to wait for the precious fruit of the earth to come from the seeds that he planted. See how patient he has to be. See how the farmer can’t wait or can’t force the fruit to come on his own timeline. Fruit only comes on its own timeline, which in the text, the timeline is dependent upon the rain that receives both early and late.”
Now, a couple thoughts here. First, this illustration of a farmer certainly would have been a cultural illustration that the first readers would have picked up on. This is such a great illustration because of how timely it is, even for us today. We know the truth of a patiently waiting farmer. Even with modern technology that can help seeds grow quicker than they have in the past, seeds still take time.
T and I, Marty and I, we planted tomatoes in late spring—containers that we kept inside the house. We put those seeds in the ground right after Mother’s Day. While we see tomatoes on the plant, while we’ve been watering the plants every day, pulling weeds around the plant, doing all that we can to help the plant, they’re still not ready for us to harvest. We have to patiently wait for them to come on their own timeline.
Second, as you think about this farming illustration, the early and late rains remind us that not only does the farmer have to be patient to wait for the harvest, but he is completely dependent on the rain to come. There’s nothing the farmer can do to force the rain. We know without rain to come, the fruit will never come; the plant will die. So, yes, the farmer has the responsibility to walk in, to be faithful in nurturing the precious seed. But without the rain, the early rain and the late rain, which the farmer has no control over, the fruit will not come.
Is that not so true for us as well? Apart from God, we can do nothing. As we walk in faithfulness and patience, we also walk with complete and utter dependency upon the Lord in whatever endeavor we are seeking to accomplish. Friends, patience on the Lord and dependence upon the Lord go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other.
Keep going. In verse eight, after this first illustration of the farmer, James circles back to what he just said and starts at verse seven with the command: “You see the farmer? You also be patient. You also wait upon the Lord.” He does this in our text by establishing your hearts in patience, which is basically the wisdom I received in seminary. They started the sermon on five: “Establish your hearts. Have planned patience.”
Have planned patience with the understanding that the coming of the Lord is at hand. Now, yet again, we don’t know when that coming will take place. There’s no date we can circle on the calendar that we know the Lord will come if we just hold off and endure until that day. We don’t know when that will be. But Scripture is clear: it is at hand. Our Lord will come again, and he will come at the right time, and he will not delay.
When he comes, friends, it’s going to feel like he has come quickly. Now, let me mention here that I do think this coming of the Lord that is at hand in our text is primarily referring to the return of Christ when he returns to judge the living and the dead, to set up his eternal kingdom that will have no end.
But within that, I do think there are also realities for us, even here, in our given situations. For example, for the suffering believers in James who are in trial, potentially even in this life, the Lord is at hand, and he’s going to come through the power of his Spirit to deliver them from the trial—the hard situation they’re in. Or maybe for some this morning, perhaps you’ve been waiting on the Lord for a long time, maybe for some type of physical suffering, some relief there, which, by the way, is going to be our text next week at the end of James.
Or maybe you’ve been waiting a long time to see a wandering loved one return to the Lord’s forgiveness, which also will be our text next week. Whatever you’ve been patiently waiting upon the Lord for, even in this life, as we wait for his return, the Lord is still at hand, and he still is at work. He still is establishing his kingdom. He is still doing far more abundantly than we could ever ask or think, which probably is part of us establishing our hearts as we have planned patience. We still have expectations that God will move in ways that his will will be done.
Friends, as you wait upon the Lord, as you trust that the Lord is at hand, have patience. He is near; he is at work as you wait.
In verse nine, because the Lord is at hand, because he’s doing a great work according to his perfect and patient plan, another part of having our hearts established in our text is that we don’t grumble against one another, which also is a command. We are to not grumble against one another. If we’re honest, this may even be harder for us to follow than the command to be patient—to not grumble.
In our text today, the grumbling James is specifically calling out was actually grumbling against one another as brothers and sisters in the Lord, which seems to apply. This actually was an issue in the early church, and no doubt this has been a challenge for every church since. But we know this: it’s so easy to grumble against others in the church family, especially when we feel stressed out by life.
This is clear from the context of James, the trials of various kinds that they are in during that stressful time. It seems like relational dynamics are really getting wonky within the church, and they’re starting to grumble. We know the feeling of stress and what that can do to relational dynamics. We know how difficult that can be for us.
This is why churches, since the early church, even through today, can struggle with unity. Unity in the church body can be so hard to come by, where it’s actually so much easier to grumble and complain against one another, judging one another, which only makes things worse.
By the way, on this note, it’s been a little bit since I cautioned us with social media and blogs and podcasts. So I’ve been out of the pulpit for a little while, and I’ll do this now. Just give you a gentle caution about how much you are intaking online. It feels like increasingly those things are just being used on platforms to grumble and say negative things in the Christian world. There’s plenty of that going on, where that’s all they do with their platforms—grumble, complain against other Christians who they don’t deem as righteous as they are.
I’m not saying there’s not a need for us to speak into each other’s lives, to help each other grow in godliness and holiness. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I’m grateful for books like James—to give us wisdom and discernment to know how we are to do that, how to make good, wise decisions that we can help one another.
But how often are those things actually being accomplished through various social media platforms versus how many of these platforms are just being used to beat our own chests with grumbling and judgment?
So, friends, this morning, if you’re struggling with grumbling, can I ask you just to look at your intake, your social media? If you see that that’s just feeding your grumbling, cut it off. Trust me, you’re going to be okay without social media. You’re going to be okay without trying to stay on whatever the latest thing everyone’s talking about in the podcast and blog world. Friends, what good is it to be in the whole social media world where you’re up on all the things to be up on, but you do so by losing your soul through grumbling?
Keep going. At the end of verse nine, James warns that one of the real consequences of grumbling against one another is that, in time, that grumbling, that judgment, is actually to come our way. We’re actually actively setting ourselves up now to be judged. “Do not grumble so that you may not be judged,” which is actually something similar to what our Lord told us in Matthew seven in the Sermon on the Mount, where he just told us, “Don’t judge others.” Because when we do, in turn, we’re going to actually be measured by the same judgment by which we are judging others.
So rather than being hypocrites who judge the specks in the eyes of others, we’re to worry about the log in our own eye. In verse nine, we have to worry about the log in our own eye because, behold, the judge is standing at the door—the Lord himself—and he will come to judge even us. This picture of the Lord standing, watching us grumble, complain, and judge ought to be enough to help us to not grumble, even when we’re stressed, even when our patience has worn thin.
Keep going. In verse ten, moving to the other illustration to help us to be patient, we read, “As an example of suffering and patience.” So not just an example of being patient to wait on something good that you desire, for example, having to be patient while suffering, he wrote that we are to look to the various Old Testament prophets—prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord, right? These great heroes in the faith. Yet these Old Testament prophets, these great heroes, lived lives often marked with deep suffering, some even suffering all the way unto death, all because they spoke God’s word.
As they spoke God’s word, they had to minister with real patience because, as they suffered, often there was little to no immediate upfront fruit. Rather, as they preached, as they ministered, often it felt like no one was responding, and they had to endure rejection after rejection after rejection. Can you imagine how hard that had to be for the prophets to be patient, enduring great suffering while seeing no real indication that their suffering was actually making a difference?
Yet by the grace of God, as the prophets spoke in the name of the Lord, as they suffered with patience, James wrote in verse eleven of our passage, “Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast even in their suffering.”
The reason why James considered the prophets blessed, and the reason why we too consider the Old Testament prophets to be blessed, is because, years later—sometimes many, many years later, well after the prophets died—their ministries bore fruit. Their suffering was not in vain. Rather, according to God’s timeline, he would reap a great harvest.
In the context of our study, the suffering and patient prophets bore fruit even in James’ day, as the early Christians studied the books of the prophets, where, through the prophets, they were able to see and behold the Lord Jesus, who the prophets foretold. This is actually true of us even today, as their ministries continue to bear fruit; God is using his word given to us by the prophets through suffering and through patience for so many purposes in our life, including for us to see their example of suffering and patience to help bring us to faith in the Lord Jesus, to grow us in the faith, to keep us in the faith. Their patient suffering was not in vain.
As you look around this little room here today, we are testifying to how blessed they were as they remained steadfast.
Keep going. The text reads that James gave one particular Old Testament example of suffering and patience, one meant to really drive his point home, which he did with the example of Job. In the text, James wrote, “So you’ve heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful,” which is the encouragement from James in this text.
As we suffer, trying to be patient, he’s trying to encourage us to see and believe and to trust that indeed the Lord is compassionate. He is merciful as he stands at the door. Our suffering, our patience, it’s not in vain. Rather, it’s being used by God to prove to us, like he proved to Job, that the Lord is compassionate; indeed, he’s merciful.
Now, if you’re not familiar with Job, he’s definitely one of the more remarkable characters in the Old Testament. In the book of Job, we read that in the beginning, he was a very wealthy man who had a great family, was very well respected, and had a strong walk with the Lord. For the purpose of God, shortly into the book, the Lord basically took everything away from Job. His wealth dissipated, his children died, and he had physical afflictions. His wife and friends were far less than encouraging; they almost kicked him while he was down. Throughout the book, in fact, his wife was so frustrated by what took place that she suggested Job would be better off if he just cursed God and died.
Yet through it all, through the pain, through the hurt, through the discouragement, through the trial—which we don’t know how long it took, but it seemed like a long time—Job remained steadfast in his faith. Not perfect, but steadfast. He even gave us the famous quote that “the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, but blessed be the name of the Lord.” In the book of Job, in all his suffering and pain, Job tried to establish his heart by keeping his eyes set on the Lord.
The book ends with God proving just how compassionate and merciful he is, as the Lord restored to Job all that he had lost—even twice as much as he had before. In the end, Job actually had more at the end than he did in the beginning.
Now, in the moment of the long suffering, the seeming unending affliction, that had to be hard for Job to remain patient. For Job, no date was given for him to circle on the calendar that if he could just be patient until that date, everything would be fine. Yet he remained steadfast. Everything was restored twofold through the compassion and the mercy of God.
According to God’s time, Job just had to trust that the Lord is at hand, that he’s at hand through it all, and that he’s good, and that in his timing, according to his compassion and mercy, he would make all things right.
Friends, we keep saying it: no doubt it’s really hard to remain patient and steadfast, especially when life is hard, especially in a trial. But as we meet trials of various kinds—and I know in this room, there are various kinds of trials that you’re trying to patiently endure—we just have to trust that the coming of the Lord is indeed at hand. Indeed, he is standing at the door. He sees what’s going on. He’s not aloof to the heartache and the pain. Rather, he’s there for his people. When he comes again, he promises us according to his word that he’s going to deliver us from all evil, all pain, all suffering, all trials, with all of his perfect compassion and his perfect mercy, which is a compassion and mercy and love and kindness and grace that will never end, that will never fail. It will be poured out on us for all eternity.
Finally, this morning, we’ll end with verse twelve. It says this: “But above all, my brothers or my brothers and sisters, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath. Rather, let your yes be yes, and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”
Now, let me mention here that in verse twelve, it does kind of feel like a new topic that James wants to address. So, in verses seven through eleven, he’s addressing the call or the need to be patient. Now, in verse twelve, it seems like he’s transitioning to a new topic of giving oaths. In fact, several different translations of our English Bible present it that way.
Maybe think of the book of Proverbs; it feels like so many independent, little pithy statements. Perhaps that’s what James is doing here as he ends his letter—like several pithy, almost proverb-like statements. Other translations, including the ESV that I’m using, keep twelve a little more closely connected to verses seven through eleven, almost more of a continued thought on what it looks like to be patient.
Honestly, for me, I’m not exactly sure what James had in mind and how these verses fit together. But with that being said, I do think that when we are struggling to be patient, making oaths that we can’t keep is something we could be very well tempted to do. When we’re struggling to be patient, we can really talk big, maybe make false promises, give false hope, either for our own benefit or maybe for the benefit of others—almost to try to distract us, a slight of hand, distract us from the trial at hand.
Maybe this is even a way to kind of manipulate our way out of a trial according to our own timeline. These oaths that we might make simply run out of patience. Currently, I’m reading through the prophets in my Bible reading plan, and the aforementioned examples of patience and steadfastness. What many of the prophets struggled with in their own day was actually false prophets—false prophets who gave false promises, false oaths to God’s people about really good things that were about to come their way, which actually wasn’t true for God’s people. For God’s purposes, he was actually leading them into difficulty, into trials.
So these false prophets, one of the biggest things that they did was harm others by giving this false hope. For us, always—but maybe particularly when things are not going the way we want—we have to be mindful of the oaths that we make.
This also relates to James four, when Rob preached on this a few weeks back, on making boasts. We’re not to make claims, promises, or oaths on things that we simply can’t keep. We can’t oversell and under-deliver. We can’t say we’re going to do one thing, make an oath on it, and then not fulfill it. We can’t go around and say this is going to happen when we actually don’t know that’s what the Lord will do. Rather, we are to make our oaths: yes, yes; no, no.
We must keep our word. If not, our text tells us we actually fall into condemnation—most particularly condemnation from the Lord, who is not pleased by false oaths, especially ones that are done in his name, where we swear either by heaven or by earth. Not only that, we actually fall into condemnation from others—perhaps others who are counting on us to keep our word when we don’t keep our oaths.
Friends, we know this: I’m sure we’ve all had this happen to us. We can really hurt others who are counting on us—who are counting on our yes, who are counting on our no, who are counting on us to keep our word. So when we break oaths, we set ourselves up for others to judge us, to not trust us, to not respect us. Scripture tells us that having a good name is greater than riches, and one of the great ways that we can have a good name or lose a good name is actually right here. It’s when we make oaths—particularly strong oaths—by swearing by heaven that something’s going to happen when we actually don’t know it to be true.
So rather than making false promises, giving oaths that we can’t keep, we are to be patient. We are to trust in the Lord. We are to wait upon the Lord, who in his word always keeps his promises.
This actually leads to how I want to end our time here by just giving you a handful of thoughts concerning this command to be patient that grounds our passage today. I’ve got a handful, and I’m going to go through this really quickly.
First, patience requires us to establish our hearts to walk with God. Now, throughout the sermon, I’ve said how hard it is to be patient, particularly when we’re suffering at the hands of others. This is not something that’s just hard for us to do on our own; it’s actually impossible for us to do. It’s impossible for us to be patient in ways that are pleasing to God on our own. The only way that we can be patient is if we walk with God and that his Spirit is at work within us.
Once again, the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience. So apart from God’s work in our life, friends, we can’t be patient in ways that are actually God-honoring. We actually can’t obey this command. So today, as I work through this passage and you recognize, “You know what? I’m just a really impatient person,” which can be worked out in myriad different ways. Listen, the answer for you is not to try harder or to try to be more patient by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Rather, the answer is to confess your sin and establish your heart, that by faith you’re going to walk closely with your God according to his word. That’s the only way we can truly be patient. It only comes by the power of God’s Spirit at work within us.
Second, planned patience requires us to establish our hearts to watch our words. Now, our Lord said, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” One of the great indicators of how patient we are or are not is by what we say and how we act. Friend, if you’re an impatient person, a great indicator is going to be the amount of grumbling that you do in life—grumbling at others, grumbling at the situation you’re in, grumbling at the difficult situation, grumbling when things are not going your way, grumbling against other Christians who you don’t deem as righteous as you.
Likewise, if you’re struggling with patience, waiting upon the Lord, a great indicator is how well you’re keeping your word by the making and keeping of oaths. When we’re impatient, when we’re stressed out, it seems like it’s so much more likely that our yes will be yes and our no will be no. Rather, when we’re impatient, our words change like the wind. Friends, this morning, examine your words—words by which we all will be judged. And through reflecting on a patient heart, the same thing: confess your sin and turn to the Lord to find forgiveness.
Third, planned patience requires us to establish our hearts by looking beyond ourselves—to look beyond our current situation. We know how easy it is to get hyper-focused on ourselves, kind of what’s just currently taking place in our own little lives, where we collapse in on ourselves, which leads to becoming more and more impatient.
So as we walk with God, rather than being so hyper-focused on self, we have to look beyond ourselves. We need to see how God is at work in the world around us, to see how God is at work through things like farming and farmers who have to patiently wait for the harvest, or look beyond ourselves and see the prophets, like Job, who had to patiently wait through suffering for the compassion and mercy of the Lord to be fully poured on him.
Most importantly, we have to look into God’s word to see how time and time again the Lord has proved to be a patient God as he’s at work in the world around us, and he’s at work in our own hearts in ways that show his compassion and mercy.
Friend, if you’re impatient, can I suggest that perhaps you’re a little too inward-focused right now? You need to look beyond yourself.
This actually leads to the fourth thing: planned patience requires us to establish our hearts by looking ahead. One last time, there’s no date we can circle on the calendar to help us know how much longer we have to endure whatever current situation we’re in, or how much longer until the Lord returns. But what we do know, what we do see throughout Scripture—including our passage today—we do know that the Lord is at hand. We do know that according to his perfect timing, he will return. And when he returns, he will make all things right, where he will remove every trial from his people, every difficulty from his people, every evil act against his people, and every sin within; they all will be removed.
We do know that, church. As we go through this life, we ought to look ahead with excitement and great anticipation for that day to come. Because when our Lord returns, every trial, every affliction, and every suffering will feel slight and momentary in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that he will usher in as he fully walks through the door to set up his kingdom that will have no end.
Church, in this life, we look ahead with patient anticipation of our Lord’s return.
The last point: planned patience requires us to establish our hearts to trust in Jesus. Friends, that’s the only way that you and I can walk with God—that is by trusting his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who came to fulfill God’s word, who came to keep all the promises of God—promises that were formed before the foundation of the world was set, promises that were given to us through the prophets, promises that came in the fullness of time, that according to God’s patient plan, God the Father would send God the Son to be born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem sinners like us who have broken God’s law in many, many ways— which our Lord did.
He redeemed us by humbly looking beyond himself, taking on the form of a servant, where he suffered the greatest of all trials as he hung on the cross to die in the place of his people, to take on the judgment of God for us, only to rise again on the third day to forgive all who by faith come to him for the forgiveness of sin—including sins like impatience; he forgives. Including sins like grumbling; he forgives. Including sins like breaking oaths; he forgives.
The promise of God: Jesus made an oath to us that James reminds us of a few times in our text. I promise that he’s going to come back with all compassion and all mercy for us. Friends, as we trust in Jesus—which is so sweet—we just patiently wait for that sure day to come.
Revelation: may we be a church that establishes our collective hearts to have planned patience. We put away all grumbling; we put away all broken promises. We come together to collectively help each other in this life to trust in Jesus Christ.
Let me just read you these words from 2 Peter: “So don’t overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and the heavens will pass away with a roar, and heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”
Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for being patient. You are so patient with us. We are so impatient with you and with each other. Lord, please forgive us our sins. Help us to walk closely with you according to your word. By the power of your Spirit, I do pray that you would birth in our hearts patience. Lord, thank you for our little church family here. You continue to watch over and protect us all the way to the coming of our Lord. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.