- Well, today, as we continue to dive into the very practical book of James, he deals with a subject that is not unrelated to what I just addressed. And that is that real faith produces patience in the midst of suffering in life. Suffering comes to all of us. We all experience the difficulties of life. It's just part of what we go through. James's words today to us are for those that are followers of Christ who have experienced suffering, who perhaps are experiencing persecution, whether it's here or around the world. And really he's zeroing in on that today. He talked at the beginning of chapter five, to the rich who were actually persecuting the poor believers and now he's talking directly to those believers who are experiencing that level of suffering and persecution. And he has some really good words for us. Because I think if I were to locate a couple of key issues that might trip you up in your walk with Jesus Christ, this is going to be one of them. Because we wonder, Lord, why am I going through this? And then the next one is, Lord, when is it gonna stop? Because I don't like this. Anybody want to identify with me on that? And so James comes along very practically and he says, "Well, let me help you through that because, "quite frankly, it's not gonna change." And if I were to give us a cultural word today, it's, I don't think it's gonna go backwards. I think we're gonna be moving in a direction where we're gonna experience more suffering and persecution as followers of Christ. So I would take note of what James says. Look down at verse seven. He 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 the late rains. "You also, be patient. "Establish your hearts, "for the coming of the Lord is at hand. "Do not grumble against one another, brothers, "so that you may not be judged; "behold, the Judge is standing at the door. "As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, "take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. "Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. "You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, "and you have 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." It's in this passage that James gives a couple of commands that guide us towards a biblical response to suffering. And he begins right up front if you look at verse seven, with this first command, he says, "Just be patient." In the midst of what you're going through, be patient. I realize you're under trials. I realize you're experiencing temptation. I realize that you're struggling with quarrels in the midst of it all because of the pressure cooker situation that you find yourself in, but he says, "I want you to be patient." Now, the word "patient" is made up of two words in the original language. And it means taking a long time to get angry. That's the idea. Just take a long time to get there. So just hang in. Now, if you're like me, I immediately start telling the Lord that I want out of this situation. I don't like it. That's reality. And we wanna back out of it, but He doesn't do that. Oftentimes He allows us to remain in the midst of whatever trial, whatever circumstance, whatever suffering and persecution. And so the question that comes up is, "In the midst of this, how do you live your faith?" When things are not going well, how do you wait? How are you to be patient? How do I make it? And I don't know if you notice this, but even when things aren't going well and you're acting in a way that's right and righteous and things aren't going well, then He still says to wait, because there's oftentimes no relief. First, God has provided for every follower of Jesus Christ, the person of the Holy Spirit that in dwells us, gives us strength and power in the midst of what we go through. And it is the Holy Spirit that reminds us of the second half of verse seven, be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Part of the answer here is that James is saying, "Look, the Spirit of God has been given to you "to remind you..." And here's the key, we sang about it earlier today. Here is the key behind making sure that you respond with faith in the midst of suffering. It's focus on the Lord. That's his point. That's it. Now, everything else flows out of that. That's the central point. Be patient, focus on the fact that Jesus Christ is coming again. And what does that do? It forces me to look beyond my current life, beyond my circumstances, and focus on the Lord who's above what I am actually going through. My hope is in Him. Yes, there'll be a day when justice is served. Yes, there'll be a day when this too shall pass, but my focus is upon Him. Now, as I focus on Him, I do realize though that I exist in a real world with real pain and suffering. And it causes me to remember a few things. And that's this one, and this is really important, answers are not always found in this world. So as I focus beyond and I look to Jesus Christ who's coming again, who's righting the wrongs, who will deal with things, in the midst of that, I am to be patient and wait. And part of the understanding there, as I understand how to wait, is to realize that sometimes answers are not always found in this world. The illustration that he gives here of a farmer, helps us see that a farmer's primarily sowing seed and cultivating. Reaping and harvest come, but there's a lot of work that has to happen prior to the harvest. And really the idea here is for us as followers of Christ, to understand, there's a lot we're going to be experiencing. There's a lot of sowing. There's a lot of cultivating. There's a lot of things that are being done in this life until the harvest and the reaping actually does come when Christ comes again, and we are to be patient and to wait. You can't have a wrinkle-free world, if you haven't figured that out yet. Life is full of stuff that is not easy. It's just part of it. It's a follower of Christ that can move into that and I believe have the most realistic perspective on life because we have hope in the Lord. We can embrace all of what is there. And he says to be patient. And when we finally come to peace with that, we can walk down a road of allowing Him to move into our life, to change us, transform us, even when the answers don't always come, we know the God who does have them, but even in this life, let's face it and be honest, He doesn't always connect all the dots for us. That'll happen later, but they're not always connected. And yet we are encouraged to continue to depend upon Him because we trust Him for His plan and purposes in our life. It reminds me of someone, you may know her name. I don't know. If not, she has a fabulous platform and ministry, her name is Joni Eareckson Tada, she was the first illustration that popped into my mind, who dove into a lake when she was in high school. She's paralyzed from the neck down. And I'm telling you, I know a little bit about her story. She's actually spoken here at Rockpoint several years ago. And I know she prayed for healing. She prayed that God would take this away, but God didn't answer that. He didn't connect all of the dots. And when she finally came to that point of surrender and submitting, God began to use her in global ways through ministries like the Billy Graham Association, where thousands of people have come to Christ and grown. And she started a magnificent ministry called "Joni and Friends." We partner with them. We allow them to use our corn maze. We rent this wheelchair with tracks on it. I actually sat in that thing. It's really kind of cool. And individuals that have disabilities are able to go through our corn maze when we had it open pre-COVID. But they are so appreciative to our partnership as a church. And God has used her in remarkable ways with her radio program. You never know what God is going to do even in the midst of struggling with answers. Why? Because God is doing something you do not always see. He's working behind the scenes. You don't always see the growth that is there. You don't see the growth in the seed below the ground. That's why He brings up this illustration. And then when the crop starts coming out of the ground, you can't control everything around you, but God is beginning to move. I saw this point when I joined the farm family of lovely Lynette and her father-in-law's a farmer. And I remember him planting and cultivating and then we would watch the weather and I would get nervous 'cause hail's coming and hail can devastate a crop, and I remember him specifically saying, "I just can't control that stuff." And it was just the simple statement of saying, "I'm out of control here. I have to release this to God. "And I know that God is doing something, "I know God is working." And that's really a point of the illustration here that he brings up. Let God have His way. Let Him move in you. You cannot control His plan or His purposes. And He takes us through these moments in time to remind us of the concept that even the Apostle Paul brings up in Romans 8:29, that through these difficult experiences, He is conforming us to the very image of His Son because He wants His Son and that message of the truth of the gospel to be communicated, in and through your suffering and persecution, to a world that desperately needs to hear it. But then partway through verse eight, again, he says, "Be patient," first command. He gives another one. He says, "Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord." It's near, it's at hand. In other words, be strong. The word "establish" means to strengthen. Under suffering, under persecution, our hearts can grow weary, as we've talked about. And yet we turn to the Lord and the Spirit of God begins to draw our attention to Him, to the person who's above our circumstances, to trust Him and to turn it over to Him. I love what Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will," what? "Sustain you." Not you. He will do it. It's that sense of releasing and allowing Him to work. And He'll never permit the righteous to be moved. Peter, who was writing to a group of saints who were struggling with persecution and suffering, and he communicates in chapter five, verses six and seven to humble ourselves before Almighty God, and cast our anxieties upon Him. In other words, to let God have the situation because He can handle it. Turn it over to Him. And when you finally come to that point of surrender, you're releasing control, but you're allowing room for God to act and accomplish His plan and His purpose in you so that you can grow. Now, many of you know that we had our first grandson and I am sometimes, not all the time, but I'll make the similar mistakes that I made when I was a parent. Lovely Lynette points that out once in a while. But one of the things that I would do when I was a parent was, one of our kids would go to sleep, either with me or with Lynette, and you put them into the crib, and then I had this terrible problem. I don't know if you struggle with this or not, but I'm just wondering, boy, I gotta check on him, make sure they're breathing correctly. And then if the blanket kind of got over their head a little bit, I'm in there messing around with them, trying to move the blanket down. And what happens when that takes place? They wake up! And they're not sleeping. And I gotta leave them alone. And I remember doing the same thing now with my grandson, Prey. Just leave them alone because they gotta rest in order to grow. And they're not real happy when they don't get their nap. Well, the same ideas here, God is saying, "Would you give it to me "and stop messing with the situation "and allow me to have my way." What would happen if I start digging in the ground as the illustration here of a farmer, and I pull the seed out and start messing around with it? It's not gonna grow. It's common sense. If it's placed in the ground, leave it there. And when you stand firm in Him establishing, letting Him handle it, you're trusting in His strength, not your own. And the moment I take control of a situation, that's when I begin to make my mistakes. And that's when I begin to fail. The power of Jesus Christ in you personally, and through His personal representative of the Holy Spirit of God, is the only way you're gonna be able to handle the pain and the suffering that you face in life. There is a point where it is a supernatural empowerment by Him to give you the kind of endurance to remain in the situation and endure it. And He will strengthen you until He accomplishes His plan and His purposes. And it is the very Spirit of God that reminds us that the Lord is coming. The One who is to give us that hope above our circumstances. And what do we say to that? That's recalibrating your perspective. It's getting your eyes off of your current situation and focusing way out over here, the One who is above those circumstances, who can give you the hope. Again, the word for strength in a scan means to stabilize, to prop up your heart in the midst of it. In many ways, it's to recalibrate your thinking, to remind yourself that He is there, not to focus on your circumstances, get caught up in self pity, which we can oftentimes do or overwhelmed by the circumstances, but to remember He's coming. To look at the Almighty God who is coming again, who is using you in the midst of whatever you're going through. Now, again, I go to Peter, one of the Lord's disciples who wrote a couple of books in the New Testament, and they were written towards individuals who were suffering and struggling. And one of the verses, a couple, one of the verses that I wanna bring up in the books, he wrote a couple of books. 2 Peter 3:8 says this. He says, "But do not overlook this one fact, beloved,..." So he's talking to believers here. He says, "That with the Lord, one day is a thousand years, "and a thousand years as one day." He's using that kind of as a metaphor to communicate a point here. And he says, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise "as some has count slowness, "but is patient, patient toward you, "not wishing that any should perish,..." And notice this, "But that all should reach repentance." Now, what is the purpose point here? What is he after? Well, first he's telling you this, that God is not bound by time. I really think that's kind of the major idea here or one of them, that God's not caught up in time. He's outside of time. And so whether it's a day or a thousand years, here's what I want you to pick up. He will accomplish His plan and His purpose. Period! That's what He does. But whether or not it's a day, or whether or not it's a thousand years that He's accomplishing His purpose, He's also telling you that time here on this planet is a blip in God's eternal timeframe. And in the midst of all of that, He is using it, regardless of how short or how long it is, He's using you in the midst of your suffering and your persecution and your trial, He's saying, "be patient, hang in there," because He's using you to bring others to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. That's the end game. That's the goal. That's what He's after here. And He's moving and using you in dramatic ways so others can find Him. I mean, quite frankly, if you literally interpret this, it's been about 2000 years since the cross and the resurrection, so if a thousand years equals a day, we're only in day two on God's timeframe. We got a lot more work to do. Now, right now, just to give you a quick example. Right now, in the midst of the country of Iran, where persecution is happening in dramatic ways, do you realize that it is one of, if not the country where the greatest revival has broken out? You wouldn't hear that in the news, not unless you're following up on these things. In the midst of persecution, unbelievable numbers of people are coming to Christ in the midst of this. You see it in North Korea, you see it in China. God is using us in the midst of all of this. And then He reminds us of something else. Be patient, be strong, but then verse nine through 11, he says, "Be careful, don't grumble." Because in the midst of this, we need to unite with one another in community so that we can, in a loving way, communicate Christ to our world. And one of the big issues is because complaining hurts others and it damages the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's his point. And that's why he dealt with quarrels and fightings earlier on in the book. Now, classical striation of this is what's going on today. We are under enormous pressure in our world. You've got issues of policy and government and justice and COVID-19 and anxieties with our future and economic issues. And I've seen it happen even in the body of Christ, even though people agree on 99.9%, what happens when tensions go up? You're really sensitive to words that are spoken. And I'll say something, or somebody else will say something, it's like, "Oh," you don't want the past. You let that go, but now all of a sudden it's surfaced. And his point here is, in the midst of what we are going through in this day and age, and I'm gonna say it again, I think we're heading into a season where there's going to be more suffering and persecution as a follower of Jesus Christ. We have to unite. We have to come together. We have to understand that there are bigger things at stake. And as we do, we communicate the hope that's found through Christ. He gives an illustration of the prophets who are giving here in the verses nine through 11, and they exemplified endurance. Remaining under, in the midst of the trial and the suffering and the pain, uniting around the truth, holding firm to these things, so that we can communicate Christ to our world. And it emphasizes this issue. And that is that endurance under pressure will produce maturity in our lives. We focus on the Lord. We allow Him to work and move in our hearts and in our lives, and it produces maturity. Go to chapter one again in the book of James, and I want you to locate verse two because he dealt with this earlier in the book, but it's a great reminder. He says, "Count it all joy, my brothers, "when you meet trials of various kinds, "for you know that "the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." That's the same word he just used over in chapter five. "And let steadfastness," which means remain under, allow God to have His way, "have its full effect, "that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Allow Him to mature you in the process as you follow Jesus Christ. "And if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, "who gives generously to all without reproach, "and it will be given to him." He is telling you to trust. He brings up the illustration back in chapter five of Job. It's interesting that yes, at some point in Job's life, if you read the story in the Old Testament book, was humbled because of his pride, but he makes some dramatic statements. In the midst of losing his family and experiencing incredible persecution, trials, suffering, he says in Job 19:25, "I know that my Redeemer lives." His trust was in the Lord. And then later on in the book in chapter 23 verse 10, after he's gone through all this stuff, he says, "I know God has tried me "and after He's tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Because He's refining me. He's changing me. I don't know if you're familiar with this author, Phil Yancy, he's written on this subject. He says this statement: "There's only one thing worse than disappointment with God, "it's disappointment without God." What a tragic life to go through difficulties and to do so alone, without a relationship with the supernatural God that can give you the hope you need to make it through those times. That's his point. God is refining you. He's working all things together for good in your life. Romans 8:28. Why? 'Cause as He does, then you get to verse 29 that I referred to earlier, conforming you to the image of His Son. And when you ask people that have gone through difficulties and trials in life, it's almost without exception, they will go back to those moments in their life that God used, and it was in those times that they grew the most as a follower of Jesus Christ, during the difficult experiences. I still remember sitting across the table in China with a group of believers who were talking to us about how they welcomed persecution. As one individual who was a pastor of one of the five house... Not just a pastor, he was a leader of one of the five house church movements, underground house church in China. And he was telling us his story about how he spent time in prison because of his faith. As a matter of fact, when you go to China and you talk with believers, I would imagine it's this case in a number of places where believers are persecuted. They actually consider as a pastor part of their seminary training, going to prison. They know how God is gonna use it. Well, he ends with verse 12 by saying, "Above all, do not swear." I don't think he's talking about profanity here. I think what he's talking about is making promises you can't keep. Losing your integrity in the midst of difficult times. And I think when we experience the kind of pressure that they were going through, we might be going through in our future, we can't lose sight of our integrity. Making promises we can't keep. Sacrificing the truth. And whether it's being patient or being strong or not grumbling and uniting around one another as we go through these moments, being careful, we protect our integrity, watching what we promise, above all things here, he says, again, "Be patient, therefore, "and look forward to the coming of the Lord." Paul says in Romans 8:18, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time "are not worth comparing with the glory "that is to be revealed to us." We're focusing on that end game when Christ comes again, our hope. He's the one that will sustain us and give us a living hope even in the midst of this world. And Peter again, who is writing to a group of believers, he says this in 1 Peter 1, right up front of that book in verses six and seven, he says, "In this, you rejoice." We choose joy in the midst of the suffering, "though now for a little while, if necessary, "you've been grieved by various trials, "so that the tested genuineness of your faith,..." Here's the growth. The waiting, the patience we need to have is to look forward to Him because He's changing us to be like Christ. "The genuineness of your faith, "more precious than gold that perishes "though it is tested by fire, "may be found to result in praise and glory and honor "at the revelation of Jesus Christ." In closing, I think we're headed into a time of suffering and persecution that we haven't seen pre-COVID-19. I don't know when Jesus is coming again. As I look at the biblical pattern here, there are some signs that seem to be parallel, but we don't know if we're in day two or day three, if you go back to Peter's words. But the point is, hey, be patient, trust Him, let Him use you because He wants others to find the hope that you have found so that they have their eternal address changed. So that they find hope in the relationship with Jesus Christ. And I hope you found that hope. It happens when you've come to a point in your life where you understand and believe that you are a sinner and you need a Savior and you want His forgiveness. And in repentance, you turn to Christ as the one who paid the price for your sin on a cross and rose from the grave, and you trust, and here's the key, in Christ alone as Savior and Lord. You commit to Christ alone as your Savior and your Lord. And you ask Him to forgive you, and He will. Every person needs to make that choice. And as you do, He will use you with boldness and courage in a very different world now that we live in, in order to communicate hope. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the hope that is found through Christ and Christ alone. And we ask Lord, that You would give us boldness and courage in a very new world, a world in which we are going to have to trust You more, but we're going to have to stand by Your truth, yes, with love, so that others can find a relationship with You. So Lord, may we keep that at the center of our lives as we leave this place and we serve You, and it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.