“BE PATIENT BROTHERS!”

James 5:7-11 Part 2

(Some of this material has been taken from John Piper’s Future Grace; God is the Gospel, The Roots of Endurance, and Life is a Vapor)

INTRODUCTION His name was Charles Simeon. He was a pastor in the Church of England from 1782 to 1836 at Trinity Church in Cambridge. He was appointed to his church by a bishop against the will of the people. They opposed him not because he was a bad preacher but because he was an evangelical—he believed the Bible and called for conversion and holiness and world missions. So Simeon stayed – for fifty-four years! And gradually – very gradually – overcame the opposition. For 12 years the people refused to let him give the afternoon Sunday sermon and hired someone else to do it. And during that time they boycotted the Sunday morning service and. The pew-holders refused to come and refused to let others sit in their personal pews. They locked their pews so that no one could sit in them Simeon set up seats in the aisles and nooks and corners at his own expense. But the churchwardens took them out and threw them in the churchyard. When he tried to visit from house to house, hardly a door would open to him. He preached to people in the aisles for 12 years! How did he last? In this state of things I saw no remedy but faith and patience. The passage of Scripture which subdued and controlled my mind was this, "The servant of the Lord must not strive." It was painful indeed to see the church, with the exception of the aisles, almost forsaken; but I thought that if God would only give a double blessing to the congregation that did attend, there would on the whole be as much good done as if the congregation were doubled and the blessing limited to only half the amount. This comforted me many, many times, when without such a reflection, I should have sunk under my burden”. Listen to his attitude towards his trials. “My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death.”

Brothers and sisters we must not mind a little suffering for Christ’s sake! Oh how we live in times of impatience! We are easily hurt. We pout and mope easily. We break easily. Our marriages break easily. Our faith breaks easily. Our happiness breaks easily. And our commitment to the church breaks easily. We are easily disheartened, and it seems we have little capacity for surviving and thriving in the face of difficulties we face with God, life, and people in the guise of circumstances that are uncontrollable, people that are unchangeable; and problems that are unexplainable. When historians list the character traits of twenty-first century America, long-suffering, commitment, constancy, tenacity, endurance, patience, resolve and perseverance will not be on the list. The list will begin with an all-consuming interest in self-esteem. It will be followed by the subheadings of self-assertiveness, and self-enhancement, self-interest, and self-realization. And if you think that you are not at all a child of your times just test yourself to see how you respond to interruptions, inconveniences, irritations, and inactivity. When you are surrounded by a society of emotionally fragile quitters, and when you see a good bit of this in yourself, you need to spend time in the Word of God that commands us “BE PATIENT BROTHERS!”

Review Last week we focused on James double commands in verses 7+8 to be patient. Patience is obviously important being that James speaks four times in regards to patience (verses 7, 8, and 10) and two times to steadfast endurance (verses 10, 11). The word James uses makrothumos means we are to be long-suffering, to have a prolonged restraint of anger or irritation. Three things are particularly impressive about this quality of patience. First, it is an attribute of God Himself, who is slow to anger (Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:5; 103:8) Secondly, being an attribute of God, it is divine love's first response. I Corinthians 13:4, "Love is patient" or "love suffers long." Thirdly, patience a fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22), it is the character quality of God that He wants reproduced in your life by the indwelling Holy Spirit working within your soul. Long-suffering is a supernatural enablement of God to face life and others the way God does. It is not a matter of disposition or personality. Christianity is supernatural or it is nothing! God desires for divine supernatural patience to master your personality in order for supernatural patience to be the ministry of your personality. Ultimately, all patience in the life of the believer is about God and faith and dependence upon Him and receiving of His God glorifying, patient sustaining, and joy producing help. No wonder, for patience is needed in every form of suffering, trial, and difficulty that we face as God’s people and brethren, God is willing to give you the patience you need. There is too much at stake, we are in the daily fight of faith against the sin of unbelief for the glory of God and for your precious soul! Patience quite simply, means being prepared in faith to wait upon the Lord. James illustrates the kind of patient waiting we are to do is like the farmer who waits by patiently working on his field and patiently waits for the rain and harvest. The farmer shows patience both actively by working hard and passively by submitting to nature and divine providence as he awaits the rains and harvest. Waiting on the Lord is a willingness to wait for God where you are in the place of obedience, or to persevere at the pace he allows on the road of obedience—to wait in his place, or to go at his pace. To wait for God in the unplanned place, and to endure the unplanned place- to wait in God’s place, and to go at God’s pace. Waiting for the Lord is the opposite of running ahead of the Lord and it's the opposite of bailing out on the Lord. Is staying at your appointed place while he says stay, or it's going at his appointed pace while he says go. It's not impetuous and it’s not despairing. Now James gives his second command in regards to patience.

I. ESTABLISH YOUR HEARTS! (Verse 8) In order to have patience, you must strengthen your heart. Why? Because a weak heart won't hold out in times of trial. So James repeats once again the proper focus of patience and endurance-the coming of the Lord which makes all the more important the need to stand firm and strengthen our hearts. The Greek word sterizo means "to fix something firmly, or to make something strong, stable and secure, to prop up and support what is heavy." In Luke 9:51 this term refers to Jesus resolute determination to go to Jerusalem although He knew He faced death when He arrived. Strengthening your heart means strengthening yourself with patience, so you can handle the external pressure of the trials that attack you. Ephesians 6:10, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” When you are suffering, been wronged, in the midst of a trial, your heart is heavy the Lord is here to give you the inner strength of patience and James commands us to seek His strengthening. The Apostle Paul tells us how to do it. He prays in Colossians 1:11, “May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance (hupomone) and patience (makrothumos) with joy.” Patience is the evidence of an inner strength Impatient people are weak and dependent upon external supports-like schedules to go just right and circumstances to support their fragile hearts. For the Christian, this strength comes from God. That is why Paul prays for the Colossians. He is asking God to empower them for the patient endurance that the Christian life requires- “according to his glorious might”. Faith in the glorious might of God is the channel through which this strengthening power comes. Specifically, the glorious might of God that we need to see, trust, and pray for is the power of God to turns all our detours and obstacles into glorious outcomes. This is what Paul did when he said in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “So we do not lose heart that is we don’t succumb to murmuring and complaining). Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

II. AN ILLUSTRATION FROM JOSEPH For example, the story of Joseph is a great lesson on why we should strengthen our hearts. If you remember his story from Genesis 37-50, Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers, which must have tested his patience tremendously. But then he was given a good job in Potiphar’s household. Then when he was obediently submitting to the place God had him in and adapting to the pace God was moving Potiphar’s wife lies about his integrity and has him thrown into prison-another great trial of his patience. But things turn out for the better and the prison keeper gives him responsibility and respect. But just when he thinks he is about to get a reprieve from the Pharaoh’s cupbearer, whose dream he has interpreted, and the cupbearer forgets him for two more years. Finally, the meaning of all these detours and delays becomes clear. Joseph says to his long-estranged brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you for a great deliverance…And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive" (Genesis 45:7; 50:20) Rather than looking at himself or the unfair circumstances, the key to Joseph’s patience was faith in the sovereign grace of God to turn the unplanned place and the unplanned pace into the happiest ending imaginable. William Cowper wrote, “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for His grace; behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.” If we believed that our hold up in a long red light was God’s keeping us from an accident about to happen, we would be patient and happy. If we believed that our broken leg was God’s way of revealing early cancer in the x-ray so that we would survive, we would not murmur at the inconvenience. If we believed that the middle of the night phone call was God’s way of waking us up to smell smoke in our garage, we would not grumble at the loss of sleep. The key to patience is that we believe in God’s glorious might to turn all of our detours, and interruptions into rewards. In other words, the strength of patience hangs upon our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our trials, delays, and detours. When delays and detours and frustrations and oppositions ruin our plans and bode ill for us, strengthen your heart by faith in laying hold of God’s sovereign purpose to bring something magnificent to pass! Oh how we need to strengthen ourselves in the promises of God again and again Isaiah 64:4, “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.”; Psalm 84:11,”For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”; Jeremiah 32:40-41, “I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.”; Romans 8:28, 32, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose…He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things”.

III. A SUPRISING ILLUSTRATION FROM THE DEATH OF LAZARUS In a surprising way, we can see this illustrated also in John 11:1-6, we read: “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

Notice three amazing things:

1. The first astonishing thing in this text is that Jesus did not depart right away so as to get there in time to heal Lazarus. "He stayed two days longer in the place where he was" (v. 6). In other words, he intentionally delayed and let Lazarus die. There was no hurry. His intention was not to spare the family grief, but to raise Lazarus from the dead.

2. The second astonishing thing here is that this delay is described as the result of Jesus' love for his friends. Notice the word "so” at the beginning of verse 6: "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So ... he stayed two days longer." Jesus let Lazarus die because he loved him and his sisters.

3. The third astonishing thing is in Jesus answer in verse 4 when he told his disciples why Lazarus was sick: "This illness does not lead to death; it is for the glory o f God, so that the Son o f God may be glorified through it." Jesus had a plan. He would let Lazarus die so that he could raise him from the dead. This was a costly plan. Lazarus would have to go through the torments of death, and his family would endure four days of grieving over his death. But Jesus considers the cost worth it. His explanation has two parts. First, in letting Lazarus die in order to raise him from the dead his aim is to show the glory of God the Father and God the Son. Second, in this costly revelation of his glory he would he loving this family. From this I conclude that the primary way that Jesus loved this family was by doing what he must do to display to them in a compelling way his own glory.

Let us not dare to instruct Jesus upon what it means for God to love us. Let us learn from Jesus what true love really is. Many today would call Jesus callous and unloving for letting Lazarus die. And they would add this criticism: that he is vain and self-conceited if he was motivated by a desire to display his own glory. What this shows is how far above the glory of God most people value pain-free lives. For most people, love is whatever puts human value and human well-being at the highest point. So to call Jesus' behavior loving is unintelligible to them. But let us learn from Jesus what love is and what our true well being is. Love is doing whatever you need to do to help people see and savor the glory of God in Christ forever and ever. Love keeps God central. Because we were created and redeemed and are being sanctified for God. Jesus was loving you when He prayed in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” His love for us drives Him to pray for us, and die for us and strengthen us and delay in our lives in order to enthrall us with what is infinitely and eternally satisfying: God in Christ. That we might see His glory- for that He suffered for you- for that He let Lazarus die-for that He let Joseph suffer-and for that He loves you through your trials and afflictions.

CLOSING THOUGHTS For fifty four years Charles Simeon persevered. He was dying in October, 1836. The weeks drug on. On October 21 those by his bed heard him say these words slowly and with long pauses: Infinite wisdom has arranged the whole with infinite love; and infinite power enables me—to rest upon that love. I am in a dear Father's hands—all is secure. When I look to Him, I see nothing but faithfulness—and immutability—and truth; and I have the sweetest peace—I cannot have more peace. The reason Simeon could die like that is because he had trained himself for 54 years to go to Scripture and to strengthen his heart taking hold of the infinite wisdom and love and power of God and use them to conquer the unbelief of impatience. So be patient brothers and sisters! As Charles Simeon said in the beginning of this message, I say to you again, “Brothers and sisters we must not mind a little suffering for Christ’s sake!”