James 5:7-12 Be Patient
 Proposition: Let your patience be a testimony to God’s grace and faithfulness
 Introduction
 Our Instant Gratification Society Has a Cost
 An article in The Boston Globe claims that our "demand for instant results is
seeping into every corner of our lives." The need for instant gratification is not
new, but our expectation of "instant" has become faster. The article states:
 Retailers are jumping into same-day delivery services. Smartphone apps
eliminate the wait for a cab, a date, or a table at a hot restaurant. Movies and
TV shows begin streaming in seconds. But experts caution that instant
gratification comes at a price: It's making us less patient …
 We've come to expect things so quickly that researchers found people can't
wait more than a few seconds for a video to load. One researcher examined
the viewing habits of 6.7 million internet users. How long were subjects willing
to be patient? Two seconds. After that they started abandoning the site. After
five seconds, the abandonment rate is 25 percent. When you get to 10
seconds, half are gone." The results offer a glimpse into the future. As
Internet speeds increase, people will be even less willing to wait for that cute
puppy video. The researcher, who spent years developing the study, worries
someday people will be too impatient to conduct studies on patience. –
Christopher Muther, "Instant gratification is making us perpetually
impatient," The Boston Globe (2-2-13)
 James wrote his letter to believers nearly 2000 years ago
 This has particular significance for this passage
 As he is exhorting us to learn to be patient until the Lord returns
 For billions of believers this has meant their entire lives
 Let us hear this exhortation with the same expectation James had when he
wrote these words to us
 Let your patience be a testimony to God’s grace and faithfulness
 Be Patient Until the Coming of the Lord (vv. 7-8)
7 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. 8 You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is
near.
 Be patient until the coming of the Lord
 How long do we need to practice and exercise patience?
 Until the Lord returns
 Why do we need to be patient?
 Worrying and complaining will not speed it up
 Jesus asks us
 Matthew 6:25-27 "For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your
life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what
you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
26 "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into
barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much
more than they? 27 "And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to
his life?
 The time for Jesus’ return has already been set, and we are playing out history
while already knowing how it will end
 The Scriptures assure us the plans of God have already been put in place
 They are not flexible, and they will not change based on our actions
 Ephesians 1:3-6 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in
Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that
we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind
intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely
bestowed on us in the Beloved.
 He has chosen each and every one of His children before He laid the
foundations of the earth
 Psalm 139:15-16 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in
secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have
seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days
that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
 He has already done this for every person who will ever live
 The world will continue to be basically the same until Christ returns
 The details may change over time, but the basic story will remain the same
 Matthew 24:37-39 "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the
days of Noah. 38 "For as in those days before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered
the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them
all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.
 James exhorts us to be like the farmer who waits for the precious produce of the
soil
 He must be patient
 He does his best to provide good growing conditions
 But even then, he is very limited in what he actually controls
 He does not make anything grow
 He must wait for the early and late rains
 He does not control the weather or natural growing conditions
 He is forced to wait on the Lord’s provision and timing
 He may worry and fret, but it has no bearing on the growth of his crops
 You be patient as well
 Strengthen your hearts
 Understand how God works
 Read the Bible
 Study the patterns of history
 Cling to His promises
 He is working all things according to His will and for our good (Romans 8)
 Have the confidence of knowing there is a very specific plan
 Each of us has our place and our part
 The coming of the Lord is near
 James is calling us to live with “constant expectation”
 Those who do not know the hour of their master’s return should always be
prepared for His return
 Even if it is not for another 2000 years
 Patience Defined (vv. 9-12)
9 Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be
judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door. 10 As an example, brethren,
of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11
We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and
have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion
and is merciful. 12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by
earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you
may not fall under judgment.
 Do not complain against one another, so you may not be judged, because the
judge is right at the door
 Defining Our Terms
 Patience – Definition (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary)
 1. The suffering of afflictions, pain, toil, calamity, provocation or other evil,
with a calm, unruffled temper; endurance without murmuring or fretfulness.
patience may spring from constitutional fortitude, from a kind of heroic pride,
or from Christian submission to the divine will.
 Complain – Definition (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary)
 1. To utter expressions of grief; to lament. 2. To utter expressions of censure
or resentment; to murmur; to find fault. 3. To utter expressions of uneasiness,
or pain. He complains of thirst. He complains of a head-ache. 4. To charge; to
accuse of an offense; to present an accusation against a person to a proper
officer.
 Patience and complaining are mutually exclusive
 They are by definition opposites and by practice as well
 If Jesus was coming tomorrow, would you be so uptight about your neighbor’s
lawn?
 Or would you be focused on being prepared for His return?
 Be an example of suffering and patience, like the prophet who spoke in the
name of the Lord
 Remember people are watching you
 The Lord is certainly watching
 Others are watching to see if your faith in Christ is real
 They want to know if God’s grace is really sufficient
 They want to know if Jesus is worth dying and living for
 Be encouraged by those who have gone before us, like the prophets
 They all counted serving the Lord to be of greater value than even their own
lives
 Even if you are just and ordinary person like Amos
 Amos 7:12-15 Then Amaziah said to Amos, "Go, you seer, flee away to the
land of Judah and there eat bread and there do your prophesying! 13 "But no
longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal
residence." 14 Then Amos replied to Amaziah, "I am not a prophet, nor am I
the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs. 15
"But the LORD took me from following the flock and the LORD said to me,
'Go prophesy to My people Israel.'
 We count those who endured blessed
 Men like Job, who have seen the outcome of the Lord’s plans and purposes
 Men like Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel
 Finding the Lord is full of compassion and mercy
 Even in the midst of great suffering and tribulation, these men found devotion
to the Lord to be the sustaining factor in their lives
 The Lord is worthy of serving and suffering for
 Above all, do not swear by either heaven or earth with any other oath
 Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, so you may not fall under judgment
 We must not feel like we must prove anything, but we must be content to let
our testimony and your life speak for
 Our testimony of faith in Jesus Christ should be clear in word and action
 But we must not live with the primary motive of proving other wrong
 This is not a competition
 Our goal is to win others to Christ by His Word and our testimony
 No challenges should be issued to those who oppose us
 We need swear no oaths to our truthfulness
 We should swear no oaths of loyalty to any other than Jesus Christ
 Therefore: Let your patience be a testimony of God’s grace and faithfulness
 Thinking with the Saints
 Saints are people who manage to love God more than life itself. They manage
to love neighbor more than self and thereby find true life. Saints are people who
just push their way into our modest present and make the God-question and the
neighbor-question the only interesting intellectual questions. Christians are
those who've learned to think with the saints, and thereby we think much more
creatively than we could if we'd been left to our own devices.
 St. Francis, Martin Luther King, Teresa of Calcutta, Gideon, Mary--they help
us to think beyond ourselves. They help us to think despite ourselves and
thereby in this act of holy remembering and saintly thinking, new options are
envisioned. We are encouraged; a new world not of our own devising is offered
to us. We get some big ideas. Torah and the saintly lives thereby produced is a
kind of intelligence by proxy. – "Don't Think for Yourself," Preaching Today,
Tape No. 114.
 The Benefits of "Living Under the Pain"
In his book When Life Is Hard, pastor and author James MacDonald shares a
valuable lesson he learned during his days as a basketball player. He writes:
I played a lot of basketball back in the day. I sprained my ankles many times, and I
learned too late that the best way to handle all that black-and-blue is to fill a
wastebasket with ice and top it off with water. Then, while the injury is fresh, put
your wounded foot deep into that cold water and leave it there.
If you can last for one minute, it's just crazy painful. But if you can keep it in there
for two minutes, the injury and its recovery time will be cut in half. … If you can hang
on for two and a half minutes, you can be playing basketball again by Thursday, but
the pain of holding your foot in that arctic water will have you crying out for someone
to bring you a sharp object. Even with my worst injuries I seldom made it two and a
half minutes.
But here is the amazing thing about "remaining under the pain" of having your foot
in that cold bucket: If you can hang in there for three minutes, you'll be walking on
it tomorrow. The pain will be consuming those last thirty seconds, worse by far than
the injury itself now. But you will walk tomorrow.
MacDonald concludes: "It is just that way with trials. You can come to the place
where the circumstance itself is less painful than the commitment not to give up."
Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky; source: James MacDonald, When Life Is
Hard (Moody, 2010), p. 63
 Edison Taught Employee Not to Fear Failure
In Shepherd Leadership, authors McCormick and Davenport remind Christian
leaders to allow for second chances and gently restore the fallen. They write:
Thomas Edison filed an impressive 1,093 patents with the U.S. Patent Office, and
behind each one of those 1,093 successes lay hundreds and sometimes thousands
of failures. Edison mastered the art of recovering from failure with lessons in hand
and sought to pass it on to his workers. Near the end of his career, a former worker,
Alfred Tate, penned the following letter to his former boss: "Above all you taught me
not to be afraid of failure; that scars are sometimes as honorable as medals."
Blaine McCormick and David Davenport, Shepherd Leadership(Josey-Bass, 2003),
p. 27
 Sir Edmund Hillary Overcomes Mount Everest
Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you. Sir Edmund
Hillary made several unsuccessful attempts at scaling Mount Everest before he
finally succeeded. After one attempt he stood at the base of the giant mountain and
shook his fist at it. "I'll defeat you yet," he said in defiance. "Because you're as big
as you're going to get— but I'm still growing."
Every time Hillary climbed, he failed. And every time he failed, he learned. And every
time he learned, he grew and tried again. And one day he didn't fail.
John Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water You Have to Get Out of the Boat,
(Zondervan 2001).
 Living Beyond Perfectionism
Lived fully, the experience of illness can free you from the curse of perfectionism
that makes happiness conditional on having everything just right.
Cheri Register in Living With Chronic Illness: Days of Patience and Passion.
Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 2.
 Living in Heavenly Places
If you are a child of God and there is some part of your circumstances which is
tearing you, if you are living in the heavenly places you will thank God for the tearing
things; if you are not in the heavenly places you cry to God over and over again--"O
Lord, remove this thing from me. If only I could live in golden streets and be
surrounded with angels, and have the Spirit of God consciously indwelling me all the
time and have everything wonderfully sweet, then I think I might be a Christian."
That is not being a Christian.
Oswald Chambers in The Love of God. Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 7.
 He Preached for Us
Martin Luther King, Jr., did not come preaching something new. He came shouting
something we already knew: "You have said in your own Declaration of
Independence that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are created
equal, and I insist that you either live by your own constitution or appear bafflingly
inconsistent." And we killed him, because King told us what we already knew. He
preached our sermon. Others have preached to us, but King preached for us.
"His Own Knew Him Not," Preaching Today, Tape No. 44.
 Christians Must Play Hurt
Someone asked Roger Staubach, former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, about
football injuries. "How do you keep on keeping on if you're playing professional
football?"
Roger said something important: "If you're not playing hurt, you're not playing
football."
It's exactly the same way with the Christian faith. If you're not living it hurt, you're
probably not living the Christian faith.
Steve Brown, "The Prime Principle," Preaching Today, Tape No. 107.
 Old Man Regains Hearing
An elderly man had serious hearing problems for a number of years. His family tried
again and again to convince him to get a hearing aid. Finally he relented. He went to
the doctor and was fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed him to hear 100
percent.
A month later he went back to the doctor. The doctor said with a smile, "Your
hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again."
The old man replied, "Oh, I haven't told my family yet. I just sit around and listen to
their conversations. I've changed my will three times!"
"Hearing Problems," Crosswalk.com, (12-03-02)
 Slander Destroys Churches
About 20 years ago, I said something impromptu to the new members standing in a
row across the front of the church. As we received them, the Holy Spirit prompted
me to add, "And now, I charge you that if you ever hear another member speak an
unkind word of criticism or slander against anyone—myself, an usher, a choir
member, or anyone else—that you stop that person in mid-sentence and say,
'Excuse me—who hurt you? Who ignored you? Who slighted you? Was it Pastor
Cymbala? Let's go to his office right now. He'll apologize to you, and then we'll pray
together so God can restore peace to this body. But we won't let you talk critically
about people who aren't present to defend themselves.'
"I'm serious about this. I want you to help resolve this kind of thing immediately.
And know this: If you are ever the one doing the loose talking, we'll confront you."
To this day, every time we receive new members, I say much the same thing. That's
because I know what most easily destroys churches. It's not crack cocaine,
government oppression, or even lack of funds. Rather it's gossip and slander that
grieves the Holy Spirit.
Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire (Zondervan, 1997); quoted in Men of Integrity
(January/February 2001)
 Failure or Opportunity?
Somebody asked Winston Churchill one time, "What most prepared you to lead
Great Britain through World War II?" For a period of time, Great Britain stood
virtually alone against Nazi Germany as it dominated the Western World.
This was Churchill's response: "It was the time I repeated a class in grade school."
The questioner said, "You mean you flunked a grade?"
Churchill said, "I never flunked in my life. I was given a second opportunity to get it
right."
John Ortberg, "A Mind-Expanding Faith," Preaching Today, Tape No. 126.
 CEO Jack Welch Tested by Pain
Jack Welch, former corporate chief at General Electric, grew up as a devoted IrishCatholic. Early on he was an altar boy, and later, as an adult, his religion was so
important to him that he was known to travel more than an hour to attend mass.
However, his commitment to faith changed 34 years ago when his mother died of a
heart attack. In his book Jack: Straight From the Gut, he writes, "I felt cheated,
angry, and mad at God for taking my mother away." He claims still to believe in God,
but says he lost his heart for religion and no longer attends church.
Lori Quicke, associate editor, PreachingToday.com; source: Del Jones, "Welch
'Angry at God' after Mom Died," USA Today (9-06-01)
 Jonathan Edwards Not Exempt from Criticism
Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the prestigious Northampton, Massachusetts,
Congregational Church, was a leading figure of the eighteenth century First Great
Awakening. Religious leaders, like the famous preacher George Whitefield, traveled
great distances to meet with him and discuss theological matters.
Yet even a man of Edwards's credentials wasn't exempt from criticism. When
Edwards sought assurance that those in his congregation had experienced genuine
conversion, a group of discontented church members took exception. They launched
a slanderous campaign against him that ultimately led to his dismissal from the
church he'd made famous. Edwards assumed a modest pastorate in the small
frontier town of Stockbridge. One of the greatest theological minds and most devout
pastors in American history was forced out of his church by malicious detractors.
Eventually Jonathan Edwards was vindicated before his critics. Some of his most
vocal opponents publicly confessed their sinfulness in attacking their godly
minister. Ultimately, Princeton University hired Edwards as its president.
Henry and Richard Blackaby, Spiritual Leadership (Broadman & Holman, 2001)
 Children Who Can Delay Gratification Become More Successful
Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession
of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he
would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn't ring
the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two
marshmallows.
In videos of the experiment, you can see the children squirming, kicking, hiding
their eyes—desperately trying to exercise self-control so they can wait and get two
marshmallows. Their performance varied widely. Some broke down and rang the bell
within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes.
The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into
better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes. The children who rang
the bell quickest were more likely to become bullies. They received worse teacher
and parental evaluations 10 years on and were more likely to have drug problems at
age 32.
Mischel concluded that children may be taught "that it pays to work toward the
future instead of living for instant gratification."
David Brooks, "Marshmallows and Public Policy," The New York Times (5-7-06)
 Naval Ships Test the 'Integrity of the Hull'
Naval officers often refer to the "integrity of the hull." When a submarine comes
out of dry dock, the first exercise is called a "sea trial," which takes the submarine
to depth in the ocean to test the integrity of the hull. Naval personnel sometimes
call this phase a "shakedown cruise" because it measures a vessel's performance
and general seaworthiness. If integrity is compromised in anyway, such as a poor
weld, the stress from the increased pressure of deep water will inevitably find that
weakness.
Adapted from Impact, Tim Irwin (BenBella Books, 2014), page 79
 John Piper on the Providence of God
In his book A Sweet and Bitter Providence, John Piper offers these thoughts about
God's providence:
Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to
heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the
point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in
our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns.
God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the
course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for
the glory of Jesus Christ.
John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence (Crossway Books & Bibles, 2010),
pp.101-102; found via Joe Thorn's blog (1-20-10)
 John Grisham: Rewards of Perseverance
Success seldom comes without pain and perseverance. Take the case of author
John Grisham.
Grisham is the world's most commercially successful novelist of the last decade. He
has well over 100 million books in print in 31 languages. Yet Grisham was hardly an
overnight success in his transition from attorney to writer.
A Time to Kill, Grisham's first novel, was rejected by 28 agents and publishers.
When an agent finally did take him as a client, the book's first press run was only
5,000 copies. Grisham himself purchased 1,000 and hawked his work to
bookstores from the trunk of his car.
Only after his second novel, The Firm, hit the bestseller list did he get his big break.
Six of his books have now been made into movies, and the press run of his most
recent volume, A Painted House, was a phenomenal 2.8 million copies.
Rubel Shelly, Nashville, Tennessee, from various news stories and reviews of John
Grisham, A Painted House (Doubleday, 2001)