In the NASB translation of the Bible, the section of Scripture we’re going to look at today has a header called “Exhortation”, and I think it is very aptly named. This passage is encouragement to find the joy and cling to the joy of the Lord in all life’s circumstances. I’ve asked a question in your bulletin, can we have joy in the midst of suffering? And the answer is…YES! Of course we can, if we remember what joy is and where to look.
Let’s look at James 5:7-10, “Therefore be patient, brothers and sisters, 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. 9 Do not complain, brothers and sisters, against one another, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door. 10 As an example, brothers and sisters, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” (NASB)
Let’s just take that first phrase of James’s, “Therefore be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.” Does anyone else feel like the word “patience” has become a four-letter word in the church? It’s like, “Don’t pray for patience, because God will actually give you situations to practice patience.” I think in reality it probably is one of the things we rarely pray for because deep down we know we’re not patient people and we really don’t want to be! I placed an order online on Monday night and I got it Wednesday morning. I can drive through a fast food place and if it takes more than 5 minutes I get frustrated because I’m impatient. We have 1 Gigabit internet because anything else is too slow. We don’t like to wait. So when James starts this passage right off the bat with a command to be patient, we might be tempted to tune out.
Not to mention that this passage about patience is what we’re looking at on the Sunday of Advent when we celebrate joy! Even the candle color changes from purple to pink to remind us that suffering isn’t going to last, and that joy is always present! What we’ll see through looking closely at this passage in James is that patience and suffering must be talked about at the same time as joy. What we’ll see is that as we practice patience in the midst of suffering, we find that there is a space for joy as well.
James tells us to be patient. What we must remember when we talk about patience is that patience is more than just enduring. When we go through difficult things, we’re not being patient if we just put up with the situation, if we just survive and get through it. Patience is meant to be more, it’s FORBEARANCE.
Sometimes when we think of patience, we think we’re just passively waiting for something different to happen, or for something to end, but James is using action words, just like he does throughout the rest of his letter. Patience is about actively living out our faith while we wait for Christ’s return. We don’t just sit and wait, we do work in the waiting. This is what forbearance is. It’s doing something while you wait. It’s faith in action.
We remember James 2:14-26 which talks about the idea of deeds, or works, being a part of true faith. We remember that James boldly said that faith without deeds is dead. Here, James uses the analogy of a farmer to talk about what we do while we wait. He says, “The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.” Since James uses the example of the farmer to show us what we have to do as we wait for Christ’s return, let’s look at what that looks like.
Here’s an easy way of remembering this, too: the three “Ps”. Farmers must first PREPARE. The preparing starts long before the farmer does anything else, and the preparing must take place long before the rain comes. They prepare compost for the soil. My dad is a great example of this. Before he planted his backyard garden, he took soil samples and tested them for nutrients. Then he took into consideration the plants they wanted to grow, and carefully amended the soil to meet the nutrient needs of the plants. He did this through adding ground egg shells and a certain type of fish compost that he had to special order. It was a long process, but the result was really great soil that grows really great vegetables.
There is more to the preparing as well. You have to pull weeds, you have to pull out rocks, you have to add manure and compost as needed. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into the work of farming, and even as you are actively working to prepare, there is a significant amount of waiting. But you don’t just sit back and wait, you work while you wait.
Then, farmers PLANT. You plant the seeds in the right place, too. Jesus gave the parable of the farmer who sowed seeds in different types of soil to help us understand how we plant. Some seeds need to be spread out, some seeds need to be planted deeper than others, some seeds need to be planted in mounds, some seeds need to be planted in richer soil.
But, the point is that you’re doing something. You don’t just prepare the soil and wait for something to magically grow. You actively plant while you continue to wait for the rains.
Then, farmers PRUNE. You monitor the seeds and the seedlings. Sometimes you have to thin them out. We didn’t do this so great with our carrots this year and as a result, none of our carrots grew to be longer than two inches. With Brussel sprouts, you have to trim the leaves as soon as they get to be about an inch long, or you won’t have Brussel sprouts. Each plant has a different way you must care for it in order for it to grow. You can’t just sit back and watch it go, or you’ll end up with some plants that have a low yield and some that have no yield at all.
Farmers, James says, do all this while they wait for the rains to come. As they’re waiting, they’re working. So when we apply this analogy to us, the church, and Christians everywhere, we are to patiently wait until the Lord’s return. And what patiently waiting means is that we forebear during the waiting, which now we know means that we work at preparing, planting, and pruning, while we wait for Christ’s return.
So James says for us to be patient, and to strengthen your hearts. In the NIV, it’s translated as “stand firm”, but I like the NASB translation better because we can see that again James is using an active statement. We don’t just do nothing as we patently wait, as we’ve learned, we prepare, plant, prune. But, we also do more in the waiting, we dig our heels in and take encouragement. We actively work to seek the One who strengthens our hearts.
We’ve been talking, through this Advent season, about how just like the light, the Kingdom of God is already here, it’s already breaking through, but it hasn’t been fully realized yet. The Kingdom draws near and will continue to draw near until Christ returns. So we must continue to seek God who gives us encouragement to continue to live in the light and patiently work while we continue to wait.
James continues on, and says this in verse 9, “Do not complain, brothers and sisters, against one another, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door.” This passage is familiar to other New Testament passages, particularly in the gospels, when Jesus told His disciples that they would be judged if they judged others. The Judge, who is Jesus, is at the door, and we are not the judge.
Our time of waiting in this life isn’t meant to be spent actively trying to judge other believers. There is too much work to be done in the Kingdom. There’s preparing and planting and pruning and even harvesting that must be done. We simply can’t spend our time judging other Christians and nit-picking someone’s walk with Christ just because it looks different than ours. We don’t grumble against others, we don’t complain against them because what is more important is the Kingdom of God.
James here is also talking about complaining about the circumstances Christians might find themselves in. We’re to remember that this was written to the early church, who were well acquainted to suffering. They faced famine and persecution among other things. The church needed to be a place where they could be united with one another and strengthen one another. It also needed to be a place where they could find care in the midst of suffering.
The kind of care and strengthening we are meant to get from one another is opposite of a complaining attitude. There isn’t room for both within the church. We can either find joy and strengthen one another, or we can complain about one another and our circumstances, but not both.
Finally, in verse 10, James says this, “As an example, brothers and sisters, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” Not only are Christians meant to take encouragement and strength from one another, but we’re also supposed to remember those who came before us and take encouragement from the example that they’ve set for us.
If you read just one verse beyond our passage for this morning, in verse 11, James mentions the example of Job. We know the suffering Job endured in his faith, but still he stood firm, and he stood waiting for all to be right, and in expectation that God was near. Job’s faith and even his joy didn’t mean that his suffering disappeared. It just meant that he knew that God was there to give him compassion, mercy, and joy in the midst of suffering.
But Job isn’t the only one. The early church knew about the other examples of patience and joy in suffering. They knew of Daniel, they knew of Elijah, they knew of Hosea, of Jeremiah, and so many others. Each of these examples of faith consistently gave the message that God is always close, even in the midst of suffering, and if we wait patiently for the Lord, there is joy.
James also adds to this that, “We count those blessed who endured.” He brings to mind Jesus’s own words in Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, that those who are persecuted for the sake of the Kingdom of God are blessed. Blessed are those who endure suffering, persecution, hardships, for the Kingdom’s sake. In this season of Advent, we count our BLESSINGS.
The beginning of James reminds us that we should consider it joy when we face these things. When we come upon suffering, trials, persecution, hardships, we must look for the blessings. That is where we find the joy because those blessings that come from those times come from God as He grows us and strengthens us.
In those times, we deeply understand that joy is more than happiness based on circumstances. It’s not an emotion. It’s assurance, peace, comfort, and hope, knowing that we are rooted in the Lord, not in the circumstances of the day. When we count our blessings in hardships, we experience the joy of the Lord. As we wait, we are reminded that we do not wait alone, and that our waiting is not idle or in vain. Christ has come. Christ will return. Christ is with us now.
Reflect on the joy and light we have in Christ this week:
1. How do you see the connection between being blessed and being joyful in your life?
2. In Galatians 5:22, joy, peace, and love are all listed as fruit of the Spirit. As we celebrate joy, peace, and love during the Advent season, how do we grow these fruit in our lives?
3. Read Job 6:8-10. Job’s circumstances were dire, but he still found joy. How?