Grumble-Free Zone - James 5:8-9 Series

When you are being mistreated, strengthen your heart (so that you don’t become double-minded) because His coming is near (we need to be ready for it). And be nice. Suffering tends to make us irritable with each other, but we must be peacemakers instead, lest we be judged. God hates grumbling.

James 5:7 Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See, the farmer waits for the valuable crop of the land, being patient until he receives the autumn and spring rains. 8 You too, be patient. Strengthen your hearts, because the Lord’s coming is near. 9 Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, so that you will not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the door! 10 Brothers, as an example of suffering and patience take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 Behold, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about, that the Lord is compassionate and merciful. 12 Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, so that you will not fall under judgment.

Introduction: First the Heart, then the Problem

It was a rough time for the readers of James. They were being mistreated and oppressed. Terrible things were happening to them, and as a result, they were turning against each other inside the church. There was all kinds of fighting and quarreling and judging and grumbling against each other. And that is pretty common – the more the suffering increases, the more we have a tendency to become irritable with each other. But it is interesting how James deals with the problem. He rebukes the people who are causing all the suffering, and he pronounces judgment on them, but he doesn’t do that until chapter 5. What did he do for the first four chapters? He taught us how to diagnose and cure the underlying heart problems that cause us to become irritable with each other when we are suffering. That is very instructive. Four chapters dealing with our own heart problems and not until chapter 5 does he deal with the people causing our suffering. When someone is “driving” you to sin with their behavior, the main solution is not to get them to stop. The main solution has nothing to do with them.

And even in chapter 5 where James does finally mention the people causing the suffering, he does not say anything about how to get them to stop hurting you. It is still all about our hearts. That’s great news for us, because if the only solution to my sin problem were to get the people around me to stop hurting me, then it would be outside of my control. But my own heart is something that I always have access to.

So James is teaching us what kind of heart responses we should have when we are mistreated, and he started with patience.

James 5:7 Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming.

James is going to give us three commands in this section. The first one is to be patient; the second one is in verse 8 – be strong.

Be Strong

Literally it is:

8 …Strengthen your hearts, because the Lord’s coming is near.

When you are suffering; when you are being mistreated; when life is unfair – be patient, and be strong.

The word strengthen means to make something immovable. It is the world used in Luke16 to describe the immovable gulf set between heaven and hell. It is the word used of Jesus’ resolve to go to die on the cross in Jerusalem. In Luke 9:51 it says Jesus strengthened His face to go to Jerusalem. He turned in that direction with immovable, unchangeable, unbending, non-negotiable resolve. And James is saying, “Do that to your heart.”

Strengthening the heart stands in contrast to what the rich people were doing in verse 5. When he said you have fattened yourself in the day of slaughter, literally it’s you have fattened your heart in the day of slaughter.

They had lived in luxury and self-indulgence to the point where their inner man was fat and soft and flabby and weak. And James says, “Instead of doing that, strengthen your heart.”

Double-mindedness

If you let your inner man become weak and flabby, the result will be double-mindedness, which James has been warning us about all through the book. Double-mindedness is weakness in the inner man that causes us to be unstable and vacillating – now I’m following Christ; now I’m not. Now I am praising God, now I am criticizing people even though they are in God’s image. Now I am praying to God; now I am in love with the world. In 4:8 he called us to repent of our double-mindedness, and part of that repentance involves doing what you can to strengthen your heart so it can remain steadfast and firm, and it does not blow back and forth in the winds whenever suffering or temptation come along.