Series: If God is For You …
Sermon: Waiting on the Lord
Scripture: James 5:7-11
[Hold up cell phone.]
I think it’s safe to say that most, if not all of you, have one of these and I can also probably say that if you have one of these it has some kind of GPS on it. In fact, it’s pretty significant that I can use the term “GPS” and you know what I’m talking about, amen? A program. An “app” which tracks you and can not only tell you where you are but how to get you to where you’re going and how long it will take you to get where you’re going literally down to the minute … and does a pretty amazing job at doing it. It has a voice that you program … male or female … British or American accent. It not only tells you where you are and how to get where you want to go, it can also show you the flow and amount of traffic around you, which, in my opinion is a pretty useful and helpful feature.
Come and step into the “way-back” machine with me for a moment to a time when we didn’t have these things. You drive onto I-40 heading to Asheville. Don’t need a GPS for that, amen? Nice day. Everything is moving along … and then you come around a curve and boom! A sea of red brake lights. I-40 is a rolling parking lot. And there you are … stuck. You have no idea what is causing the traffic jam. You have no idea how long the traffic jam is. Should you get off at the next exit? Go a long way out of your way? But what if the traffic jam ended just past the exit? Then you’ve gone a long way out of your way for nothing. Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew what was going on up ahead and how long the traffic jam is so that you can make a decision about what to do if and when you reach the next exit?
This [hold up cell phone] lets you do that. If you come up on a traffic jam, most GPS programs will tell you what’s going on … there’s construction or a traffic accident ahead … and it tells you how long the traffic jam is and how long you’ll have to wait in traffic. In fact, it will suggest you get off at the next exit and show you alternative routes and how long those will take to get you to your destination.
Wouldn’t it be extremely helpful if we had some kind of GPS for our lives? You’re cruising along through your life when all of a sudden something unexpected pops up and you’re dealing with a whole set of problems and issues you didn’t expect. Wouldn’t it be nice if you got some kind of warning that not only told you that there was a problem up ahead but what kind of problem … and then gave you some suggestions and alternatives on how to either handle the problem or avoid it all together?
Well, for now, we don’t have an “app” for that. Life is full of twists and turns and unexpected surprises, amen? And we have to deal with them as they happen. We can make some plans. We can try to look ahead and make some educated guesses. But … more times than not … our little plans come to naught and most of our problems seem to come out of nowhere so there’s really no time to make plans. We just have to deal with it.
None of us expected a virus to suddenly pop up one day and spread around the world the way that the COVID-19 virus did. It really did seem to come out of nowhere and take the world by surprise … and now, here we are, two years later still trying to fix it. Fortunately, it looks as though the spread of this virus is slowing down and … so far … it keeps mutating into something less harmful … and we all hope and pray, I’m sure, that it keeps heading in that direction, amen? Billionaire Warren Buffet made this profound observation: “I have never seen Americans more fearful. It takes five minutes to become fearful, much more to regain confidence” (“Buffett Says Five Years for Economy to Recover.” Sydney Morning Herald, March 29, 2009).
We’re not out of the woods yet. We’re still dealing with the virus itself and we’re also dealing with the fall out from it but things do appear to be slowing down and heading in a more positive direction, so I thought we’d take some time this morning to do some reflection on our experience. You see, at the beginning of his letter, James makes the following observation: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy” … what? How can literally surviving a pandemic be considered a thing or experience of joy? Well, says James, because “you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance” … well, we’ve certainly had to “endure” these past two years, amen? “… let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:2-4). Well, let’s see if James is right, amen?
Let’s start with God. Good place to start, amen? Where was He in all of this? We couldn’t see it coming but He did. In fact, God, who created time, exists outside of time. He is, as Jesus explained, the Alpha and the Omega. He sees the beginning of time and the end of time. He knew that in a fallen world there would be diseases, and so He created our bodies in such a way that they are able to combat the thousands of germs and virus that attack us every day … bodies that produce “antibodies.” He produced minds and hearts dedicated to helping the body fight and cure diseases. He gave us the resources and the technology to produce billions of doses of vaccines. He created armies of doctors and nurses to care for those who are sick.
Don’t get me wrong. This hasn’t been a joy ride, to be sure. But now is the time, I think, to look back and see where God was clearly present and at work. It is also an important time for us to look at ourselves and how we reacted to this time of crisis and testing. A “crisis,” says Jesus, is really a fork in the road. One road is wide and easy … that one leads to destruction … or, in our case, to discouragement and despair … and the other is narrow and more difficult … and few find it because it is based on hope and our hope is based on God. During a crisis like the pandemic, some have shaken their fists at Heaven and blamed God for it. Others have simply abandoned God because they feel He has abandoned them. Others have shouted that this proves there is no God. For some, the pandemic has brought them closer to God … closer to God than they’ve ever been in their life. I have personally looked to and have clung to God through this whole thing and I continue to encourage you to do the same thing. “Crisis” … “testing” as James puts it … either drives us away from God or closer to God. It proves that our faith is solid or just a veil of words and empty platitudes. And I know that learning the truth about our faith can be, well, a difficult thing to learn about ourselves, but I would rather know that my faith is just a veil of words and empty platitudes so that I can ask God to give me a solid faith that will stand the next time a crisis along, amen?
It’s been two years, my brothers and sisters. Two years! Remember when it first hit? We were asked to self-quarantine and wear masks for how long to slow the spread? What was it? Fifteen days? Fifteen days. Not bad. Fifteen days … two weeks basically … but fifteen days turned into a month, then months, then a year … and there seemed to be no end in sight. Just when it seemed like things might … just might … be taking a turn for the better and we were getting hopeful again … boom! The Delta variant reared its ugly head. More time, more uncertainty, more fear … followed by more variants … and a year has stretched out to two … going on three.
What if we had a GPS … a global pandemic satellite “app” … that could have told us what lie ahead and now long this pandemic was going to last? How would that have affected our attitude? I don’t know about you, but the not knowing has been the worst part.
A couple of years ago I got stuck on the Florida Turnpike for four hours. No joke. Not a rolling parking lot. It was stopped. Period. There was nothing I could do but turn off the car and wait. I had no idea how long I was going to be there. Like said, the not knowing was the worst part so I got on my cellphone and tried to find out what was going on. It turns out that there was a serious accident involving a couple of cars and tractor trailer. They had to shut down the turnpike so that the rescue helicopters could land and pick up the accident victims and rush them to the hospital and then, because of the traffic jam, it took a long time for the tow trucks to get up to the scene of the accident to tow the truck to the side of the road so that the traffic could start moving again. My whole attitude changed. I went from being frustrated to accepting the fact that I was going to be there for awhile … I still didn’t know for how long … but somehow knowing the cause of the delay made it easier for me to accept the reality that I was going to be there awhile.
“Now faith,” says the author of Hebrews, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). But that’s the problem, right? Things “not seen.” The problem with life is that we don’t always know the cause of our problems nor do we know how long they are going to last … which raises the issue of my reaction … and my reaction is a good measure of my faith. “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of our faith produces endurance” (James 1:2-3) … well, I can endure a traffic jam if I know how long it’s going to last, amen? I can endure a pandemic if I know for sure that there is a clear and definite end in sight, right? It’s the uncertainty. It’s the not knowing. Another word that James uses for “endurance” is patience. “Endurance” means to rely on an inner strength to persevere, to keep pushing ahead, to patiently wait, to tolerate your present reality when there is no clear end in sight. We’ve had to endure these past two years of uncertainty, haven’t we? We’ve really had no choice but to patiently wait it out.
As one preacher noted, there is a direct correlation between the strength of one’s faith and the depth of our patience (Jeremiah, D. Living with Confidence in a Chaotic World. Nashville: W Publishing Group; 2009; p. 190). That same author goes on to say that patience “can be one of the most elusive virtues” (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 190). Puritan Thomas Watson once observed: “There are no sins God’s people are more subject to than unbelief and impatience; they are ready, either to faint through unbelief, or to fret through impatience” (Smith, H., ed. Gleanings from the Past, Vol. 3. London: Central Bible Truth Depot; 1915 (www.stempublishing.com/ authors/smith/ WATSON.html). How about you? Do you faint? Or are you fretting?
Listen to our scripture reading again. “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being” what? “…being patient with it until it receives the early and late rains. You also must be” … here’s that word again … “patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:7-11; emphasis added). Hummm … what do you think James is suggesting to his “beloved”? Be patient?
We don’t know exactly who James was addressing in his letter but it is clear that he was dealing with a community that was facing some kind of crisis or crises. One of the hopes of this community was that Jesus would come … SOON! … and put an end to their persecution. During times like the pandemic, we tend to look for signs of the end time … of Christ’s coming … to give us hope. Once the Lord shows up and whisks His church to Heaven, who’s worried about a virus, amen?
James tells them to strengthen their hearts because the coming of the Lord is near … He stands at the door and could appear at any moment, so don’t let Him find a community that is divided and at odds with itself. He is also calling them to come together around a common cause … their faith in Jesus Christ and their hope that He could, in fact, appear at any moment. But … he also calls them to be patient because Jesus will come in His own time, according to His own schedule, when the time is right … and so, he uses an image that is familiar to many … a farmer who does what he can to ensure that he or she will produce a good crop but who will ultimately have to wait on forces beyond their control.
There were no irrigation systems in first century Hebrew farming. The farmer had to depend on God for the water that he needed for his crops to grow … and that had to be a very trying and difficult time. Too much rain and the crop were ruined. Not enough rain and the crop failed to grow or thrive. In either case, the outcome was possible starvation. And the rain … the cycles and currents of the weather … were beyond their control … but not beyond the control of God, who they had to utterly depend upon for survival. The farmer’s job was do what he could ... till and cultivate the soil, plant the seed and, if rain fell by the grace of God, to bring in the harvest. He could shout at the sky. He could pace back and forth and demand that the plants grow … but in the end, the farmer had no choice but to wait on God and nature to take its course … and James is calling us to do the same. We’re to simply till the soil, to nurture each other, to make good use of the “early rain” which was the first appearance of Christ … and to be patient and wait until the “latter rain” when Christ will come to bring in the harvest. We can only do our part and wait on God to do His part … which leads me to the first thing that we have to realize. God’s timing is not the same as ours.
Our concept of time is limited to the here and now, to the span of years that we have on this earth. God’s concept of time is beyond infinity because He is beyond time. When the time is right, Jesus will appear. It could be any moment, it could be centuries from now. Paul put it this way: “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). The “fullness of time” … when is that? We’d like to think it’s now, today, because our view is limited to our time, our circumstances but we ultimately have to put our trust and faith in God … who sent His Son the first time at just the right place, at just the right time. Rome had built roads that connected a vast empire and the Roman army made it relatively safe to travel from place to place with the empire. The entire region shared a common language … koine Greek. Both the Roman highways and the common language of Greek made it possible for the Gospel to spread over vast regions. The Jews had established synagogues all over the Mediterranean region which would became the “seeds beds” for the Gospel to take root and become the centers for active communities like the ones that James and Paul wrote to. And when all the prophets had fallen silent, and all the prophecies of Christ’s coming had been made, and all the elements of God’s plan were in place … He took on flesh and put His plan in action … one that led to the cross and our salvation.
Whether we trust in God’s timing or not, it really doesn’t matter does it? I mean, think about it. God’s going to do what God’s going to do and we … well, we can try to dictate to God what and when WE think things should happen, right? … or we can trust and accept, as Paul says, that all things are going according to plan … God’s plan. And we can humbly accept the fact that God’s plans will always, always be better than ours, amen?
So, the thing that we have to deal with is what goes on up here [point to head]. The problem doesn’t lie with God but with our perceptions, our expectations. Martha Washington, THE first First Lady of the United States gave a wonderful example of how it’s all about our perception in a letter that she wrote to a friend in 1789. She confessed to her friend that she would rather be at home at Mt. Vernon, playing with her four grandchildren, than serving as what she called a “symbolic presence” at the nation’s capital in New York City. Yet, she wrote, “I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have … learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wheresoever we go” (Upham, C.W. George Washington, The Life of General Washington: First President of the United States, Vol. II. London: National Illustrated Library; 1852; p. 181).
Our patience comes from our trust in God and His plans and purposes, not our own. Our trust in God gives us hope and that hope is the source, the foundation, the key to our patience. Remember, James starts out by telling us that whenever we face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because we know that the testing of our faith produces endurance. Paul gives us a more expansive view on this process: “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5-3-5) … and how has the Holy Spirit been give to us? Because, in the fullness of time, God took on flesh and endured the agony of the cross. And because of the Holy Spirit we have a hope that is solid and foundational … a hope that is absolutely persuaded that God can and has already won any conceivable battle that this day or any other day might throw at us … and that hope gives us confidence and our confidence is what gives us our strength to endure and to be patient. “That is why James stands with Paul in telling us to embrace the quality of patience; to look for it in ourselves during tough times, and to depend upon it to inspire us” (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 194).
There are a few things that we “assume” when God doesn’t appear to be answering our prayers. One is that we assume He is not answering us or that we have fallen from His grace and He has turned His back on us. David cries out on Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest” (Psalm 22:1-2). Maybe the problem isn’t that He’s NOT answering us but that He IS answering us and either we can’t see it we can’t hear or understand the answer, amen?
Sometimes God may have to delay answering our prayers until the time is right … but the word “delay” makes it sound is if He’s waiting or holding back, doing nothing. Maybe He has to delay because there’s a lot of things … a lot of moving parts … that all have to come together just right for everything to fall into place and work itself out as God planned it. As one author observed, “Delays don’t occur because someone … in heaven or on earth … is trying to irritate us personally. There are very good reasons in most cases; as far as heaven goes, in all cases” for the delay (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 196). I think that Dr. David Jeremiah says it better than I can:
“I pray for things, not knowing when He will answer. I long for his coming, having no inside knowledge of when He will appear. But I know this: delay is not a word found in God’s vocabulary. Never yet has He been too late or too early by even the flicker of an eyelash. He is not slack regarding His promises, and we’ll understand it better by and by. It’s the divine prerogative to schedule and the human prerogative to wait in faithful patience” (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 202).
It is the divine prerogative to schedule and our prerogative to wait in “faithful” patience.
So, what should WE be doing while we wait patiently for God’s plans and purposes to come together? James says that we should “establish” or “strengthen” our hearts. In some translations, it says that we’re to be “stouthearted,” to “put iron” into our hearts (Jeremiah, ibid., p. 202). When James says that we are to be “patient,” he is not suggesting that we resign ourselves to a sad acceptance or a passive resignation to our situation. He is calling us to pump up our faith. Tribulation, challenges, hardship … they’re all part of life … they are all part of living in a broken, fallen world. God doesn’t bring trouble down upon us just to see how we’ll react. He doesn’t give us pointless challenges or trouble for trouble’s sake. Life happens. Trials and tribulation can be the result of poor decisions on my part. I may have to suffer trials and tribulations as a result of poor decisions or even right decisions on the part of someone else. Life happens. But God has a way of using the trials and tribulations of a broken world to teach us to hang in there, to strengthen our faith, our confidence, to develop and mature our character … all of which gives us hope and patience that comes from our experience of God’s Presence and purpose in the past. We get it from the Word [Bible], which is filled with the history of God bringing His people through trial after trial and challenge after challenge … each with the on-going promise that He will continue to do that for us. God wants us to have real hope … the kind of hope that is strong and dynamic and vibrant. He wants our faith in Him to be steadfast in the face of all challenges, all difficulties. Because He is a loving God, because He is in charge of the universe and He knows every blade of grass, every sparrow, every hair on every head in the universe, we can have confident patience, strength, and endurance, amen? What kind of patience? Confident!
Patience, as the saying goes, “is doing something else in the meantime.” Patience doesn’t means just sitting around staring up at Heaven and waiting in anticipation. It’s getting busy while we wait. James gives us a number of examples of the kinds of things that we could and should be doing.
“Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them” (James 5:13-14).
He also mentions praying. “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” and then he gives us the example of the Prophet Elijah who prayed “fervently that it might not rain and for three years and six months and it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest” (James 5:17-18).
Along with prayer, however, which he suggest that we do for each other and not just for ourselves, James also suggests that we fill the time by caring for each other. “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20). Maybe the actions that you take are part of God’s plan or God’s answer to someone else’s prayers … have you ever thought about that … and while you’re sitting around “patiently” waiting for God to answer your prayers or deliver you from your tribulation, God is waiting for you to do your part in His plan to deliver someone else from their tribulation. Right?
Remember our GPS? GPSs not only show us where we are but they actually tell us where to go … literally. As I mentioned earlier, they come with a choice of male or female voices and a variety of accents. You and I can be the voice that leads some poor lost soul to our GPS [hold up Bible]. You can come beside someone who is just as tired and weary of this pandemic as you are and be the voice of God that says, “Let me walk beside you and together, let God show us the way.”
