Advent 3
James 5:7-11
Do you know what two of the most dreaded words a teacher can hear from one of their students are? What two little words can a student say that will drive a teacher up the wall? I think they are words that we all have said to a teacher, a spouse, or an employer at one time or another. The two little words being the short sentence, “I forgot.” “I forgot to do my assignment. I forgot that needed to be handed in today.” What makes these words “I forgot” so hurtful to hear is that they always betray a lack of love, and a lack of devotion on the part of the person saying them. “Sorry hunny, I just forgot it was your birthday today. Sorry dear, I forgot to pick up that milk you asked for on the way home from work.” “I forgot” is really saying, “you weren’t the main thing I was thinking about. I had more important matters to attend to, so I forgot you.”
Sometimes you might get the impression that God has more important things to do than to think about you. He has to control the planets, comets, stars, tides, and weather. He has to feed every creature and nourish every plant. And as God is busy doing all these things, do you fall through the cracks? You might look at the things you are struggling with and think that God has forgotten you. And then you begin to question his love for you, and if he really understands what you’re going through, and if he cares or if he even notices. King David felt this way as he wrote in Psalm 13, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
James was worried that some of his readers might think that God was forgetting about them. In the verses preceding our text, he talks about poor people being mistreated, taken advantage of, and even murdered by the powerful. And to some of these downtrodden, it looked like God had forgotten them. God forgot to take care of them. Of course he hadn’t. God is not slow as some people understand slowness, but he is patient. And in case you ever feel as if God has forgotten you, let James teach you this morning how to Practice Pre-Christmas Patience. 1) Patiently Remember that the Lord is in Control. 2) Patiently Remember that the Lord Brings Blessings.
Part I
Someone once said that you know you are in a rural congregation when it’s Sunday morning, it’s pouring and lightning and thundering outside, and everyone is in a great mood. For most people, thunderstorms and dark rain clouds have a tendency to get us down, put us in a melancholy mood, but not farmers. They have invested thousands of dollars out in the fields, and the rain means that they will have a return on their investment. But do you know how much work a farmer contributes to the weather to make it rain? Absolutely none! Our text says, “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.” A farmer has zero control over if it is going to rain or not. He can go out into the field and do rain dances until his legs fall off, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to rain. A farmer realizes he has no control, and instead he must be patient as he waits for rain.
Prior to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s execution, he gave away a note which contained his last words to the world. As you might imagine, these were some sad words. Sad, because they did not show a hint of remorse or sympathy for the killing of 80-plus innocent people. But sad in another way as well. This note ended with the words, “I am the Master of my Fate. I am the Captain of my Soul.” Though McVeigh was going to be killed, he wanted to give the impression that he still was in charge. Even in death, this terrorist did not want to give up control of his life. How sad that he died as he had lived: trusting in himself!
There’s a big lie going around these days. That lie says that if you can control every situation, that’s the road to happiness. If you can control your finances, if you can control your health, if you can control your future, you’ve got it made. Sounds good, but it’s a lie! For we cannot control these things anymore than we can control the rain. We would like to think like McVeigh that WE are the Master of OUR Fate, the Captain of OUR Souls, and if WE just work hard enough, and if WE just do the right things, WE will control the outcome of OUR lives. And if we run into a bump along the road to that perfect existence, a bump in the form of someone else who we cannot control the way we’d like, maybe it’s the spouse not on the same page as you, someone else in our family who’s giving you grief, someone at church or work giving you problems. When we can’t control things, we have a tendency to lash out at those closest to us. How backwards it is that we may be so polite to complete strangers, while those dearest to us are the problem, and we gripe about them. And we probably gripe to them. That was the problem with the people that James addressed, as he wrote, “Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged.”
I don’t think you would use the word “patient” to sum up this time of year. Just the other day, I was driving behind someone on a 1-lane road who was going 5 miles under the speed limit, and I could not get around them, and I just couldn’t believe how rude they were being! If you’ve been doing any shopping, you’ve seen many impatient people. "You don’t have any more of that? The flier said it would be here!" "I can’t BELIEVE how long this line is!" "GREAT, does this cashier even know what she’s doing???" Perhaps you’ve experienced more than a little impatience yourself toward other people. Funny, aren’t we getting ready to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace? But we find so little peace in our lives during this month. I guess it’s because we are looking in the wrong place. The world’s lie is that control brings happiness. If you are trying to control matters to give yourself a perfect Christmas, and the perfect life, well, you might as well try to control the weather. We can’t control that, we don’t have to, because God has already given us the perfect Christmas, and the perfect life, if we would only give him time to remind us of it. You see, if we find ourselves being impatient, with others, or especially with God’s timetable, it’s not ok. It’s not a minor little personality quirk of ours. It’s a sin. Impatience is a mild form of unbelief. And I guess there really isn’t such a thing as mild unbelief. So what’s the solution? Would you believe me if I said that it ISN’T to be more patient? That solution can’t work, because it is one that comes from ourselves. We need an outside source for patience.
And we have one. “The Judge is standing at the door!” Granted, this little sentence could be taken in a Law sense. “You better be patient with each other, because God is watching. He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good (or be patient) for goodness’ sake.” Not exactly. It would be good to remind ourselves on what basis God will judge you. He’s been very patient with you, hasn’t he? God hasn’t forgotten you; he hasn’t thrown you away every time you’ve sinned, but instead the Judge stood at the door each time holding out the invitation to repent and come back into his forgiving arms. Your sins, committed by you, but punished on Calvary, are gone because of one reason: God’s great patience. You can place all your trust in the Lord’s control, and hand over all your problems to him. He says to you, “Be still and know that I am God.” And when you can wrestle control away from yourself and place it in the Lord’s hands, you’ll find yourself able to be patient.
Part II
We don’t want to romanticize the early Christian church too much, after all, they were also a group of sinners who struggled with their own weaknesses. But one thing the early Christians had on us: they were much better than we at living their lives as if the end of the world was imminent. We all know in the back of our minds that Judgment Day is coming, but judging from the way that we live and the priority we give God, we give it pretty low odds. Is it fair to say that you lived 2004 90% sure that you would see 2005, with a small 10% or even smaller chance that Judgment Day will be this year? Many early Christians lived the opposite way. They acted as if the Judgment was right around the corner. They acted as if during any given year, there was a 90% that the end of the world would come, with perhaps a 10% chance that they would see the next year. In fact, in the early days of the Christian church, there was a rumor, a false one, but a thought going around that Judgment Day would come before the Apostle John died. While this was an incorrect idea, it does show us the seriousness they took the end times.
It makes mathematical and logical sense too that the end is near for us. For instance, if I don’t know when your birthday is, but you tell me that it isn’t today, then there is a greater chance that it will be tomorrow. And if Judgment Day doesn’t happen today, there is a greater chance that it will be tomorrow. It’s just mathematics. And yet we’ve somehow thrown logic out the window, and more often than not we live as though this world is the greater priority, when people who lived thousands of years ago acted as if Christ’s return was imminent. And it’s not just logical and mathematical to live as though the end is right around the corner, it’s biblical too. Even in the early church, there were those who forgot this, and so James had to write, “You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” And as examples of patiently waiting for the Lord’s blessings, James cites the prophets and Job.
Yes, all honor and glory for everything that we do goes to God, but wouldn’t it be sort of neat to be able to exchange lives for say, Isaiah, who wrote one of the larger books of the O.T., a book that is called by some “the 5th Gospel”? Wouldn’t it be a little neat if that book bore your name? Wouldn’t it be kind of interesting to be able to exchange lives with any of the prophets? Well, we don’t want to glamorize their lives without remembering the not so nice things about being a prophet. Tradition has it that the great prophet Isaiah was put to death by being sawed in two. And most of the other prophets weren’t treated much better. Job had a nice life that many of us wouldn’t mind trading ours for, but then would be really have been able to handle the losing of all our possessions, the tragic killing of our children, the jeering of our own spouse, and the taunting of so-called friends?
These believers are held up to us as patterns of patience, who looked past their sufferings to the blessings that the Lord would give them. James writes, “brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about.”
Remember how the story of Job turned out? After that period of suffering, the Lord out of his love and grace doubled his possessions and gave him a new family. Remember how the story of the suffering prophets turned out? Even if they were sawed in half during this life, they are enjoying the bliss of heaven, being eternally with the Lord.
And that’s how your story will end as well. Yes, here below we struggle with problems. A lot of them. Many times more problems today than we had yesterday: cars breaking down, credit card debt, loss of job, trouble at school, bickering in the home, illness and disease, and the list goes on. We struggle with a lot of things. We struggle with spiritual matters: our poor prayer lives, the guilt we have over past and present sins, the inability to study the Word as we know we should, the allurements that we see in our hearts towards things of this world instead of the next, and the shame of not being as strong a Christian as we know we should be. And yet we remember that there is an end of all this. We are turned to the last words of our text, “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” He doesn’t just have a little compassion and mercy for you, but he is filled to the brim with it, saturating you with forgiveness whenever you feel the load of your sins, and reminding you that like the prophets, you have something better to look forward to. God is so full of compassion and mercy that he wants only one thing for you: to bless you for eternity, just like the prophets were graciously blessed after their tough lives of service.
Conclusion
You might forget some things in these last busy days before Christmas. You might forget to send a card out to someone, you might forget to give a gift to a person. You might forget an errand that you need to do. But isn’t it a comfort to worship a God that is so completely different from you? A God who never forgets you. A God who wishes to take control of your life, so that he can shower you with blessings, blessings that will last far longer than a short Christmas season, but last until and through eternity. Amen.
sdg
