James 5:7,8 – “Pondering Patience”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷Therefore, brothers, be patient until the coming of the Lord. Look! The farmer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, being patient upon it, until he receives [the] early and latter [rains]. ⁸You, also, be patient and establish your hearts, because the coming of the Lord has drawn near.

Patience. Staying under it. Staying calm.

It’s one of the fruits of the Spirit – “love, joy, peace, patience …” It’s one of the qualities God calls us to cultivate – “Be patient therefore brothers …” – and yet it is a fruit of the Spirit – something we cannot manufacture. “Against such things there is no law.” A fruit of the Spirit is a work of the Spirit. Even as I type, I don’t know in this case, how the two work together – how I can somehow “work” at learning to be calm and patient while at the same time realizing it is a work of the Spirit and something I can’t produce. Hmmmmm. So I’ll keep praying and thinking and doing whatever seems right and see if He shows me something …

I like what Jay Adams says about this call to patience: “It is a command to become impervious to pressure; it is a call to abandon all spiritual weaknesses that cause us to fall apart when the waiting is long and the struggle is intense.”

“Impervious to pressure.” Yes. That is it. That is what I want to become. My heart is convinced all that matters is to love God and love people, that I can be totally confident in my good and wise God. Yet, when I face the calamities of life, that same heart goes to pieces, and this awful engine of fear and worry winds up to about 10,000 RPM inside of me and sucks the very life and energy out of me. “Impervious to pressure.” That’s exactly what we should be. And why not? The Lord is on His throne and He is coming.

Hmmmm. One thing I think worth noting is that, for a Christian, being “impervious to pressure” means keeping up our love, our sweet spirit, staying faithful at whatever are our responsibilities in life, keeping up that confidence in God, even in the face of seemingly intense pressures. It is worth pointing out, I think, that this is patently not what many would resort to – the hard-heartedness, indifference, or stoicism, the “I have no choice anyway. It is what it is. There’s no use fighting it. I don’t see it changing anyway …” James’ call is to “establish your hearts.” Your hearts. As usual, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. The change that must occur is in our hearts, not just our behavior. It is a change in how we view the situation, what we’re thinking. So “impervious to pressure” doesn’t just mean whatever we want to make it. It is a change in our hearts that, therefore, allows us to live above whatever may be going on around us.

James calls us to consider two things – the example of a farmer and the Coming of the Lord. I guess I’ve never noticed before how the work of a farmer is really a grand fractal of life itself: He has much work to do. He must clear the ground, then plow it and plant it. Then he must weed it and protect it from pests. When it is ready he must go out and harvest it. He does all this while he has no control at all over how seeds in the ground germinate, how plants grow, whether or not it rains or the sun shines. Sounds just like my dilemma above – how the Lord wants me to “work” and yet the work itself is a fruit of the Spirit. But I guess most of all, He’s wanting us to see how it is a “working and waiting” sort of endeavor. It is something we must “stay at” regardless of the many, many things that could (and might) go wrong, in spite of the many things that do go wrong. A farmer simply has to “stay at it.”

And we live knowing that the Lord is coming. Somehow, we have to keep in mind this is all for Him. “And whatever you do, do it with your whole heart, as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ.” The Master will return. Then all that will matter is how we served Him. “He who rides to be crowned will not mind a rainy day” – John Trapp.

It all makes perfect sense.

I just don’t seem to know how to make it “work” as I face those calamities, how to turn off the engine churning inside me. Oh, well. No matter. I am confident the Lord is teaching me all of this, running me through all these “calamities” because He has every intention of changing me from the inside out. Once again, I will go on praying, and studying, and trying to do what seems to be right, and “wait and see what He will show me.”

Patience.

James 5:7,8 – “The Coach”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷Therefore, brothers, be patient until the coming of the Lord. Look! The farmer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, being patient upon it, until he receives [the] early and latter [rains]. ⁸You, also, be patient and establish your hearts, because the coming of the Lord has drawn near.

The opening words of verse 7 further convince me that vv1-6 were spoken to the wicked rich, not believers. Here in v7, he immediately says, “Therefore, brothers …” In so doing, it seems to me he is addressing a different group.

Before I dive into v7, another thought I want to include is that vv1-6 too often apply to people who call themselves Christians. The British Empire called itself Christian but they were to the people they ruled every single line of vv1-6. They ruled their colonies in complete godless cruelty while naming the naming of Jesus, in spite of the fact that James 5:1-6 was in the very Bible they so claimed to advance. I have also seen far too many “church” people in my life whose business dealings were anything but Christian. All of this is very sad, because those “business” dealings, to a large extent, are the single largest exposure we have to people who need the Lord. Our work lives ought to “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” in all things, but too often just “give the enemies of the Lord cause to blaspheme.” God help us all to live our faith 24/7, especially in all our business dealings.

Unfortunately, there will always be the wicked rich and too many of them will call themselves Christian … therefore be patient, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. This brings us back to the vv7,8.

Life is full of hardships. One among those many is the oppressions of the rich and powerful over the rest of us peasants. But, without those hardships, we’d still have plenty to suffer. Life is simply hard. So James returns to the subject of patience with which he opened this book (1:3-12). There he specifically used the word for “endurance” or “perseverance” – staying under the fight, while here he uses the word more commonly translated “patience.” It has more the meaning of being “slow to burn.” For myself, the two words are so close to synonymous; I won’t make much of the distinction here.

It’s interesting to me that James, in a sense, begins and ends his book with calls to patience. For myself, when I started this study I was struggling with the workload at my job. James’ words in chapter 1 really helped me to keep my head up, keep loving people, and to stay positive. Now, over two years later, the workload is far more intense and I’m struggling more than ever. So here I find myself wading into the next section of James, and what do I find? A call to patience. I see that little smile on the Lord’s face and those knowing eyes. The old sneak. “Yes, Don. This is what I’m trying to teach you. I want you to learn how to carry a heavy workload and yet keep trusting and keep loving.” And I would tell Him, “Thank you. I want to be different. I want to be stronger.” And I am so glad I’ve got a coach that never gives up on me – one who “has begun a good work and will continue it …”

So what have I learned in the last two years? I think I have particularly come to realize the problem is entirely within myself. In other words, the problem really isn’t the workload or the deadlines or anything else. The problem is how I see them, how I respond to them, how I think about them. That realization is itself encouraging because I have every confidence that the Lord will eventually teach me something to totally alter how I think and allow me to live above it all. I spent one weekend completely freaked out about something and went into work Monday morning expecting my boss to be on the warpath. When I greeted him, he was his usual calm self, and when I mentioned whatever it was that I thought was a huge problem, he just shrugged his shoulders and said something like, “Oh, we’ll work through it.” Here we are, both facing the exact same problem. If anything, he has more responsibility in it than I do. I’m freaked out and he’s just calmly going about his life. That was one of the times the Lord really, really clearly showed me that the problem is me.

And so the Lord brings me back again to the subject of patience.

As I wade into vv7,8, I do so far more keenly aware that the problem is within me. I definitely haven’t conquered it. If anything it’s worse. But I wade into these verses hopeful that He will teach me and that I’ll either move some new step closer to putting this behind me, or perhaps He will drop one of His atom bombs on my brain and finally allow me some quantum leap of improvement.

The Coach is still at it. I’m so glad He doesn’t give up. It is great to be on His team.

James 5:1-6 – “Hearts and Steady Hands”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹Come now, [you] the rich ones, weep howling upon your miseries, the ones coming. ²Your wealth has rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. ³Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be into a witness to you and will eat your flesh as fire. You laid up treasure in [the] last days. ⁴Look! The wages of the workers who reaped your fields which were withheld by you are crying out, and the cries of the harvesters have entered into the ears of [the] Lord of Sabaoth. ⁵You have lived luxuriously on the earth and you have lived in excess. You nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. ⁶You have condemned [and] murdered the righteous one. He is not opposing you.

Wow. What a passage. Wow. I’ve read this for years and never knew quite what to do with it. Wow. Words that ought to register about a 10.5 on the Richter Scale of our hearts. Wow.

It has been the perennial affliction of the human race that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer until finally the whole wretched affair collapses in some horrible bloodbath of revolt or conquest. In a sense, in America, we have been sheltered from this evil by the economic predominance of a prosperous middle class. I have, of course, through my lifetime sadly observed the slow decay of that middle class, knowing my history well enough to know exactly where this is headed – to the same broken pattern it has followed throughout human history. It will only get worse, not better, until finally we join our ancestors in the certain outcome – another bloodbath.

What I have never realized is just how much God is aware of the problem and just how much He hates it, how that ultimate collapse is actually His very predictable judgment on the monstrously wicked, cruel, and oppressive system we invariably create. I’ve known for years that God hates oppression and social injustice, but in my mind I’ve never connected it with the whole rich/poor cultural divide. I think about passages like Isaiah 58:6,7:

⁶Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

The Lord in this passage is speaking to people who “have” and calling them to share out of their “have” with those who “have not.” What He is clearly calling us to in this and a thousand other passages like it is to care about people less fortunate than ourselves and to share out of our abundance to relieve their want. This is the heart of a true believer and, think about it, to do this is to distance ourselves from the very problem God is addressing in our passage from James. What is the Lord really doing in our passage except reproving people who have utterly disregarded the heart of Isaiah 58:6,7?

The Lord would have us all to know that it us utterly unchristian for anyone to run a business, make profits, and then hoard it all for themselves while the people around them, and particularly the people who work for them, suffer want. The rich fool in Luke 12:16-21, when he brought in a great crop, said to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops … This is what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods …” Of course God said to him, “You fool. Tonight shall your soul be required of you.” People around him were starving, and all he could think of to do with “more” crops is to build bigger barns to store them in. The same was true of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man “was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day,” while right at his gate was laid “a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table” (Luke 16:19,20). The man had hoarded his wealth and lived in luxury while another man at his very gate would have been happy if he could just eat the rich man’s garbage.

I guess I’ve never thought just how much God hates this.

Hmmmm. As I type I am very thankful that I grew up in a generous family. My parents and pretty much my entire family have never been rich people, but they’ve always been willing to share what little they had with others. That makes it a lot easier for me to see what God is wanting here. It’s the world I grew up in.

I suppose I should inject here that I do not think James is speaking to believers, although his words should go to each of our hearts. James is not writing to a church. He is writing to the “Twelve Tribes,” the Jewish people, and when speaking to the Jewish people, Jesus Himself could mentally break away from His disciples and directly address “the rich,” as in Luke 6:24ff, “Woe to you who are rich …”

I also want to note the four particular problems James addresses, which are:

1.      Hoarding --  ³Your gold and silver have rusted ...You laid up treasure in [the] last days.

2.      Cheating people -- ⁴Look! The wages of the workers who reaped your fields which were withheld by you are crying out…

3.      Self-indulgence -- ⁵You have lived luxuriously on the earth and you have lived in excess.

4.      Cruelty -- ⁶You have condemned [and] murdered the righteous one. He is not opposing you.

One last thing, always worth noting, is that it isn’t a sin to be rich. The Bible is full of people who were wealthy particularly because of the Lord’s blessings – Abraham, Job, Boaz, David, Solomon, and on. When addressing the Christian rich, Paul instructs Timothy, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (I Tim 6:17-19).

The problem, of course, is that “it takes a steady hand to carry a full cup,” and few of us seem to have a very steady hand. Unfortunately, “wealth” in any form tends to be our ruin. But this very issue leads us all back to our hearts. “My son, give me thine heart, for out of it are the issues of life.” The Lord wants our hearts whether we have wealth or not. If we give Him our hearts, if we would have His heart for the people around us (and under us), then with or without wealth, we’ll live the love that life is really all about and certainly not fall into the horrible judgment portrayed in our passage in James.