So what are we to make of James’ advice here, in the face of his tirade, in verses 1-6, against economic and social injustice, when he then writes ‘Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming’? It is enough to make Karl Marx turn in his grave. Here surely is religion in its customary role as the opiate of the people, drugging the innocent sufferers of verses 4-6 into passive acceptance of inequality, injustice and exploitation. But, of course, the grave is just where Karl Marx is today, and the history of the last century has passed its own verdict on his ideology and his economic theories.

In the Bible we encounter the thoughts of one who is not dead, indeed the One whose coming, whose return, is near. And it encourages us to work out our human behaviour in the light of that. It always encourages us to look further back to where we came from and to look further forward to where everything is heading. We humans tend to act like panicking exam students, hunching our shoulders and peering more and more desperately at the exam paper in front of us, without even daring to raise our eyes to glance at the clock.

At the beginning of his letter, James wrote, ‘Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him’ (James 1:12). Look up, says James. Our trials point us forward to God’s purpose and goal. So:-

1) Be Patient (vv. 7, 8)

So, ‘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. You, too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near’ (5:7, 8).

Patience, we say, is a virtue. But we see it more as longsuffering endurance, as perseverance, rather than the expectation of a future goal. For James, the patience of a Christian brother or sister actually mirrors the greedy acquisition of the avaricious rich in the preceding paragraph. Did you notice that? Both are concerned with accumulation and growth. The rich hoard wealth (vv. 5:2 ff.). They plan for their financial investments to mature. And the Christian, too, is waiting for an investment to mature: ‘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’ (v. 7). You see, the farmer waits, too, for some­thing to mature, to come to fruition. And the Christian life is like that. It is not the growth of riches, not financial investments. It is the growth of righteousness, which only God can cause in a human life. He is the One who sends the autumn and spring rains on the farmer, and Christians are waiting for God to act, to work out His purposes in our lives as we persevere.

Human beings are meant to covet; we’re meant to be greedy for righteousness – to hunger and thirst after it. And our desperate longing for material possessions (a timely salary rise to make Christmas so much easier, just that slightly bigger car, just that slightly better house or accommodation, that slightly bigger grant that would allow us to eat all the better) – our desperate longing for these material things is a right instinct, hideously distorted. As a farmer waits patiently for the growth of his crop, so we are to wait, to give God time to act in our lives and in our circumstances, to persevere in the faith and to set our hearts on what God has in store for us.

How do we keep that hope alive? Particularly when there is little within us to encourage us, little evidence, perhaps of change and improvement in our characters.

Well, the Bible does not encourage us to look inside ourselves for that encouragement. It encourages us to look outside ourselves to God and to the promise of God’s return: ‘Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming’ (v. 7a). Like growing a root vegetable (a potato or a carrot or an onion or a parsnip): it is no use digging it up and examining it to see how it is growing. That won’t help it at all. And you and I would not be helped if we could open up our hearts to the light of day and observe the growing righteousness within them. That would lead to spiritual pride and complacency in a moment. No, the mark of the maturing Christian is a growing sense of our own unworthiness, our own sinfulness. It has been said that a Christian is like a church spire – the closer he/she gets to heaven the smaller he/she becomes. And if you or I try to keep ourselves going in the Christian life by cultivating a sense of increasing righteousness, we will end up either in hypocrisy or in despair.

No, ‘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. You, too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near’ (5:7, 8). We keep going because of where we are heading, or rather who is heading towards us.

2) The Judge at the door (v. 9)

The New Testament has over 300 references to Christ’s return – one out of every 13 verses. It may seem a strange idea to the non-Christian – although actually it is the scientists nowadays who are becoming the prophets of doom: foretelling the end of the world. The last email I got warning me of impending disaster was not from some end-times, sign-watching Christian fanatic, but from an environ­mentally-concerned relative informing me that, and I quote, ‘carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the previous 20 million years,’ and that ‘frozen methane hydrates trapped under ice caps may escape into the atmosphere’ which is apparently on a par with the abomination of desolation standing where it should not.

The Christian faith has always pointed us to the end: to the end of our own lives at our deaths and to what lies beyond; and to the end of the present order of existence when Jesus will return. Both are absolutely certain events. But the timing of the second is even less predictable than that of the first. The doctrine of the second coming is very important for Christian maturity and stability. If I want to ask myself the question, “How mature am I in my Christian faith?” I need to ask myself this: “How much does the second coming of Jesus feature in my thinking? Do I think of it daily? Or weekly?” It is a mark of the mature Christian that he or she lives with a sense of a God who is at the doors. You may walk into your room one day and find yourself face to face with Him.

And it is not just the evil rich (of verses 1-6) who need to know this. It is the Christian brother or sister seeking to be patient and to persevere. We find our encouragement for the Christian life not on our own progress, but in the character and action of God: ‘You, too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The judge is standing at the door!’ (vv. 8, 9). We talk about ‘seeking justice’ in life; ‘go to court and get justice’. But notice this justice comes seeking us. We do not have to appeal to this Judge. He is standing at the door! It is like the schoolboy standing at the board, doing his imitation of the teacher, much to his classmates’ amusement, only to turn round and find the teacher is standing in the doorway. It is a holy and righteous Judge who is coming.

That is why we can be patient. We can be patient about our own growth in holiness, because this Judge is the One who has called the Christian into relationship with Himself. ‘He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ’ (Philippians 1:6). Whatever our struggles in the Christian life, the Christian can know that it was not our idea in the first place. It was His and He has undertaken to get us to heaven. (Like the millionaire who invites his guests to holiday with him and undertakes to pay their air fares to reach the holiday island.)

We can also be patient in the face of the injustice in our world. We do not resign ourselves to it (as we will see in a moment), but nor do we resort to the violence or the vengeance of the revolutionary. Evil cannot be overcome with evil. That just increases evil. It can only be overcome with good. The Christian can afford to wait, to be patient. That’s not the same as taking it lying down, but it contrasts with the revolutionary. The revolutionary is a violent man who cannot afford to wait: he has only got 70 years to see his Utopia come in. But the Christian looks beyond this present world order, this present life, beyond time. And he sees the Judge at the door. We can afford to wait, to be patient.

Now, typically of James, he applies this truth very practically: being patient because the Judge is coming means not grumbling and not swearing.

3) Don’t Grumble (v. 9) and Don’t Swear (v. 12)

Practical and to do with the tongue (as we have come to expect from James). When you want to find a puncture in a bicycle tyre, you put the inner tube into water and increase the pressure by pumping it up. James knew that when the pressure increases the weak spots appear, and the tongue is the prime candidate for giving way under pressure, the pressure of waiting patiently when life is difficult, when things are against us, when trials and tribulations come our way, when injustice surrounds us. Most of us can be pleasant enough when life is easy; but when the hassles begin, our speech takes on a different tone. I am often tempted to pin this little notice to my study door:-

Please
speak to me gently,
without raising your voice
and without contradicting me
in any way.
In people of my age,
noise and contradiction provoke
hypertension,
gastric hyperacidity
and cardio-vascular troubles,
so that I rapidly become
disagreeable.

It is the trials and pressures of life that lead us to get at one another, so James says: ‘Don’t grumble against each other …’ (v. 9a).

How easily grumbling begins when we are called to be patient! It may be envious grumbling at the rich, those who have more than we do. It may be that blame culture we live in, where everything is someone else’s fault – the railways or the boss, or the spouse, or the government or the weather, or the church leaders. How quickly we do it, even in Christian fellowship. Does your home group like to complain about the church? I’m afraid most churches do suffer from clerical thrombosis (a clot in the pulpit) but we are not to become custard Christians – the sort who get upset over trifles.

But it is not just grumbling: ‘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, or you will be condemned’ (v. 10). We are not to call on God irreverently in our distress. When life is difficult and we are under pressure, impatience leads us to strong language. “I b***** well will,” we say, or something like that, forgetting Jesus’ own words, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’, and your ‘No’, ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matt. 5:37). The inspiration for strong language is to be found not in the God of truth but in the father of lies. And you and I will be called to account for every idle word we utter. It’s not so much what we say as how we say it. I was once taken to task by my family for using the word ‘Blitzkrieg’. You might feel there’s not much wrong with that word in itself, but I definitely used it as a swear word. It came out in moments of distress, and they were quite right to rebuke me.

We are to be the sort of people who do not need to intensify language in order to get other people to believe us or to sympathise with us.

Notice that it is not silence that James recommends: ‘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. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy’ (vv. 10, 11). Neither the prophets nor Job were silent or inactive. They did not take their suffering lying down. The prophets were strident in their denunciations of injustice and exploitation. they were no supporters of the status quo. But their tongues were controlled. They spoke in the name of the Lord. That is the example you and I are to follow – not to say nothing, not to give way to grumbling or swearing, but to speak for God. That is what it is to be patient and persevering (according to James) – to speak to other people about God, however adverse the circumstances of life may be: ‘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’ (10, 11a). Persevered in speaking in the name of the Lord.

‘You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about’ (v. 11). Job was no example of stoic indifference to suffering. He questions God ceaselessly in the 42 chapters of his book. But he stuck to his guns. William Barclay wrote: ‘The great fact about Job is that in spite of all his torrent of questionings, in spite of the agonising which tore at his heart, he never lost his faith in God. “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15). “My witness is in heaven; and my advocate is on high” (Job 16:19). “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25). The very greatness of Job lies in the fact that in spite of everything which tore at his heart, he never lost his grip on faith and his grip on God. Job’s faith is no grovelling, passive, unquestion­ing submission; Job struggled and questioned and sometimes even defied, but the flame of faith was never extinguished in his heart.’

We are not to pretend we are not hurt by suffering, that it does not affect us, but we are to direct our speech, away from bitter grumbling or loud-mouthed swearing, to prayer (however agonised it may be) and to speaking in the name of the Lord, as the prophets did. That is how we are to be patient.

4) Be Patient

Let’s end where we began: ‘Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming … You, too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near’ (vv. 7a, 8).

If you’ve been a Christian a long time and you wonder what real change there has been in you in all these years (as I find myself wondering), Be patient: it is God’s work and His coming is near.

If you’re young in the Christian life and full of zeal and enthusiasm tonight, Be patient: you do not know when you will meet your Judge face to face. It may be a long haul; it may be tomorrow.

If you’re not a Christian tonight, notice that there is a lovely crescendo in chapter 5 as we look at what the passage is telling us about God. Back in verse 4 of chapter 5 we noticed that the cries of the labourers reach God’s ears. Then in verse 7 we noticed that God is coming. God hears and God is coming. Then His coming is at hand (v. 8). Then the Judge is at the door (v. 9). Do you notice that increasing suspense there, that note of imminence growing?

Notice how this slightly threatening crescendo ends. I do not know if you saw that in verse 11. “Who is this judge? How will he treat me? The end of verse 11 can be translated ‘You have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.’ Is not that a lovely finale to the crescendo? He is going to come, and we are going to experience His compassion and His mercy – because heaven knows you and I need those things. I wonder if you have asked for His compassion and mercy?

There is an end, a goal, a purpose to all God’s dealings with human beings. It is to get us to heaven, to bring us back into relationship with Him for ever. Are you determined to thwart that? You can, you know. We cannot save ourselves, but we can see that we are damned. But what folly! – to cut ourselves off from a compassionate and merciful God for ever!