Test Case #4: Wisdom for Patience in Adversity (James 5.7-11)
7 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. 8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. 9 Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
10 Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 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.
James returns to address specifically the attitudes that God’s people need to adopt in light of God’s coming judgment. And if you take another look at the passage, you will see what James believes that attitude should be. He says right off the bat, “Be patient”; he uses the illustration of how “patient” a farmer is and he commands that “You too, be patient and stand firm”. Then James gives two examples of “patience”, the prophets and Job. They both “persevered” to the end. James is teaching his audience that to think heavenly in the midst of adversity is to simply be patient. Romans says it this way:
19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
When we are facing persecution or adversity from the world, we are called to die to ourselves. That is ultimately what patience is. It is dying to our worldly desires to act out, to get upset or irritated. Being patient is dying to those worldly desires and waiting. It is trusting that God will, at some point, make things right. That is the hard thing with experiencing injustice or persecution. We want to see justice NOW, IMMEDIATELY. But James tells us that that is thinking and living according to our earthly desires. Thinking heavenly is realizing that God will enact his divine justice on his judgment day, not ours. We must die to ourselves, give God room to be the just Judge he is, and wait. And hopefully, us waiting, will bring about that person’s repentance and they won’t have to be judged. That is the ultimate goal. Look at the two examples James gives of this kind of patience:
10 Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 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.
The two examples are the prophets and Job. First, James is making the point that the prophets, no matter how much they experienced adversity, remained steadfast and continued to speak God’s message to his people. And what was their goal again? Repentance. The purpose for the prophets prophecies the majority of the time was to call people to repentance. Does this sound familiar?
The second example of patient endurance in the midst of adversity is Job. Job’s story basically goes like this: Job was a righteous man and Satan did not like that. So Satan made a deal with God, challenging God that if God took away all of Job’s stuff, Job would curse God. So God allowed Satan to inflict adversity onto Job. Job’s flocks and herds were killed, all of his children died in a natural disaster, and Job got sores and boils all over him. And even though his wife told him to curse God, and his friends did not give any good advice, Job was patient and stood firm in the midst of all his adversity and was faithful to God.
The only way that both of these examples were patient in the midst of adversity was that they thought heavenly. They lived by the wisdom from God rather than the desires of the world. Our picture stands true:
Wisdom from above (thinking heavenly)--> truth---> good deeds --> Life
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Desires from Below---> leads to temptation----> leads to Sin-----> leads to Death.
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