Jesus Is Near.

Well, happy Sunday. It's so good to see so many faces. I want to say a special hello. We have a few people we're welcoming back today.

We're so happy to see you. Make sure you stop him today, because he leaves, so ask him about how his time has been. And we've got Betty in the back here, back from School of Ministry. She's headed back to Dallas this week, so make sure you hug her and ask her how her time was, see her today. And he'll be back for good, so we'll see him around.

I already told him his story. If you don't know, he went to partner with our missionaries and some church plants in Thailand after we took a global trip in January. I'd mentioned before that he had time in the summer, that he could probably go for the summer, and he did. He connected with the missionaries and served there, so we're excited to hear all the stories of what God did.

We're continuing our sermon series through the book of James today. If you want to open to James chapter five. I realized if we have it on the screen, I'm going to read it myself, because I have three different translations here and we're going to talk a lot about the word, so I want to make sure I'm not reading the wrong words. It says this: [inaudible], and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple yes or no.

God, we thank you so much for this time that we can gather, that we can worship, that we can lift your name high, and that we can hear your voice through scripture. We thank you that through your Holy Spirit you are communicating to us.

God, I thank you today that you know each and every person in this room, not from a distance but up close, because you formed us in the palm of your hands. I thank you that you see us. I thank you that you know what we came in here carrying: the things we're walking through, our hopes, our dreams, our desires, our questions, our doubts. Holy Spirit, would you speak to that through your word today? I invite all of us here to take a moment and say, Holy Spirit, I welcome you.

Holy Spirit, come. Give the Lord permission to speak today, and say, I want to hear from you. God, we want, we desire to hear from you. So we pray, Holy Spirit, would you come? In Jesus' name, amen.

I had a couple of different translations I was going back and forth with today, because the first time I read this passage, I'd heard it before and it can feel familiar: pain, suffering. But there's a lot going on here. We could be talking about two totally different things.

My current suffering is being bullied by my neighbors, the bunnies that keep crawling under my fence. When I think about this analogy of the plants and being patient, I have no patience. We plant things, the bunnies come back, and they're bullying me. This morning I was sitting on my patio, overlooking my flowers that I'd worked so hard to plant, and I saw a little rustling. I swear I made eye contact with a squirrel that was trying to get under the fence, and it was one of those get-behind-me-Satan moments, protecting these plants every day.

But what James is talking about, we're going to get there. When I'm talking about my plants and my annoyance, it's not real suffering, not real trauma. James is talking about something more significant. So we're going to dive into that. And when I'm talking about my plants, I'll be honest, I've never paid more attention to those plants than I have this summer. I've never been so meticulous about making sure I'm planting them in the right spot, whether I need to move them to a different part of the yard.

There's something being formed in me in that process. As we go through the scripture today, we're going to talk about patience, perseverance, pain. He mentions the prophets, he talks about oaths and promises. What is he really talking about here?

The other thing James does is point to Job as an example, and in a way turns to Job as encouragement. That's not usually where I'd go in the Bible when I need encouragement. No one would say that. A couple weeks ago I spent time with one of my cousins, who's an Old Testament theology professor and did her entire dissertation on the book of Job.

We sat there for about six hours talking through Job. On my day job, when I'm not here at the church, I'm a therapist, and I focus a lot on trauma. She turned to me and said, I have a question for you on Job. I said, what kind of question do you have for me on Job? You've studied this for eight years. She asked, do you think Job had trauma?

Job went through all of this suffering and pain, but in her research she questions how we use the word trauma. Everybody has trauma, everything is traumatic. She said, just because you suffer doesn't mean there's trauma. It's the same situation, and it's less about the situation.

I told her I'd never really thought about that before. After all her study of Job, if you asked her what it means, her first answer would still be, we don't really know. And here's why I think that's encouraging for us today: we think that in order to move to a place where we can worship, where we can pray, or where we can encounter pain, we need some reasoning for it. But there's something about the story of Job that James is referencing, and is going to teach us through his life, that reminds us we're not here to avoid pain, because it's going to come. It's more about how we stay present with Jesus in it, and how we don't get so focused on making our identity into our suffering, but instead lean into being [inaudible].

The kingdom life, not the balanced one

That's what James is pointing to, because he's addressing the rich oppressors. All of chapter four, he's confronting the people who were rich and were doing the oppressing. Then a couple of weeks ago Nathan picked us up starting in chapter five, where there's a shift, and now he's speaking to the people who were being oppressed. This was no light oppression.

I think that's part of why he references Job. Job wasn't just having a bad day, he had a really rough stretch. There was a lot happening. If anyone could claim to have suffered more than anyone, mind, body, spirit, everything, it was him.

So James is speaking to people who were truly suffering, the poor and the oppressed. This goes beyond, and I don't want to negate or minimize what we've all been through in this room, because we've experienced stress and things that have probably caused trauma in our lives. But he's not speaking to people who are just slightly annoyed, to people who don't have their dream job yet.

They are oppressed people. And he's saying, be patient, persevere. He's talking about the pain, and pointing to the prophets as an example, and to Job as encouragement. Be cautious of your promises. Now, I'll be honest, some of this is a little confusing, so we're going to go verse by verse, because what I see here is that James doesn't want us to just focus on having a managed, well-balanced life that's free of pain, free of suffering. James is inviting us into kingdom living, which says, when I persevere, and if I'm blessed enough not to have pain, I enter into somebody else's pain, like the prophets, and I prophetically live into that kingdom reality of feeding people and clothing people and letting them know that Jesus is near.

So no matter what, it's not about avoiding pain, it's about how we stay present with Jesus in the midst of it.

The word patient, and the farmer's wait

So verse seven, he starts, and I'm going to read a couple of translations back and forth, so if it doesn't line up with what you have, I apologize. He says:

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.

James 5:7

I want to talk about this word patient. It's the opposite of being short-fused, the opposite of having a quick reaction, a quick temper. When you look at the Greek word used specifically here for patience, because sometimes when we go through translations there might be other English words that could mean this kind of patience or that kind, this is the patience used specifically in this verse. It means to be of a long spirit, not to lose heart, to persevere.

That's already tied in here: to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others. That's interesting, to be patient in bearing the offenses of other people. So again, we're not quick to avoid being offended by people. This idea of long-suffering, slow to anger, and I love that at the end, slow to punish, almost slow to seek our own revenge and control it. But we're going to wait, just like the farmer is waiting.

Then in verse eight, it says to establish our hearts, because the Lord's coming is near. If we believe that not only the Holy Spirit is within us, but that Jesus came, that his kingdom has come and is coming again, that changes how we live, because we have hope that there is more than this.

We have hope that just like James is talking to people whose pain was temporary, and he's referencing Job, whose pain was temporary, our pain and suffering is temporary. It will not last. That's the hope: he's near, he's near, he's near. This is important, because if we're just looking to be anchored in ourselves, we're going to be anchored in selfishness, anchored in the temporary. So it might feel counterproductive to say, lean into the pain, lean into bearing other people's pain, be patient. But when we seek to live like Jesus and into the kingdom, that's what lasts. That's what gets us to where we were really created to be.

Then he throws in something that can feel a little out of context: don't grumble, don't complain against one another. Zip it, stop it. A couple of things come to mind for me with this. One, I think our patience is best tested not when we're alone, but in relationship with one another. Think of the last time you were impatient. Maybe it was with something at work, or software, but most of the time it's in relationship with other people. That's when we experience the short temper, the short fuse. That's where patience is tested, in relationship.

So he's saying, don't grumble against one another, Jesus is near. I feel like he's almost warning them that if we don't truly lean into being patient, our lack of patience starts to leak out of us, and we get frustrated with people, angry with people, unwilling to forgive people.

I want you to think, even today, is it other people who are testing you right now? I think two of the things he's pointing to, going back to this illustration, is that you're waiting on the timing of the rain, and you're waiting in relationship with people, and both of these are things we cannot control. I don't know if you've ever tried to control someone before, it does not work. You could feel like you worded everything right and someone could still come at you. We cannot control everyone's response, but we can control how we choose to surrender that to the Lord. It's going to happen when our desire, our longing, is finally fulfilled, but we can control how we choose to submit it to Jesus regardless of when the timing comes. So what is being formed in us as we wait, as we're patient? We're being formed into people of surrender and trust.

The prophets, and Job's perseverance

Verse ten, he starts talking about the prophets, as an example of patience in the face of suffering.

Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

James 5:10

Now, when I think of prophets, if somebody asked me for one word to describe them, think about it yourself, probably not patience would be your first response. But when you look at the definition of patience, bearing offenses and injuries to others, long-suffering, the prophets in the Old Testament, the people who spoke on behalf of the Lord God Almighty to the people, suffered a lot. They suffered a lot for the kingdom of heaven.

In Matthew 5:12, when Jesus is speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, which James is referencing so much of, he says, rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So he's saying, celebrate this, your reward is in heaven, because in the same way they persecuted the prophets who came before you. This was a known thing, the prophets were persecuted. It was not a glamorous life to be a voice calling in the desert, make way for the Lord. This was not a glorious thing. The prophets suffered for a long time.

He could have picked any example here, but I believe he picked the prophets on purpose, because these were people who stuck true to God's word and were faithful. Elijah ran for his life, and at one point literally asked God to let him die because of his suffering. That is long-suffering, not just minor discomfort or inconvenience. These were people who confronted kings and leaders, risking their lives for the kingdom of heaven. So James is using these extreme examples of the prophets, and of Job, because he's confronting oppression and the sin of oppression in such a serious, extreme way.

But he's not the first to do this. The prophets came before him. In many ways he's mirroring their message against the rich rulers. He's participating in making things right for the kingdom. This goes back to the pull we feel from a balanced life to a kingdom life, and what that looks like for us. Because a balanced life is going to lead us away from having to see injustice, away from having to feel it. We think that's great, but it doesn't mean it's not happening. And because we have the same Spirit of Christ Jesus alive in us, we're called, like the prophets, to step into that. A kingdom life is one that pursues making peace where things aren't right, that brings wholeness to what's broken. That's the difference.

Verse eleven, we continue:

We count as 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 5:11

I want to look at this word persevere. This idea of perseverance is to remain. I think it's interesting, a lot of times we love the language of dwell, of abide, but a piece of that comes up into persevere. It feels intense, but it's similar: remaining, not fleeing from the hard, painful things. Persevere, hang tight to it, hold fast. That's wild to think about when you first read it. It's not just persevere through your situation, he's saying, don't flee from it. I want to flee from it every time hard things come. I want to run fast. But he's saying, hold fast instead.

How are we supposed to do this? This is the word that really got me: calmly. Are you kidding me right now? How am I supposed to walk through pain and suffering calmly? He's speaking to people who are being oppressed in intense ways, and he's saying, just do it so calmly. You can't do that without Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Not all suffering is the same

And thankfully, not all suffering is the same. Some of it's self-induced, if we're being honest. There's oppression, the pain caused by somebody else's unjust hands. And then there's Job's kind of suffering, which is really just unexplained, the kind we don't have answers to.

Yesterday, Ashleigh and I, shout out to Ashleigh, ran the Gospel 5K in Madison with a bunch of other churches. Neither of us had really run in about a month, maybe six weeks. It had been a minute. As we're barely a mile in and finally starting to go uphill, I'll say, she gave me such wisdom. We both had valid excuses. I'd been really sick for a couple of weeks, she had some health things going on, travel, all of it. It was hot outside. We hadn't really trained for this. So we're going uphill, and she says her hip hurts, I say my back hurts, and we say, we can do this, we can keep running.

I'm shouting out little things to Jesus the whole time, Lord, give us strength, heal our sick bodies, and she goes, well, we can pray that, but honestly this is kind of my fault for not preparing. And it was in that moment, we can still pray for Jesus to heal us and forgive us for not stewarding our bodies well, in a situation where I'm saying, I'm suffering for the cause of Christ right now, Lord heal me, free me from this, and he's saying, I told you to prepare. We knew this was coming. Nobody forced us to run a 5K. Self-induced. Are there ways right now that the Lord has been speaking to some of us for a long time, saying, get ready, prepare? He's given us the tools. He says, spend time with me, get to know my voice, be in community, let people in, come close to you. And then when we feel lonely, we say, Lord, I'm so alone, and he says, but you've pursued no friendship. When we're struggling financially and we say, Lord, provide for me, I'm so scared, and he says, why were you going out to eat so much last month?

I'm sorry, I'm going to stop, I'm getting a little too pointed here today. But really, when we think about it, a lot of our suffering, if we're honest, is self-induced. And he's not speaking to people with minor inconveniences, not to people who are just a little tight on their budget this month. That's real, I get it, that's real stuff we go through, stressful experiences. But we have to be honest, because he's talking to people who were oppressed, and then he says, let's look at Job, the one deemed the king of suffering, well, that's Jesus, I probably shouldn't say that, bad preaching. Jesus is the one who has suffered more than anyone, but in the Old Testament, Job is suffering, and this pain has no explanation.

If you haven't read Job, I highly recommend it. In chapter forty-two, there's a moment, an interaction Job has with God, where God says, pray, talk to me, and then things shift. There's not a lot of explanation. That's still the most mysterious part about all of the suffering: Job was a man who, within a day, lost his children, his wealth, his family, his servants. And at the beginning of Job, he's introduced to us as someone who was blameless.

So this is not self-induced suffering. But James is introducing this idea to us: he stayed with God. He had moments of questioning, moments of asking what was happening, all these voices coming at him. But in the end, it says, count it as a blessing, those who persevere, those who stay, those who trust, those who surrender. Job is commended for how he was in the middle of his story. Yes, at the end, God was merciful to him, and God restored his family, his riches, his wealth. But so much of this story is not about that, it's about how Job remained and persevered in the middle. And we, my friends, are in the middle. We're in the middle of this now-and-not-yet reality, where Jesus came and has empowered us to continue bringing his kingdom from heaven to earth, from heaven to Madison, to where we are today. And it matters how we live in the middle of that.

It matters how we practice that waiting, that patience, how we persevere, how we live into the prophetic reality of the kingdom coming, because we know it's coming. I love even the songs we sang today, about all the earth shouting your praise, because that's what we're singing, believing it's going to happen, that even our bones will cry out.

Compassion, and being formed like Jesus

Verse eleven again says we have seen what the Lord finally brought about, the Lord is full of compassion and mercy. When it comes to compassion, if you did a Google search for compassion in the Bible you'd get tons of verses. If you're not familiar, when we talk about word studies we'll often use Blue Letter Bible, a website where you can study the original words, with reference numbers from when they were translated. We get our definition of compassion from several different places, but it's closely tied to mercy: kindness, goodwill toward others, a desire to help them. That's the definition of the word used here, where it says, you have seen the Lord, the Lord is full of compassion, full of the desire to help. To exercise this virtue is to show oneself merciful. Our English definition of compassion is often rooted in the Latin word, to suffer with, which traces back to scripture, to what's often quoted in Hebrews 4:15, that our high priest can empathize with us, has compassion, and knows how to suffer with us in our weaknesses. So this idea of compassion is being able to look at other people and enter into their pain, not to be removed from it, and we persevere in that way because the Lord is the one who is full of it.

We were made in the image of God, made to bear his image. So what's being formed in us as we start to enter into people's pain is that we're becoming like Jesus. We're becoming who we were created to be, to bear the image of our maker as we persevere, as we enter into compassion. This is who we were created to be.

I'm going to invite Princess up today as we get ready to close. There's a lot I want us to reflect on today. As I bring this together, what is James trying to say to us through all of this, patience and perseverance, the prophets and Job, suffering and pain? James doesn't just call us to persevere through our own suffering. He calls us to also be people willing to enter into others' suffering. We're called to imitate Jesus in that.

I want to speak to two different spaces for a moment. First, experiencing pain and suffering ourselves: I think the impact is patience, like the farmer, to keep working and keep moving as we wait. Not to think of the waiting as stillness, but as something we get to enter. It's an invitation for us to persevere, that's closer than the breath in our lungs. His breath is in our lungs, so we can persevere.

If you're here today in the midst of a moment where you're experiencing pain, or maybe there are things from your past that still feel like this kind of pain and suffering, be patient, know that in this in-between we need perseverance, but that there is hope that someday all this pain and suffering will be gone. This is temporary.

The next piece: what does it mean for those of us who are comfortable? He's condemning the oppressed, the rich who are oppressing people, and it can be easy for us to find our way around that and say, I'm not oppressing anyone. But the reality is, probably with the purchases we're making, the things we're doing, there's a lot we could ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us about how our time and our resources are oppressing people. This one's a little harder for us to avoid, because he's asking, are you willing to show compassion? Are you willing to enter into other people's pain? What does it mean to enter into suffering, not to seek a balanced life but a kingdom one, because we know this is temporary and we're living for eternity.

What does it look like for us to live like the prophets? To stand up to empire, to kings, to anyone who isn't worshiping the Lord, and to show them there's more for their life than this? What's formed in us when we live into the prophetic, when we participate in that suffering? That's again when we become like Jesus, who left heaven to come down to earth, suffered, joined us in our pain and our suffering, and overcame it by his blood. That's the hope that we have.

Simple yes or no

I want to go back, because there's something interesting at the end of this passage that at first doesn't seem to fit, it could be a whole sermon on its own:

Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple yes or no. Otherwise you will be condemned.

James 5:12

This idea of swearing an oath was almost an idea of affirming, of invoking. I feel like he's saying, don't inflate the reality of what's happening. Our natural tendency is to want to explain things away, to say, well, this happened, and this is why, and I swear by whatever that this is why I'm confident. Can I be honest? There's a lot of things in life I'm just not that confident about. I don't know why this happened. I don't know why you're suffering this way. I don't know why you're still not healed.

There's a temptation to want control and security, and to start to inflate it, to swear by something. And he's saying it can just be a yes or no. It can just be, this happened, and I don't really know or understand why. When people were under pressure, when their pain was unresolved, there was a temptation to manufacture these grand stories about what was happening, when in reality sometimes it was just, I'm suffering and I don't know. And that I don't know is okay. Even though at times it might feel better to make bold promises, sometimes the best thing we can do is sit in the in-between. Sit in the suffering, sit in the pain, sometimes our own and sometimes other people's. We've seen great suffering and tried to explain it away, but here's what I do know: Jesus is near. Jesus is near.

Closing invitation to prayer

So I'm going to invite you to stand today. Our so-what today is that life is more than avoiding pain. It's trusting God enough to stay, to be patient, to persevere, and to prophetically move toward Jesus. Now what do we do with that?

I want to invite us just to close our eyes for a moment. First, if you're in a place where you're experiencing suffering and pain, know that you're not alone, that Jesus is near, that this pain will not last. Out in front of you is a sign of surrender, so just name that before the Lord: continue to form me into a person who trusts you. God, I pray right now for all the people carrying pain, maybe suffering in their lives, whether physical, spiritual, or emotional, things they don't have answers for. God, for those of us where it's self-induced, where you've been telling us to prepare and we haven't, would you convict our hearts, knowing it's not out of condemnation but out of love, because you want us closer to you, and conviction leads us closer. Would you show us that? Jesus, would you be near? When we don't have patience, give us patience. When we don't have the strength to hold tight and remain, would you hold tight to us? Jesus, be near to us in our pain and our suffering. Renew our hope that this is not the end.

And now I want us to take a moment and say, Holy Spirit, is there anyone else's pain and suffering I need to have compassion for, that I need to enter into? Holy Spirit, would you show us? Are there things that, for some reason, we can't look away from, can't unsee? Would you show us, Lord, how not to be distant, but like you, Jesus, came close? Help us to come close. We don't have to be afraid, because Jesus, you're near, and you continue to come closer, and you want healing, you want restoration.

God, I pray that you'd help us to live like the prophets, to be people who speak your love boldly and live it out, to be people who aren't afraid of pain, who aren't afraid of suffering, because Jesus, you are near, and you are close. Would you help us to persevere, to be patient, to participate with you in suffering, and to see your kingdom come, the promises of your kingdom come.

I want to close today by reading Psalm 30 as a reminder of who God is, and a reminder of what's to come:

I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me. You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead. You spared me from going down to the pit. Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people. Praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:1-5

God, we thank you that you are our king, that you are our Lord, that it is your kingdom we're living for. Would you empower us this week to live from that place, from that identity, knowing that we were made in your image, to bear your image, that you are near, that you are close, that you're healing, that you're restoring? The pain that we feel, the pain that we see, the pain that we enter into, is temporary, but your joy, your healing, your restoration, there is more to come. We thank you for that, and we pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you all for being here this morning. Hang out, say hi to some people, and make plans to be here Tuesday night for Dwelling in the Word.