Amen. Well, we are going to James's epistle once again. We're going to our main sermon now, so if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to James chapter 5. We have quickly moved through this little book. Well, perhaps not so very quickly. It is just a little book. But here we are getting towards the end of the final chapter. I think at least another one sermon to go. But here's what the Apostle James writes to us in James chapter 5 verse 7. James chapter 5 verse 7. and we'll read down to verse 12. This is the word of God. James chapter five and verse seven.

Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned. Behold, the judge standeth before the door.

Take, my brethren, the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering, affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yea be yea and your nay, nay, lest ye fall into condemnation.

Amen. May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word. As I was preparing my thoughts for today, I recalled the words of Moses to the children of Israel in the book of Exodus as they stood by the side of the Red Sea. Egypt's army, Pharaoh with his army, was bearing down upon them. And their situation seemed desperate. They were hemmed in. There were apparently mountains to each side of them. The Red Sea was before them, Pharaoh's host aggressively bearing down upon them from the rear. But Moses reassured them. He said, fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today.

How hard it is for us to stand still. How reluctant we are to wait upon the Lord. And how difficult it is to learn patience under the trials of this life. And yet patience is what James is calling for today. Patients that endures the challenges of the Christian life. Patients that trusts in the salvation of the Lord. That perseveres and prevails against the powers that bear down on God's people and Christ's church. True patience, we learn from the Word of God, is a spiritual gift of grace. It is, says the Apostle Paul, a fruit of the Spirit. He tells the Galatians, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, there it is, long-suffering or patience, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such, says Paul, there is no law. You cannot legislate these qualities. Against such there is no law. You cannot call people to be obedient to these things because they are a gift, they are possessed by God's grace.

You can experience and exercise the fruit of the Spirit as the Lord enables. And it is the exercise of these very graces that James has been advocating to the Lord's people throughout this little epistle. It's very practical. It's very intimate and personal to the Lord's church, to you and to me. And here, the apostle is continuing in this vein. He says, in the face of hardship, under the threat of hurt, despite struggling with pain, Believers are to exercise the gifts of perseverance, long-suffering, and patience in the name of Christ and for the sake of the gospel.

And real, and very real, it actually happened, so I'm not casting any doubt upon the veracity of the account, real as Exodus was, The children of Israel's situation at the Red Sea is a type of a believer's spiritual journey through life. And we need to learn what the children of Israel had to learn. We need to learn to fear not. We need to learn to stand still. And we need to learn to see the salvation of the Lord.

And James adds to those mosaic principles, if I can phrase it like that, James adds from Job's testimony, we need to see the end of the Lord. That doesn't mean the Lord's end. It means the Lord's purpose, the Lord's objective, the end to which the Lord is bringing his church and people. We need to see the end of the Lord. Then he tells us what it is, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.

Now, I don't need to speak to most of you about trials and hardship. Most of us probably feel that we have a PhD in trouble. Today, it is my plan rather to bring what James speaks about here in the context of Job, to bring the end of the Lord for us all into view. That is, it is my aim today, it is my plan to bring into view the aim and purpose of the Lord's dealings with us.

What is the end of the Lord for you? What is the end of the Lord for me? Brothers and sisters, is it not to show love and grace, pity and mercy to his church in the Lord Jesus Christ? Is it not that we who are Christ's may have personal knowledge of His divine pity? That we may not discover the meaning of mercy in our own lives and in daily exercises? that we might enjoy practical experience of the Lord and of his peace and of his goodness and of his grace.

And it is my prayer that there is a message for all the Lord's troubled saints in James's words today, and that we all may taste a little of what the ancient Israelites felt. when the Lord told them through Moses, fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today.

James, in the first part of this chapter five, has rebuked the corrupt rich and with them, in them, all who set themselves against the Lord and his people. He has foretold, James has, the everlasting miseries that must soon overtake such people. And now, in these verses, James is turning his attention back to the humble poor. Yes, these rich men, again, it's one to cover all the opponents of God's church, of Christ's people. These rich men were persecutors of the Lord's little ones and James tells them what their end will be. But now he is turning to the Lord's people who suffer at the hands of these men. And it is to them that his words are directed, that his attention is directed. And he calls for patience on the part of the Lord's redeemed people until the end of God is revealed and his judgments are executed.

Now we know that James is speaking to believers here because four times in five verses, I mentioned this yesterday in the little note, four times in five verses, he explicitly addresses them as his brethren. He's speaking to you and me who believe in Christ.

And how privileged we are to be James's brothers and sisters in Christ. And if his brethren, then how privileged we are too to be brethren of Job and the prophets of whom James speaks. And here we see, I think in a lovely way, almost in an incidental way, the beauty of the enduring tie that exists for the spiritual family of God. The family union and the covenant bond that links us all through time and joins every elect child of God to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and to one another.

Christ is our head and we are all united to him who believe. We are members together in him. And when one hurts, we all hurt. And when one is blessed, we all are blessed together. We are brethren by eternal decree and we are brethren by conversion and the new birth. We're the adopted children of God. We are heirs with Christ.

And everything that God has purposed, everything accomplished by Christ's coming into this world and dying on the cross, everything which led up to that and everything which has flowed from that, has been done in love for the sake of God's covenant people, his adopted family. Pity and mercy that characterize the Lord's dealings with us has ordered every step of the way because towards all his children, says James, The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.

Well, we know that James is speaking to his brethren in Christ. We also know the subject of which he speaks because five times he mentions patience. And patience has been a recurring theme for James in this letter. He told us in chapter one, the trying of your faith. So again, we're back to this subject. So there it was at the beginning, here it is at the end.

The trying of your faith worketh patience. And he goes on, let patience have her perfect work. that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. So the trying of our faith, the trials that we have, work patience. And we are told to let patience have her perfect work. that we, in our experience of the trials and the patience that that trial elicits, draws forth, might be entire, wanting nothing. James is telling us our trials are positive gifts from God, designed to deepen our spiritual understanding and draw us closer to Christ. Our trials exercise our spirit and they produce spiritual fruit. Our trials call us to practical patience and to seek God's grace in our lives. And the apostle has told us to expect the trial of our faith.

That is, to expect hardship, to expect frustration. Even in some cases, persecution unto death. That's the allegation he leveled at these rich men in the earlier verses. And these hardships, these frustrations, this suffering is for the cause of Christ and his gospel, to the glory of God and to the blessing of his people.

James tells us that the prophets experienced this. And we know that the apostles experienced it. We know that the church in its history through the ages has experienced it. And we may deduce from practical experience I guess for those of us who are older and well this will be the lot of each one that we will know it to.

James says, take my brethren the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering affliction and of patience. See the two things going together running side by side. These old men are an example to us. Those who have gone before us have charted a course that we too shall follow. They exemplify, he says, for an example of suffering, affliction, and of patience. They exemplify how God deals with his people. They suffered, they endured and they entered into their rest.

We see their defeats and we see their victories and these ought to steal our own response to similar tests of our faith as we encounter them in our lives. Our trials James is telling us here. Our trials are wisely and lovingly sent from God with a divine purpose. They are preparing us for the Lord's return. Our trials are preparing us for the Lord's return, either at death or on the last day. Whether for a particular individual, the Lord's return is at our death or on the last day, our trials throughout our life have been preparing us for that moment. And they may appear random, they may appear unnecessary. But that is because we do not see the larger picture. We do not see as the Lord sees. We do not know what is good for us.

The Lord teaches us that tests and trials and persecutions rid the church of dross. They refine our trust in the Lord Jesus. We're not being made more holy but we are being made more beautiful and more useful in the service of our King. Our trials differ one from another, but they ready us for the same perfect end.

James says, as the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. James uses a picture here of a husbandman, we would say a farmer, but a husbandman who looks after a parcel of land. And that husbandman, having sown his seed, having tended his vines or his trees or his crops, whatever it might be, has to wait patiently for the crops to grow and ripen. And it's a fine analogy for the Lord's people, because a work of grace, we are the Lord's planting.

A work of grace has been begun in us that the Lord will perform unto the end. And we all have to grow in grace. We grow in grace and in a knowledge of the truth. Well, we learn the truth. We grow in grace by the things that we experience at the hand of the Lord. God waits and we wait until the work of grace is complete. We are his workmanship. It is God himself who will keep us faithful to the end. there is coming a joyful harvest and a glorious entrance into the blessings God has prepared for them that love him. And yet for the time being we must endure trials.

You know I said we don't appreciate the big picture. And of course, it is hard to see the big picture when we are suffering. I do trust that I don't minimize the hardship, the suffering, the pain that people are going through when I speak like this. It is hard for us to understand and accept our suffering in the midst of our pains.

Our wish is simply for the pain to stop. And long drawn out suffering is hard to bear at any time. But because it enables closer times with the Lord, Those trials can become a blessing to us. They encourage patience and patience opens the door to spiritual peace and contentment. And Job here is called forth by James as a prime example. How that old saint suffered. How he wrestled to understand his predicament.

And yet we have seen. Have we not? Well, yes, we have seen the end of the Lord. We have begun reading in the early chapters of Job. We've discovered his circumstances. We've seen the way in which those circumstances were altered and changed. We have seen the way in which his losses were incurred. We've seen the way in which his friends came and endeavoured to philosophize and reason as to why these things might have occurred.

And then we have seen the way in which the Lord taught his servant. And ultimately we saw the end of the Lord. We saw how the Lord reasoned with his child. We saw how the Lord rebuked his errors and ultimately how he was restored and all that he had lost and more was restored to him.

Let me just say this one little thing. The drawing upon Job's history as an example shows us that James believed that Job was a real character, a real historical figure whose experiences can assist our own understanding of hard times. And what enduring help we glean from Job. Many lessons are to be found, no doubt, and it's not my purpose today to consider the ways in which the Lord worked with Job throughout the chapters of that book. But here's what James tells us. Let's keep those lessons for another day. Let us take this lesson on its own. The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. Those are the lessons that James would have us draw from the example of Job.

And how full scripture is of these wonderful revelations of the Lord. God, God, the infinite God, beyond our comprehension, God who is unchangeable, God who is solitary in his being, in his majesty, in his dominion, in his power. God who created all things, who knows the end from the beginning, who is the eternal God. God who needs nothing, yet has caused us to hear These words, he is pitiful and of tender mercy.

This is such a revelation. We are sinful, we are poor, we are rebellious, we are lost. And yet here is the gospel given to us in James's word from this Old Testament saint. The evidence proves in the reading of scripture, the testimony of God, that he is very pitiful and of tender mercy. What a characteristic that is of the eternal God. And no doubt James is drawing on several Old Testament verses and passages and examples of the Lord's pity. Or compassion is another way of phrasing that. It carries the same meaning. But that pity of the Lord, that compassion of the Lord, is what James is emphasizing here to us. Psalm 86, for example, might be in James's mind here.

Verse 15 says, But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering and plenteous in mercy and truth. Or we might think about Psalm 103. Some of you may know I was involved in Annabelle's, one of her sisters who passed away recently. I was involved in her funeral midweek and I was able to read Psalm 103. And this is what is said in that passage.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, and he remembereth that we are dust. So again, remember what we're talking about here. James is soliciting patience from the Lord's people. And he tells us that the Lord is very pitiful and that he is full of mercy. He knows our frailties. He knows our frame. He knows our skeleton. He knows our makeup. He knows our flesh. He remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 145 verse 8 says, The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy. And it is to such a one that James would have us turn in times of trouble. Our blessed Lord and Saviour, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, took our frame, joined Himself to our nature, and became a man. And as such, our Lord knows what we are suffering, and He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. James says the Lord is very pitiful, not just pitiful, very pitiful. He says His mercy is of the tenderest kind. His church and people experience these blessings as we go through the trials that beset us.

Paul speaks, does he not, gloriously of the wonderful love of God. We might think of Romans chapter eight where he speaks of God's love, but there are many, many places in which that love of God is most gloriously presented to the church. It's a wonderful love. But James is attempting not only to assert the objective truth of God's distinguishing love and mercy, his pity and mercy, his compassion.

But he is stressing the subjective experience of that pity, that felt tenderness of a friend who draws near to us in our times of trouble and understands us like no other can. One who is very pitiful and whose mercy is tender towards us. And no doubt James is calling forth these Old Testament examples so that his New Testament readers can identify the same gracious care in their own lives as the Lord demonstrated in the lives of his beloved saints of old. So let us too, with them, bear our trials in faith with an eye to the Lord, remembering that he is faithful to his beloved people. James goes on to call his brethren not to begrudge one another. It's another aspect which I think is, well, it's useful to note. It's easy to take our eyes from the Lord in times of trouble and consider the relative state of other believers. And then we might think, why me? We might ask, why not him?

James is saying, don't be envious while comparing experiences. Our troubles, your trouble and my trouble, our troubles differ in nature, in timing and in degree. We cannot walk in another man's shoes. We cannot walk in another woman's shoes. We have to defer to the all-wise master builder who knows both our needs and our brethren's needs and tailors our experiences to suit our case. Judging or begrudging a fellow believer's circumstances is a vain activity. Judging or begrudging a brother's relief while we suffer is short-sighted and unbecoming a believer.

Christ endured much more than ever we shall be asked to bear. Let us keep our eyes upon Christ and all that he suffered and endured. It ought to be enough to know with Paul that God is faithful, who will not suffer or who will not allow you to be tempted above that he are able. And know this, Our loving, merciful God deals with each of his children personally, caringly, and with mercy. I want to touch on one final thought here as we come to the end of our sermon today.

As James comes to the end of this little section, he says in verse 12, But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by earth, the earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yea be yea and your nay, nay, lest ye fall into condemnation. Now, it might seem odd. that this matter should be ranked by James above all things. Because that's what he says. But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, et cetera. Why should he rank that above all things?

Well, I think there is wisdom here too. And the apostle's admonition is really very basic. but I think it is suitable and it is timely in its advice. He's talking about us groaning. He's talking about us expressing discontent. And he's talking about us literally, literally swearing.

Groaning, expressions of discontent, and oaths are amongst men the first evidence of impatience. That's the very first thing that happens when a person encounters something that displeases him, something that annoys him, something that obstructs him. The very first thing that happens is that an oath is uttered. Think about it.

It's the way we act. And by asking us to guard ourselves against swearing, the apostle is giving us a very practical warning light for personal restraint. Now, I don't think that James is talking about oath-taking in a court of law. That's permissible, that's another subject. He is speaking literally about expressions of anger, expressions of petulance, expressions of ill temper.

What we say openly or under our breath when things don't go our way. I remember hearing a man speaking of how influenced he was when another man hit his thumb with a hammer while he was doing a job. And the first man expected to hear a string of curses, but nothing came. And it impressed him that nothing came.

Now, this might seem facile, it might seem glib, but I think James is being very practical. And believers ought to have a presence about them that restrains the outbursts of the old nature, the old man. Okay, I'm gonna be a little bit explicit. But comments like, God damn it, or for Christ's sake. Phrases that use heaven, good heavens, or hell, spill easily from the lips of people who know no better. But surely we have no desire to utter God's name vainly. I want to add another point to this.

I want us to be aware of what is called minced oaths. Minced oaths. You know what minced meat is? Well, these are minced oaths. Minced oaths is a term for disguised swearing. And that is like saying cor blimey, or gee whiz, or jeepers creepers. And these exclamations, they might sound innocuous, but the real meaning behind them is not.

Now, we would not say, God blind me. So why should we say, Cor blimey? Because that's a minced oath. We would not say, Jesus wept. So why might we say, gee whiz? Because that's a minced oath. We would not speak the precious name of Jesus Christ except in adoring terms. So why would we say Jeepers Creepers? Why would we veil swearing or employ these minced oaths? It's merely a vain conceit to be avoided by the Lord's people.

If you wouldn't say the one, don't say the other. Because even polite swearing betrays a defiant attitude. And whatever the Lord brings upon us, whatever happens to us in the little incidents of the day, all things are for our good. So let your yea be yea and your nay, nay. That simply means temper your reaction to your circumstances in a quiet, patient, reflective manner. I quoted a verse from Isaiah 41 the other day and it's opposite in this situation. Isaiah 41 verse 20 says, that they may see and know and consider and understand together that the hand of the Lord hath done this and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.

The world will quickly tell us what counts for happiness in this life. Riches and popularity, a well-paid job, lots of creature comforts. That, they will say, is what makes a person happy. Will we know better? James says in chapter 1 verse 2, My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations. And again here he says, Behold, we count them happy which endure.

Patience, brethren, patience. The coming of the Lord draweth nigh. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. Psalm 145, verse 18. May God give us patience to bear what he sends. May he give us faith to believe it is for our good and spiritual wisdom to use our hardships to seek out new ways of fellowshipping with Christ. Your Saviour knows you and He is very pitiful and of great mercy. So, in our times of trouble, let us always be on the lookout for our Saviour. always watching for tokens of his love and for his mercy. May the Lord bless these thoughts to us today. Amen.