The Patience of Job

I want to talk to you this morning about... to begin with, about a very outdated concept. And Di has given all my secrets away straight away—a very outdated concept, which is called patience. Because that's what James says to begin with: he says, "Be patient." I told you it was outdated!

We have fast food, fast cars; we travel to the other side of the world in 20 hours and complain about the jet lag, when our forebears traveled by square rigger and got scurvy. We have instant coffee—what a horrible thought! You're hungry? Order Uber Eats. Bored? Binge Netflix. Want to do some research? Go to the library? No, you don't have to go to the library—just look it up online. Better still, "Siri, how do you spell dystopian?"

We take photographs on our phone and post them right away to social media and Instagram. I can remember a time, as you can too, when we used film, and it took weeks to realize that you had your finger partially covering the lens, and it wasn't until you got the photographs back that you realized you'd made an error.

A 2001 study at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York found the average time spent looking at a piece of art was 27.2 seconds. I deliberately time myself to 30 seconds because I'm competitive by nature, but there you go. People don't even look at art for long periods of time; you've got to keep moving.

A few years ago, I was reading that young people in Japan text-messaging their romantic partners discovered there was this phenomenon where they would send a blank text—just a blank text—and time how fast it was for the person to respond. Just a blank text! It's got to be instantaneous. And you might think that's bizarre, but how often have you sent a message to someone or an email to someone and thought, "Why have they not responded?" when, in fact, they haven't even read what you've written, let alone had time to respond to it? We would all like instant solutions to our problems, wouldn't we?

James says, "Be patient." You can see it there in the passage just by the sheer number of times it's mentioned:

• Verse 7: "Be patient, then, brothers and sisters..."

• Verse 8: "You too, be patient and stand firm..."

The word for "stand firm" literally means establish your hearts. Be patient. It's all the way through the passage.

Why? Why be patient? Well, he says in verses 7 and 8, because of the Lord's coming. See: "Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming." And you too, verse 8: "be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near." Be patient because the Lord is going to return. Be patient because history is going somewhere. The Lord Jesus Christ will return.

The word that's used here in the original is the word translated parousia, and we've come to understand it as the Lord's return. And that's absolutely true—that there is a destination for this world, there is a destination for this cosmos, that Jesus will return. We tend to just jump to that as the translation, and that is true, but when the word was used, it was used in a very ordinary way. It was used for, say, the official visit of a king, or the Lord's presence, or the Lord's arrival, or the Lord's coming, or perhaps the Lord's visitation.

And it's true that he will come again, but is it also not true that he could come to us now? That he could bring fruit to us now? See, it is all up ahead, but is it in some sense that he comes to us now, today, in this present world?

See the second half of verse 7: "See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains." James is saying, "Be patient. Be patient like a farmer."

I don't know anything about farming—best I can do is grow a few vegetables in the backyard—but I do know the farmer puts in crops and has to wait. The seed gets sown, but he can't really water... I mean, not in the ancient world. You've got to wait for the rains to come, so you've got to wait. The seed is sown, but you've got to wait for the fruit.

I can kind of imagine olive trees in the ancient world, and olive trees take about 7 to 10 years to bear fruit, to become fruitful. And James is saying, "Be patient until the Lord's coming. You might be waiting for a long time. Be patient."

There's lots of things to wait for, aren't there? In 1952, the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was waiting for Godot in his play—a thinly veiled reference to God's absence. Pretty depressing play, really.

James uses the example of Job and the prophets. Brothers and sisters, verse 10, as an example of patience in the face of suffering: "Take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience..." As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You've heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

It's more than just patience here; it's also perseverance. Perseverance is patience, but when you're personally under the pump. Not just waiting for something to happen, but perhaps under persecution. The prophets are patient while they're suffering. Or Job, as we were thinking about earlier in the year, the perseverance against worldly loss. Everything seems to go for Job, and yet he's able to be patient.

Now, it can be hard to wait, can't it? I was born in December, so that means as a kid, you had to wait a whole year for presents. It wasn't like, you know, those... I really envied those people who were born in June because they got their birthday presents, and then they got their Christmas presents six months later. But for me, I had to wait the whole year for any action!

What else do we wait for? Maybe you've prayed for someone you care about to believe, and it just doesn't seem to happen. And it can be hard to wait, can't it? Don Carson, the famous Canadian preacher and writer, describes growing up in a minister's family, essentially. You know, his father was a pastor in French-speaking Quebec in the 1950s, and Carson talks about his father toiling for years and years and years without any obvious growth or anything much to show for it. And it can be hard to wait, can't it, in ministry?

We support at this church, we support BCA, and in particular, we support James Damon, who's the minister at Cobar amongst other things. And what would it be like to turn up to church and there's just really only a handful of people there? We need to pray, don't we? We need to pray for patience. We need to pray for perseverance under that sort of pressure.

In ministry, we need to be patient like a farmer, and we need to be patient here, don't we? We can have great plans, but we need to be patient. We see churches around us that seem to be thriving, and other churches that seem to be very modest by comparison. Why is that? And we tend to think humanly, don't we? We tend to think about cause and effect—it's the way we've been trained to think. And we think if there's no effect, there must be a problem with the cause.

But there could be faithful and gifted ministry in all sorts of churches. So the measure is not necessarily the fruitfulness, but we should pray that the Lord will bring blessing, the Lord will provide fruit. On a cold, wet Sunday morning in August—when I woke up this morning, I think, yes, we should pray that the Lord would grant fruitfulness. We can sow, but we can't make things grow. It requires the Lord to do that. So we need to be patient and pray for that.

Secondly, be careful not to grumble.

Look there at verse 9: "Don't grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you'll be judged. The judge is standing at the door."

It's easy when things don't go right to grumble. Grumbling is one of those things that's insidious. It's not outright opposition; it's not the wrecking ball that knocks down the house. It's just the white ants that chew away at the structure. It's not aggressive; it just eats away in the background.

I'm interested in watching professional sporting teams, and sometimes you notice these sporting teams when something goes wrong. Sometimes the players just remonstrate with the person who's made the mistake and throw their hands up and yell at them when the ball gets dropped or something like that. And in other teams, they just seem to pick each other up, you know, just pat each other on the back and say, "Don't worry, let's keep going." Good teams stay connected with each other, and you see the difference, don't you? A great team won't grumble.

So James says, "Don't grumble. Focus on what you do have and not on what you don't have." Grumbling is one of those things that eats away at you as a person, as well as eats away at everyone else. The grass is not always greener on the other side. Be grateful for what you have. Don't keep living your life wishing it away, wishing it was something else, wishing your circumstances were different.

Some of you might know I spent my first years out of school studying and working as an engineer. And the thing about engineers is they fix problems. In fact, you've got to identify the problem in order to fix it—that's kind of how engineering works.

Then after that, I went and studied and worked as a physiotherapist. It's pretty much the same: you need to try and identify what the problem is in order to fix it. So we fix problems, and it's easy, therefore, for everything to become a problem that needs to be solved. We fix problems, and so it's easy to center on the problems and then become problem-centered. "If we only did that, then we wouldn't have to put up with this." And once you get sufficiently problem-focused, it's very easy to start grumbling.

But James says, "Don't grumble. Don't grumble, even when you need to be patient and you need to be persevering because things aren't seeming to go so well. Don't be a grumbler. Don't grumble."

James says, "The judge is standing at the door." Now that's pretty dramatic. James is pretty dramatic all the way through his letter; he uses hyperbole, he says it big so we get the message.

Now for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you need to know that there is no condemnation if you are someone who has put your trust in the Lord Jesus—in his death for you, in his resurrection on your behalf. Your assurance is absolutely true; you've gone from death to life, there is no condemnation. But what James is speaking about here is what will be your commendation. See the difference? See, for every believer there will be a degree of commendation. What will it be for you? Will it be the words that you hear: "Well done, good and faithful servant"? Be patient, persevere, don't grumble.

Thirdly and lastly, be a person of truth.

Look at verse 12: "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."

Now, James is quoting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount almost word for word, where Jesus says, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." James says, "All you need to do is say a simple yes or no."

He's not speaking here about your requirement perhaps as you go to court or to give evidence in court where you have to swear an oath. He's not talking about that. He's just saying that you don't need to do that; you don't need to go beyond the truth of what you are saying by swearing an oath. The point is just let your yes be yes and your no be no. You don't need to swear to prove yourself, because you're a person of your word.

It was my childhood bestie, Lynette, who lived two doors down, who taught me that little phrase: "cross my heart and hope to die." You know that one? "Cross my heart, hope to die"—because you're going to tell the truth. You don't need to do that. You don't need to swear to God that you're telling the truth. Your word is your word; you are a person of truth.

This is very different to the world we live in, to the world we're immersed in, our environments, because our world is full of lies and falsehoods. Political spin doctrine—it's just the air we breathe. If you say it enough times, even if it's not true, then people are going to start to believe it. It's got to do with how our brains remember things: we remember things that are true and things that aren't, and we think to ourselves, "I've heard this before, there must be a kernel of truth in it somewhere." Just be a person of your word.

Apparently, in 2016, the Oxford Word of the Year—you know these dictionaries, they have a Word of the Year: Macquarie Word of the Year, Oxford Word of the Year—in 2016, the Oxford Word of the Year was post-truth. It wasn't new; it had been coined way back in the '90s, but Oxford Dictionary got onto it 20 years later. Post-truth. We live in the post-truth age. It is said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on.

The current foreign secretary for the UK—I'm not going to mention his name—in a quite famous interview in 2011 when he was in the opposition (you can see it online, it's almost painful to watch), he says this. He's asked a question, and he says:

"These strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still going on, but parents and the public have been let down by both sides because the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. After today's disruption, I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric and get around the negotiating table and stop it happening again."

And so the interviewer asks him another question, and he gives the very same answer. And he asks him another question, and he gives the very same answer, and another and another, until it's agonizing to watch. And why? Because he thinks that his answer is just going to be a sound bite, and that's all that comes across, so he just repeats it over and over and over again—different question, same answer. And we get used to this, don't we? No wonder people are cynical.

There are lots of ways to conceal the truth, aren't there? The use of "weasel words"—probably, many, should—gives people an escape route to get out of actually being truthful. "Colgate helps fight tooth decay." "Well, I got tooth decay!" "Well, we only said it would help; we didn't say it would stop it." Or use a passive word rather than an active word is another technique: "Many villages were bombed" instead of "We bombed many villages."

There's an inquiry at the moment into a multinational professional services network, who remain nameless—you can fill in the blank. Is the problem that they have a few bad apples, or is it systemic, institutional failure?

Or it could just be the sheer number of words. Shakespeare's Macbeth has about 17,000 words. The terms and conditions for PayPal? About double: 34,000 words. And if you want to sign up, you've got to tick the box, and if you haven't read the 34,000 words, well, you may be in trouble.

James quotes the very words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." Be truthful in all your dealings. Be known for that. Not trying to get away with as little truth as possible, like checking the fine print or "how can I stay on this side of the law?" Be as truthful as you can. It's about the maximum amount of truth, not trying to get away with the minimum amount of truth.

Your yes is your yes, and your no is your no. If you're going to do it, do it. If you're going to be there, be there. If you say you will do something, if you commit to something, then you commit to something. Be truthful. There are so many ways that you can distort the truth. James says, "Be a person of your word, not trying to get away with as little as you can, but the most truth as you can."

Now, if you follow this, you're going to be different, aren't you? Patient in an impatient world, not grumbling in a grumbling world, truthful in a world that likes to make truth very malleable. You're going to be very different, very radical—and we should.

So if you like, here are three little things to take home:

1. Be patient.

2. Don't grumble.

3. Be truthful.

Let's pray that God would help us to do that.

Heavenly Father, we pray that you might grant us the sort of patience that's been spoken about here: forbearance, perseverance. We are conscious it's not always easy—we have to wait. Please help us to wait.

We pray that you'd help us not to grumble, to have that positive, forward-thinking, and sunny disposition. And we pray that you might make us truthful in a world that sees truth expediently at best. Please help us to be marked as people who are people of truth.

We pray this in Jesus' name,

Amen.

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