CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 5:7. Margin, “suffer with long patience.” St. James inculcates a systematic course of action. Early and latter rain.—Early rain fell from October to February, latter from March to end of April.
James 5:9. Grudge not.—A caution against an impatient, querulous temper. “Complain not.” “Groan not.”
James 5:11. Endure.—Some prefer “endured.” Pitful.—Large-hearted; tender-hearted. The word used, πολύσπλαγχνος, is peculiar, and it is thought may have been coined by St. James.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 5:7-11
Our Duty in the Waiting-times of Life.—Throughout his epistle St. James keeps before him the suffering and distressed condition of the Jewish Christians. There was grave fear lest they should be led to give up their faith in Christ; but there was even a greater fear lest they should come to reproach one another, and so spoil their life of kindly relations, and deteriorate their own Christian characters. The times called for the spirit of endurance. The call of the hour was to waiting-work. In every sphere of life and relationship, in those days, the Christians were called to quiet waiting. There was so little that they could do. They had no power of control over the social and national movements of the age. Their strength was to sit still, holding their own with a quiet persistency. Their endurance was their witness to their age. But that waiting is the hardest thing ever given to man to do; and it is a great help to him in the doing if he can have the inspiration of an ideal, if he can have some great waiting in mind to which he may be constantly lifting himself, and in the great effort making all lesser efforts at waiting come easier. The typical waiting then was for the “coming of the Lord.” The typical waiting still is for the “coming of the Lord.” It was not realised then as men imagined it, but it was realised. It is not realised now as men imagine it, but it is realised. This is the mission of that expectation of the Lord’s coming which so many devout souls still cherish: it inspires endurance; it nourishes the spirit of quiet bearing of present ills; it enables a man to be patient amid the cares and disappointments of the earthly life; it uplifts with the cheer of a high hope. No doubt our Lord’s great discourse on the “last things,” which is recorded in Matthew 24, led to a general belief of His speedy return in human form, but with heavenly powers, to rectify those abuses and disorders of society, which pressed so heavily upon His disciples. It was only the form of His coming that was misconceived. It is only the form of His coming that is still misconceived. He did come to waiting souls. He does come to waiting souls. He came in providences. He came in spiritual manifestations. He came as the relieving angel “Israfil.” It was, and it is, the support of our waiting moods that His disciples keep quite sure that He is always just upon coming to help them. That leads them on, enabling them cheerfully to bear their burdens day by day. And it is but the Christian translation of the feeling that has been cherished by God’s saints in all the ages. It expressed itself in this way in the older times—“Thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God.” And in this way in the newer times—“Come, Lord Jesus; come quickly.”
I. What are the duties of Christians during their waiting-times?—St. James does not deal with all the duties—only with such as were relative to the needs of those to whom he wrote.
1. They ought to keep from restlessness. That is the idea of “patience” as here commended. The restlessness that keeps going to the door, or looking out at the window, and so takes men off from the duty of the hour. We cannot do our work well while we keep a restless state of mind. If we are expecting an arrival at our home, but are uncertain of the precise time, it altogether spoils our work for the day; it compels us to do nothing, if we suffer ourselves to become restless and anxious. In this way our hope of Christ’s coming may become morally mischievous. It will, if it makes us restless and dissatisfied. We shall undervalue our present work, and think lightly of our present responsibilities; and instead of spending our strength in service, we shall spend it in worrying and restless watchings. Our Lord pointed out this danger, when He taught that the servant who expected his master’s home-coming watched best by quietly waiting, fully occupied at his servant-duties, and actually found at work when the master entered the house. Restlessness never becomes a Christian virtue by disguising itself in pietistic forms. “Be patient unto [in respect of] the coming of the Lord.”
2. St. James points out another duty of the hour. They should keep from doubting. Restlessness might make them neglect their work; but doubting would altogether change the character of their work. It would soon cease to be work for Christ, and come to be work for self. If the servant began to say within himself, “My lord delayeth his coming”; if he said to himself, doubtingly, “He will not come soon, and I question whether he means to come at all,” that servant would soon begin to lose all wise restraint of himself, and “to eat and drink with the drunken.” St. James bids the Jewish Christians who were tried by the seeming delay of their deliverance from present evils, “stablish,” or “strengthen,” their hearts. If we gave the advice in these days we should say, “Don’t lose heart,” “Don’t give way to doubts and fears,” “Buttress your hearts against all temptations to doubt,” “Nourish your souls into such spiritual strength that you can throw off from you all poison atmospheres of doubt.” Hearts are stablished and strengthened, not by trying to force a way into the mysteries of God’s doing or delaying, but by meditating on what God has done, by realising what God is, and by inquiring, with a full purpose of obedience, into what God would have done by us. Three things are always at hand for the mastery of temptations to doubt:
(1) the revelation of God, which contains the “exceeding great and precious promises”;
(2) communion with God, which brings personal satisfactions to the soul; and
(3) active service, which takes a man off from perilous broodings. Those who dwell unduly on the “coming of the Lord” are especially liable to doubt, if they are active-minded; for they are compelled to recognise that He never has come, never does come, and never will come just as men have expected Him to. Those who wait must not only wait quietly; they must wait hopefully. Our time is alway ready. He who is coming will come; He does not really tarry.
3. St. James further points out the duty of keeping kindly relations with one another while we wait. “Grudge not one against another.” “Murmur not, brethren, one against another.” So easily, in their waiting-times, even Christians can get to wranglings and mutual reproaches. One man has his explanation of the Lord’s delay. Others are not able to accept his explanation. One man is sure that he can fix the day and the hour of the coming. Others remind him that he has fixed it before, and the time has gone by; and he becomes angry at the reminder. It may be comparatively easy for an individual Christian to wait patiently; it is always very hard for a number of Christians to wait patiently together. A Christian man is seriously strained and tested in the time when he can do nothing. A Christian Church gets into all sorts of contentions, misunderstandings, mutual reproaches, bickerings, and jealousies, when it is doing nothing, when it is waiting for some “coming of the Lord.” An inactive Church will often have a good deal of pietistic talk; but that may only be an insincere covering over of rankling enmities, mischievous murmurings, and mutual grudgings. It is like the servant that our Lord pictures who, because he did not keep on with his work, began to “beat his fellow-servants.” That was the mistake that was made by the early Jewish Christian Churches. They had taken up this notion, that Christ was coming at once in some outward way, to redress all their wrongs, overwhelm all their enemies, and enrich them with all benedictions; and in the excitement of this sentiment, they had become restless, they were neglecting their work, and they were quarrelling among themselves. “Every doctrine is known by its fruits”; and the doctrine of the “second coming,” as men usually hold it and teach it, is certainly not commended by its fruits. There is a true doctrine of the “second coming,” but the unduly occupied ear of Christ’s Church is not now open to receive it. There are waiting-times in all our lives. There have been; there will be. St. James’s advice may be fitted precisely to our waiting-times. Keep from restlessness. “Be patient.” Keep from doubting. “Stablish your hearts.” Keep from envying. “Grudge not one against another.”
II. What are the helps to the fulfilment of duty, in their waiting-times, which are at the command of Christians?—
1. They may keep the inspiration of good examples. For other people have had to wait, and have waited well. Nay, looking around them, Christians may learn from the spheres of business and social life; and turning over the pages of their Scriptures they may find inspiring instances of heroic endurance.
(1) There is the yearly example of the husbandman. “He waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receive the early and latter rain.” The husbandman worketh. If he does not plough and clean and smooth his soil, and cast in the living seeds in their season, he will have no waiting-work to do, and nothing to wait for. It is not sufficiently impressed upon us in moral and spiritual spheres that only workers can be waiters. If a man has not worked, what has he to wait for, what has he to wait about? In all true waiting there is expectancy; but expectancy must be based upon something. The husbandman bases it upon his work. Waiting that has no work behind it, and no work in it, is dreamy sentiment, and is no good to anybody. The husbandman has to wait, and work while he waits, for the fruitage of his sowing. The fields must be guarded, tended, nourished, while the crops are growing. But the results of his work get beyond him. He finds himself in the midst of forces that he cannot control; and no efforts of his can possibly hurry on the results. During the months of growing, what a life of waiting-faith every farmer has to live! And what a lesson of the patience of faith comes to us as we walk the fields, and see the crops so slowly, but so surely, growing unto harvest! Our Christian work starts influences which get altogether beyond our control. We work for issues; and want them to come immediately, and they will not. We work in the upbuilding of character, but character grows and unfolds very slowly; and we can no more hurry on our results than can the farmer. God takes all good work into His keeping, and makes His rains and His sunshine nourish the growing crops, which will be reaped to the unspeakable joy of the worker some day. The husbandman may have much anxiety, and much trial of faith and patience, while he waits. Everything depended, in those older days, on the “early” winter rains and the “latter” spring rains; and sometimes they failed altogether, or they were insufficient, or they were excessive. The cold seasons kept the crops back. Wild storms just before harvest laid the heavy-headed stalks; prevailing damp made the grains sprout; prolonged drought burned up the grass, and dried up the seeds of the root-crops as they lay in the ground. Many and many a morning during the growing months the farmer wakes and listens anxiously for the sound of rain, pulls the blind aside, and nourishes or crushes his hope for the day. It is hard indeed for him to see all the fruitage of his toil being hopelessly ruined, and to know that his harvest can only be a “day of grief and desperate sorrow” True, the issues are not often as the fears. Nature—God in nature—has a wonderful recovering power. Constantly we find we have to reap the harvest of God’s mercy, instead of the harvest of our fears. Are not Christian waiting-times anxious times? Parents work in their boys for noble manhood; and the day comes when the boy must go out into life, and battle for himself amidst manifold evils; must soul-thrive amid stormy winds and pelting rains of temptation, and it may be amid blazing suns of success. How can we measure the parental anxiety? See how every letter from the boy is scanned! how mother reads what father cannot see! how the tone of the letter is appraised! All those years of unfolding while out of parental control bring their grave anxieties; and, full of fears, those parents often say to one another—What will the harvest be? It is but the type of all the waiting-times of Christian workers. It is part of our discipline that they shall be full of grave anxieties; and if we are full of concern about the issues of our work, we may realise how concerned God is about us, wanting the very anxieties of our waiting-times to be sanctified to us. But the husbandman keeps the cheer of the certain result while he waits. There stands the word; the years have rolled into centuries, and the centuries have heaped up one upon another, but the word has never been belied—“While the earth remaineth … seedtime and harvest shall not fail.” Get the barns ready, though the cold chills, the heavy rains, or the untempered sunshine do come upon the growing crops. Get the barns ready; they will be filled, as they always have been. Earth never rolled through one of its years, without its people singing unto God their song of harvest home. Must we wait? Is it hard to wait? Does our Lord seem to delay His coming? We too may keep the cheer in our souls while we wait. He has promised. We grip His word so tight that the surge of life’s storm-tossed sea can never loosen our hold. He has said, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye may be also.”
(2) There is the example of the saints of the older days. “Take, brethren, for an example of suffering and of patience, the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” It is not possible now to do any more than let the great “cloud of witnesses” pass before us, in a seemingly endless panorama; and then say, after the eloquent writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, when he had set before us the long list of those who had “endured, as seeing Him who is invisible”: “Time would fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens.” They had their anxious waiting-times, but they waited well; and they came through to victory and their Lord’s “well done, good and faithful.” And
(3) there is the familiar example of Job. “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” He could wait for God, and wait on God. And while he waited, Job sang in his soul, and cheered his soul with the singing, of such things as the psalmist puts into poetic words, “Clouds and darkness are round about Him, justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne”; “I wait for the Lord; my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope.”
2. They may keep the confidence that God has His gracious purpose in every call to endure. The “end of the Lord”—and He always has an “end”—will be sure to justify the means. We may never think of God as acting on impulse. He has a distinct aim, a purpose of infinite wisdom and goodness, towards which He moves with infinite adaptations of His means. St. James assures us that He is “large-hearted,” “tender-hearted.” He can deal graciously with all the weaknesses that we may show—all the failures from duty—in our waiting-times. He will not let them hinder the carrying through of His purpose. They shall never spoil His harvest. Wait; wait on; wait worthily. Be patient. Keep confidence. Look up, even if there be clouds in the sky. Hold fast by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though His way may seem to you to be “in the sea, and His path in the great waters.” Wait on. Work while you wait. “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find so doing: verily I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself; and make them sit down to meat, and shall come and serve them. And if He shall come in the second watch, and if in the third, and find them so, blessed are those servants.… Be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 5:7. The Coming of the Lord.—“Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming [margin, presence] of the Lord.” James 5:8: “For the coming of the Lord is at hand.” It is perfectly clear that all the early Christian teachers had the distinct expectation of something, which they agreed to call “the coming of the Lord.” It is also certain that they looked upon this coming as the fulfilment of the Lord’s own promises, both in the “upper room” and at His ascension. But it is by no means clear what it was that they expected. It may indeed now be quite impossible to recover their precise thought, because very different thoughts have grown up round the expression “the coming of the Lord” in the course of the Christian ages. It very materially helps us toward the apprehension of the apostolic idea, if we get an answer to this question—Did Christ come to the early Church, in the manner, and at the time, the apostles expected He would? It is quite clear that they understood their Lord to mean that He would come in some material and visible manifestation, and that He would come before the apostolic age closed. The question requires the answer Yes or No, and it can be satisfied with no other answer; it will have no qualified answer that merely turns it aside or puts it from consideration. The answer may be—Yes, He did come in the apostolic age, and He did come in a formal and material manner. Then there is nothing in the historic record of those times which can, by any possibility, be identified as our Lord’s coming, save the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and final breaking up of the Jewish national and ecclesiastical systems. The answer may be—No, He did not come as apostles expected, and has not so come even yet. Then it is impossible to prevent the reasonable suggestion of devout souls, that the apostles may have misapprehended. His meaning, both as to the manner, and as to the time, of His coming. And it is quite open to devout souls to suggest, that if our Lord had been understood spiritually, it would have been seen that He did fulfil His promise, and does fulfil it; but our mistaken apprehensions have prevented our recognising the fulfilment.
James 5:10. Examples of Christian Endurance.—“Take, brethren, for an example of suffering and of patience, the prophets who spake in the name of the Lord.” It is questioned whether only the ancient prophets are referred to, or whether the term is intended to include the persecuted and martyred teachers of the Christian age. But even if we assume that St. James thought only of the Old Testament prophets, there is no reason why we should hesitate to include all, in prominent and official positions, who present the example of suffering and patience. And our life is encircled with such examples. History is full of them. Imaginative literature is constantly creating fresh types of heroic sufferers. The actual experience of our lives brings us into fellowship with those who are triumphantly bearing the burdens of lifelong pain or loss or disability.
I. Examples of endurance are constantly presented to us.—Apart altogether from religious motives and helps, there is a heroic endurance in humanity. A power to bear; and even to bear for others, which ennobles man. There is never any occasion for trying to debase humanity in order to exalt religion. It may be necessary to do that in order to lay suitable foundations for a religious creed; but not to maintain revealed and spiritual religion. We can fully admire the moral greatness of man’s endurance and patience, while we recognise his lost standing relations with God.
II. Examples of Christian endurance have a particular influence upon us.—Because they indicate the inspiration of the very highest motive upon which men can act. And they convince us that there can be a Divine presence with man, and a Divine power on man, which can raise him altogether beyond anything that of himself he could attain. Suffering patience with the supreme motive of doing and bearing God’s holy will is an attainment which is wholly impossible save with an indwelling inspiration of God.
James 5:11. The End of the Lord reveals Him.—It has often been pointed out that the final reward and restoration of Job is given after the “poetical justice” with which we are familiar in works of imagination. In actual history or biography we do not meet with such exact restorations. In a book which is the illustration of a great principle, by the use of a historical figure, and conversations in dramatic form, such an ending is befitting, and its precision of detail need not be overpressed.
I. The Lord always has an end.—It is this conviction which gives a man such satisfaction when he sees that his anxieties have come from God. Troubles that are manifestly of our own making are our supreme anxiety, because we can only think of God as overruling them. They are not His mind; He has to come into them in a gracious kind of interfering way. Job’s troubles were not brought on by his own wrong-doing; they were distinctly disciplinary troubles sent by God. God never afflicts willingly. God never smites in any “acts of sovereignty.” There is a distinct purpose in every Divine act, in every Divine permission. He has an end towards which He is ever working. If we are in His chastisement, it is for our profit.
II. The Lord’s end is seldom understood by the Lord’s way.—That need be no surprise to us if we are familiar with the complicated machinery involved in our manufactures. Take the process by which sheep’s wool is turned into clothing; or what seems but rubbish becomes white paper. The tearings, and burnings, and boilings, and rollings can neither be understood separately, nor in their connections; and yet we can believe that each strange thing helps to accomplish the end which has been, all along, held in view. God’s ways cannot but seem strange, and we had better not try to imagine the end by the help of the means.
III. The Lord’s end is always in harmony with Himself.—It is a wisely ordered end, for He is infinitely wise. It is an end of infinite blessing—adapted to us, satisfying to us—for He is love.