Jim Styles - Class 5: Enduring Our Trials with Patience

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   Well, good morning again, brothers and sisters, and the young people that are here this morning. We come to the end of our study of James today, and the study of James is going to end now at a point where we left off yesterday looking at some of the issues about friendship with God versus friendship with this world.

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   So, a friend of God has developed that wisdom of God from chapter 3. It's self-seeking and envy and tension and stress. And to be a friend of God, we've got to be willing to submit to God, yield to one another. And that's the ability that we can just watch.

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   Thank you. That humility that's there. ...from this gathering. I got all these... I'm going to tell everybody what I'm doing. I'm going to tell everybody what I'm doing. I'm going to tell everybody what I'm doing.

4. 2:21

   I'm going to tell everybody what I'm doing. What I'm doing with Ecclesia. So in life, then, we give him the credit, not just boast about what I accomplished. We've got to implement some of these policies of how we treat each other. We're partial about how we treat each other.

5. 2:57

   Watching what that tongue says over the next few weeks and being careful about what comes out of our mouth. And so he leaves off with some very practical things in this chapter about suffering.

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   And then, what a great thing to end on, on the notion of prayer. Talk to God. Take these things to God. Let Him know your concerns. And hopefully, if we take that as a single-minded approach, God will work on our lives. He wants to help. So, James chapter 5, what he does is he has a little section right here where he goes back into the rich at the beginning of the chapter.

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   He starts out with this warning to the rich. Now, these rich in James chapter 5, most folks would figure, well, he is pretty hard on the rich. And when you read through those verses, when you see that, you come on, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

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   I mean, that almost sounds like the language of Joel or the Old Testament. So far astray, there was almost no hope for those people. Your riches are corrupted, he says in verse 2 there, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are corroded, and your corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

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   You've heaped up treasure. He's heaped up treasure in the last days, you see. And so he's pretty well writing these things at this point. There's no mention in here at all of anything about brothers or sisters or anything. It's not until you get down to verse 7. If you like to do some Bible coloring, you'll see, it says, therefore be patient, brethren.

10. 4:42

    And then again, you'll see in verse 9, humble against one another, brethren. Verse 10, my brethren, take the prophets. So it's almost like there's a changeover in the categories of people that he's talking to. So these rich may have been people that were just like the rich of the community that may have like come into the ecclesia.

11. 5:03

    They were having an influence upon the ecclesia at the same time. But it's almost like James doesn't really even have real believers at this point because he writes them off. So you're going to pay for what you've done. You've mistreated the brethren and sisters. You've mistreated the family of God. And because of that, the time is coming in which the persecution that was about to come, see, the rich were going to go after them.

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    What was happening, and you look at what the rich have done here, you see in verse 4, you know, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud. I mean, this is the way they were treating their fellow Jews. They were not being kind and considerate. They were holding back wages, which we know in the Old Testament, in the law, that was definitely condemned.

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    You had to be kind to the people that were working for you, whether they were slaves or not. God really encouraged kindness. And these wages, they cried out. And the cries of the ears, the Lord of Sabaoth, right? You lived in luxury, in verse 5, in pleasure. You've had fat in your hearts as in a day of slaughter.

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    And now, the day of slaughter was going to come. Because, when the persecution started, evidently, I mean, who better to go after when they, when they, when they, when they, when they, when they, when they, Jews at this point, and the, and the, rose in, in 80, 70, what ended up happening is that they went after the rich first.

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    Why bother to persecute the poor who had nothing? You can't get much out of a poor person. But if you go into the rich homes and you take all of their stuff, these people were about to suffer for, for their way of life that they had. And James is warning them that look, your day is coming.

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    The day of slaughter is there. You've fattened your hearts. You've built up all these things. And you've mistreated the, the brothers and sisters and the poor. And now, because you have all this stuff, you're going to be the first one to get hit. And that's evidently what happened during the persecution that arose just after this time.

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    And verse 6 there, he even says, you've condemned, you've murdered the just, and he does not resist you. So, those first six verses, you can see that certainly the warning was there for all of us, brothers and sisters, to not take advantage of one another. Now, we don't usually have brothers and sisters working for us anymore in ecclesial life, although once in a while that does happen.

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    But at the same time, the attitude that these folks had of taking advantage of the poor brothers and sisters, I mean, we shouldn't be doing that in any way, taking advantage of the poor. We should make sure that we treat everyone without that partiality, and that we value all of the things that brothers and sisters bring to ecclesial life.

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    We don't rank the jobs in ecclesial life and say that these are the important ones and everybody else just does these. We need them all. Everybody needs to be working together, and the mindset that we have to have is one that we value. We value everybody's piece they have to play. And you look at all the things that went into this gathering, all the different components that it takes to pull this off.

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    I mean, they're all equally important because everybody has a part to play. And all we have to do as members of the community, we only have to do the parts which God has given us the ability to do. And everybody is good at something. Everybody out there has something to offer in ecclesial life and family life.

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    And all we've got to do is be brave enough and trust God enough to get involved and do it and jump into those things. And if we fail the first time or we mess up, whatever, that's okay. We cut each other some slack and we just get on. That's the way life is.

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    Nothing has to be perfect in ecclesial life. We just have to get out there and try. I mean, every parent knows that when you're raising children. Who in the world ever raised their first child exactly right? I mean, let's face it, the oldest child out there and every family is an experiment between mom and dad, you see.

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    And that's just the way it is. You are the guinea pig of the family and we try this and we try that and by the time you're a few years old we think, okay, we're ready to try again. And then the next one comes along and we find out, oops, they're not like the first one.

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    And then you've got to start all over again and that's just the way it is. But you can't just walk away from it and say, I'm not going to do it. We just do it. We do the best we can and we pray that God will make up the difference. And working in the ecclesia is no different at all.

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    But let's not take advantage of one another. Let's value the work that everybody does. And I'm serious about that because in ecclesial life what we tend to do is we have jobs in ecclesial life and we rank them. And we look at the brethren back home who get up and give exhortations and a lot of times they get a lot of the exhorting brother or the presiding brother that day gets a lot of the attention.

26. 9:40

    And yet look at, without somebody playing the piano or providing music to us the hymns would be really pretty bad if we were all singing a cappella. And what about the person who got up early and set up the bread and the wine and they do that back home week by week and they do all that for us.

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    The people that clean the hall and they have it all ready to go so that we can walk in and it's set to go. Everybody has a part to play. Everybody. And imagine yesterday what it would have been like if nobody had taken the kids during the kids' classes and they were all in here.

28. 10:09

    You see? It would have been a whole different kind of class if everybody was in here and we had all that activity going on in this building as well. See, all of us benefit by all the different components that everybody does in ecclesial life and family life is no different. I really believe it.

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    If husbands and wives just valued the part that each one has to play and really did value it and realize how essential it was to the family that all of us would probably have a better relationship. It's not that anybody's job is any more important. We're all doing the part that we have to play.

30. 10:41

    And let's recognize that with one another and thank each other for the work that we do in family life and ecclesial life. So, what happens then in the first six verses? If you had been a brother or sister in the ecclesia at this time and you were living under the persecution of all these rich people and the trouble that they brought into you and how they had taken advantage of you and they had kept back the wages from you and they were taking advantage of you left and right, I mean, the tendency would be there for us to want to take personal vengeance.

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    That's what we would want to do. We get frustrated when people take advantage of us. We want to reach out when we get a chance and we want to do something about it. And so, James anticipates that and he says, look, in those first five verses or the first six verses here, he encourages us to look, be patient.

32. 11:30

    You know, the day is coming when the rich were going to be taken care of but God was going to do it. They'd fattened up themselves for the day of slaughter, all right, but we aren't going to be the ones that slaughter them, you see. God will take care of those things in ecclesial life and in family life and in our job situations at large out there.

33. 11:51

    So, his encouragement to us at least, the next section starting in verse seven is he then leads into this issue of, look, for the brothers and sisters, God will take care of all of those people that are causing the problems there but now what we have to do is we have to be patient.

34. 12:09

    We've got to be patient and he uses the common example of the farmer. Be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer in verse seven waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and the latter rain. You also be patient.

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    Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Now, the coming of the Lord back then was certainly not the setting up of the kingdom. The coming of the Lord for them was going to be that something was going to happen. The Lord was going to come and he was going to change their political and economic situation which certainly did happen in the persecutions that arose during the first century at that time.

36. 12:50

    And so, the coming of the Lord came at that point in time and the rich that had been persecuting them definitely were taken out of the way at that point in an ecclesial life but then they had some other problems that they had to deal with. But even for ourselves, the coming of the Lord is never that far off because in our own lifetime, all of us at some point reach a stage where we fall asleep in Christ.

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    And at that point, the coming of the Lord is at hand. So, whichever way you take it, I think in this case he was certainly looking at the fact that the persecution was going to begin and that the rich were going to go down first, that the coming of the Lord was going to come and that God would take care of it, that he will take care of it.

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    It's not something that we have to do. And so, he encourages personal patience. Patience, just like the farmer. And, you know, what happens with the farmer is that, as all of you that are farmers would know, is that, you know, all the time in our lives what we want to do is we want to bypass dependence on God.

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    That is the basic human philosophy that's out there in this world that all the things that happen and what we tend to do is we want to come up with a way of, well, just in case God doesn't take care of it, then we want to make sure that we've got it covered.

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    So that if it's a bad year and God doesn't send the rain, well, let's get the underground water pumps going, the sprinkler systems rolling to make sure that the crops will grow. And that's basically the philosophy that's out there in our world or what happens if a problem develops in our lives, there's all this insurance that's out there.

41. 14:18

    And what can happen for some of us, especially as the younger people as you grow up, is that what this world has done is taken away a lot of the control mechanisms that God would have used through the natural world out there to make us depend on Him, to encourage us to trust in Him.

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    And they constantly want to pull those things out of the way. And so what God, what the angels have to do then is find other mechanisms. And a lot of times they do that with accidents and with health issues and things like that. But the common ones that were used back then would have been something like just depending on the water as the farmers would have waited for the water.

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    Because a farmer at that point in time couldn't make it rain. They were forced into looking up to heaven and trusting and praying that God would bring the rain. Now, just to show you how that was such a common issue and how God had designed it that way, if you just look back in Deuteronomy 11, in Deuteronomy 11, it's an interesting passage, a Bible mark in this little section there because it certainly fits the use that James has given.

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    Just to show how much God had really set up the whole scenario of giving Abraham the land of Israel and his descendants and bringing the Jews out of Egypt and bringing them from one area down in Egypt into a land which would encourage godly development, God actually designed the geography of the land of Israel in such a way that the natural geography of the land would encourage dependence on God.

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    That's a lot of work to go to, to make sure that you provide a land where not only you're going to talk to people and give them a law and all their religious system, but the very land itself, the way it was designed with the hills and the valleys was designed to encourage dependence on God.

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    So you find that Moses warned them back in Deuteronomy 11 over at verse, starting at verse 10, when he says, look, he mentions in verse 9 that you could prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey. For in verse 10, the land which you are going to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot as a vegetable garden.

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    See, they grew up in Egypt with the Nile River and the overflowing of the Nile like that and they got used to like using their little trenches that were dug and they'd plant their seed and they'd come along with their feet and they had plenty of water and they just watered the land with their feet and that's how they had all grown up and that's what they were used to.

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    And Moses says, oh no, that's not what God has in store for you. What he's got designed for you when you get into the land, in verse 11, the land for which you crossed over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares and the eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and then be careful that you diligently obey the words of the Lord.

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    So right away, he ties in the fact that it's going to be different when you get to this land. This land is going to be designed with challenges because if you are diligent to obey the commands of the Lord, he will send the rains. You'll be looking to heaven for God to provide your rain and if you don't, the rains won't come.

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    And so God is going to teach you through the natural means of just giving the rain, he's going to encourage you to turn to him. That's a different kind of a life than they would have had back in Egypt where the natural land was not like that at all and they would just spill the waters out of the Nile and they had this big river like that that they could depend on.

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    The Jordan wasn't like that. In fact, today, I think they've taken so much water out of the Jordan that if you follow the Jordan now and you look at it right before it goes into the Dead Sea, it's basically run out of water right now. It's pretty well being drained by the people that are pulling water out of the Jordan.

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    So what God had done is he designed natural circumstances in the land to try to encourage trust and dependence, single-mindedness, where you turn to God and look to him for the solutions of your life rather than trying to find schemes where we work around it and we do that. So there's a nice natural mechanism.

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    So here he's encouraging patience. If you're going through a period of ecclesial life or at your work and your job or the younger people that are at school where people are intimidating you and people are taking advantage of you, he says, look, be patient, talk to God, let him know about it, and God will take care of that.

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    It's not something that you have to do. You don't have to reach out and violate your godly principles and go after somebody. Pray to God, talk to him, be patient. Patient, because the coming of the Lord would be at hand. Now, look in verse 9. They don't grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned.

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    Behold, the judge is standing at the door. Now, we all know that when things are going well in life and you go home and next week you go to a meeting and you're healthy and everything is good and your ecclesia is running well, it's a lot easier to be nice to each other when things are going well.

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    But what happens when things aren't going so well? What about when there's problems that develop? What happens when the economy goes bad, when our job's in jeopardy, when there's troubles in the ecclesia and we have issues that we have to deal with? That's when the challenges start, you see. And there, you see, if the single-mindedness isn't there, that we realize God is in this and God is in control and we just got to talk to Him and work it out with our brothers and sisters.

57. 19:46

    If we feel like we got to get in there and we got to get this issue figured out or we got to solve this problem or somebody says something to us and they ruffle our feathers, the tendency is to grumble against one another. We can't do that. He just said back in chapter 4 that look, that's one of the barometers that we have to find out whether we really are humble and we really should get the grace of God.

58. 20:11

    You see, that was the solution in chapter 4 is that here's your barometer. Are you speaking evil of one another? Are you grumbling about each other? Or are you saying kind and compassionate and willing to yield and peaceable things and developing the fruit of righteousness that is sown in peace by those who make peace?

59. 20:28

    So the encouragement at verse 9 right there is be careful, brethren, don't grumble against one another. So, you know, if we find that happening in ecclesial life or in family life, if we find our spouse grumbling about people, we can gently remind each other that, wait a minute, that's not what we're supposed to be doing.

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    We're supposed to be seeking peace, looking for positive ways to solve things in family life and ecclesial life because single-minded people don't grumble against each other because they see God in the picture and they realize God has brought this and he's going to try to work out something in this circumstance. Just be patient.

61. 21:03

    The judge is standing at the door, you see, for us. He's standing there at the door and he hears all that grumbling that's going on. He's aware of it. He knows what's going on and he's the one who will judge. So be careful, brothers and sisters, how we respond to these things because it's one thing to look at an issue in life and feel like, well, somebody else said something wrong about us and they did the wrong thing and they made all these mistakes and we got all the Bible passages as to why but it's a whole other thing as to what are we going to do about it and how are we going to respond.

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    And a lot of times God's waiting to see what am I going to do about the mistreatment that I'm suffering from somebody else. See, both of us have something to learn and we both have a part to play. It's not just a case where one is always right and the other is always wrong.

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    We can both be wrong. One can be wrong for starting a problem and the other person can be wrong in how we respond to it. We've got to be careful that we respond the right way and try to be single-minded in our approach of recognizing that God is in it and we can take the issue to God and try to work it out in peace and kindness and patience with each other.

64. 22:11

    So, of all things, look what he goes to in verse 10. My brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example of suffering and patience. And imagine, you know, of all the prophets you think about of suffering and patience, of course he goes into Job in verse 11.

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    We count them blessed who endure and you've heard of the perseverance of Job and seeing the end intended by the Lord. You see, of all people, Job, a man who was a prophet of God and people would go to him for all of the words of wisdom that Job had to offer and then all this trouble came on Job and then Job's three friends came at him from the left and the right and they were hitting him and persecuting him about the fact, Job, you must have committed some terrible sin.

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    Just confess your sin, admit it, Job, and then God will forgive you and bless you and give you back what you had and Job has endured that and Job hadn't done any great thing wrong like that and now here he was suffering the personal, the suffering that he went through and the loss of his family, the loss of his goods and the struggle that would have developed between him and his wife and now he's got his friends coming at him and here's the ecclesia coming at him as well and they're coming at him and they're persecuting him.

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    So nobody was responding the right way and here we have Job then pulled out. What a great example of single-mindedness. If Job wasn't single-minded, if he wasn't, he would have lashed out against God in the end. That's what he would have done. Job had that figured out. When you read through that book of Job, you will see left and right, he's one of the greatest examples of single-mindedness.

68. 23:45

    He had to have some issues corrected in his life, but he never, ever gave up the confidence that he had that God in the end was going to set it right. He knew God was in this situation, he knew it had come from God, and he realized and had confidence that in the end God would somehow have to set it right.

69. 24:03

    His mistake was that he thought that God would in the end have to admit God was wrong and Job was right, but at least he had that confidence that God was in this thing and it really helped him get through it, whereas other people in this case had issues that were wrong about God and in the end Job ended up having to pray for them.

70. 24:20

    So, you know, that's what we remember Job for, that Job in the end had to pray for his, he had to pray for his friends and without that prayer those friends, you know, who knows what would have happened because Job is actually told at this point at the end of the book to pray for his friends and that God would forgive them of the mistakes that they had made.

71. 24:38

    A good example, you see, for the lead-in to the end of this chapter about praying for one another. So, I think he really brings up Job for two reasons right now. One was for the example of patiently suffering through false accusations within your community amongst his friends, patiently suffering through trials and troubles that God brings upon you.

72. 25:00

    Not that Job did. Job fell into those problems. He didn't jump into them. He fell in and those things were brought on him by God, the trials that he suffered through and now he's got to deal with the false accusations on the part of the members of his community that were coming after him.

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    So, what a great example of somebody who patiently, patiently suffered through, single-mindedly trusting that in the end God was going to work out something good out of all this and that God would bring about good in the midst of a very, very, very bad situation. And you can see he ends up at verse 11 that, you know, you can see the end intended by the Lord.

74. 25:39

    See, God was never out to destroy Job. He's not out to destroy any of you in all the troubles that he brings on us. The angels are extremely compassionate as our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. They're compassionate and merciful. He doesn't punish us according to our sins. That was the huge mistake of Job's three friends.

75. 26:01

    He's extremely compassionate. He's like a dad. A dad doesn't go out and punish his children according to their sins. We do enough to teach a lesson and that's it because we're trying to develop. We're trying to develop our children not to destroy them and our God is no different. So he says, look, remember single-mindedness.

76. 26:21

    Remember the end intended by the Lord. The Lord is very compassionate and merciful and it helps us get through some of those things that God brings into our life and the way the ecclesia responds sometimes or our spouse might respond to us or our children to us or our moms and dads where we think that, you know, we're having to suffer not only the problem that has come but also the persecution that comes along with it and all the false accusations.

77. 26:47

    So in verse 12 you might wonder, like, what's that doing there? Why throw in this issue about above all, brethren, do not swear either by heaven or by earth? This is one of those phrases that is definitely a Bible echo back to the Lord Jesus Christ words in the Gospels. That's almost word for word to not swear by heaven or by earth or any other oath but let your yes be yes and your no be no lest you fall into judgment.

78. 27:08

    And it's probably because the tendency would be that when the false accusers come just think of Job. Think of what happened with Job's life. You know, and what did his wife say? Curse God and die. You see, that's the natural reaction of people when we suffer persecution and especially when other people are laying the false accusations upon us.

79. 27:29

    It's just curse God and die and it just comes and the tongue out it comes. Curse God and die. So he says, look, be careful, brethren, when you're going through these problems. Watch your tongue. Don't issue these oaths. Don't swear. Don't curse. Don't put out things like that. Watch what you say. Is the power of the truth, the doing of the word of God, powerful enough in our life that it's going to control our tongue when we're under pressure like that.

80. 27:54

    So don't let it out. Just say yes and no and that's enough because any more than that you may fall into judgment. And then in the last section here in verse 13 to 18 is this section here about prayer. You know, what a wonderful way to close out this book because he hasn't said a whole lot about prayer all the way through the book yet but this last part is certainly, he leaves this almost like for the end about, look, when we're going through troubles and we're going through persecutions and we're going through family matters and ecclesial problems, talk to God.

81. 28:25

    Talk to Him. That's our avenue to communicate to our Heavenly Father. He wants to hear from us. Take those problems to God. He listens. He hears them and He will act. So James gives us some examples. Look, if we're sick, if we're sick, pray to God, you see. And if a member of the community is sick, then we get together and we pray for them.

82. 28:47

    In verse 14, you see, if anybody's sick, you know, we pray about them. Call for the elders of the ecclesia and let them pray over Him, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. What a great way to bring about unity in ecclesial life. You look at illnesses that we go through in ecclesial life and you're like, why did that happen?

83. 29:08

    But from the angels' perspective, they bring a problem like that and all of a sudden the things we thought were so big yesterday are now little small things and now we have to deal with illness. And now, you know, it's time to let go, let our guard down, humble ourselves in the eyes of God and bring the ecclesia together.

84. 29:27

    What a better way to unite an arranging board or an ecclesia when somebody is sick that they come together and they pray together for somebody. It's a fantastic way to bring unity where everybody at that point together is praying that God will solve the problem. And that's the way all these problems are going to be solved in the end anyways.

85. 29:47

    And so God uses sickness to try to teach that lesson. And it's powerful. The prayer of faith in verse 15 will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. So people who had made mistakes in the ecclesial life right now, some of the people that had been causing these problems and these troubles, evidently God had brought illness into their life.

86. 30:11

    It's very similar, don't you read about in 1 Corinthians 11 when Paul talks about the same kind of issues and he says for this reason that many of you are sick and some of you have died. That the angels were bringing illness into the people's lives when the ecclesia was in turmoil and they were using that illness to try to get people to focus back in single-mindedness and bring unity back into the ecclesia and try to get people to work together.

87. 30:38

    I mean, what else can the angels do? They can't make us get back together. They have to bring about circumstances to where we choose to do that. It's just like trying to make your children. You can't force a child as they're growing up. We can't force them to do the right thing. We can't force them to behave a certain way.

88. 30:57

    Maybe when they're very small we can, but as they get older we can't force them anymore. We have to develop that will within them, the love and the compassion to where they will do it because it's the right thing to do. And from God's perspective, with all of the mechanisms that we have to try to circumvent God's work in our life today, all the things that we have in our community of the running water and the watering the crops and our insurance programs and all that, what else can God do but bring illness into people's lives and hope that illness will in some way turn people around and make them face the bigger issues of life and bring about some ecclesial unity.

89. 31:37

    So this is what he did back then as well. And the brethren would come together, the ecclesia would come together and pray for a person. And it's not like every time that they're going to make that difference but it's certainly worth doing and God listens. And he gives the example at this point of Elijah in verse 17 that Elijah was unlike nature as ours.

90. 31:58

    He was like you. It's not like Elijah was some gigantic superman prophet. He was of the same kind of nature as us. He lived back in a time in which people were, some were righteous and some were turning away from God. And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And it didn't rain on the land for three and a half years.

91. 32:17

    And then in verse 18 he prayed again and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. You see, what a great example of a man who could make a difference. So brethren and sisters in our ecclesial life when we go home, pray about these issues. Pray earnestly about these issues. Talk to God.

92. 32:36

    Make it a matter of prayer every day, many times during the day that God will help us solve these problems. That God will bring about this single-mindedness. That God will work with our children. That God will work with our ecclesia. And pray about these issues like Elijah did. Pray earnestly because God listens to those prayers.

93. 32:56

    Prayer makes a difference today still just as it did back then. It may not happen tomorrow. It may not happen the next day. Elijah prayed for three and a half years that God would work in this community. Three and a half years he was waiting and patiently waiting to where enough people would finally be turned around.

94. 33:15

    And what an example that we have of the difference between a single-minded Elijah and a double-minded Ahab, the man who was one of the best examples of double-minded characters, that when the rain doesn't come and the crops aren't there, instead of looking at this as an act of God and recognizing this as a time to change and develop the community, all he does is come along and says Elijah, well, there you are, you troubler of Israel.

95. 33:39

    Well, that's double-mindedness, you see. That's what we do in ecclesial life. We pick somebody who's caused a problem instead of recognizing God's involved and we take somebody and we blame them for the problem. We say, oh, you're the one that's troubling this ecclesia. That's so typical of the double-minded spirit that you see in an Elijah like that.

96. 33:57

    So I think really it's a good way to end this letter encouraging all of us, brothers and sisters, when we go home this week, to take these issues to God in prayer, our economic situations, our health situations, our ecclesial situations, and believe that God listens to these prayers. It might take some time, but God is going to answer those prayers.

97. 34:17

    Single-minded people are willing to patiently wait, like the farmer, and they wait, they talk to God, they wait, and they wait, and they let God handle the issue. We don't have to solve these things ourselves in an unchrist-like, unkind way, or force issues or ram things down people's throats because God will take care of it.

98. 34:38

    He will solve those problems. And then at the end, the last couple of verses there, I mentioned them yesterday, but what a good way to finally end the letter because James foresaw the fact that some of these people in all the midst of this trouble, you know that when trouble hits ecclesial life, that our brothers and sisters and some of our young people, the tendency is for people to wander away.

99. 34:58

    They don't want to be a part of an ecclesia that's fighting and warring and bickering and saying unkind things about each other all the time. Who wants to go to a meeting just to listen to that or to hear an exhortation that always tears everybody down? That's not what we come to a meeting for.

100. 35:11

     We come to be built up and encouraged that God's working on our life, that he can do it, that we've got to believe he can do it and find good, positive ways to work that out. And if the ecclesia is constantly tearing down and saying negative things or we're talking evil of one another, our young people start wandering away.

101. 35:28

     Our brothers and sisters, they start wandering away. And so James was hoping that this letter would make a difference and that some of these people could be gathered back in and he already foresaw the fact that there would be members in the ecclesia who didn't want them to come back. They didn't want them back because they would view them as part of the trouble.

102. 35:49

     Maybe they were on the other side of the issue and we're glad to have them go. And James says, wait a minute, that's not it. God wants all to be saved. And he reminds them that look, if you find somebody who's wandered away and you bring them back, look at what, you're like God.

103. 36:06

     You're like participating in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ that you will turn a sinner from the error of his way and save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. That's the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. You're helping to participate in that work by finding those lost sheep and bringing them back.

104. 36:23

     And of all things, in ecclesial life, brothers and sisters, don't give any reason for those lost sheep when they come back. Don't ever be the person who puts the stumbling block and encourages them to go away again. That's not what we want. We want to bring them back and we want to bring them back in a very positive way.

105. 36:40

     So this morning then as we come to the end of James, we come to the memorial service and the bread and the wine, here's our opportunity to remember the commitment that we made to our God when we were baptized, that we will join our Lord Jesus Christ and his death to sin and live a new way of life.

106. 36:57

     It's a life to be lived. We take up our cross and we follow him. We live his life. Single-mindedness, trusting in the Father that his way is right and that God will take care of those big issues. Not us. We don't have to do those. Let's leave here this weekend trying to become a little more single-minded.

107. 37:16

     Next week, practice that, of recognizing in all the events of our lives that God is in them and that God is in control. Let's remember that God wants all his family to be saved. He wants everybody. We've got to quit judging the motives of other people. We've got to look at people in a little more positive light and remember that in the end, mercy triumphs over judgment.

108. 37:37

     We have to mentally be ready to do that. When we're on that borderline and we tend to be the kind of person that's a judger all the time, remember, we've got to get back the other way. Think about what we want at the judgment seat and remember that mercy will triumph over judgment.

109. 37:52

     Let's think back on the example of Abraham and of Rahab, two people that very clearly believed and then acted on their belief. They didn't have a passive belief. They had a belief that drove them to become involved in ecclesial life and helping God and his work. And let's go home more committed. Think about on the way home as you're driving home today, what can you do in your family?

110. 38:14

     What can you do in your ecclesia? The young people, what can you do to help out? In your family, in your ecclesia, become a doer of the word, not just a hearer only, deceiving our own selves. And let's watch our tongues this week, brothers and sisters and young people. Watch what we say.

111. 38:31

     Let the word of God control our tongues. For the moment, you know, we just like zip it up for a minute and we count to ten before we say something. And a lot of people have that kind of a practice. It helps us to think first before we talk. And we don't just like lash out at somebody and say the first thing that comes to our mind.

112. 38:47

     And eventually, we'll hopefully get to the point where the word of God will really control our tongues. And let's become a friend of God. Remember, God's friends trust Him. They trust what God is doing in their life and they don't have to come to verbal wars. They don't have to send out nasty emails.

113. 39:04

     They don't have to send out text messages that hurt other people and talk behind their back. Friends of God act like God, not like the people of this world. And let's be careful and show patience in our trials. Remember that God brought the trials. He's trying to save us. He's not trying to destroy us.

114. 39:24

     He wants you to be saved. And the only way He can do that is through the trials and through the troubles. And so like the farmer when it doesn't rain for a while and we see the drought that's coming, we go back to God and we talk to Him and we look for the rain from heaven.

115. 39:39

     Let's be patient with each other, brothers and sisters. Some things take weeks and months and years. But if we're patient and we wait them out, maintaining our godly principles in single-mindedness, we can learn to live more like the Lord Jesus Christ. And last of all, let's pray for each other. Pray for each other in the illnesses that we have, in the problems that are going on in people's personal lives, the economic situations people are dealing with, their health issues that they're dealing with, their children that they're dealing with and the struggles that people have.

116. 40:12

     The older folks of our community that are having problems of their own, the ones that are taking care of them as well, let's pray for each other and hope that God will bless and encourage everyone to make it and provide mechanisms that we make it and be positive in supporting those things. You see, prayer is the first step.

117. 40:31

     If you pray for somebody, then you then look for a way to help them. But if we don't even pray for them, we're not even thinking about becoming a part of a help to their life. What can I do to help them out? That's what the doers of the word do. They talk to God about it, we pray about it, and then we look for ways to help in ecclesial life and in family life.

118. 40:50

     And above all, let's take the lesson of James with us this weekend, brothers and sisters, of becoming a doer of the word. Let's not be satisfied with a passive belief that we've got the truth, we've got the right beliefs, you know, we're part of the Christadelphian community and we belong to the right church.

119. 41:06

     That's not enough. What we've got to do is go home committed to become a doer of the word, involved in ecclesial life, in our families, and try to fix some of the things that are there and praying to God to help for ways to fix those things and become a doer of the word and not a hearer only, just deceiving our own selves.

120. 41:25

     Thank you.