Patience With Others

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Mike Ebenroth here. It's been a week since I've been in this posh studio. I was in New York City last weekend at Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Upper East Side, I think on 62nd Street, right by a little coffee shop called Birch.

You can write me, mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. All right, today, what do we have ready? I didn't say what do we have on tap. We don't do that here. I guess you could have root beer on tap. Sarsaparilla on tap.

Sarsaparilla. So much for that. I just looked down and I saw something here written, so much to learn about the cross. And then I just said so much when I looked down to see so much and I think it's, it's a God thing.

Oh, I do not like it when people say that it's a God thing. That's just, I don't know. It just seems irreverent. Just seems like, I don't know. But these days people wear hats to church and I don't mean ladies.

We had an older gentleman here at the church years ago and he was confronting the young men who would wear hats, baseball caps. And I said, you know what? I don't think they should be wearing baseball caps.

But maybe the guys have psoriasis. Maybe they've never been taught. We have other fish to fry and right now it's not baseball caps in the church. So he's like, okay, I see where you're coming from. So then he confronted, today on the show, I want to talk a little bit about dealing with other Christians who are less than perfect.

Obviously, no Christians are perfect. And we sometimes get irritated by other Christians. Now, I know you probably don't, but maybe I'm the only one who sometimes gets irritated by other Christians. And I probably irritate other Christians more than they irritate me.

But how do we deal with other Christians in a world that's bonkers? Sometimes we suffer just the effects of the fall. Sometimes we suffer the effects of the fall and persecution from other people. Sometimes it's the fall, it's the worldly system, it's other people.

Where would we go for advice on how to get along with people and not be so irritated by other people when we're in the kiln of trouble in society? We're far from a Christian nation. This is not a show on Christian nationalism.

But where would we go? And so the answer today is we're going to go to the book of James. I have been preaching in the gospel of Jesus according to Luke. And I took a little detour through James for lots of reasons.

One, it was a snow Sunday. We had one Sunday here where it snowed a lot, few people showed. Then the next Sunday, no people showed because we had a huge ice storm and it was dangerous. And I just kept going in James a little bit.

I think this Sunday will be my last Sunday in James. And I'll be back to the book of Luke, the gospel of Jesus according to Luke. And I thought, you know what? This is good for me. How do I deal with people that are less than perfect?

And the real key in James 5, 7 through 12 is the word patience or patient.

Be patient.

Patiently Waiting for the Lord’s Return

So today we're talking about being patient. Are you a patient person? I wonder why we call people patients in hospitals. Probably you have to be patient. When I was in the hospital for 16 days with COVID, I had to be patient for my food, for pretty much everything.

You just have to wait, wait, wait, wait. Maybe patients have to be patient. Patients, are there patient patients? We'll find out. So today, patience in suffering while we wait for the Lord's return.

All right.

Are you ready? James 5, 7 and following. Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains.

You also be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door.

As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. That's related to patience, and we'll find out why and how.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. Now, it looks like the rest of the passage there, the next verse, rather, doesn't really go along with it.

It's indented in most Bibles. And as I'm turning to James 5, it says,. But above all, verse 12, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.

I think that ties into all this, and hopefully we'll have enough time to talk about that. We are in between the first coming of Christ and the second coming. The first coming of Christ, of course, has happened, and we wait the Lord's return with eager anticipation, anxiously, earnestly, with great anticipation, yearning for the Lord's return.

2 Peter 3, Titus 2, Revelation 19, we're waiting for the Lord's return. And while we're waiting, we are not living in paradise, and things are troubled here. We live in the last days. Difficult times will come during those days, and people, according to 2 Timothy 3, are lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

We live in a society that Romans 1 would talk about how God gave them over to all kinds of things that are not proper via the depraved or the reprobate mind. So how do we live in such a world while we're waiting for the Lord Jesus?

And the key word is we're to be patient. We are to be patient. James 5, 7, be patient, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. We are suffering now, difficulty now, persecution now, trials now, and when the Lord comes back, will He not right all the wrongs?

Will He not make everything holy and good? Will He not exercise justice and wrath, and won't He be righteous? And we know the answer is yes to all those questions. And so here in a very pastoral way, James is saying, brothers, I want you to be patient until the Lord returns.

I want you to, let's think of some synonyms, to be long-suffering, to forbear, to bear under, to hold out, to restrain your soul, to wait with patience and expectation, to, as one writer said, hold one's spirit in check.

We're to be patient. Otherwise, we might be tempted to despair or to bitterness or to anxiety or something like that. So, we're trying to be very careful here. We are waiting for the Lord to return. And while we're waiting, we're supposed to be patient.

Now, he's going to talk about being patient with other people. Patience, while we're waiting for the Lord's return, we're patiently waiting for Him, that's true, but we're going to have to be patient as we wait for Him, and we have to be patient with other people.

That's interesting. Now, we know the Lord's going to come back. Vance Havener talked about the untils of the Bible, until the coming of the Lord. And by the way, no patience needed in heaven. You don't have to be patient in heaven.

Trials aren't going to last forever. And we're waiting for the King to come back. And it's the same way the men of Galilee have watched Him go into heaven. He's going to come back. So said the angel. Two men, white clothing stood beside them.

He's coming back. And so we're going to be waiting. We live in a fast-paced instant society. You can drive up to fast food places and see timers so that when the person pulls up and says, I'd like a Dunkin' Donuts half-calf, that the timer goes on, and they want to serve them within X amount of minutes.

We are on the clock always. And so we are to be patient. There is a lot of bad stuff going on, and we want to make sure that God will repay, and He is the one to avenge, and we're not going to have to get after people.

We are waiting for the King to come back, and we want to make sure that our attitude is longing for the Lord and just waiting for Him, but also to then be patient with other people. Now we're going to get there.

He does in chapter 5, verse 7, talk about the farmer and the precious fruits and being patient. And certainly when you think of farming, you have to think of patience. Now I've never owned a farm, but I worked on a farm for several summers, and you can't coax growth.

You can't force growth. It's just a slow growth, right? They wait. Farmers wait. And here James, like he does regularly, has great pictures of speech, figures of speech, understanding very quickly about farmers and how they sow the seeds, and they weed, and they water, but God has to give the growth.

And so they're just waiting confidently that there will be plants that come up, and we're waiting confidently that the Lord will return. And so then he says in verse 8, you also be patient. He says it again.

This is urgent. While we are waiting, we're to strengthen our hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. We are to stand firm. We are to establish our hearts. We are to have a steely resolve. We're to have stable hearts, stout-hearted hearts.

That's easy to say.

Psalm 57 has the idea. My heart is steadfast, O God. My heart is steadfast. I will sing, yes, I will sing praises. Firm in the faith, steadfast, established. Same word Jesus, where he would set his face toward Jerusalem.

Having our hearts strengthened, the Lord is near. The Lord is easily going to come back. I said not easily come back. Well, it will be easy for him. Eminent is what I was looking at. The eminence, the end of all things is at hand.

Jesus is coming back. We don't know the day or the hour, but he's going to come back personally, judge the living and the dead, and for us, we will have great joy in his presence. He's coming back in an hour we don't expect.

He's coming back in glory with all the angels with him, and he will sit on his glorious throne. That's what Mark says. The powerful one, the infinite one, the eternal one, the incomprehensible one, the one that Habakkuk 3 talks about, his radiance is like the sunlight.

He has rays flashing from his hand, and there is the hiding of his power. Job 9, were he to snatch away, who could restrain him? Who could say to him, what are you doing? We know what the answer is. No one could say that.

So, here's what it says. You didn't think I was going to get to this, but I am. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. So, we have this section here, be patient, be patient, farmers, coming of the Lord, we're getting stressed out, we're getting persecuted, we're having trials, fallen world, world system, and then it says, don't grumble against one another, brothers.

This is the family code. Every family's got a code, and that code is called the third use of the law. And the God who loves us, the God who sent the Lord Jesus, the God who is our Father, who art in heaven, who's holy, he doesn't want us to grumble against one another.

Jesus is standing at the door. This is urgent. He could return any time. And if we're not careful, we can be bugged by other people. We can become irritable, and we can grumble, and we can groan. Christ is going to appear, bringing salvation for those who are waiting for him.

And while we're waiting, we can buy into the complaining culture of the world. It can infect the church. Now, certainly we sin against one another. James will go on to talk about that. We don't always act perfectly toward one another.

And if we're not careful, we're going to sigh and grumble and complain about each other. Now, there are words for complaining that are grumbling, that are open grumblings, open complaints. You say the word, how could you?

Who do you think you are? There are things like that. But this word here is more of a sigh. It's kind of audible, but there's no words. That's the word in James chapter five. Present imperative, don't ever do that.

Somebody on earth, Christian, doesn't really act the right way, doesn't do what you want them to do. And it is a big, long sigh. Oh, brother. This is Israel groaning to God during their slavery in Egypt.

You groan inwardly and you grumble outwardly. That's what commentators would say. This is, you don't really like what somebody's doing, but you don't really say it out loud. So you're just like, I read one guy who called it a muffled mutter.

The muffled mutters. I don't like what they're doing. They're bugging me. I'm getting a lot of pressure in this world. Satan's real. Persecution's real. The fall's real. My own sin's real. The world system's real.

Living in the last day's real. Jesus hasn't come back yet. I know he will. And then somehow we take it out on other people. Instead of bearing with one another in love,.

Ephesians two,.

We take it out against other people. But the Lord is standing at the door, as it were. He's near. He sees. We don't want to fall prey to having a hard life, and then we take it on somebody else. The Lord is looking.

I don't want to be involved with divide and conquer, Satan's pawn for having disunity, having no love in the local church with other Christians. And here the focus is, instead of on the Lord, it's on other people.

We're not to be judging.

We just learned that in chapter four. We're to be careful with our tongue. We learned that in chapter three. The judge is right there at the door. I don't want to be chastened. It's like he's right around the corner.

It's going to happen any time. It's a warning in one sense.

Be careful.

It's a consolation on the other sense. On the other hand, that it's a comfort he's coming back. We're to do all things without grumbling or disputing. Philippians tells us why, that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God, above reproach, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world.

Could it be said on No Compromise Radio Ministry that impatience with other people is impatience toward God? He could have sent the sun back yesterday. He could have rearranged the world. He has decrees.

He's sovereign. He providentially rules over everything. So we want to be careful that we don't fall into this at home, at the local church,.

Where we work.

I mean, you can do a good study about prophets of old. They were a good example of suffering and patience. They spoke in the name of the Lord, verse 10 of James 5, and we consider them blessed when they remain steadfastness.

Steadfast, just like Job. It's easy for me to talk today. Law, gospel, a primer. Cancer is not your shepherd. Available on Amazon, or if you want to buy a bunch. Somebody bought 50 copies a while ago.

Somebody bought 75 copies. A lot of people buy 10, 20 copies. Hope it's helpful to you. So just think about those Old Testament prophets. Elijah enduring pain from King Ahab. Jeremiah suffering. Daniel suffering.

Think Lion's Den. Daniel said to God, we have not listened to your servants, the prophets who spoke in your name, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. Hey, they weren't listening, but here James wants you to listen.

Prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. You watch what the Lord did through them. And you're thinking they were steadfast. They were patient. They were persevering under trial, James 1, 12. They were blessed.

The Bible says, through the words of the Lord Jesus, rejoice and be glad, free reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who went before you, or who were before you. The steadfastness of Job.

Losing his wealth, losing his children.

Yet he says,.

I know that my redeemer lives. And you've seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. The Lord cares. He doesn't really explain the circumstances,.

But he just says,.

Don't take it out on other people. Think of me. Don't take it out on other people. Think of me. And I am compassionate and merciful. I am compassionate and merciful. Now, other people might not be compassionate at the moment.

Other people might not be merciful at the moment, but the Lord is full of compassion. Not just compassion, but full of compassion. God's compassion. That word is used a lot, and it always refers to God's compassion, with one exception, with the Samaritans' compassion for the wounded man.

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love, and faithfulness. You think of Jesus. He feels compassion for them, because they're like sheep without a what?

Shepherd.

He saw the great multitude after he comes ashore. He had compassion on them and healed their sick. Lord, we want our eyes to be opened. And Jesus moved with compassion, touched their eyes, and immediately they regained their sight and followed him.

Compassion, compassion, compassion. And here, unlike all those other times, we see the word compassion. It's extra compassion, poly-compassion, full of compassion and merciful. He's not hard-hearted.

He's the father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction. Think, well, Warren Wiersbe is right when he said, when you find yourself in the fire, remember that God keeps his gracious hand on the thermostat.

And that leads into the kind of a verse that somebody, most people, they don't know what to do with it. And it's verse 12, but above all my brothers do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no so that you may not fall under condemnation.

Now, people read above all and they're like, this is the most important thing of the book. I don't think that's true. I think he says above all, but he is right there in the context,.

But above all,.

So he's not saying chapters one, two, three, four, and five up to this point now, but now this is the most important, but in the last section about being patient and suffer well. And by the way, when you're patient, you're not going to somehow have these oaths to get you out of situations.

You're not going to make a vow to really not be honest,.

But you might even say,.

And when you're getting persecuted, I don't even know what it's like. This is just what I've been told because I've never really suffered that much for my faith. You might try to get out of something and you might use an oath back in those days to get out of it.

No, don't swear by heaven or by earth or by some oath. Just fear the Lord, your God, serve him, cling to him. That's all you need to do. This is language that's very similar to the Lord Jesus's. You don't need to try to say, you know what?

Fingers crossed, hands behind my back. You ask me something and I'll tell you the truth. It'll be yes, yes, and no, no. I don't have categories of kind of true and kind of not. No, I'm not going to take a vow to get out of something.

And by the way, isn't that one of the most impatient things you could do? Shouldn't you just hold up underneath whatever persecution? I don't need to say something about God's name or heaven or earth to guarantee what I say is true.

No, I should have my yes be yes and my no be no. Swearing on a stack of Bibles, on my mother's graves, God as my witness. No, I should just be honest. There's nothing wrong with a real oath, but I don't need the oath here.

I'm Kevin Roth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. So today we're talking about, and we did talk about, I talked about, patience with other people. Now we land the plane and now we move to preaching. Are you a patient person?

Do you want to be a patient person? Who's on the receiving end of your impatience more than anyone else? Who's the one that receives the sighs and the groans more than anyone else? Who's the one where it's maybe not even audibly or maybe nothing with air in your nose, but just internally it's, I breathe in, sound like a smoker.

Probably it's people at home Probably it's your spouse. Probably it's your children. Probably it's somebody at church. We don't want to do that, do we? I don't want to do that. Do you like it when people are patient to you?

Patient with you? Patient for you? Patient against you? How many prepositions can we find? We want to be patient. The Lord's coming back. You don't have to be patient forever. There's no patience needed in heaven.

Just one more day, Lord, help us to be patient. You've given me security so I know I'm going to go to heaven. I don't have to waste my time saying to myself, am I really saved or not? I'm trusting in the Lord Jesus and so now I can love other people.

And if I'm to love them and want their best, certainly I'm not going to express myself with sighing and groaning and everything else. Think about the Lord Jesus, how patient He was. How patient He is.

Patient on earth and patient even now. So we want to make sure that we're waiting for the Lord's return and so our eyes are up. Our eyes aren't down on other people. You can write me, Mike at No Compromise Radio and some people even ask me to do shows on stuff and I've done them.

So you never know. Mike Ebenroth, NoCo. Wednesdays, by the way, go to our YouTube channel. We lost our YouTube channel. They're back up again. Mario is doing a great job. We have five or six videos on the No Compromise Radio channel on YouTube.

Tune in.