We’re approaching the end of James’ letter with a quick look back at every use of “works” throughout the entire book, and his last use of the word in regard to the farmer. We do a deep-dive into what “establishing” really means, and we learn the art of looking forward to the next advent (and not just celebrating the first).
The Technicalities
We’re rounding the corner on the tail end of James’ letter, and he’s transitioning to the purest and surest way of working out your faith: with patience and perseverance and persevering in prayer. We’ll get to that last one next week when we finish the book together. For now? Let’s talk about patient perseverance and the interesting dichotomy James introduces here, which contrasts wildly with the impatient and greedy field owners of the previous verses. The ones who were so eager for cash and getting their financial profit now that they scraped it off the top, cheating the field workers and harvesters who worked their land for them of the pay they were due.
“That said,” James wrote in James 5:7, “in response to that, be patient as you wait for the Lord’s return.” He uses a Greek word that describes having a long spirit (or, more specifically, a long-enduring temper) and is marked by a certain calmness and persevering patience in the face of suffering and adversity.
“Wait for His arrival,” the Message’s version reads. “You see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work. Be patient like that. Stay steady and strong.”
If you look a little bit more closely at the “farmer” word, you’ll see a very simple definition, but one that holds a whole lot of weight in the context of the faith-working we’ve talked about at length throughout our digging here. It’s a compound of two other Greek words: gē, meaning “land,” and ergon, the same word consistently used for “works” throughout this book. When James says, “Look at the farmer,” he’s saying, “Look at the soil-tiller” or, simply, “the land-worker.”
Now, before we go any further into this passage, I want to do a quick recap of James’ use of ergon throughout his letter, starting with letting patience have its perfect ergon-work (James 1:4), followed by the truth that a doer of the ergon-work is blessed in all she does (James 1:25). Then there’s James 2:14 and faith without ergon-works profits no one at all, in fact, it’s completely dead without them (2:17) because faith is shown by ergon-works (2:18). And don’t forget Abraham, who was justified by ergon-works (James 2:21), and his ergon-works perfected his faith (2:22). They are, by the way, the same ergon-works that justify you and I (2:24), that justified Rahab (2:25), and are done in the meekness of wisdom (3:13).
That said, James uses the word one last time to drive the point home here in James 5:7 when he uses the land-worker who waits, looks for, and expects the field-fruit as an example of how we are to wait for Jesus’ triumphant second coming. But, here’s the surprising part of the waiting James describes: it’s multi-layered. He uses two different Greek words there in verse seven. The first, ekdechomai, (used in the phrase “the farmer waits”), is looking for, expecting, and awaiting the arrival of something (in this case, the fruit of his field). And the second is makrothymeō, used for “waiting patiently for it.” It means continually and bravely enduring the daily wait for the fruit he’s hoping for and counting on until he receives the rain that will both sprout and mature the fruit. And here’s the thing about that receiving: it’s the same word from back in James 1:7 and the early admonishment to ask God in faith without doubting, waiting patiently in the daily expectation that he will receive it.
And just when you think you’ve wrapped your mind around the multi-layered waiting and twice-mentioned patience, James says it again: “You also, be makrothymeō-patient,” continually waiting and bravely enduring until what you see and expect in faith is real and tangible, right before your eyes. To do that, you have to establish your heart.
It was right there, at that “establish” word, that life took over. I had prepared as much as I could, getting ahead on content and writing, knowing that major surgery was coming down the pike for me, but, still, in the healing weeks that followed, as I eased my way back into some light digging and mostly being still in God’s presence, I couldn’t get beyond the establishing. It was a hurdle my brain could not get its feet over, so I dug into the Greek word repeatedly. When I was done digging there, I moved on to its Hebrew counterpart and did the same. I looked at the patterns and word usages, and do you know what I discovered? Establishing is fundamentally grounded in setting something into place with a foundation so secure that it will remain standing in its place for countless generations after its placing. (Think Joshua 4 and the memorial stones that were set up and standing in the midst of the Jordan and remain still today.)
But there is an additional detail throughout the usage of the setting, placing, and establishing: it’s often used in the context of the direction in which a person sets their gaze or the direction in which they are to look. So, when James says, “Establish your heart, for the coming of the Lord is at hand,” he means that you are not only to place your heart firmly in the truth that Jesus will come back at any day, any moment, but you are to set your gaze upon Him while you wait. Look at Him and only Him.
And then, James seems to suddenly switch subjects in verse nine when he says, “Don’t grumble against one another.” But it’s just a further reiteration of an already established heart and that ever-constant reminder of persevering patiently because it’s in the impatience of waiting that the grumbling starts. But if your heart is properly established, your gaze rightfully fixed, and you find yourself patiently present in God’s presence, you provide the solid space for others to do the same, naturally encouraging the people around you to continue in their own perseverance instead of grumbling against their own version of impatience. And, when you grumble, you will be the one judged worthy of punishment anyway – not them. And the Judge is right there, standing right at the door. Don’t you want to be caught in the act of glorying, not grumbling, when He walks in?
Speaking of gaze-fixing, James says in verse ten, fix your gaze on the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, who spoke a lot of not-so-pleasant things to some very important people because they couldn’t not. Things like Isaiah 39:1-7, when Isaiah told the reigning king that, because of his excessive pride, everything he had, all of his treasures, gold, silver, spices, and jewels meticulously collected by his fathers before him, would be carried off by the Babylonian king. Nothing would be left. Even his descendants would become slaves and eunuchs in the Babylonian king’s palace.
Or Jeremiah 26, when Jeremiah spoke every word that God spoke to him, not holding back any part of any detail at all of the judgment that was coming, and everyone who heard it responded collectively with the same reaction: they wanted to kill him. In response? Jeremiah doubled down.
“Do with me as seems good and right to you,” he said, and the key, here, is that he did it without any hint of grumbling because he knew what Paul knew when he wrote Hebrews 10:36 – that after he had done the will of God, he would receive the promise. “Do with me what you will, but I will not sugarcoat anything. God said what He said, and it’s up to you to respond.”
But, most of all, in all of your waiting and patient perseverance and doing of faith, James says, “Never take an oath.” Do not swear that God will do what you are waiting, expecting, and believing Him to do. Don’t say, “I swear to God Himself that the rains will come,” the crops will grow, or the harvest will be full. Just keep your face locked on God while you’re waiting. He’s right there at the door. He’ll do the rest.
Making it Personal
Before we get into the tangible tips for making this passage personal to you, I want to point out a very important detail about the waiting farmer from James 5:7 or, rather, about the rain upon which he consistently and patiently waits for the success of his crop and his livelihood.
But, before I get to that, I want to tell you about the canal that runs near our home. It was a warm afternoon in early October, and the leaves on the trees couldn’t decide if they wanted to stay green or paint their faces with the fall colors of the foliage, slowly giving into the changing season all around them. I walked down the street with my three children and turned the corner to walk another block to the edge of the water they thought was a river where they could throw some rocks. We were within days of the canal water shutting off for the season, getting in our last throws while we could.
We live in a high-desert mountain town that depends upon two canal systems (covering more than 700 miles) to provide agricultural and industrial water for five local towns (including its subdivisions, parks, and schools) and its farms and ranches by diverting it from the main river in our region. The canal systems run at 100% capacity from May to October, “irrigation season,” they call it. In the winter? They are bone dry as the Wickiup Reservoir stores up its reserves for the months that the farmers and ranchers need the water the most.
The land-workers that James mentions in this passage didn’t have that kind of dependable and predictable irrigation system. There were no large rivers in the area to supply the abundance of water they consistently needed to grow their crops. Sure, there were creeks and springs in most of the valleys, but their flow depended on the weather, leaving the farmers entirely dependent upon the seasonal rains as the sole water supply for themselves, their animals, and their fields. The spring rains got the crops growing. And the rains in the fall matured them. A lack of rain in either season at the time that they were due resulted in a complete harvest failure.
The people who read James’ letter knew that the land-workers were totally and completely dependent upon God to bring the rain. Now comes the “making it personal” part. Take out the “land” part of “land-worker” and replace it with whatever your doing-word is. “Look at the word-worker, the women-worker, the camera-worker, the fitness-worker.” You’re doing the same amount of work as the farmer, putting in the time, sowing the seed. Sometimes the fruit of your labor is immediate, but, more often than not, it’s delayed much longer than you would like it to be. That’s exactly how God wants it. He wants you to be entirely dependent upon Him because, if you aren’t, He’s not the one receiving the glory in the end – you are.
Do the work – whatever that work looks like for you that goes hand-in-hand with your faith. Do the work and wait for God to water it with His rain. And the best way to do that? It’s to be patient in His presence, living in the daily expectation that Jesus can (and will) arrive at any time. Take a peek over in Luke 2 to see this in action, first, with Simeon, beginning in verse 25. And, again, with Anna, in verses 36-38. These were two people who were constantly looking for and daily expecting the coming Messiah (for Anna, with the same daily fervency for 84 years). She didn’t depart the temple. She lived there, breathed there, and established her heart there.
Remember, the word “establish” from James 5:7 means to place firmly, set fast, and render constant. It’s keeping your face perpetually turned toward something. Now, think back to James 4:8 when James said, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” He used similar language there to a verse over in 2 Chronicles when the Spirit of God came upon Azariah (a prophet), who then spoke to Asa (the king of Judah).
“The Lord is with you while you are with him,” he said in 2 Chronicles 15:2, “if you seek Him, He will be found by you.”
Did you catch that? “The Lord is with you while you are with Him. Not “the Lord will be with you,” but “is with you,” present tense. Also, the Hebrew word for “with” means “close to” and “beside.” It also speaks to equal resemblance and can be translated “as long as.”
As long as you’re in with Him, He’s in with you. And, “If you seek Him” (present tense), “He will be found by you.” The seeking that Azariah describes comes through treading – it’s a word picture that describes frequenting God’s presence so much and so often that you trample down the ground around it. The Hebrew word also means “to apply yourself to anything, to study, to practice.” It’s following Him and practicing His presence by learning and digging into His Word. It’s going to Him with on-target prayer (hello, James 4:4) and worshiping Him with both digging hands.
That is the kind of active patience James means – it’s being present in His spiritual presence until Jesus’ future, visible presence is back here on earth.
Be patient until His visible presence. Be present in His Spirit because being patient for something is always doable when you’re distracted by Someone else. Always.
Thanks so much for listening!
