#DailyDevotion Be Patient Until The LORD Comes

James 5:1-11 Come now, you rich people, cry and howl over the miseries that are coming to you. ²Your riches are rotten, your clothes are eaten by moths, ³your gold and silver are tarnished, and their tarnish will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have piled up treasures in these last days. ⁴But now the wages you never paid the men who reaped your fields cry out. And the groans of those who cut the grain have come to the ears of the Lord of armies. ⁵You have lived here on earth in luxuries and pleasures. ⁶You have fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous man — he doesn’t resist you. ⁷Be patient, fellow Christians, until the Lord comes. See how the farmer looks for the precious crop on the ground and waits patiently for it to get the fall and the spring rains. ⁸You, too, be patient, and keep your courage, because the Lord will soon be here. ⁹Don’t blame your troubles on one another, fellow Christians, or you will be judged. You know, the Judge is standing at the door. ¹⁰As an example of patiently suffering wrong, fellow Christians, take the prophets who spoke in the Lord’s name. ¹¹Remember, we call those happy who endured. You heard how Job endured, and you saw how the Lord finally treated him because the Lord is tenderhearted and merciful.

James begins his letter with a warning to Christians about giving special attention to the rich and ignoring the poor or having contempt for the poor. He comes back around to the topic of the rich again to give them fair warning of what is coming to them if they do not repent of their ways. Now contrary to popular opinion, not everyone who is rich is a miserable sot who got that way from taking advantage of the poor, cheating people and makes mammon their god. It is highly difficult though for any of us not to make mammon, earthly wealth, what we ultimately put our trust in.

It is to those who put their trust in their riches James is speaking to and you don’t even need to be rich to do this. Many of the poor and middle class also put their trust in riches. So we all need to repent of making riches an idol. Here James speaks particularly of hoarding wealth and that wealth being a heaping mess rotting away. It is like the manna which was saved for the next day because they did not trust the LORD to provide for them every day. What are they not doing with their wealth? They are not paying those rightly who have worked for them. Their cries reach into the ears of the LORD of Armies. They have condemn righteous men, i.e. Christians to keep, preserve and increase their wealth. They did not resist as Christ didn’t resist the Jews and Pilate.

In the midst of this, of suffering as Christians, James calls us to be patient until the LORD Jesus Christ returns. Sometimes when we suffer we may look to blames someone and we may blame our fellow Christians. We are warned not to judge one another for our Judge is standing at the door. Open the door to him as you judge yourself rightly and know we deserve no good thing. Whatever good we have is by the mercy and kindness of God. We may indeed suffer wrongly but look at Job. Blessed are those who endure unjust suffering. They are walking in the way of our LORD Jesus Christ. Job eventually was restored greatly because the LORD Jesus is tenderhearted and merciful. On the Last Day, you can be certain whatever losses you experienced in this life will be rewarded greatly in the next. What we are crying over today will seem as nothing compared with what Jesus will replace it with when he returns, if we are faithful to him.

Heavenly Father, cast out the idol of wealth from our hearts and grant us patient endurance so we may receive our eternal rewards when Christ Jesus returns. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.