Corrosion, Corruption and the Call to Persevere

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information in our church, please visit grandparkway.org.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, I'm mindful of a great lyric from an old indigo girl song that says, I've sailed my ship of insecurities until it sank, and I'm crawling upon your shore.

We're crawling upon your shore today, God, because we believe what we just sang.

That all other ground, all other things that we could build our life on will not last.

The hymn writer said that they're sinking sand.

They give the illusion of stability, but when we put the weight of our life on them, they sink.

And our present condition is worse than our previous condition.

And so we've come to you, God, to do what Jesus, what you said to do.

You said to dig down deep and build your life upon the rock.

And when the storm comes, not if it comes.

There's a brand of American Christianity that says if you give enough or you're good enough, the storm's never gonna come.

And yet the Bible says that the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The issue before us today, God, is not is the rain gonna find me?

It's just a matter of time.

And that's not because we're being punished.

We're being invited to be men and women who live what we profess to believe.

God, turn up the volume on that invitation today.

God, make the Bible come alive, cause it to go off in our mouth like pop rocks today.

We pray that now and we give ourselves to it in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, open it up to James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

If you're a guest today, thank you for being here.

I'm teaching through the book of James, and we're up to chapter 5.

And uh if you're wondering about what's on the stage here, uh we we have a food pantry, but we don't have room, so we just run it off the stage.

So after the service, if you're like craving macaroni and cheese, I've got some.

No, I'll tell you why this is here in just a minute, but not now.

James chapter 5, I want to talk to you about this topic: corrosion, corruption, and the call to persevere.

James 5 · chapter mention

Corrosion, corruption, and the call to persevere.

James chapter 5, verse 1, he says, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

James 5:1

Your riches have rotted, your garments are moth eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.

You have laid up treasure in the last days.

Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

If you've got a pen or pencil right in the margin of your Bible by that sentence, uh oh.

It's one thing when people hear you, it's another thing when God hears you.

He says the cries of those that you've ripped off have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

Verse five, you have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence.

You have fatted your hearts in a day of slaughter, you have condemned, you have murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you.

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 remain steadfast.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Jod, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

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.

Corrosion, corruption, and the call to persevere.

Really, I want to break this section of Scripture, verses 1 to 12.

It really I don't want to break it.

It breaks into two sections.

Basically, there's the context and then there's the commands.

There's the context and then the command.

You say, What do you mean?

Let's take the context first of all.

The context is verse 1 to 6, and there's three questions you have to answer in order to understand this passage because the rich, I don't know if you've turned on your TV lately, but the rich are getting throttled on TV.

Have you noticed that?

We got people saying I'm the 99%, and I, yeah, I want some of the 1%, and you ought to kind of a wealth redistribution.

Hey, I don't have anything, but I like to smoke pot and eat Cheetos and sit around in sweatpants and play World of Warcraft 3, and I want to get paid for that.

The Bible doesn't endorse that, by the way.

The Bible is not in favor of this wealth redistribution that's rooted in people's laziness and their demands, okay?

So you gotta understand.

I want you to understand what he's saying.

That's what I mean by context.

There are three questions you have to ask and answer in the first six verses.

The first question is, who is James talking to?

He says, the rich, and you think, yeah, oh, get those people.

So the Bible, not so fast, my friend.

When he says the rich, he's talking about rich non-Christians.

He's not talking about believers.

You say, Well, how do you know?

Just a couple things.

Look at verse 1.

He says, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

He's talking about a day that's gonna come when it's not gonna be so good for you.

He says, by the way, there's three ways you proved your wealth back in biblical days.

Number one, your food.

Secondly, was your clothes, and thirdly was the amount of precious metals you had, silver or gold.

That's why verse 2 he says, Your riches have rotted.

He's talking about your food.

Your food is rotted, your garments are moth-eaten, your gold and your silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you.

We'll get to that in just a minute.

But I want you just, he says, and let's get down to verse five.

He says, You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence.

You have fatted your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you.

He said, How do you know that's the that's people that aren't Christians?

That's like uh that that that's unchristian rich people, rich people don't know God.

Well, just ask yourself, does that describe the behavior of a Christian?

And does it describe the eschatology of the Christian?

In other words, the end times when James starts off in verse 1 and says, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are gonna come upon you.

When you think about heaven, do you feel that way about heaven?

I don't.

I don't think, oh, oh, I can't wait to go to heaven because I'm gonna weep and howl because God's gonna lay the wood to me when I get there.

Absolutely not.

I go home every day, and I don't know why it is, but every day I go home.

I don't get my if I get home at 4:30 or 6.30 or 11:45 at night, and it they're in bed, but usually if I get home during the day, anytime I put my key in the door, I hear from the other side of the door, Daddy, and my two girls come running.

Now the older one's now 14, so that's kind of not so cool.

So she's kind of sits on the couch now and calling, hey dad.

I'm like, don't get up, it's just your dad.

I'm prying the other one off of me, walking with one leg.

Okay, come on, let dad set his back down.

All right, let's sit over here on the couch and tell me about your day.

My kids are crazy about me and they live with a sense of anticipation.

And I'm the same way when I'm home and they come home and I'm like, Sophie, what's up?

How was your day?

Hey, dad.

Dad, can I watch TV?

Dad, can I have some apple juice?

Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.

I think they figured out if I put dad on the front of the sentence, this moron will do anything I ask.

James says to these rich people, that's how you know they're not believers, because he says basically, hey, you it's not going to be good for you.

You weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

When you think about heaven, it's not misery.

It's not misery.

As a matter of fact, the Bible says it's reward.

He says in 2 Corinthians 5, we almost all appear before the judgment seat of God so we can receive what is due to him for the deeds done in the body, whether good or evil.

Jesus said, Lay up for yourself treasure in heaven.

So who's he talking to?

Well, it's wealthy non-Christians.

Because this behavior in the first six verses is not in keeping with a Christian.

You say, How do you know?

That's what I just said, those things he's he kind of spells out there.

Thirdly, and this is where I want to drill down a little bit.

He says, Why, well, the third question is, why is James saying this?

It's important to note that the Bible does not condemn anybody for being rich.

The Bible condemns the sinful use of wealth.

Do you hear the difference?

It's important to know the Bible, there's nowhere in the Bible you can point to and say, Oh, yeah, God hates rich people.

I've had so many people ask me here recently, hey, what do you think God thinks about this occupy Wall Street and occupy Oakland and occupy Houston?

I just said, give them time and we'll get fed up with that, and they'll break out water cannons and plastic bullets and we'll get rid of this nonsense.

And they're like, oh, Pastor, you shouldn't feel that way.

I'm like, hey, the Bible says crazy things like if you don't work, you don't eat.

No one's down there with that on a sign.

Hey, I don't work, so I don't deserve to eat.

See, you can pick anything out of the Bible and twist it to make it say what you feel.

That's not what the Bible's about.

The Bible says, you said, what do you mean?

It doesn't condemn anybody for being rich, it condemns the sinful use of wealth.

And there's basically two words I want to put in your mind today.

The first one's corrosion, the second one is corruption.

Look, if you would in James chapter 5 at verse 3.

James 5 · chapter mention

And James says, in verse 2, he says, Your riches have rotted.

This this nice food you pride yourself on being able to afford.

And your garments are moth-eaten.

Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

You say, What?

What do you mean your gold and silver have corroded?

That word literally means it's rusted.

Now, I don't know about you, but our gold nowadays is more pure.

We have a better refining process, and so gold doesn't rust, but back then it was more of an alloy.

And gold and silver would actually rust.

Matter of fact, the longer you held on to it, the longer you handled it, the more it came in contact with moisture.

Remember when you were a kid and you got chains, you would hold it in your hand and your palm would get kind of sweaty.

That's the way these people did.

They had gold kind of stored up and kind of stacked up and pushed away, and they prided themselves on that.

Hey, listen, if the market tanks and the world goes to hell in the handbasket, we got our Dave Ramsey emergency fund back here.

Oh no, you didn't.

You've been asking them Dave Ramsey.

These guys had like more than they had rooms, they had rooms with silver and gold stacked in it.

And the Bible says this crazy thing.

Hey, your gold has rusted.

How long do you have to hold on to gold for it to rust?

And if you're looking at this stage, you're kind of thinking, Oh, I think I know, oh, was today the day we're supposed to bring our grocery bag full of food for my brother.

Was that today?

This has nothing to do with that.

I kept my mind, could not get away from, God, how long do you have to hold on to money before it starts to corrode?

And then I went to our financial secretary and I said, Hey, do we have any money that's just been sitting around for a while that we hadn't done anything with?

She goes, Well, actually, there was some money given a couple of years ago.

What?

Yeah, somebody gave some money a couple years ago, and they and they said we want to use it, and and we haven't really used it.

And I said, Why didn't you tell me about this?

Well, I told some other people and staff, but I guess I didn't tell you.

No, because I'm not going to get up on Sunday and talk about, hey, don't let your gold corrupt, rich people.

Your gold, the corrosion of your resources will be evidence against you in the judgment.

That's what God says to rich lost people that don't know Jesus.

Because here's how you know they don't know Jesus.

They hold on to their stuff because they put their stuff, their hope is built on nothing less than their 401k and their IRA and the market and what gold is doing.

I got so many phone calls a year ago.

Hey, Neil, you need to buy gold.

Well, see, here's the problem, Goofball.

To buy gold, you gotta have money.

I don't live in your world.

I have a friend that spent$50,000 and bought gold when it was$412 an ounce.

$50,000.

Just sitting around, and you can just take it and go, here, I want some gold.

And then gold got up to$1,500 an ounce.

Do the math on that investment.

And he goes, What do you think?

You have a problem with me, like you know, doing no, not at all.

But you're gonna stand before God and give an account for all that profit you made.

And if all you do is build more houses and buy newer cars, it ain't gonna be good for you, my man, because believers don't live that way.

Now, here's where people get mad at the preacher.

I'm not telling you how to live.

I don't care what your house looks like, I don't care what you drive, I do care about this.

Don't forget that if our silver and gold corrodes, we hold on to it so long, and we love it so much, and we're, ooh, ooh, I got all this.

That'll be evidence against you.

And so, last Saturday night, I went to a banquet for my brother's keeper.

I don't think she's here today.

She'll be in the second service, I think usually Renee Nelson sets about right there.

She leads a little food pantry in A-leaf called My Brother's Keeper.

And I was sitting there at the food pantry and I was like, God, we got to do something because we got some money just sitting around.

And by the way, I'm I'm a physical conservative.

I don't just indiscriminately throw money out the window.

Uh I we have reserves.

We have, we're we're we're we're very we're a plurality of leadership.

We have elders.

Otherwise, I'd give it all away.

So it's part of the good.

There's you know, five other men around the table going, shut up, okay?

That's a crazy idea.

And and so I was at the banquet, minding my own business, eating my chicken and my steamed vegetables or whatever they had there, and got up and I'm like, God, you know what?

We got some money two years.

Two years.

Somebody said, Here, I want to give this to the church, and I want you to do something with it.

And we took it and we just set it over there and forgot about it.

You got any money you've forgotten about?

No, you're fantasizing about some money right now.

You're thinking, man, who forgets about money?

Not me.

And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, God, I'm not gonna be a hypocrite, but I'm gonna get up and say, hey, you don't want your silver and gold corrupt.

And we got some, we got our our our money just corroded, just gathering moss over there.

And Renee got up and said, Yeah, this is a busy time of the year for us, and our our pantries, you know, our food pantry gets a little bare sometime.

Ding.

So I went and loaded my truck up, backed it up to the front door, and said, I gotta go to preschool day in the country.

Can y'all unload this?

Came back, went back to Sam's again.

Had so many people ask me, hey, didn't you have like a wagon train of flatbeds earlier?

Mm-hmm.

And I'm about to get some more.

He said, Man, how many cases of ravioli do you have?

I don't know, about 30.

There's 10 cans in a case, and so a couple of cans, you can feed people.

He said, Is this for you?

Yeah, I don't tell my wife.

I overeat.

Have you ever seen the show hoarders?

I'm gonna be on there next week.

Really?

No, this is for a food pantry.

And then standing in the aisle sandwich, I said, This is for a food pantry in our city.

And people, and your church is paying for this?

Mm-hmm.

Because we have money sitting around, not doing anything, and money is a tool.

And you need to do something with it.

How much money are you supposed to spend?

Well, I was given a budget, but I don't, I'm not in the Dave Ramsey class we're teaching right now.

So I'm about to blow the top out of that.

How much can you spend?

Enough.

I might have to come back next week for some more.

So you're not getting any of this.

All of this after our second service, we'll pull the church trailer up right there by that side door.

And some of you, if you can stay and help us, we need your help.

We're gonna load all this up in the church trailer, and it's gonna be taken tomorrow to my brother's keeper and put in there for people to come and get.

Why?

Because your church is so wealthy, we have money sitting around, corroding.

And I'm not gonna stand for it.

So they're gonna get all this, they're gonna get all the bags out there.

Matter of fact, these pieces of paper they're flying off are maps to my brother's keeper because they have a busy week this week and they need some volunteers.

They need volunteers every day this week.

So if you can volunteer, I want you to come and just pick up a map.

You're not signing up for the year, you're not signing up for every day of the week.

If you can go every day of the week, that's great.

If you can go just three hours on one day, that's great.

But because the Bible says to these rich people that they don't know, don't be mad at them.

They just don't know any better.

When you don't have God as a supreme love of your life, there is no limit to the smallness of what you'll love.

He says, Your gold and your silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you, as if that wasn't enough.

Then, secondly, there's corruption.

Look at verse 4.

Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back from fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence.

You have fatted your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You've condemned, you've murdered the righteous person, and he does not resist you.

That is the context.

You say, Well, I don't know what you mean by corruption.

If you gain wealth by cheating other people, you will never know the peace that comes from an honest day's living.

If you own a business and you rip people off and you cut wages and increase hours, God has a record of that, and the cries of the people that work for you have reached the ears of the Lord, and you can fool everybody, and you can write checks, and you can build hospitals, and you could come up to me after the service and say, Hey, I want to underwrite all of this.

And if you don't go to work tomorrow and treat people humanely, that is gonna cry out against you.

God bless you.

That's the context for these crazy words.

Because here comes the commands.

Look at verse 7.

You still with me?

He said, Look at verse 7.

Be patient.

That's crazy.

Be patient, therefore, brothers.

Therefore, in light of all this, by the way, there's rich people that the only thing they have to love in their life is money.

Don't be mad at them.

Share the gospel with them.

Tell them, hey man, for about$3,500, you could do something about the hungry people in your city.

You don't need another sea dew.

You don't need a newer truck.

Just drive a truck for more than two years.

I have friends of mine, he gets a new truck every two years.

Drives it down to the dealership and gets out and he says, it doesn't smell new anymore.

I'm gonna pick out a new one.

What do you give me for this one?

And he just writes a check.

And he's like, What do you think about that?

I think you're bored.

He's like, and I said, Well, and by the way, I don't care.

I don't care if you got six trucks, I don't care if you got 15 trucks.

But what if you just skip one of these two-year intervals and maybe, I don't know, let's say it's$5,000,$10,000 that you got.

And my friend's got so much money.

I have a friend that has two lots in the Bahamas, and he doesn't have anything built on him.

He likes to go down there and scuba dive for lobsters at night with a glowing light.

And I'm just looking at him.

We're having lunch, and he's telling me this.

He's like, Yeah, you know, you take it, and those lobsters come right up to the light.

He goes, What's wrong?

I want to jump to this table and choke you.

Not because you have lots in the Bahamas that you keep just so you can go over there and scuba dive on.

I don't care.

God, here, God doesn't care how much you possess, God cares about what possesses you.

Say, well, I what do you mean?

Look at verse 7.

We've got to get to the heart of the matter here.

Verse 7, be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer, see, the context is hey, rich people are doing people wrong and they're cheating and they're lying and they're small and their food is rotten and their clothes are moth eaten.

Hey, by the way, a little application right here.

Why don't this week we all go home and look through our closet and anything we haven't worn in a year, we give away?

It's just gonna corrupt.

Y'all are like, alright.

You talk about rich people and their money, you talk about me and my clothes, we're gonna break the fellowship right here.

Am I telling you you have to?

Why don't you just look?

You just look to there and said, Hey, do I need that coat?

I hadn't worn that coat in a long time.

I can get rid of that, I can get rid of those shoes, I can get rid of that.

So we're gonna do that.

Be glad to have it.

See, it gets this this context that he gives these commands.

There's three of them.

He says, be patient, establish your hearts, and and and then take, for example, let's let's take the first one, be patient.

Verse 7 be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer weighs.

See, he doesn't just say be patient and give you no context for it.

He says, Be patient.

And while you're being patient, why, why, why, while Wall Street people are correct.

Let's don't act like they're not they're crooked.

Oh my goodness.

They came out of these mathematical formulas called derivatives and they just made billions of dollars and cheated people and people lost their homes because they financed houses, they gave mortgages to people who couldn't afford a house, okay?

That it's not all their fault.

You know what you can afford and what you can't.

Don't be stupid.

But you don't think God has a record of that?

You enjoy your weekend in the Hamptons now because on judgment day, he's gonna lay the wood to you.

And not because you're rich.

It's not like God goes, hey, I don't like rich people.

No.

That's not it at all.

It's the sinful, indifferent accumulation of wealth.

He says, be patient.

And then he gives a like a he says, while you're being patient, don't just be patient and do nothing.

He said, look, 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.

That word patient is a Greek word macrothemia.

Macrothemia.

And it basically means patiently enduring difficult people.

Uh-oh.

It's these people he was talking about in the first six verses, and you say, no, why do you tell us that?

Because earlier in chapter one, he says, counted all joy when you fall into different temptations or different trials.

Remember that?

Hello?

Remember that?

Are you all new?

Do you remember that?

Yeah, thank you.

Talk to me, okay?

He says, he now, now he says, hey, you know, you gotta be patient.

Macrothemia, it's patiently enduring difficult people.

Earlier in chapter one, when he said, you know, count it all joy when you fall into different trials, that's he was referring to patiently enduring uh difficult circumstances.

That's the Greek word, hoopamone.

Hupamone.

You say, what why do you say that?

Because it's easier to endure circumstances because you can't do anything about circumstances.

It's harder to endure difficult people in a Christ-like way.

Because you can hit people, you can cuss people out in your head.

Not that y'all have never done that.

You can fantasize about harming people.

And he says, This isn't a circumstance.

This is people.

Macrothemia.

Patiently endure difficult people.

And let me give you a person to look at, James says, why you're patiently enduring these rich people who all they have is their food and their clothes and their silver and gold.

Don't hate them, don't be mad at them.

Feel sorry for them.

He says, look at the farmer.

And he uses this phrase, early and the late rains.

Early rains come in October, November, and they make planting possible.

The later rains come in March and April and they ripen the seed and bring it to fruition, to maturity.

The early rains make planting possible.

The later rains make the harvest plentiful.

And the farmer, he says, why does he say, look at the farmer?

I remember I've preached in West Texas on many occasions.

I can just tell you, farmers have more faith than any preacher I've ever met.

Their whole livelihood depends on something that is outside of their control.

Think about that.

The early and the late rains.

Their entire livelihood depends on something that is outside of their control.

And when he says be patient, it's against his backdrop of all this.

James says, be patient.

And we think, how?

Because we hear be patient, we think, oh, you want me to be patient and wait for these people to change?

And James says, no, I want you to be patient.

And what you're really waiting for is to God to demonstrate that He's always the same.

You're not waiting on people to change.

I have friends that have money that we say in the church, well, they're blessed.

They're rich.

They're just rich.

You can say that's that's not a sin.

I got some of the most generous people I know have a lot of money.

There's people in this church that you would think, you know, they're just ordinary, simple, great people.

They come up on occasion and say, hey, did you know anybody that needs anything?

And sometimes it's yes, sometimes it's no.

And they're very generous.

They're like, oh man, great, wonderful.

Absolutely.

Yeah, here, let me do that.

This morning someone stopped me and said, Hey, I heard so-and-so can't pay some bills.

Can I give you a check?

Because I don't want them to know who I am, but I want to bless them.

You go to people like that, you go to church with people like that, who their silver and gold is not going to corrode.

James says, Hey, while you're being patient, it's not waiting on those people to change.

It's waiting on you, waiting on, waiting to be reminded that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Secondly, the second command, the first command is be patient.

The second command is establish your hearts.

Look at verse 8 and 9.

He says, while you're being patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Do not grumble against one another, brother, so that you may not be judged.

Behold, the judge is standing at the door.

Do not grumble against one another.

You see, because when you endure hardship and you endure difficult people, you get this sense of justice, and what happens is it's kind of like Lord of the Flies.

You're tempted to turn on each other and you begin to bite and devour each other.

And he says, No, be patient.

By the way, establish your hearts.

Shore up what you know to be true.

You say, What do you mean?

Somebody asked me recently, they said, Do you really read the Bible a lot?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I try to almost every day.

There's some days I don't.

I don't get in bed at night and go, Oh, I read the Bible today.

I gotta get up, read the Bible.

No.

But here's why I like to read the Bible, because it establishes my heart.

Think of it as kind of like a levees around New Orleans.

After Hurricane Katrina, they all kind of realize we don't have, we need to kind of shore up and fortify these things because they can't keep the flood back.

Because when you endure difficult circumstances and difficult people, if your heart is not shored up by the truth of God's word, your heart will just get crushed.

And you'll just give up.

You'll just lose faith, lose faith and hope and just kind of go, well, it doesn't matter.

No, it matters.

It matters.

Third thing.

Third command that James gives us is he says, take for example, look at verse 10.

What do you mean, take for example?

Verse 10 he says, as an example of suffering and patience.

Don't separate the two.

Suffering and patience have to go together, or else it's not suffering.

It'll start to feel like punishment.

As an example, 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 remain steadfast.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Job and you have seen the purpose of the Lord.

How the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

Notice that he says, You have heard of the steadfastness of Job and you have seen the purpose of the Lord.

It involves to be steadfast, you've got to hear, but you also got to see.

But I want to just draw your attention to that little phrase.

He says, take, for example, as an example of patience and suffering, the prophets.

Now, when I say prophets, just any names, kind of think of names that come to your mind.

It's kind of the guys in the Old Testament with the funny names, kind of towards the end of the Bible, like Malachi and Amos and Hosea and people like that.

Like Hosea, you said, Who is Hosea?

Hosea was a man in the Old Testament that had a wayward wife.

She was just crazy.

And she would go and she became a prostitute.

She was married and she went and just pimped herself out to other men.

And she was being sold on the slave market.

And God told Hosea, go buy her back.

Can you imagine?

You want me to what?

I want you to go down there.

Your wife has been selling herself to other men, and now she's for sale in the open market.

And I want you to go buy her back.

And here's why.

Because God says, I want everyone to know that I'm that long-suffering and that patient.

I got that much macrothumia in me.

And I want you to buy her back as an example.

And so when James says, take for an example of patience and suffering.

Somebody asked me, if your wife ever cheated on you, could you take her back?

I don't know.

I had to go home and look at her, give her the stink eye right now and say, Listen, woman, let me tell you something.

But then I remember Hosea, and Hosea went down.

And James says, with reason today, you go down there, Hosea, he reminds us, take, for example, the prophet, and you buy back this woman that does not deserve to be redeemed.

Reminds you of anybody?

You should see them in the mirror when you shave or brush your teeth.

You are a person.

I am a person who is bought back, who is redeemed, who someone gave something to have rightful claim, to restore me back to a covenant relationship that I didn't deserve, but he wanted me to have.

Okay.

How do you seek the Lord?

Just seek him.

Okay, one more time.

I don't know if you heard me, but how do you do that?

Just seek him.

Okay.

Thank you.

And so I uh was going down uh to the to the to the shower house, and I thought, I'm gonna take my Bible and sit down and read a little bit.

And so I unzipped it, and I did this.

Do not do this, but I did this.

I said, God, I don't know what being called to ministry is, but I want you to give me an idea.

And I just cracked my Bible open and looked down, and it said, Ezekiel's call right above chapter two.

And I thought, oh, it's a sign from above.

Mighty power from above, come a swooping like a dove.

And I read these words.

Ezekiel chapter 2, verse 1.

Ezekiel 2:1

And he said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak with you.

And he spoke to me, and the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

And he said to me, Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels who have rebelled against me.

They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day.

The descendants also are impudent and stubborn.

I send you to them, and you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God, and whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house.

They will know that a prophet has been among them.

And you, son of man, be not afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words, though briars and thorns are with you, and you sit on scorpions, be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house, and you shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house.

But you, son of man, hear what I say to you.

Be not rebellious like that rebellious house.

Open your mouth and eat what I give you.

And when I looked, behold, the hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it, and he spread it before me.

And it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe.

And I promptly closed it back up and said, I don't think I'm called to that.

Sounds like a bunch of rebellious people.

They're a rebellious house, and you gotta say whatever God says, and sitting on scorpions.

Are you kidding me?

I've been a Christian 13 months.

I don't want to sign up to sit on no scorpions and don't pay no attention to what they say or how they look at you.

Church people don't look at you fucking hold your hands out.

Church people don't talk about you behind their back, do they, God?

Walked out of that bathroom stall, and I flushed every idea of ever being called to ministry.

I just said, I don't think I want to do that.

About three o'clock that morning, out of the dead sleep, I got woken up.

And someone said to me, I don't think you understand how this works.

You don't tell me what you're gonna do.

I tell you what you're gonna do.

So don't ever tell me what you're not gonna do, ever again.

And we had to room with other guys through counselors because this was the week of we were getting ready.

This was during orientation, kids hadn't even showed up yet.

And I got up and I went back down to that shower house bathroom, and I went right in that middle stall, and I sat right back down on that seat I was sitting on, and I said, I'm sorry.

I'll say whatever you tell me to say, I'll do whatever you tell me to do.

If they're a rebellious house, if they listen or not, I'll do whatever you say.

I didn't make a deal with God.

You don't make deals with God.

I acknowledge before God that God was right and I was wrong.

That's not a deal, that's a confession.

And I don't know, I don't have words to describe it, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you about it.

But something happened in that bathroom stall that middle of the night.

And I got up and I closed the door, and the next day somebody said, Man, how you doing, Neil?

Well, I'm good.

I'm trying to just get my head around what it means to be called.

See, take as an example of patience and suffering the prophets.

And finally, this morning, you still you still with me?

It doesn't matter if you are or not.

I read it in the Bible, you're a rebellious house.

Sinners.

I don't want you to miss this.

Look at verse 11.

He says, Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord.

How the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

Hear that phrase again.

How the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

Just mark that in your mind.

That compassionate, when it says the Lord is compassionate, it's a Greek word.

It only appears here in the entire New Testament.

It's palas plaghtnos.

And that's why it only appears here in the old in the New Testament.

Palas plagnos.

And it means many boweled.

You say, uh oh, what?

He says, the Lord is compassionate.

What do you mean?

The Lord is compassionate.

For the Jewish people, the bowels was the seat of emotion.

When Jesus looked out over Jerusalem in Matthew chapter 9, and it says he was moved with compassion for them.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

He felt it to the core of his being.

It's like his soul just kind of, oh, I wish that you would listen to me.

The Bible says here in James, these people that are suffering under some difficult circumstances because of some difficult people.

He says, by the way, God is many Bibles.

He has the capacity to feel what you feel beyond your capacity to feel it and to feel everybody at once and not be overwhelmed with it.

The Bible says he's a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

And if you've got if you're in James, just turn a few pages back to the left to Hebrews chapter 4, and we'll be done this morning.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

Hebrews chapter 4, verse 14 says this.

Hebrews 4:14

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

In the midst of difficult people and difficult circumstances, hold fast our confession.

Shore up your hearts, people.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

He's many boweled.

You don't have a high priest that just gives out religious information and advice.

He's a sympathizer.

He's able to sympathize with our weakness.

But we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are and yet without sin.

Let us then, because of this, therefore, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Here's why you don't have to be afraid of God.

It's because when you draw near to Him, He is many-bowed.

He sits on the throne of grace and He's full of mercy.

You don't have to come with an explanation.

Well, I will see, I was kind of saving that for uh, He doesn't call you to be unwise with your money.

He calls you to be Christ-like and to be spirit-led.

He says, Don't leave guilty today.

Don't leave wondering, hey, was God talking about me?

God says, hey, here's the context and here's the command.

And the command are real simple.

It's just three simple phrases.

Be patient.

Be patient.

Be like the farmer.

Because don't just be satisfied with the early rain.

Wait and be patient for that later rain.

Because it's not enough just to plant a crop, just to go through the motions.

He wants you and I to experience the harvest.

He says, be patient.

Establish your hearts.

Take for an example of patience and suffering, the prophets, Hosea, Isaiah, Job.

He mentions Job in here.

He says, by the way, don't forget over all of this.

I know it feels like you might be forgotten.

God, are you kidding me?

He's many bowel.

He has the capacity to feel this on a level you never will.

And that's why the Bible says in Isaiah 53, of this Jesus, that it pleased God to place upon him the iniquity of us all.

If he can take the sin of the world, you don't think he can take the sorrow of the world?

You don't think he can take the difficulty?

You don't think he can take what you brought with you today into this service and sit there weighed down with right now.

That's why James says, hey, don't forget that the Lord is compassionate.

Hold your hands out.

You do not just have a God and Savior, you have a high priest.

And he finished his work and he sat down.

Depart now.

And live as if it's really finished.

And he meant what he said, and he knew what he did.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.