What does it mean to be "blessed"?
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Good Morning!
As always, I am excited to be with all of you this morning.
Today we are going to talk about patience, endurance, and being blessed by God.
We will get to all that, but I want to start by saying that it is such a blessing to enjoy God’s presence with all of you each week.
As some of you may know, Brittany, Able, Elijah, and Ari Meek were in town this week, and some of us got to visit with them briefly.
I also talked with Russ on the phone a few times, and both Russ and Brittany shared how they missed all of you.
Without getting too far off track and sharing a lot of details, suffice it to say that life has been difficult for them since they moved.
They greatly miss our church family, and I believe it is because of the spirit-filled worship and fellowship that we share.
Russ told me Wednesday about what they have gone through recently, and as I spent time with God throughout that day and the rest of this week, God has spoken and sent so much encouragement.
One of the ways God did this was through Carey.
I was sharing Russ’s story with him Wednesday night, and Carey shared one of the passages God had him in that day.
I want to read it with you this morning because it is a perfect intro to what James is going to say.
12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you.
13 Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.
14 If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
15 Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a meddler.
16 But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God in having that name.
17 For the time has come for judgment to begin with God’s household, and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?
18 And if a righteous person is saved with difficulty, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?
19 So then, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator while doing what is good.
None of us in this room are strangers to hardship.
We could fill this time and much more with stories of difficulties we have faced in this life.
I bet we could fill our time this morning with just things that have happened this week.
Find comfort in knowing that you and I are not alone.
We see passages similar to this one in 1 Peter all over the bible.
Last week James called out the rich and their lack of care for those in need.
As we learned, all of us struggle with protecting our possessions.
There is this false idea in our culture that having more stuff will make the things that Peter is describing easier to deal with.
But pursuing more only leaves us with anxiety.
What we need more of is not wealth but trust in God.
Money is temporary, and an obsession with it will cause us to miss out on what God wants to do in our lives.
Our goal, as Gathering Place people, is to know God progressively more every day.
If we don’t allow God to change our hearts so that we are more motivated by His grace than we are by our possessions, we are going to miss out.
But do you know what the problem is?
Do you know why we all struggle with this?
We struggle because life is hard, and we have bought into the lie that more possessions will make life easier.
We aren’t the first, and we certainly won’t be the last.
So what is the solution that James gives for dealing with the hardships of life?
Look at James 5:7-11 with me.
7 Therefore, brothers and sisters, be patient until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth and is patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, because the Lord’s coming is near.
9 Brothers and sisters, do not complain about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!
10 Brothers and sisters, take the prophets who spoke in the Lord’s name as an example of suffering and patience.
11 See, we count as blessed those who have endured. You have heard of Job’s endurance and have seen the outcome that the Lord brought about—the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
First, notice the difference in tone.
In the previous section, he said, “come here now,” and in this one, it is “my brothers and sisters.”
James is addressing those that have been suffering hardships with compassion.
James asks them to do two things.
Be patient
Endure
Let me say this, I know that if you are in the middle of something difficult, being told to be patient and endure is the equivalent of a man telling his wife to calm down when she is upset.
Nothing good ever comes of that.
James gives us three examples of what it means to be patient and endure.
The first is that of a farmer.
In the event that you have never planted tomatoes, I’m here to tell you that there is nothing that takes longer than waiting for a seedling tomato plant to grow up and produce it’s first ripe fruit.
You water, weed, prune, weed, remove pest, weed, wait, water, pace, weed, remove more pest, talk the plant out of dying, weed, weed, weed, and finally you get three decent tomatoes.
Okay, maybe it isn’t that bad, but it’s close.
It takes a long time and there is nothing you can do to speed up the process.
You may think that adding more fertilizer would make it produce faster, but it won’t.
It takes what it takes.
For those of us that have small gardens, we have some luxuries that farmers don’t.
If the plants need water we can put out a sprinkler.
Unlike a farmer who must wait on the rain.
Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn’t, or sometimes you get too much or too little at the wrong times during the season.
There is nothing a farmer can do to determine any of those factors.
Therefore he/she must wait.
The same is true for some of the things we struggle with in life.
We can want things to be different, but often we are powerless to do anything about it.
And so what does James say we are to do?
We are to wait, be patient, endure, and strengthen our hearts.
We will come back to this idea of “strengthen your hearts” later today.
He goes on to say in verse nine,
9 Brothers and sisters, do not complain about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!
The text doesn’t spell this out, but you have to think that James is dealing with these people’s feelings toward the group he addressed in the last section.
Here we have people who are suffering, and in the last passage, he is dealing with the rich that are allowing or even causing the suffering.
This is a hard thing to do.
James is getting into some deep-heart stuff here.
He is reminding the church of something that Jesus taught.
1 “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged.
2 For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.
3 Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye?
It is so easy to look at others, particularly the people that have wronged you or made your life difficult, and judge them.
In fact, they may be completely wrong in their actions, yet Jesus doesn’t say that it is okay to judge them.
Jesus says to quit focusing on the speck in your brother’s eye and deal with the beam in your own.
In other words, don’t be so obsessed with what has upset you because you are as guilty as they are, but just in something else.
We’ve talked about this before.
When we are wronged, we want to be angry, and we want to be justified in our anger.
James is echoing Jesus in saying that even if our anger is justified, we are still wallowing in guilt, just like the person that has upset us.
James says to be patient because the judge is at the door.
God sees what you see, but he sees it more clearly than you do, and that other person will stand before Him and account for their sins.
It doesn’t do them or us any good to compare our sins and find that theirs are worse than ours.
Sin is sin, and all of it separates us from God.
10 Brothers and sisters, take the prophets who spoke in the Lord’s name as an example of suffering and patience.
James is reminding the church of all those that came before who suffered in their service to God.
Don’t be surprised if your life isn’t carefree.
Jesus warned us that it wouldn’t be.
13 You will be hated by everyone because of my name, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.
James spoke to this earlier in his letter.
12 Blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
James wasn’t the only one to address this issue either.
Look at Paul’s words to the church in Corinth regarding how the apostles were treated by the world.
9 For I think God has displayed us, the apostles, in last place, like men condemned to die: We have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to people.
10 We are fools for Christ, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored!
11 Up to the present hour we are both hungry and thirsty; we are poorly clothed, roughly treated, homeless;
12 we labor, working with our own hands. When we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it;
13 when we are slandered, we respond graciously. Even now, we are like the scum of the earth, like everyone’s garbage.
I don’t know how you see it, but to my eyes, this doesn’t line up with “American Cultural Christianity.”
Culture says that if we give our lives to Christ, go to church, and promote moral living, we will be #blessed.
We will have all we want, and life will be stress-free.
#too blessed to be stressed
Look at James 5:11 because James says the exact opposite of what ACC teaches.
11 See, we count as blessed those who have endured. You have heard of Job’s endurance and have seen the outcome that the Lord brought about—the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
Wait, what?
We are blessed if we endure like Job?
Do you remember Job’s story?
It goes like this, he had everything a man could want, riches, a big family, great relationship with God.
All that was taken away, and he continued to believe that God was good and stood firm in that in the face of all his friends and his wife trying to convince him of the opposite.
What was Job’s outcome?
10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and doubled his previous possessions.
11 All his brothers, sisters, and former acquaintances came to him and dined with him in his house. They sympathized with him and comforted him concerning all the adversity the Lord had brought on him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold earring.
12 So the Lord blessed the last part of Job’s life more than the first. He owned fourteen thousand sheep and goats, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys.
13 He also had seven sons and three daughters.
Remember Job’s three friends?
The ones that spoke against God and Job.
The ones that God calls into correction and tells them to go and apologize to Job.
James isn’t just saying that if we endure, God will bless us; he is referring to this very specific instance where these men we speaking ill of Job.
God tells Job to pray for them, forgive them, and then God blesses him for doing what God said.
The blessing comes after obedience.
We have to be careful here and pay close attention. Are you still with me?
It would be easy to turn our brains off right here and go on thinking that if we endure, we are going to get a bunch of stuff.
What does scripture mean by blessing?
Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Blessedness)
Blessedness. Condition or state of being in God’s grace or favor. The Bible contains the words “bless,” “blessing,” and “blessed,” but not the noun “blessedness,” although the idea of a spiritual state of beatitude in which believers enjoy God’s fellowship permeates the Bible.
Makarios was frequently used in Greek literature, the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament), and the New Testament to describe the kind of happiness that comes from receiving divine favor.
So we see two things blessed as having two things, God’s favor and God’s presence.
What did Jesus say about blessing?
Look at Luke 11:27-28 and John 13:12-20.
27 As he was saying these things, a woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the one who nursed you!”
28 He said, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”
Again, the blessing comes after obedience.
12 When Jesus had washed their feet and put on his outer clothing, he reclined again and said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you?
13 You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are speaking rightly, since that is what I am.
14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done for you.
16 “Truly I tell you, a servant is not greater than his master, and a messenger is not greater than the one who sent him.
17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
18 “I’m not speaking about all of you; I know those I have chosen. But the Scripture must be fulfilled: The one who eats my bread has raised his heel against me.
19 I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am he.
20 Truly I tell you, whoever receives anyone I send receives me, and the one who receives me receives him who sent me.”
Again, you receive the “blessing” by doing what God has commanded or shown.
It is vital that we pay close attention to the example given, the whole example.
Jesus did not wash their feet to gain favor.
He washed their feet as an act of loving service and to communicate the kind of love that He has for His people.
Jesus is showing that in order to be blessed, you must do as He does.
He loved sacrificially, to the point of humiliation and death.
His pride played no role in His degree of love toward others.
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. LXII (Daily Blessings for God’s People (No. 3,493))
But God’s goodness to us is not merely bene volens (Latin meaning Well Wishing), in which he wishes us well, but it is beneficence or good doing. His gifts and benefits are deeds of goodness, acts of goodness.
He doth to us that which is good. He doth not only wish us well, and speak to us well, and direct us well, but he doeth well unto us. He doth not only say, “I pity thy lost estate,” but he delivers the lost out of their ruin.
God does not simply "wish us well"; he does good to us and for us.
So what does it mean to be “blessed”?
It means that because of God’s grace, we enjoy His presence and favor, and we live sacrificially towards others out of the love we experience from Him.
We talked a lot about this during our Ecclesiastes study; the world is broken.
As a result of living in a fallen world stricken with sin, we have to deal with hardships regularly.
God is aware, and as we endure those hardships, as we learn to be patient with others, God is working on our behalf.
For our good here on earth and also for our good eternally.
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. LXII Daily Blessings for God’s People (No. 3,493)
You are God’s children; you are joint-heirs with Christ. “All things are yours”; ay, and “things to come,” you have guaranteed too—preservation to the end, and you have, after the end of this life, glory without end. The “many mansions” are for you; the palms and harps of the glorified are for you. You have a share in all that Christ has, and is, and shall be.
We're co-heirs and share in all that Christ has both now and in heaven.
This is our blessing...
Enjoying the kingdom of God here on earth and into eternity are our blessings and inheritance.
As a child of God, you can know that at all times, good, hard, bad, or easy, God is working on your behalf for your good.
At the beginning of the message today, I told you that it was a blessing to worship in God’s presence with you.
This is it.
What we enjoy as a body of Christ is the blessing.
We have full access to the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit every moment of every day.
And then a few times a week, through life groups and other ministries, we get to experience God corporately.
James ends this passage by saying that the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
We experience that through one another and directly from God each week.
Because of God’s grace, because of Jesus’ sacrificial love, the very presence of God resides in us.
The God who spoke the universe into existence, who created you and I, the God that Isaiah stood before and thought he would die, that same God lives in us.
Do you realize how lame and ridiculous it is to think that being blessed means having stuff when what it really means is that God lives in us?!?
Life is hard sometimes, and the way we endure is by remembering that there is something greater is at stake than our comfort.
As we walk in obedience, the difficulties don’t mean that God has left or that we aren’t blessed; it means that God is doing something that is bigger than we are.
When things get difficult, remember that God is working.
It may be for you, or it may be for someone else, but God is working.
You have His favor and his presence, not because you have earned it, but because He has given it.
Don’t be so small-minded that you forget the larger scope of what God is doing.
He is revealing Himself to the world through you.
Jesus suffered as he did that, and so will you, but you are not alone.
God is with you.
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