We're going to read two passages of Scripture this morning. First, we're going to read from the Gospel of Matthew 24. We're going to read the words of Jesus here, prophesying His second coming. Matthew 24. We'll begin reading at verse 29, and we'll read through verse 44. Matthew 24, beginning at verse 29, and we'll read through verse 44. This is God's Word in the mouth of Jesus Christ. He says, and He's just spoken of the signs of His coming, Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with the great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now learn a parable of the fig tree. When his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near even at the door. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. Then shall two be in the field, the one shall be taken and the other left, two women shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left. Watch therefore. For ye know not what hour your Lord doth come, but know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched and would not have suffered his house to be broke up. Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh. And then we turn to the book of James chapter 5. We're going to read the first eight verses of the chapter, and the text this morning will be verses 7 and 8. James chapter 5, the first eight verses. Last week we looked at the first six verses, where James says, Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten, your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have heaped together treasure for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth. And the cries of them which have reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton, ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter, ye have condemned and killed the just, and he doth not resist you." And then the words of the text, Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and the latter rain. Be ye also patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." We read this far in God's holy and inspired Word. Beloved, when you were in a trial, And when you're going through a difficult circumstance in your life, what is it that gives you hope? When you are mocked and when you are persecuted, when the believer, perhaps in a land of persecution, is persecuted and imprisoned and tortured and maybe even put to death for his faith, what is it that gives the believer hope in such circumstances? The answer in the text is this, Jesus is coming. The coming of the Lord draws nigh. We've been looking at the book of James, and perhaps there are two main themes in the book of James you've noticed. One is the tests of true Christianity. James talks about Christian living and what that looks like in the life of the child of God. You must not only have faith, he says, because faith without works is dead. You must demonstrate in your life the genuineness of your Christianity. That perhaps is one theme, but the other theme is this. James is talking about Christian living and the testing of your faith, especially under trials of persecution. If we go back to chapter 1, you see that James introduces that subject immediately. He says in verse 2, My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations or trials, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. And James has spent most of the book up to this point, as it were, outlining what the Christian life looks like, outlining how we ought to live as believers and demonstrate our faith even under trials. And now in this chapter, he comes back to where he began the subject of trials and persecutions. Last week when we looked at this, I said we have here in a sense James' eschatology, James' teaching on the end times. We saw that in the first section in verse 1, James speaks about hell. He says to the rich unbelievers, Go to ye rich, howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. And when he says howl, he uses the language of the Bible that talks about how people will express themselves in and under the miseries of suffering in hell. He speaks in verse 3, at the end of verse 3, about the last days. And he's speaking of the time in which they were living. And during those last days, these rich were persecuting poor Christians. And they were living in what he calls the last days. And then in verse 4 he speaks of the final judgment and of the sins of these wicked rich men coming up before God as a testimony against them and for the poor oppressed on the judgment day. And now, in verses 7 and 8, still looking at this idea of the end times and eschatology, James speaks of the coming of Jesus Christ. The future coming of Christ, and he says, that draws nigh. Now, all these things, the Bible's teaching on the end times, are very interesting for the Christian. It's a subject in which we have an intense interest. The Bible, it seems, doesn't say a lot about it. There's some mystery as to the future. What will the future hold for the people of God? And so we're keenly interested in these things. But James is interested in them, not just from a theological and an intellectual point of view, but James is interested in them from a practical point of view. And that's exactly the way that Jesus and the book of Revelation and 1 and 2 Thessalonians and the rest of the scripture teach the end times. It's not just about what's going to happen, but it's about what do you do and how do you live as you wait for the coming of Christ. And that brings us back to our first question. How do you respond to the trials of life? What is it that gives you hope in those trials? And the answer is, Jesus is coming. This morning let's look at these verses under the theme, patiently waiting for the Lord's coming. And we'll notice two things, Christ's second coming And we want to notice that in the text here, not only, but broaden that and look at what the Bible, the scriptures have to say as a whole about the second coming of Christ. And then second, we want to look at our patient waiting. This should be our response to the teaching of the scripture on the second coming of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus is coming again at the end of the world. We call this the Lord's return, or the second coming of Christ. In the text here, the word that's used is parousia, or appearance, or even presence. There's a day when Christ will come and manifest Himself in all His glory from heaven. He has come once already, and so we call it the second coming. In His birth, and in His life, and the cross, and His death, He came once. And in that first coming, He secured the salvation of His people. And now, He has ascended into heaven, and He sits at God's right hand, and He sends out the Spirit and the Word, and gives the church the task of preaching the gospel till He comes again. We await the day of His second coming, and while we do, He gathers the church through the Spirit and the Word. Now the question is, what will the second coming of Christ be? How will it come? What things will happen? When will it be? Should we fear the second coming of Jesus Christ? As believers, we should not fear. The second coming of Jesus Christ will be His visible appearance to save His people from their present condition in this world and to bring all of them with the saints who have died before into the glory of the new heavens and the new earth. The Bible teaches several things about the second coming of Christ. First, it will be real and personal. That is, it will not be a vision, but Christ Himself will appear on the clouds of heaven. Christ Himself will come. And when we say it will be personal, we mean not only that Christ Himself will come, but we mean that Christ will come to every individual. He will come to me and He will come to you in that last day. return of Jesus Christ will be visible. And by that we mean that every eye in heaven and in earth will see and will know of the coming of Jesus Christ. It will be a reality. In the text that we read in Matthew 24, verse 30, Jesus says this, Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn. That will be the response of the unbelieving on the day of Christ's return. And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The book of Revelation tells us that even those who pierced Him will see Him coming. Those who mocked and scorned and rejected Jesus Christ will see Christ coming. In the third place, the coming of Jesus Christ will be miraculous, and it must be miraculous. We were talking about this with our children at the dinner table this week. The earth is round, but Christ is going to come, and every eye shall see Him. It will happen, the Bible says, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. He will come on the clouds of heaven. And all those things point to the mystery and the miraculous majesticness of that great day. Jesus says that He will come, Matthew 24 verse 30, with power and great glory. How different that will be than His first coming. In His first coming in Bethlehem, He came into obscurity. He came into poverty. He came to be a servant and to give His life as a ransom, to subject Himself to the weight and the burden of our sin. But the Bible says the second time, He will come without sin, unto salvation to redeem His people and bring them to glory. He will come with the glory of the Father. And think of all the miracles that will surround the day of the coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus speaks of the heavens and the earth trembling. He speaks of the judgment happening immediately at that day. All the world being gathered before Him. How will all these things happen and how will they all happen in a moment? It will be a great miracle, the day and the appearance of Jesus Christ. He will come in the fourth place in judgment. In the context here, in the book of James, that's very important because James is speaking to the persecuted believers and he's just spoken to the rich. And He's spoken to them of the judgment that will come upon them, and that they ought to weep and howl because of that judgment. But this is the purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ. He comes to judge the world. In that judgment, all will stand before Him. And 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10 tells us that everyone will be judged according to his works, that he may receive in his body according as He has done in that body. The result of the judgment will be the destruction of the wicked with this present world and the redemption of all those who stand as God's chosen, Jesus says in Matthew 24, that will come to gather the elect from the four winds of the earth. In the fifth place, the coming of Jesus Christ in the future will be permanent. Christ will not come and then leave again. It's a very popular teaching today that Christ is going to come in some sudden way and take all the elect from the earth and leave behind the rest. That's not what the Bible teaches about the coming of Jesus Christ. The very word that James uses here in James 5, the word parousia, or appearance, comes from the word that has to do with presence and permanence. We will stand in His presence. He comes to stay. Not to stay in this present world and form some kind of earthly kingdom here, but he comes to permanently be with his people in that day. Matthew 24 speaks of the coming of Jesus Christ as the end. The end of the world and the coming of Jesus Christ are one. This coming, beloved, is our hope. We do not fear the day of the coming of Jesus Christ. Yes? Unbelievers should fear the coming of Jesus Christ in the final day. But the coming of Jesus Christ for believers will be a day of complete deliverance from sin and of full redemption. It will be for the child of God a recreation and a renewal. It will be the end of sin. It will be the day of the resurrection of our bodies without disease and sickness. It will be a day of reuniting with loved ones. It will be a day of the wiping away of all tears from the eyes of men. And especially the joy of that day will be this, that we will live with Christ in heaven forever. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then the Apostle says face to face, we will know Him as He is. And so that day will be a day of fulfillment. Fulfillment and perfection of God's people in revelation and charity. The tabernacle of God is with men, and God Himself shall be with them. And they shall be His people, and He shall be His God. And so this day, as we think about it, ought to create in us a longing and an excitement for the coming of Jesus Christ. What a day! What a glorious day! that will be. That's what James is talking about here when he speaks of the coming of the Lord. Now the question is, when will that day be? And we ask that question because James says in verse 8, the coming of the Lord doth not And by that, he means it comes close. He means it's getting closer. It won't be long until the day of Jesus Christ. And what James says echoes all of the teaching of the New Testament. Jesus Himself says in the book of Revelation, Behold, I come quickly. In 1 Peter 4, verse 7, the Apostle Peter says, The end of all things is at hand. In Philippians 4, verse 5, Paul says, the Lord is at hand. And all these speak of the day of the Lord, the return of Jesus Christ, His second coming as something that sparks. It's at hand. Now what does that mean? Those are given as a reason for us to live soberly and seriously in this world. Jesus is coming, so we ought to live in all godliness before Him. But what does it mean that He's coming soon? In 1 Peter 3, you find out that the scoffers, the unbelievers, look at the promise of the coming of Jesus Christ. They say, He's not coming. All things continue as they were. They just go on and on and on. And He hasn't come yet. So He's not coming. And they use it as an excuse to live in ungodliness and denial of the gospel and the coming of Jesus Christ and the judgment. What does it mean for us? Jesus is coming. And His coming is near. Well, it means this, first of all, that Jesus is always coming. We should remember that. He's always coming. That is, every event in the history of the New Testament is a part of the coming of Jesus Christ, and a fulfillment in some way, and even a part of the, you might say, the wheels that bring Him. Every event in the New Testament works towards the coming of Jesus Christ. And we ought to see that Jesus is coming in all the different events of history. Jesus in the New Testament described for us the signs of the coming of Jesus Christ. There are signs in the creation, there are signs in the church, and there are signs in the world of politics. And all through history, from the moment Jesus left, those signs develop. And they become more clear and more evident. And they all work to bring Jesus Christ. The coming of Jesus is at hand. It's close. It's right here with us. That's the idea. But then also, as you look at the text before us, we are speaking not just of the coming of Jesus Christ in history, but speaking of the specific bodily appearance of Jesus Christ. The parousia draws nigh. So what do we mean when we say that the bodily appearance of Jesus Christ is near. It's been 2,000 plus years since those promises were made. Well, first of all, it means this, that the next great event in God's calendar is the second coming of Jesus Christ. The next great event on God's calendar It is the second coming of Jesus Christ. If you read the Old Testament, and we were saying Psalm 18 and Psalm 50 this morning, the Old Testament speaks of the coming of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Messiah, but it describes it as one great appearance of a king in a magical way. Other times it describes it as the coming of a meek and a lowly one. And from our vantage point in history, we're able to distinguish two comings of Jesus Christ. He came first in the meekness and humility of Bethlehem to secure our salvation, but He comes again in the future with the majesty and the glory that's spoken of in Psalm 18 and Psalm 50 and that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 24. And the next great event The calendar of history is the end of the world and the coming of Jesus Christ. So He comes quickly. He comes soon. Because that's the next thing that God is going to do in an extra revelatory way. Now we have the Scriptures. We wait with the Scriptures in our hands. for the next revelation, and that's Christ on the clouds of heaven. It means this too, that He comes as quickly as He can. In the first coming of Jesus Christ, we're told in the book of Galatians that He came in the fullness of time. And that means the timing of the birth of Jesus Christ was perfect. Everything was prepared. politically, and culturally, and as far as the languages were concerned, for the coming of Jesus Christ. When He came, there was a universal language of the Greek. When He came, there was political freedom to travel throughout the world. When He came, Israel, the nation of Judah, was at its worst spiritually. When He came, the line of David was almost run out. So he came in the fullness of time, the perfect time. And so it will be when he comes again at the end of the world. He comes as quickly as he can. And he will come not a moment too late, but not a moment too early either. Because when he comes, This will be the end of all things. And by end, the Bible means not just the place where things stop. God, in all things, will then be fulfilled. On the one hand, the cup of iniquity of the ungodly will be filled so that the world is ripe for judgment just as it was in the days of Noah and in the days of Lot when Sodom was destroyed. So it will be at the end of the world, the world will have filled up its cup of iniquity and the forbearance of God will end and the world will be destroyed. But on the other hand, It will be the day when every one of God's elect sheep have heard and believed the Gospel. The Apostle Peter puts it this way in 2 Peter 3, verse 9, and if you look at the context, you see that he's not speaking in universal language, but he's speaking in the language of election and reprobation. The Lord is not slack, he says, concerning His promise, the promise of His coming, as some men count slackness. But He's long suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish. Not willing that any of His should perish. And so Christ will not come until every last one of His elect have been gathered by the Gospel. And when they have, then He'll come. Then all things will be ready for His return. the fullness of time, the perfect timing for the end of all things will then be. Now to bring this home, James, and to make this clear, James in verse 7 uses a very powerful illustration. And when you first read it, you see it's an illustration of a farmer or a husbandman who, he says, waits for the precious fruit of the earth and has long patience for it until he receives the early and the latter rain. Now in Palestine, the time for planting things was in the late fall. Over the summer, the ground will become very parched and hard. And you had to wait for the early rains. They were the fall rains that would come in October and November. And then the ground would be wet and you could put your seeds in the ground. And then through the fall and the mild winter, the plants would grow. And in the spring, they would be ready for harvest. But not until the second rain, the latter rains of April had come. Now, that takes quite a while. And it might be that the farmer and his family don't have much in their barns or in their pantry. And it might be in March that they've got these plants, but they're not really ready yet for harvesting. And so the farmer doesn't go out there and say, well, we're hungry anyway. No, he says, we're going to endure. We're going to wait for the latter rains so that when we bring in a crop, we bring in a crop that's ready to be harvested. Well, that's the illustration here, and James is using the same kind of method as teaching as Jesus did, the method of parables. You recognize that the husbandman here is the husbandman in the parables of Jesus. Jesus speaks of a husbandman many times, and the husbandman is God. He plants a vineyard, and Jesus even uses the same kind of Examples to explain the same thing. God plants a vineyard, he says in Matthew 21, and goes away for a long time into a far country. That's the same idea that's here. Or he uses the one of the virgins, the ten virgins waiting, and waiting for the bridegroom to come. Some of the same teaching. But here, God is the husbandman in James, and He waits. He's long-suffering. He's very patient. Because if He would come too soon, some of the harvest wouldn't be brought in. If He would wait too long, the crop would be destroyed. He comes at just the right time. He harvests. This husbandman does it just the moment that it needs to be harvested. And so it is with the coming of Jesus Christ. God is patient. God is long-suffering. Jesus is patient in His coming. We shouldn't become impatient then that Christ has not come again. And Jesus and James says that in verse 8, Be ye also patient, just as this husbandman is, just as God is. So also you be patient for the coming of the Lord. But what is patience? Well, patience is, first of all, the ability to endure something, to remain calm, not to become agitated. When you're going through very difficult circumstances, when your world is falling apart around you, you don't become agitated. When there's something that you really long for, but you don't have it yet, patience is to wait. When there's somebody in the context here who's aggravating you, who's persecuting you, you don't retaliate, you don't take out vengeance, but you wait patiently. Now as we think of patience that way, in the context of the coming of Jesus Christ and receiving the final and full blessings of salvation and deliverance from things in this world, you see that patience is an aspect of faith. We long for things that we haven't seen yet. But it's a faith that endures, that waits, that trusts in God. and his timing and his purpose. And so James says, be patient unto the coming of the Lord. And he means by that two things. First of all, he means this, that we must be patient under trial, that we must be patient under even persecution. as we wait for the coming of the Lord. That's the whole context here, and that's the whole theme of the book of James. In chapter 1, consider it all joy when you fall into divers' trials. And this is exactly the reason that we might become impatient. We become impatient because we're going through some kind of trial. And for us, that might not be persecution. Maybe it's some grief or some poverty or some sickness or some illness that debilitates us. Maybe some troubles in our home and family, maybe economic difficulties. And under those trials, we begin to say, well, I wish the Lord would just come. Then we can be rid of these. Then we don't have to go through all these troubles in our life. Now, in a sense, that's very good because God gives us the trials, doesn't He? Exactly so that we don't become too connected to this world and to our life here. He gives us the trials to create in us that longing for heavenly things and for the coming of Jesus Christ. But you see, we mustn't run ahead of God. That's what James is saying here. It's not wrong to long for the coming of Jesus Christ. No, that's the hope of the Christian. That's what we want more than anything else in this world. But James says, be patient. Endure trials. Don't let those trials make you despair. But bear long, have a long fuse under the trials that you go through in your life. God has other purposes in those trials than just to bring us to glory and deliver us from them. James 1, verses 2 and following. Patience, works, endurance. It strengthens our faith. All these things are sent by God in our lives to make us stronger in our faith and in their own way to prepare us and equip us to live with God in heaven. They're sent to us so that we may be a testimony under trial to others. And so don't, James is saying, under trial just say, well, I want out of this. I want Christ to come again. But bear up. Be patient. Endure trials. Like the farmer. Maybe he and his family in the months of February and March and April, while they're waiting for the crop to ripen, have to very carefully ration their food. An impatient farmer would go out there and cut the lettuce out to the size of a fist. The patient farmer waits until the lettuce is full and ready to feed his family. James is saying, be patient, endure trials, endure suffering until the day of Jesus Christ. The coming of the Lord is our hope. And the coming of the Lord ought to make us patient under the trials that we have to endure in our life. In the context here again, the poor are being persecuted. Poor Christians are being persecuted. And James doesn't even speak to them so much in it as to speak to the ungodly and who are their persecutors and of the judgment that's coming upon them. And he's saying to the Christians, don't envy them. Don't worry. These things are in the hand of God. You be patient. God will make things right in the final day. When Christ comes, then we can be sure everything will be answered. So that's what James is saying. And Jesus said the same thing as He speaks of His coming. He speaks of believers living in the world and experiencing all the difficulties of the signs of His coming, especially under tribulation. And Jesus says to the disciples, when you see all these things coming to pass, look up. Your redemption draws nigh. Now He doesn't mean give up, but He means persevere and keep looking heavenward because Christ is coming. So that's what James means first. Be patient in trials. What are your trials today? What are the difficulties that you have to go through? What are the burdens of your heart this morning? Bear up under them. Be patient. Endure them until the day of Jesus Christ. He's coming. And when He comes, then you'll understand. Then you'll see why God sent these things in your life. Then all the wrongs that are committed against you, that you want to react to, will be righted. Christ Jesus is coming. But James means not only be patient in enduring trials, but he also means be patient like the husbandman for the timing of the coming of the Lord. You see, it's very easy for us to become impatient. We wish that it would happen today. We wish that Jesus would come tomorrow that would solve so many of our problems and so many of our issues and all our burdens and trials would be gone. That's especially true when we think of as we study the scriptures, the future there is for the church and even for the coming generations and our children, and there's a certain anxiety that that creates. And we think, well, why doesn't Christ just come now? James says, no, be patient for the coming of the Lord. Because God has things to do yet in the history of this world. That's the whole idea. We shouldn't rush Him. He has 2 Peter 3 verse 9, the whole of His elect church to gather into one. of your children and through the work of missions. And it's how privileged is the people of God in this world to be involved in that work, be patient unto the coming of the Lord, and be busy in this work. Don't rush the Lord. He'll come at just the right moment and just the right time. He's coming quickly, but never too soon. And so we must be patient for the coming of the Lord. And James tells us also here how we can be patient. He says in verse 8, Be ye also patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Establish your hearts. Stabilize your hearts. And that makes me think of somebody who's got heart problems, and either this, their heart is racing, and the medics have to do something to slow it down because this is not good, or their heart is very slow, or it's stopped. And again, the medics have to do something to get that heart going again. And you see, James is saying this, that our hearts can be too quick for the coming of the Lord, and too slow for the coming of the Lord. Either we're too interested in hurrying God with this for our own advantage so we can get out of the troubles that we're in right now. And so our desire is more than it should be for the coming of Christ. Or our hearts are slow. We're not interested in the coming of the Lord. We don't have our eyes set on the day of the Lord. We're not living by faith as we should in this world, but we're living for what this world has to offer for us right now in the present. James says, establish your hearts. So that from a spiritual point of view, your heart is beating at a healthy rate. So that you're living just as you should be, patiently waiting for the coming of the Lord. What is it that establishes our hope? Well, it's truth. And especially the truth of the coming of the Lord and the truth of the coming of the Lord as that's been presented this morning. the Bible's truth of the coming of the Lord. And James is saying when he says, Establish your heart, that we need to have a firm foundation on which we stand. And that foundation is the Word of God. And so as we wait for the coming of the Lord, and we become anxious, and we can't endure the trials, and we want Him to come now, or we're not interested in the coming of the Lord, James says you ought to be going to the firm foundation of the Scripture. And you ought to be in the Scriptures and in prayer establishing your heart so that it's healthy as you await the coming of the Lord. Establish your hearts so that they beat spiritually at a healthy rate. And then you'll be able to patiently bear the trials and wait on God and His timing. in the return of the Savior. Now just think of the audience that James wrote this to. And they're persecuted. They're poor. They're scattered from Jerusalem. They're homeless. Family members have been killed off because of persecution. James says to them, be patient unto the coming of the Lord." What an encouragement and what hope this wonderful promise of the coming of Christ must have been for them and so for us today. Have you been through something difficult and rough in your life? Maybe even some persecution. Maybe it's an unbelieving family member and they mock and scorn you for your faith. Be patient. Be patient unto the coming of the Lord. When we go through trials, where do we turn? When we're persecuted for our faith, what is our hope? It's this. Jesus, the King, the Lord, is coming again. Amen. Let us pray. Father, we thank Thee for the word of the Scriptures here and the way in which James, in a very concrete situation where believers were persecuted for their faith, encourages them to be patient and to wait and to endure trial as they wait for the coming of Jesus Christ. What a promise and what a confidence and what a hope it is for us that Christ comes again. Lord, help us to live in the consciousness of it. For Jesus' sake. Amen.