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Northview Church in Kodak, TN exists to point people to the love of Jesus Christ and help people fall in love with Jesus and love others.
I hate waiting. Am I alone in that? I hate hate waiting. I I'm the guy who when you pull in to the Chick fil A drive thru, I size up every single line to looking for two things. Which one's the shortest and which one has the new person who's taking the orders too slow because then I know it don't matter how long the line is.
Pastor Greg:So, I try to choose very strategically and very wisely because I hate waiting. I'm the guy who I'll take a back road even when I know that the traffic's going to move just as fast but at least I'm moving on the back road and it feels like I'm moving quicker because I hate waiting. I pay for Amazon Prime so that I can get a package tomorrow instead of next week. Anybody else do that? Yeah and I have even paid.
Pastor Greg:I'm not right now but I've even paid extra on Netflix just so I don't have to spend thirty seconds watching a commercial. Can Can I get an amen on that? We all do that, right? I hate waiting. What do you hate waiting on?
Pastor Greg:Throw some out there. What what is it that you hate waiting on? Somebody share with me. Payday. Yeah, those aren't fun.
Pastor Greg:You talking about the candy bar or actual cash? Yeah, both of em. Oh, yeah. Payday. We don't like waiting on payday.
Pastor Greg:What else do we got? To get a haircut, don't you cut your own hair, Micah? Okay. You kind of got a problem there, bro. I don't know how to help you there.
Pastor Greg:Any others? Any other big ones? Oh, I'm not saying that out loud. Oh, it was Joey that said it. No, it wasn't.
Pastor Greg:It was Craig. Wife to get ready. Yeah. Oh, alrighty then. I would say y'all need counseling but Tina is the counselor.
Pastor Greg:I don't know where we go with that. You know, we built an entire economy around helping people avoid waiting. All the things that we've talked about, we built this economy around it and it's the very thing that James is asking us to do is to wait. As we dig in to James, you can go ahead and open up your Bibles. We're going to be in chapter five.
Pastor Greg:Yes, that means we're getting very close to the end of James. We we heard that over there. Just one week after this one. Honestly, when we think about waiting, it's not about Chick fil A. It's not about the the Netflix queue.
Pastor Greg:Every single one of us, we're waiting on something bigger and and maybe for you, it's a personal thing. You're you're waiting to hear back on a diagnosis or you need an apology from someone who hurt you earlier and you're just waiting. Maybe it's for the prodigal who's drifted away and they've not come back yet and you're praying and waiting on them to come back or or maybe it's for a marriage, your own, or for a friend's marriage that you're just praying will turn the corner and you are praying that the lord will bring that back together. Maybe it's a breakthrough or an answer to some question that you've had. We all have something that we're waiting on.
Pastor Greg:And the deepest weight underneath all of it whether we'd say it out loud or not is waiting on god to finally fix what's broken. James knew that when he was writing this letter, he knew that what we're really waiting on is is Jesus. We're waiting on him to answer the question. Every other weight in your life is a smaller version of that. Every unresolved ache in the room today.
Pastor Greg:You're waiting on Jesus to make it right. Whatever it may be. So, here's the hard truth that I want to kind of just throw out right now. Before we get any further, this is what we're going to be coming back to to this whole message this morning. It is not your job to control the weight.
Pastor Greg:It's your job to trust the one who does. To be faithful in it. We're going to pick up in James chapter five verse seven today. Scripture will be on the screen. If you don't have a Bible with you, there are also Bibles spread out through the auditorium under the seats there.
Pastor Greg:You can take one of those if you like. And here's what James writes beginning in verse seven. Dear brothers and sisters, be patient as you wait for the lord's return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen.
Pastor Greg:We start this passage on waiting and the first thing we're going to see here, what James is telling us, wait with patience. So, let's ask the obvious question, what do we actually want if we're asking for patience? When we say or pray for patience, what is it we actually want? That word for patience that he uses there, the original language is macro the Mayo. That word just kind of sounds nasty, doesn't it?
Pastor Greg:Macro the Mayo. Everybody say that with me. Macro the Mayo and we all just pronounce Greek incorrectly, I'm sure. Macrothomeo. It means patience is how it's translated but in the original language, what it really means is long suffering.
Pastor Greg:Now, I don't like it anymore. Long suffering. So, let's be honest with yourself Do we actually want patience? Do you actually want long suffering in life? We don't really want patience.
Pastor Greg:That's what we settle for when we can't have what we want. We want a resolution to whatever it is we're asking for and whatever it is we're praying for. We want it right now. We want it on our terms and we want it in our timeline. We don't want long suffering.
Pastor Greg:It's the outcome that if you snapped your fingers, you could get it to happen right now. That's what we want. Patience. That's what we do while we're waiting, long suffering, waiting for the thing that we actually want. James, he gives us a picture of what that looks like here.
Pastor Greg:He opens it up and he says, think about the farmer. What is a farmer's life actually look like? Especially in James' time, you plant the seed and you wait for the rain. I know today, we can irrigate fields and all that but but for him as he's writing this, a farmer couldn't make it rain. You plant and you wait.
Pastor Greg:You could tend to the crops. You could help keep the pests out, maybe fertilize somehow but you can't force the rain to happen. He can't make it rain. He can't make the seed grow faster by going out in the field every day and looking and saying, grow. It doesn't happen that way.
Pastor Greg:The farmer has to wait. You can't dig it up and check to see how it's growing then you kill it. A farmer has to wait for the harvest to come. Everything that happens between when a farmer plants the seed and the harvest happens, it happens between the seed and the soil and it's totally outside of the farmer's control and and that's what James is saying. Whatever is happening, it's happening between the seed and the soil.
Pastor Greg:It's out of your control. It's all in the father's control. Here's the divide that James draws for us. There's a part that's the farmer's job and a part that was never his job to begin with. His job is to plant and stay faithful tending to what he can do.
Pastor Greg:Plant the seed. Tend it. Show up every day but the results, that's all dependent on whether god sends the rains. The timing, the harvest itself, it all belongs to god. Our job is faithfulness in the waiting.
Pastor Greg:The farmer's job is to be faithful in the waiting. The outcome was never ours to control. Whatever you're waiting on right now, it's not your job to control the outcome. It's your job to be faithful in the wait. In verse eight, James says this, you too must be patient, take courage for the coming of the lord is near.
Pastor Greg:Mentioned it just a moment ago, the real deepest thing that every single person in this room and every person on this planet whether they're believers in Christ or not, maybe they don't recognize it. What we're all longing and desiring is really the return of Jesus. That's all that's going to fix it. Everything, all of our unresolved ache gets answered in that moment. Whatever you're dealing with, whatever your struggle is, whatever your long suffering through, it is answered in that moment, the return of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Greg:So, we wait James says, wait patiently looking forward to the answer knowing we're not in control of it. Long suffering. Macro the Mayo. But here's what nobody tells us about waiting. It doesn't just affect you.
Pastor Greg:As we wait, as we get frustrated, it affects how we treat the people around us. Let's look at verse nine. Don't grumble about each other brothers and sisters or you will be judged. For look, the judge is standing at the door. He goes from waiting to stop grumbling.
Pastor Greg:He just spent two verses telling us, this is how you act. You should be like the farmer, patient, faithful, hands off of the outcome, and in the very next verse, he shows us exactly what happens when we don't act that way. It affects everything around us. When god doesn't move on our timeline, we don't usually get angry with god at least not out loud. We take it out on the people around us.
Pastor Greg:Usually those closest to us. Couple of months ago, I was headed out to to do a freelance video job. If you didn't know, I still do freelance videos. Some on the side and was going to do a job in Orlando with with our good friend Scott Blair and I'm waiting in the airport. I I was flying out on Sunday night after we had church that morning and this was the kind of freelance job where it doesn't happen if I don't show up.
Pastor Greg:I was the only one doing the that part of the job. I was actually bringing some of the equipment with me. So, I had to be there. If I don't show up, it doesn't happen the way that it's supposed to. So, everything's going swimmingly well.
Pastor Greg:I get on the flight, sitting on the plane, and we start to taxi to the runway and we stop. And we wait there. For I don't know, half an hour probably. We're just sitting on this plane and the flight attendant is doing the best they can to to please everyone who's there and then the pilot comes across and says, we are going to have to go back to the gate and deplane because the air conditioner doesn't work and we are, it's illegal to fly a plane without air conditioning. Who knew?
Pastor Greg:Although, it would have been miserable. Didn't know that was a thing. As soon as the pilot says that, the flight attendant gets on the intercom and says, basically this, please don't take this out on us. Please be kind to your flight attendant and to your gate agents. There's nothing we can do about this situation.
Pastor Greg:Two thousand years after James writes those words, don't grumble against one another. A flight attendant in an airport says almost the exact same thing. There's nothing I can do about this. Please be kind. Especially to the gate agents.
Pastor Greg:A cabin full of frustrated people and if you ever been on a flight like that, it is incredibly frustrating. Some things about human nature just haven't changed since James wrote the book, has it? Here's what was at stake for me that day. If I didn't get out, the next morning shoot doesn't happen. It was already scheduled to happen.
Pastor Greg:So, I sit in the airport. All day long. I think I got there about noon, 12:30. I can't remember. It was left from here, went straight to the airport.
Pastor Greg:So, probably about 12:30 and just trying to get on a different flight, going and speaking to the gate agent. Is there anything we can do? Anything we can do and they bumped me to another airline and then say, well, your bags are already on the plane. We can't get, it's just not going to, it was a nightmare. I look around and people around me, they're they're not holding it together People, their tempers were starting to boil over.
Pastor Greg:They just want to get on a plane and get where they were going. Things were said that day. To gate agents who had nothing to do with what was happening. I ended up going home that night never getting on a plane but you know what? They got me on one the next morning.
Pastor Greg:I got to the shoot a few hours late. In the process, they were able to reschedule that that interview that I was supposed to shoot that next morning. It was just inconvenient. Nothing was lost in the process other than time and a lot of stress. I could've lost my cool that day but somehow I didn't.
Pastor Greg:But if I had of, that's exactly what it looks like when you're trying to control the weight. Instead of trusting the one who really does. It seems trivial thinking about a flight but even that, god had his fingerprints on it. God was in control the whole time. I got to spend another night with my family so that was nice.
Pastor Greg:That gate agent did not cause the delay. She didn't control the weather, the mechanics, the timeline, none of it And most of the time, neither does the person standing next to us who were taking it out on. Your spouse didn't cause the diagnosis. Your kids didn't cause the financial pressure or maybe they did but it's your fault for having them, right? Your coworker didn't cause the promotion to stall out.
Pastor Greg:But we can't get our hands on the source of the delay so we take it out on everybody around us. Usually those closest to us. Because god's not standing there in front of us to vent at. So, we take it out on our spouse or our friends or our coworkers or our kids and James says, we better watch it. Because the judge is standing at the door and he's not saying it to scare us into behavior.
Pastor Greg:He's saying it because it's just the truth. The one who is actually in control of that timeline, he's here all the time watching exactly how you treat people. In first John, it says, love one another How do you treat people when you're in the wait? When you're frustrated. We wait.
Pastor Greg:In verse 10, for examples of patience and suffering, dear brothers and sisters, look at the prophets who spoke in the name of the lord. He he's told us now, wait with patience and now he's moving into this other idea. We need to wait with hope. He says, look at the prophets. Dear brothers and sisters, look at the prophets who spoke in the name of the lord.
Pastor Greg:Think about what it actually cost some of these men that we read about in scripture. It took years. Sometimes, a lifetime of speaking the word of god that didn't come true for them to see for a really long time. They didn't always get to see the resolution of it. The realization of the truth that god had put into them.
Pastor Greg:They just had to trust that the god who gave them the word was going to come through and what he told them to say. Think about Noah. Noah's told to go build an ark and that everybody thinks he's crazy. It takes over one hundred years for him to build an ark. Think think of Moses who waited and waited and waited on the lord and then led the people to the doorstep of promised land and never got to go in.
Pastor Greg:But James, he saves probably the most powerful example of this for last and he names him by name. We give great honor to those who endure under suffering. For instance, you know about Job. A man of great endurance. You can see how the lord was kind to him at the end for the lord is full of tenderness and mercy.
Pastor Greg:Job. I don't know how many of you've ever spent any devotional time reading the book of Job. It can be a bit of a downer. I don't know if you've read this or not. If you read it, in the power of the spirit, it's actually incredibly encouraging but on the surface, it's hard.
Pastor Greg:I mean, let's look at what Job actually lost. His wealth He lost his health covered, head to foot in sores. He lost all of his children. Not just like losing them like dead. They're gone.
Pastor Greg:They're not coming back. His marriage was strained to the point where where his wife told him, curse god and die. It's not going great for Job. His friends turned into accusers instead of comforters. Job had every reason in the world to grumble against everyone around him.
Pastor Greg:And you know what he does in the in the middle of all of it? He says, what might be one of the most defiant sentences in all of scripture. In Job chapter 19 verse 25, he says, I know that my redeemer lives. In the middle of all of it, I know that my redeemer lives. Here's what we really need to understand about what he's doing here.
Pastor Greg:Job says this and there's no resolution in sight. He said it in the dark not after the lights came back on. Don't take it wrong. Job's not happy about what's going on here. I mean, he complained to God quite a bit.
Pastor Greg:But he stood on this truth. Even in the middle of all this, I know I know without a shadow of a doubt that my redeemer lives. Church, I want you to hear this clearly. If you belong to Jesus this is as bad as it's ever going to get for you. Whatever you face in this lifetime, that's as bad as it gets.
Pastor Greg:You have an eternity with your savior. Your redeemer lives. This for you is as bad as it's ever going to get. If you don't know Jesus, This is as good as it's ever going to get for you. This is heaven for you.
Pastor Greg:Is that good? Is that what you want? Here's the part of Job's story that we really don't even think about enough. Even when god's restores him at the end, it doesn't erase what he lost. He never gets his children back not the original 10 Whatever happened to Job in this life however it ended there was still a piece of it that could only be made right in eternity.
Pastor Greg:It couldn't be fixed on this Earth. And that's the hope that James is pointing us to. Not hang in there, you're gonna get through it. Not, it's all gonna work out in the end. It's not your job to control the way.
Pastor Greg:It's your job to trust the one who controls it. Because here's the thing about Job's confidence. I know that my redeemer lives, he says. And he said that not even knowing half of what we know today. Job didn't know about a cross Job didn't know a resurrection was going to happen three days after the cross.
Pastor Greg:He just knew somehow that god had not left him. And it made it all okay. Not happy but he knew there was a purpose in it. I know that my redeemer lives. Your weight is not evidence that he's forgotten you.
Pastor Greg:It's evidence that something is still being written and it's just not finished yet. But I know my redeemer lives. So, let me ask you a question this morning that I really want you to think about. Don't just rush past it. Rush past it.
Pastor Greg:Can't speak English, sorry. What is your unless? Let me explain what I mean by that. Think about a marriage for a moment. We think about a marriage and most of us say, I'm never leaving.
Pastor Greg:I'm married for life. Yet, people still every single day sit across from a counselor, inches away from leaving. There, I will never leave was followed by an unless. I will never leave unless my spouse is unfaithful, unless they're uncaring, For today, it's it boils down to maybe the spark is gone. So, what is the one thing for you that if it happened or if it kept not happening, if it got worse instead of better, that would make you say, I would never leave the lord.
Pastor Greg:Unless. Name it. Don't pretend you don't have one. We all do. There are things that we seek in this life and we trust god to to take care of it and when he doesn't, we doubt and we begin to think maybe it's time to walk away.
Pastor Greg:What is it? Your health? A child who's wandered away and won't come back financial collapse that's terrifying you because you don't know where you're going to turn We need to know what our unless is so that we can come to god honestly and confess that to him instead of pretending we don't have one and then getting blindsided by it later down the road. What is your unless Job's answer in the end was nothing. I know that my redeemer lives and that is good enough for me.
Pastor Greg:Is it really good enough for you? It wasn't his wealth. It wasn't his health. It wasn't even losing his children. Nothing was worth more to him than the god who he trusted in.
Pastor Greg:What's yours? So, what does it actually look like? To wait with hope to wait patiently. It's not waiting for the resolution We don't know when the resolution's coming or if we'll ever see it. The prophets didn't get to see most of their words come true in their lifetime.
Pastor Greg:Job never got his 10 kids back on this side of eternity. If hope meant waiting for the outcome we want, most of scripture's heroes died disappointed. Hope means something far different. It means living right now, today, in the middle of whatever it is. Being confident about who god is.
Pastor Greg:I know that my redeemer lives. Whether or not he's moved yet, hope is not a guarantee that in the end, you get what you want or what you think you want. It's trust in the character of the one who's holding it all. What does it look like to wait patiently and to wait with hope? It's simply this, trust the one who does.
Pastor Greg:Trust the one who's got it. Whether you get the answer you're seeking or not, So, I want to close with this. As we talk about a lot of times, there there's really two two sides at play here in this room, two groups of us. Some of you've never trusted Jesus. You've spent your whole life waiting on your own terms chasing the next thing that would finally make it enough.
Pastor Greg:And it's never been enough. There's always something else and I need you to hear this. Jesus is the lord of all whether you admit it and agree with it or not. He is lord, period. He died in your place because you needed a savior because you were an enemy of god and you are facing his wrath.
Pastor Greg:And he took all of that and he died in our place and then then he defeated death and rose again and maybe you've heard this a million times but you've never really given your life to Christ. He's not asking you to have all of it figured out before you come to him. He's saying come in the waiting. In the middle of whatever you're in, he is there. I know that my redeemer lives.
Pastor Greg:Have you ever accepted Christ and given him your life as lord? Truly given him your life. Not a raised a hand in a VBS. Nor walked an aisle at the end of a church service, really surrendered to Jesus as your lord. Because if you have, then you can say, I know my redeemer lives.
Pastor Greg:Some of you in the room, you already know Jesus. You've trusted him for years but you're in in a mess. Things are hard. If we're honest, you've been living less like you trust Jesus and more like you're managing all of what's going on. You've been more afraid of the delay than you are of him.
Pastor Greg:It's time to let go of whatever. Whatever it is, it was never yours to control in the first place. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to respond to him and I'm going ask the band to go ahead and make their way back up. We're going to close with worship. And as they come back up, I want you, I'm asking all of you to close your eyes, bow your heads, and don't look around.
Pastor Greg:Let people in this room do business with the lord however he's leading this morning. So, here's my question first. Which side are you on? If you've never accepted Christ as your savior and you know it or you have questions, I'm I'm really not sure. I'm confused right now.
Pastor Greg:In this moment, you can be redeemed and all that it means is you are placing your trust in Jesus Christ and making him the lord of everything in your life. It's super simple but it's not easy because it does require us to surrender. Have you ever done that and received that love and that compassion and that redemption that's only available in Christ? If you've never done that this morning and you want to follow in that, nobody's looking around. Would you just raise your hand?
Pastor Greg:You're just saying, I want to know Jesus. I'm not going to make you come up front. I just want to pray with you. Would you raise your hand this morning? Now, there's some of you in this room You've got a relationship with Jesus but you're controlling everything yourself.
Pastor Greg:You're not letting go and you never look at it and say, I know my redeemer lives. You say, I got this. You don't. He's got it. It's never meant for you to control it.
Pastor Greg:It's meant for you to trust the one who does. And I don't know what everyone in this room is going through but I know we all got something. And right now, you're in the middle of a struggle. Maybe it's it's the hardest thing you've ever been through in your life or maybe right now, your things are going okay but there's still something, something that you won't let go of. Right now, would you pray that prayer?
Pastor Greg:I know my redeemer lives. Help me to let go of this. Help me to trust the one who controls it all. As we close, the the altar's open, come and pray. I will be up here on the side.
Pastor Greg:If you've made a decision to follow Christ or if you just need someone to pray with, come grab me. Grab Tina in the back. We would love to pray with you. How is he leading you to respond? Don't just sit.
Pastor Greg:Move however he leads you this morning. Father in heaven, as as we read your your scriptures today and lord, dig in to your truth, you have pierced the heart. I believe of many in this room. I know there are some in this room who don't have a relationship with you. They pretend that they do and they play the game but god, they've never given their life to you as lord.
Pastor Greg:Father, I pray that you would draw them to yourself right now. Don't let them leave today until they do business with you. I pray that they would tell someone would come and grab me upfront or just tell the person they're sitting next to that they came with. But I know a lot of people in this room, they love you but they're trying to do this on their own terms. They've gotten caught up in trying to control whatever they're waiting through right now.
Pastor Greg:And god, I pray that you would help them release it right now. So, if they can look in the middle of it even if they're frustrated so they could look to you and say, I know that my redeemer lives. That you would bring comfort to those who are in need. That you would give us the strength to let go of it, to come and lay it on the altar to you. Lord, would you move?
Pastor Greg:However, however you lead this morning, I pray that people would respond to you. In Jesus name,