- 1 day ago
God isn't slow. His promises will be fulfilled when they are ready to be fulfilled. In the meantime, our job is to keep the body of Christ healthy through humility, kindness, and patience.
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
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From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Send me a friend request on The Torah Network: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
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LearningTranscript
00:00We're on James chapter 5, verses 7 through 12.
00:05I'm reading from the Scriptures 2009 version today.
00:09It's not my favorite translation, but, you know, out of the Hebrew roots kind of translations,
00:15it's probably one of the better ones.
00:17I think it's definitely better than the Et Zephyr and the Hallelujah Scriptures and all
00:23of those.
00:25And it's more accurate to the text than the complete Jewish Bible.
00:30I mean, the complete Jewish Bible is great.
00:31I love it.
00:32It's not a literal translation.
00:34It's very loose and adds a lot of Jewish flavor, and that's deliberate.
00:39So you just have to read it, keeping that in mind.
00:42And the Scriptures is similar, where it's literal most of the time, but every now and
00:48then it gets a little loose.
00:51Like in our reading today, it's going to put the four-letter name of God, Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh,
00:56in places where James wrote, Kurios.
00:58Well, if James wanted to write the Tetragrammaton, he could have, but he didn't.
01:04He wrote his letter in Greek.
01:06He wrote out Kurios for Lord instead of putting the Hebrew name in there.
01:12And, you know, I don't think the Scriptures is wrong.
01:15I don't think, I mean, that's who James is talking about, but it's just not accurate
01:20to the text.
01:21So on one level, it's not inaccurate, but it's not as literal as I would prefer.
01:30There are some other issues with it, but, you know, overall, it's a pretty decent translation.
01:35So I think it's fine for most people.
01:37So starting in verse 7, as I read, be listening for the major themes and ideas that, you know,
01:47what is it, what is James' overall topic here?
01:50What is he trying to say?
01:52What are the things that he's got on his mind?
01:54I got my letters reversed there.
02:24See, we call those blessed to endure.
02:27You who have heard of the endurance of Yov and saw the purpose of Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, that
02:33he is very sympathetic and compassionate.
02:35But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by the heaven or by the earth or with
02:40any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no, no, lest you fall into judgment.
02:47Okay, so major themes here.
02:50Patience.
02:51Yep.
02:53Patience.
02:55The coming of the Lord.
02:58Endurance.
03:00Grumbling.
03:02Yeah.
03:03Grumbling.
03:04We'll definitely talk about that one.
03:06And what else do you have here?
03:09The early rain and the latter rain.
03:12Yep.
03:14Swearing.
03:16Suffering.
03:17Praise.
03:18Suffering, praise, prayer.
03:19All right.
03:21So based on these major topics that James has going on here, what would you say his main topic
03:30is?
03:30I mean, what is he really trying to talk about?
03:33Enduring faith.
03:34And especially with the idea of faithfulness.
03:39Yeah.
03:40Because he's not just talking about maintaining your belief, which is what we often think of
03:45when we think of faith, but maintaining your faithfulness.
03:48Yeah.
03:51Because even toward the end, after 12, like he starts talking about confessing your sins
03:56to one another.
03:57So this is all about that process, that journey.
04:01Yeah.
04:01And it shows different levels of faithfulness too.
04:03What are you being faithful to?
04:04If you're being faithful to God, that means that you're also being faithful to God's people
04:09and his kingdom, which means not grumbling about each other.
04:14All right.
04:16All right.
04:16Verses seven and eight.
04:19Brothers, be patient until the coming of the master.
04:22The master.
04:24English standard says coming of the Lord.
04:27And I believe that, yeah, it's the same kurios.
04:31So I find that especially annoying that in verse seven, the scriptures translates kurios
04:39as master, but in verse 10 and 11, it translates it as yodei vavhi.
04:49I'm not really sure why they chose that, except to emphasize that until the coming of the Lord
04:56being the return of Yeshua, as opposed to the father.
04:59But I'm not really sure there's a difference there because the coming of Yeshua, the second
05:05coming of Yeshua ushers in the day of Yahweh.
05:09So when Yeshua comes, Yahweh's coming too.
05:13You really can't separate them.
05:15So the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until
05:19it receives the early and latter rain.
05:22James loves to use these colorful earthy metaphors.
05:27He talks about farmers and ships and trees, and I think he does this pretty much in every
05:33chapter.
05:35And here, I think, you know, we like to think of patience as somebody is just being slow.
05:44So we need to be patient with them.
05:46We're waiting for them to be, to catch up or, you know, to finish whatever they're doing
05:51so they can do this other thing.
05:52But James is talking about a different kind of patience here.
05:56I mean, internally, it's the same.
05:59You know, we're waiting for something else.
06:01But it's not like God is slow.
06:04I mean, he's not slow as people consider slow.
06:07I think Paul said that in one of his letters.
06:10But he's coming when the time is right.
06:13Not because he's got other things to do or because he's just slow in acting or he's going
06:21to get around to it one day.
06:22No, but because you have to wait for the right time for things to happen.
06:27When the time was right, God sent his son.
06:30When the time is right, God will send him again.
06:33And so just like the farmer, you can't rush the harvest.
06:37You know, you, you clear your fields, you, you plow, you plant the seeds, you cover them
06:43up, you water, and then you wait.
06:46I mean, can you coax the seeds to grow faster, to germinate and, you know, sprout it faster?
06:53Maybe with modern technology, you can do a little bit of that, but only within certain
06:57limits.
06:58Maybe you can have some genetically modified seed or a special hybrid that, that germinates
07:05faster or grows faster or something, but that plant still has its cycle and you can't rush
07:11the cycle.
07:12You have to wait for it.
07:14And that's what James is talking about here.
07:18Yeshua's return will happen when it's supposed to.
07:22We can't rush it.
07:23You know, there's a tradition that the rabbis have that the Messiah will come when all Jews
07:30worldwide keep the Sabbath on the same day.
07:32When they're all doing it together, that will usher in the Messiah.
07:36It's a great thought, but it's totally wrong.
07:39The Messiah will return when the Messiah is supposed to return.
07:42And there is nothing you or I can do to make it come faster or slower.
07:47There's the latter rain, the early rains and the latter rains, whatever that equates to in
07:51history.
07:52These are things that God is preparing.
07:54He is preparing the ground.
07:56He's preparing the seeds and the plants.
07:58He's even preparing the tares.
08:01And we have to wait for all those processes to go through.
08:04We have to wait for the tares to grow so that the wheat boughs and the tare doesn't so
08:10that we can tell them apart when we harvest.
08:13Is the early rain and latter rain something unique to you and me personally and individually
08:17and then corporately together at the same time?
08:21That's probably true in some ways because everybody's life goes through similar stages.
08:29You can even think of the progress of the Hebrews from Exodus into the promised land
08:34as the life of a believer.
08:37As we all go through various stages where we realize that we're under the oppression of sin
08:45and we need a Savior, that's when we cry out to God.
08:47So he sends a Savior.
08:50I mean, he's already sent the Savior.
08:51We just need to be made aware of him.
08:54And there's some turmoil.
08:56You have to do some battle with yourself.
08:58But really, it comes down to trusting him.
09:00Are you going to walk out of Egypt with him or not?
09:02Leave the sin behind.
09:04But then we have this period where we go through like a wilderness experience with God.
09:10And it's similar to what you've been going through with the Sabbath and the feast days
09:13where you're learning something new.
09:15I mean, it's a whole new experience and it's not always easy, you know, trying to struggle
09:20to help the kids understand why we're doing what we're doing, why we're leaving all those
09:25leeks and cucumbers and fish behind in Egypt.
09:28They were so great.
09:29And now all we've got is manna.
09:31This is awful.
09:33But there's a rhyme and a reason and things have to go in the right order or stuff breaks
09:39down.
09:39We get to the promised land too soon and we're faced with the Amalekites and we run away screaming.
09:45Or we attack at the wrong moment and defeat ourselves.
09:50That process is going to look different for every person, just like it looks different
09:53for every crop.
09:55But the process, I'm convinced, is still pretty much the same.
10:01Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
10:02Here, I think James is really talking about the grand scope of history, specifically.
10:07I mean, the same principle applies to each one of us.
10:10But I think he's really, what he has in mind is the final return of Yeshua ushering in the
10:16messianic kingdom here on earth.
10:19You guys, what do you think?
10:21What are some things that everybody thinks that we ought to have right now and we don't
10:25have?
10:26That we ought to have?
10:28Right, people that people think we ought to have.
10:31You know, God said that we're going to have this, we're going to have that, so why don't
10:34we have it?
10:35Well, I know one thing that we've talked about a lot is healing.
10:40We've had our share of health concerns and my mother has been battling cancer for about
10:45a year and a half now.
10:47And she's had some miracles along the way, but healing isn't really coming.
10:52But she believes that God heals.
10:55I believe that God heals.
10:57So why, when we pray for healing, aren't we healed?
11:01Sometimes we are, sometimes we're not.
11:04And it's just, God doesn't jump through our hoops.
11:08But God promised healing.
11:10He said that by his stripes, we are healed.
11:13Well, Yeshua took those stripes.
11:14So why aren't we healed?
11:16And I think that it's because there's always a process to things.
11:20Whatever it is that we're looking for, you know, God wants us to be healthy.
11:25He wants us to be prosperous.
11:28But the world has fallen.
11:29It's a corrupt world and the corruption is not going away.
11:33Not today.
11:34Eventually, the whole thing is going to be destroyed and remade.
11:37But between now and then, we still have to deal with a fallen world.
11:42We still have to live in it.
11:44We are still in Egypt in that way.
11:47And we can't leave Egypt on our own.
11:49I mean, you think about the Hebrews, if one family of Hebrews decided they were going
11:53to up and leave Egypt because they were tired of it.
11:56Well, maybe they'd be able to escape Egypt, but are they going to be able to get across
12:00the wilderness by themselves?
12:03Are they going to, what's going to happen when they meet the Amalekites or when they
12:06meet the Rephaim in the promised land?
12:09By themselves, they're not going to get anywhere.
12:11So sometimes God has promised things and those promises are sure, but they're not necessarily
12:19going to come when we want them in the way that we want them.
12:23And for a lot of people, for almost everybody, really, I mean, we all get old and die.
12:28Everybody.
12:30So on some level, we are all waiting for a final healing.
12:34And that's not going to happen until the final resurrection.
12:38It's not pleasant.
12:40It goes against a lot of Christian doctrine and maybe not the most common Christian doctrine,
12:46but certainly the real popular stuff in the West right now with the prosperity gospel,
12:52things like that.
12:54That's just not biblical.
12:56Yes, God wants us to be healed.
12:57He wants us to be happy.
12:58He wants us to have good things, but he wants it his way, not ours.
13:03In his timing, not ours.
13:06Unity.
13:09Unity amongst believers.
13:11Yeah.
13:11Sometimes that means that we have to stay behind.
13:16We have to wait on God's timing and we don't get what we want because if we got what we want,
13:22then it would be detrimental to the people around us.
13:26It's one of the things that my mom has told me that she knows that even though she doesn't
13:31understand why God doesn't heal her, she knows that these nurses and other people who are
13:37working on her, they are watching her.
13:40They know that she's a believer.
13:42And so she is having an impact on all of these people.
13:46And maybe that's the reason that God hasn't healed her because there's somebody there who
13:51needs her.
13:51And she would never meet that person if she went out, you know, just died in her sleep
13:58one day instead of from cancer or whatever it is that people get sick from.
14:04Yes, I agree.
14:06It made me think, and that's such a remarkable perspective.
14:10It just made me think of Stephen when he was being martyred in the way that he received
14:15that.
14:16And I believe that to have been had a huge impact on Paul, you know?
14:20Yeah.
14:21Standing there witnessing that.
14:23Yeah.
14:24The look on his face and the way that he responded to just such an awful situation.
14:30Yeah.
14:30This guy that Paul expects is an apostate, an idol worshiper because he's following this
14:38false messiah, but then he just repeats back scripture to him.
14:41And yeah, he's got to be thinking to himself, I can't find anything wrong with anything he's
14:48saying, but I know he's a bad guy somehow.
14:52All right.
14:53So in the next verse here in verse eight, James starts with, you too be patient.
15:00So just like the farmer, you have to be patient.
15:04And maybe God gives you the things you're looking for.
15:08Maybe he doesn't.
15:09Sometimes he does.
15:10Some people have miraculous healings.
15:12Some people get wealthy just because God needs them to be wealthy or he's rewarding
15:19them.
15:20And we think about Abraham, who every time he went through a trial, he came out of it with
15:25more money and stuff than he had before.
15:28And he doesn't appear to have ever really wanted to get rich.
15:31He just did.
15:33God had a purpose for that.
15:35I like this next phrase, establish your hearts.
15:38What do you think James is trying to say with that?
15:41I wrote down to anchor your heart in the scripture and then also the promises of Messiah's return.
15:51Yeah.
15:52Anchoring your heart in that hope.
15:54Yeah.
15:55Absolutely.
15:56The same word.
15:59Let me see what the Greek word is.
16:02Yeah, that sounds right.
16:06Yeah.
16:06Sterizo.
16:08In other places, it's translated as strengthen.
16:12And so this establishing is like putting it on a firm foundation so that it can't be moved.
16:19It's like, brace yourself, stand firm and establish for the coming of the master has drawn near.
16:26I think literally it says that the coming of the Lord is at hand.
16:31Although King James does the drawing nigh too.
16:35That's egizzo.
16:37Yeah, that is actually approaching.
16:39The day of the Lord is approaching.
16:41So this is something that I think confuses a lot of people.
16:46Paul seems to talk about it.
16:48Yeshua makes statements like, this generation won't pass away until all these things come to pass.
16:54Paul says that, I can't remember his exact words, but he makes several comments where it sounds like he expects Yeshua to return any day.
17:02And James says, the coming of the master is drawn near or the coming of the Lord draws near.
17:11But here we are almost 2000 years later.
17:16And if you believe the, the preterists, they believe that he did come back.
17:22He came back in 70 AD, judged the Jews, destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and kicked them out of the land.
17:30And, and most of them also believe that he ended the Jews as his people, like done with them.
17:38Now I've got this new people.
17:40Some of them will, I saw somebody today who posted online that we don't believe that the church replaced Israel.
17:47We believe that the church is the continuation of Israel with the different people.
17:51Like, well, how exactly is that not replacing?
17:55I mean, God didn't replace Israel.
17:58He just replaced all the people who were Israel.
18:01Yeah.
18:02The kind of mental.
18:03Wow.
18:03Talk about delusional.
18:05How did they explain Ezekiel 36?
18:08What was that?
18:10My wife said, how do they explain Ezekiel 36?
18:13Most of Ezekiel, they believe is a metaphor that it's all just stuff that either happened in 70 or in the first century, or it's all a metaphor of the kingdom of heaven.
18:29And so all of Ezekiel's descriptions of the temple and all the things that happened there, you know, the sacrifices and the priests and all these things.
18:37This is actually about the church and how the church is supposed to be in the world.
18:43And it really seems like they're trying too hard just to force things to fit a particular eschatology.
18:52It made me think of that verse that in Matthew 5, 17, do not think that I came to abolish, but to complete.
19:00And, you know, yeah, but don't you know that to complete something is to throw it out?
19:08Right.
19:08You know, it's like a puzzle.
19:09I'm done with a puzzle.
19:10I throw it out.
19:10Right.
19:11Exactly my point.
19:13So what do you think James and Paul and Yeshua really mean when they make statements like this, that it sounds like Yeshua is coming back any day?
19:22I can be patient.
19:25We don't have a lot of people here.
19:26So, well, it's I don't think that it's metaphor, but I think they really believe that he was coming back at any moment.
19:34It wasn't just like, well, that's how we should live every day.
19:36Like he's going to be that he's going to return at any moment.
19:39I don't think that's the answer.
19:41I mean, they really felt like that he was going to be back.
19:45I've wrestled with that passage because when you break down that, you know, this generation shall not pass away.
19:50As I understand it, he was really speaking about that specific generation.
19:53Yeah, that's the most that's the most common interpretation.
19:58I take a different tack on that one.
20:00I think when he says this generation, he's not talking about the people who are alive at that moment, but the generation of Jacob.
20:08Like this line of people will not pass away.
20:11I'm going to preserve Israel through all of this stuff.
20:15That makes complete sense.
20:16I could be wrong, but that's how I believe what I believe it means right now.
20:22Them believing the Messiah was going to return at any moment is do you think that has anything to do with why they gave their possessions away in Acts 2?
20:30Yeah, I think it is.
20:32Yeah, I think they really did.
20:33A lot of those people really did believe that he was coming back any day.
20:36I don't think that's necessarily what James is saying here, and I suspect that as Paul got older, he probably realized that his expectations might have been off.
20:47He's never saying it's going to happen within my lifetime or it's going to happen in this decade or anything like that.
20:54He never says that.
20:55He says he could be coming back any time or this day is near.
21:02But, you know, that's kind of subjective.
21:05What does near mean?
21:06In my opinion, I think God was moderating him in how he wrote that.
21:11Even if he expected Yeshua to come back right away, God made sure that he wrote it down in a way that could be interpreted to mean that near is in God's perspective.
21:25Or it might mean something else.
21:27Like here in James, James is using this metaphor of the farmer in the seeds.
21:31I mean, if you've done any farming or gardening, you know that there really is a lot of work to be done between the planting and the harvesting.
21:40You've got weeding and pruning and pesticides or pest control because they wouldn't have had pesticides then.
21:46You do have a lot of work.
21:48But as far as the fruit goes, the fruit's coming when it comes.
21:53But as soon as you plant and water those seeds and they germinate, now the harvest is near.
22:00The harvest is coming.
22:01You know it's coming.
22:03There's nothing else you can do with this fruit to make it happen.
22:06So now you're just watching for it.
22:09It's the next thing on the farming calendar is the harvest.
22:14And we can see this at work in the feast calendar.
22:18We've got all this busy stuff in the spring.
22:21And then we've got a long period of seven weeks.
22:25And then we've got this day, another harvest festival in the middle that's really connected to those spring feasts.
22:33It's kind of an extension of the early first fruits and Passover.
22:37And then we've got another long period until the final harvest is Sukkot.
22:41And when you get to Shavuot, you say, what's the next holiday?
22:49Well, the fall feasts are next.
22:51The fall feasts are coming.
22:53Well, they're not coming this week or this month or next month.
22:56They're several months away.
22:58But they're the next thing on the calendar.
23:00Well, I think that might be what James is saying here.
23:03That he's saying, well, now you've cleared your field, you plowed, you planted your seeds, you watered, the early rains came, the harvest is next, the harvest is coming.
23:14It's just, you know, you got a few months.
23:17And with these habaneros in my garden, you might have six months.
23:21Okay.
23:22Verse nine.
23:23Do not grumble against each other, brothers, lest you be judged.
23:26See, the judge is standing at the door.
23:29I think just about every translation says standing at the door.
23:33But the same word can be translated gate.
23:36And we were talking about the Daily Bread devotional book.
23:40And in our Torah portion, we're going through the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah right now.
23:47And as we're reading through this in our daily readings, you know, all kinds of different connections are coming out.
23:54But one of the things we talked about is that it says Lot was sitting in the gates when his two visitors arrived.
24:01So what is Lot doing sitting in the gates?
24:05Well, everywhere else you look in scripture, when somebody is sitting at the gates, it's talking about the elders of the city.
24:12The judges and the rulers, they sit at the gates and they hear people's problems.
24:18They weigh cases.
24:20They give advice.
24:22So even though the people of Sodom are certainly not on Lot's wavelength as far as spiritual matters go, he's a very rich man who lives in this fairly large metropolitan city, large for that day.
24:35So they would have given him a place of honor simply because of his social status, even if they disagreed with him.
24:44So he's sitting in the gates.
24:47That's where the judge is.
24:48So when I see in James, the judge is standing at the door.
24:52It's not like he's standing in the door of your house, like ominously, like, here I am.
24:58I'm here to judge you.
25:00No, he's standing in the gates.
25:02This is where the judge is supposed to be.
25:05He is ready to take to hear your case and he's ready to pass judgment.
25:09So now all that's waiting is for the plaintiff and the accused to show up and for the witnesses to appear.
25:20And then we can have the trial.
25:22But we don't get that until Revelation.
25:24At the end of Revelation, when the books are opened, this is what happens when the judge does his thing.
25:30Obviously, there are other moments of judgment, too, because God judges the nations, he judges the wicked, and then there's the resurrection and he judges everybody.
25:41But James is saying that everything has been put in place.
25:45Now the judge is waiting for his day.
25:48And I think here's where the preterists, they're not wrong about everything.
25:53And I think 70 AD was sort of an iteration of prophecy.
25:59It's a shadow of the day of the Lord.
26:02It's not the worst thing that ever happened.
26:05It was terrible.
26:07But there have been worse wars.
26:08There have been worse slaughters of the Jews.
26:11But it didn't fulfill all of the prophecies of the day of the Lord.
26:18It didn't fulfill even all of the prophecies that Yeshua gave at the end of Matthew.
26:22There are other things that have to happen.
26:25And so we're looking forward to those same events again.
26:28But all of these things are judgments.
26:31Judgment comes for different people and different nations at different times.
26:36Just like we were talking about different varieties of plants are harvested at different moments.
26:43Some things, you plant radishes.
26:46They grow when they're ready to harvest in a few weeks.
26:48But you plant peppers and it might take six, seven months before you're getting ripe peppers out of them.
26:55So there's lots of judgments between the beginning and the end until the big final judgment.
27:00Where I was talking about the feast days in the calendar, you can see that there too, where Passover is a harvest festival.
27:09That's the barley harvest.
27:11Shavuot is the wheat harvest.
27:12Sukkot is the fruit harvest.
27:14And, you know, in real life on the agricultural calendar, you have lots of other harvests in between.
27:19But these are the three major ones.
27:21These are the staples for everybody's diets.
27:24All the vegetables and leafy stuff.
27:27Those are kind of year round.
27:29You're harvesting things constantly.
27:30And you're not really preserving most of those.
27:34So what are the ways that we grumble against each other?
27:37I know we've all seen it.
27:39What kinds of things do we do that would qualify as grumbling against each other?
27:45Why did you leave the dirty clothes in the floor?
27:48Yeah.
27:50Complaining about the little things that people do.
27:55In the Torah movement, we've got some peculiar grumbles that we have.
27:59Announcing the names.
28:01Yeah.
28:01How do you pronounce the name?
28:02Do you say Yahusha, Yeshua, Yehoshua, Yehoshua?
28:07Right.
28:08Yeah, there are all kinds of things that we do.
28:11And I think that most of these things, they don't really have a lot of impact on how you actually live.
28:20Does it really affect how you live from one day to the next if you say Jesus, Yeshua, or Yehoshua?
28:26I can't think of anything other than how people will react to you at times.
28:32It just doesn't affect anything about how I live my life.
28:35And people can have their own opinions about these things without being dishonest or pagans or whatever word we want to throw at people.
28:48They read the scriptures.
28:50They come to a specific conclusion.
28:52You know, one common objection I've had to using a Hebrew name at all for Yeshua is that the only actual record we have of his name is in Greek.
29:01Yes, I mean, we know that we have example of other people who had that name in the first century, and it's spelled Yeshua in Aramaic or Hebrew is same in either one.
29:13But the only record we have of our Yeshua is in the Greek New Testament, and it's spelled Yesus every time.
29:23So when the angel comes to Joseph and said, don't worry about this, don't divorce Mary, she has a child from God, and you're going to name him Jesus because he's going to save his people.
29:39They say, well, Jesus, therefore, means he's going to save his people.
29:43Kind of, sort of.
29:44You know, when you understand that it's a transliteration of a transliteration of a transliteration of Yeshua, yeah, Yeshua means salvation, which is why I prefer to use the name Yeshua, because it kind of shortcuts all that and says Yeshua means salvation.
30:00So I don't have to explain to people how that means salvation, because it just does.
30:06In reality, of course, I do have to explain it because it confuses people when they're used to hearing Jesus.
30:10But my point there is the people who say we should be saying Jesus or Yesus even, they have a point because that's what Scripture says.
30:20So I'm not going to argue with them about it.
30:23That's okay.
30:23As long as they're not going to tell me that I'm a Judaizer or a pagan for saying Yeshua instead of Jesus, I'm okay with them saying Jesus.
30:34I'll use Jesus with them because I don't, I'm not trying to offend them.
30:37I'm trying to communicate.
30:39And one of the ways that, that very subtle way that we can grumble against people is by deliberately choosing words that we know are going to offend them to provoke a reaction.
30:50If I know that somebody is offended when I say Yeshua, I think that's a problem.
30:57They've got a spiritual issue there, but I'm probably going to use the word Jesus with them because my, I'm not trying to offend them.
31:04Usually there, there might be some case where it could be good to offend somebody to make them think about something.
31:10But most of the time, that's not my point.
31:12I'm trying to talk to them about Yeshua.
31:14So calling him Yeshua, when they don't know what that means or it confuses them, it's counterproductive.
31:22And I think trying, pushing the issue is a form of grumbling against those people.
31:27Like I'm going to show you, I'm going to use this word because you're wrong.
31:31And they do the same thing right back.
31:34That's verse nine.
31:36I went down a pretty interesting rabbit hole whenever I was studying this out today.
31:42When I heard grumbling, it brought me back to a numbers.
31:46Whenever the father asked, how long was this evil congregation grumble against me?
31:51I've heard the grumblings with the children of Israel are grumbling against me.
31:54And I believe you even mentioned it earlier when you were talking about the cucumbers and the fish.
32:00But it's a different word.
32:02When I studied it out that James is using versus what was used in the Hebrew.
32:07And it came from a place of intent.
32:09So the word that the Hebrew word was LUN, L-U-N.
32:14And it was, it's not casual complaining.
32:17It implies persistent, discontented murmuring that challenges authority.
32:22That was what was used in numbers.
32:24It's emotional pain.
32:26And it's pointed against him, not groaning to him about something.
32:31It is really authoritatively challenging.
32:33But the word that James used is Stenizo, S-T-N-A-Z-O.
32:40And it is silent anguish, sometimes born from righteous endurance.
32:46It reflects inward pressure, but not necessarily rebellion.
32:51And when it says that the judge is standing at the door,
32:54it made me think of how quickly complaint can open the door to rebellion.
32:58Yeah, the discontent.
33:01Yes.
33:02And it brought me back to what we were speaking about maybe last week or two weeks ago.
33:07In Genesis 4-7, when sin was crouching at the door,
33:11I didn't know if that had any kind of correlation.
33:14That was just kind of in my notes.
33:17That is interesting.
33:18I hadn't thought of that.
33:20I'd have to go back and look at the word there for sin.
33:22Because Satan means the accuser.
33:27So if you've got the judge at the gate, that's where the accuser has to be too.
33:32At least if he's bringing an actual case.
33:36Yeah.
33:37That's a great point.
33:39I think one of the things that we do very often, though, is we grumble about people or
33:46we gossip or we speculate about people when we're not at the gates.
33:52And that's really sidestepping the legal process that God has laid out.
33:58Paula and I have talked a lot about a particular set of things that we perceived were wrongly done,
34:05where harm was done.
34:08And most of our conversation has been about, what do we do about this?
34:11Is there anything we can do to make this right or to get this person to make things right or whatever?
34:20But honestly, the more we talk about it, the more it just encourages those bad feelings
34:27and encourages speculation about motives and other things that we really can't know.
34:33And in a way, this is, even if we don't go and talk to other people about it,
34:37it can be a kind of character assassination because now we have a predisposition against
34:45those people in this particular way, where they don't have an opportunity to defend themselves.
34:51And then if they come up in a conversation or we have an interaction with them in front of other
34:56people, our biases against them may come out in the things that we say or the way that we act
35:02just totally inadvertently, which could then influence other people against them.
35:06And so even just murmuring on the inside or quietly stewing on things that are going wrong
35:13can come out as a false accusation against somebody.
35:18And how can they defend themselves against something that we're not even saying?
35:22Go ahead.
35:24That's a really good perspective.
35:25And I'm so glad you came to that.
35:28But it's interesting because I feel like we're on kind of the other side of it in the sense
35:35of, I think there's been a lot of processing of asking these questions and actually feel
35:40like part of the conclusion that we've come to is this is really pointless.
35:45This is not helpful.
35:46It's actually been more of a process lately when we do, when we haven't had conversations
35:52about it.
35:53I feel like it's been more positive in the sense of like, we're unraveling some of the
36:00things that we might have thought when we were first dealing with that.
36:05And so, which I'm really, I've really been happy about because we've, because we've asked
36:11a lot of questions about it.
36:12But, but what I think about when I think about this is that I saw some research recently,
36:18scientific research.
36:20And now I can't remember any of it, but the gist of it was that like, and this has to
36:25do with how we develop neurological pathways and the fact that our thoughts become things,
36:29physical things.
36:29Um, when you think about something over and over, you build neural pathways, neurological
36:35pathways for those things.
36:36And so that becomes part of you and it becomes a pathway that your brain more easily takes
36:43like a super highway.
36:43And so it works both directions for us in the positive sense.
36:50When we express gratitude, it builds super highway neural pathways that you more easily use.
36:58And it works the same way in the opposite direction.
37:01When you grumble, when you complain, when you build and what you're talking about, I think
37:06is like building stories in your own head, building up the reasons why something happened, building
37:14up the possibilities of why or what's going on or whatever.
37:19And it's really about the fact that by nature, we want to understand the reasons and we are storytellers.
37:28And so we often will tell ourselves stories.
37:31And so I think what you're describing is the idea that like, we can tell ourselves stories,
37:35but those stories have impact.
37:39They have way more impact than we imagined because we're building neurological pathways,
37:45like as if those things become, or are real things, like they actually happen that way.
37:50And if we do that kind of stuff over and over again, we will express differently about people
37:58like that we've made stories up in our head about.
38:03And they're really just ways that we're comforting ourselves instead of allowing God to comfort us
38:09in that space of not knowing.
38:12It's the space of not knowing that's uncomfortable.
38:16And so we're just trying to find comfort wherever we can find it.
38:20And it's the same thing we've been doing since the fall of man.
38:24It's instead of just going to God and asking for help, we're like, how can I fix this myself?
38:31And that's what we do.
38:34You know, it's just, it's a very, it's insidious in the sense that like, it's so subtle that we
38:39don't even notice it because part of it is part of our culture.
38:43Like everybody around us does this stuff.
38:46So we think it's just normal and it's natural for, it's natural in terms of our tendency,
38:51but it doesn't mean that it's the way we're meant to live.
38:56So, sorry.
38:58I just had to throw my two cents in on that.
38:59Oh, that's good.
39:00Don't apologize.
39:02Now, how much of the grumbling is from a selfish perspective because you feel wronged or
39:07righteous in a certain way, harmed, I deserve better or this shouldn't be happening.
39:16Yeah.
39:17Yeah.
39:18Or trying to create a defense in your own mind.
39:22Yeah.
39:22I didn't deserve this.
39:25And here's why I didn't deserve it.
39:27And here's why this person is evil.
39:29And I'm perfect, which is never true.
39:35But also, you know, those are the stories we tell.
39:38Yeah.
39:39And I think what's interesting about it too, is that sometimes it's the desire to make it right too.
39:45And so in some cases, like some of our conversations have been like wanting things to be right.
39:52Not so much about the wrong that was done.
39:56It's more about like the relationship being made right.
40:00Like the relationship being made whole again.
40:03Right.
40:04Because of the fact that like in the scriptures, you know, it talks about unity of brothers and sometimes these things don't get resolved.
40:13That's sometimes what our experience is.
40:16And so sometimes it comes out of like a desire for the good thing to happen.
40:21And you're trying to figure out like, how could this happen?
40:25How could we have an impact on this happening?
40:28Because you want things to be okay.
40:31You want things to be made whole again.
40:33And so it's not always a negative in the sense of wanting somebody to pay, you know, like wanting somebody to pay for what they did.
40:41It's a lot of times it's also out of that idea that like we want things to be made right.
40:47We want things to be good again.
40:50And sometimes that's not the case, you know.
40:54But it really comes back to the discomfort that we have around all of it and the difficulty that we have with sitting in the place of not knowing.
41:08The vulnerability of it and all the things that surround it.
41:12Yeah, that's good.
41:15I was looking for something else in my notes and so I lost my place.
41:19There was some pretty strong connections in Leviticus 19 to this passage.
41:25And let's see, we're on verse 9.
41:28Leviticus 19 verses 15 through 17.
41:32You shall do no injustice in judgment.
41:35You shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.
41:40You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor.
41:45I am Yahweh.
41:46You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart.
41:49You may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him.
41:53You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
42:00I am Yahweh.
42:00So because we are, because he is our God, we are his people.
42:07One of our jobs, part of being faithful is maintaining relationships within the kingdom with our neighbor.
42:14Because if we are creating problems or we are encouraging problems between different members of the kingdom, we're creating an autoimmune condition within the body of Christ.
42:26Shoot.
42:27And we are the source of disease.
42:30So if that gets bad enough, he's got to cut us out.
42:34And so our job, because he is Yahweh, our job is to maintain those relationships and to not just maintain them, but to strengthen them, make them better over time if we can.
42:45And so you don't hate your fellow countrymen in your heart, the grumbling and the murmuring that goes on in secret, that inevitably comes out into the real world in some other way.
42:57Because if you do, eventually you're going to sin against him in real life.
43:02I mean, the sin in your heart is what condemns you.
43:04The sin that comes out is the thing that harms somebody else.
43:09And they're both bad, obviously.
43:11The sin that harms somebody else is the thing that other people get to punish.
43:14The sin that corrupts your own heart is what God is going to punish.
43:19All right, let's move on to verse 10.
43:21I have a question.
43:22Okay.
43:23When you say the sin that corrupts your own heart, is that talking about the mind?
43:31Yeah.
43:31The things that you are dwelling on inside.
43:34Yeah.
43:35Well, it makes me think about the neurological pathways and stuff.
43:39It's like that would be a corruption, like a circuitry issue, like a corruption in the circuitry.
43:46Yeah, you're training your mind to think about somebody in a particular way or to think about other people or yourself or a class of people in a particular way.
43:56And the longer you do that, the harder it gets to break out of it.
43:59Even if you see the truth, your mind is still stuck in a certain pattern.
44:04All right.
44:06So verses 10 and 11.
44:07My brothers, as an example of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of Yahweh.
44:13See, we call those blessed to endure.
44:16You have heard of the endurance of Yeov and saw the purpose of Yahweh that he is very sympathetic and compassionate.
44:21And here's what I was talking about with the scriptures, inserting the name of God in here instead of just translating the Greek, which means Lord.
44:32And there's my typo in that first one, Yod-Heh-Heh-Vav instead of Yod-Heh-Vav.
44:39And Eov, that's Job.
44:41So using the Hebrew name of Job, I wonder what the Greek version of that is.
44:46In verse 11, the Greek word for Job is Yob, so closer to the Hebrew than to English.
44:57We have all certainly heard of the suffering and the patience of the prophets.
45:02They were not popular, at least not among the ruling classes.
45:07Because some of them were popular among the people.
45:11Some of them, like Jeremiah, they weren't popular with anybody.
45:15But they did what they were supposed to do.
45:18What do you think we can learn from that?
45:21Keep your eyes on your own paper.
45:23Yeah.
45:23Well, unless you're a prophet and God tells you to go tell that guy what's on his paper.
45:28Like Nick and David.
45:29Okay, but how many of us really are prophets right here?
45:32No claims here.
45:33Yeah, but what James is saying about the prophets who spoke, see, we call those blessed who endure.
45:43You know, what Yeshua said about a prophet, you know, he's never appreciated among his own people.
45:49Well, his own people exist in time also.
45:52So even though, you know, Jeremiah preached doom and gloom against the royal house of Judah.
45:57And he warned everybody that Babylon was coming and they were going to destroy the city and take everybody off into captivity.
46:06And nobody wanted to hear this.
46:08But, I mean, he had to say what he had to say and his life was hard because of it.
46:15But here, about 2,600 years later, we remember Jeremiah as the weeping prophet.
46:22And a large part of the Bible was written by him.
46:26He wrote, you know, a book of Jeremiah.
46:28He wrote Lamentations and 1 and 2 Kings.
46:33These are all books attributed to Jeremiah.
46:36He can't think of Jeremiah without honoring his name because of the massive legacy that he left behind.
46:43And to his contemporaries, he was a real downer for the rest of us.
46:52He's a source of hope.
46:53I did a video on Lamentations.
46:55It was on the Common Sense Bible Study Portal, but I haven't put it up on YouTube or anything yet.
47:00I'll get to it eventually.
47:02But Lamentations is a, it's an amazing book.
47:06The poetry is just crazy.
47:09The stuff that Jeremiah did in that book, he was an extremely well-educated man.
47:16He understood how to use words in all kinds of different ways.
47:20And so he did things with words that nobody else in the Bible did.
47:25He played tricks with words.
47:27And it all comes out in the book of Lamentations if you really pick it apart and look at it.
47:33But even though it's called Lamentations and it's all about how awful life was and the terrible
47:39things that happened to Judah, in the end, it's really a message of hope and how all of
47:46this is intended to bring us back to God.
47:49And when we've returned to God, God returns to us and restores us to all the blessings that
47:53he promised and even more besides, just like with Job.
47:56So that's the message of Jeremiah, even though it might've been pretty dark at the time.
48:04All right.
48:05In the second verse here, you've heard the endurance of Job and saw the purpose of Yahweh,
48:11that he is very sympathetic and compassionate.
48:14If you went to Job in the middle of his travails and you said, Job, can't you see that God is
48:20sympathetic and compassionate?
48:22I mean, if I were Job, I would not have reacted well to that.
48:26But, you know, Job got a little frustrated in the middle of it, but he never lost faith
48:31in God.
48:32He always believed that he got angry and he had a little shouting match with God, but
48:40he always trusted him.
48:42He didn't understand him, but he trusted him.
48:46Bad things happen, but he knew that God had a plan and he was just going to go with it.
48:51So I'm not always that good.
48:53No, I'm going to do this.
48:54Let's see.
48:56Any other thoughts on these two verses?
48:59The purpose of Yahweh.
49:01Sometimes we can't see the forest because of the trees, but his ultimate plan is redemption
49:06that's rooted in compassion.
49:09Yep.
49:10Yep.
49:11That's a good point.
49:12Yeah, and he knows who we are.
49:16Just like he knew who Jeremiah was.
49:18God knew him all along, knew all of the troubles that he was going to go through, knew everything
49:23that was going to happen to him.
49:25It was all just part of his plan.
49:28And Jeremiah never shrank from telling people the truth.
49:32When God sent him to the king and say, okay, you're going to tell him this and tell the
49:36king he had better surrender when the king of Babylon shows up at his gates.
49:41Jeremiah was lucky to walk away from that one with his head still attached.
49:44But he knew that God's court was far more important than the king of Judah.
49:52That Judah had their books.
49:56Well, God's got his books too.
49:58And your name can be blacklisted in every book on earth.
50:02But if you're in the Lamb's book of life at the end, that's the only thing that matters.
50:06It's hard to keep that in perspective while we're here and surrounded by the world and
50:13the way that it is.
50:15But, you know, that's what one of the things that the Bible keeps telling us all around,
50:19all through the whole thing.
50:21The world hates us.
50:23The world hates God.
50:24And so anything associated with God is going to be hated.
50:27But establish your hearts.
50:31Keep the faith.
50:32In the end, God makes it right.
50:34Okay.
50:35I think we've got one more verse here.
50:40Above all, my brothers, do not swear either by the heaven or by the earth or with any other
50:44oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, lest you fall into judgment.
50:49This one seems almost out of place.
50:52James is talking about be patient, be courageous, you know, stand firm, just like the prophets
50:59did who spoke in my name.
51:01And above all, don't swear by heaven or earth.
51:05Just let your yes be yes and your no be no.
51:08How is one related to the other?
51:10Any thoughts?
51:12I'll tell you my first thought.
51:14My first thought is that the prophets spoke in the name of Yahweh.
51:18It says that in verse 10, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord and consider
51:28those blessed who remain steadfast.
51:30And then do not swear either by heaven or by earth.
51:35So we are here as emissaries of Yeshua.
51:40We are his presence on earth.
51:43Everybody around us is supposed to know that.
51:45And they're supposed to know that we are his, not by our fire and brimstone preaching, not
51:53by pointing our fingers in everybody's faces and telling them they're sinning.
51:57There's a time for that, but that's not what we're supposed to be known for.
52:01We're supposed to be known by our love.
52:02And sometimes love requires that you rebuke people, tell them when they're screwing up.
52:08But mostly love is about being compassionate and merciful.
52:15Just like at the end of verse 11, he is very sympathetic and compassionate.
52:19And that's how we're supposed to be.
52:23So if we are here on earth representing him, we are bearing his name in front of all of the earth.
52:31Our speech, the way that we speak to people, the things that we say are the first thing
52:38that people know about God.
52:41And so if our speech is, if we are attributing things to God that aren't true, we are not speaking
52:49in his name.
52:49We're speaking under color of his name as if we're speaking in his name, but we're not
52:53saying things that he would say.
52:55So we're misrepresenting his name.
52:58So James is talking about speech and how we represent God on earth.
53:02So then when we're speaking to people, when we are brought to trial, whether it's a judge
53:08here on earth or the judge at the end of time, let your yes be yes and your no be no.
53:15So you don't need to go to the judge and say, I swear by God that, you know, this is true.
53:21Well, he already knows that you're a representative of God because of the way that you behave and
53:25the way that you speak.
53:26So just let your yes be yes and your no be no, because anything else is drawing specific
53:32attention to that thing that you're saying.
53:34And people are going to try to pick it apart because they hate God and they want to pick
53:39him apart.
53:40So don't give them leverage to do that.
53:45Don't defame God's name in front of other people by dragging him into things that aren't
53:50his business.
53:51And I don't not when I say not his business, I don't mean that he's not in control and
53:56that the whole world isn't his business.
53:58I mean that when we get into trouble and when we cause problems, that's not his doing.
54:04That's us.
54:05So don't drag him into it.
54:07Just keep it simple.
54:09Don't swear on things that, I mean, if you're sure about something, then just say yes and
54:14let your reputation as an honorable person of God carry that for you.
54:20Because if you have to add things on top of it, swearing by the altar or by heaven or God
54:24or whatever, what you're really doing is causing people to doubt it.
54:28And they start looking for things to pick apart in what you're saying and looking for ways that
54:33you are screwing it up.
54:35And that just brings shame on God's name.
54:37I know that was kind of rambling, but hopefully that made sense.
54:41Well, that's exactly what Leviticus 19.12 says.
54:44Yeah.
54:45And that's where I was going to go.
54:46I said, that's why I think that James, this is what James was saying.
54:49He's just, he's taking Leviticus 19 and he's, I mean, he's not doing it exactly in order,
54:56but Leviticus 19 is his base text for this letter.
55:02So that verse 12, you shall not swear falsely by my name.
55:07So as to profane the name of God, I am Yahweh.
55:10I'm Yahweh, not you.
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