“The Judge is Standing at the Door” sermon teaches us that Christians believe the coming of the Lord Jesus is imminent and could happen at any time.

Key verses:
James 5:7-9

Take your Bible, if you will, and turn with me to James chapter five, James chapter five. We’ve been doing a series through the Book of James, and we’re getting near the end of it because there are five chapters, and we’re in the fifth chapter. We’ve been in the fifth chapter for a little while, actually, longer than usual, because we took two weeks off for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. We didn’t take off from church, but we took off from the topic of studying James. So, James chapter five, and then we want to look at verse seven. We’re just going to look at three verses tonight. James chapter five in verse seven says:

James 5:7: “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 latter rain.”

James 5:8: “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”

James 5:9: “Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.”

It’s been our tradition for many years now to designate the first Sunday of the year as the Second Coming Sunday. That is because we never know if this is going to be the year in which the Lord will come. Because we took a couple of weeks off from our studies, we’ll come back to that same theme tonight. I want you to look at the last part of verse nine, where James writes, “Behold, the judge standeth before the door.” I want to talk to you about that tonight, “the judge is standing at the door.”

The Imminent Return

I want to just encourage you about “the judge is standing at the door.” That means He’s ready to come. We believe, as many Bible believers would say, we believe that the coming of the Lord Jesus is imminent. That means it could happen at any time. So, we talk about the first Sunday of the year, and that’s not wrong because His coming is imminent. It could happen at any time. It could be this year. It could be any time this year. It could be tonight.

The old hymn says, “Maybe morning, maybe noon, maybe evening, it may be soon.” So, we look forward to the Lord’s return. Now, as we’ve said throughout this study, James probably was the first book of the New Testament written. I can’t prove that beyond question, but there’s pretty good evidence of it. Therefore, it would be, and listen to me on this, the first book of the New Testament to tell us about the return of the Lord. If it is, in fact, the first book written, it’d be the first book of the New Testament to tell us about the return of the Lord.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which we just spent a month celebrating, He entered into this world to accomplish the will of God. In Hebrews, he says:

Hebrews 10:7: “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.”

Psalm 4:8: “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.”

“I delight to do thy will oh Lord, lo I come to do thy will,” in the volume of the book it’s written of me. Psalm 48, he said, “I delight to do thy will, O God.” And that is, He came to save sinful mankind. That’s why He came into the world. Luke 9:56, Jesus said:

Luke 9:56: “For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.”

He came as the Savior.

John 12:44: “Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.”

John 12:45: “And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.”

John 12:46: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”

John 12:47: “And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”

John 12:48: “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”

So, He came in the first place to be the Savior and not to be the judge. But He’s coming again, and He’s coming again to be the judge.

I mentioned this recently. I think I talked about it on Sunday, a conversation I had a few months ago with a very educated man. I don’t want to diminish that at all. I believe he’s a very educated man of great accomplishment. He stated that there are very few verses; as a matter of fact, he said only two or three places in the New Testament speak of Jesus’ return in general and of what we call the Rapture in particular. He really wasn’t a believer in the Rapture. Now, that’s an interesting claim to believe the Bible, and I’m not saying he doesn’t believe the Bible, but I’m saying he doesn’t understand some things. That doesn’t mean, as I said earlier, he’s not educated. It doesn’t mean he’s not a man of accomplishment, but just some things he didn’t understand.

I quoted to him five or six passages in the Bible that talk about the Lord’s return, but there’s more than that. I’m going to give you a fast rundown on just some of them. I can’t give you all of them, and you can try to write them down, but I’m going to go pretty fast. So, I encourage you maybe to go back and listen to the video later if you want to know where all of these are. But these are just some of the verses that talk about Jesus coming again. Are you ready?

Matthew 16:27, 19:28, 24:3, 24:27, and then 24:36 to 44, and 25:31. Mark 8:38, verses 34-37, Luke 12:35-39, 17:22-37, 18:8, 21:27, John 14:3, Acts 1:10-11, 1 Corinthians 4:5 and 11:26, Philippians 3:20, Colossians 3:4, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1:10, chapter 2:19, chapter 3:18 chapter 4:16, chapter 5  verse 23, 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10, chapter 2:1-8, chapter 3:5, 2 Timothy 4:8, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 9:18, James 5 7-9, the passage we’re looking at tonight, 1 Peter 5:4, 2 Peter 3:3 and 4, 1 John 2:28 and 3:2, and Revelation 1:7, 16:15, 19:11 to16, 22:12 and 22:20.

That’s not nearly all of them, but that’s more than 40 references that I’ve just given you. More than 40 times in the New Testament it talks about Jesus coming again. I don’t know how anybody who knows the Bible could say it’s only mentioned two or three times. So, again, I’m not trying to criticize that man or embarrass him. I doubt he’s listening anyway, but I’m not trying to do anything like that. I’m just trying to say that he didn’t know certain things, and that’s understandable. I’m sure he could talk about a great many things that I don’t know anything about, and that wouldn’t be too hard to do.

But the Lord Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose again from the dead. Now, another quick rundown of verses. We’re not going to go through all of the possibilities here either, but this is testified that the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is testified in Matthew 27:32-60, 28:1-10, Mark 15:22-42, and Mark 16:1-28, Luke 23:33-53, and chapter 24:1-8, John 19:16-42, 20:1-20, Acts 1:1-3, chap 2:23- 24, and verse 32, and 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, and many other places. We have the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. There’s no doubt about it, no question about it. And there’s no question about the fact that Jesus is coming again.

Be Patient

So, now, James, who we believe to be James, the Lord’s brother, that is the son of Joseph and Mary, we gave you when we started this study evidence on that, James writes. And if he is indeed the first writer of the New Testament, he tells us here in chapter 5:7-9, about the Lord’s return. Take a look at it, if you will, in chapter 5:7, “Be patient therefore.”

People have trouble being patient. Have you noticed that? If you drive around here, you’ve noticed that. Have you noticed that one of our main traffic problems here is nobody wants to wait their turn? I mean, they just want to go when they want to go, whether it’s their turn to go or not. Does that ever create problems? It does, but I don’t see it changing anytime soon.

He says to be patient and to be patient here means to wait and to wait patiently. Be patient, and why with the coming of the Lord? “Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” So, there’s no question here in James’s mind that the Lord is coming. So, don’t doubt it. It’s what he says. But the admonition is to be patient and wait on His coming, and the idea of waiting here doesn’t mean getting a chair, a comfortable chair, and sitting up in it.

Back a few years ago when the Covid virus was going on, I was pretty sure I had it. I did one of those home tests, and I did a televisit with my doctor. They didn’t want you coming into the office. And the doctor says, “Yep, pretty sure you got it.” And here was the doctor’s advice: he gave me some medicine to take and said, “Get a room, isolate yourself from everybody else, and pick out some movie you’re going to watch because you’re going to be there for a while. Just rest and get over it.” That was the doctor’s advice.

Now, I didn’t pick out the movies because the room I was in didn’t have anything to watch a movie on, but that’s beside the point. “But what did you do?” I slept most of the time to be honest with you. I wasn’t feeling like doing much else.

But that’s not what it’s talking about when he says wait. It doesn’t mean to find some movies to watch or to go to bed and sleep. It’s not what it’s talking about. It’s talking about waiting if you go to a restaurant. Nowadays, the person, the man or the woman, whoever comes out to serve your table, they call him a server, but they used to call him a waiter. “What’s the difference between a waiter and a server?” Not much.

The idea is to wait, or waiting, on the Lord is to be serving the Lord and expecting Him to come. Don’t just be sitting around saying, “Well, I guess He’ll be here one day.” No, no. Be busy serving Him and expecting Him to come. And then it says this, and I found something interesting and studying for tonight that I’ll share with you in a minute. But hopefully, more than one thing. But he said, “Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” And then he said, “Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.”

The husbandman – that’s a term we don’t use much anymore. We use the term husband some, but not husbandman. A husbandman is an old term for a farmer, and the Greek word translated husbandman here has to do with agriculture.

Now, here’s what I found out that I did not know. The English name George comes from the Greek word translated husbandman, and it means a farmer or a tiller of the ground. How many of you knew that? Oh, you did? Of course, but I didn’t until I was studying for this study, and I found that out. I thought, “Well, that’s pretty good. I think everybody I know named George now, I’m just going to call him farmer.”

“Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it.” He’s got long patience. It’s not in a hurry. He waits for the crop to come in. He knows that God has His own timing. He has faith in God’s timing. We talked about that a few weeks ago. We were talking about the text in Galatians, where it says, “in the fullness of time the Lord came,” – when God’s timing is right, not when our timing is right. It’s not happening when we want it to happen, when we think it’ll happen, or when we think it should happen, but in God’s time. God knows what time is, right? He’s the creator of time. He’s the creator of everything else, and He knows when things are supposed to happen, and that’s when they happen.

So, again, he says, “Until he [the husbandman] receive the early and latter rain.” That means the rain at the beginning of the season and the rain at the end of the season, so he knows when to plant, and he knows when to harvest, and he’s patient for that.

When I was just a little boy, I don’t know how old I was, couldn’t have been more than six or seven, probably not even that old, probably about five or six, I had a pet rooster. I really did, no kidding. I had a pet rooster and if you think they make good pets, they really don’t, but it was okay, I was a little kid. I like my pet rooster, I really did.

So, we got a big bag of corn to feed the rooster, and it was such a big bag I decided I was going to grow my own corn. So, I went out, and I cleared a patch of ground. I planted some seed, and I watered it, and I checked it every day, and one day I’m out there checking it, and I said, “Oh, I got weeds in my corn patch!” So, I pulled them up, and I showed them happily to a lady, and she looked at that and said, “No, you pulled up your corn is what you did.” So, I never did get a good corn patch going, but I’m not I’m not much of a farmer. Both of my grandfathers were farmers, but I didn’t inherit their talent.

What I’m trying to tell you is, you’re waiting ‘til the time is right, and when the time is right, He’s going to come. And so, James says:

James 5:7: “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 latter rain.”

Verse eight, “Be ye also patient.” So, he’s telling us again, be patient, be strong, as you wait. The word there means to be strong as you wait, “for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” That praise is saying that He’s approaching, He’s getting closer. “Well, preacher, that was written over 2,000 years ago, and He hasn’t come yet.” That’s true. “Well, what do you say to that?” I’ve already said it. He’s coming in God’s timing, not ours.

So, he says, “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts,” – strengthen your heart, take a stand in your heart, but strengthen your heart “for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”

Grudge Not Brethren

Now, we’ll spend a little time on verse nine. While you’re waiting, while you’re strengthening your heart, “Grudge not one against another.” What’s the next word, anybody? Got a Bible? What’s the next word? Brethren, okay. Brethren. Who’s James talking to here? Yeah, saved people, and he’s telling the believers, the Christians, the saved people, “Grudge not one against another.” Do God’s people ever have grudges against each other? Everybody, do this [nod head]. Yes, they do. Should they? Everybody, do this [shake head]. No, they shouldn’t, but they do, and it’s sad.

In Proverbs, where it lists the six things that God hates and the seventh is an abomination, do you know what the seventh one is that’s an abomination before God? “He that sows discord among the brethren.” Isn’t that something? Those who caused division among the brethren –  that’s an abomination for God. What’s an abomination? Do you know in Revelation chapter three, where Jesus says, “You’re lukewarm, and that makes me want to spew you out of my mouth?” Have you ever put something in your mouth that tastes off? You just had to spit it out. Well, that’s what it means to spew it out of your mouth, and that’s how distasteful it is for Christians to be lukewarm.

But that’s also the idea of the word “abomination.” It means something that just makes God sick. I don’t know of a passage where He says it this way, but it’s the same idea as if He said, “I’ll spew you out of my mouth. You just make me sick.” God doesn’t want there to be division among us. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, in the first chapter, he says, “I hear that there are divisions among you, and I partly believe it.” He goes on to talk about the divisions in the church. He says there should be no divisions among you, and then, do you know what he does? He writes 16 more chapters about that, straightening out the doctrinal errors in the church and calling them to unity in Christ.

So, “Grudge not,” and the word “grudge” there means to hold a grievance, to hold a grievance so somebody or someone has said or done something wrong. Now, notice what I said. I said that someone had said or done something wrong. I’m not saying that you took it the wrong way or you misunderstood. I’m saying they genuinely did something wrong, or they said something wrong.

I’m probably the only person in the room who has ever done this, but you know, I’ve said some things to people over the years that I wish I had never said. I’ve said some things that weren’t as kind as they should have been. I’ve said some things that hurt some people. Now, I’ve done that without trying, not meaning to, but I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about when I was upset with a person, I just said something. Boy, you can just cut them into ribbons with your tongue. God’s not happy with that. So, somebody has said or done something wrong. Do you ever have a Christian do something wrong? Do you? Please don’t raise your hand or talk out loud. Probably you have.

I’ve loaned people money that they never paid back. “Well, did it bother you?” It did. I got over it, you know, just went on. “Did you ever see those people again?” Sure. “Did you ask them for the money every time you see them?” No. “Why not?” I don’t. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. It’s not important anymore. There are more important things than that. Now, don’t misunderstand what I just said. I’m not saying don’t pay people what you owe them. We quoted that verse earlier, “He that borroweth and returneth not again, the same is as a thief and a robber.”

Or maybe someone has offended you by their attitude, just the way they look at things. I have. We ask on our employment application here, do you have any personality types that you have trouble working with? Why do we ask that? Because we want to know who to team you up with, and who not to team you up with. People answer that in different ways. Some people put no, and some people name a type.

I really have a problem with arrogant people. I really do. I have a problem with people who think they’re better than everybody else and they just look down their nose at them, I do. I have a problem with that. But you know what? You’ve got to deal with those folks, too, okay? So, maybe it’s their attitude, or maybe it’s their actions, maybe they do things that bother you. I don’t know if you’ve ever had anybody do something that bothers you, but you probably have. Maybe they do things that just bother you or again, it could be words that are said, and these things have caused you grief in your mind and in your heart and in your spirit.

Now, the grief is real. It’s not imaginary, it’s real. You were genuinely hurt by that person. They genuinely grieved you, and it’s more than just a misunderstanding. Maybe they meant to do it. Maybe they didn’t mean to do it. They were just being thoughtless, not considering the result of what they were saying or doing, but that’s not the main problem. That’s a problem for sure, but it’s not the main problem.

Do you know what the problem is? You’re holding on to that grief. You’re holding on to it. Your grief over time has become mixed with anger so that when you see that person, or when you think of them, or you hear their name mentioned, you get angry. You may not say it, you may just think it, but you think about what they did to you or what they said to you that hurt you. You want justice or maybe it’s not justice you want, maybe it’s revenge. They’re not the same thing. They’re not the same thing. Justice is setting things right. Revenge is getting the other person back, and some of us are pretty good at that. “You can be mean to me? I’ll show you. I can be meaner to you. You can hurt me. I can hurt you worse. That’s revenge. You want to see them pay for what they’ve done.

Forgive Our Debtors

Now, let’s listen to the words of Jesus. We’re not going to go through this passage because of time, but in Matthew chapter 18, the bulk of that chapter is about forgiveness. But in verses 21-35, Jesus answers the question that Peter presented. You know the question, “Lord, how oft shall my brother,” – underscore the word “brother,” – “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” And Peter, I’m sure, thought that he was being generous. He said, “Till seven times?” But he offends me, he hurts me seven times, and I should I forgive him all seven times? Jesus patted him on the back and said that’s right, Peter, seven times, buddy, that’ll do it. No, He didn’t. It’s not what he did at all. Jesus said, “I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven.” That’s verses 21-22.

Then, the Lord told us a story where he gave an example of a man who owned a great debt. His debt was, depending on how you calculate the value of talents in those days in modern day currency, it was 10,000 talents that he owed, the passage says, to the king. I don’t know about you, I don’t want to owe the king money. That doesn’t sound like a safe proposition to me. But he owed 10,000 talents to the king. He couldn’t pay it. Now, that’s a very large sum of money, and again, depending on how you calculate it, that’s anywhere from hundreds of thousands to some people think up into the millions. Either way, it’s a huge sum of money and it was due now.

How this man came to owe this much money to the king, we’re not told. You know, that’s really not the point of the story. The point of the story is that he couldn’t pay it. That’s verses 23 and 24, and there was a penalty for not paying. The penalty was that he was to be sold. Yeah, sold. He was to be sold and his wife and his children and all that he had were to be sold and payment to be made. Aren’t you glad we don’t live in a society where somebody you owe money can demand that you and your family be sold? That’s verse 25.

But in verse 26, the man made a plea for mercy, and he asked for more time to be able to pay the debt. In verse 27, Jesus said, “Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.” You know what that means? It means he didn’t have to pay it back.

Integrity Matters

Last night, I was talking to a group of teenagers, and I found a story that I wanted to tell them. The topic that I was speaking to them on was integrity, and I found a story that was in the biography of Booker T. Washington. I asked, and this is kind of sad, I asked this whole group of teenagers, I said who knows who Booker T. Washington is? Only one young man raised his hand. The rest of them didn’t know who that was. I thought that’s kind of sad. We need to know our history, folks, we really do.

In the book Booker T. Washington’s biography called “Up From Slavery,” Washington told a story about a man in Virginia who was a slave, and therefore, legally, he was owned by another man. Now, I’m going to tell you, as I told them last night, in actuality, you can’t own another person. But in that day, you could legally own another person.

The owner, in this case, told this man, he said, “I’m going to give you a chance to buy your freedom.” I’m not sure you should have to buy freedom, but that was the law in those days. He said, “I’m going give you a chance to buy your freedom.” Furthermore, he realized, I’m sure that he was never going to buy his freedom working for him, so he said, “You can go out and hire out to anybody you want to anywhere you want to just earn the money and pay me the price that they had agreed on and buy your freedom.”

Now, that was in Virginia, and for some reason, the man who needed the money found out that he could make better money in Ohio. I’m not sure how that worked out. The details weren’t given, but he went to Ohio, he worked hard, and he almost had the money he needed to purchase his freedom. He was about $300 short when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Now, legally, he’s free. Legally, he doesn’t have to pay the money. But you know what he did? He kept working in Ohio, got that extra $300, went back to Virginia, and in the book it says he walked most of the way back, can you imagine walking from Ohio to Virginia? He went to the man, and he put every dollar in his hand in cash. Can you imagine that? Again, he wasn’t legally bound to do that, but he was bound in another way. He had given his word, and that’s why he did it. Isn’t that something? He didn’t have to do it. He chose to do it because he had given his word.

What I was trying to get the teenagers I was talking to last night, is that’s integrity. That’s integrity. He didn’t have to do that. Legally, he could have never gone back, never paid that money, and he would have had no penalty. That story spoke volumes to me. It really did. Doing the right thing because it’s the right thing not because you have to, but just because it’s the right thing.  So, the man made a plea for mercy, and his lord forgave him.

Eternal Accountability

Then verses 28-29 say, “But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him an hundred pence,” – that is nothing compared to what he had owed the king. “And he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all.” Verse 30, “And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.”

Now, I’m going to interject something here. It’s not in my notes. I have never understood the concept of debtor prison. Somebody owes you money, so you put them in prison. How are they going to pay you back? That just never made sense to me.

But some of his peers witnessed what happened and they made a report to the king concerning this incident. The king called him in, and he said to him, “O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had on thee?” Verses 31-33.

“And his lord was wroth,” verse 34, “and delivered him to the tormenters till he should pay all that was due him.” Isn’t that interesting? Delivered him to the tormentors. Verse 35, Jesus said, “So, likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”

There is eternal accountability. There is. The Lord Jesus is the judge. Romans 14:10 to 12, “But why dost thou judge thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, sayeth the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So, then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”

Do you understand that? Everybody is going to give an account of themselves to God. The believer, the Christian, is going to stand before the judge at a later time, not at the same time, but at a later time. Those who have not believed shall stand before the same judge Revelation 20:11-13, “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.”

And James says, “Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned.” The final phrase in James 5:9 says, “Behold, the judge standeth before the door.” The trial is over, the accused is guilty, and the judge is ready to enter and pronounce the sentence. You and I and the people of the human race must ALL realize that there is a God of justice and judgment. How it would change the world if people would just realize that someday they’re going to stand before God and give an account.

I don’t know if that bothers you. It makes me concerned, to put it mildly. You and I are going to stand before God, and the judge standeth at the door. The day of God’s judgment is coming.

Forgiveness of Sin

The sinner can be forgiven. The salvation of the soul, the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of eternal life are available to anyone and everyone who will come to the Lord Jesus to acknowledge their sin and trust him to forgive them.

1 John 4:9: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.”

1 John 4:10: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

1 John 4:11: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

And then 1 John 5, in verse one, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” The sinning brother, the Christian, can also be forgiven. He’s not in danger of hellfire. As we sang a while ago, “Jesus paid it all.” But he is deserving of the Lord’s tasting. 1 John 1: 8-9, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Paul writes to those who are in Christ and in the church in 1 Corinthians 11:31-32, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

You’re not going to lose your salvation, not going to be condemned with the world. You’d be chastened to the Lord if what? If you continue in your sin. You cannot sin. The Christian, the believer, the one who’s saved, cannot sin and get away with it.

So, in this last verse of the passage, James 5:9, James writes to those who do not know the Lord when he writes, “Behold, the judge standeth at the door.” He writes to those of us who do know the Lord when he writes, “Behold, the judge standeth before the door.”

In verse eight, James is writing to the believers, the Christians, when he writes, “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” To those of us who know the Lord, we know that we’re going to go home and be with him. For those who don’t know the Lord, the judge is standing at the door.

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Let’s pray. Father, thank you so much for blessing us. Thank you so that we can have time to look into your Word. Now, Lord, bless us as we go to a season of prayer. Help us Lord, to lift up the requests that have been shared tonight, the other needs that we know of, things that we’ve been asked to pray, about people we’ve been asked to pray for. Help us, Lord, to come before your throne. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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