Lift Up Your Heads

 

James 5:7-8 “Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near . . . As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.”

 

During the past few weeks, we’ve looked at what it means to have a ‘fear’ of God – which is considerably deeper than simply being afraid of Him. The biblical idea combines reverence, awe, honor, and a deep desire to live in a way that pleases Him. As we saw last week, reverence toward God also leads to an increasing confidence in God. It’s the same kind of confidence that allowed Peter to sleep between two Roman guards as he awaited execution in the morning. It’s the kind of confidence that allowed Paul and Silas to sing praises and hymns in that filthy dungeon even while their feet were fastened in wooden stocks and their wounds still stinging from their beatings for preaching the gospel.

 

Today I want to revisit that point of a reverence-driven trust in God’s utter sovereignty over all nations and over all individuals within those nations –those who sleep under bridges and those who are powerful political leaders – and everyone else in between. In so doing today, I hope to remind us that nothing can happen on earth or in our private lives without His direct involvement.

 

Nothing can happen without Him – even if it be a car accident or cancer or a murder or the promotion of wicked people to governmental or religious power. Nothing can happen without God’s direct involvement – an involvement which always flows from His love, His kindness, and His desire for the salvation of souls – yours, mind, everyone’s.

 

Why am I emphasizing this point? Do you follow the national and international news? If you do, then I suspect you have at times become – as I have become – increasingly agitated and even fearful of where our world and our nation are rapidly headed – and how that direction will affect us and those we love.

 

It is clear to all those whose eyes have not been glazed over by the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life that something is happening here. Something not good. Something menacing.

 

In 1965, after reading a chapter in Billy Graham’s book, World Aflame, his wife, Ruth Graham told him: “If God doesn’t soon bring judgment upon America, He’ll have to go back and apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

 

She said that in response to the sweeping sexual immorality, the violence, abortion, and growing lawlessness ravaging America in the 60s. But what would she say about America today?

 

In the short 60 years since that decade, America has slaughtered more than 60 MILLION babies in their mothers’ wombs – and so few in our country care. You know that’s true because Americans – even churchgoers – keep voting for proabortion politicians.

 

And it’s hard to find a movie or TV program that doesn’t treat adultery and fornication as normal fare, whereas virginity before marriage and sexual fidelity in marriage is portrayed as abnormal. And how can it be in this once-Christian nation that we permit the surgical and medical mutilation of boys and girls who want to change their anatomical sex? And Americans still vote for politicians who support that satanic evil.

 

Just watch what happens at the polls in a few weeks.

 

No wonder it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone with even a modicum of spiritual understanding to read today’s headlines and not become fearful or frustrated, or a little of both.

 

But please hear this word of encouragement from God Himself as He speaks to us through His infallible and inerrant word we call the Bible: Things are not falling apart. They’re falling into place.

 

I say it again for emphasis. Things are not falling apart. They’re falling into place. Scripture assures us through the prophets and apostles – “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hands of the Lord. He turns it wherever He wishes.” (Proverbs 21:1)

 

The king’s heart and everyone else with political power – all of them, the godless and the godly – they’re each, moment by moment, at the utter mercy of their Creator who easily moves them like pieces on a chessboard according to His will and His plan. And they are abject fools to think otherwise.

 

I think of the godless pagan Pharaoh to whom God gave disturbing dreams that resulted in Joseph’s elevation to vice-regent of Egypt and which ultimately led to the salvation of the twelve tribes of Israel. I think of the wicked pagan King Nebuchadnezzar to whom God also gave disturbing dreams. Those resulted in Daniel’s elevation to leadership in the king’s court and to the protection of the Jews during their Babylonian exile.

 

I think of the pagan monarch, King Ahasuerus, or the Medo-Persian king Cyrus, or any of the dozens of powerful kings and rulers in Biblical and post-Biblical eras who were unknowingly moved by their Creator to do what His plan and purpose had decreed from eternity past.

 

One of my favorite examples of God’s chessboard is found in 2 Kings 19 and repeated by the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 37. When the brutal and ruthless Assyrian king waged war against Israel, King Hezekiah prayed in desperation to the Lord. And God, in response to Hezekiah’s prayer said this to the pompous Assyrian king:

 

(Isaiah 37:26-29) “Have you not heard? Long ago I did it, from ancient times I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps. Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength, they were dismayed and put to shame; They were as the vegetation of the field and as the green herb, as grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up. But I know your sitting down and your going out and your coming in and your raging against Me. Because of your raging against Me and because your arrogance has come up to My ears, therefore I will put My hook in your nose and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came.”

 

Tell me why anyone would think the king’s heart – ANY king or ruler – why they are not like channels of water in the hands of the Almighty?

King David captured the point of it all quite well when he wrote in the second psalm: (Psalm 2) “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.”

 

It is a fearful thing to be scoffed at by Almighty God.

 

Kings, rulers, and the average individual citizens – God’s sovereignty reigns over all of them, checkmating even the vilest and most powerful.

 

Let me now drive home this point which I direct to all whose faith is in Christ for forgiveness, salvation and eternal life: God’s authority and sovereignty in 2026 have not faltered or changed one iota. He repeatedly declares it – probably so we don’t forget it: Malachi 3:6 – “For I am the Lord, I change not.” Hebrews 13:8 – “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” James 1:17 – “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

 

Which brings us back to the text in the fifth chapter of James we started with: “Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near . . . As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.” James 5:7-8

 

Brothers and sisters in Christ – Be Patient. Do not fret because of the growing evil in our nation and even the growing apostasy in so many churches. Be patient. The Lord Jesus is right at the door, and it is about to swing open. “Lift up your heads, O ye gates! And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates! Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.” (Psalm 24:7-10) 

 

God has always used, and is still using, the rich and the powerful – even as He is using you and me – to bring about His purposes, one of which will culminate with the glorious return of the Lion of Judah – King Jesus – to set up His throne on earth; A throne Daniel saw in vision like a stone cut out of a mountain that crushed and scattered all the kingdoms of the earth and which then grew and filled the entire earth (Daniel 2). And what is that stone? Scripture tells us:

 

“The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone

 . . . And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” (Matthew 21:42,44)

 

That stone is the Lord Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior.

 

There is good reason – of course – why God repeatedly tells humanity in general and you and me individually of His unassailable power. Surely He does so to provoke and to mature reverence toward Him – fear, awe, wonder – and reverential confidence in Him. What the Lord Jesus told His disciples living under the heel of a despotic Roman government He speaks also to us living in 2026 as our culture and our political and religious leaders grow increasingly malevolent:

 

“These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me. But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.” John 16:1-4

 

He then closed His prophecy with this divine oath: These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

 

Christian, because you are by faith ‘in’ Christ, you have nothing to fear from man or circumstances. Things are not falling apart. They are falling into place.

 

How then are we to live? As always, Scripture guides us. Listen again to James who opened this epistle with a call to patience: “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

 

Listen also to Peter: (1 Peter 1:13-16) “Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

 

Now to John: (1 John 3:2-3) “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

 

Fixating on Jesus and walking in holiness are not God’s suggestions to His children. They are His commandments because it is only by living in and striving toward holiness will we find His peace – peace that surpasses all human understanding.”

 

Christian, be patient until He returns. Strive for holiness until He returns. “The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near

 

And live evangelistically, even now, in our old ages in which Almighty God promises us fruitfulness Psalm 92:12-15 “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; He is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”

 

Christian, we are almost done. We are almost home. Keep at it. “God is [and always will be] our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.” Psalm 46:1-3

 

Things are not falling apart. They are falling into place. Lift up your heads. Our redemption draws near.