Young People’s Blog

“Behold, the husbandman [farmer] waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain” (James 5:7).

The Lord knows how bad this world is getting to be, and He is not indifferent to it. But He is waiting for the “precious fruit of the earth.” What is this? He is waiting for more people to be saved. He is like a farmer who plants his seeds, or has his fruit trees, and he anxiously looks for a good crop. He may have to wait a long time, until the proper rains come, and the fruit matures.

The gospel has been going out for nearly 2,000 years now, and millions have been saved. Yet the Lord is still waiting, for His house must be filled. How many will it take? We do not know, but if the Lord can have patience and wait, surely we can too. It will be worth it to see more people in heaven!

“And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And He touched his ear, and healed him” (Luke 22:51).

When the soldiers of the chief priests came to arrest the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword to defend Him. He ended up cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest. But the Lord Jesus was so gracious. He not only told Peter to stop, but He reached out and healed the man’s ear. The Lord Jesus knew He was going to the cross; it was His Father’s will. He wanted to show love and grace, even to one of the men who had come to arrest Him.

We do not hear anything more of this servant, but I am sure that he never forgot how the Lord healed his ear. There is a good lesson for all of us here. Let us seek to show kindness and love to others, even to those who may have wronged us. They need to experience the love and grace of God.

“Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord…stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:7-8).

As we see things going more and more wrong in this world, it is easy to get impatient and to want the Lord to do something about it. After all, how bad can things get before the Lord steps in and deals with them?

In the first few verses of this chapter (James 5), we have a description of how rich men sometimes cheat poor people out of their proper wages, and how they live in pleasure while others have very little. This is true in many parts of the world today, and it is a real cause for concern. I read yesterday that some families in one country in this world are having to sell one or more of their children, in order to get money to feed the rest of the family. We all feel how awful this is!

But you and I are not to try and set the world right. The Lord says, “That is My job, and I will look after it.” There is judgment coming upon this world, but the Lord is waiting patiently for something, and we should be patient too. We will see on Monday what the Lord is waiting for.

“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

This verse goes along well with what we had before us yesterday. We may have plans of our own, but God has called us according to His purpose. What does this mean? If we read the next verse in the chapter (vs. 29), we find that God wants us to be “conformed to the image of His Son.” He wants us to be more and more like Christ, and He orders our lives for that purpose.

He may allow difficulties in our lives, and of course we sometimes cause problems for ourselves by wanting our own way. It is worth it to have the Lord direct our lives if we become more like Christ through it all. An older brother used to remind us that ‘the secret of a happy Christian pathway is to take your circumstances FROM the Lord, and your difficulties TO the Lord.” This is a good thing for all of us to remember.

“Ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4:15).

We all like to make plans for the future, and perhaps we speak rather confidently of what we will do tomorrow, or next week, and even next year. If we always made those plans in perfect fellowship with the Lord, we could be confident that we would be able to do what we had planned. But the Word of God recognizes that sometimes we make our own plans, and they are not the Lord’s plans. That is why we should always say, “If the Lord will,” we will do this or that.

We notice that first of all, our verse says, “If the Lord will, we shall live.” We must recognize that we may not even be alive later today, or even one hour from now. The Lord could say to the wealthy farmer in Luke 12, “This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” But even if we are alive, the Lord may allow circumstances to come along that prevent our being able to carry out our plans. My wife and I planned a trip in early 2020, but then Covid-19 came along, and it had to be canceled. But what the Lord allows in our lives is always for our blessing, and we should not resent it if He changes our plans.

“Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).

This will be our last meditation on food, for now. But here we see that we are permitted to eat any creature, as long as we do so with thanksgiving. In the Old Testament certain animals were unclean, but now, under Christianity, we may eat any creature. In some parts of the world they eat things that we would not wish to eat. For example, I have seen short, fat, ugly worms for sale in the market in one country we visited, all wriggling around in a big jar. Many people bought them, took them home, cooked them, and ate them. We know from the Bible that John the Baptist ate locusts, which are like a big grasshopper.

Many years ago I knew a woman who enjoyed a good dinner at a friend’s home, but afterward, the hostess told her that the meat had been venison (deer meat). The woman was so upset that she went to the bathroom and vomited it all up. In North America we enjoy beef, but in some countries you would never be served beef; people do not eat it.

The Lord recognizes that different cultures are used to different diets, and this is quite all right, as long as it is received with thanksgiving. God has given it to us.

“In the latter times some shall depart from the faith…commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:1, 3).

Here we find another scripture related to food. The expression “the latter times” refers to the time after the apostles had gone to be with the Lord, when Satan started to introduce error into the church. One of these errors was to insist that people should not eat certain foods, or should not eat them on certain days. Over the centuries many professing Christian groups have tried to make rules about food, telling people not to eat certain things. One large group used to say that no one should eat meat on Fridays, while another group says that Christians should not eat pork. Other rules were that people had to fast (stop eating) on certain days, and those who disobeyed were sometimes killed.

In our verse, the Apostle points out that all this is a “doctrine of devils” (demons), for God has given us food, and intends us to enjoy it. We do not need to be ashamed of enjoying good food, for it is a gift from God. But we should not be addicted to it, or be continually thinking about it. It is meant to nourish our bodies so that we can use them for the Lord.

“Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

This verse goes along well with the one we had yesterday, for it reminds us that our bodies are not our own, but rather the Lord’s. Some years ago there was a demonstration of women in Canada who were upset at the way they were being treated, and one of them carried a placard that said, “Our bodies — our own!” She meant that women ought to be able to decide what happened in their bodies. But as Christians we are given bodies that we are to look after, because our bodies are now the place where the Holy Spirit lives. If a member of the Godhead lives in us, how careful we ought to be with our bodies!

This does not mean that we constantly worry about what we eat or drink, for we can spend too much time being concerned about our food, what vitamins we take, and so on. But we are told to eat and drink in moderation, and to use wisdom in the care of our bodies. Let us never forget that a Divine Guest — the Holy Spirit, is living in us.

“He saved others; Himself He cannot save” (Matthew 27:42).

The Lord Jesus had indeed saved many others, even raising some from the dead. He had clearly shown His power as the Son of God; there should not have been any doubt as to who He was. Yet when He was on the cross, the Jewish leaders said that He was not able to save Himself.

Could the Lord Jesus have come down from the cross? Surely He could have done this, but then how would you and I be saved? How would our sins be put away? He had to remain on the cross in order to suffer for sin, and complete the work His Father had given Him to do. It was not the nails that held Him there, but His love for us, and His obedience to His Father’s will.

Himself He could not save; He on the cross must die;
Or mercy cannot come to ruined sinners nigh.
Yes, Christ the Son of God must bleed
That sinners might from sin be freed.

“We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick” (Numbers 11:5).

In this verse we have the children of Israel speaking longingly of what they had eaten in Egypt. Egypt is a picture of the world, and again, these foods have a spiritual significance. First, there are only six of them. Six is man’s number — short of perfection. Secondly, except for the fish, all of these foods grow either in the ground or on the ground. The fish of course live in the water. All of these foods are connected with the earth, and are a picture of the attractions of this world.

Thirdly, these foods do not require much effort to obtain. You can simply pull leeks or onions out of the ground, cut them up, and eat them. Melons and cucumbers can simply be picked, cut open, and eaten. Again, they are like the things of this world — easy to get.

Finally, some of these foods leave a strong taste in your mouth and a strong odor on your breath, so that if other people get close to you, they know very well that you have eaten them. If we, as Christians, spend our time in the attractions of this world, others will soon sense it. Let us each learn a lesson from these foods.