by New Culture Church
CREATING THE CULTURE OF CHRIST IN MADISON, WI The New Culture Church podcast is packed full of great sermon content from New Culture Church in Madison, WI. Be part of a welcoming community that values real conversations, personal growth, and making a positive impact. Subscribe now to explore life's big questions and find meaningful connections.
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July 13, 2026
<p>James 5:7-12 reads like a string of familiar words. Patience. Perseverance. Suffering. The prophets. Job. Pastor Abbie walked us through it verse by verse, and the message underneath the vocabulary is one sentence. Life is more than avoiding pain. It is trusting God enough to stay.</p><p>Start with who James is talking to. Nathan showed us two weeks ago that James 5 opens with a prophetic warning against rich oppressors. Now the letter turns to the people being oppressed. These are not people with minor inconveniences. They are truly suffering. And James tells them to be patient, the way a farmer waits for the autumn and spring rains.</p><p>The Greek word for patient here means to be of a long spirit. Slow to anger. Slow to punish. Patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others. And notice where patience gets tested. Not alone. In relationship. You cannot control another person or the timing of the rain. You can control what you surrender to Jesus. That is what waiting forms in us: people of surrender and trust.</p><p>Then comes perseverance. The word means to remain. Do not flee the hard, painful thing. Hold fast. And the definition includes a word that stopped Pastor Abbie cold: calmly. Nobody walks through oppression calmly on their own strength. That calm comes from Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. His breath is in our lungs so we can persevere.</p><p>Pastor Abbie was honest about the kinds of suffering we carry. Some is unjust, caused by someone else’s hands. Some is unexplained, like Job’s. Her cousin wrote an entire dissertation on Job, and after eight years of study her answer to what it means is still, we don’t know. And some suffering, like praying for healing one mile into a 5K you never trained for, is self-induced. God hands us the tools before the race. Spend time with Me. Get to know My voice. Be in community.</p><p>James picked the prophets as his example on purpose. They stayed true to God’s word and suffered for it. They confronted kings and empires at the risk of their lives. That is the pull Pastor Abbie named: from a balanced life, which arranges itself so we never have to see injustice, to a kingdom life, which moves toward broken things to bring wholeness. The Lord is full of compassion, a desire to help. When we enter someone else’s pain, we become like Jesus, who left heaven to join us in ours.</p><p>Even the strange ending fits. Do not swear. All you need is a simple yes or no. Under unresolved pain, we are tempted to manufacture explanations and inflate stories. James frees us to sit in the in-between and say, this happened, and I don’t know why. That answer is allowed. Because here is what we do know. Jesus is near. The pain is temporary. Weeping stays for the night, and rejoicing comes in the morning.</p><p>This week, stay. Be patient with the people who test you. Enter one person’s pain instead of managing your own comfort. And when you have no explanation, hold on to the one thing that is certain. Jesus is near.</p><p><strong>Scripture References:</strong></p><ul><li>James 5:7-12 (Be patient until the Lord’s coming; the farmer and the rains; do not grumble; the prophets; Job’s perseverance; do not swear)</li><li>Job 1 (Blameless Job loses everything in a day; suffering without explanation)</li><li>Job 42 (God speaks; restoration and mercy at the end of the story)</li><li>Matthew 5:12 (Rejoice and be glad; they persecuted the prophets before you)</li><li>1 Kings 19:4 (Elijah flees for his life and asks to die)</li><li>Hebrews 4:15 (A high priest who empathizes with our weaknesses)</li><li>Psalm 30:1-5 (You lifted me out of the depths; rejoicing comes in the morning)</li></ul><p><br></p>
June 21, 2026
<p>James 5 opens with a hard word. Now listen, you rich people. Weep and wail. Your wealth has rotted. The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. It reads like a tonal break from the rest of the letter, and Nathan sat in that tension out loud. This is a prophetic warning against oppressive wealth, and the word that kept rising off the page was the first word of verse four. Behold. Look.</p><p>So the message is not first about money. It is about sight. When we see God rightly, we see ourselves rightly. And when we see ourselves rightly, we finally see the people around us.</p><p>Start with God. Every injustice begins with a wrong view of God. He made us in His image, and we keep trying to return the favor, building a god out of our fears and our history until he blesses whatever we already wanted. The rich oppressor in James did not have a true picture of God. So Nathan offered three.</p><p>God sees. The first person in Scripture to give God a name is Hagar, a servant woman driven into the desert to die. She calls Him the God who sees me. Yahweh sees the people society overlooks. God hears. The cries of the harvesters reached the ears of the Lord Almighty, and the blind man on the Jericho road who would not stop shouting got heard. God comes after. The Lord of hosts, the God who commands heaven’s armies, refuses to leave us. He came, and He will come again.</p><p>If that is our God, who does that make us? You are loved. Loved so much that He calls you His child, loved with the same measure of love the Father has for His own Son. In the worst moment of your life, the worst thing you have ever done, you were loved over the top in that moment. And the love does not stop at affection. Our posture is sons and daughters. Our position is co-laborers, invited to partner with God against the enemies of sickness, hatred, and racism, and to bring His kingdom.</p><p>People who know they are loved start to see. The rich saw their fields, their harvest, their profits. They never saw the workers. Neighbors became opportunities. Image bearers became tools in someone else’s story. That is the tragedy James exposes. Our calling is the opposite. Love your neighbor as yourself. Slow your pace enough to see the one in front of you. The pace of the rabbi is usually slow, because you have to have time to see people. If your whole life is a frenzy of work, ask the Lord if that is what He has for you.</p><p>Then James lands on hope. When the world feels broken and God feels still, be patient and stand firm, the way a farmer waits for the autumn and spring rains. The Lord’s coming is near. There is not a single wrong that Jesus will not right.</p><p>This week, see the One who sees you. Then go see the one in front of you.</p><p><strong>Scripture References:</strong></p><ul><li>James 5:1-8 (Warning to oppressive wealth; behold; the cries of the harvesters; be patient until the Lord’s coming)</li><li>Genesis 16 (Hagar in the desert; the God who sees me)</li><li>John 4 (The woman at the well; Jesus sees the outsider)</li><li>John 14:9 (Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father)</li><li>Mark 10:46-52 (Blind Bartimaeus; Jesus stops and hears)</li><li>Romans 6:23 (The wages of sin is death; the gift of God is eternal life)</li><li>John 17:22-23 (Loved even as You have loved Me)</li><li>Romans 8:38-39 (Nothing can separate us from the love of God)</li><li>1 John 3:1 (See what great love the Father has lavished on us)</li><li>1 Corinthians 3:7-9 (We are co-workers in God’s service)</li><li>Genesis 1:28 (Created to rule and steward)</li><li>Matthew 22:34-40 (Love God; love your neighbor as yourself)</li><li>Mark 12:41-44 (The widow’s two coins)</li></ul>
June 14, 2026
<p>You are a mist.</p><p>James does not ease into the back half of chapter 4. He looks at our five-year plans, our savings accounts, our carefully mapped futures, and he says it plainly. You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.</p><p>The problem is not planning. Work hard. Make the plan. The problem is assuming we are the ones in control of the future.</p><p>And here is the honest part. We do not reach for control because we are arrogant. We reach for it because we are afraid. We want certainty. We want predictability. We want safety. So we build the plan and we tell ourselves we are secure. Then something fails, because it will, and we no longer know how to live.</p><p>Control is an illusion. And the things we cannot surrender are the things we are worshiping. An idol is anything we trust to save us. The savings we think will keep us from ever going without. The relationship we think will keep us from ever being alone. Whatever you cannot open your hands around, look there.</p><p>Then James hands us a picture. The rich man in Luke 12 had a full harvest, and his first thought was to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. When abundance comes, our invitation is not to store it. It is to steward it. God, who can I give this to? Consider the ravens. They do not store, and He feeds them. Seek His kingdom, and the rest is added.</p><p>Pastor Abbie pressed the line we love to hide behind. “If it is the Lord’s will.” That is not a cop-out for laziness. The Lord’s will is already plain. Love the people in front of you. Forgive. Feed the hungry. Share Jesus. You do not need a dramatic vision to obey. The world needs everyday people showing up to work, walking their block, treating the waitstaff a little bit different.</p><p>Which lands on James 4:17. Anyone who knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, that is the miss. Knowledge alone does not transform us. We know we should forgive. We know we should pray. We do not do it. Transformation comes when truth moves from information into practice. You do not learn to ride a bike by reading about it. You get on the bike.</p><p>So here is the invitation. Steward today. Trust God with tomorrow. You cannot control tomorrow, but you can control how you steward this day. Open your hands.</p><p><strong>Scripture References:</strong></p><ul><li>James 4:13-17 (Boasting about tomorrow; you are a mist; if it is the Lord’s will; knowing the good and not doing it)</li><li>Luke 12:13-31 (The parable of the rich fool; consider the ravens and the wildflowers; seek His kingdom)</li><li>Matthew 6:19-34 (Store up treasures in heaven; do not worry; seek first the kingdom of God)</li><li>John 15:5 (Apart from Me you can do nothing)</li></ul>
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CREATING THE CULTURE OF CHRIST IN MADISON, WI
The New Culture Church podcast is packed full of great sermon content from New Culture Church in Madison, WI. Be part of a welcoming community that values real conversations, personal growth, and making a positive impact. Subscribe now to explore life's big questions and find meaningful connections.
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