How to delay a method to execute

Question

Hello, I need to write a program which displays some texts for several seconds,
and then erase the texts. I developed it in a JTextArea. please see the demo code. I used a sleep method from a Thread class. But it delays the displaying texts rather than eraseing method. Can anyone give me some help. Thanks in advance.
jTextArea1.setText(this.jTextField1.getText());
Thread.sleep(2000);
jTextArea1.clear();

Answer 1

* Simple demo that uses java.util.Timer to schedule a task to execute
* once 5 seconds have passed.
public class Reminder {
    Timer timer;
    public Reminder(int seconds) {
        timer = new Timer();
        timer.schedule(new RemindTask(), seconds*1000);
    class RemindTask extends TimerTask {
        public void run() {
            System.out.println("Time's up!");
        timer.cancel(); //Terminate the timer thread
    public static void main(String args[]) {
    System.out.println("About to schedule task.");
        new Reminder(5);
    System.out.println("Task scheduled.");
}