Waiting Patiently

Hebrews chapter 6 verses 13 through 18.

Hebrews 6:13–18

The last section of Hebrews that we looked at was a really heavy section of Scripture.

But the author of Hebrews is moving on from that warning of telling the people, hey, don't

give up on your faith in Jesus Christ.

But he's really telling them to hold strong.

That's what we saw at the last of that last section we looked at a few weeks ago.

I know it's been a while.

We had Gideon speak here and we had some Easter sermons.

But he gave them a warning.

Don't turn from Jesus Christ.

And he's telling them to stay strong in the faith, to persevere in the faith.

And in helping them to stay strong in their faith in Jesus Christ, he gives them an example

to go by.

He says, look, don't give up.

Don't give up in the midst of difficulties, but learn from the example of Abraham.

And that's what we're going to look at this morning in Hebrews chapter 6 verse 13.

Hebrews 6:13

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore

by himself, I will indeed bless you and I will greatly multiply you.

And so after waiting patiently, Abraham obtained the promise.

For men swear by something greater than themselves.

And for them a confirming oath ends every dispute.

Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of

the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath.

So that through two unchangeable things, in which is it impossible for God to lie, we

who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before

us.

Let's pray.

Father God, we come to you today and we need your word, dear Lord.

We need your strength.

We need you to just to be with us, God.

Life is difficult.

There are good days and there are bad days.

And dear Lord, we want to wait on you.

And so help us, dear Lord, to just be strong in our faith, to not be discouraged by whatever

it is that we may be up against today.

And in these few minutes, God, that your Holy Spirit would speak to each one of us, God,

that you would free us from distractions and worries of the world, that you just would

kind of grab a hold of our minds and our ears and our hearts for these few minutes.

I pray, God, that you would hide me behind the cross, that you would help me to preach

and teach in a way that brings glory to you.

I pray that you take away any fear, any pride, and I pray that every word that is spoken

today is from you, dear Lord.

So let your Spirit and let your Word do the work in our life today.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We often see, especially in the book of Hebrews and really in the New Testament a lot, it's

not uncommon to see Abraham mentioned.

And for good reason.

Everything really began with Abraham.

This promise that God made to Abraham all these years before, God said, look, Abraham,

I am going to bless you.

You need to leave your land, go to a land I'm going to show you, and I'm going to bless

you.

I'm going to bless you greatly.

You're going to have a son, and there is going to be a whole world that is ultimately going

to be blessed through what I'm going to do for you.

And so Abraham's a pretty important figure for the promise that God made to him, but

also because Abraham was before the law.

And so many times the people that Jesus was encountering and the early church was encountering

and even here in the book of Hebrews, a big problem was so many times people were caught

up on the law of Moses and things of Moses and wanting to live by the law.

But hey, wait a minute, Abraham came before the law.

And look at Abraham.

He was righteous.

And why was he righteous?

Not because he followed any kind of law.

The law was a long way off.

But the thing that we celebrate Abraham for is that Abraham had great faith.

He had faith in God, that God had made a promise to him.

Now when God made this promise that he was going to bless Abraham, we see in Romans chapter

Romans 8 · chapter mention

8 that Abraham, he thought, well, this is kind of a crazy thing.

It says in Romans chapter 8, he says, I was as good as dead.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I was 100 years old.

He says Sarah's womb was dead, is what we see in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And even though Abraham knew that it seemed impossible that he and Sarah would bear a

child, it says that he did not waver in his faith.

He did not waver in unbelief, but yet he believed God's promises.

God is a God who keeps his promises to us.

God is a God who told Abraham, indeed, I will bless you, and he did.

But it took a long time.

It took a whole long time.

It took years and years and years.

And even when it seemed unlikely, even when it seemed that maybe God had forgot or maybe

God wasn't able or maybe God wasn't going to keep his promises, after years had gone

by, what does it say of Abraham?

It said that he waited patiently.

He waited patiently.

Now the Bible is full of a lot of hard things that it calls us to, but one of the things

that God's word calls us to is to wait patiently.

I suspect that that may be harder for our culture today than it has ever been.

Attention span in our world and our culture today is shorter than ever.

We don't have much of a attention span.

We don't like to wait.

Now I'm preaching to myself here.

I don't like to wait.

I like for stuff to get done.

When I want something to get done, when I'm ready to do something, when I'm ready to get

something I want, I want to get it.

I don't want to wait.

I want to do it.

We just planted 170 shrub bushes in our yard this week.

This last couple of days, Michelle has worked me and fished to death.

But we got it done.

We got it done.

We got some more to plant.

If anybody wants to volunteer to help your neighbor and love your neighbor as yourself,

you can come on over.

But look, they're about this tall, and they're about this wide.

But we planted them because we want them to be a privacy fence around our whole yard there.

Well, there ain't much privacy there now, unless you an aunt.

An aunt couldn't see around it.

Other than that, it's easy to see around.

I want them to be 12 foot tall.

I would like them to be 12 foot tall by the end of the week.

But they're not going to be.

They're going to be the same height they are now.

But over time, they're going to get to be the height that we want and the width that

we want.

But until then, I have to wait patiently.

There's no way I can make those things grow faster.

But that's a hard thing for us in life.

We don't like to wait.

We go somewhere to eat dinner.

We go up there and say there's a party of four.

And they say, well, it's going to be 30 minutes.

And we say, I ain't going to wait.

And then we get in the car, and we drive 15 minutes somewhere else.

And we wait 20 minutes at the place we just drove through.

And so instead of waiting 30 minutes, now we've waited 50 minutes because we can't wait.

And oftentimes, when we can't wait, we end up causing ourselves more trouble than we

had at the beginning.

We don't like to wait.

Whenever I order something online, if there's one day shipping available, if it's something

I really want, I'll get to one day.

I want it the next day.

How could I wait two days for this cable I need to plug my TV into?

I mean, it's impossible.

You can't wait two days for that.

So we don't like to wait.

We don't like to wait for the simple things.

We certainly don't like to wait for the serious things.

Waiting is hard.

Waiting is hard when you're single and you're waiting on a spouse and you're praying and

you're saying, God, I want somebody.

And we want them now.

We don't want to wait.

We don't want to wait till we're 30, till we're 42, or 52, or 60.

We want to get married now.

We want a relationship now.

We don't want to wait when there's sickness in our family, when there's somebody that

we love that's sick.

We don't want to wait.

We don't want to wait for the doctor to tell us what to do.

We want to do something now.

The doctor says you're sick.

Well, what do we do, doctor?

Well, the doctor says you're going to have to get some tests done.

Well, when can we get them done?

Well, the quickest we can get you in is a month.

We don't want to wait a month.

We want to get it done.

We don't like to wait.

We don't like to wait on things.

We want things to be done quickly because that's the right way to do them and that's

a good way to do them.

It's good when it's quick and that's the way that we think, but that's not the way

that God thinks.

That's not the way that God works.

Now, sometimes God may work quick and God can work as quick or as slowly as he wants

to.

You know, we read God's word and we see these things and we see promises that God makes

on one page and we flip the page of the Bible and the promises has come to fruition, but

that one or two page flips we make may have taken 20, 30, 40 years, hundreds of years

sometimes we see in scriptures for God's promises.

And so we need to learn from Abraham that in the midst of our trials, in the midst of

our struggles, that God has not forgotten us, that God is capable of doing what he says

that he can do, that God is with us.

He has not left us or forsaken us.

Now, we're not like Abraham today.

I'm going to say most of us aren't like Abraham in the sense that God has appeared to us and

said specifically, this is what I'm going to do for you.

Maybe God's spoken to you in some way through his word or through prayer or whatever it

may be.

Maybe the Holy Spirit's spoken to you in some way, but probably not in the same way that

he's spoken to Abraham.

So maybe we don't have a specific promise like Abraham had, but certainly we have promises

in the word of God that God has made to his people, that God has promised he will not

leave us or forsake us.

We see that in Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 8.

Deuteronomy 31:8

He tells us people way back then, I will not leave you or forsake you.

And by the time we get to the end of the book of Hebrews chapter 13 verse 5, the author

Hebrews 13:5

of Hebrews recalls that scripture to tell his audience, God will not leave you or forsake

you.

God is a God who keeps his promises.

What are his promises to us?

Well, the Bible is full of promises to us, but maybe we just need to look at a few today.

Some of these that I think we can hold on to, and one of those is that God will not

leave you or forsake you.

Wherever you are today, whatever pain you're in, whatever struggle you're in, whatever

you're going through is tough as it may be, and you say, God, where are you?

God do you even care?

God, are you listening?

God, are you going to act?

God, what are you doing?

God has not left us or forsaken us.

And in those times, perhaps we simply need to wait patiently.

And that is a hard thing to do for us to wait, but yet that's what scripture calls us to.

And perhaps we need to be reminded as we wait patiently on God that God has not forgotten

us, that God has not left us, that God has not forsaken us.

Philippians chapter 4 verse 19 says, and my God will supply all your needs according to

Philippians 4:19

his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

There's another good promise in the word of God that God will supply our needs.

Now, sometimes our definition of what our needs are may differ from what God's definition

is.

Sometimes there are a lot of things that we think that we need, but ultimately when it

comes down to it, whatever it is that we need to be sustained and to make it in life, God

will provide it.

Maybe not in the abundance that we wish we had it, maybe not in the way that we would

like to see it, but God will provide for his people.

God's word promises that he will not let us go without, that he will take care of us,

that he will meet our needs.

And sometimes maybe just barely, but God is faithful to do what he says he's going to

do.

When God promises us things, God will hold on to those promises and we need to hold on

to the promises of God.

First John chapter 1 verse 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to

1 John 1:9

forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness.

That's the most beautiful promise in all of scripture, that God promises us that if we

put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we will be forgiven of our sins, not because

we deserve it, but because God loves us and because Jesus Christ gave his life on the

cross for us.

And God's word promises us, we don't have to doubt this, we don't have to question this,

but we can know for certain that there is salvation for us when we put our faith and

trust in Jesus Christ.

That is the greatest promise that we see in God's word, that we see what Jesus Christ

has done and there's a promise of something better for us than what this world has to

offer.

Praise the Lord.

If there is no other promise that we can look forward to in our walk in this world, in our

struggles in this world, in our pains in this world, we can look forward to the promise

that one day we will be with the Lord.

And some of you today may be saying, I wish that day would come.

Come Lord Jesus, either come take me home or come back and take us all home.

There's some of us today who are ready to go, but we don't go on our time, we go on

God's time.

And so until God's time comes for us, there's only one thing we can do.

We can wait patiently.

That's a hard thing to do.

But anytime that we wait on God, we will never be disappointed when God shows up.

We'll never be disappointed because God works all things together for the good of those

who love the Lord.

We see that in the book of Romans.

That's a hard verse to reconcile sometimes with the things that we see in our life and

the things that we suffer and the things that we see in our world.

And we see that verse and we say, how in the world, God, have you worked this situation

in my life for good?

You see, oftentimes what God is working on is so big, we can't even fathom.

As humans, we can only see very little.

We can only see what's right there before us.

We can't fathom things that many moves ahead.

We're playing checkers and God's playing chess.

He's seeing moves ahead that we can't even imagine.

And so we sit here today and probably every one of you, you've got something going on

in your life, either in the past or in the present, and it's hard and it's painful.

And you say, how can any good come from this?

Well, I don't know how good comes from the things that God does, but I know it ultimately

will.

I know that God works all things out for the good.

And perhaps today you say, man, God, I wish you'd help me to see that good.

God, I want to see that good today.

And God, I've been in this mess for weeks, for months, for years.

I've been in this struggle.

I've been in this pain.

I've been in this sorrow.

And God, I don't see the good yet, but God, I want to see the good.

God, when am I going to see the good?

And what does God's word tell us?

It tells us to wait patiently, to trust in the Lord.

Proverbs chapter three, verse five, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not

rely on your own understanding.

Man I lived on that verse for years of my life.

I just, I lived on it.

I set up camp on it because so many times we go through things in our life that we just

don't think we can make it and we don't see how God's at work.

How can God be at work when everything around me is falling apart?

Is God there?

Does God care?

Yes, he does.

But God does not work on our times and so many times we see as in the story of Abraham.

It took years from the time that Abraham got the promise.

It took 25 years before he finally had a son and Abraham in the meantime tried to take

care of the promise himself, but it didn't work.

When we get impatient and we try to take care of things on our own, it don't work out right.

We have to sit back and be reminded God's way is better.

God's promises are better.

And when God comes through on his promises, oh what a blessing that is.

When we see the good that comes from the bad, oh what a blessing that is.

And some of you can give a testimony of that today, I guarantee you.

There are probably some of you in this room that you have been through some things in

your life and you thought I'll never make it through.

There will never be any good that comes through it, but I bet you some of you today could

say, but let me tell you how God worked.

Let me tell you how God worked in the midst of everything crumbling and falling apart.

Let me tell you how God was building something more beautiful than I could ever imagine.

So God doesn't work on our time today.

I know this is a hard message.

I wish I could tell you today that God was going to make your problem better and bless

you and give you everything that you wanted and make all things just perfect for you today.

I wish I could say that, but I know the reality is that many times in God's word, his people

must wait.

They must trust in him.

They must seek him.

They must call out to him.

They must wait on him.

One of my favorite stories in all of scripture is the story of Joseph in the Old Testament.

Maybe you've read that story.

Joseph's brothers, they didn't like him.

They sold him into slavery and he went to work for a guy.

Somebody lied on him.

He got put in prison.

He was in prison for a while.

Some people were supposed to help him out.

They didn't help him out.

Long story short, eventually this boy that was thrown into this hole ends up being second

in command in all of Egypt and saving his whole family as a result because when the

famine comes through, there is Joseph in Egypt and he had been put there by none other than

God.

We read that story in 15 minutes in our Bible, but that's a story that took years and years

and years and years, probably about 20 years it took of Joseph's life.

Can you imagine even being thrown into a pit by your brothers waiting and waiting?

How long would he have to wait?

Only after waiting through that horror, he sold into slavery with a bunch of strangers

and he waits and he waits and he waits until he ends up in another household and things

begin to go well and then someone lies on him.

And then he's in prison and he's waiting and he's waiting and he's waiting on the people

that are supposed to put in a good word for him to help him get out.

And he waits and he waits and he waits.

But at the end of that story, we see that God worked all things together for the good

of those who love him.

So may it be today for us, perhaps there are some of us today who have been waiting and

waiting and waiting.

Well, I can't tell you how long you're going to have to wait today, but I can tell you

that God is good.

I can tell you today it may not seem like it.

You may tell me after church, you don't know what you're talking about.

You don't know what I've gone through.

I don't know what you've gone through, but I know that God is good.

I know that he has not forgotten you today.

I know that his promises are to give us something better if not in this life and the life to

come and he is a God who is worth trusting in because if we do not trust in God, then

in whom will we trust?

There is no other that we can trust.

There is no other that we can put our hope in.

There is no other who has promised to be with us and to give us grace and to give us strength

and to give us eternal life apart from God.

That's the only one we can trust in and he is the only one that we can wait on today.

So we must be those in the midst of our trial who wait patiently on the Lord.

The audience in the book of Hebrews, they were getting ready to turn.

They wanted to give up on the Lord, but the author says, wait on the Lord.

In the midst of your conflict and your pain and your sorrow and your struggle, wait on

the Lord.

So it is for us today.

We must be those who wait on the Lord.

Lamentations chapter 3 verses 25 and 26 says, the Lord is good to those who wait for him,

Lamentations 3:25

to the person who seeks him.

It is good to wait quietly for deliverance from the Lord.

The Lord is good to those who wait on him.

Perhaps one way that God really begins to work in our life through waiting is that the

more we wait on him and the more we call out to him and the more that we seek him, the

more we trust him.

And maybe that's the greatest blessing of all.

Maybe the blessing that we are looking forward to, the thing that we want to see, maybe that's

not even going to be the way that God blesses us.

Maybe the real blessing is in the wait.

Maybe the real blessing is when we genuinely seek God and begin to trust God.

And it's a beautiful thing and there's nothing more beautiful than when we really learn to

trust God.

Now we may all say that we trust God in here today, and I'm sure on some level you probably

do.

But I bet you there are some people in this room that have really learned to trust God.

And we only really learn to trust God when we go through the worst of the worst situations.

When our health is failing, when someone's health that we love is failing, when our marriages

are falling apart, when our jobs are falling apart, when our churches are falling apart,

when our nation is falling apart, when everything around us is falling apart and we begin to

seek God and call out to God and trust God and we find the presence of God, what a beautiful

blessing that is.

Some of you have no doubt experienced that today.

You know what it means to really trust in God.

You've gotten to a place where you say, look, I know the goodness of God and I will trust.

Perhaps for others of us today, we're still in the midst of that struggle.

We're still crying out.

We're still saying, God, I need some help.

And when we really crowd and trust and seek God, maybe it takes weeks or months and years,

but when we seek God with all our heart, we will find him.

And there is blessing in the waiting.

It may not seem like it.

It doesn't seem like it sometimes, but when we experience God, we say, man, God, it's

worth the wait.

Whether it took me weeks or months or years, God, it's worth the wait.

And so we have to be those today who wait patiently on the Lord.

Psalm 40 verse 1, I waited patiently for the Lord and he turned to me and heard my

Psalms 40:1

cry for help.

That's what we want, right?

We want God to hear our cry for help.

For some of us, that cry has been going on for days or months or weeks or years and we

continue to cry and we continue to cry and we continue to cry, but I'm telling you, when

God hears and he answers and you know that he's there and you feel his presence, what

a glorious day that will be.

And know that God has heard your prayers.

He has not forgotten you.

He has not abandoned you.

He has not forsaken you.

He has not left you.

He is with you and he'll give you the strength to get through.

He may not make all of your problems go away today.

Maybe he will.

Maybe he won't.

But I can guarantee you his grace is sufficient for his power is perfected in weakness.

And in the midst of our weakness, we cry out to the Lord and we wait patiently because

who else can we wait on but the Lord?

One last scripture this morning, Psalm chapter 37 verse 7.

Psalms 37:7

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Do not fret when people succeed in their ways when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently.

There are a lot of hard commands that we see in scripture.

Love your neighbor as yourself is one of them.

But this is another hard one.

To wait patiently because we want to do it ourselves.

We want to make it better.

We want to say, okay, I got to do something.

I got to do something.

I can't just sit here and do nothing.

I can't just sit still and be quiet and do nothing.

I got to do something.

But yet that's not what God's word calls us to.

There are some times that we simply must be still and be quiet and wait patiently on

the Lord.

God is good this morning.

Do not doubt that.

Do not forget that.

Trust in him and he will guide you along the right path.

Whatever you're going through, I don't know what it is.

It may be something super serious.

It may be hard.

I'm not pretending that it's not.

But I'm telling you that God is big and God is good and he is a God worth waiting on.

He is a God who keeps his promises.

He kept his promises to Abraham and he keeps his promises to us.

He will not leave us or forsake us.

He'll forgive our sins.

He'll give us grace.

He'll get us through the toughest days.

And one day God promises to take us home to be with him.

But until that day comes, we must be those who wait patiently on the Lord.

Let's pray.

God, I pray for these people today, dear Lord.

I pray for them, God.

I know that life is hard.

And I don't know everybody's struggle, but dear Lord, I know we all got a struggle of

some sort.

And if we don't have one today, we will soon enough.

But God, whatever anybody's going through today, dear Lord, I pray that they would trust

you and seek you, dear Lord.

I know oftentimes we don't see good in what's around us.

We don't see how it could ever be good.

But you are a master, dear Lord, of taking what's bad and making it good.

But dear Lord, you do it in your time.

And maybe it takes years, dear Lord.

So I pray that you help us today to be those who would wait patiently, dear Lord.

That if there are some here today that are struggling, that they would call out to you,

dear Lord.

That they would trust in you.

That they would seek you.

That they would today know that you're good.

That they would not question your goodness.

That they would not question your promises.

That they would not question whether you hear them or whether you care about them or whether

you're going to help them.

God, you are going to help them.

You do care about them.

You do hear them, dear Lord.

And I pray today that they would find grace in you.

I pray today that they would find strength in you, God.

I pray that you just would be with them, dear Lord.

It's tough.

So I pray that you give them the strength that they can make it the next day and the

next day and the next day, dear Lord.

I pray, God, that you would help us to be those who wait patiently on you this morning.

Dear Lord, maybe there are some today that have never heard, have never put their faith

and trust in Jesus Christ.

God, maybe today they know the promise that there is salvation in no other than Jesus

Christ.

And if we are faithful to confess our sins, you are faithful to forgive us our sins, dear

Lord.

So I pray, dear Lord, that if there are some that do not know Jesus, that if you spoke

unto them today that they would repent, that they would ask you to forgive them, dear Lord,

that they would confess and that they would make Jesus the Lord of their life this morning.

God, maybe there are some here today and they're yours and they don't doubt you, dear Lord.

They don't question you, but they just don't see how things are going to work.

I pray, God, that you just give them peace.

God, you don't show us how things are going to work, so you just have to give us the peace

and the grace to know that you are good and you're working things together for good.

God, I pray that you would help us today with this tough command that we see in scriptures,

to wait patiently on you.

God, for those who have been waiting for weeks or months or years even, I pray that you give

them strength.

And God, ever how long our wait is, I pray that we would never question you.

We had never doubt who you are, dear Lord, that our faith would be like that of Abraham,

that it would be unwavering to know that you are good.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.