The Patience of God

What's the most important thing about you?

Most important thing.

When we think about God, you know, when we think upon the Lord, that's a very important thing that really centers us, directs us, brings us into a view of who we are and who God is.

And that's a very important frame of mind to understand and bring together that how am I operating, how am I behaving in reference to God?

Now, if we have a God that's off out there somewhere and yeah, he created all this, but he's really not in tune and he's just letting it see.

He's just sitting back going to see how it works out.

I'm glad that's not the way our God is, aren't you?

Because that would leave so much up to me and you and how we do and the things we do.

But to know that God is sovereign, that God is in control, that he's ruling everything.

Isn't that good for the soul? That God is in control.

He's the one true God.

There are no gods except him.

He's the maker of heaven and earth, all things therein.

And as we've studied him, the attributes of him, we should be more and more and more in all of our awesome God.

He's all inspiring.

We should bow down and worship the Lord our maker.

When we see his power and might and grandeur, when we see his wisdom and knowledge and brilliance, when we see his justice and truth and splendor, when we see his holiness and faithfulness and glory, when we see his love and mercy and goodness.

As we approach our topic this morning, it's one not less than any of the others.

There are no lesser and greater of the attributes of God.

They're all great.

They're all good.

But it's one that we maybe don't hear about a lot.

It's one that kind of gets lumped in with a group of others.

But we get to hone in and look with a little more insight into the patience of God.

The patience of the Lord.

Now the Lord is patient, right?

But many times that gets lumped in with his mercy, his goodness, and several others which say these are all who God is as well.

But when we think about the patience of God, we get to do that this morning, the patience of the Lord.

Have you heard a sermon on that recently?

Me neither.

So patience, of course, just kind of work through what we've been doing when I do that.

What is it?

What is patience?

What is patience?

And I like to get the old Webster's definition there of the ability to endure pain, suffering, or other evils with calm, unruffled temper.

I think about that.

It can also mean the act of waiting for justice or something good without discontent.

So in lay terms, let's think about what that might mean.

It might mean not smacking somebody that needs to be smacked.

Okay?

Or the ability to be calm and content when you're in the waiting room of the doctor's office.

Or at the red light.

Right?

Okay.

We know what patience is though.

It's also a word that we find in the Bible as long suffering, long suffering, to bear provocation or injury for a long time, to be patient, or to not be easily provoked.

So from the biblical terms, the Greek and what have you, we get words like steadfastness, endurance, perseverance, forbearance.

And in the Hebrew it's long suffering or slow to anger.

Slow to anger.

So how is God patient?

Well, he's not quick to anger.

He's kind to sinners.

He fulfills his promises without haste, endures with those who don't believe, and doesn't lose patience with those he loves.

Because we kind of get just some things in our minds about what patience is.

Let's think about when we see this as God saying this about who he is.

Now Moses had went up on the mountain.

He'd received the commandments.

And in that time, God said the people have rose up.

They've created a calf.

They're worshipping the calf.

And he does this thing with Moses.

He says, "I'm going to go down and just wipe them out.

And then I'll start anew with you." And Moses said, "Well, God's doing something with Moses.

You know, God's not, I'm just going to wipe them out and start all over like God's trying to determine what he's going to do.

He's trying to get Moses to see and understand what the way things are." And so Moses said, "Well, if you do that, you know, the people of Egypt, the people might say that you weren't true to your word, you know, and that you brought them out here just to slay them." And so anyway, you know, you know how the story goes.

So Moses goes down and he sees it.

He loses his patience.

You know, he throws the tablets down.

He has to go back on the mountain and get the tablets for the second time.

And this is where the Lord comes and he proclaims his name.

He proclaims his name and this is what he says,"The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord.

The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." What have we learned over the past several weeks that he is a God of love.

He's a God of wrath.

He's a God of justice.

He's all of this, but God says, "I'm going to declare my name to you." And he could have said any of those, "I'm a God of wrath. I'm a God of justice." But he comes and he says,"A God of merciful, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." Let's look at a couple of other verses that we get from Psalm 86.15.

"But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." Kind of repeating that what the Lord had said to Moses.

Now we get this in the book of Jonah.

You know Jonah's story, he was supposed to go to Nineveh and declare to the people that the Lord was going to destroy them if they didn't repent.

And this is something that Jonah said.

And he prayed to the Lord and said, "O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster." This is our God.

Later in the book of Nahum we find this.

"The Lord is slow to anger and great in power." How is God able to be slow to anger?

How is God able to be patient, long suffering, because he is great in power?

Stephen Sharnek and others say that God's patience is his power over himself.

So when we think about patience and endurance and things in our Christian line, we think about it as self-control.

We want to smack, but we control ourselves and we don't.

So in thinking about how God is his patience, is his power over himself, we need to be careful how we view that in our minds that we don't view him like a man or like us, because God is not a man.

But he has revealed himself to us in his word in human ways so that we can understand him to the degree that he wants us to understand him.

So we need to think about that and be careful how we think when we think about God.

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he who takes the city.

So when we think about this God power over himself to be patient, to be kind, to be long suffering, we can see it clearly in the Scriptures.

But we can't think of God as getting angry like we do and just having to hold back that anger, like getting to a boiling point and having to hold himself back from throwing something across the throne room of God like we might do in our shop or garage.

Holding back angry words from the terrible driver in front of us.

God is patient. God is in his perfection.

He's perfectly long suffering. He's perfectly gentle and patient towards us, sustaining perfectly his wrath and anger.

God's patience is his ability to be angry and sin not.

We're encouraged to be angry and sin not. Jesus was angered when he went into the temple.

Some might view that as him throwing a fit, overturning the tables. No, that was anger perfectly executed.

It was anger and not sinning.

We can probably be good for us to grow in that area. Amen. Or am I just speaking for myself? Be angry and sin not.

God's patience is the silence of his justice and the first whisper of his mercy.

Stephen Sharnak.

I believe that the whole Bible and God dealing with man is a display of his patience from beginning to end.

But I think I want to give a warning to not let God's patience, long suffering forbearance be to your detriment because he delays his wrath.

We think we have time or that he's gracious. He's merciful and he will just forgive us.

He will not just forgive us, but he will justly forgive us or he will justly punish us.

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.

Because God is patient, men continue to sin.

Someone has said if sins effects were immediate, it would have fewer takers.

I thought about that this week. I thought, well, if sins effects were immediate, we would all be dead.

The wages of sin is death. But if sin, oh, this would be awesome.

But if sin were like a hot coal and we reached and picked it up and burnt our hands, we wouldn't want to grab it again.

And the next coal that comes along and we reach for it, we would fill the warmth before we grabbed it and no to get back.

Sin is worse than a coal.

All that we might be trained to flee from sin, to run from sin, to abandon sin, to not see it as we want to see it, but see it as it really is.

Burning coal.

The more His patience is abused, the sharper will be the wrath He inflicts.

All the time men are abusing His patience, God is wetting His sword. And the longer it is wetted, the sharper will be the edge.

He is long suffering to us.

Is there, when I thought about this, was there a verse that comes to your mind at the beginning when we think about the long suffering, the patience of the Lord?

This is the verse that came to my mind, 2 Peter 3.9.

"The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." I don't like that translation of this particular verse.

God is not wishing any should perish. That is a thing. Does God ever wish for anything?

Let's look at it in the King James.

"The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." The Lord is not slack. What is the promise that Peter is talking about here? Some will say in the last days scoffers will come and say, "Where is the coming of the Lord?" We've heard about this all of our lives. He's not come yet. He's not going to come.

The Lord has promised He will come. He's not slack in that promise. Why has He not come? He's not willing that you should perish, but that you should come to repentance.

Why has God not come? Because all of His elect are not saved yet. And once all the elect are gathered and the last one is saved and the last one is sanctified to the point that He desires, then wrath will come.

Here's a kind of a long quote, but I want to give it to you. It's two pages.

"Long suffering forbearance patience is to be the Christian's reflection of the character of God." So when we think about the character of God as He's explained Himself, as He's proclaimed who He is, long suffering forbearance patience is to be the Christian's reflection of the character of God.

It is part of God's character to be slow to anger and quick to be merciful. Part of the incomprehensibility of God in terms of my own relationship with Him is this.

I cannot fathom how a holy God has been able to put up with me more in His creation to the degree that I have for these three score in five years. For me to live another day requires a continuation of God's gracious patience with my sin.

It becomes even more difficult to fathom when we see a sinless being being more patient with sinful beings than sinful beings are with each other.

Who does that sound like?

That God lets me take another breath is a demonstration of the patience of God.

And when we think of how He's put up with me to this point, what patience, what mercy, what grace?

When we see the patience of God, we think about the patience of God. Do we not see the patience of God personified, glorified, illuminating from the person of Jesus Christ?

Amen.

Coming one, being born, living, waiting, waiting, waiting 30 years to the point that He would begin His ministry, beginning His ministry, calling out His twelve, the patience He had with them, the patience He had with the rulers and those around about Him. He was oppressed.

He was afflicted.

Yet He opened not His mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before His shearers is silent. So He opened not His mouth.

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.

Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted.

The patience of Christ, the long-suffering, the slow to anger.

Remember that?

When the officers come to seize Jesus, Peter drew out his sword and he cut the ear of Malchus off the servant.

He said, "Do not think that I can appeal to my Father that He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels." As I thought about it, just before this, Jesus did not even need the legions of angels. With just two words, He caused the whole band that come to arrest Him to fall back.

And He said, "I am." But just a word of His mouth He couldn't.

He was patient to fulfill the Father's will. He knew what He was doing, He knew why He was doing it, and He knew all that was happening to Him was the will of the Father.

Do you think that there is anything that has ever or will ever happened to you that's not within the will of the Father?

If you think something can happen to you that's outside of the parameters of the will of God is perfect will for your life, you need a new God.

Everything is happening for a reason and when we know it's coming from the hand of the Father, we can be patient. We can endure with much long suffering.

Or do you presume upon the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

His patience, His kindness, His long suffering, Him not doing things according to your timetable or my timetable.

He's doing it just right. He's doing it perfect. Have you ever come to the point wherein your sinfulness and you saw your sinfulness as exceedingly sinful to you?

That you saw it under the light of God's patience and kindness to you?

And you sided with God against yourself and saw how deserving of hell you actually were?

I mean, when you come to bear the weight of your sin and see it in the light of its sinfulness, that He gives me another breath, but His grace, His love.

It's then you bow the knee. It's then you repent and believe upon the realness of what Christ has done for you.

And you call upon the name of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your exceeding great patience toward mankind.

But you're exceeding great patience toward me, us here this morning.

We must say, wow, what a mighty God you are. Worth all of our worship, all of our service.

To you goes the glory, the power, the honor, the might. Lord, you are God and there is none else. In Jesus' name, amen.