The Gift of Patience

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome to our worship service. It’s good to see you all here.

I have a few announcements I’d like to mention from your bulletins.

The men’s group will meet tonight.

We’re also going to have a called business meeting after our service on September 24 to vote on the new Nominating Committee Report. Shouldn’t take but a minute, so if you’re a member, please try to stay behind for that.

We’re still collecting items for Stump Elementary’s WRE program. You’ll see a list of needed items in your bulletin, and you can leave those in Randal’s classroom or see Della.

And we’ll also be continuing to collect arts and crafts supplies for our shoeboxes. You can leave those in the shoebox room down the hallway, or see Joanne.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we praise You this morning for your goodness and Your love, knowing that the blessings You offer us each day are the blessings You wish us to share with others. As You care for us, so let us care for others. As You show us kindness, let kindness rule with every person we meet. As You shower us with the love of Christ, so let the love of Christ shine through us and into the world. Let us be Your hands, Your words, Your witness to those who search for you. For it’s in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

Alma Hunt

This is the time of year when we focus on our Alma Hunt offering for Virginia Missions. If you would like to give to Alma Hunt, there should be an envelope tucked inside the pocket of the chair in front of you, or you can mark your check Alma Hunt. Harvey has a video for us to watch.

Lord’s Supper

At this time, I’ll invite our deacons to come down to the front as we prepare for communion. Today we honor Christ as the fulfillment of every desire as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

Scripture teaches us that through Holy Communion, we connect with Christ not only in the memory of his death, but in the spiritual life he gives us and in the eternal life which is to come. We have eternal life only with the life of Christ inside us. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11 that “whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” From communion we learn how Jesus used two of the most common things in ancient life as symbols of His body and blood and established them as a monument to His death. It was not a monument of marble or brass, but of bread and wine.

I invite any who know Jesus as their Savior to participate.

(Bread)

Matthew writes that on the night of Jesus’s betrayal, he gathered his disciples in the very Upper Room where they would witness him resurrected. Each of the twelve were there.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

(Juice)

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” By him, we are made one with him. By his blood, we are made eternal. Amen.

Sermon

Two centuries before Christ was born, the world’s two greatest powers were at war. On one side was Rome, which was about to reach its greatest time of power. On the other side was Carthage, which was a powerful kingdom in North Africa.

Carthage would eventually lose that war. But in 215 B.C., their greatest general, a man named Hannibal, was conquering cities all through Italy when he came to a city named Casilinum (Cass-ill-e-num). The city was walled, just like every city was at that time, but it was defended by only 540 Roman soldiers. Hannibal thought taking the city would be simple for his huge army, but he was wrong. The siege of Cassilinum dragged on for months. The people just would not give up. It was incredible — a tiny little city with only 540 Roman soldiers withstanding a siege by an army ten times that size.

Hannibal eventually withdrew when he realized he wouldn’t take the city. What made him decide that wasn’t a surprise attack from those few soldiers inside the walls. It wasn’t the arrival of reinforcements from Rome. Instead Hannibal got up one morning, looked down over his whole army surrounding the walls of that little town, and saw the citizens of Casilinum coming out to plant turnips along the city walls. That’s when Hannibal knew he’d been beaten.

Why would the sight of some poor farmers planting turnips be enough to turn away what was then the world’s most famous general? It’s because turnips take a long time to grow, about 60 days from planting to harvest. Hannibal watched those people planting and said, “Not only won’t they surrender, they’re determined to hang on for another sixty days to harvest this crop.”

So the city was saved. Not by war, but by turnips. Not by fighting, but by patience.

Everywhere we look nowadays, we see a short supply of that, don’t we? We have impatient drivers on the roads; impatient people waiting in line at the store; impatient bosses and co-workers; impatient neighbors. That’s a direct result from a culture that now demands everything immediately. Everything today is all about our own instant gratification.

We have fast food, fast internet, and fast fixes. We have diets that promise great results in minimal time. Books and movies actually have to be made shorter now because our attention spans have gotten shorter.

We can’t stand to wait on anything, and that’s even leaked into our spirituality. Think of some of the sermons you’ve heard on TV or articles you’ve read online. You’ll have titles like, “Five Keys to Spiritual Victory” or “Three Steps to Holiness”. As if all you need to do to have spiritual victory or to be holy is quickly check off a few items and then you’re done.

We want our faith to come as fast as our Amazon order. That’s why you now have churches preach that faith isn’t a process, it’s a product. Salvation isn’t something you work out with fear and trembling, it’s just something you ask for once and then don’t have to think about. Paul says we need spiritual meat — we need to dig deep into scripture and study it — but a lot of churches just get by with spiritual junk food. That’s how you end up with Christians who know nothing about the Bible, nothing about what Christianity means, nothing about how God says we’re supposed to treat each other — and trust me, that’s a people who will fall for just about any false teaching there is, whether it’s the prosperity gospel or Christian nationalism or progressive Christianity.

The world has McDonalds. Too many churches have McFaith, because we’ve forgotten how to wait. We all need a good reminder of what the Bible says about patience, because the truth is, any real growth you have in the Christian life isn’t going to be fast and easy, it’s going to be slow and painful.

Of all the virtues Christ says we need as believers — love, joy, hope, peace, faith, courage — patience is the hardest. And it’s not just people today who have trouble with waiting. It’s always been that way. In the Bible, patience is defined this way — it’s the ability to endure difficult people and difficult situations without giving in to anger or giving up hope. And it’s held up as a virtue in scripture because it’s one of those qualities of God that we share. Remember when we talked about that last week? God is all-loving, and so He calls us to love. He is all-holy, so He calls us to be holy. And God is patient, so we’re supposed to be patient too.

The prophet Joel wrote in Joel 2:13, “Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracioius and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” Because God keeps showing us patience when we do things that disappoint Him, we can show others patience when they disappoint us.

But so many of us still have a tough time with that, don’t we? Because at first glance, patience looks a lot like inaction. We think patience is just doing nothing. When somebody gets on your nerves, don’t act annoyed. When somebody hurts you, don’t seek revenge. When God keeps you waiting, don’t use you prayers to vent your frustration.

But that’s not what the Bible says patience is at all. Patience is a lot more than just not giving in to impatience. Patience — true Biblical patience, the patience that’s given to you through the Holy Spirit — can actually be one of the most powerful things in your life. In fact, it’s so powerful that Solomon says in Proverbs 25:15, “With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.”

Wouldn’t you like to have a patience like that? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about the three areas where the Bible says we need to show the most patience. Those are Patience with God, Patience with Ourselves, and Patience with other People. If you learn how to be patient in these three areas, your life is going to be a lot less stressful, a lot more joyful, and much more productive for God’s work. And remember, that’s why we’re all here. Careers and family and personal happiness are important, but first and foremost we are here to do the work God has given us to do, because that work will follow us from this world into eternity.

So first, let’s talk about patience with God. Turn with me to the book of Psalms, chapter 40. One of David’s Psalms. We’ll be looking at verses 1-3. David writes,

And this is God’s word.

There’s a little bit of difference between how patience is defined in the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew translation for patience is actually two words meaning — and I’m not kidding — long nostrils. Now, what in the world do long nostrils have to do with patience?

Well, think about how your body reacts when you start giving in to anger and frustration. Your heart rate increases. Your cheeks flush. And you start breathing quickly, don’t you? You start breathing heavy.

But when you’re patient, your breath is even. It’s deeper because you’re keeping calm. You don’t get upset. You don’t get frustrated. That’s the idea behind long nostrils.

A big part of learning patience is being honest with ourselves about where we struggle. And if we’re very honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that where we often get the most impatient is with God. Because no matter how hard we try, God just won’t do what we want Him to do. God doesn’t move quickly enough. He just seems to take His time in our lives, and that can leave us feeling a lot of hurt because we tend to think that means one of two things: either God’s not hearing us because He’s not there, or He’s hearing us but doesn’t care enough to do anything.

Both of those are wrong. When you think like that, you don’t have long nostrils. Here in verse 40, David tells us exactly how we’re supposed to have patience toward the way God moves in our lives, and the key to that patience is what we’ve been talking about for the past few weeks now — it’s trust. It is going to be impossible to be patient and wait on God if you don’t trust that God knows what He’s doing, and that God will act in the perfect time.

David trusted in God, and because of that trust, he could do what he says in verse 1 — he could wait patiently for the Lord. The original Hebrew there is “In waiting I waited,” or “In hoping I hoped.” Meaning that whatever it is in David’s life that he’s praying and praying for, there’s not a single moment when he doubts that God hears his prayers or that God isn’t going to help him. Not one.

The key here in verse 1 isn’t just prayer, it’s continued prayer. It’s not giving up. It’s constantly going to God and sharing your heart with him.

David’s prayer wasn’t answered at once, it was only answered after he’d prayed about it for a long time. Then, he says, God “inclined to me” — that’s a beautiful picture. David’s saying that God bent forward and put His ear to David’s mouth to hear his cry, and he’s saying God does the same for you, and that His answer will often come not after you pray just once, but after you pray a hundred or a thousand times.

And why would God do that? Why would God make you wait for something for so long? Again, many times He’s working on your trust in Him. But more often, God’s using His delay to get you ready for what He has waiting for you, or He’s using His silence to bring you alongside His way of thinking. That’s a huge part of prayer, by the way — when you pray like David does here, in worship and hope and trust, God will use your praying to change your thoughts to be less like you and more like Him.

When that happens, you get verse 2. God’s going to draw you up from the pit of destruction, and that word in the Hebrew means “a pit of noise.” When you’re impatient with God, your whole life gets noisy. San your heart be quiet? Can your soul be still? No. When you’re fighting with God over what He’s doing or not doing in your life, your heart and soul and mind are in constant nervous motion. There’s no rest at all for you inside.

But when you pray and keep praying, God draws you away from all of that noise. David says Gpd draws you up from the miry bog, where there’s nothing firm for you to stand on, and sets your feet on a rock, where you’re solid. But you have to hang in there. You have to lean on God. You have to trust that He’s in control and He knows what He’s doing. And you have to realize that His goal might not be the same as your goal because most often you’re goal is temporary. It’s just for now. But God’s goal is eternal, and God is working in your life not just for you, but as an example of His love and care for others to see.

Why do you have to be patient with God? So God can do a good work in you while you wait. And what’s God’s goal there? To make you more like Christ, and to be a witness to him. Look at the end of verse 3. God’s goal is to shape your life so that “many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.”

There is power enough in God to help you even when you’re weakest, and grace enough in him to help you even when you’re the most unworthy. All He asks is that you wait patiently for him by continuing to believe, and hope, and pray.

But patience with God is just where it starts. There’s another area where the Bible says you have to show patience, and that’s with yourself.

Turn with me to the book of 2 Peter, chapter 3. Peter writes,

The New Testament treats patience a little differently than the Old Testament does. Like the Hebrew, the Greek has patience made up of two words: makros, meaning long, and thumos, meaning soul. So in the New Testament, to be patient is to be “long-souled,” and the meaning is having the endurance to stay calm and keep doing what you’re supposed to even when you get frustrated and want to give up. If you want to be more patient, you have to think long-term instead of short-term. You have to have the strength not to cave to the pressure of the moment.

That’s what Peter is talking about here. You have to be patient with yourself. That’s a hard thing to do, because guess what? You’re a mess. I know you’re a mess. We’re all a mess. You don’t want anybody to know you are, so you try to put on a smiling face and hide it, but you know exactly what a mess you are. You know every flaw you have, every failure you’ve made, every sin you’ve committed. And because you know all of that, you spend most of your life beating yourself up. You throw your hands in the air and say there isn’t any reason at all to keep going. You say, “Why bother trying to be a better Christian? I know I’m never going to make it.”

A lot of us are harder on ourselves than we are on anybody else. But Peter says here that God is patient with us, and just a little further down in verse 15, he says that we should count God’s patience as our salvation. In other words, you might be waiting on God, but God’s also waiting on you.

But there’s an even better reason to be patient with yourself. Too many of us think, I’m never going to change. I’m never going to get better. I’m always going to struggle with this sin, or that fault. I’m broken, and I’m going to stay broken.

That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says not only is God waiting on you, God’s working in you. Paul says in Philippians 2:12-13 that you need to keep working on yourself not because you’re doing such a great job, but because God is working on you and in you, and God promises that when He begins a good work in you, He will bring that work to completion. When you’re struggling over the bad things you’ve done and are doing, remember that. When you mess up, don’t throw up your hands and quit. Be patient. You keep working on you because God is working on you, and He’ll get you there.

We tend to forget as we get older and have more responsibilities that we’re still children in God’s eyes. We still struggle to do what Paul says and walk in a manner worthy of Jesus Christ. So we fall like children learning to take their first steps. And we stumble. But eventually we do learn how to walk, not because we’re we’re great at walking, but because we’re not walking alone. Christ is holding our hand.

You’re still going to fall, because you’re not perfect. But over and over, the New Testament writers say that when we fall, we’re not just supposed to lie there on the ground wallowing in the mud. We’re not supposed to get comfortable with our sins and say, “Well, that’s just who I am. That’s how God made me.” No, we have to pray and strive to overcome those sins. But while we’re doing that, we have to be patient with ourselves. That means you let God pick yourself up again, clean you off, give us our cross, and keep walking with Him.

The entire point of your life is to get you ready for heaven. That means working through the struggles in your own life, your own secret faults and sins, and letting God do His work in you. Because He’s promised you that you’ll get there. He will complete His work in your heart and in your life.

Now, there’s one more area where God says you have to be patient, and I saved the hardest for last. You need patience with Him, you need patience with yourself, and lastly you need patience with other people.

Turn with me to the book of James, one of my favorite books of the Bible, and let’s look at James chapter 1, verses 19-20. James writes,

There’s a pattern through the whole New Testament from Paul to Peter to John and James that says this: what God gives to us, we’re called to pass on to others. God gives us grace, and so we have to show grace to everyone. The same is true of forgiveness, and blessing, and truth. God doesn’t give these things to us for us to just hoard. He gives them to us so we can turn around and share it with others. That’s especially true with patience.

We just read in 2 Peter that God is patient with us. Because of that patience, we’re able to be saved from our sins. Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:16 that there wasn’t a greater sinner in the world than himself, but Christ gave him mercy so that Paul could be an example of just how loving and patient God is. He not only gives you patience in providing you salvation. Once you’re saved, God keeps on providing you with patience so that you can live a fruitful life.

It’s that same patience that God gives you that He says you have to pass on to others. That’s what love is. Remember what Paul writes in that great chapter of 1 Corinthians 13. Love is what? Love is patient. If you truly love others, you’re going to be patient with them.

James describes what that patience looks like right here. Jesus died and rose for you not so you can just have a new eternal life in heaven, but so you can have a new life here on earth too. When you trust in him, you receive the Holy Spirit that gets to work remaking you into someone who’s more like Christ. The fancy term for that is regeneration, and James says one of the best ways to know the Holy Spirit is working in you is by the patience you have toward others, and that patience is most clearly shown in the three examples he gives in verse 19.

First, be quick to hear. You know the old saying about God giving you two ears, two eyes, and one mouth because he wants you to listen and see twice as much as you talk? That’s great advice. We live in a time when listening to others and sharing in what’s going on in their lives is pretty rare. Most often when two people are having a conversation, the person being quiet isn’t listening, they’re just waiting to talk. Their mind isn’t focused on the other person, it’s focused on what they’re going to say next. And the result of that is we just keep talking past each other. Nobody’s taking the time to really listen to what is being said.

The key to being quick to hear is humility. It’s understanding that you’re not the most important person, and that the person you’re talking to is every bit as valuable, every bit as gifted, every bit as loved by God as you are. Listening to them means valuing them. It means loving them, and the Bible says love is the greatest power of all.

These three examples James gives build on each other. If you’re quick to hear, you’re going to be slow to speak. We’re going to be talking about the weight of your words in the next couple of weeks, and honestly that’s something I could preach on every Sunday, because if you really knew how powerful your words are to other people, you’d talk a lot less.

But when James says you should be slow to speak, he doesn’t mean you should be silent. He means you should choose every word you say carefully. You should run everything you say through your heart and ask whether those words are going to be helpful or hurtful before it goes over your tongue. Let the Holy Spirit influence what you say instead of your own emotions.

If you’re quick to hear, James says, you’ll be slow to speak. And if you’re slow to speak, you’re going to be slow to anger. There is nothing more destructive to your faith or your witness than a bad temper. Nobody wants to be around someone who’s always flying off the handle, someone you always have to walk on eggshells around. How can someone like that be filled with the Holy Spirit? They can’t. That’s why James says in verse 20 that anger can’t produce the righteousness of God.

It’s interesting the way that the Bible warns against anger, because it’s often more than just a warning against a bad temper. It’s actually a warning against an attitude of always having to be right, always wanting to pick a fight with somebody, because that’s an attitude that won’t allow you to be taught by anyone or anything, not even the Bible.

And again, all three of these attitudes toward others that James speaks of depend on humility. On thinking of yourself less and others more. That’s the secret to patience, whether it’s patience with God, with yourself, or with other people. It’s understanding that you don’t know everything, you’re just as broken as anyone else, and we’re all just trying to get home together. Because we have to love each other, and above all things, love is patient, and love is kind.

Faithfulness to God is going to lead you right to patience in all the little challenges you face each day. And we all need that, because we spend a whole lot of our lives waiting. Waiting on God to act, waiting on ourselves to be better, waiting on others to do the same. But the Bible’s view of patience isn’t just sitting around and doing nothing. God’s idea of waiting is never inactivity. He means for your waiting to be positive, purposeful, and spiritual.

Your waiting has to be positive. Think of Abraham. God promises Abraham a son, then makes Abraham wait nearly an entire lifetime before that promise is fulfilled. Imagine that, a whole life spent waiting on God. But what did Abraham do in all that time? Did he just sit around? No. Abraham worshipped. Abraham prayed. He worked. He served. He remained committed and faithful to his God, and that’s exactly what you should do while you wait for Him to act according to His perfect timing and wisdom. Make yourself useful to Him and to this world, and I promise you’ll find that it’s in your season of waiting on God that you grow and accomplish the most.

Next, never forget that God has a purpose for your waiting. There’s a reason for it, and we’ve talked about how you’re much more able to endure any sort of What so long as you know there’s a Why. God might not let you know exactly what your Why is, and that’s okay. We’ve talked about that too. A lot of times, that Why is part of His hidden will for you, and God says that hidden will is his to know and not your business.

But have you noticed that when you’re waiting for God to act, when you come face to face with just how tough life can be, you start getting more honest with yourself? James said that patience keeps you humble, but being humble is also what makes you more patient. When God makes you wait on something, He’s also giving you an opportunity to face up to your struggles, and confess your doubts, and understand that you’re weak on your own but strong with Him. It makes your faith stronger. Waiting makes you see more clearly that everything in this world will ultimately disappoint you, and then it takes you straight to the cross and the promise that someday everything will be made right.

When God makes you wait, always remember Jesus’s parable of the mustard seed. In Mark chapter 4 verse 31, Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed planted in the ground. Meaning there’s always a lot more going on hidden under the surface of your life than you can possibly see.

And lastly, always remember that your waiting is spiritual. It’s God-centered. You’re not just waiting, you’re waiting on God. You’re waiting on the Creator of the universe to work in your life. You’re not waiting on some force you can’t understand to do something, you’re waiting on your Father in heaven, the God who loves you like no other. You will grow in patience to the extent that you follow the Holy Spirit’s reminder that you serve a God who loves you, and that in every part of your life, He’s working things for good.

Usually when you’re struggling with patience in your life, it’s because of spiritual amnesia. You forget that over and over again, God has proven Himself trustworthy to you. You forget that His church is going to outlast every godless culture and the Gospel is going to overcome every one of the devil’s lies. You forget that your light and momentary troubles are achieving for you an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

Don’t forget. Remember. Be patient. Stand firm in your faith. God will act. He will come through. He will finish the good work He’s begun in you. You just have to give everything to Him. And if you’d like to do that this morning, I invite you up here as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Father so much our lives are spent in waiting — waiting for You to act, waiting for ourselves to change something inside us, waiting for others to grow and to be as we believe they should. But that waiting can be so hard sometimes, and patience is so difficult for us to have. We pray that when we struggle we remember that You are first patient toward us, and that Your patience is born of love. Help us to love you, to love others, and to love ourselves the same. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.