Fruit of the Spirit - Patience
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Pray
Introduction
As many of you know, we are working through the fruit of the Spirit in our evening service. We’ve looked at love, joy and peace. Today we are now onto our 4th fruit of the Spirit, which is Patience.
Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can. Always in a woman, seldom in a man.
Have you heard that rhyme before?
How would you rate yourself? Would you say you are a patient person?
For me, it depends what definition of patience it is...
Because I think I am, for the most part, a patient person. I don’t lose my temper. I don’t lose the rag and get all hot headed. Which sounds admirable, and it would be if I stopped there…but where my weakness come out to play is when I’m expecting something to happen and the deadline has passed. THEN I am impatient.
So for example, if I order something online, and it’s due today and today comes and goes, and tomorrow comes and goes, and it’s still not here… then I get agitated.
And it’s stupid, but it’s how my mind works. Strange thing is that up until the deadline, I’m patient, because I know it takes as long as it takes…but once that time has passed, then I start to get wound up.
I also found it happening when I changed computers. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I changed from a PC to a Mac a few years ago. When I had my PC, certain tasks took as long as they would take. And I was patient while the computer was doing what it had to do, because that’s how long it took.
Then I switched to the Mac and I realised that the same tasks DIDN’T need to take 5 minutes to complete - they could be done in 5 seconds. And life was great…until those times when I have to use a PC for some reason…and I realise that the tasks that take 5 seconds on my mac take a lifetime on the PC…and the patience disappears.
So there are two related-yet-different definitions of patience...
When you’re happy to wait for something to happen.
Or
When you’re able to endure…to tolerate something.
And in our culture, where everything is instant, we almost expect everything to be instantaneous.
I remember, growing up and watching a series on TV, I had to wait each week for the next episode. Today, with Netflix, we don’t have to wait at all. We have every episode available to watch RIGHT NOW…and in many cases, not only do we have every episode, we have every series available to watch RIGHT NOW.
Or think of cameras. When I was younger, I had to take my film to the photo labs to be developed. And it took about a week before I got the photos back.
And then things got a bit more high tech and you could get your photos in AN HOUR. How amazing was that?
Today, we can reminisce instantly. We can take a photo, turn the camera around and say, ‘Aw, look how young we looked’. Because today we see our photos the moment we take them.
And I could go on all night - but what this is doing to some people in society - possibly the young people - is teaching them that they don’t need to be patient because the can get whatever they want in an instant.
But that is only one side of patience.
The biblical view of patience is more nuanced.
Pause
The Greek word for patience in our passage in Galatians is makrothumia. Which literally means long anger. In other words, someone who is patient is someone who takes a long time to get angry. The opposite of short-tempered.
That’s the patience that comes from the Holy Spirit.
And the best place to look at this in the bible is in the other passage we read which is Matthew 18...
And I think this is a brilliant picture of how the disciples got it wrong on so many occsisions.
Peter comes to Jesus and asks him how many times should we forgive someone who sins against us....and he suggests 7.
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Now, the Rabbinic tradition taught people that you forgive people for 3 sins but you stop at the 4th. This comes from passages in Amos where God says..
3 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Damascus, even for four, I will not relent. Because she threshed Gilead with sledges having iron teeth,
So the 4th sin was when people would not relent and that’s where they were told to stop.
Now, imagine Peter, taking that amount, doubling it, and one for good measure, and coming to Jesus, almost smugly, ‘Hey Jesus, how many times should we forgive a brother that sins against me? As many as 7 times? Now, we don’t know if he was smug here, but Peter certainly wanted to show that he was going over and beyond what was expected.
But for Jesus, that wasn’t enough. 7 times? No no no, Peter…seventy times 7…or 77 times, depending on the translation.
The number is irrelevant. The point is that there is NO LIMIT to the number of times we forgive someone.
And when it comes to patience, that’s really a test of our patience…to endure someone sinning against you again and again and again, and having to forgive them again and again and again.
It almost seems unnatural.
Here’s a thought…it IS unnatural…which is why this type of patience comes from God himself, since it’s a fruit of the Spirit. This is not a human patience here - this is a supernatural patience that only God gives. And it’s an example that God sets for us to follow. And it’s in the parable that Jesus told.
Let me retell the parable in numbers and currency that we will help us to see the differences here...
So it starts off with a king, who wants to settle debts. So he gathers his servants together to have them pay up their debts to the king.
There was one servant who owed 4.5 billion pounds…and I’m not exaggerating. ONE talent - just ONE talent - was worth about 15 years wages. Taking a wage of around £30,000 and multiplying it by 15 gives £450,000. Then multiplying that by ten thousand gives 4.5 billion pounds.
Now, how that man ever got into that debt, we will never know. The point is that 4.5 billion pounds of debt is an amount of money that nobody would be able to pay back. That’s an impossible amount to pay back.
And of course, the servant couldn’t pay this debt back. So the king was within his rights to sell the servant, his wife and children and try to recoup some of the debt. That was the King’s prerogative and he was within his rights to do that.
But the servant begged and pleaded with him…Have patience and I will pay back this 4.5 billion pounds. How he would do that, I have NO IDEA.
And I think the king KNEW that he would never be able to pay this debt back. But out of pity the king cancelled every single penny of the debt. What a gracious king that was. He didn’t have to do that, but he was merciful.
Then, that same servant went out, debt free, and saw one of his colleagues who owed him £8,200. Now, where do I get that figure from?
Well, 100 denarii was a very small amount. It was 100 days wages. So let’s take that average wage of £30,000 and divide it by 365. It gives £82 pounds per day. Multiply that by 100 and the debt was around £8,200. Not a terribly big debt. One that could be paid back over time, and NOWHERE NEAR the debt of the other servant. In fact, the other servant’s debt was 548,780 times more than this.
But this servant couldn’t pay back his small debt.
Now, you would think that the first servant, having had his 4.5 billion pound debt forgiven, would let the other servant off with his £8,200. But he didn’t. He threw him into prison until he could pay his debt.
When the king heard of this, he summoned the first servant and said to him, ‘you pleaded with me to have patience with you, and I didn’t just have patience - because you would never have been able to pay that debt back - I forgave the debt completely. You didn’t have to pay back a penny. Could you not have had the same mercy on your fellow servant in the same way I had mercy on you?’
And the king then put the 4.5 billion pound debt back onto the first servant and threw him in prison until he could pay the debt…which, by the way would take an eternity.
Pause
Now, let’s look at the details...
The first servant had a debt that was impossible for him to pay. He was shown mercy so he did not have to pay the debt. It was forgiven.
The second servant had a debt that was possible to pay, but he didn’t have the funds to pay it. He SHOULD have been shown mercy by the first, but instead, the debt was called in, and the servant had to pay it.
Now, you might say that each person was forgiven once…Where’s the seventy times seven?
The point is the size of the debt - the first servant’s debt was 548,780 times more than the second servant. So you COULD say the first servant was forgiven 548,780 times.
But that’s not the point. The point is God is the king in this story. We are the first servant. The debt that is impossible to pay is our sin.
And our sin comes with it an eternal punishment - an eternal debt that needs to be paid. And it’s a debt that we can never pay back...
And Jesus took that debt on himself when he died on the cross.
And the debts that we owe each other - and we’re not talking money now. The wrongs that we do to each other, the grievances, the mistakes that we do to each other, the sins that we commit against each other, are like a tiny debt compared to what we owe God.
And if God can forgive us the immense debt of our sin - if God can have mercy on us for what we have done to HIM, then we MUST show mercy to those who have wronged us, and we MUST forgive them.
Time and time and time again....and that takes patience.
But if we can’t forgive people again and again and again, then look at what happened at the end of the parable…the first servant was summoned by the king and his debt was back - it was as if the debt was never forgiven - and he had to pay back every penny of a debt that he could never pay back.
Pause
Jesus said in Matthew 6...
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
And he also said,
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
The first servant was shown mercy, but didn’t show it to the second servant. And because he was not showing mercy, his debt was put back - the mercy was taken back. So because he didn’t show mercy, he was not shown mercy by the king, but was put in prison to pay back the debt.
Had he forgiven the second servant, his own immense debt would have remained cancelled and the King’s mercy would have remained. Instead, he wasn’t shown mercy.
If we forgive other people when they sin against us, our heavenly Father will also forgive us. But if we do NOT forgive others their sins, our Father will not forgive OUR sins.
That’s scary.
Pause
But that’s patience…God is patient with us every day. Because every day we sin against him in some way or another. We may not think we do, but we do. And God is patient with us, and gracious to us.
I’ve heard it likened to an old dog who has a yappy puppy bouncing all over him. The old dog will just lie there and let the puppy jump around and nip it and want to play. And the old dog can, at any time, grab the puppy and... game over.
But it has patience and so it tolerates the yappy puppy.
That’s how God is like with us. We sin against God every day, but God tolerates us and forgives us because of his love for us and because of what Jesus did to take away our sin.
But as a result we are called to be the same with others. To tolerate them. To be able to forgive time and time again. You don’t need to be a walkover…but we’re called to forgive…and that takes patience.
I read a quote during the week which said...
The only reason why sinners are not wiped off the face of the earth is because of the mercy and grace of a long-suffering God.
Pause
Another example of this, very quickly is in Exodus.
In Exodus, Moses goes up Mount Sinai to get the 10 commandments. He’s up there a while and the people at the foot of the mountain get impatient. They forget that God led them out of Egypt and they forget that he split the red see for them to walk across, so they make a golden calf and worship it. This is ludicrous, but they do it.
Moses comes down, sees the calf, is furious and drops the tablets on which the commandments are written and they shatter.
So he goes BACK up the mountain to get a new set of commandments - I mean you can’t make this up...
Anyway, AFTER ALL THIS, in Exodus 34, God says this...
6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
I am the LORD, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger....Even after the Israelites had immediately forsook God and started worshiping a golden calf, God still says that he is slow to anger. He could have wiped them off the face of the earth. The only reason he didn’t is because of the mercy and grace of a long-suffering, patient, God.
Pause
God is patient with us to the Nth degree. He tolerates us. His love ENDURES forever - it endures…endurance isn’t easy. Endurance is tough, it’s hard but you stick at it and you keep going - and that’s what God’s love does... It ENDURES…forever. It tolerates and puts up with us forever.
And that’s the kind of patience we need in our lives - to endure our spouse at times. To endure our family members who keep wronging us. To endure our friends who keep letting us down.
It’s a patience with other people who annoy us. It’s a patience with other people who let us down or who wrong us.
And that’s what makes us different in the world. Because for the rest of the world, if someone does something against us we kick them out of our lives.
Not so for Christians. We are called to be patient. Because God is patient with us. He puts up with us letting him down on a daily basis…and if we can learn anything from the parable it’s that we need to be patient with those who let us down…again and again and again.
And that is hard! It’s unnatural.
Which is why we need the patience of God. People talk about someone having the patience of a saint - we need to have the patience of God.
It’s not a try harder kind of thing - it’s a fall down on your knees and ask for an indwelling of the Spirit kind of thing.
It’s a, ‘LORD, I am struggling with these people. HELP me to endure them. Help me to put up with them. Help me to forgive them’ kind of thing.
It’s a fruit of the Spirit.
Let’s pray.