WEBVTT 00:00:00.001 --> 00:00:05.000 What's the most important thing about you? 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Most important thing. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:28.000 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. 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:43.000 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? 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:55.000 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. 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:00.000 He's just sitting back going to see how it works out. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:05.000 I'm glad that's not the way our God is, aren't you? 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:10.000 Because that would leave so much up to me and you and how we do and the things we do. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:20.000 But to know that God is sovereign, that God is in control, that he's ruling everything. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:27.000 Isn't that good for the soul? That God is in control. 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:32.000 He's the one true God. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.000 There are no gods except him. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:43.000 He's the maker of heaven and earth, all things therein. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:57.000 And as we've studied him, the attributes of him, we should be more and more and more in all of our awesome God. 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:00.000 He's all inspiring. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:07.000 We should bow down and worship the Lord our maker. 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:37.000 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. 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:47.000 As we approach our topic this morning, it's one not less than any of the others. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:52.000 There are no lesser and greater of the attributes of God. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.000 They're all great. 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.000 They're all good. 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:01.000 But it's one that we maybe don't hear about a lot. 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:06.000 It's one that kind of gets lumped in with a group of others. 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:20.000 But we get to hone in and look with a little more insight into the patience of God. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.000 The patience of the Lord. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:28.000 Now the Lord is patient, right? 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:40.000 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. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:48.000 But when we think about the patience of God, we get to do that this morning, the patience of the Lord. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:53.000 Have you heard a sermon on that recently? 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Me neither. 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:01.000 So patience, of course, just kind of work through what we've been doing when I do that. 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:02.000 What is it? 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.000 What is patience? 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:05.000 What is patience? 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:26.000 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. 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.000 I think about that. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:40.000 It can also mean the act of waiting for justice or something good without discontent. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:47.000 So in lay terms, let's think about what that might mean. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:55.000 It might mean not smacking somebody that needs to be smacked. 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:56.000 Okay? 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:09.000 Or the ability to be calm and content when you're in the waiting room of the doctor's office. 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:12.000 Or at the red light. 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:13.000 Right? 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:14.000 Okay. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:18.000 We know what patience is though. 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:36.000 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. 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:51.000 So from the biblical terms, the Greek and what have you, we get words like steadfastness, endurance, perseverance, forbearance. 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:58.000 And in the Hebrew it's long suffering or slow to anger. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:01.000 Slow to anger. 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:04.000 So how is God patient? 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:08.000 Well, he's not quick to anger. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:11.000 He's kind to sinners. 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:24.000 He fulfills his promises without haste, endures with those who don't believe, and doesn't lose patience with those he loves. 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:33.000 Because we kind of get just some things in our minds about what patience is. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:39.000 Let's think about when we see this as God saying this about who he is. 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:42.000 Now Moses had went up on the mountain. 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:44.000 He'd received the commandments. 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:50.000 And in that time, God said the people have rose up. 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:52.000 They've created a calf. 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:55.000 They're worshipping the calf. 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:57.000 And he does this thing with Moses. 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:01.000 He says, "I'm going to go down and just wipe them out. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:14.000 And then I'll start anew with you." And Moses said, "Well, God's doing something with Moses. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:20.000 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. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:42.000 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. 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:47.000 So Moses goes down and he sees it. 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.000 He loses his patience. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:52.000 You know, he throws the tablets down. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:59.000 He has to go back on the mountain and get the tablets for the second time. 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:03.000 And this is where the Lord comes and he proclaims his name. 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:15.000 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. 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:20.000 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:41.000 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. 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:44.000 He's a God of wrath. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:47.000 He's a God of justice. 00:08:47.000 --> 00:09:38.000 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. 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:55.000 "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. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:59.000 Now we get this in the book of Jonah. 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:08.000 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. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.000 And this is something that Jonah said. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:20.000 And he prayed to the Lord and said, "O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:42.000 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. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:52.000 Later in the book of Nahum we find this. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:11:08.000 "The Lord is slow to anger and great in power." How is God able to be slow to anger? 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:19.000 How is God able to be patient, long suffering, because he is great in power? 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:29.000 Stephen Sharnek and others say that God's patience is his power over himself. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:37.000 So when we think about patience and endurance and things in our Christian line, we think about it as self-control. 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:44.000 We want to smack, but we control ourselves and we don't. 00:11:44.000 --> 00:12:03.000 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. 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:15.000 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. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:24.000 So we need to think about that and be careful how we think when we think about God. 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:35.000 Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he who takes the city. 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:53.000 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. 00:12:53.000 --> 00:13:22.000 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. 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:37.000 Holding back angry words from the terrible driver in front of us. 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:45.000 God is patient. God is in his perfection. 00:13:45.000 --> 00:14:00.000 He's perfectly long suffering. He's perfectly gentle and patient towards us, sustaining perfectly his wrath and anger. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:08.000 God's patience is his ability to be angry and sin not. 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:19.000 We're encouraged to be angry and sin not. Jesus was angered when he went into the temple. 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:31.000 Some might view that as him throwing a fit, overturning the tables. No, that was anger perfectly executed. 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:38.000 It was anger and not sinning. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:59.000 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. 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:08.000 God's patience is the silence of his justice and the first whisper of his mercy. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:28.000 Stephen Sharnak. 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:51.000 I believe that the whole Bible and God dealing with man is a display of his patience from beginning to end. 00:15:51.000 --> 00:16:11.000 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. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:20.000 We think we have time or that he's gracious. He's merciful and he will just forgive us. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:36.000 He will not just forgive us, but he will justly forgive us or he will justly punish us. 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:50.000 Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:17:03.000 Because God is patient, men continue to sin. 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:14.000 Someone has said if sins effects were immediate, it would have fewer takers. 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:23.000 I thought about that this week. I thought, well, if sins effects were immediate, we would all be dead. 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:33.000 The wages of sin is death. But if sin, oh, this would be awesome. 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:46.000 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. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:18:00.000 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. 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:06.000 Sin is worse than a coal. 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:25.000 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. 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:28.000 Burning coal. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:46.000 The more His patience is abused, the sharper will be the wrath He inflicts. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:19:00.000 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. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:10.000 He is long suffering to us. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:22.000 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? 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:28.000 This is the verse that came to my mind, 2 Peter 3.9. 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:55.000 "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. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:06.000 God is not wishing any should perish. That is a thing. Does God ever wish for anything? 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:09.000 Let's look at it in the King James. 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:49.000 "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. 00:20:49.000 --> 00:21:08.000 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. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:33.000 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. 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:44.000 Here's a kind of a long quote, but I want to give it to you. It's two pages. 00:21:44.000 --> 00:22:05.000 "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. 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:18.000 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. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:39.000 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. 00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:56.000 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. 00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Who does that sound like? 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:24.000 That God lets me take another breath is a demonstration of the patience of God. 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:47.000 And when we think of how He's put up with me to this point, what patience, what mercy, what grace? 00:23:47.000 --> 00:24:06.000 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? 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:13.000 Amen. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:50.000 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. 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:52.000 He was afflicted. 00:24:52.000 --> 00:25:12.000 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. 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:38.000 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. 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:52.000 Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. 00:25:52.000 --> 00:26:12.000 The patience of Christ, the long-suffering, the slow to anger. 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:18.000 Remember that? 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:28.000 When the officers come to seize Jesus, Peter drew out his sword and he cut the ear of Malchus off the servant. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:52.000 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. 00:26:52.000 --> 00:27:18.000 And He said, "I am." But just a word of His mouth He couldn't. 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:38.000 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. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:28:02.000 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? 00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:18.000 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. 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:35.000 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. 00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:51.000 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? 00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:09.000 His patience, His kindness, His long suffering, Him not doing things according to your timetable or my timetable. 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:27.000 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? 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:35.000 That you saw it under the light of God's patience and kindness to you? 00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:48.000 And you sided with God against yourself and saw how deserving of hell you actually were? 00:29:48.000 --> 00:30:11.000 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. 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:36.000 It's then you bow the knee. It's then you repent and believe upon the realness of what Christ has done for you. 00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:53.000 And you call upon the name of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your exceeding great patience toward mankind. 00:30:53.000 --> 00:31:06.000 But you're exceeding great patience toward me, us here this morning. 00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:17.000 We must say, wow, what a mighty God you are. Worth all of our worship, all of our service. 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:33.000 To you goes the glory, the power, the honor, the might. Lord, you are God and there is none else. In Jesus' name, amen.