This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour podcast. And as we discussed yesterday, the bad news here is that my little workshed got struck by lightning and it broke my internet. The good news is that my workshed did not gain consciousness as a result and go on a destructive rampage, like the plot of the 2005 smash hit Stealth, starring Jamie Foxx. So I guess there's some positives here. Still haven't quite got my internet fixed. Haven't been able to get a hold of those Ethernet switch people and haven't brought myself to the point of mustering the patience needed to get back on another long wait on hold with the hold music so that I can talk to them about how the lightning broke my internet. Speaking of patience, we're talking about patience because it's one of the fruit of the spirit. It's right here in Galatians chapter 5. And it's a good one. It's a good fruit of the spirit. It's a timely fruit of the spirit for me this week. And I had this plan when we got to the fruit of the spirit. It was like, I'm just going to be like, these are the fruit of the spirit. They're good. Let's just keep going. We're not going to spend a bunch of time on this. But then I got to love, and that was the first one. I was like, well, we'll probably talk about what the Bible means about love a lot. Because it seems like there's societal debate and confusion about what exactly that means, and particularly about what it means when the Bible says love. So we took a real long time and we did that. And I was like, there, now it's all downhill from here. We're just going to cruise through the rest of these fruit of the spirit. But then joy came up. It's like, well, that one probably deserves a whole day. That was pretty good. Peace. I like peace. That one deserves a whole day. And I was like, patience. Well, that one deserves a day. But then I thought about it a little bit and was like, well, this seems like the one where it makes sense to talk about these being the attributes of God that are transferable, that are handed off to us in the form of the fruit of the spirit. And now here we are in our third day of patience. I mean, there's kind of a meta thing going on there, though, right? I mean, patience, it takes us three days to get through it. I don't know. Today's going to be the last day on patience. This is what I know. We started talking about patience from a biblical perspective as an attribute of God. Just definitionally, logically, biblically, God must be patient because everything else in creation is worse than him, right? Then what do we have to be patient with? Well, one of the things that it's hard to be patient with in life is stuff that's dumber and worse than us, or at least that we perceive that way. Can you imagine being smarter and better and gooder and writer than literally everything and having that be actually the case, not just arrogance? Dang. I'm watching that Superman trailer that's playing all the time right now. If you're watching this later in history, you might not remember what I'm talking about. But as I'm recording this, we're coming up on a whole reboot on the whole DC comic book movie universe. They got a new Superman. This is like the sixth or seventh one that's happened in my lifetime. And I mean, looks like he's going to do a nice job, but in the trailer that's so popular for this new fangled Superman that has this new feel and hopefully is going to be refreshing and different from the previous comic book movies. There's this one shot, right? Where Superman, who has basically unlimited power and strength or whatever, he sees that a little girl is about to get wrecked by some kind of shrapnel-y explosion. And the dad, I'm not kidding, I'm not even being ironic right now. This works on me. The dad part of me just goes, like this is what I think about right before I drift off to sleep every night. Protect, protect, protect. Ah, it's a little girl. And the shot that James Gunn, the director of this movie, has crafted, that I keep seeing in this trailer is Superman with all this power rushing at like the speed of light to get in between this little girl and the explosion. And then he has to tuck her head down to get it, you know, to cover her fully with his body so that all of the wreckage and everything will smash into him and not tear her up. And if you just think about what Superman is, he's so strong that the amount of strength and speed he has to exert to get in position to protect her, but then the amount of delicacy that he has to simultaneously demonstrate not to hurt her while trying to protect her because of his massive strength. It's just crazy. And that's one of my favorite things about Superman, is just that idea of someone so powerful trying to interact in a society with a bunch of people who are so far beneath him in terms of power and strength. So I just think it's a neat shot. And as I keep seeing that trailer, it keeps reminding me of this attribute of God. He's literally better than anyone else he could ever talk to. He's literally better than everybody. He literally knows more than everybody. He's more powerful than everybody. Okay, well, if that is the case, if there is a God, definitionally, God must be patient. You just hope he's really, really, really, really patient. And that seems to be what the Bible demonstrates. So then, because God is like that and he has a long view, as we've discussed, it makes sense that patience with God would be the least we can do. It would be the most obvious aspect of patience as a fruit of the spirit, an evidence of the work of the spirit in the life of the person who's with God. And we talked about that yesterday. But then in addition, well, there's going to be this element of patience. It is maybe the most obvious element, but that's just patience with other people. And surprise! I brought a Bible and I have a couple of verses in mind. And one of them is in First Corinthians, and this is also by Paul. And it's a verse I've read recently, but it's it's the love one, right? First Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, and it goes on. We read all of that the other day. But patience isn't uh just its own individual attribute. Patience is an expression of love. It's an expression of humility to say your thing is uh a mess right now, or your thing is inconveniencing me, but uh I'm going to humble myself before whatever your circumstances are, and I'm going to be patient with you. That's a fruit of the Spirit. Colossians three, popcorn. Count it up. There it is. Colossians three, twelve through fourteen, right here. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive what grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you, and over all these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity. And maybe right now you're like, you are an incredibly lazy man, and your lightning strike is no excuse for this laziness. You're just going through the same list of verses you did with love. I see what you're doing. You caught me. Both of my hands are guiltily in the air on either side of this microphone right now, guilty as charged. Also, it totally makes sense, doesn't it? That the love and the forgiveness and the patience thing, they're all knitted together. I mean, isn't that what this passage is saying? That love is kind of the cord that wraps all of these otherwise clumsy things that we might not be able to hold all at the same time. It's just too big and armful. But if you wrap all of these virtues up in love, it works. Well, yeah. Forgiveness, patience, long suffering. We're imitating God when we are like that, when we do that. But also the capacity to do that is a gift from God. We're mirroring Him. All right. In general, patience is regarded in the Bible not just as a thing that the spiritually mature person has with God. Like God's working stuff out, so I'm being patient, long view of history. Patience is not just regarded in the Bible as patience with others, but there's also just this idea of a general virtue, of sort of a long view of things, of understanding that life is big and the knee-jerk reaction to things isn't always the shrewd or wise reaction. Ecclesiastes 7, 8 says, the end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.
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SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's pretty simple. I mean, it's basically a proverb right there in Ecclesiastes. And speaking of Proverbs, I mean, there's a bunch of them about patience in Proverbs, but I jotted down this one, Proverbs 14, 29. A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly. Think about most of the things you most regret. How many of them are tied to impatience or a quick reaction? A lot of them for me, a lot of the stupidest stuff that I've ever said was just quick. I didn't think, I didn't reflect, or I didn't think about the bigger picture. And so yeah, patience is a fruit of the spirit, and my impatience is kind of an act of the flesh. Okay, last one. We got patience with God, we have patience with others, we have patience as a general virtue, and then finally there's this idea throughout the Bible of patience in the face of suffering. And we've looked at a lot of stuff that deals with that. First Peter tackles a bunch of that. I'm gonna go with Romans 12, 12. This is a letter that Paul wrote. In it, he touches on the idea of suffering. It's a letter that Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, a place where Paul would inevitably suffer quite a bit. By that I mean they took his head off with a sword there in Rome. And in Romans 12, 12, it says, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer, share with God's people who are in need, practice hospitality. The virtue throughout the entire New Testament is we be patient in suffering. This is part of the deal of this lifetime and this world and the nature of the world. This is why things need to be redeemed, this is why God is redeeming. And so part of patience with God is also patience with suffering, is also tied to patience with others, is also tied to a general calm, peace that passes understanding notion of patience as an orientation toward life and the unfolding of things. You think about the people who you deeply admire, who you want to be like, who you trust, they all have this virtue. You think about the people who are walking chaos and you never quite know what you're gonna get, and they live crisis to crisis, and you might really like them, but it isn't what you want to do. Generally, patience is not among the fruit that is on display in their lives. The people we admire tend to get this really right. And if I'm to understand Paul correctly, here in Galatians 5, they got it from God, whether they've ever said that out loud or not, because patience is a virtue of God. All right, that's plenty for now. Hopefully, tomorrow, I'm gonna look out for me. I could be full interneting again in just one day. I don't even know what I'm gonna do first. Maybe I'll go tweet some more stuff. The possibilities are endless, crazy. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.