In this sermon, we want to see that we should ADD TO OUR FAITH PATIENCE!
Illus: Patience gives us a fit in this life! A man noticed a woman in the grocery store with a very hyper three year old girl in her cart. As the mother and her child passed the cookie section, the little girl asked for cookies and her mother told her no.
The little girl went wild and pitched a fit. Her mother patiently said, “Now Missy, we just have half the aisles left to go through, don’t be upset. It won’t take long.”
In the candy aisle the man saw the little girl getting upset again. She was kicking and screaming, and the mother said, “There, there Missy don’t cry, only two more aisles to go.”
When they got to the checkout lane, the little girl was going wild and began to reach out for gum and candy, and the mother said, “No!” and she screamed louder.
The mother said, “Now, now Missy we’ll be through this checkout lane in five minutes and you can go home and take a good nap.”
The man followed them out of the store and stopped the mother to compliment her. “I couldn’t help but notice how patient you were with your little daughter Missy.” The mother sighed and said, “Oh, no my little girl’s name is Francine, I’m Missy.”
We live in a very difficult world that works on our nerves. Does it seem strange to you that the company that advertises, "You deserve a break today”, is a fast food restaurant? I guess what they mean by that is, "Come on in! Let’s see how fast you can take a break today, and then get out on the road again at break neck speed."
The Lord came up with the idea of a Sabbath day - a day to worship and rest.
• Our bodies need it
• Our minds need it
• Our spirits need it
This fast paced society is killing people. We need patience in our life in so many ways.
Illus: A life-long city man, tired of the rat race, decided he was going to give up the city life, move to the country, and raise some chickens and become a chicken farmer.
He found a nice, used chicken farm, which he bought. Turns out that his next door neighbor was also a chicken farmer.
• The neighbor came for a visit one day and said, "Chicken farming isn't easy. Tell you what. To help you get started, I'll give you 100 chickens." The new chicken farmer was thrilled. Two weeks later the new neighbor stopped by to see how things were going. The new farmer said, "Not too good. All 100 chickens died." The neighbor said, "Oh, I can't believe that. I've never had any trouble with my chickens. I'll give you 100 more."
• Another two weeks went by, and the neighbor stops in again. The new farmer says, "You're not going to believe this, but the second 100 chickens died too."
• Astounded, the neighbor asked, "What went wrong? What did you do to them?"
• Well, says the new farmer, "I'm not sure whether I'm planting the chickens too deep or not far apart enough."
We all need to retire from this “Rat Race Society” before it kills us.
HOW DO WE GET PATIENCE IN OUR LIFE? Look at Romans 15:5, it says, “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus.”
The more time we spend with God, the more patient we will become. That is because He is a GOD OF PATIENCE!
In the previous sermon, we looked at the IMPATIENCE OF ABRAHAM AND SARAH and the trouble it got them in. But also in the Old Testament we find a man that had PATIENCE LIKE THE GOD OF PATIENCE.
Let’s look at-
I. THE PATIENCE OF JOB
When we think of Patience, we think of Job. Sometimes we refer to a patient person as having “The patience of Job!”
WHY DOES JOB HAVE THE REPUTATION OF BEING A PATIENT MAN?
God blessed Job with a large family and a lot of material blessings. Now if you never had anything, you do not miss it because you never had it. Job had it. He was one of the richest men on the face of this earth at this time. But one day he woke up and lost it all! But the way he handled this situation is remarkable!
Illus: During the Great Depression, when some of the rich lost their wealth they could not handle it, they jumped out of tall buildings and some of them ended their lives by putting a gun to their heads.
But Job did not do such a thing, he handled the situation like all of us should when hard times come. He patiently waited on the Lord to work it out.
WHY DID HE HAVE SO MUCH? God blessed him!
Job learned that by:
• Living a godly life
• Living a good moral life
• Being a man that worked hard
• Being a wise man that made wise decisions
.. He became a man that God could bless.
There’s a cause and effect relationship the servants of God have with the living God. That is, if we live a certain way, God has promised us He will bless us.
But this man that God had so richly blessed lost it all in one day. It just did not make sense, God had blessed him and now it seems like God had cursed him.
Now there are two situations where we are most prone to be impatient.
• One is when we’re experiencing a good thing and we really do not want it to end
• The second is when we are experiencing a bad thing that we want to have END
I guess impatience is most difficult in the latter situation - that’s what Job endured. The hardest thing was that the bad was undeserved. He couldn’t look at his life and say:
• “Oh, I abused my body and that’s why I’m sick”
• “Oh, I really raised those children poorly and that’s why they died.”
• “Oh, I disobeyed God’s commands about honesty or hard work, and that’s why this has happened.”
No, Job’s life is all about the mystery of suffering that cannot be explained by moral cause and effect. When God was blessing him, he understood the “cause and effect” relationship, but now he was the same man suffering, and the “cause and effect” relationship did not make sense at all!
And that will test our faith like nothing else will. Let’s look at two reactions to these sufferings.
A. HOW DID JOB RESPOND TO THE WORST POSSIBLE NEWS HE COULD HAVE RECEIVED?
He responded well. Look at Job 1:21, “And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
Many of us are convinced that God wants to give us the blessings of life, and there’s a feeling of ENTITLEMENT that comes with that knowledge.
Job says, I came from my mothers womb with nothing, and I’ll return to the womb of the earth with nothing.
B. HOW DID JOB’S WIFE RESPOND TO THE WORST POSSIBLE NEWS SHE COULD HAVE RECEIVED?
She did not respond well. While Job thought in the right way, Job’s wife did not. His wife had an irrational way of thinking. She said, “Why don’t you curse God and die!” It makes you wonder if she really loved Job at all.
Illus: She reminds me of a wife named Becky that was beside her dying husband’s bedside. She held his fragile hand, tears streaming down her face.
Her voice roused him from his slumber. He looked up at her and his pale lips began to move slightly.
• "My darling Becky," he whispered.
• "Hush, my love," she said. "Rest, Shhh, don't talk."
• In his tired voice, he said "I have something I must confess to you."
• "There's nothing to confess," replied the weeping Becky.
• "Everything is all right...go to sleep."
• "No, no I must die in peace Becky. I....I cheated on you."
• "I know," Becky whispered softly, "Now close your eyes and let the poison work."
Listen, the way Job’s wife talked to Job, it makes you wonder if she loved him at all.
But Job had a good attitude in life, he felt like, “We take the good days from God – why not the bad days also?” Do not get the false idea about Job’s reaction, HE HAD SOME QUESTIONS! GOD DOES NOT MIND US ASKING, “WHY?”
Illus: Have you noticed that when you tell a child not to do something, they immediately say, “Why?”
Job was a child of God, and he had some questions to ask God about what was going on in his life.
You see, waiting on God involves two things:
1. DAILY COMMITTING OURSELVES TO GOD
It involves committing our situation into his hands. If need be, we can cry out to God like Job did. Let Him know that we’re perplexed, impatient, needy, or confused. Then reaffirm our trust like Job did.
Look at Job 13:15, we read, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”
2. CONTINUING TO DO GOOD
Look again at Job 13:15, we read, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: BUT I WILL MAINTAIN MINE OWN WAYS BEFORE HIM.”
We commonly associate patience with doing nothing. Yet there is a patience that can carry on.
• It’s one thing to relax and not run ahead of God by taking matters into your own hands
• But it is a harder thing sometimes to carry on under stressful situations.
We can learn a great deal about PATIENCE from the life of Job, but the one who can teach us the most about PATIENCE IS THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.
JESUS IS THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF PATIENCE.
In the 26th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we see Jesus coming to the Garden of Gethsemane and experiencing one of the most trying times in His life here on earth.
Leaving the rest of the disciples by the gate, He takes Peter, James, and John with Him into the inner recesses of the garden, and says to them, "… My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me."
Listen to HIS words again to get the full impact of what He is saying, “… My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.” He wanted them to know that this was one of the hardest things He could ever do.
Was the Lord saying this because He feared death? No, He was saying this because the Holy God of heaven who became flesh and dwelt among us was preparing to become every filthy sin that mankind has ever committed.
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger tells that when he was in Bible College in Lakeland Florida, he worked at the Lakeland Hospital. They put him and some other young people through some extensive training for the work. He was placed on the cardiac arrest team that was trained to show up when someone needed to be revived. Back then, they would do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and they were assigned by numbers to do this procedure. For example, a young woman was one of the kite flyers at “Silver Springs”, and while she was there, she had to be revived and one of his coworkers did the mouth to mouth resuscitation. They told Dr. Belger that he was next in line to do the procedure. Then, one day the team was all called to show up in a certain room. When he got there he saw this fat old lady who was unconscious, had no teeth, in dirty clothes, with tobacco juice flowing out of both sides of her mouth. The leader of the group gave the nod for him to start the procedure, he said it was the most repulsive thing he had ever done in his life. He said he literally thought of looking at his supervisor and saying, “I quit!!” But he eventually got the grace to do what had to be done!
Now I only mention that to tell you that when the holy God of heaven became flesh, and took on all the filthy sins of the world, it was the most repulsive thing that you could have asked Him to do.
• He took upon Himself the sins of every filthy prostitute
• He took upon Himself the sins of every filthy homosexual
• He took upon Himself the sins of every filthy child molester
• He took upon Himself the sins of every filthy gambler
• He took upon Himself the sins of every filthy wife beater
• He took upon Himself the sins of every filthy liar
He took upon Himself every filthy sin we ever committed.
It was not the fear of death that was stressing Him out. It was that for the first time in His life He was going to be the most vile person that ever existed on this earth.
OH HOW HE LOVES US, TO DO SUCH A THING!
This was a trying time for Him! Look at Luke 22:44, "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
Illus: Evelyn Christenson wrote, "I wept as a cardiologist described Jesus’ drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was betrayed and arrested. Medical science reports that only when humans are under rare and extremely grave stress do their blood vessels break and mix with the sweat in their sweat glands...”
The Lord told Peter, James, and John, “… My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.” Then when Jesus came back, He found Peter and James and John sound asleep. Hello! With friends like this, who needs enemies?
Jesus was experiencing the most terrible night of His life upon this earth, and they fall asleep, not once, but 3 times. And yet Jesus treats them with love and patience and kindness.
No wonder Peter wrote, in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering (Patient) to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."
That is why God doesn’t send a lightening bolt from heaven and turn Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein into burnt toast. He wants them to come to repentance and be saved.
It is a good thing that the PATIENT GOD OF HEAVEN IS GOD and not us. If we impatient mortals were God, a lot of folks would be in bad shape tonight.
• Did you know that when you are patient with someone who deserves to be hit in the head with a ten-pound hammer, you are like God, and your patience shows them the God who lives in you and may lead them to God
• Pause right now and ask yourself who God has given you, placed in your life, that you need to be more patient with. If you are here tonight and you are married, you probably do not need to think very long.
Patience is the ability to PUT UP with people you’d like to PUT DOWN.
Conclusion:
We live in a very IMPATIENT SOCIETY!
• Many can not slow down long enough to come to church and give an hour of their full attention to God
• If the service goes over ten minutes, we get anxious and impatient and want to leave. We can’t slow down, and it’s killing us.
We seem to have no idea what scripture means when it says, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10).
Illus: John Ortberg says, “For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.”
Here’s a few practical ways we each can learn to slow down and teach ourselves patience.
• Drive in the slow lane on the expressway. It may be that not swerving from lane to lane will cause you to arrive a little later, but you will find that you don’t get so impatient and angry at other drivers. Instead of trying to pass them, say a little prayer as they go by, asking God to bless
• Eat your food slowly. Chew at least fifteen times before you swallow
• Stand at the longest checkout lane
• Occasionally allow someone that has a more in their buggy to get ahead of you. It might give you a chance to witness to them
• If you see someone trying to move into the flow of traffic, slow down and allow them to enter
• Go through one day without wearing a watch or using the cell phone. You won’t know what time it is and you won’t know who you need to call right away. But it might help you slow down and live a lot longer
• Go to someone that you lost your cool at and tell them you are sorry for losing your temper. You will be surprise how it affects that person
This list could go on and on but you get the idea. Learn to slow down and teach yourself patience.
One last thing we can do to develop patience is to remember how patient God is with us. When we get impatient with circumstances and people, we need to just remember how patient God is with us. Now He wants us to be patient with others.
I. THE PATIENCE OF JOB
A. HOW DID JOB RESPOND TO THE WORST POSSIBLE NEWS HE COULD HAVE RECEIVED?
B. HOW DID JOB’S WIFE RESPOND TO THE WORST POSSIBLE NEWS SHE COULD HAVE RECEIVED?
