Sermon of the Month - July 2009
Fruit of the Spirit 4: Patience
Readings: Jonah 3; 1 Timothy 1:12-17 and James 5:7-11
1. God’s Patience
What’s it like, being a Christian?
A Christian is someone with Christ in their lives. But what difference does that make? Jesus went around doing good and healing people – that’s how Peter summed it up on one occasion. Jesus was a man of love – supremely. If we want to know what God’s love is really like then look to Jesus. So if you and I become Christian, and we invite Jesus into our lives as Lord and Saviour, then by the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus changes us inwardly and outwardly. Above all Jesus lived out love, care, compassion in practice. So if anyone has really got Jesus in their lives, then we will see love beginning to grow. That’s the hallmark of the Christian life. You can’t say, Well I’ll follow Jesus, but love is irrelevant! – because Jesus is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent [Jesus], his only Son into the world... That’s how John put it.
Love is a big challenge. We all know that we are not always loving all the time. So what does the Bible say about this? In his letter to the Christians in Galatia, Paul talk of the fruit of the Spirit – one translation calls it the harvest of the Spirit. It’s the same idea. Fruit grows; a harvest takes all summer to grow. But in time, it’s grown enough to be ready to eat. It’s ripe and ready. It’s mature. And so through the summer of our lives, as the years go by and we grow and change, if God, if Jesus, if the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives – in other words if we not only start saying Yes to Jesus to come into our lives, but carry on saying Yes to him every day, then this harvest will grow. And what are these fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control And we’re looking at these one by one. Today we look at patience.
God shows great patience with us. God is perfect, and wants a perfect world, but we human beings keep on messing it up. God is holy, he is judge, and he is perfect. And he should really be judging us, and making the world perfect by judging us all. None of us deserves to live. But God does not sweep us away. He is patient with us. The Bible – especially the Old Testament puts it this way, time and time again. It says, God is slow to anger and abounding in love. You can see this with Jonah. The people of Nineveh were people who cared nothing for God, and they should have been judged. They had attacked Israel many times, and Jonah like the people of Israel generally couldn’t wait for God to judge Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. But God shows patience, and he shows it by sending Jonah to speak God’s warning to Nineveh. Jonah knows God. He knows God is patient, and he fears God will not judge and destroy Nineveh. So he tries to go as far away from Nineveh as it was possible to get – to Tarshish in Spain. You know the story: he got swallowed by a sea creature, spat out, and realised he could not escape from God. So he went back and spoke God’s warning to Nineveh. And the people heard it and showed they were sorry for their sins. God was patient – he gave them a chance. And they took it, they did what was right. Jonah was really cross that his enemies were not killed. But God was patient and kind, and forgave them their sins.
2. Experiencing God’s Patience
Paul knew exactly what it was to experience God’s patience. In the words we have just heard Paul say to Timothy, Paul knew he was the worst of sinners. He said that because although he had been very religious, that had made him a violent bigot until Jesus changed him. He’d been a vital part of the mob that lyched and killed Stephen, guarding their clothes so they could all throw their stones at him to kill him. But Stephen and the people he’s been attacking in the name of religion was only guilty of finding God and knowing God through Jesus. He was guilty of being changed by Jesus; he was guilty of being loved and showing that same love.
Jesus was the Messiah. He was the one through whom God was acting to save the world. He was the one who completed all God’s promises to the world, and to his special people Israel. Paul should have been on side. He should have been able to see it. But he could only see his own anger, his own pride, his own self-righteousness. Sometimes people get so full of themselves, and their own theories about God, their own self-made certainties, that they can’t see the truth of God’s love, even if it screams at them in love frrom the agony of the cross.
God should have removed Paul. He was the worst of sinners. But God showed mercy; he showed patience. This is what he said, I was shown mercy so that in me the worst of sinners, the Messiah, Jesus might display his unlimited patience...
And that’s what it is for us, too. God shows extraordinary patience, perseverance. He waits. He waits an awful long time for some of us. God loves you; he loves me; he loves all of us. And he shows it by his great patience.
3. The Secret of Patience
God is patient. And he not only calls on us to learn to be patient, he helps us, too. That’s what the fruit of the Spirit is: it’s God at work day by day in our lives. But he doesn’t force us to change. He works in us according to his love – so that means it happens when we are open to him working in our lives. So if we want to grow in love, joy, peace, patience and the rest, we need to pray and ask Jesus to help us, to ask him to strengthen his good work in our lives, so we become a bit more Jesus every day.
Of course there’s a problem with patience: when I ask people which of these nine fruit of the Spirit they find hardest, most people either say patience or self-control.
But patience is tied up in many ways with mercy and forgiveness. Too often we are impatient. We are tempted to get angry and cross with people. We are tempted to shout and react. We are tempted to say, Right that’s it! and reject them, and so on. It’s hard learning to be patient. But the secret, to some extent, is the secret of forgiveness. It’s hard to forgive people, sometimes. We just want to get cross and annoyed and angry. But the vital clue is to remember that we are forgiven, that God has shown mercy to us, he has been patient with us. In another letter, the one Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi, Paul said something similar. He said, I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. And what was that secret? It’s this: Paul said, I can do everything through him who gives me strength. That is also the secret of patience. God will give you and me the strength to be patience and merciful and forgiving. But we need to turn to him for this help. Then we can even learn how to be patient, through him who gives us strength.
How? Prayer. Talking to God. Listening God. Sharing with God. And so we will now pray.