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CPC Sunday School | Attributes of God-6 (10-29-2023)
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The transcription is a prayer followed by a discussion about God's patience as an attribute. It explains that patience is an aspect of God's goodness and mercy, and it shows His power to regulate Himself. Patience is defined as God's willingness to defer pouring forth His wrath upon sinful creatures. The relationship between patience and power is explored, with patience being seen as a demonstration of God's dominion over Himself. It is emphasized that God's patience is more profound than His power to create the world. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we praise you, we thank you for this day, the Lord's day, the day your Son rose victorious over sin, over Satan, even over death itself, that you have vindicated Him, that you have highly exalted Him, that we, as former sinners, now declared righteous to what He has done, are able to approach you with boldness and confidence. We pray for this time as we consider your patience, your long-suffering, that you would look upon us in our state of misery, even in our state of sin, and that you would bear with us, that you would be patient, that you would express your goodness and your mercy towards us in ways that are untold, that we do not even realize the fullness of the depths of your patience towards us. So as we pray, as we consider your patience, that it would only cause us to marvel in awe at who you are, at your character, at your very essence as you have revealed yourself, and we pray that we would respond in worship and adoration and even imitation by ourselves going forth and being patient, out of trust and dependence in who you are, in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so we have today...this is the last section in our series on the attributes of God, and we're considering this morning God's patience...God's patience, which Stephen Charnock, who I'll be using a lot during this presentation, describes as the first attribute. So for our last series, we're doing the first attribute of God, God's patience. Just to whet your appetite, Charnock puts it this way, patience is God's first attribute, which steps in for our salvation. That's something you can think about now. Why would Charnock say that patience is God's first attribute? Here's what we're going to try and cover today, simply what is it, what is patience? The relationship between patience and power, which is something that I don't think is discussed enough or appreciated enough, who are the objects of God's patience? Two problems with patience we should explore and look at why God is patient and how it applies to our life. Okay, but we've covered this question a lot, question four of the catechism, what is God, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. But we have a problem, what is not up there? Patience, yeah, so patience is not listed in what is God, right? Why would the divines not list God's patience? Is patience unimportant? Is it a kind of secondary, tertiary attribute of God? Yeah, too much of a hurry to put that in God's patience. It is a shorter catechism after all. All right, well here's one reason why, is that patience is often understood as an aspect, as an offshoot, as a dimension of two other attributes of God, God's goodness and God's mercy. So Daniel covered last week God's goodness, fitting that we cover God's patience this week. So that's one way to start to think of patience. Patience is an offshoot, an aspect of God's goodness and God's mercy. And simply put, the greater the goodness, the more goodness a person has, the greater patience they have. You can flip it around, the less good a person has, the less patience that they have. As God obviously is ultimate goodness, He's got perfect patience. So it's God's goodness that sets Him on His work to be patient. Kids, this is for you all, so Van, Noah, Allie's, Riddell's back there, if you guys read Lord of the Rings, let me get a sip of coffee here, have you guys read Chronicles of Narnia? Okay, kids, have the kids, have you guys read? If not, put it on your winter reading list, okay? But you know how patient Aslan is with Edmund, right? Aslan's very patient because Aslan is so good. Conversely, the White Witch, you might remember how impatient the White Witch is. Here's a quote from her, every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill. The White Witch always shows this like eagerness to want to punish, right? She's very eager to pounce on someone and punish them and be as cruel and as merciless as she can be. That's a good example of someone not having goodness and therefore being impatient. Aslan's very good, so Aslan is very patient. And so here's one way to think of it, goodness is God's showing his benevolence to us as creatures. So Daniel covered this last week, right? God created us, he puts us in this garden, you can eat of every tree save one, it's all yours, I even made the trees pleasant for your eyes, look at all this goodness. So goodness shown to us as creatures and again we're thinking of patience in relationship to that. So patience, aspect of goodness shown to us as transgressors, as sinners. Here's a simple way to put it, his patience towards us is not for his lack of power, so just consider that as something we'll come back to in a minute. It's not because God lacks power to punish us, it's the effect of his goodness towards us that God is so patient. This is the way Herman Boving describes it, the goodness of God which spares those who are deserving of punishment is simply called forbearance or God's patience. Okay, let's look at the second aspect, so it's an aspect of God's goodness and it's also understood as an aspect of God's mercy, of God's mercy. God's mercy, alright, shown to us as...so God's mercy, we've talked about how God's goodness comes into play, is shown to the creature as miserable, as we are in a state of misery, right? God looks at us in our state that we're subjected to all the miseries of this life. We get sick, we get the cold, we get the flu, we have aches and pains, we suffer all the curses of sin and of course ultimately we suffer death, right? And that's God's mercy towards us. As related to that, God's patience is shown to us as, this is Toronto's word, criminal, because we are criminals, we might simply say lawbreakers, is how God looks at us through His mercy and patience is refracted through it. We'll explore this more later, but just think of it this way, mercy would have no room to act if patience could not prepare the way for it. Mercy couldn't breathe, right? Mercy would have no room to breathe if God was not so patient to us. That's another reason why Charnock describes it as the first attribute of God. It starts to make way for all the other attributes to shine. Another simple way to think of it, if sin never entered the world, God's patience would not be exercised. So there's the argument that if Adam and Eve don't sin, there's nothing for God to be patient about. No room, no reason for God to show His patience. In eternity past, maybe one could argue that the Father, Son and Spirit don't need to show patience to one another because there's no mercy being exercised between the persons. All right, so we can put all that together, here's a simple definition, probably pretty common sense. Patience signifies God's willingness to defer and His unwillingness, unlike the white witch for instance, to pour forth His wrath upon us, sinful creatures. Very simple definition, all right? That's a good question. So yeah, we'll get to that. That's a good question. We will cover, at least touch on that. You can see in the word patient, this is the Latin word, patentia, which just means suffering. God suffers us. God endures us. God suffers what we do to Him. All right, so that's patience defined. Let's talk about or think about the relationship of patience and power, patience and God's power, which again, I don't think is often understood or appreciated enough. There's that opening line of Nahum, remember Nahum's the prophet who's coming to pronounce judgment upon what city? Nineveh, yeah. So enemies of God, Assyrian capital, God, this prophet comes. You can see the first part, we do have God as He's vengeful, He's wrathful, He's jealous, He's coming to bring all kinds of awesome wrath, and yet we also see, equally true, God is slow to anger. Right alongside that, God has great power. He stores up wrath, and yet He is slow to anger. And so you see God's power, as great as it is to punish us, He also shows power in how patient He is to spare us. So when you start to think about patience, of course you don't want to confuse patience with God's weakness, Him being tolerant, Him being indifferent, whatever other synonym you'd like to throw out there. When we say slow to anger, you don't want to think of God as incapable of anger, that of course would not be the right way to think about it. But what God's patience does show is actually His great power. I don't know if you would have said that before, right? God's patience shows His power. So what way is that true? Why would patience show God's power? Here's why. It is part of God's dominion over Himself, where He can regulate, He can rule over Himself, rule over His affections, according to the holiness of His will. It really shows just how powerful God is that He can be patient. If you're not convinced, just think of yourself, right? Think of us, right? When we cannot control ourselves, we can't moderate and rule ourselves, what do we do? We, out of a lack of power, here comes all the anger, right? We start it up and we can only start it up for 30 seconds, here you go, here's all my anger, right? So we have impotent impatience, God has powerful patience. We see how unlike we are to Him in that area. And Charnock went this far. I don't know if you would have said this, God's slowness to anger is actually more profound than His power to create the world. I mean, just think of that. God created all things of nothing by the word of His power. He sustains all things by the word of His power. You are being sustained right now by the word of His power. And Charnock says even more powerful than that is that God can be slow to anger, that God does not pour forth all of His wrath immediately, shows just how powerful God is and God's perfection over Himself. Romans 9 puts this very clearly, you're probably familiar with this passage, what if God desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power and then look what comes next, He has endured with much patience vessels of wrath. That word power, dunitas, is where we get our word among many other English words, dynamite. That's how much power God has made known by enduring with patience vessels of wrath that are prepared for destruction. Pretty awesome. You can even see it in the Greek word, here's the Greek word that appears very often in the New Testament, macrosummia. It's just a combination of two words. You know the word macro, something's macro, it's big, it's long, it's large. Macrosummia is a word that would mean like anger or violence or even passion, so it's saying God is long in His anger, He's long in His vengeance, takes a long time to get God going, takes a long time to get Him angry, He's very, very patient. John put it this way, patience is simply the silence of His justice, God's patience is the silence of His justice. Here's why you could say His power is greater in patience than in creating the world. It's a wonder that God could crush all, right? God has every right and authority to immediately, right now, destroy all things. But it's a greater wonder that when He's provoked by everyone, that God doesn't at the very first provocation crush all. It speaks to just how forbearing God is with us. So you can see why patience very much glorifies God. If God punished immediately, we would see His holiness and His justice, we would see those things clearly, right, if God just immediately punished everyone. But what you wouldn't see is His power over Himself and what would be overshadowed is God's great patience. All right, let's ask the question, who is the object? Who gets to receive God's patience? Who are the recipients of God's patience? And Charlock says the lower creatures, and by lower creatures it probably means angels, demons, the devil. These lower creatures don't injure God and therefore they are not the objects of God's patience. So it's a pretty awesome thing to think about. The angels, the demons, fallen angels, don't get any of God's patience. Here's this verse from Jude, the angels, these are speaking of fallen angels, they didn't stay with their realm, right, they rebelled against God, they left their proper dwelling and God is keeping them, so He's storing up judgment for them, He's keeping them in eternal change under gloomy darkness until the day of judgment. The point being that these fallen angels who have wrath stored up for them never are the words patience, forbearance, long-suffering directed towards fallen angels, towards Satan, towards the enemies of God. It's never directed towards these lower creatures. They don't...they're not the recipients of God's patience. Conversely though, we are. So Pam, to your point, right? God has patience even towards entire nations. In times past, God suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. God would show patience to...we just mentioned Assyria, for instance, the enemies of God. Here's a sobering thought, even our hardships, even our sufferings, even our afflictions are drenched with God's patience towards us. There's patience in every cross, that would just be a word for affliction, a man meets with the world. Because though it'd be punishment, it's actually less than is merited by an unrighteous rebel. So even the worst hardship that befalls someone, even that in this life is soaked with God's patience because it is so much less than that person would deserve or that person would merit. You see this in disasters that occur. You remember this? We were speaking of that tower that falls, it kills a lot of people. People are asking about it. And Jesus says, do you think that they were worse offenders than everyone who lived in Jerusalem? I tell you, unless you repent, you all will likewise perish. So even natural disasters, so-called natural disasters that occur, these are examples of God being patient, of God forestalling His judgment upon unrighteous rebels such as us. Okay, let's consider, this is a detour, this is admittedly a detour, let's think through two problems of God's patience that I'm going to try and tease into other parts of the class. All right, first question. How can God be both patient and holy? Are those two in conflict with one another? One of the goals of this class has been, we're trying to avoid thinking of the attributes of God competing with one another. We're trying to avoid thinking, well, if God is patient, He must happen to be set aside His holiness. And if God wants to be, you know, show off His justice, He's got to trade off some of His patience. And there's kind of this seesaw going on within God's being. That's what we're trying to avoid thinking of. But it's still a hard problem, right? I mean, how is God both patient and just, both patient and holy? Yeah, right, exactly, right? God is holy and we need to always keep this in mind, right? God is always opposed to sin, right? God cannot not be displeased with sin. So we don't want to think of patience as God, you know, kind of relaxing some of His holiness. So we want to affirm the first part, no, He's holy, He's always opposed to sin, yet God has full liberty, or we just said full power, over Himself to restrain the effects of His anger for a season as He sees fit according to His holy will, right? So we don't want to think of God's patience to the diminishment of God's holiness or any other attribute for that matter. All right, problem number two, if patience means that God suffers, does God suffer? Can God suffer? Who remembers, for 50 bonus points, who remembers the attributes of God that would say, no, God does not, cannot suffer? Let's... Simplicity. Yeah, simplicity. You guys... I don't know who taught that course, but man, we're going to have to get a different teacher who ever taught that one. I taught that course. Yeah, God's simplicity. God is simple. Remember, God is simple means that God is without a body, parts, or passions. God has no body, parts, or passions. God has no body, parts, or passions. So we covered God is spirit, right? God is immaterial. God obviously has no body parts, right? And we don't add things together to get God. And the last one was that God has no passions. Man cannot make God suffer, right? Man cannot inflict harm on God. God is simple. And yet, patience is often defied. Even the King James has that great, great verse, right? That God suffers the nations to walk in their way. So does patience mean that God is suffering? God has like some kind of internal suffering going on. We'd say, no, God is simple. God has no body, parts, or passions. Chalmers puts it this way. As patience signifies suffering, it is not in God. It's not in God's being, right? God cannot suffer in his being. The divine nature is impassable, just a big word meaning God cannot suffer. God can't be touched by the violence of men. So you don't want to think of patience as God internally suffering. God suffers no grief by men's wronging him, but he retains his arm from punishing him according to their merits. So tie that back to that doctrine of simplicity. And here's a good analogy. I think I actually used the analogy of fire when I taught on God's simplicity. I think fire is another good way to think of it. All right, if justice is natural to God, and it is, right? We'd all confess that God is just, he's a perfection of God. That is one of God's attributes. God is just, right? And he cannot but punish sin. Because God is just, he has to punish sin. But he's not necessitated to consume sinners as the fire with the stubble, right? If you, you know, kids, you get a wad of paper, you throw it into the fire, what does the fire do? Burn it. Have you ever seen a fire go, you know what, I don't, I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to exercise some control over myself, my fireness. I'm going to not burn this piece of paper. Have you ever seen a fire do that? Never, right? Because a fire, right, a fire does not have God's perfection, right? So that's why Taronic says God is free, he's a free agent, he can choose and does choose his own time for the distribution of that punishment which his nature leads him to. So we know God is an all-consuming fire. We want to pair that truth, God is an all-consuming fire, he's just, he cannot not be displeased with sin, and we pair that with this awesome power he has over himself to be patient, to show off his patience and his long-suffering towards sinners. That leads us to a good question. Why would God show patience? Why does God do it? There's a lot of reasons, we've already covered the obvious one, but if God only executed justice, if that's all God did, then we don't get to see this side of God, as it were. There are no sides to God, but we don't get to see this part of God that is his patience. We don't get to see how glorious he is in his patience. You also see it too in how wise he is. He would not be, he would be an incompetent governor of a sinful world. He would not be able to rule over a sinful world. Next one, you see how patience helps the creation mandate, right? If Adam and Eve sin, boom, here we go, here's justice, here's the consumption of the world, here I am, I'm going to destroy you, which I have the right and the authority to do. Yeah, this is a good way to put it. God would always be creating, tearing down. Create a world, destroy the world. Create a world, destroy the world, over and over and over again, and man is not going to be fruitful and multiply if God is not long-suffering with us. Also in patience, by showing patience, God shows he is appeasable. He's able to be pleased. He does this daily, right? Just natural revelation that the sun rose today, that God gave us rain today to the just and to the unjust, that God gives good gifts to the just and to the unjust. He's always showing off, hey, I am an appeasable God. There is a way to be reconciled to me. I am not, I am the God of wrath, but not only wrath. I can be appeased, and God does that all the time, daily, all day, all day, every day. Of course, God's patience is glorified in Christ, right? He's satisfied divine justice in Christ, and his patience, rather than interfering with the rights of his justice, it actually promotes it, it actually increases it. You certainly want to say this is the case, that God is patient for the sake of his bride. Why is that so? Why does God's patience help God's bride? Paul, you can let me know if this is still the case, actually. In English common law, there was a law that if a woman pregnant with child is indicted and to be executed, that she would be reprieved of that sentence until she gives birth to the child. Is that still the case, Paul, in American law? It certainly, I don't know if you're pregnant, I've seen a lot of times where a judge will delay sentencing for a term of imprisonment, if any, if a woman is pregnant. Okay, yeah, so you just, I mean, perfect words, right? Delay sentencing for the sake of this child, right? And of course, by analogy, like this is what God is doing for the sake of his bride, right? You see this in many, many, I mean, countless instances, this is the easy one, the wheat and the tares, Jesus says, no, let them both go together so that my child, who is the church, so to speak, in this analogy, so that my kingdom can grow, can advance, I will delay my sentence so that I can fill up the world with my people, with my elect. So certainly God exercises patience for the sake of his bride. There's even a sense in which you could say that God is patient toward the unelect, toward the unelect. And this is just a fascinating thing to go into, right? How did Christ's death, what benefits, did any benefits accrue from Christ's death for the sake of the non-Christian? Here's Charnock's comment, regarding the fruits of God's patience, Christ is said to buy, now of course he doesn't mean salvifically, buy the wickedest apostates from him. He has in mind, you might remember that verse from 2 Peter, you've got these false teachers who are bringing in destructive heresies, and the text reads, they deny the Lord that bought them. They bring upon themselves swift and just destruction, their damnation is not slow. And here's the comment, Christ purchased, so this is saying Christ's work on the cross purchased, not their salvation, but just simply the continuance of their lives, the delay of their execution, and that offers of grace might be made to them. So you can already see how God's patience, we'll talk about this later, should queue up evangelism for sure. That's an interesting thing to think about, how the death of Christ even has a benefit, you could say, for the un-elect. All right, let's roll through just some simple examples of God's patience. Who would be the first recipient? Our first parents, yeah, our first parents, right? First attribute going to our first parents, right? Enemy of sin, God has all authority to destroy them, yet what is more pronounced than judgment in the garden is God's patience. I don't know if you guys have caught this, you might remember that when R.C. Spoles asked about this, like someone asked him some question like, I don't get it, like Adam and Eve sinned and God was so, you know, so mean to them, like said you're going to die and he kicked them out of the garden, and Spoles, this is Spoles, like what's wrong with you people? Like do you not see how patient God was with them? He could have, should have, would have destroyed them immediately, and yet God says, okay, like here's the promise of the gospel. You sinned, here's the promise of the gospel. You know, from your seed will come the snake crusher, he will destroy, he will destroy the one who tricked you and who deceived you, and you're allowed to live, you're allowed to bear children, you're allowed to be fruitful and multiply, you're allowed to enjoy many good gifts. It's amazing patience when you think about it. God shows great patience to the Gentiles. So here's this whole rap sheet of the Gentile sin, I won't read all of it, you know, envy, murder, strife, so on and so forth, all the things that we are outside of Christ. And then right after that comes this, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. Like a very interesting phrase, right? That man's conscience does not malfunction. Like man is doing these things and he knows in his conscience, I deserve death. I'm a child of Adam, I'm a daughter of Eve, I've sinned, I deserve to die. I deserve punishment, yet God is being patient with me, right? God is so constituted man that man knows, man, I cannot believe just how patient God is being with me. Again, this should queue up our evangelism, right? Man is...man deep down is already thinking this way, right? Though man suppresses the truth and unrighteousness, his conscience does not err. He's made in God's image. He knows that he's spurning God's patience towards him. Israel, oh man, how many examples do you have of God being patient with Israel, right? The Stiphnic people, grieving them for 40 years, right, provoking them over and over and over and over again, and God says, O Ephraim, how can I give you up, right? He's just incredibly patient with his people. And then most of all, us, right? You, you and I. This is Charonic's comment. Just think of what a sobering thought this is. Today, every day, you have enough sin to make you stand amazed at divine patience, right? That's just today. You know, just think of yourself today and you should be amazed at just how patient God is towards us. All right, even in God's warnings, right, even in God's dreadful, judgmental, in the good sense of the word, warnings, God speaks so often, nearly every time, before he strikes. One example, among many, decades leading up to the flood, right, here are your warnings. Here is my patience towards you. Here is what is coming. Flee from wrath to come, especially when you consider just how much slapping in the face there is, right? God goes to Pharaoh 10 times, here you go, 10 patient examples, 10 chances, who is the Lord that I should obey him, you know, who is this God that I would listen to him and God is so patient with Pharaoh. And again, you see, for the sake of his church, for the sake of his people. Of course, you see that even more so today, right now, right? God warns today through the preaching of his word, through all evangelical obedience. God warns the hour is coming. God warns man today. As much as he warned of the flood, even more so, he warns today the hour is coming of judgment and that is an example of God being incredibly patient towards sinners. Patience also very much just shows off who God is, right? It shows his disposition. Unlike the white witch who is very eager, I can't wait for a chance to punish, you see this from Lamentations, God does not afflict man from his heart, right? God is not eager to want to punish and to show forth a kind of merciless retribution. Even this, when God punishes, it is with regret. You might remember, you know, Sodom, Adam and God have that dialogue and the way God approaches Abraham, I say Adam, Abraham, the way God approaches Abraham, it's this, hey, just, I'll take, I'll take whatever it is, are there 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, it's just any righteous person, like I am looking for chances to be as merciful and as good as I can. He bears himself a witness, right? By his patience. I already covered this, but just by giving us rain today, fruitful seasons, satisfying our hearts with food and gladness, and this is referring to pagan nations, God is showing off himself and his benevolence towards mankind. So that raises the question, right? Can we abuse God's patience? Can we abuse God's patience? To ask the question is to answer it, yeah, of course we can, right? Think of a dam, kids, if you've seen a dam before, you can imagine that dam filling up with water, it fills up with water, it fills up with water more, and then at some point, that dam is going to burst and it's going to give way. Now with God, that's never an uncontrollable burst, right? It's always a controlled, deliberate, according to his holy will, burst, but again, slow to anger doesn't mean incapable of anger, right? And there will be swift execution of God's anger. So we want to think of God as long-suffering, but not infinitely suffering. And so there's a number of ways we can abuse God's patience, I have three, I'm sure there's more. One would just be we misinterpret it, oh, God's patience must mean he's careless, it must mean he's indifferent. It must mean he's not so holy after all, maybe he's not as holy as I thought he was. No, that'd be a gross misinterpretation. Of course, presumption, right? Well, God, since there's no punishment, I can probably just continue on in my sin and nothing's going to happen. And similar to that would be repeating, right? Returning like the dog to his vomit, returning to sin once God alleviates it. And you see that all the time, right, in the Old Testament. You see that with Pharaoh, right? Here comes the punishment, here comes the threat, I repent, oh, there's kind of a relaxation of judgment, okay, I'm going to go back to the sin, right? These are gross abuses of God's patience. So instead, we want to receive God's patience, right, we want to receive it. And every act of forbearance obligates us, increases us in our duty to make good on God's patience. So let's think through uses of the Christian life. What can we do with God's patience? Obviously, perhaps the most obvious one is that God's patience should spark repentance in us. The very opposite of presumption, the very opposite of continuing in it, the proper and immediate end of long-suffering is it leads us to repentance. God is preparing a way, showing us His mercy so that we might repent. This is a great line, I love the way Toronto put this, it's a more endearing argument than His goodness. So if Daniel was here, but Daniel's not, I'd say this attribute is better than the attribute he presented. It's more endearing than even God's goodness to us, that God would show us patience. Romans 9, the end of it, so we saw this verse earlier, God endures with much patience, vessels of wrath, why? In order to make known the riches of His glory for us, vessels of mercy, that is us, we have received mercy upon mercy, which God prepared for glory, even us whom He has called. And so it ought to encourage, always encourage us to always be repenting. Another great use is it should lead us to trust in His promises, trust in His promises. Again, think of the garden, God was quicker, He was more eager to make a promise than He was to punish. Now He did punish, right, He did pronounce the sentence of death, but John says He was quicker to make a promise of redemption after man's apostasy than He was to execute the law, right? So that ought to shape our mind, our hearts to look at God and go, man, God's disposition towards me, here's a promise, trust my promise. And we ought to count that as salvation, right? The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise. Now obviously from our vantage point it seems slow, right, before us is that with God a day is as a thousand years, right? So from our vantage point it seems slow, but it's not, right? God is slow to anger, but He's fast to fulfill His promises. And so we ought to count God's patience as our very salvation. All right, next one, this should be very obvious, would be our evangelism that I hinted at multiple times. God is purposely, deliberately forestalling judgment that He has all right, all authority to execute right now, in fact, in the garden, right, He has all right and authority to execute right there. He's purposely forestalling it so that He fills up heaven with an innumerable number of people. And the means to do that is our evangelism. So patience is like, hey, here's the opportunity to go and to evangelize. Even in our infirmities, right, if God was not patient, I mean, you know, if someone's impatient, right, and you start, hey, here are my problems, and it's like, all right, you know, I don't have time for these problems, right? God's patience because He is so patient, He can bear with all of our weaknesses, our infirmities, all of our ailments. And so we ought to meditate on God's patience. It's a good quote from Charnock, what is the devil trying to do? He's trying to make us forget that God is like this, right? He wants us to think of God as impatient. You think of Saul making that sacrifice, I don't have time to wait for the priest to make a sacrifice. I got to do it right now. And this is the devil's aim, right? Get us to be hasty, get us to be anxious, get us to worry, forgetting the patience of our God. So very obviously with that, if God is patient, and it, of course, follows, be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect, we must imitate God, we must put on patience. As God is slow to anger, we must be slow to anger, right? We should, in a rainy day, you'd want to think of like wet wood. How hard is it to wet, or to light on fire, wet wood? Kids, have you ever tried to light wet wood? Do it today as a Great Lord's Day activity. Go home and try and set on fire some wet wood, tell your parents, pastor said you could do that. And you'll see how hard it is, right? And that's what you want to be, you want to be like wet wood, ah, it takes me a lot to get me going. It takes a lot to get me angry. Right? We want to be unhurried, slow to criticize and to punish others. How do we punish others? Well, we punish others most often in the Christian life with our words. That's how we bite and how we devour one another. So patience towards one another, right? Don't grumble against one another, don't bite, don't devour one another, don't gossip one another. We should be very long-suffering when we see the faults in others. In our waiting, in our waiting, this is just simply, you know, be patient as we wait for the coming of the Lord. So this is kind of the ultimate sense in the way that we should be patient. We're waiting for the coming of our Lord. Peter's very direct. I'm sorry, James is very direct there, pretty obvious. Patience in parenting, right? It's often said, I thought it was patience and then I had children, you know, like parenting challenges patience. But you see the way Hebrews talks about it, this is in reference to our discipline, right? We're trying to shape our children out of their folly, into maturity. The analogy being used is that of a harvest, peaceful fruit of righteousness. Of course you can't plant a seed and walk out the next day and expect a harvest. This is playing the long game. So certainly patience in parenting. Also in evangelism, so earlier I made the argument God is being patient so that we can evangelize. I would also say in the actual just act of evangelism, right, that you want to be patient, that sometimes you might have the expectation, I shared the gospel, now it's time for you to respond, you know, immediately. Need the answer right now. And you know, we're familiar with this verse, right? Again, these are agricultural metaphors that Paul's using. I planted, someone else comes along and water, again everything that you know of a harvest is that it is a time-intensive, time-labor to bring about a harvest when it comes to our evangelism. So we need to be very patient in our evangelism. All right, in a little early, questions, thoughts, comments on God's patience, the first attribute. The idea of imitating, thank you, imitating God's patience as parents in particular, in the verse that you put up from, I think, yeah, I'll go back to it, yeah, about discipline, Hebrews, yeah, thanks. So how do we contrast discipline, God disciplines those who he loves, but he does so patiently. And so where's that, can you talk about that balance point, both as a parent and then kind of as the Lord's kind of perfect example of giving us the discipline that we need to be corrected without lashing out in anger? Yeah, let me make sure I understand your question. So the first part of your question, you're talking about how do you balance discipline, discipline our children as a parent, with what? Well, so God's patience doesn't extend to the point of being permissive of sin. Yeah, right. So, is there a logic to where that line is, like, how does God decide where, you know, he's going to discipline us without being impatient? Sorry, this is a pretty bad question. No, no, you're fine, it's a good question, it's a good question, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, so, I mean, one thing I say is this, right, when you're disciplining children, you know, like, one immediate obvious application is that you're never, if you're ever disciplining out of anger, you already know, like, oh, I'm off here, like, this is not the right disposition that I should be, so if there's any part of discipline that's, you know, ventilating anger, you know, exacting your anger, fumigating your anger, you know, and we all kind of know what those signs are, right, like, we're off. We're completely off at that point, like, it should be a manifestation of complete self-control, and remember to think of patience as an aspect of goodness, and that's very much what discipline is, right, what the father who doesn't discipline his child does not love his child, conversely, the father who disciplines his child loves his child, so discipline in that regard is to say, here's my benevolence, though it doesn't seem like it, which is what Hebrew says, here's my benevolence towards you, in complete self-control and out of love for you, I'm going to chastise you, and you can see how opposite that would be to any kind of ventilation of, I'm irritated in the moment, and now I'm taking my irritation out on you, is that, is that, okay. Absolutely, yeah, no, that's what I was hoping that would come across, yeah, because there's a difference, right, between, you know, I'm going to, let's just use spanking as an example, I'm spanking you because I'm angry, right, the same exact action could be an act of love, right, or an act of retribution, right, but there's a difference that can be felt, it's hard, I think, to put it into words, but I think you explained it really well, yeah, yeah, no, it's a great, great, right, yeah, because our discipline is not, right, we're not, yeah, it's not retributive in that sense, right, it's discipline, it's formative, corrective, benevolence, you know, though, of course, in the moment, it doesn't feel like it, but it is. With the intention of the person's good, right, and sort of discipleship, yeah, a harvest of righteousness, yeah, which, again, takes, and that's the patience of it, right, and as kids know, like, I disciplined you one time, problem solved, yeah, like, we're moving on, like, we all know, this is going to be a work in progress, right, a work in progress. And the intent is not to punish you, the intent is to bring you to the point that you need to be, so the number of times it's going to take is dependent on the progress that you make. Yeah, right, right. All right. Yeah, very good. Good question, good question. Anyone else? Thoughts, comments, questions on God's patience? Mark, you compared patience, you know, against His holiness, even though we're not supposed to compare them, right, made me think of His mercy. Yeah. You would think that, can He be holy and mercy at the same time, right, you know, they appear as in conflict, but they're not, right, you know, why does He not punish people, why does Yeah, no, good thought, yeah, I think, I think that is the, that's the hard thing for us to conceptualize, is you think of God, we don't want to think of God's patience as He's setting aside His holiness, He must, there's this kind of trade-off, I'm going to give up some of my holiness so that I can be patient, then I'm going to take away some patience so that I can be holy, right, you don't want to think of it that way at all, though in appearance it might seem like their intention, they're not, right, His holy justice is holy justice, His patience is holy patience. You say that our reluctance to believe this would come from what we talked about at the beginning of the Attributes series is us wanting to make God in our image because we know how impatient we are, we know, you know, maybe our examples growing up of impatience, and so we, you know, habitually want to see God that way. Yeah, that's a good, yeah, that's a good question, I mean, I think a number of things, one, I mean, one, like, think about, like, when you're wrong, right, and you react in anger, in that moment you're like, hey, I'm, like, I'm fully justified, this is the right, I'm giving you the right reaction, and it's only, it's only until after, like, through the Spirit's work you come down off that and you're like, oh, yeah, that was not the right reaction. Secondly, I think the average person, I even think maybe the average Christian doesn't really believe, at least not fully, oh, my one sin, my one sin today is wholly deserving of eternal punishment, like, that's a sobering thought, you know, like, my white lie completely deserves eternal punishment. I think the average person is like, no, that's, that's, you know, that's too heavy handed, that's too much, no way, no way that's, you know, no way is that just because we don't see God, we don't see God rightly, to your point, like, we work bottom up instead of top down. Yeah. So, is it correct to say it's not just our one sin, but even our one thought? Yeah, thought, word, deed, thought, word, deed, yeah, so I just used, I just used an action. That's even greater. Yeah, right, right. Because, you know, I'll hear other Christians in some venues, you know, they'll be really focused on the action. And I'm like, well, no, it's really just even your thought. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Thought, motivation. Right. Yeah. So, when you think of that, again, in just one day, we've merited eternal punishment, you start to see, ah, God's so patient. Could you just, I guess, explain one more time the difference between, the difference between God's action and, ah, patience? Oh, yeah. So, that would, yeah. Okay, so, um, that went back to a class, you might not have been in that class, because it was on God's simplicity, which just means that God has no passions, which is, and let me just say, this is a hard concept, so don't, if this goes over your head, don't, don't think twice about it. But, it's just saying that we, man, doesn't cause God to have passions, ah, in himself. We don't act upon God, where we moved God from a state of something he was, to a state of something that he, he now is. He's, you know, perfect, unchanging, immutable, so it's not like we, when we sin, we're causing something internal in God that wasn't there in his perfect divine essence. Because in God's perfect divine essence, he can't increase, otherwise he'd be more perfect. He doesn't decrease, otherwise he'd be less than perfect. He just simply, purely is. And that's what that word, like passions, is kind of trying to get at, it's just sort of saying that in the essence of God, he's, he's pure act, he, he simply is without changing. And we're not causing God, we're not moving God into a state that he wasn't always in eternally. Does that make a little sense? I mean, it's a hard, it's, that's a, that's a good question, and it's a, that's a hard concept, but yeah, we can talk more on that if you need to. All right, any other questions, comments, thoughts? All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you, we thank you, Lord, even for the simple truth that we confess today, that you are the God who is patient towards us, and who we are as your creatures, the recipients of your goodness, and as such, we are sinners, that we've rebelled against you, and yet in your great patience, your long-suffering, you have not only forced all judgment upon us, but you have saved us, you've justified us, you've adopted us, glorified us, all through the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Father, as we consider your patience, that we'd only marvel more and more at who you are, the God who is long-suffering, the God who is slow to anger. We pray that we would imitate you, and we confess we are often quick to be angry, and we pray instead, help us to put that to death, and to put on the slowness to anger of what it is to be like you, to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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