The Fruit of the Spirit: Patience - Audio
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We're continuing our series, "Delicious," the fruit of the Spirit today. We're going to be talking about patience. My father, my dear departed father, loved a saying. He said, "What did he say, patience? Have it if you--patience is a virtue. Have it if you can. Sell them found in women. Never found in men." And he used that to excuse himself from being nice to waitresses. And it got worse as he got older. I was like, "Man, I really feel like we're all supposed to be patient." That's one thing about the fruit of the Spirit. It's a singular. It's not the fruits of the Spirit's fruit. One fruit of the Spirit. Indicating that all of these things, love, joy, peace, patience, kind of, goodness, faithless, gentle, self-control, we're supposed to have all of them. And for some of us, some of them are easier than others. In fact, probably for all of us, some of them are easier than others. But we're supposed to be developing all of them as a gift from the Holy Spirit to us. And so, we're supposed to be patient, too. First, we'll look at our text. We're starting out in Galatians 5. It says, "Not patience." It says, "The fruit of the Spirit is loved, joy, peace, forbearance." This is the new international version. Kindness, goodness, faithless, gentle, and self-control. I understand, and we'll talk about why they say forbearance in the new international version. But it's not a great translation because normal English speakers never use the word forbearance. And so, we very often don't know what that means. But I understand why they're doing it. But to understand biblical patience, biblical forbearance, we need to see it in context. And so, we're going to investigate kind of a representative text. This is from 1 Timothy where Paul is teaching a young pastor, Timothy, how to be a good pastor. And he's explaining his own experience. And his own experience is going to have, it's going to rest on biblical or divine patience. He says, "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, Messiah Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength. He considered me trustworthy, appointing me to His service. Even though, listen to this, I was a blasphemer that we don't use that word a lot. But it's someone who denigrates who God is. And in the ancient world, that was like capital offense. So it's something very, very offensive to God. So I was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, a violent man. We know that before Saul became Paul, he looked on approvingly as the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death. Paul was like, "Yeah, get him!" It's so mercy, Paul says, "Because I acted out of ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith, the faithfulness probably. The faithfulness and love that are in Messiah Jesus." He goes on to say this, "Here is a trustworthy saying. This is probably a poem or a hymn that the Christians of the ancient world were kind of circulating amongst themselves."
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Biblical patience: extreme restraint while waiting for change.