Sermon Transcript
I love that family and love that ministry. I know many of you do too as well. Now normally, this would be the point in the service where we would dismiss our elementary children to go to Sunday school. Before they go, though, I have a video clip that ties into our sermon series that we’ve been in, in the fruit of the Spirit. We’ve been talking about the ways that God grows us, and today we’re focusing on patience.
Self-control. And I had a video clip, and I thought the kids would be very disappointed if they were not also in here, because it’s from the movie Zootopia that I just love. So we’re gonna show the clip, and then we’ll dismiss the kids. But patience and self-control. Watch the clip.
Actually, I just remembered I have a pal at the DMV. Flash is the fastest guy in there. You need something done, he’s on it. I hope so. We are really fighting the clock, and every minute counts.
Wait, they’re all sloths?
You said this was going to be quick. Are you saying that because he’s a sloth he can’t be fast? I thought in Zootopia anyone could be anything. Flash, Flash, 100-yard dash. Buddy, it’s nice to see you.
Nice to see you too. Hey Flash, I’d love you to meet my friend. Uh, darling, I’ve forgotten your name. Hmm. Officer Judy Haff, CPD.
How are you? I am doing just fine, as well as I can be. What— hang in there— can I do? Well, I was hoping you could run a plate for you. Well, I was hoping you could today.
Well, I was hoping you could run a plate for us. We are in a really big hurry. Sure. What’s the plate? 29T— Number.
29THD03.
2, 9. THD03.
T. HD03. H. D03.
D. Mm-hmm. 03.
0. 3.
Hey, Flash, wanna hear a joke? No! Sure. Okay. What do you call a 3-humped camel?
I don’t know. What do you call a— 3-humped camel. 3-humped camel pregnant.
Ah, ah, ah. Haha, yes, very funny, very funny. Can we please just focus on the text? Hey, wait, wait, wait, Priscilla. Oh no.
Yes? Flash. What? Do. No!
You call. A 3-humped camel pregnant! Okay, great, we got it! Please. Humped.
Here. Yes, yeah, yeah. Here. You. Thank you.
298G03. Go. It’s registered to Tundratown Limo Service! A limo took Otterton, and the limo’s in Tundratown! It’s in Tundratown!
Way to hustle, bud. I love you. I owe you. Hurry, we’ve got to beat the rush hour in. It’s night?
Awesome.
Now at this time, I’d like to, uh, ask our elementary students going to Sunday school to join Miss Alba in the back, and she will lead you, uh, to our kids building for Sunday school. If you are new here and you don’t know where these children are going, You are welcome to follow them and see where our children’s building is, and to go follow Miss Alba and to get to know her. But this is for elementary age kids. We’re so glad that they could join us for worship, and they’re going to follow her. But you are also welcome to follow if you want to know more about Kids Sunday School.
Patience and self-control. If you’ve ever been at the DMV, you know what that’s all about. There are plenty of other examples that we could have here, but we are in a series, as I mentioned, on The fruit of God’s Spirit. And we get this title and this concept from Galatians 5:22-23. I hope that you’ve been tracking along with us.
The fruit of God’s Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. And we have been talking the last 3 weeks about how God’s Spirit produces these things within us. This is the natural result of— for any of us who follow Jesus, what we would naturally expect God to produce within us. And sometimes he has to prune us and refine us so that we can produce these things more in our lives.
But Pastor Dan covered love one week, and then we talked about joy, and last week was peace. But today we’re going to combine patience and self-control, and I just have a couple quick reminders about this. First of all, the fruit of God’s Spirit in Galatians 5 is singular. It’s not the fruits of God’s Spirit. I know that it lists 9 different qualities, but they are all singular in that they all are produced from God’s Spirit.
And the Greek word that is used there for fruit is actually a singular word. And I think that’s teaching us that these are not individual fruits, that they are interdependent upon one another, that meaning they all work together. You’re likely, if you’re going to grow in one, you’re going to grow in multiple areas, or you’re not going to grow in patience or self-control without also growing in some other areas. Also, as a reminder, this fruit is not artificial fruit like you find in the hotel lobby. This is very real fruit.
It’s true evidence of Christian discipleship when God produces these things within us. I don’t mean just willpower love, joy, peace, patience. I’m talking about Spirit-produced, supernatural, God-transforming your heart. Inside out, that’s not artificial. That is evidence of our following Jesus.
And so that’s why this is so important. Jesus said, you will know my followers, or you will know them by their fruits. And so we need these fruit to be evident in our life. Now I would argue that if there were a popularity contest on the fruit of the Spirit, patience and self-control aren’t going to finish very high. They’re too difficult.
Give me love, for sure. I want love. I want joy. I want peace. Like, I want all of those things, but I don’t really— patience and self-control, too, too difficult.
But God still wants us to grow in these areas, and I’m going to make you a promise that because we are talking about them today, that at some point in your life this week, if not already today, you are going to encounter something that will test your patience or your self-control. I guarantee it. I’ve experienced it this past week, and I’ve forgotten that I’ve been preaching about this, but when my patience has been tested, I find myself getting frustrated, and then, okay, God, I see what You’re doing here. This is totally what He does. This is the lab, a sort of assignment that God gives us when He puts something before us in the form of, hey, I want to grow these things in you.
You will be tested in these areas. So we’re going to look at a few Scripture passages today that are going to show us hopefully 3 lessons or 3 things today. The first is going to show us not only why impatience and not having self-control are such big problems for us, but actually that there is a common problem that is underneath those problems. And so we’re going to not only identify the problems, but the problems underneath at the root of both of these problems. Then second, we’re going to look at an extremely common human response to these problems.
And it can work in the short term, just not long term. It’s an inadequate response. And then third, we’re going to look at how we can actually change, become more patient, more self-controlled. So let’s talk about patience here for a moment. Patience is a real problem for us, is it not?
Because things just take longer than what we want them to. On top of that, we actually live, I think, in such a way that mitigates against us growing in patience. How many of us, if we’re looking up something on our phone and it’s beaming back and forth, to satellites in the sky. 1 second, 2 seconds. I don’t have time for this.
I don’t have 3 seconds to wait for the answer to this question. Or if you text someone and then you know that they’ve received it because you see the little ghost bubbles there, and so I’ve texted, it’s now been 10 seconds, they haven’t responded back. Why is this taking so long? I don’t have time for this. The very speed of our lives and the speed of technology mitigates against patience.
One of my favorite comedians, Brian Regan, has a thing where he talks about Pop-Tarts. It’s probably been a while since some of you have had a Pop-Tart. Did you know that on the box of a Pop-Tart, the next time you’re in a store, you look at it, there are microwave instructions? And that the microwave instructions for Pop-Tarts say 3 seconds. And Brian Regan is talking about if you are so busy that you don’t have time to put it in the toaster and you need that 3 seconds, you might want to clear up your schedule a little bit.
Might need some more margin in your life. We are actually very impatient people, incredibly impatient. And in a sense, our economy actually encourages impatience. If you have a device of some kind, it takes 5 seconds for you to do something that another device can do for you in 2 seconds, the company that did it in 5 seconds is eventually going to go out of business. If you order something from one company and they can deliver it to you in 1 week, Hello?
And then the other company can send out the van, and on Sunday night he’s running around in your neighborhood and throwing boxes out there because he delivered it to you on the same day. That first company is going to be in real trouble. Let’s look for a moment at what James chapter 5 has to say about patience. It says in verse 7, James 5, be patient then, brothers and sisters. Until the Lord’s coming.
Look at the farmer. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too be patient. Stand firm because the Lord’s coming is near, as we sang about earlier. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged.
The judge is standing at the door. Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, Take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered like they did. And you have also heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about for him. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
The first part of that section there, verses 7 through 9, is dealing with a particular kind of patience— patience with people. Patience with people. James uses the illustration of a farmer. Why? Because farmers plant and they don’t expect a harvest right away.
They also can’t reap too soon, so it’s an example of patience. But an example of the opposite of patience is in verse 9: grumbling. Grumbling is a lack of patience. What’s grumbling? When people are frustrating or they’re disappointing to you, you tend to grumble.
Grumbling can, of course, be outward But in many cases, we just do it inwardly, and we hold it in, and we’re just stewing. Grumbling is responding to people who disappoint you or who frustrate you by lashing out or by holding resentment within you or negativity or by holding a grudge against them. People are always going to behave in ways that, though not necessarily directed against you personally, they still affect us, and they irritate us, and they disappoint us. It might be the driver that’s in front of you who is driving too slowly. It might be the friend who is always running late and therefore making you late.
It may be the neighbor who is being inconsiderate. Our usual knee-jerk response to these people is to do what? It’s to grumble, whether outwardly or inwardly. Now, why is that a failure of patience? The specific word that James uses there for patience in verses 8 and 9 is a word that means long-suffering.
Long-suffering. That aspect of patience is the ability to endure with people, and in some cases, to even suffer a long time under intentional mistreatment from others without growing resentful or bitter. How can you possibly do that without grumbling? Through long-suffering. One reason why grumbling is a problem is because it means you’re not being long-suffering.
It’s a sign you’re giving up on that person or judging that person. You’re pitting yourself against that person. You’re writing them off. You’re not sticking with them. So grumbling against people outwardly or inwardly is a serious lack of Christlike patience and love.
So one aspect of patience there in James, patience with difficult and disappointing people, but then the second paragraph also introduces patience with circumstances. Patience with circumstances. Job is given as one of the examples here. Job’s problem was not so much how he was being treated by other people. His problem was really more how he was being treated by life, right, and by circumstances.
There was a disaster that wiped out all of his wealth, and then another disaster that took away his family, and then another disaster that took away his health. Job, we are told, demonstrated great patience in the face of that. And the word that is used there in James to describe Job’s patience is a different word that has to do with perseverance. So, we have longsuffering, and we have perseverance. Perseverance there in James is actually a Greek word that means to hyper-stand in place, to hyper-stand.
You can picture what that might look like. A person is in the throes of battle, this intense warfare, and one thing after another is being lobbed at this person again and again, but the person stands firm and doesn’t give an inch, doesn’t even flinch. That’s the idea behind perseverance here, that kind of patience in circumstances, to hyper-stand. So one aspect of patience, patience with difficult people. Another aspect, patience with difficult circumstances.
And so the result, or the fruit of God’s Spirit working within us hopefully and naturally should result in that kind of patience, long-suffering, and perseverance, in which you become more long-suffering towards others. You persevere. You stand your ground when difficult circumstances come your way. The rest of the world may not respond that way. They probably will not.
But if you’re a Christ follower, friends, that’s what Jesus calls us to, and He’s working by His Spirit to produce those things. Within us, and it is hard work. It is so difficult. But God still wants to produce these things within us. You don’t grow in a day.
It takes a lifetime to grow in these areas. But then we also have to consider self-control. Self-control, I define it as the ability to regulate what it is that I think, to regulate what it is that I feel, and to regulate what it is that I do. And how important is self-control when we think of it in those terms? We desperately need it for, for instance, our bodies.
We need self-control for our bodies. Even though God created us to enjoy things that are pleasant to our senses and our bodily appetites, we, the Bible tells us, in our sin have corrupted all of those natural blessings that God has given. And because our desires have been corrupted, the things that God intended for our use and our enjoyment for our body have a tendency to become our masters. That’s not, that’s not a good thing, and that’s why we struggle with physical temptation. Like gluttony with food, gluttony with drink, laziness, sexual immorality, which is, by the way, not just simply physical sexual activity, but also sexual immorality includes the areas of impure thoughts, lustful looks, and suggestive speech.
We need self-control. On top of that, we need self-control for our thought life, because I can obsess over— I’ve got this problem, I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about work. I can’t stop thinking about that person. I can’t stop thinking about this memory over here.
The truth is, I think we frequently allow into our minds all kinds of thoughts, even the wrong thoughts that we are more than happy to entertain in our minds, but we would never allow in our actions because then people would judge us. But we have no problem having them in our minds. And so instead of controlling our thoughts and focusing our minds on that which is good and pleasing to God, as Philippians 4:8 tells us, we let our guard down. And we fixate on things that we know are displeasing to God. We need self-control for our feelings and our emotions because I’ve got things like anger and rage and resentment and self-pity and bitterness rattling around within me.
How about you? Those feelings may be explosive or they just may be simmering under the surface, but in either case, the emotions need to be included in this list of things that need to be self-controlled. I think we know in our hearts, I think all of us know in our hearts, the correct order of life for us as believers should be this: God’s Spirit speaks to your heart, your heart speaks to your will, your will then tells your mind what to do, and your mind then tells your body what to do, and then your body obeys it. Wouldn’t that be great if that was the order of events? We know that that’s not what ends up happening.
When we lack self-control, our body ends up in charge. Our appetites and our impulses— eat this, drink this, watch this, buy this, wear this, say this— and our mind becomes obsessed with those things, and then our will gets enslaved to whatever our appetites are, and the result is chaos. Now, the specific word used in that listing there of Galatians 5 of the fruit of the Spirit That specific Greek word there for self-control comes from a word, interestingly, that means power or strength or dominion or lordship. So, self-control is really talking about having power or lordship over yourself, mastery over yourself. And the opposite word in Greek would mean someone who has no inner strength and therefore no discipline.
We need to understand, though, that the biblical concept of self-control, though, is not self-control for your own sake. It’s always self-control for God’s sake. That’s what the scripture is pointing us to. The ancient concept of self-control was considered a virtue. I think self-control today can be considered a virtue, because if you have power or control over yourself, then nobody else can have power, dominion, or control over you.
And you may say that’s how you live your life, and you may very well do a very good job of controlling yourself, and you say because it’s good for you, and it’s good for society, and it helps me to get things done, and it’s just good to have good old solid discipline. Some of you have achieved great things through that kind of thing. Self-control in that sense is a virtue, but biblical self-control is never something that you do just for yourself. Biblical self-control is not about your own happiness or your own ego so that you can say, I’m more disciplined than this person. I’m more self-controlled than that person.
That’s not the fruit of God’s Spirit. Why? Because when you become a believer, you no longer belong to yourself. You died to yourself, and so your life is hidden with Christ in God. You are no longer your own.
You belong to and live for God. So self-control should be directed towards Him. Nevertheless, we all have problems with self-control. Even the Apostle Paul says that he struggled with it. He said in Romans 7, Verses 15 and 19.
And I think about Romans 7 all the time. I do not understand what I do, Paul says. What I want to do, I don’t do, but what I hate, I end up doing. Verse 19: For I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. I’m confident that everyone here could identify with what he’s talking about.
And say the exact same thing about yourself. I’m confident that everybody here can think of some area or emotion that you have trouble controlling. I have a lot of confidence that some of us would be good at identifying a lack of self-control that others have too, maybe even better than we can even identify it in our own life. Maybe you have some emotion that you have trouble controlling. Maybe you have difficulty controlling your own tongue and the words that come out of your mouth.
Or controlling your passions, or maybe it’s a habit that you struggle to control. We all struggle with something related to self-control, and if you can’t think of anything that is out of self-control, then your pride is out of self-control.
Consider what Proverbs 25:28 tells us about why a lack of self-control is so serious. I love this. Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control. Like a city whose walls are broken through. A city without walls may not mean anything to us today.
In that day, it meant disaster or disaster waiting to happen. Why? For one reason, walls provided security for people. So without walls, raiders and invaders and thieves could easily come in and take everything. And if there weren’t walls, then there’d be no real justice system, because if there was a conflict or dispute, you would take it out through blood feuds or through exploitation— the powerful taking advantage of the weak.
Instead of taking disputes, for instance, to, say, a city council. In other words, without walls, civilizations fell apart, and everyone would be left scrambling for survival. So, what is this verse telling us? Without self-control, friends, you are defenseless. You are easy prey to the invader, in this case, the devil.
And you don’t even have to be a city without a wall. You could just be a city without some part of a wall. That’s all it takes sometimes. One breach in the defense can mean that an entire army could still come and wipe you out. You are still very much vulnerable to attack.
So patience and self-control, real problems for us. What we often fail to think about though is what is underneath that, the problem under those problems. One of the differences between being a follower of Jesus and a merely religious person is that genuine believers find that they increasingly become aware of how inward sin is. Decent religious people all have an understanding of sin, but when they think of sins, they think of the outward stuff, like lying and violence and acts of sexual impurity. But the Bible explains that the essence of sin is very inward.
It’s an inward thing. Meaning the outward stuff is just a symptom of something going on underneath, the inwardness of sin. And impatience and a lack of self-control, I think, both fall into that category of that inward thing. Yes, there are certainly outward expressions of impatience, outward expressions of a lack of self-control, but they’re really originating from something within us. For example, we tend to think of impatience with people— your boss, your family member, whatever.
Or impatience with things around us, the DMV, the traffic, things that don’t work right. We tend to think of those things, but ultimately the reason why impatience is bad for the soul and it’s bad for us is because underneath, impatience has its roots in pride, perhaps from a feeling that we’re smarter or more capable than someone else towards whom we’re directing our impatience. And even underneath that is still something else. It is an impatience with God, if we’d be willing to admit it. How?
Because you’re trusting in your own timing. You think your timing is better. You’re trusting in your own schedule. You’re trusting in what you think should happen with this person or in this circumstance rather than trusting in God’s timing, God’s schedule, God’s wisdom. You’re grumbling in your heart and Not again, God.
That’s not fair. Why are you taking so long to answer me, God? Are you listening to me at all? I deserve better than this, and they deserve a lot worse than what they’re getting. What does he or she even think that they’re doing?
You see how this is something that is inward, underneath the problem of impatience? And if you carry those things around in your heart, you’re not going to have any inward peace or rest. Because you don’t believe that God actually knows what He’s doing, or that He is wiser than you. And the same thing is true of self-control. The bent of our sinful nature is to be God rather than to be under God.
Let me say that again. The bent of our sinful nature is to be God rather than to be under God. That was the very first recorded temptation that we have in Scripture. First humans wanted to be God. They wanted to decide right and wrong for themselves, and we all want that same thing as well.
And what it does is it creates drivenness and compulsive behaviors within us. It causes us to look to other things in the world that we feel like, I absolutely have to have that in order to be fulfilled and complete. And as we do, even instead of experiencing freedom, as we do that, we ironically are coming even more under the power and rule and dominion of of sin. We’re becoming enslaved by it. See why patience and self-control are so important?
Both of these are areas of battle, battles for our soul, for our hearts. It’s all happening within us. And both are also largely at the root of a lot of other external actions that are also harmful, also contrary to God’s Spirit, and move us further away from where God wants us to be. So what do we do about it? Well, this is point 2, and I promise point 2 and point 3 aren’t going to take as long as point 1.
Point 2, what do we do about it? One course of action— it’s an inadequate response, but one response— lots of people do this, Christians and non-Christians. We typically turn to first in order to say, I need greater patience and self-control, and I’m going to do it through good old-fashioned willpower.
There’s a couple of problems with that.
For one, we’ve already seen that your heart and your will are not on your side. Jeremiah 17 reminds us that our hearts are plain deceitful. They are desperately wicked. And therefore, your heart cannot be trusted, and it will naturally go away from God and in the direction of what may seem right to us, but in the end may lead to death, may lead to deeper and deeper enslavement to our old sin nature. We often hear the mantra, oh no, you can do anything you set your mind to, and we believe it.
People can accomplish amazing things through willpower until it falls apart. Until it falls apart. Until we’re stunned to realize that our willpower, though incredibly strong and resilient and resolute, isn’t enough to adequately address each and every single shortcoming or temptation. You can’t do it. Moreover, each of us, I believe, has a finite amount of human willpower.
There have been studies that have in recent years cropped up that said no, no, no, willpower is unlimited. But for the course of history, the common thinking— and I think that this is probably more accurate— is that we have a finite amount of willpower because it becomes depleted when you use it. That’s what makes sense. It’s common to think we have one separate reservoir of self-control for work, and then I have another reservoir of self-control for parenting, another one for for dieting, another one for exercise, and another one for being nice to your neighbors. But years of history have shown us that’s not true.
Completely unrelated tasks— completely unrelated— like resisting temptation on one hand and then persevering in trying to solve a problem both draw on the same energy. So you use the same supply of willpower to deal with frustrating traffic as you do with annoying colleagues. As you do with your pouting child, as you do with your demanding spouse, as you do with tempting food. And you add all of that up and that leaves you exhausted. You have less willpower to deal with something else that might even be more important than those things.
And that’s a real problem for us because we have a lot of things that require regulation. And so our willpower gets depleted. And you can tell when it’s being depleted because you find yourself getting more irritable, or testy or frustrated. You have less energy. So we cannot live just simply by this inadequate response to these problems, by white-knuckling it, trying to do these things through sheer willpower.
Our will, the Bible teaches, on its own simply lacks the ability to follow the leading of the Spirit. We have no natural desire within us to take up our crosses to follow Jesus. We need to be transformed for that desire to crop up within us. And we cannot, by sheer will, love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Willpower by itself might temporarily allow you to do some amazing things, but your willpower cannot change your heart nor your desires in the long run.
And that’s a really discouraging thing. There’s still hope for us. This is point 3. How do we ultimately change and grow? How do we ultimately change and grow?
First of all, I think the emphasis and the struggle for patience and self-control— I hope that we can be gracious towards one another here. The emphasis should be on the word growing in patience, right? Growing in self-control. We will never fully attain complete patience or complete self-control in all areas in this life. We won’t.
No one. We also must realize that the battle for patience and self-control is different for all of us. For instance, you may have no problem whatsoever with controlling your tongue, but you have a bent towards being prideful inwardly or seething towards other people with rage or selfishness or something like that. Another one of you may never be bothered with impure thoughts, but then you indulge your emotions in resentment or self-pity. I say this because I think it’s tempting and easy for us to judge others for their own lack of patience and their own lack of self-control in areas where we may not have that same issue or struggle.
But we do that while overlooking our own lives, our own struggle. So we’re all in process here. Can we just say that together? Like, really, like, we are all in process. None of us has arrived.
So how do we grow? Growing. How do we grow? How do we change? How do we become more patient, more self-controlled?
Lots of great resources on discipleship and growing in godliness that you can look to in these areas. I’m happy to recommend some. Anything by Jerry Bridges. Love Jerry Bridges. Anything by Dallas Willard.
Or, like, I have my personal favorites. Pastor Dan will have his own. Listen, if you need suggestions for how to grow in these areas and discipleship and to put these things into your life, taking off the old self, putting on the new self, happy, to make those recommendations. Just for the sake of time, I just want us to look, though, at Titus 2:11-14. Titus 2:11-14.
For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people, and it teaches us to say— what? To say no to ungodliness. It teaches us to say no to worldly passions. It teaches us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait, again, as we sang about, for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself— Jesus did— for us to redeem us from all wickedness, including impatience and a lack of self-control, to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. The grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodly and worldly passions and to live self-controlled and patient lives.
Do you realize that’s That’s typically not the way we as parents teach our children self-control and patience. Grace and love is not the method we usually use. You know what we normally say? Instead, we say something like, if you don’t get yourself under control right now, you’re not leaving the room. You’re not going to the party.
You’re not going to have screen time, or whatever the case may be. And usually they’re like, okay, okay. That type of method of teaching can be effective. In the short term, but it’s ultimately not the way to get patience or self-control. Like, we’re talking about heart issues here.
Fear of consequences and threats may work in the short term, just not in the long term. And the long term is what we need to be focused on. They just make you more anxious— consequences and threats. They just make you more upset. But this passage is telling us there’s another way.
There’s another way for us to grow. It says, the grace of God has appeared. What does that mean? It means it’s become visible. Well, how could the grace of God become visible?
I think you know. Jesus. Jesus lived. Jesus died. Jesus was raised.
And then Titus 3 tells us what the grace of God is. The grace of God is that He saved us, not because of our own righteous deeds, but because of His great Do you know why this matters, friends? Do you know why this matters, especially as it pertains to us growing and becoming more patient and self-controlled? It’s because it is reminding us that Jesus, knowing full well what was coming to Him, stayed the course that His Heavenly Father gave Him. Jesus dying on the cross and suffering as He did, that must have taken an incredible amount of patience.
Must have been incredibly difficult. Must have taken a lot of self-control and perseverance. After all, Jesus was the only absolutely perfect innocent sufferer in history. Not Job. Jesus.
Absolutely perfect. And Jesus could have backed out at any moment. He could have called upon the angels to rescue Him from the cross. But instead, in the greatest act of patience in history, the greatest act of self-control in history ever, Jesus gave His life for us. Us in order to redeem us.
That’s what Titus 2 is telling us, so that we could be made right with God again and could come to Him. Where did Jesus get that kind of patience? Where did Jesus get that kind of self-control to endure what He did? Hebrews 12 tells us He did it for the joy set before Him. He did it for joy.
What kind of joy are we talking about here? What kind of reward Would Jesus be looking forward to, and that could have possibly motivated Him to endure what He did, to stay with it in patience and in self-control until the end? What possibly could have motivated Him? And the answer is you, and you, and you, and me, and all of us. The reason why Jesus endured what He did was for you and for me.
And so, one of the keys to developing patience, one of the keys, It’s not the only key. One of the main keys, I think, the foundation of developing patience is to reflect often on God’s incredible patience with you, with me. God’s own trait of being slow to anger, as Scripture tells us, towards us. When we continue to struggle to have patience, or like with others, or patience in difficult circumstances, it’s often because we’re forgetting God’s extreme patience with us.
Similarly, one of the keys to developing self-control is to reflect often on Jesus’ self-control and what He did for you, that He set His face like flint so that He could complete the task that God sent Him to do. And when Peter tried to dissuade Jesus from the cross, Jesus wouldn’t have anything of it. He rebuked him. Nothing’s going to divert Jesus from His task. Friends, the point is, is that Jesus’ patience and Jesus’ self-control gives you life.
It’s what gives you life. Why? Why can you and I be forgiven for our own impatience? Why can I be forgiven for my impatience? Because through His perfect patience, Jesus atoned for your and mine impatience so that the Father would be endlessly patient with us.
Never giving up on us, even when we fail Him. And why can we ever be forgiven when we stumble in not having the right amount of self-control? Because through Jesus’ perfect self-control, Jesus paid for your lack of self-control and my lack of self-control. He paid for that with His very life. And the more that we think about and let what Jesus did really and truly sink into our lives and our hearts, we reflect on it every day.
Every day, every morning, remind yourself of God’s great patience and love for you. The more you do that, the more motivated you will be to keep working and growing in patience and self-control. Let’s pray. Father, I ask that you would let the words of your holy book, Lord, come in and change us from the inside out. May your Holy Spirit produce these things within us.
This is the fruit of your Spirit. May you produce it within us where we lack patience with people, where we lack patience in circumstances. Right now, people are going through some really difficult circumstances. That’s no small thing, Lord. Where we lack patience, would you give us a supernatural supply of your Spirit producing patience within us?
And Lord, where we lack self-control in any area, I pray that we would take that seriously and come to you and every single time asking for your divine intervention to rescue us from ourselves. Thank you, God, that Jesus came and he modeled for us what you’re wanting to produce in us. May we walk and follow you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you. Yeah, we can celebrate that today. Thank you, Steve, for that message.
