‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
49th teaching
9.2.2013
“God’s Forbearance”
Living on
Borrowed Time
Introductions.
Announce PROJECTapologetica
PROJECTscriptura:
Announce next week’s topic (God’s Goodness), challenge each person to find ONE Bible verse
about this attribute of God to share next week, you may use any resource as
long as you find just one verse.
Review:
Throughout the course of our studies in Theology Proper, we’ve
come to use several useful keywords. Two keywords so far have helped us to
distinguish two types of attributes
which God possesses: what two types of attributes have we looked at so far?
What does metaphysical mean? What are some examples of a metaphysical attribute?
What is moral attribute mean? What are some examples? What does keyword “non-communicable”
mean? What are some attributes which God shares with His human creatures? What
are some attributes which He does not?
What was our subject last week? Which prophet saw the LORD
seated on His throne and was immediately confronted with God’s holiness and his
own unholiness? True or false: the word holy
appears more times in the NKJV than even the word love. We also looked at three origin words for our English word holy; what three languages did we turn
to for these origin words? What was the Hebrew word for holy? Qodesh means
apartness, pointing to the fact that God is transcendent, metaphysically different
and distinct from all other life-forms. What was the Greek word for holy? Hagios more points to a moral character, holiness in that respect
of being good. What was the Anglo-Saxon word for holy? Hal seems to mean
health, implying that all things unholy and sinful are in fact sick and dying.
Does this mean that life needs
holiness? Can someone explain how we ought to pursue holiness? What did the
Pharisees lack in their own pursuit of holiness?
End Review
Did you ever know an idiot? That one guy who just got on
your nerves? I think that a basic element of the human experience that we all
share is that we each know people who push our buttons, who get under our skin,
who’s every word is like the grating sound of fingernails on a chalk-board, who
you just cannot stand. Say YOLO one more time, see what happens!
The challenge then of human experience is to be able to
still socially function despite the annoying person. The challenge is to be able
to have patience with them, even though they make you want to punch them in the
esophagus. That might sound un-Christian of me to say, but you all know that
this is exactly what our very real flesh wants to do.
Now let’s put this into perspective. If we being sinful are
annoyed other sinners, could you even begin to imagine how God’s patience is
tested by billions of sinners every day? God, who is perfectly good and holy,
let me remind you, has the moral high ground, and could you imagine being
buffeted by billions of annoying gestures, actions, words, thoughts and
intentions from every sinner on planet Earth daily? It’s hard enough for us to even be patient with one frustrating person.
I don’t think we can fathom the depths of God’s patience.
But in fact, that is our topic of study tonight, which is entitled: “God’s
Forbearance: Living on Borrowed Time”.
For a prime example of God’s patience in action turn to Numbers 14.
A little background and context: this was the moment that
the descendants of Abraham had been waiting for. God had promised their fathers
that He would give them the Land of Promise, the land of Canaan, as an
inheritance. So, the LORD delivered them out of slavery in Egypt, guided them
across the Red Sea and through the wilderness, gave them the Law at Mount
Sinai, instructions on how to worship Him and instituted their priesthood…
everything was set and ready. The children of Israel were ready to enter and
inherit the land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There they were
on the threshold of their God-given inheritance.
Only, they decided they would spy out the land first. Twelve
spies went in. Ten spies came back with a bad report and two spies with a good
report. The ten spies said that the land was indeed bountiful and beautiful but
that it was controlled by giants in fortresses, too mighty of a enemy for
Israel to defeat. But the two spies said that they could still possess the land,
after all the LORD was giving it to them.
Maybe you remember the story. Instead of listening to the
good report, the children of Israel instead listened to the words of the ten
spies. Everything was ruined. Everything failed. Years of preparation down the
toilet. And rather than spending one last night in the desert preparing for
victory the following day, Israel wasted the night moaning and weeping and
complaining.
Numbers 14:1-10.
You get the idea that Dad just walked into your room in the middle of a fight
you’re having with your brother or sister. Time for some discipline.
14:11-12. God is
essentially saying “I have had enough”. No doubt. His patience had been tested
over and over again.
Check out Moses’ response: 14:13-24. At first glance, it appears that little Moses holds back
the consuming wrath of Almighty God, but upon closer inspection, you realize
that Moses is only pleading upon God’s own character, upon who God is. When God
revealed His name to Moses back in the book of Exodus, He told Moses that the
LORD is longsuffering, aka slow to anger. Remembering that, remembering God’s
own claim of Who He is, Moses here in the book of Numbers uses the exact same
terminology. The point is, Moses realized and remembered and prayed upon God’s
revealed character. What could Moses have done to hold back the will of God? This
isn’t Moses changing God’s mind, this is Moses falling upon the mercy and the
patience of God, and God acting according to His own revelation.
And so God withholds His wrath, and what would be justice in
destroying that rebellious people, not merely for the sake of one little man’s
prayer but for the sake of His own quality of Forbearance. And Israel survived
on borrowed time.
But what we see happening in this passage is a clear
example of God’s Forbearance in action. In order to get a grasp of this moral
attribute of God, let’s hit several points tonight:
1. What is Forbearance?
2. The nature of Forbearance
3. The example of Forbearance
1.
What is Forbearance?
Have you ever heard of the famous Seven Deadly Sins? Wrath,
Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy and Gluttony? Well, on the flip side, there are
the Seven Heavenly Virtues: Chastity, Charity, Diligence, Humility, Kindness,
Patience and Temperance. So we recognize right from the get go that Patience is
a moral virtue, an ethic, and therefore this is a moral attribute of God we’re
dealing with.
Let’s start with a few synonyms. The Scripture uses words
like patient and longsuffering and forbearance
to describe this attribute of God.
Patience has been
summarized as “the capacity to accept delay, trouble or suffering without
getting upset”. Patience can be a form of tolerance and self-restraint.
Patience is endurance under difficulty. Patience is not lashing out at that one
annoying guy you know. Patience is a quality which is naturally tested and challenged
by hardship. Patience, so we’ve all heard, is a virtue.
I like what the Wikipedia article on patience says: “Patience
is the level of endurance one can take before negativity”.
The Greek word for patience is hupomone (hoo-pah-mah-nay). It’s a compound word made up of the
words under and remain. So in the Greek mind, patience meant to remain under, to
remain under challenges, difficult situations, tests, trials and hardships,
even with the capacity to walk out from under them.
What about longsuffering?
Longsuffering is just an older word for patience. Longsuffering is simply
patiently suffering long. Longsuffering means that you show patience in spite
of troubles, especially the trouble cause by other people. Longsuffering is a
very personal word then, since it has to do especially with peoples and
persons. You can be patient for the light to turn green or patient for the mail
to arrive, but longsuffering especially means that you remain patient with
people who directly cause you grief.
That’s a great word to describe this attribute of God. He
is Longsuffering toward us in this personal sense of the word.
Consequently, I discovered that the Hebrew phrase for
longsuffering is actually a figure of speech, an idiom in the Hebrew
language, which literally means “long of nose”.
What? Why would the phase “long of nose” mean longsuffering
or slow to anger? Well, think about it: when somebody annoys you, what’s one
natural reaction you do to get ahold of yourself and be patient? You take a
deep breath. You sigh. You exhale. The Hebrew figure of speech here meaning “long
of nose” signifies that taking of a long breath to hold back anger. Maybe the
length of the nose pictures the dilation of the nostrils in taking and
breathing out this deep breath of patience.
So then, we discover that God has a very long nose. How
long? Very long. God knows how to count to ten. God cools down and stays His
own wrath. He takes a deep breath before dealing with His sinful children. Aren’t
you glad for that!
Even wackier than that, the phrase erek apayim is plural, signifying literally “long noses”. Does this
mean that God has more than one nose? Apparently, the rabbis explain this
phrase as meaning that God shows mercy and patience both to the righteous and
to the wicked, two different objects, in this figure of speech two different
noses. Of course we know this to not be literal. Though we often think of God
naturally in anthropomorphic terms like a human being, we know that God is an
immaterial Spirit aside from the Incarnation of Christ. You don’t have to worry
about some weird multiple-nosed God waiting for you up in heaven.
*So patience and longsuffering, good synonyms for the word
Forbearance. As for the word Forbearance itself, it has a unique meaning more
specialized than just simple patience and longsuffering. That’s why I chose it
to represent our study tonight and specifically this attribute of God we’re studying.
Though it’s an old-sounding word and not as oft-used as words like patience,
Forbearance gives us insight into this attribute of God.
Forbearance is a unique word for patience because it was originally
a purely legal term. And as a legal term, Forbearance meant to not enforce the
obligations of debt. Forbearance means to keep from taking action, specifically
from taking action in making others pay back their debt.
Picture a creditor, like Scrooge McDuck, who realizes that
today is the day when money he lent to you else is due to be paid back. Today
is the day that the debt is due. Now if Scrooge McDuck refrained and stopped
himself from enforcing this debt, from forcing it to be paid, then he has shown
Forbearance toward you. He has kept from enforcing the obligation of debt.
Now what an amazing word this turns out to be in reference
to God. Forbearance being a unique legal term regarding debt, we are reminded
that we owed God a deep debt that we could not pay. We as sinners were
criminals against Him, we earned the debt of death but to repay that debt, He
Himself not only kept from forcing us to pay but paid our debt in full Himself,
when He became a Man and died in your place, satisfying the legal demand of our
own debt against God.
And that’s all wrapped up in this one great and forgotten word:
Forbearance.
*So we recognize that patience, longsuffering and
forbearance are all great words which the Bible uses to describe this attribute
of God. Patience means to endure, to remain under hardship. Longsuffering
carries the meaning of tolerating trouble caused by people. And finally,
Forbearance is a legal term which means to keep from enforcing the payment of
debt.
2. The nature of
Forbearance
Where does Forbearance fit into the nature of God? Well,
what we find out is that Forbearance is central to God’s moral character and
His being, His identity. Again, when God revealed His name, His very name, to Moses, essentially saying “this
is who I am” there in Exodus 34:6,
He proclaimed His own name, saying: “The
LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, LONGSUFFERING, and abounding in
goodness and truth…”
This attribute of patience is so central to who God really
is that when He announced His name, the word Longsuffering was listed there
alongside mercy, grace, goodness and truth. So the patience of God is a
foundational truth of exactly who this God person is.
Let’s get a clearer image of what the Bible says about this
attribute by delivering our Project Scriptura verses. What did you find on the
Forbearance or patience of the Lord?
Romans 15:5
calls the Lord the God of patience. Romans
3:25 says that God passed over the sins previously committed before the
propitiation of Christ because of His forbearance.
Notice three things about the Forbearance of God, three
relationships between His Forbearance and His other attributes:
A. His Forbearance is an extension
of His Mercy
Paul writes in I Timothy
1:15-16, “This is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in
me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who
are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.” What is the apostle
saying here? Well remember Paul’s testimony? He says of himself in I Corinthians 15:8, “Then last of all [Jesus] was seen by me also, as by one born out of
due time.” Paul was the last of the apostles to be saved, and before his
conversions he was in fact a persecutor and enemy of the church. But Paul
considered that He obtained mercy and that God was longsuffering toward him
even during the length of time that Paul was an enemy of the church before his
conversion.
So then, we see that Paul’s own testimony serves as an
example of how God’s forbearance is an extension of God’s mercy. God was
showing Paul mercy by allowing him to be, not destroying Saul, the enemy of the
church, before he too had a chance for salvation and become Paul the apostle.
God’s patience, then, is really the activity of His mercy.
God’s mercy accomplishes His patience and works out His longsuffering, bearing
with the sinner, giving them time, so that they might have all the chances
possible to turn and be saved.
B. His Forbearance holds back His
Wrath
Nehemiah 9:17,
in speaking about the children of Israel in their time of wandering the
wilderness, such as in the book of Numbers, says this: “They refused to obey, and they were not mindful of Your wonders that
You did among them. But they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they
appointed a leader to return to their bondage… (such as exactly what
happened in our opening chapter, Numbers
14) …But You are God, ready to
pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not
forsake them.” In His anger, God could have destroyed Israel. He had every
moral right to. However, He is slow to anger, and He withheld His own wrath.
But Romans 2:5 bears
the warning: “But in accordance with your
hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” One
thing which we must realize about God’s Forbearance is that it is not forever.
So many of God’s attributes reflect His infinity. His Love is infinity. His
grace is infinity. His power is infinite. But the truth of the matter is that
His Forbearance may be able to infinitely tolerate any amount of sin but He
will not do so for an infinite time. In other words, the hourglass will
eventually run out. God has set and promised how He will bring ultimate justice
and that time is soon coming, soon as His Longsuffering runs out. We need to
tell the world that we’re living on borrowed time.
As the preacher Jonathan Edwards said: “There is nothing
that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of
God.”
And that is His Longsuffering, for now holding back His
righteous anger and impending justice that all the time possible might be given
for men to be saved.
C. His Forbearance flows from His
Love (II Pete 3:9,15
Why restrain Himself? Why restrain righteous anger? Because
God desires that the sinner come to repentance. Get the right picture of God’s
wrath. The Lord says in Ezekiel 18:23,
“Do I have any pleasure at all that the
wicked should die? Says the LORD God, And not that he should turn from his ways
and live?” Further in the chapter, God reiterates: “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and
get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of
Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, says the Lord GOD,
Therefore turn and live!”
We need a correct understanding of God’s wrath and
love in balance. Truly, God is daily angry with the wicked, but He also desires
that they turn and be saved. Though His wrath burns hot against sin, He sent
His Son to demonstrate His love by dying. He doesn’t delight in destroying
anyone. That is why He holds back His anger, displays His Forbearance as an
outflow of His Love.
II Peter 3:9, a
crucial verse on tonight’s subject: “The
Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is
longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should
come to repentance”. In a nutshell, that explains why we aren’t at the end
yet. So many people have this problem of evil, asking how can there be a good
and all-powerful God and yet evil in the world? Wouldn’t God want to stop evil
and also have the power to stop evil?
And all throughout Scripture you see this as well:
Job, the persecuted but patient saint, cried out in Job 21: “Why do the wicked live and become old, yes, become mighty in power? Their
descendants are established with them in their sight, and their offspring
before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God
upon them.”
The psalmist wrote in Psalm
94, “O LORD God, to whom vengeance
belongs—O God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth! Rise up, O Judge of the
earth; render punishment to the proud. LORD, how long will the wicked, how long
will the wicked triumph?”
Jesus Himself even said in Mark 9:19, “O faithless
generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?”
In other words: when is enough enough? We look around and
we often see the wicked prosper, criminals getting away with their crimes, open
sin and rebellion going unpunished. We see mockers of God experience success.
We see those who shake their fists at God not only go free from harm, but
sometimes (it seems more often than not) having wealth, prosperity and fame.
So when is enough enough? How long will God tolerate? In
essence, how can evil exist if God is both all-good and all-powerful?
The answer is He is longsuffering toward humanity. It’s not
that God is slack concerning His promise of ultimate justice. It’s not that God
is lazy or forgetful, it’s that He is Longsuffering, and that He has allowed
this present time as a chance for many to come to repentance. Peter also says
in II Peter 3:15, “…consider that the longsuffering of our Lord
is salvation.”
This is the very purpose
of God’s Forbearance, that there might be as many who repent as possible. Romans 2:4, “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and
longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”
His Forbearance provides a limited timeline. We can take
comfort in the fact that someday it will run out, and God will rise up and
judge in righteousness and make a new heaven and a new earth, that we will no
longer have to deal with the apparent dilemma of a good God and present evil.
But we must also take it as a warning, that God’s Longsuffering will indeed run
out. It is both a comfort and a danger.
So then, we must understand that for each of our unsaved
family members and friends, time is running short. All the time we have now we
have merely because of God’s own pleasure to be patient with this rebellious
world. We don’t know how long until
that divine temper reaches the end of that divine fuse, but we know it is
coming. That should be some intense motivation to take what we’ve learned and
share it with those who need to hear this.
3.
The Exemplar of Forbearance
Can anyone name off the Fruit of the Spirit? According to Galatians 5, the Fruit is love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control. You see that right there, patience, longsuffering resides in the
list of the fruit of the Spirit. So we recognize that the mature Christian will
be marked by patience. This is what the abiding Spirit of God in the believer’s
life will naturally produce, a temperament that suffers long under the troubles
of others.
Realize that this is entirely contrary to what human nature
will naturally produce. Patience must be a work of the Spirit. Naturally, human
beings are selfish, conceited and impatient.
Neuroscientists identify patience as decision-making,
involving the choice of either a small reward in the short term, or a more
valuable reward in the long term. I found this quote only: “When given a
choice, all animals, humans included, are inclined to favour short term rewards
over long term rewards. This is despite the often greater benefits associated
with long term rewards.” Is that not true? That’s why so often humanity chooses
the passing pleasures of sin over the long term reward of eternal life.
Roman general, Julius Caesar, once said “It is easier to
find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to
endure pain with patience.” Many of us would rather go out with a glorious bang
than suffer the slow hardships of challenges and tests and trials.
How many times in your life have you stood in front of one
of a microwave, impatient upon the slow ticking of the seconds, mere seconds, that you have to wait until
your food is cooked? In fact, it seems like an eternity! Much of our busy lives
are characterized by flashes and bangs: commercials and advertisements bombard
us with brief images and colors, entertainment has become explosive, dizzying,
fast-paced, hurrying through characters, plot and climax breathlessly, we fill
our lives with all kinds of plans about work, shopping, chores, having fun,
meeting with friends, attending events so much so that sitting at that traffic
light for even one minute in our busy schedule seems like torture.
Oh how we need more patience.
And what better way to learn patience than from the
greatest Exemplar who ever lived, the One who gave us the Spirit that produces
patience within us: Jesus Christ Himself.
In considering this subject of forbearance, patience and
longsuffering, consider too that there is no greatest example of it in all of
Scripture than when Jesus Christ suffered the long agonies of the cross.
Remember the Greek word for patience, hupomone? To remain under. Could Christ have stopped the pains and
the torment of the cross, the stab of betrayal, the agony of His public trials
and the shame of crucifixion at any moment? Certainly, He could have.
Matthew 26:52-53,
Jesus is being betrayed to his enemies, Peter strikes at one of the soldiers
with his sword, but Christ says “Put your
sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Or do
you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more
than twelve legions of angels?”
Doing the math, the Roman legion typically consisted of
5,400 soldiers. So Jesus is saying that He could get some 64,800 angels to come
down and defend Him from His enemies. Considering that just ONE angel in the
Old Testament once took out an army of 185,000 enemies of Israel, that’s quite
a lot of firepower.
Jesus could have taken those kind of measures to defend
Himself and end the agony whenever He wanted, but He remained under the weight
of the crucifix.
Recall Matthew 27,
blasphemers passed before Him as He hung from the cross saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in
three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross…”
They mocked Him, saying: “He saved
others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come
down from the cross and we will believe Him.”
Wouldn’t it have freaked them out if He suddenly appeared
next to them, on the ground? Ta daaa! Yet He even resisted that temptation. He
patiently endured the torment of the cross. He suffered long under the mocking
of His enemies.
This is the Lord who we have been called to identify with,
to follow in His example.
Ephesians 4:1-3,
“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord,
beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all
lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,
endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Christianity cannot be confused with all these
introspective, selfish and self-centered pursuits of purity and personal
holiness that flood the religion scene today. So many religious systems are
merely concerned with you making you a better person. Christianity goes beyond
that.
Ours is a calling not simply to be a better person, but to
be a better person to others. Do you
see that distinction? We are to learn to bear with one another and in fact to
bear one another’s burdens (Galatians
6:2).
So, we recognize that God is longsuffering toward us and so
we ought to be longsuffering toward others. At the outset of tonight’s study, I
asked if you knew anyone who just irritated you. You know who that person is,
or who those persons are. Could be a family member, a coworker, a class mate, a
friend, an acquaintance, an enemy; how can you show patience toward them?
Keep in mind that the production of patience is not a
natural thing to us. We as humans have an aversion to being patient. It is a
work which the Spirit must complete in us. So let us pray that He would make us
patient men and women, that our patience might reflect upon God’s Forbearance,
and give us opportunity to tell others that don’t know the Lord that they are
only living on borrowed time.
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