We'll largely base our exposition of the subject
tonight on verse 4 in that second chapter,
though of course this fourth verse is very
closely related to what has preceded it, and
indeed with what follows from it.
But let me read again, as largely the
basis of our meditation, verse 4 in chapter
2.
Do you show contempt for the riches of
his kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that
God's kindness leads you toward repentance, the patience
of God?
You will sometimes hear men speak of the
patience of Job.
I'm personally not quite convinced that Job was
all that patient, but that's a matter of
one's predisposition, I suppose.
But we very rarely hear men speak of
the patience of God, and yet there is
nothing which characterizes the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ more than his patience.
And there is no doubt about the patience
of God.
If it were not for his patience, you
and I would not be here this evening.
If it were not for his patience, we
would long ago have been the objects of
his judgment and sheer outright condemnation.
Our lives would have been terminated in this
world.
Were it not for the infinite, the amazing,
the unbelievable patience of God.
It is one of the unrecognized facets of
his grace and of his mercy towards fallen
and rebellious mankind.
Paul, however, is not negligent, nor indeed is
he afraid to speak of the God of
patience.
In chapter 15 and verse 5, he refers
to God as the God of patience, as
he does elsewhere speak of the God of
peace, and the God of hope, and the
God of comfort, and as his brother apostle
Peter speaks of God as the God of
all grace.
A very beautiful reference.
We shall now consider the subject of the
patience of God, then against this particular background,
and we crave his mercy and enabling that
we may understand or write these words before
us.
Now the first thing I would like us
to look at is, I would like us
to consider what patience is in principle.
What is patience?
In answer to that, I would like to
say in the first place, on the basis
of what we have before us and of
teaching that we have elsewhere in scripture, viewed
generally, God's patience is an aspect of his
goodness.
God's patience is one facet, one aspect of
God's own distinctive goodness.
And that is how you have this translation
here.
In some versions you have it, Do you
show contempt for the riches of his goodness?
Depends what translation you have, or in the
NIV, Do you show contempt for the riches
of his kindness?
The King James Version, Despises thou the riches
of his goodness.
The point is that God's patience is an
aspect of his goodness, an aspect of his
kindness.
Now in the Greek language there are two
main words for goodness.
One is agathos and the other is krestos.
Agathos refers in the absolute sense to God
alone.
God alone is agathos.
God alone is good in the sense of
agathos.
The quality to which this word refers is
very closely related to that of justice.
The good man in this sense of the
word goodness, the good man will never contravene
the rules of right and wrong.
The good man is essentially just, meticulously just.
He will do exactly that which is right.
He will not go beyond it.
He will not come short of it.
God then is good in this sense because
he will not countenance wrong nor injustice.
And he has pledged to straighten out the
crooked and to right the wrong.
And when God has finished with this universe
and this world, there will come into existence
a new world in which righteousness is at
home.
And nothing, nothing that offends either creator or
creature will ever, ever enter into it.
God is essentially good in that sense and
God alone.
As Jesus said, there is no one good
in this sense but God.
Our Lord Jesus Christ exemplified this same quality
of goodness when twice during his earthly ministry,
for example, he made a whip of cords
and he overturned the tables of the unscrupulous
money changers in the temple courts and chased
them out.
Now why did he do that?
Was it because he had lost his temper
as we say?
Not at all.
It is because he was good.
As God is good, he exhibited and manifested
the inherent goodness of God and was pledged
to undo that which was wrong.
And these unscrupulous people had made his father's
house what was meant to be a house
of prayer, they had transformed it into a
den of thieves.
In such circumstances, our Lord was good, he
was agathos in that he was doing what
justice clearly required and doing it single-handedly.
But this other word for goodness or good,
krestos, is the one that we have here
in Romans 2.
The uppermost thought in this second word is
that of undeserved kindness.
It implies the necessity of sometimes not immediately
demanding what is right, not immediately demanding what
strict justice may require, and of showing undeserved
clemency or mercy.
And our Lord Jesus Christ of course manifested
this in many, many instances in his life.
As for example, when he permitted a woman
of very suspicious moral character to anoint his
feet, he didn't immediately call down the judgment
of heaven upon the woman, he was patient,
he was kind.
And his kindness took the form of patience.
Same goes for that other woman who was
brought into the temple, caught in the very
act of adultery, he did not immediately call
down utter judgment upon her.
But there's a width and a depth and
a largeness to his kindness which is unbelievable.
As the hymn we have just sung reminds
us of, he showed krestos and his patience
with sinners is an aspect of that goodness
of his which does not necessarily immediately press
home the judgment which men and women deserve.
The same quality of goodness then is evidenced
in the manner in which God showers his
providential mercies upon just and unjust alike.
I'm quite sure there will be someone here
who has been puzzled at some time or
another with a way in which evil, evidently
wicked and perverse and lawless men and women
live long and comfortably.
While so many of the saints of God
have short lives, not only short lives but
live physically uncomfortably, materially they're deprived of many
things.
The wicked live long because God is patient.
The wicked live long because God is good
and he is patient towards even his enemies.
This is part and parcel of the patience
of God.
God's patience then is an aspect of his
goodness, goodness in the sense of krestos.
Now Paul takes us a step further, a
step further nearer to the very heart of
the meaning of patience when he uses another
word here, it's translated tolerance in the NIV
and forbearance in the King James Version.
Here it is.
Or do you show contempt for the riches
of his kindness, tolerance and patience?
It's that word tolerance in the NIV and
forbearance in the King James.
What Paul has already described generally in terms
of goodness, he now proceeds to define more
specifically in terms of this word.
And the Greek word which underlies it is
anoke, which really means a truce.
A truce.
This word conveys the idea of delaying something
or holding something back.
It was most generally I believe, I believe
most generally used with reference to a truce
during wartime.
It may be the secession of hostilities by
both sides in order to let soldiers gather
up those that have been wounded and attend
to them or collect the bodies of those
who have died, who have been killed.
And a truce would be called, an anoke
would be called for a limited period during
which you could minister to the needy and
you could gather those, the bodies of those
who had died.
Now says Paul, God's patience is an aspect
of his kindness.
But it is an aspect of his kindness
which is a kind of truce.
It has a limit to it.
If God's patience continued ad infinitum, then it
would appear that God was not the God
of justice.
It would be questioned whether God was still
holy and just for the goodness and against
the evil.
So his patience with sinners and evil men
is a truce that he has offered graciously
offered and it has a limit set to
it.
And that brings us to the very heart
of the principle which underlies the biblical concept
of patience.
Patience is expressive of the generous goodness of
God in which he has called a temporary
truce before the final execution of his justice
and his judgment at the last day.
And you and I are living now in
the period of God's truce.
The Old Testament is very expressive here.
I have sat in wonder as I've been
thinking about this these last few days, how
expressive the Old Testament is.
We often take it for granted and gloss
over some of these words but they are
so vivid when you come to think of
it.
The Old Testament presentation of this aspect of
God's goodness goes like this.
It generally makes use of a Hebrew word
that means long or slow.
God is said to be long-suffering.
He puts up with things so long, long
-suffering and he goes on and on.
He's long-suffering.
Or on the other hand, he's slow to
anger.
In the expressing of his anger and of
his judgment God appears to be like an
old man who is incapable of moving very
fast.
It is as if his feet were leaden
or his legs are stiff and he just
can't go.
Of course that only appears so.
I'm using the physical analogy.
There is no deficiency in God.
At any moment he could bring in judgment.
At any moment he could call it a
day.
And he could say time up.
But in moving to the day of judgment
God is not in a hurry.
On the contrary, he moves so very slow
that some of his enemies say he's not
going to judge.
He doesn't care all that much about right
and evil.
He's not moving that way.
And they play with his justice and they
play and trifle with his holiness.
He's slow to anger and his enemies misunderstand
it.
Could anything be more expressive than that?
Thus does the Old Testament stress that in
the execution of his altogether righteous indignation in
judgment against sin God moves with infinite patience
slow to anger.
God is patient.
The New Testament takes up the same thought
and adds something to it.
The word for patience, macrothumia expresses the same
fundamental thought as its Old Testament counterpart.
Perhaps it is not quite as expressive.
It declares that God is long-tempered in
the sense of delaying his wrath.
The late Archbishop French described it as quote,
a long holding out of the mind before
it gives room to anger.
In principle then God's patience is his temporary
truce offered to the wrongdoer.
His temporary delay in demanding the righteous judgment
which he could exact at any given moment
in time but chooses not to out of
his goodness.
God's patience is his goodness where he has
temporarily delayed final sentence upon rebellious men and
women.
And the fool may choose to interpret it
as if God did not care about matters
of right or wrong.
He does.
But his patience is long-suffering and he
is slow to anger.
But one day he will declare to the
whole universe that he is a God who
is holy and who is just and the
God of judgment.
He is holding his righteous wrath in check
awhile.
This is a day of truth.
Now that is a very brief outline all
too brief to be exact of the biblical
doctrine of God's patience.
A patience expressed towards nations and individuals as
well as congregations of God's people and the
church at large.
Now the next thing I would like us
to consider is the patience of God as
to its purpose and intention.
Here Paul is very clear.
God's kindness or goodness leads you towards repentance.
Although King James puts it the goodness of
God of which his patience is an aspect
the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.
Why is God patient?
Why doesn't he unsheathe his sword immediately and
the moment you and I sin why does
not he come down in judgment upon us?
Well here's the answer.
He gives us a period of truth in
order by his goodness and compassion and patience
to lead us away from our sin toward
repentance.
Now this is a great subject isn't it?
And I think you and I would find
great benefit if we pursued this theme on
our own.
It's something that makes you worship.
Something that makes you lord and magnify the
almighty God who is so often maligned by
his foes and sometimes out of ignorance by
his own people.
Now there are one or two things I
want to say about the patience of God
as to its purpose and intention.
First, the goodness of God as it manifests
itself in his patience is meant to perform
a vital task a most important task namely
to lead men and women to repentance.
You ask, what's God waiting for?
Many people have asked.
Why does he delay?
Again we might go back to the question
we posed earlier.
Why are evil people allowed to go on
and live well and long and do as
they please?
And you could ask many other questions.
Why not visit every act of sin with
immediate punishment consistent with its gravity?
That is what we try to do in
society.
This is what we generally try to do,
apparently.
The moment a crime has been committed we
seek to detect it and when it is
detected the process of justice is set in
motion and pursued until justice is administered as
soon and as quickly as possible.
That apparently is the principle behind the application
of law in our society.
Why does God act?
Why does not God act that quickly concerning
the sins of men?
Well you see, God has this in view.
He wants the sinner to repent.
God does not delight in the death of
the wicked.
I think it is necessary for us to
grasp that.
He does not will the death of the
wicked.
He does not desire to see the wicked
in hell.
He has no delight in the lostness of
any man or any woman.
And he would that men should turn from
their sins and return from their avenues of
wanderings that he may pardon them.
And this is the rationale.
This is the reason.
This is the motivation.
This is why God is so consistently and
unmovably patient with the most ridiculous kind of
people.
You and I were not so patient and
have so much sin in us we would
have acted differently of course.
But God is patient and you and I
are dependent upon that patience.
See repentance is so necessary.
If there was no need for personal repentance
and personal faith in Christ the Savior whom
God sent well then it would be all
right.
But you see, repentance in the whole scheme
of salvation is so very important.
What is repentance?
Well repentance is a change of mind.
It's a change of mind that comes to
us by the Spirit of God showing us
what wrong we have done and why it
is wrong.
How is it wrong?
And he convinces us that something is wrong
and he convicts us like a barrister, like
a lawyer.
He convicts us, he arraigns us and he
finds us guilty and he proves us guilty
to ourselves and our consciences say that's right,
I've done wrong.
Now having convinced us and convicted us of
our sin the Holy Spirit begins to draw
us back to God in acknowledgement of that
and in quest of his mercy.
And this is the beginning of the change
of heart you see which makes man into
a new creature.
It shows that God is at work in
the soul when he changes his mind about
sin and returns to God.
God has already been doing a work there.
It couldn't happen without the Holy Spirit.
It couldn't happen without God being at work
in the heart.
And it is so important.
Now says God, I am patient because I
want men and women to come there.
May I ask you my friends, my brothers
and sisters and friends that I know not
in this congregation tonight, how long has God
been waiting for you to repent of your
sin and turn to him?
How long has been God's truce with you?
I know not, but of one thing I
know in the very nature of the case
the truce has to come to an end.
And if it does not come to an
end during my lifetime in this world then
it will come to an end at the
judgment day.
Paul makes that clear in this context.
God's truce, God's patience is a respite to
allow for this kind of possibility in the
life of individuals that we may repent of
our sins and return to God acknowledging the
evil of our ways and accepting the provisions
of his grace.
He does not delight in the death of
the wicked.
Positively one of the prophets tells us he
delights in mercy.
I think that is one of my favorite
passages of scripture.
The Lord delighteth in mercy.
God does not grumble in being merciful.
God does not grumble in forgiving.
When you come to him in penitence you'll
never find a grumble in his heart or
on his lips.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the
unrighteous manage thoughts and let him return unto
the Lord and he will just pardon.
No, no, no, no.
He will abundantly pardon.
The color and the dye and the evil
in our sins seems to be of no
account whatsoever because the blood of Jesus Christ,
God's Son has met the exigency in his
atonement and totally removed the curse that we
may have forgiveness and peace to live.
And he will abundantly pardon.
That's the meaning of it.
You remember that.
You tend to get cross with some of
the evil men in the world.
So do I.
Let's try to remember this.
God's giving them another day's truce.
But will you and I be present to
tell them that the day is hastening by
and the night is coming and to tell
them the way back to God through his
Son.
But then let me add this.
God's goodness in such patience should be influential
in judging objectively, I say.
It should be influential in leading men to
repentance.
It is a very staggering fact that it
does not apparently do so in so many
cases.
The reference here by Paul is to the
influence which God's goodness has expressed in his
patience should ordinarily have.
It should lead us to repentance.
It should make its appeal to the mind,
to the intellect, for example.
You see, that there is a God who
made all things.
A God in whose hands we all are
and all history is.
And the end of things, they're all in
his hands.
He's the Lord of history, he's the Lord
of time, he's the eternal God.
And yet he, the eternal God, my Creator,
Lord and Judge, says, I won't hasten to
judge him, to judge her.
I will give her time to repent.
Imagine that.
Doesn't the fact that God is a God
like that appeal to your intellect?
That he is a God who is worthy
of your faith, worthy of your admiration, worthy
of your worship, worthy of obedience?
It should make its appeal to the heart,
to the emotions.
That God, who is all-powerful and all
-holy, should restrain his righteous wrath against my
sin simply because he wants me to repent.
Oh, the amazing grace of God.
He wants to see me redeemed.
He wants us to be saved.
He wants us in his fold.
He wants us within his arms.
He wants us.
If there is an impenitent soul here tonight,
I want this to be God's shaft to
your heart.
God wants you in his arms.
And the truth remains open because he loves
you still and has commissioned that his word
should be declared in your hearing tonight.
And, of course, it should quicken the will
to act.
Repentance requires this kind of action.
It calls for a recognition of sin and
a renunciation of it and a returning to
God.
But seeing this kind of activity in God
should have its impact upon the mind and
upon the conscience and upon the heart and
upon the will.
We should be drawn.
We should be influenced by this.
Now, this goodness of God as expressed in
his patience must lead us to repentance before
the limited time of the truth expires.
And here I have to speak very bluntly.
There are a number of things that could
bring this truth to an end sooner than
you think.
Speaking at the end of another year, the
last Sunday evening, let me mention these things
without dwelling on them.
First of all, the objective offer of pardon
may never come your way again.
Do you know that?
It is my great, my immense privilege tonight
to be standing here for my Lord, offering
mercy from God to any penitent sinner.
You know, you may never be faced from
this night forward by anyone who will come
to you and say as bluntly to you,
God wants to save you.
Not because of anything in me, but because
God has ordained it so.
And even though it be announced in your
hearing, you may not hear it after tonight.
Others may hear it sitting next to you,
but you won't.
There is a hardening of the heart and
of the mind and of the conscience that
even if it is objectively proclaimed, it is
not personally heard.
It's a terrible thing.
I have known it.
I have known, indeed, the night I came
to Christ myself, I went into the service
with a man who had a family who
had been praying for him for years, a
young man, probably from his childhood.
And he was a far better living fellow
than I was.
A young man to whom one could look
up to in so many, many ways.
But when he heard the gospel, it closed
his heart to it.
And from that day forward, in all my
dealings with him over the years, I've lost
contact now.
He's got harder and harder and harder and
more and more careless.
And the gospel doesn't touch him anymore.
He was shaken that night.
The Spirit of God seemed to give him
a shake.
But thereafter, he was never shaken at all.
It never penetrated.
The subjective impressions that may be real to
you at one given moment in time may
not always be as real unless you respond
to them.
Again, the Lord Jesus Christ may return and
wind up the affairs of the universe, and
that will terminate the day of grace.
The outstretched hand will then be withdrawn.
I don't know whether you'll ever hear an
evangelistic appeal then, but if you do, it'll
never mean anything.
It cannot.
But death may visit your home and take
you away, or take me away.
Men and women, it is not in vain
that James says, Boast not yourself of tomorrow.
It doesn't belong to you.
It's in God's hand to give you.
And I say to you, ladies and gentlemen,
you may die before you respond to God's
kindness, unless you do it tonight.
Now, that to me is part of the
seriousness of the gospel.
Death has a finality about it in this
regard.
When men die, each person goes to his
own place.
Not only Judas went to his own place.
Every man goes to his own place.
You'll be fitted for the place to which
you go.
And your life fits you, prepares you.
Your mind, your attitude of being here and
now makes you such that you'll fit into
the atmosphere of heaven or hell.
And you know the answer to that.
Would you be at home in heaven tonight?
That brings me to the last main thing
I want to say.
The patience of God as seen in its
practical outworking.
Do you show contempt for the riches of
His kindness, tolerance, and patience?
Not realizing that God's patience leads you toward
repentance.
Two things.
There is the possibility of despising or showing
contempt for the patience of God as well
as for our respecting it.
We can show it contempt or respect, either
or.
Because the execution of judgment is delayed, we
too may inwardly conclude that God is not
all that concerned about matters of right and
wrong.
And we may trade upon that.
And we may, as it were, sin that
grace may abound.
God doesn't care, so I can live as
I like.
I guess this became very real to me
on one occasion not all that long ago
when in conversation with someone about the gospel,
the lady said, It doesn't really upset me
to be living such a loose life, she
said, because my husband is very forgiving.
And here she was, living with anyone who
would come along, trading upon the fact that
her husband was so forgiving.
And because forgiveness seemed to be so near
at hand, even for the asking, she lived
upon it and she thrived and she is
sick.
Brother and sister, you can't do that with
impunity in your relationship to God.
He will catch up with us.
His patience is great.
His mercy is beyond comparison.
But listen, you've got to come to terms
with the fact that God is God and
holy and righteous and just and sin is
the antipathy of all this.
Are you guilty of regarding the patience of
God as an invitation to continue in sin
rather than an incentive to repentance?
And then this.
There are examples of both kinds of reactions
to be found in the Bible.
You may go after them.
I just want to refer to one on
each side.
Take, for example, an example of Nineveh in
the Old Testament, the whole story of the
book of Jonah.
You remember how Nineveh was given 40 days
in which to repent.
The truth.
And God said to the prophet, there are
40 days for you to repent.
A whole nation, a whole city.
Blessed be the name of God.
Nineveh repented.
Jonah wasn't pleased.
But Nineveh repented.
And the city was saved.
God was gracious.
But you see, history has so many examples
of those who did not repent during the
time of truth.
I refer, for example, to Noah's contemporaries.
Noah, a preacher of righteousness, declared the righteousness
of God, that sin cannot remain unpunished.
And the day of judgment is coming.
Now God does this occasionally.
He punctuates history with an occasional intervention in
judgment.
Generally, judgment is delayed until the day of
judgment.
But there are occasional moments in history when
God intervenes, as it were, to indicate, I
do mean business.
I do hate sin.
This was one of them.
As he put Adam and Eve outside the
Garden of Eden, so he deluged the earth.
And a whole generation was wiped out.
They would not repent.
Do you remember how long they were given?
But they would not repent.
Patience that has been despised and misconstrued, goodness
that has been viciously misrepresented, only serves to
aggravate the state of guilt that is already
apparent.
And to justify a condemnation that is already
earned.
Brothers and sisters, we have a peculiar capacity
for transforming God's most precious gifts into curses.
Of turning God's most precious provision into poison
for our souls.
Change the metaphor.
There is a kind of streak in fallen
human nature that can turn every blessing into
a curse.
I beseech you, don't do that.
In refusing God's truth, as the opportunity to
repent and to return to Him with all
your heart and all your life, and to
yield it all to Him, take advantage of
that truth.
For if you do not, it will only
prove that you are doubly fit for judgment
and doubly deserve the righteous condemnation of God.
Ah, this is one of the dark threads
in the gospel story.
I am guilty before God.
Already in sin did my mother conceive me,
and we have all from our childhood moved
astray.
Like sheep we have gone, every one of
us, to our own individual ways.
In rejecting the gospel and God's patience, in
turning it aside, in treating it lightly, we
only add to the deserts of judgment.
I close with a reminder that patience as
understood in scripture, and as attributed to God,
is a temporary phase only.
For God to perpetuate His patient forbearance so
that it becomes a fixed and eternal attitude
would imply His total unconcern with justice and
with truth, and that cannot be.
He would thereby lose His character, and He
would cease to be the God of the
Bible.
We would have another God altogether.
Being the God He is, the temporary truce
must sometimes cease.
There is therefore an end to God's patience.
Then the door that has been long held
ajar will close.
The hand that has been long outstretched offering
mercy will be withdrawn.
And the voice that has pleaded so tenderly,
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and
stonest them that are sent unto thee.
How often I would have gathered your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under
her wings, and you would not.
O Israel, return unto the Lord your God.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden.
The voice that has sounded forth with loving
concern to save the lost will be forever
silent.
God grant us grace.
In this day of His mercy, as 1985
is moving into history, God grant us grace.
In honor of His name, in recognition of
His sovereignty, and of His saviorhood, to return
to Him from our sins, to place ourselves
at His disposal as well as at His
mercy, that whatever days remain for us, they
may be days of doing His will and
not our own.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we first of
all acknowledge our sin of failing to appreciate
the meaning and the wonder of your patience
with us individually.
For each one of us has been guilty
of breaking your laws and of transgressing in
one way or another, moving contrary to your
purposes, even when we have known the way
we should walk.
Forgive us, we pray.
Grant us, O Lord, anew as these last
days of an old year are swiftly passing
by.
Grant us to sense the influence of your
spirit upon us, leading us yet to repent
of all our sins, that we may find
in you that wholesome and total forgiveness that
makes us accepted in the Beloved One, your
Son.
O, lead us to the fount where sin
is washed away.
Call us, and we will run after you.
So grant us grace through Christ, your Son,
our Lord.
Amen.