Jan 23 2022 The 'Long Nose' of God (Patience)

Lord, thank You for the opportunity to be with You – thank You for the snow – thank you for those who are here and those online. Thank You for Your body, the Church. We are humbled to serve You and Your people. We are grateful to be Yours. Help our hearts and souls to understand the value of relationships – we are grateful for the service of all. Help me to share with freedom and ease what You would place before us – with humility to understand that You are the one to speak to each of us.

Back to our verse:

Ex. 34: The LORD passed by before him and proclaimed: "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness,

Today, the third attribute – slow to anger – I hope you were able to watch the Bible Project video -https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/slow-to-anger/ – the word for anger means – “HOT NOSE” – slow to anger – LONG NOSE – quick to anger – short nose!

Three other main words – longsuffering – sometimes translated differently. Forbearance. Patience.

In the book of Exodus, there are two examples that I will highlight that demonstrate God being slow to anger. The first – when God calls Moses at the burning bush. God is telling him He is sending him to rescue His people from slavery in Egypt – and 5 times Moses comes up with excuses about why God is all wrong and has the wrong guy…

Exodus 4:14 Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses,

Depending on your perspective, this might not seem like slow to anger – 1 conversation…

Maybe in your family – or – with a parent or coach – I am not going to tell you again! Don’t make me tell you again! And we associate this with impatience or anger. But the clue that this is slow to anger comes next:

and He said, "Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks fluently. And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you; when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I, even I, will be with your mouth and his mouth, and I will teach you what you are to do.

God’s patience is demonstrated in that He accommodates Himself to Moses’ doubts, insecurities and anxiety. OK, Moses, I get it – we’ll let Aaron speak.

What this shows is that God is patient with us when we struggle with our faith. God is patient when it is hard for us to follow Jesus. He doesn’t just say come on, let’s go, get it together. He comes to our need – He accommodates Himself to where we are – at that moment – at that point in time in our faith. It is almost as if His expectations for us are not as high as our own! Yes, He has high expectations for us, but He will work with us where we are right now.

A bruised reed He would not break – He is so gentle; He can work with that without breaking it – He can work with us without breaking us!

Second – Pharaoh – a number of chapters later. What happens with Moses – 5 times Moses makes excuses. With Pharaoh, God gives him 10 opportunities to let His people go. Yes, those opportunities come in the form of plagues, and there is time for judgment. We might think – wow, those are pretty severe judgments. When we think of Pharaoh, we think of Yul Brenner in The Ten Commandments, but what we should think about is Adolf Hitler in WWII. HE was in the process of genocide – He told the midwives to kill babies. So, what did he do? He deputized every citizen to take Hebrew babies and throw them in the Nile.

It is no wonder that the first plague was turning the Nile to blood. And the last plague – can be better understood in that context.

God is patient with the wicked – and even the most wicked. Yes, He will judge, but He gives the opportunity to turn.

Exodus 34, where we are camping here, is followed by the Golden Calf.

Moses has gone up to the mountain and is up there for forty days. The people are not patient. They tell Aaron to do something – and he makes the golden calf and they start worshipping the calf. Moses comes down and many die as a result of this. But after that, God gives Israel a second chance. After they have rejected Him…

Ps78:38 But He, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them; And often He restrained His anger And did not arouse all His wrath.

God gives them multiple opportunities – We fail – and fail again – and God is still patient with us and gives us another chance. We have all had so many chances. And God continually gives us more

Isaiah 30:18 Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.

God’s patience allows us who fail to fully experience His blessing and compassion.

God by His nature is always compassionate. But we are not always ready to receive His grace and compassion – so He waits until we are ready – and it is in that waiting that God is preparing us, so that we can receive His grace and compassion and experience it fully. He is just waiting so we can experience it fully. He will wait whatever it takes.

In the New Testament, Peter says this:

2 peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

The first part of this is great – not slow as we count slowness. Time moves very differently for God than it does for us. This is in context of the return of Christ – but also, the context of Christians who are suffering for the faith. It is saying that God’s coming justice for you is not slow, even though it may seem like it.

In waiting He provides the opportunity for all to come to Him. Think of yourself – what if He had come before we had had that opportunity? He is waiting because He wants all to come to Him.

His time is the right time. Ours is always now. For God, it is often ‘not now’

We might see this in answered (or unanswered) prayer. I pray – and I think – well? Where is it? But sometimes God waits a long time for that to be answered – and it doesn’t make it any less answered.

1 Tim 1:16 Christ came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.

Paul says he is the foremost of sinners – twice. He is not being historically accurate – it is not like God and Paul got together and evaluated all sinners and determined Paul was the worst – more like, God saved a wretch like me – it took all of God’s mercy and patience to save me. In light of God’s mercy – Paul would say the same about you and me! Foremost sinner. How patient does God need to be with me? Perfectly patient. It required His perfect patience to save us – that is what Paul is trying to tell us.

God’s patience is always enough.

I would like to turn this to us – it is so good to understand God’s patience – and this should cause us to be patient – to learn to be slow to anger. I’ll be a little more straightforward than I tend to be. I believe that slow to anger quality is greatly missing in our world – including Christians in the Church – it is not just a problem – out there.

Being quick to anger has replaced baseball as the national pastime!

Proverbs 15:

A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, But the slow to anger calms a dispute. (Pro 15:18 NASB)

Someone with a hot nose stirs up strife. If you listen to social media, go to the grocery store or drive on the highway – you experience people stirring up strife. But look at the slow to anger – it calms a dispute! How much of that do we have going on? What a revolution that would be if millions and millions of Christians became slow to anger, calming every dispute!

All you have to do is read James 1 to make everyone feel bad – let’s look at it:

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen (wow, that is really hard! – listen for the purpose of understanding), slow to speak (how slow? God’s slow!), slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.

(Jam 1:19-20 NET)

Human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.

Now there are times – it says slow to speak – but there are times we must speak, correct, criticize and correct – and times, in a right way, to judge – but when we do that – we must be slow – we must first to have listened to understand before we speak.

One thing I have noticed – maybe you have noticed it too – I think this is a change, or I’ve just become more aware – it seems people are easily offended by the opinion of others. Here is the thing – you can disagree with a person’s opinion. You can think a person’s opinion is crazy – and all that is okay – we have all experienced that over the last few years. You cannot be offended or get angry at a person’s opinion! It is simply not right to do so! But before you are offended by my opinion on this – because some may be – let me give a couple caveats.

Sometimes, it is not an opinion – sometimes it is someone promoting and pushing genuine evil. Genuine evil does not just mean you disagree with an opinion – we can be offended by that. We can address that.

Second – if it is an opinion – it is different than a decision being imposed on you. When someone expresses their opinion or conviction – feel free to think they are crazy.

Do you get offended by others’ opinions? If so, that is not healthy – you need to find out why. There is an anger issue if that is the case.

I’m going to give an example – and take a right turn –

Something that happened this week – there was a voting rights bill that did not pass. I will not give you my opinion – either way, there may be people offended. People of goodwill can agree that voting should be fair, secure, accessible to everyone – and that the voting process should maintain integrity. I believe all people of goodwill can agree on that – but – people of goodwill will disagree on how that can be accomplished.

On voting – I think we should be able to vote online! You might disagree. You might strongly disagree – and some might think I’m crazy. It will take some time for this to become secure. But I think it would be great to vote online!

But here is why you can’t be offended by what I say – It is not being forced on you! It is just an opinion – what I think.

Now take that and apply it to real discussions – voting rights – even theological, social, political, educational things – we need to learn to apply – slow to anger! Quick to hear – seek to understand the position and opinion of the other person so fully –

This is what it means to listen to understand – where you can express the other sides’ opinion so fully as to convince you that it is right. That is not their goal, but they understand it so completely because they have listened. And at the end, the person on the other side would be able to say – yes, that is what I think.

We are all pretty lousy at that – at least most of us – we have a long way to go.

Then, being slow to speak, we need to determine not to speak until we fully understand. That is a lot of work.

He who rules his spirit is stronger than the mighty and will conquer kingdoms.

To rule our spirit!

One last verse to close:

Forbearance

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (Eph 4:2 NIV)

Forbearance basically means to be able to adjust, bend, flex – to yield – to bear with someone. To put up with someone. We use it negatively – but to put them up – hold them up – lift them up in love.

Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal 6:2 NAU)

To carry people’s burdens and struggles – to take responsibility for their well-being. SO that we know when someone needs help – because of our relationship we help. When they need to be visited, or a friend, we bear with them and help carry the burdens.

Whether in a family, workplace, or church, there will be a lot of putting up with and bearing with one another for that place to work. It is the human thing – He bore Israel on His wings. And on the cross – He bore our sins. He was stricken for us – despised – took our sin, that we might have life.