This passage is based on 2 Peter 3:8-15.
We are in the second week of our Advent Sermon Series titled, The Gifts of Christmas. This is the time of the year when we spend a lot of time thinking about what gifts we might want, and what gifts we might want to give others, so we’re taking some time on Sunday mornings to think about what gifts God wants to give to us. Last week we looked at The Gift of Anticipation. At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, His coming to the world He created. But when He was taken up into the heavens, He said He would be coming back. So we remember His coming, and we also anticipate His return. And this anticipation is a gift, because it gives us a chance to make sure we’re ready. Each year, Advent is a reminder to anticipate His coming again and to be ready for His coming. A second gift we receive at Christmas is the Gift of Patience. This is the time of year that we need to be patient as we wait for Christmas, so we’re going to look at what God’s patience might look like in our lives. Patience is defined as the ability to bear pains or trails calmly or without complaint, steadfast despite opposition, able or willing to bear. When applied to our Christian faith, it is that quality of self-control which shows itself in a willingness to wait upon God and his will. So the idea of Christian patience is being willing to follow God, no matter may try to distract you or hold you back. As a parent, have you ever tried to get your kids to pick something up, and they wouldn’t, so you started counting to 10. I think everybody’s done this, and I’m not sure it’s ever worked. But we think we’re being patient by giving our kids a little extra time to pick them up – only a count of ten, but as long as we see progress during that count, right. We usually don’t, but… I think it’s a human tendency to take our human qualities and apply them to God. It’s hard for us to imagine how God’s patience could be good news. How could it be a gift? Is God just giving us a little more time to play before He decides to intervene. “I’m going to count to ten, and you’d better repent…” There are two images of how God relates to the world regarding the idea of God’s patience. They’re actually kind of related, but they seem like opposites. The first one is the idea that God is hands off. He set things up in the beginning; He created everything, then just kind of sat back and is watching how it all plays out. He gave us everything we need, He created all the natural laws that govern how things work, and now He just sits back and waits to see how we’ll do. The Deists believed this. In fact, Thomas Jefferson was one of the most well-known of the Deist. The other image looks at the miracles in the Bible, and says that those are examples of times when God chose to get involved. This theory says that sometimes God breaks a law of nature and steps in to do something miraculous. That there are times when God will step in to stop something bad from happening, or make something good happen. These two pictures of God’s involvement are really both dealing with the same fundamental relationship between God and the world. When we hear that God is patient, we think that means that most of the time God is leaving us alone, He’s hands off, He’s fundamentally distant. Maybe the biggest difference between these two is that in the first, God never gets to ten. He never has to do anything. Maybe He gives up, maybe He never starts counting in the first place. In the second, sometimes God does get to ten and has to get involved, once in a while He has to perform a miracle to set things right again. In our reading, Peter is arguing against both of these pictures of God’s relationships with the world, by using the example of God’s patience. But first he has to do a little theological housecleaning if you will. There something we need to understand first, So Peter wrote in verse 8, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” One way to see this verse is to think God must have a really wacky calendar that we just can’t understand. But I think maybe a better way to think about this is that maybe, for God, time doesn’t mean as much as it does for us. Ideas like a minute, a day, a month or a year, just don’t describe how God sees time. We use them, the Bible includes them because that’s how we relate, but maybe they don’t really apply in heaven. That’s why Peter says in verse 9, “The Lord is not slow as some understand slowness, God is patient.” Maybe slowness, the passage of time, doesn’t describe God’s patience. We use these ideas, because they’re all we have, but maybe they don’t adequately describe God. So the first thing we have to set aside is our human notion of patience as sitting back, hopefully calmly, hopefully not getting angry. God isn’t just sitting around wondering when He should finally intervene. From the human perspective it might feel this way, but that’s not what’s happening. So what does it mean then, in verse 15, “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation.” He doesn’t mean that God is standing by, giving us a little more time, standing back and waiting for everyone to repent. He doesn’t mean that God is standing back, hands off, just giving us a little more time to get our act together. I think that’s what he meant in the first chapter, 1:3, when he wrote, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…” I see this as a picture of a God that’s always involved, always giving us what we need, supporting our lives on our journey toward holiness. This is a God who in his providence is always relating, always giving, not standing back, hands off, uninvolved. But constantly involved, constantly at work. And I think that’s what Peter means by God’s patience. Just the opposite of what we think about, standing back and waiting. I think Peter is saying that patience is God’s promise that He will always remain involved. That God will never abandon, never forsake us. Never losing patience and deciding to bail. God’s promise of patience is God’s promise that He will not leave us alone. That’s what Acts 17:28 was saying, “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” Everything is in God, not on our own, He’s not standing back watching us, He’s making it possible for us to live and move and have our being. That’s what Augustine was saying when he said, “God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.” That’s not an image of a distant God, that’s an image of a God who constantly with us. God promises to never be hands off. God promises to stay actively supporting us, actively involved in our lives. And Peter calls these promises patience. And he says that patience means our salvation. Let me give you three illustrations that help me to see this image of God’s patience. Not as God waiting hands off wondering when to get involved, but as God always and everywhere actively involved in our lives. Think for a second about going to the theater, a live theater, not a movie theater. Imagine you watch the actors on the stage as the performance goes along. What you don’t notice, at least you don’t pay attention to it, is the stage itself. It’s always there, supporting what’s going on, making the whole play possible. You don’t really notice it, but if it were to disappear, the play would come to a crashing halt immediately. Imagine God’s patience is the stage on which we live out our lives. Making our lives possible, supporting our living, making possible our eventual transformation into the image of Jesus. And Peter says that patience means our salvation. Another image; think about going to see a movie. You sit there and you watch the images flicker on the screen, you see all the action, but what you don’t notice or pay attention to is that really bright light in the projector, shining light through the film that makes watching the movie possible. If that light were to burn out, the movie wouldn’t be visible, and you would demand your money back. Now imagine God’s patience is the light that infuses our lives and makes our very existence possible. It’s what allows us to shine with the brightness of Christ. And Peter says that patience means our salvation. A final image, think about looking at a tree, or a house, on the horizon. Ever go for a ride and look off in the distance and watch the horizon. You see the tree line, maybe some barns. But what you don’t notice, it’s kind of in the background, is the horizon itself. Where the land and the sky come together. That makes it possible to see the trees and the houses and the barns that sit on the horizon. How about this, God patience is the horizon on which our lives are played out. And so it makes possible our visible transformation into the image of Jesus. Peter calls that patience salvation. We don’t need God to intervene in our lives. We don’t need God to intervene in the life of our church or in the lives of the people we love. God is already there. Already present, already working. And that presence is what Peter calls patience. And that patience means our salvation. It’s the gift we unwrap and celebrate at Christmas, Emmanuel, God with us, present with us, working around us and in us. It’s the gift that we celebrate and acknowledge in Communion. God is here, right here, right now, not somewhere else, waiting to show when he’s really needed – He’s here now. He’s supporting and sustaining always.
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