Patience | Sermon | The Grove Church, Port St. Lucie

How to Finally Be Patient with God and Others

Patience comes from God’s patience with you.

Summary

Galatians 5:14–25 names patience as the fourth fruit of the Spirit and sets it against a church that bites and devours one another. Preaching at The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, David Hancock traces Paul’s word makrothymia, long-tempered, back to the Old Testament picture of God as “long of nostrils,” slow to anger, and shows how impatience began with the serpent’s shortcut in Eden and tore apart the household of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. He argues that willpower cannot produce patience because the flesh, Paul’s word for self-reliance, is the very thing that bites; patience comes from God’s own patience, drawn into the believer by the Spirit as a branch draws from the vine. The sermon ends at the cross, where Jesus, patience itself, was bitten by the people He came to save and never bit back.

Key Takeaways

Patience in the Bible means being long-tempered, “long of nostrils,” so that anger has a long way to travel and cools before it shows; it is aimed mostly at people, and it is the art of waiting for people to grow up.
Impatience began with a shortcut in Eden, and nearly every sin since starts the same way; because we bit the fruit, we now live in a world that bites, devours, and consumes one another.
Patience starts with God, who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; believers receive it by walking by the Spirit and keeping in step with Him, not by willpower, because the flesh cannot make itself patient.
Patience is never passive: it opposes what destroys people while refusing to give up on them, and it extends to children, spouses, friends, and oneself, because God is not done with any of them.

Read Galatians 5:14-25 (ESV)

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Talk about it

1. The sermon opened with a car ride that fell apart one small delay at a time. What is the roundabout in your week, the ordinary place where your patience runs out fastest? What do the people closest to you see when it does?

Long of Nostrils: What Does Patience Mean in the Bible?

Paul’s word for patience is makrothymia, “long” joined to “wrath.” A patient person is long-tempered, and the word is aimed mostly at people rather than circumstances. Behind it stands the Old Testament picture of being “long of nostrils.” Picture the cartoon character with smoke pouring from his nose; the long-nosed man still has the fire, but the heat has a long way to travel before anyone sees smoke, and by then it has cooled. Add the farmer’s art of waiting for a crop, and patience becomes the art of waiting for people to grow up. Its place on the list matters: love is the foundation, joy the thrill built on it, peace the certainty that neither can be lost, so people can’t steal his love, joy, or peace; therefore, he is able to be patient with them.

Eden was meant to work this way: God gave Adam and Eve the long, honorable task of growing paradise until it covered the earth, and the serpent offered a shortcut. Eat, and be like God now. Nearly every sin begins there, with a shortcut taken because we couldn’t wait, and our instant world has left us untrained to wait.

KEY WORD: MAKROTHYMIA Makrothymia is the Greek word translated “patience” in Galatians 5:22. It joins makros, long, with thymos, passion or wrath, so it literally means long-tempered. It carries forward the Old Testament description of God as “slow to anger,” which in Hebrew reads “long of nostrils,” the picture of anger that has a long way to travel before it shows; older English Bibles rendered it “long-suffering.” Unlike patience with a slow line or a late train, makrothymia is almost always patience with people: bearing with their faults long enough for them to grow.

Talk about it

2. The sermon traced sin back to a shortcut: Adam and Eve grabbing now what God meant to grow in them over time. Where are you taking a shortcut right now because you are tired of waiting on God, on your own growth, or on someone else? What has that shortcut already cost?

Biting and Devouring: Why Do Impatient People Tear Each Other Apart?

Listen to Paul’s wordplay. Because we bit into the fruit in the garden, we now live in a world that bites, devours, and consumes one another. “Fits of anger” is the plainest opposite of patience, and the plural means a pattern: not getting what we want fast enough, so we flare. Short-nosed tempers. Eight of the fifteen works on Paul’s list are about how we treat people, and impatience with people is how a community breaks down. Patience is long-suffering directed toward people, which implies people are annoying. Some bite us; some set out to devour us. And Paul is writing to the church: he means the people in the room, and he means you.

The sermon showed what happens otherwise through Abraham and Sarah. God promised offspring as numerous as the stars; a decade of an empty nursery later, Sarah sped things up through her servant Hagar, and Genesis tells it in the garden’s own words: Abraham listened to the voice of his wife, and she took and gave. The trouble with shortcuts is that they work. Then the biting started: contempt, blame, a shrug, and a mother walking away from her son under a bush because she could not watch him die. That is where impatience leaves a family. Everyone gets bit.

Talk about it

3. The sermon was blunt: you are one of the annoying people Paul is talking about, and so is everyone in this group. Who in your life is currently biting you, and how have you been biting back? Whose patience with you have you been quietly relying on without noticing?

Slow to Anger: Where Does Patience Come From?

Patience does not start with us. Right after Israel built a golden calf, Moses heard God describe Himself as “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” God is long of nostrils, and that line became Israel’s creed. His patience has a purpose, your growth: the Lord is patient, Peter says, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Yet He will by no means clear the guilty. Jonathan Edwards pictured the bow of justice bent and the waters of wrath dammed up; it is the patience of God that holds back the water and keeps the fingers from releasing the bow.

People made in His likeness are meant to carry that patience home, and Paul tells us how. Walk by the Spirit: a daily habit. Keep in step with the Spirit: a military phrase, a whole church disciplined in that habit. The habit is dependence on the Spirit to animate the patience of Christ in us. The flesh is self-reliance, and the flesh is the monster that bites, so trying to kill impatience by willpower is asking the monster to be patient. That is why it never works. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches; the Spirit is the vein that draws His patience up into us until His creed becomes ours. Anger does not vanish; patience gives it time to mature into the desire for people to become who they were made to be.

Talk about it

4. The sermon said willpower cannot make you patient because you are asking the monster to be patient; only dependence on the Spirit can. When your temper rises, what do you actually reach for first: a deep breath, a comeback, or Christ? What would make that reach for Him a daily habit rather than an emergency measure?

Thick Gloves: How Do You Stay Patient with Difficult People?

You have a choice. You have a million reasons to rage, and every one can be justified; people are annoying and you have suffered them. Or you can be patient as they become who God made them to be. Paul says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Righteous anger opposes whatever destroys God’s people; patience is love refusing to give up on those same people. The cost of patience is that you get bit, but a Christian cannot be consumed; the worst the world can do is take your life, and that makes you alive forever.

The sermon was careful here: Paul is not telling anyone to lie down under abuse. Meekness, still to come on the list, knows when to stand against injustice and when to sheath the sword.

Moses, who first sang of God’s patience, lost his own at the rock and did not enter the land; we have what Moses did not, the Spirit of Christ in us. And patience is never passive. Paul pairs it with active help: admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. It is not ignoring sin; it is refusing to give up on people, as God did not give up on you. Your kids need it, your spouse needs it, and so does the friend wrecking his life; God is at work in them. We garden people who have thorns, so we put on thick gloves and keep planting. Some of you need that same patience with yourself: you are not perfect yet because God is teaching you that you cannot become who you were made to be without Him.

THE PRACTICAL TEST When the smoke starts pouring out of your nose, that is the moment to look at Christ. Before the sun goes down, ask three questions. Is my anger about something truly wrong, or about not getting my way fast enough? What would it mean to fight for this person rather than against them? What is God still patiently bearing in me?

Talk about it

5. The sermon named the people who need your patience most: your kids, your spouse, the friend wrecking his life, and yourself. Which of those have you quietly given up on? What would “thick gloves and keep planting” look like with that person this month, and where do you need to stop biting yourself for what God is still growing?

The Heart of It: How Is Jesus the Patience of God?

Christ is the ultimate expression of God’s patience with us. God came into the world to give His life for people who bite, devour, and consume one another, and we proved the depth of our depravity by biting, devouring, and consuming God Himself. He long-suffered us, and He never bit back. He is patience itself. We spat on patience; we slapped patience across the face; we whipped it until the lash ripped His back like teeth. We nailed patience to a cross, and from that cross He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Then He died and waited, not a minute, not an hour, not a day, but three days, until the Father raised Him. He rose and gave the gift of His Spirit, who by faith animates the patient life of Christ in everyone who belongs to Him.

God has not given up on you, and He will not. So do not give up on others.

Talk about it

6. Jesus was bitten by the people He came to save, and He never bit back; from the cross He asked the Father to forgive them. Where do you most need to hear that God has not given up on you? How does His long-suffering toward you change the way you will walk back into the room with the person who bit you last?

Questions This Sermon Answers

What does patience mean in the Bible?

Biblical patience means being long-tempered. Paul’s Greek word makrothymia joins “long” and “wrath,” and it carries the Old Testament picture of being “long of nostrils,” where anger has a long way to travel before it shows. Older Bibles called it long-suffering. It is aimed mostly at people and includes the farmer’s art of waiting for growth.

What is the Greek word for patience in Galatians 5:22?

The word is makrothymia, from makros (long) and thymos (passion or wrath), so it literally means long-tempered. It describes someone with a long fuse who is slow to anger and who bears with other people’s faults long enough for them to grow. It is almost always patience with people rather than with circumstances or delays.

What does it mean that God is slow to anger?

In Exodus 34:6, right after Israel worshiped the golden calf, God called Himself “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” The Hebrew phrase is literally “long of nostrils.” God’s anger against sin is real, and He will not clear the guilty, but His patience holds back judgment so people have time to repent.

Why does Galatians 5:15 talk about biting and devouring one another?

Paul warns the Galatian church that if they bite and devour one another they will be consumed by one another. The sermon hears a wordplay: because humanity bit the forbidden fruit in Eden, we now live in a world that bites. Eight of the fifteen works of the flesh are about how people treat one another; impatience is how a community tears itself apart.

Why did Abraham and Sarah use Hagar to have a child?

God promised Abraham offspring as numerous as the stars, but ten years later Sarah was still childless, so she gave her servant Hagar to Abraham to bear a child she could claim, a common practice then. Genesis tells it in the garden’s own words: Abraham listened to his wife, and she took and gave. The shortcut worked, then tore the family apart.

How do you become a more patient person?

Not by willpower. The flesh, Paul’s word for self-reliance, is the very thing that bites, so trying harder asks the monster to be patient. Patience comes from God’s own patience, received by walking by the Spirit daily and keeping in step with Him; the Spirit draws the patience of Christ into the believer like sap from root to branch.

Does being patient mean putting up with abuse?

No. Paul is not telling anyone to lie down under abuse. Patience is love refusing to give up on people, and righteous anger still opposes whatever destroys God’s people; meekness, the next fruit, knows when to stand against injustice and when to sheath the sword. Patience is always paired with active help: admonish, encourage, help, bear with one another.

How does Jesus show the patience of God?

Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s patience. He came to give His life for people who bite and devour one another, and they spat on, whipped, and crucified Him; He never bit back, and from the cross He prayed, “Father, forgive them.” He waited three days in the grave, rose, and gave His Spirit, who grows His patience in believers.

Vision for the Christian Life

The Christian life this passage envisions is a congregation of long-nosed people. They still feel the heat, but it has a long way to travel now, because love, joy, and peace are secure in Christ and no annoying person can steal them. So they have time: time to let anger mature into a fight for someone’s good, time to garden thorny people with thick gloves, time to wait on God for a spouse, a child, a friend, or themselves. They reach for the Spirit the way a branch draws from the vine, until God’s creed sounds like their own: slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. They were bitten, and they were not consumed. He is not done with them, and He is not done with the people they love. Keep planting. He will bring the harvest.

Discussion Questions for Small Groups: Galatians 5

The sermon opened with a car ride that fell apart one small delay at a time. What is the roundabout in your week, the ordinary place where your patience runs out fastest? What do the people closest to you see when it does?
The sermon traced sin back to a shortcut: Adam and Eve grabbing now what God meant to grow in them over time. Where are you taking a shortcut right now because you are tired of waiting on God, on your own growth, or on someone else? What has that shortcut already cost?
The sermon was blunt: you are one of the annoying people Paul is talking about, and so is everyone in this group. Who in your life is currently biting you, and how have you been biting back? Whose patience with you have you been quietly relying on without noticing?
The sermon said willpower cannot make you patient because you are asking the monster to be patient; only dependence on the Spirit can. When your temper rises, what do you actually reach for first: a deep breath, a comeback, or Christ? What would make that reach for Him a daily habit rather than an emergency measure?
The sermon named the people who need your patience most: your kids, your spouse, the friend wrecking his life, and yourself. Which of those have you quietly given up on? What would “thick gloves and keep planting” look like with that person this month, and where do you need to stop biting yourself for what God is still growing?
Jesus was bitten by the people He came to save, and He never bit back; from the cross He asked the Father to forgive them. Where do you most need to hear that God has not given up on you? How does His long-suffering toward you change the way you will walk back into the room with the person who bit you last?

Related Messages in This Series

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Pastor David Hancock is the Lead Pastor of The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, FL, a church where believers and skeptics wrestle honestly with faith and doubt.

Wrestling with a question this raised? You can text in your question on any Sunday and hear it answered after the sermon. Or come sit with people asking the same things. Plan Your Visit

Read the full sermon manuscript

Imagine you trying so hard to be on time for something. You load your kids up in the car, and like always, Tommy, your 5-year-old, is inside looking for his second shoe. Tommy comes out with a big smile holding his second shoe up in the air and gets in the car. Before you back out of the driveway, Timmy, Tommy’s older brother yells out, " Wait, I have to go to the bathroom.” You grit your teeth, put the car in park and Timmy runs inside. When Timmy finally gets in the car, he accidentally steps on Tommy’s foot, and they start fighting. Stop fighting, you yell through the noise. You get moving with hopes you still make it on time. Then you hit heavy traffic but you still might make it. You come to one of those round abouts where no one seems to know what to do, and you follow all the patterns and rules, but someone pulls out in front of you and beeps the horn at you. You curve around them, yell at them with your closed window and unlike your normal nature you stick up your middle finger and fly past them with your grove church sticker on the back of your truck bumper.

We are in our series call Christian Freedom in Paul’s letter to the Galatians and today we arrive at Patience. What Paul calls the 4th fruit of the Spirit. My aim today is that you will learn the meaning of patience, where it comes from, and how you can finally get it.

14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

What does patience mean? The Greek word for patience is makrothymia. Makros means long, and thymose means passion or wrath. It means long-tempered.

Someone who is patient has a long fuse and is slow to anger.

And patience is mostly directed toward people.

Now Paul is importing the OT’s visual for patience. It literally means long in the nostrils.

You get the image of an angry cartoon character with smoke coming out of his nose.

The long-nostrilled man might have fire, but it’s calmed through the long tunneled nose before the smoke shows.

Patience in the OT is often also called long-suffering. It’s to suffer someone’s ignorance or even evil with a long nose, where anger has time to cool down.

Patience also includes the art of waiting. Like a farmer waiting on his crops to grow.

In sum, patience is the art of waiting for people to grow up.

Patience is fourth on the list of nine of the fruit of the Spirit. Paul never states there is an order but there seems to be one. Love starts as the foundation. Joy is the thrill, the happiness built on the stable foundation of love. And peace is knowing that love and joy aren’t going anywhere. There is no fear or anxiety because love and joy are secure and can’t be lost.

Love and joy and peace are never in threat of being lost, so the patience man doesn’t have to feel the anxiety caused by people who still need to grow. They can’t steal his love, joy, and peace, so he can look on them with care and want to see them grow up like the farmer’s crops.

Let’s go back to the 1st moment humanity lost its patience.

God gives Adam and Eve a garden to grow. God told humanity to take the goodness of love, joy, and peace of Eden and grow and expand it till it covers the earth. He said, have dominion and subdue, which is like calling them kings and queens under the divine King. Made in the likeness of God’s creative authority.

Be creative, and grow Eden until it covers the earth.

It’s a long process, but it’s a great honor to be called to grow paradise and cover the earth with it.

But then a snake slithered into this good garden and offered Adam and Eve a great temptation. A shortcut. If you eat of this tree, you will be like God; in the snap of a finger, you will be the ruler of your own Eden; no waiting, no delay, no more waiting on God or your abilities, or other people.

Eve took the fruit and ate of it, then she gave it to her husband, and he ate of the fruit.

They were already made in God’s image and likeness, but they grabbed for the short cut of what God meant to grow in them and through them through time.

Sin almost always starts with a temptation of some kind of shortcut.

Stealing, lying, coveting. This is all something that we do when we can’t wait anymore.

The couple that can’t wait for the wedding day, a shortcut.

We live in an instant gratification world. We have to wait for almost nothing.

We are no longer trained to wait. We aren’t good at it, especially waiting on God’s timing.

The world used to be much slower and those people seemed okay with it. Today, it’s faster than ever but never fast enough.

Now listen to the wordplay, Paul is probably using. Verse 15 shows us that because we couldn’t wait and we bit into the fruit in the garden, we are thrown into a world that bites, devours, and consumes one another.

Fits of anger might be the direct contrast to patience in community. It’s a flare-up, and the plural of fits means there is a pattern of not getting what we want fast enough so we have an outburst of anger. Short-nosed tempers.

But you can also argue that many of the other works of the flesh, like sexual immorality display a lack of patience in waiting. The the unmarried couple. They have an impulse and can’t wait until the wedding day.

8 of the 15 works of the flesh that Paul listed has to do with relationships with people.

And a lack of patience with people leads to breakdown in community.

Patience means long-suffering directed toward people. This implies people are annoying. Some of them bite us. Others are worse and seek to devour and consume us. Paul, by the way, is talking to the church. He is referring to all of us here. We are the annoying people that bite, devour, and consume.

It’s the people in this room especially Paul has called us to be long-suffering with.

But more than that, I’m annoying, you will have to be patient with me. And so are you, so you will need others to be patient with you.

Paul is calling us to be patient with each other.

What happens when we don’t learn this?

The man and woman who have dominated the book of Galatians are Abraham and Sarah from the bible. Their story is one of failing at patience and learning to grow in it.

God takes Abraham outside in the night and says, Look up at the stars; as many of the stars are that dot the sky, so will your offspring be. It’s an amazing promise.

1 year goes by, 5, 10; Abraham is 85, and Sarah is 75. The nursery is still empty, and I’m not sure how many 75-year-old pregnant women you have seen, but I’ve never seen one.

So Sarah made a plan of how to speed things up.

You see our servant Hagar. Now it was a common practice then that if a woman couldn’t get pregnant, her servant could have a child with her man and call it her own. So she adopted the ways of the world, sped things up, and listened to the language Genesis uses.

Abraham listened to the voice of his wife, and Sarai took and gave her to her husband.

The same words we hear in the garden.

It worked. That is the trouble with short cuts, they work.

Then the biting started. Hagar, the servant, felt contempt (16:4), and Sarai said to Abraham, “May the wrong done to me be on you.” Abraham shrugs and says Do to her as you please.

Sara pushes Hagar out, and she runs with her child Ishmael into the wilderness; their water runs out, and she lays him under a bush and walks away. She cannot watch him die.

This is where impatience leaves a family. Everyone got bit.

So how do we get patience, so we don’t see our lives and families fall apart?

We must first start with God’s patience toward us.

Moses says of God that He is “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

God is “Long of nostrils.”

It’s important to know when Moses says this about God. This is right after God’s people made a golden calf, worshipped it, and thanked it for leading them out of Egypt.

This becomes Israel’s creed about God: “He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” repeated throughout the story of God and His people.

And His patience has a purpose. Your growth.

2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

But scripture all tells us, “He will by no means clear the guilty.”

God has a righteous anger toward our sin, but he is gracious.

Jonathan Edwards talks of this in his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”says, God’s bow of justice is bent, the waters of his wrath have formed up as behind a damn, and his hands are holding us up from falling into the fire of judgment at any moment.

It’s an intense image.

And it’s the patience of God that holds back the waters, keeps us from falling into the fire, and his strong fingers that don’t release the bow.

God is patient with us to change.

His patience should give us patience toward others.

We are made in His likeness to be people who, like God, are patient with the people in this room, the people in our homes, our friends, and family.

And Paul teaches us how to do it.

He says walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. What’s that mean?

To walk means to have a habit, something you do daily. To keep in step with the Spirit is a military phrase that implies to be disciplined about that habit. It’s a whole church of people who are together, disciplined daily in a habit. What’s the habit?

Dependance on the Spirit to animate the patience of Christ in us.

It’s not us who has the patience. Paul says the flesh in us want’s to bite, devour and consume.

The flesh is self-reliance, and flesh is also the fleshy monster. So when you try on your own to kill your impatience and anger with the monster, you are trying to be patient with the monster and that’s why you aren’t able to be patient.

More than that, Paul says a war is going on in all of us. The flesh, which is what bites, devours, and consumes, and the Spirit.

So the Spirit goes to war with our flesh, so we might not break out in fits of anger, but be patient with each other as God has been patient with us.

Here is how Jesus explains it. He is the vine, and we are branches; without Him, we can’t bear fruit.

Christ is the divine root system that has all the nutrients for us to have the fruit of patience in Him.

And Christ is in us and we are in Him by faith. He is deep in our souls. What will draw Him out?

The Spirit is like the vein that reaches from us the branches, to Christ the roots system and draws us patience of God that has made His home in us so we can be patient with others.

His creed becomes our creed: I am slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

You can now say, “Yes, I have anger, but my patience gives me time to slow my anger and let it mature into something healthy.”

What is that healthy version of what anger matures into?

It’s the desire for people to become who they are made to be.

God’s anger is always rooted in something not being right with us and the world.

Healthy anger is when we are frustrated when people aren’t being who they ought to be. But when we are long-nosed, it means our anger matures into a fight for people to become who they are made to be.

Is that hard? Oh yes. But it’s what God has given you.

You have choice. You have a million reasons to rage in fits of anger. You could find justification for it all. People are annoying, and you have suffered them. You can say they deserve it all and find reasons for your wrath.

Or you can be patient as they become who God has made them to be.

Patience offers time to test your anger.

Paul says in another letter: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Instead, let your anger be purified through patience into encouragement for those who have let you down to become who they are made to be.

You can either nurse your anger overnight and let it grow, or you can see God’s patience with you and let it grow patience in you toward others.

Righteous anger opposes what destroys the community of God’s people; patience is love refusing to give up on those same people.

The cost of patience is that you get bit. But you can never be consumed by the biting of others as a Christian. The worst the world can do to you is take your life and that makes you alive in eternity.

Moreover, they can bite you, but that only makes you more aware of the patience God has for you, which makes you love Him and worship Him all the more.

Paul is not advising that you roll over and let people who are abusing you bite you. Meekness coming up is having the wisdom to know when to stand against injustice and when to sheath your sword.

The reward of patience is that people have time to become who God made them to be.

God eventually kept his promise to Abraham, and he had a son. And from that son’s bloodline came the son of God. And through Jesus Christ, Abraham is given sons and daughters of the faith more numerous than the stars in the sky.

Moses, the first one to sing of God’s patience was also a man of great patience. He pleaded with God to be patient with His people and hold back the waters of His anger, the arrows of His wrath.

But one day in the desert they thought they were going to die of thirst. They grumbled at Moses and at God and said they were better off slaves than free with God.

After so many miracles and signs, they still didn’t trust God. Moses had enough.

God told Moses to tell the water to come from the rock, but Moses, in his impatience, struck the rock twice, and water came out.

God told Moses that because of this what I’m calling impatience for God’s people that he couldn’t enter into the promised land. Patience is important in the eyes of God.

The same patience he gives us, he calls us to give others.

We have what Moses didn’t. The Spirit animating the patience of Christ in us.

Patience is always paired with active help toward others.

Paul says, "admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all" (1 Thess 5:14). "Reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience" (2 Tim 4:2). "With patience, bearing with one another in love" (Eph 4:2).

Later in this letter, Paul says restore people in a spirit of gentleness, bear one another’s burdens, let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.

Patience has a purpose; it gives people room to grow, space to change. It’s not ignoring sin; it’s not giving up on people, as God didn’t give up on you.

Don’t give up on the people in this room.

Your kids need your patience to grow into who they are made to be.

Your spouse needs your patience. Don’t give up on them. God is at work in their life.

Don’t give up on your neighbor, on your friend who is messing up their life,

God isn’t done with them.

Patience is the mark of a good farmer or gardener. God told Adam and Eve to grow Eden out and it took time. For us, we garden people who have thorns.

So with patience and thick gloves we learn to garden as we get bitten, knowing that people need time and space to grow, and one day they will thank us for not giving up on them even as they bite the hand that tried to feed them.

Some of you need to learn patience with yourself. If I had it my way, I’d be perfect by now. I’ve pleaded with God to take away my sins. But here I am, only growing increasingly aware that I’m a sinner.

So we must learn to be patient with ourselves and patient with God as He grows us into who we are made to be.

You aren’t perfect today because God is teaching you what Adam and Eve found out. We can’t become who we are made to be without God.

He is teaching you patient dependance.

Often I think when we bite others, we are biting in them what we are frustrated about ourselves.

We can learn patience with ourselves and others by looking at God’s patience with us.

When smoke starts pouring out of your nose. That is when you need to look at Christ.

Christ is the ultimate expression of God’s patience with us.

God has come into the world to give his life for those who have bit, devoured, and consumed each other.

We proved the depth of our depravity by biting, devouring, and consuming God Himself.

He came here and long suffered us. And He never bit back.

He is patience itself. The very perfect expression of it.

He came, and we spat on patience; we slapped patience across the face; we took God's patience and whipped it on the back with a cat of 9 tails, an instrument that brought great and long suffering, gripping and ripping the flesh on his back like teeth.

We nailed patience to the cross, and from that cross He said, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

Then He died and showed His patience as He waited not a minute, not an hour, not a day, but 3 days and finally the Father raised Him from the dead.

He rose and offered us the gift of His Spirit who would animate by faith the life of Christ’s patience in us.

God hasn’t given up on you. He won’t. Don’t give up others.

Be patient as God forms you and them into Christlikeness.