Bear Fruit With Patience, Part 2

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1 1 Introduction i How do we appropriate the promises of God for our lives? How do we grow to maturity in Christ? What does God call on us to do that we might work the work of God? How do we exhibit the character of God? How do we act as light and salt in the world? Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God...But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience." Luke 8:11,15. Isaiah said that through the Messiah, the Christ, we would be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord (Isaiah 61:3). We are to bear fruit to Lord with patience! 2 What Is Patience? - Part 1 3 God Has Modeled Patience to Us - Part 1 4 God Gives Us Patience - Part 1 5 God Commands Us to Walk Worthy of Our Calling - Part 1 6 Our Patience Grows Through Endurance of Trials To show how different our life is from those who don't know Christ, we are told to joy in our trials and suffering. Why, because we're masochists? No, James tells us that God uses our trials and tribulations to mold our character, to change us, always seeking the goal of conforming us to the image of Christ: My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. James 1:2-4. Our trials are a test of our faith. Will we believe God during them or do we blame God for them? Will we rejoice in faith knowing that God is a good God, or will we only look with physical eyes and decry our suffering. Look at Job's reaction after all of his possessions were stolen and all of his children were killed: Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said: Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1: When Satan couldn't shake Job's faith by destroying his possessions and murdering his children, Satan struck Job with a terrible skin disease with running sores, and Job sat on the ground and scraped himself with a piece of a clay pot. Job's wife told him that his faith was useless, look where he was and what happened to him. God didn't protect him and God didn't deserve his worship. But Job responded in faith knowing that God was a good and just God: Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die! But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? In all this Job did not sin with his lips. Job 2:

2 When we look with eyes of faith, we are trusting that God is good and has good plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11). We know that the trials that we are suffering are necessary because God loves us. He is a God of wisdom and He is not capricious. Every single thing that God brings into our lives is meant to work something in us that could not be worked in any other way. Many of the things we suffer, we want to know why, and most of the time we won't receive an answer from God. Even Job was never told why he had to go through the things that He went through. But God grew Job through that experience and God blessed us by recording that experience for us in the book of Job! And at the end, God restored to Job double what he had before. Even though God doubled all of Job's possessions, he only gave him the same number of children as he had before. Job had to wait patiently to be reunited with all of his children in heaven. God had also doubled the number of his children, and Job waited in faith for his resurrection (Job 19:26). Our joy in the Lord is not based on our physical blessings or lack of them, on our comfort or our distress. It is based upon our faith in God and Christ: Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3: Our joy is in who God is and what Christ has done for us. Our joy is in knowing that we're going to live with God and Christ forever. Whether we live in plenty or in lack in our existence here on earth will be forgotten. James says that we are to wait patiently while God works in us, because this is how we will be made complete! Patience will make us perfect and complete! He compares us to a farmer waiting for the rain to make his crops bear fruit. Our patience in the working of the Lord in us allows us to bear fruit: Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. James 5: Bearing Fruit With Patience Patience, like everything else that God wants to produce in our character is contrary to the natural man. We are born with a nature that says, "...I want it now..."! Having patience means to follow Christ's call to deny ourselves (Matthew 16:24). I remember a story my mother told me about a battle she and I had when I was three. I was driving her crazy running around the house, and she told me that I had to sit quietly in a chair for five minutes without moving or talking. If I got out of the chair or started talking the five minute timer would start over. She sat me in the chair and put a clock in front of me. She said it took over four hours to get me to sit for five minutes without talking or leaving the chair. She told me that she swore to herself that I wasn't going to win! 2

3 Now we might think that this is just a story of the immaturity of a child. But it actually reflects something that all of us have in our human nature. We all have that same impatience built into us. It's actually a form of rebellion. No one can tell us what to do, and we don't want to wait for anything. We have to have external help from God to overcome ourselves. It's interesting that the world says that our problems are external, and the answers to our problems can be found in our hearts. God says that our problems are internal, our sin nature has corrupted our hearts, and the answers to our problems are found external to ourselves in God. God gives us external help through trials. It's not that God delights in bringing trouble on us. It's that God knows the lessons that He has to subject us to in order to produce godly fruit in our lives. He knows the state of our hearts, and uses the trials of our lives to reveal them to us: Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalms 139:23-24 KJV. The fruit that God wants to produce in our lives is the character of Christ. He wants us to walk before Him in holiness, not swayed by the promptings of our flesh. He wants the life of Christ living in us to be replicated in the lives of other people. We have been promised many things by God, but all of them only come to us by faith. Patience is the outworking of our faith. It is what demonstrates that our faith is real. We are ordering our lives by the keeping of God's word, walking in faith towards God, patiently waiting for God to complete His work in each of us. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Hebrews 6: The writer of Hebrews tells us to imitate those who through faith and patience have inherited the promises of God. Paul is someone who inherited the promises of God. Paul tells us to imitate him as he imitates Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). We are to seek out people in our own churches who are manifesting the fruit of the Holy Spirit and Christ in their lives and we are to imitate them. When we do this consistently we will find that other people are watching us and imitating us. We have a responsibility to model the life of Christ within us to other people. God wants our life in Christ to not be in vain. What would God say if when he died to save us and change us He can see no effect of His sacrifice on our lives? We are to bear fruit to His glory. 3

4 God tells us that when we forego vengeance we are also demonstrating faith and patience, knowing that God will judge every wrong and he calls on us to demonstrate that we are different from the world: He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. Revelation 13:10. We can all agree that the state of people living during the time of the tribulation is going to be unimaginably bad. We are to patiently wait for God to carry out His promises, no matter how bad our situation looks: Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Revelation 14:9-12. Anyone who is obedient to God in the last days and refuses to worship the beast or his image is demonstrating faith at the cost of his life. He is demonstrating patience in waiting for God to save him! God calls on the people of God to surrender their lives in support of their faith during the time of the tribulation. It is no different for us now. God calls on us to surrender our lives in support of our faith knowing that God has given us eternal life and we are to be unafraid! We are patiently waiting for the fulfillment of Jesus' promise to return: Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." John 14:1-3. 4

5 8 Conclusion Everything that God asks of us is something that He's already given us. When He asks us to endure with patience and longsuffering, He's really asking us to walk in the Spirit and use the gifts of the Spirit that He's already given us! We are to always have the Lord before us, to remember who we are in Christ, and with patience rule over ourselves, that we might bear fruit to the Lord and people around us: He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. Proverbs 16:32. The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression. Proverbs 19:11. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Proverbs 24:10. By long forbearance a ruler is persuaded, and a gentle tongue breaks a bone. Proverbs 25:15. We are to know that in everything, the Lord is doing a good work in us, something that only He can do, and that can only be done in the way that He is doing it. Exercise the patience that God has given you through the Holy Spirit. Wait and watch what God is doing in you, and through you: Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. 1 John 3:2-3. Copyright Stephen W. Lange. All rights reserved. i All scripture taken from the New King James Version, NKJV, unless otherwise noted. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 5