Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: 1 Peter 1:8-12

LIVING FOR THE LONG HAUL

All right, we’ve got about twelve minutes, at least the ballpark of twelve minutes, to talk about the subject of patience this morning. And the good news for you is you’re not going to have to exercise very much patience to get through the teaching. 

We’re back in the Book of 1 Peter, and I just want to read verses 8-12 for us. Now, maybe you’ve heard me say this before, but in the world of Greek scholarship, for any of us who have ever played video games– some of us are like, You can play video games as a Christian? Well, me and my wife do sometimes when we can’t sleep at night, but that’s another story entirely. 

Greek scholars would say that 1 and 2 Peter are something like the final boss of Greek study in the New Testament. It’s because Peter, or Peter’s scribe, uses incredibly verbose and dense vocabulary and phrases. 

And even in our English translation I often read, and this is interesting because I can look at the Greek so I can compare it back and forth to the English. Sometimes, even when I read the English translation, my answer to Peter is, Huh? What on earth are you talking about? 

1 PETER 1:8-12

So, I’m going to read this for us slowly. It will be verses 8-12, and I’ll be reading through the New Revised Standard Version. And if you need me to slow down, just yell at me, Dustin, slow down. It says, “Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace intended for you made careful search and inquiry, asking about the time and the circumstances that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings intended for Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, in regards to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit from heaven, things into which angels long to look!” 

Last week, Pastor Greg led us through verses 6-8, and he spoke to the necessity of trial and difficulty in our daily life. And whether a trial is the discipline of the Lord, is an attack from the enemy, is caused by human sin, it really doesn’t matter, because Peter shows us that every trial and every difficulty is an opportunity for the Lord to grow us into the nature of Christ. 

PATIENCE

And today, we’re going to talk about a trial that everyone loves. It’s called patience. Woo hoo, another helping, please. If we go elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul will tell us that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. 

Now, when I was a kid in Baptist Church, my Sunday School teacher would talk about fruits of the Holy Spirit, and I would think of Fruity Pebbles, and I would just check out of the rest of the lesson, which shows I didn’t have the fruit of patience yet. 

But fruit throughout Scripture is a spiritual metaphor for the evidence, a consequence, of a certain action. We remember the Book of Genesis, where Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and what happens after that? Sin and death. 

We remember when Jesus warned us that we are to judge certain teachers by their fruit, patience is the fruit. It’s the evidence that the Holy Spirit has control of our life, that we are actually living in alignment with Him. 

Impatience means, according to Peter here, that we are to stay in and under whatever process He’s put us in. We often see the reality of patience: our self-control, our kindness, our calm in the midst of difficulty when our spouse uses that tone that we love, when our children create chaos in the evening, and you’re like, I already put all these toys away. Why do I have to put them away again? 

When we go to work and that co-worker asks a question at the closing minute of the meeting, these are the moments where we have an opportunity to show the world around us that the Holy Spirit actually has leadership of our life. 

THE PATIENCE OF THE PROPHETS

And Peter here, it almost seems like a change in topic, he points to the Old Testament prophets as an example of patience. He really points out the prophet Isaiah by quoting this famous passage from chapter 40, which says, “The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” 

And Peter uses the figure, the person of Isaiah, as an example of supernatural patience. How do I know? Because he reminds these churches that the prophets, particularly Isaiah, had to exercise great patience because they weren’t serving themselves. They weren’t serving their own lives. He says they were serving you. 

I want to put that statement into perspective. Scholars estimate that the Book of Isaiah, at least the initial writing of Isaiah, happened sometime between 750 to 600 BC. That was a long time ago. You don’t have to be a history nerd to know that. 

I want to remind us that Paul is writing to churches in the first century AD. That means Isaiah had to wait for approximately eight hundred years in order to see his prophecy fulfilled. That’s a long time. That’s longer than any of us are ever going to wait in the Chick-fil-A line. That’s longer than any of us are going to have to wait for Social Security, even if they keep pushing the age up. 

Isaiah had to wait. He had to be patient. And guess what? It gets even worse if we go to the Book of Isaiah. In chapter 6, Isaiah hears from the Lord, Hey, you’re supposed to go to the people of Judah, but guess what? They’re not going to listen to you. They’re not going to give a rip about what you have to say. I’d be like, God, that’s awesome. Actually, it’s not. Can I get a different prophecy, please? 

In Isaiah 40, the Lord tells him, Hey, the people of Judah, they’re going to wither up like grass and blow away in the wind. Their lives are going to come to naught. I’d be like, Cool. This prophecy just keeps getting better and better. 

And in Isaiah 66, the Lord tells the prophet, Hey, you’re not going to know how this whole thing shakes out until the resurrection of the dead and new creation. My question is, Does Heaven have a customer service department where you can bring your receipt and go, Lord, this is a cool prophecy and all, but can I exchange it for another please?

Isaiah had to exercise great patience. It took eight hundred years to see his prophecy fulfilled, and yet he was faithful, because he surrendered himself in trust to the process of the Lord. 

GOD’S TIMING REQUIRES PATIENCE

Now, I want us to imagine getting a personal prophecy like that for our family. Imagine you’re with the Lord in prayer one day, and you hear His voice, and He tells you, Hey, My name is going to be magnified in your family for generations to come. I want that promise for my kids, for my grandkids. 

But imagine He says, Hey, in the meantime, guess what? Your spouse, they’re not going to listen to you. They’re not really going to give a rip about what you have to say. Sometimes it’s going to seem like they don’t even like you. 

Your kids, they’re going to be crazy for a while. They might even spend a wayward season away from the faith, and you’ll be really, really worried about them. Hey, that daily routine, that job, that thing you’re really stressed about, guess what? It’s not getting any better. It might actually get a little bit harder, and you’re not going to see how this whole thing shakes out until the resurrection of the dead again. Customer Service Department, new prophecy, please. 

But so often we get frustrated, we get disappointed, we get angry at God because we forget the truth that God’s promises are not conditioned by my expectations. I’ll say that again: God’s promises are not conditioned by my expectations. He controls the timing, He defines the process, and He determines the details. That’s why His promises often require my patience. 

Why, you might ask? Well, the Scriptures teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are eternal, which means that God has all the time in the world. That’s why David will tell the Lord, Hey, remember that I’m just human. 

According to American life expectancy, I’ve got about forty to fifty years yet. Lord, I know you’re going to keep going, but remember how small and finite my life is. According to Peter’s second letter, the timing of the Lord is moved by His mercy, not my urgency. Why is the Lord working so slowly? Because He desires that all would be saved, that all would come to saving knowledge and repentance. 

And lastly, if we go to Paul in the Book of Acts, he reminds us God doesn’t need anything. God isn’t insecure. He’s not afraid of missing His moment. He’s not in a hurry because He’s God all by himself, which means oftentimes we need to be patient. Everyone go, Woo hoo. 

So, why is Peter reaching into the story of Isaiah? Because he’s taking Isaiah’s patience and saying, Hey, you, you’re going to have to live this too. And Paul says to the Philippians, I want to know Christ, and I want to become like Him. The chief aim of salvation is that we would grow in our relationship with Jesus, and we would become like Him. 

And this is a hard truth that sometimes I don’t want to hear. God is often more interested in changing us than He is in changing our situation. So, to embrace His promises, we often have to let go of our need for immediate results. But thankfully, according to Scripture, the Holy Spirit doesn’t leave us hanging in the process. 

He’s given us the gift of prophecy, and according to Paul, prophecy is unto the purpose of building up and encouraging and strengthening the church. And I think we forget how blessed we are in our own generation. 

When Peter had this letter written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he had to find a scribe, which at the time was kind of difficult because literacy rates weren’t so great back then. He had to pay that scribe an exorbitant amount of money. He then had to send his letter with a messenger to these churches, a process that would often take months and months at a time. 

Today, when the Holy Spirit prompts us to encourage one another, all we got to do is take out this and send a message, and it’s there in an instant. Imagine what Paul and Peter would have done with this. We have been so blessed in our own time. 

LIVING WITH PATIENCE

So, as we close the most beloved topic of patience, I want us to invite some hard questions of ourselves. If the Spirit is inviting us into difficult situations so that we can grow in patience, and patience makes us more like Jesus, I want us to ask the questions. Maybe grab your journal or your phone and write this down. 

What is one specific situation in your life that you’ve been asking God to fix or take away? Is it a marriage hardship? Is it an unsatisfying job, financial difficulty, a strained relationship with a child, or a parent? A diagnosis? What in your life have you been asking the Lord to fix? 

When I was in my early twenties, it was the end of what was kind of the long span of the 2008 recession. It was 2012, and I had just gotten out of CSU, and I couldn’t find a decent-paying job. And so, I went to Denver to find the best job that I could locate, and it was with the city of Denver. 

And here I am, a middle-class kid from suburbia working with a bunch of guys who, for the most part, had been inner-city gangsters. I really didn’t fit in. I was the scrawniest truck driver you’ve ever seen. And if you ever get the privilege to drive a tractor-trailer through an alley in Denver, you’ll know what patience means. 

And so, when I first was working there, I got picked on. I wasn’t treated very well. My faith got mocked because it really didn’t fit kind of the grubby blue-collar culture there. But over the course of time, not only did I grow to be friends with my co-workers, but they began to respect me and my faith.

And one of my favorite memories– actually, I have a lot of favorite memories. I had friends who had called me with their marriage problems. I baptized some of their kids. I officiated some of their weddings. God opened so many doors in that season. 

And one of my favorite memories, and I’ll leave out the profanity for us since we’re in church, is a new guy on the fleet saw me, noticed I was the scrawniest truck driver there, and started to pick on me. 

And all my co-workers circled around and, with more profane language than this, said, Leave Father Dusty alone. He’s like a priest or something. Do you want to deal with God? Because we don’t. 

And you know, through that whole season, all I wanted was God to take me out of it. I was ready to go to grad school. I was ready to get training to be a pastor. I was blowing up pastor Greg’s phone, saying, Please save me out of this place. I need to get out. And I wanted to leave so I could become a minister in the church. 

And meanwhile, God was making me a pastor right where I was. I didn’t need a graduate degree. I didn’t need an ordination license. I didn’t need a job at a church. He was making me who I was supposed to be, right where I was, because sometimes God is more interested in fixing me than He is in fixing my situation. 

So, have the courage to ask, When things get hard, Lord, do You want to change this, or do You want to use this to change me? And if He says, I’m using it to change you, have the courage to ask, Then how should I pray? 

Should I pray for greater contentment? Should I pray for greater peace, so that in the midst of conflict, I don’t react, I don’t get angry? Should I pray for strategy? Real, tangible, practical help when I go to work, and I feel like I’m at the end of my rope? God, show me what I’m supposed to do in those moments. Give me practical things I can do to reveal You and be faithful where You’ve placed me. 

The question I leave you with this morning is, what if you’ve been asking God to remove the very thing He’s using to make you more like Him? And perhaps in those moments, do we risk missing Him? Because all we want Him to do is fix our situation instead of fixing us. All right, that’s patience. Woo hoo. Here we go. 

All right, let me pray for you guys. Lord, patience is difficult. I think of Paul’s words, that I desire you would live quiet lives, and I think about you, Jesus, fully God, fully human, and for thirty years, we hardly hear anything about Your life. 

Why? Because You were being patient, You were growing in wisdom, You were learning, You were allowing the culture of the Kingdom to inform every part of who You were as a human being. 

And I know You’re fully God and You’re fully human, and we don’t understand all the Christological dynamics of that. We can talk about it all day, and we’ll have a blast, but Lord, we know that You exampled perfect patience. 

So, Lord, in the moments where, like in the Garden of Gethsemane, we’re asking You, take this thing away, take this thing away, fix this thing, take it away. And instead, Father, Your answer is, no, I’ve left you here for a reason. 

Would You give us the patience, the supernatural strength, the trust and the faith to not only endure those things, but to be transformed by them? We pray for a greater measure of Your grace in our families, we pray for a greater measure of Your grace in our church. 

Would You grace us with wisdom and strategy to not only survive the week ahead of us, but to thrive, and show the world Your Kingdom? Lord, be glorified, all in all. Make us more like You, so that when the world sees us, they see Jesus. Amen.