Read: Exodus 34:1-9
Patience is a difficult discipline. We learn of its difficulty and how we are bent towards impatience from an early age. By waiting for birthdays, dinner, or a ride at an amusement park, we learn just how impossible patience is.
Waiting for things to happen for stuff that we want is a hard test of patience, but patience toward others is the most difficult test of patience. Again, we learn this lesson early, especially if we have siblings.
Bearing with people—their flaws, their sins, and the time it takes them to learn and grow—takes patience. The difficulty is in the very word ‘bear.’ We are carrying a heavy load, aching to put it down but not being able to. And the more we seemingly think we’re growing in patience, the Lord in His grace seems to expose just how impatient we truly are.
I thought I was a patient person until I got married. Then, as I thought I was growing in my patience toward my wife, we had a baby, and I have realized that the length of rope I have toward others is far, far shorter than I ever thought. But the Lord is patient, and this eye-opening experience has proven it all the more.
Although it is unpleasant and painful, the more the Lord graciously reveals our sinfulness to us, the more we are able to understand, appreciate, and love his perfections. The more I have come to understand how hard patience is, the sweeter God’s patience has become. When Moses was finally able to see a snippet of the Lord’s glory from the cleft of the rock he heard God proclaim some of his attributes, one of which was that he is slow to anger.
Upon hearing this he prays to the Lord and asks that God would be with his people and take them as an inheritance. This request comes with the full acknowledgement that those same people are stiff-necked and full of iniquity and sin.
Moses knew firsthand how difficult his people were and how much patience would be required to lead and to save them. Moses didn’t have that amount of patience, but he knew that the Lord did. Only the Lord is perfectly patient and capable of bearing with us.
Think how much patience is required to bear with us and not destroy us outright, let alone to send his only Son to die for our sins. God is perfectly holy and he has given us his perfect Word that has revealed exactly the kind of behavior, patterns of thought, and affections that are acceptable and pleasing to Him. And do we follow it? Not on our own.
We come out of the womb tainted with sin, and we only commit more and more sin as time goes on. As Paul learned, even when we learn of God’s standard our bent is to turn away from it and do its opposite (Rom. 7:7-8).
Yet the Lord does not immediately crush us for our iniquities. Through his providence he brings someone into our lives who shares the gospel with us, and by his grace he saves us (Eph 2:8-10). So now we’ve come to a knowledge of Christ, we have a new nature, and we are able to live by faith and love his law, and may think, “Ok, now I’m easy to live with. Now I won’t require that much patience to handle.”
Nope. It’s almost like we require more patience because now we’ve come to a knowledge of the truth and yet we still sin. Before Christ, we were at least ignorant and blind. But now we know grace. Now we know Christ and what it cost Him for our sins to be forgiven. Now we truly know what God desires from us and we still sin.
And yet, God still does not crush us and in fact, because of what Christ has done for us, he will never crush us. What love and what patience! As he is patient with us, let us be patient with others (Matt 18:23-35; Eph 4:32).
