Dennis Tuuri

our series of studies going through the church confessional statement. For those of you who don’t have a copy of that statement, I brought several copies today. If you just ask me afterwards, I’ll go ahead and give you one.

We are discussing actually the first sentence in that confessional statement about supporting the church: endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit that God has provided through his shed blood.

We’ve been using Ephesians 4 really as the base text for the last three or four weeks and we’ll continue to use it for another couple of weeks. We’ve been talking about unity and we talked originally about the foundations of unity being one Lord, one faith and one baptism out of verse four in this text. We then went to a discussion of the ethics of unity talking about the need for diligence, humility, meekness, and then last week we kind of summed up those three aspects of the ethic of unity.

And today we’re going to move on and talk about patience and forbearance. Next week we’ll talk about the purpose of that unity.

Going through more of Ephesians 4th chapter, I think it’s somewhat interesting that a church that is obviously associated with the theonomic perspective yet we spent a month now on what I guess could be described as body life and that’s been very intentional. We recognize that as we said as we began this series that it is important for a doctrinal foundation to correct understanding of God’s word. But then we also know it’s important to apply that orthodoxy and orthopraxy and it’s important to work out true piety in relationship to the foundation that Jesus Christ has purchased with his blood. And these scriptures tell us quite clearly that we’re to endeavor to keep the unity of the body of the unity of the spirit that Christ has purchased.

So there’s a unity that exists. There’s a unity that is continued and maintained through correct relationship to one another through the application of God’s law.

So I think that’s a good thing that we’re doing this. This morning we’ll talk about patience and forbearance. Now last week we considered meekness, humility, diligence. We’ve been talking about those things for a couple of weeks and those things really we made primary application in the body here to people in the church who are doing things correctly maybe differently from us maybe in a different fashion from us and yet humbling ourselves and seeking the best of people around us.

Today though we kind of take a shift an emphasis and the patience that God calls us to and the forbearance that he instructs us to in these verses here and throughout the scriptures recognizes the fact that within the body of Christ there’ll be problems. There’ll be people who don’t do things correctly all the time. There’ll be people who fall short of God’s calling. We all fall short and we’re going to fall short in relationship one to another as well.

And the verses we have before us are extremely important in discovering how to deal with those sort of things.

Patience and forbearance is kind of a hard truth to work through and to be able to explain beyond simply saying the words. It’s a hard truth to communicate. And yet, it’s such a great need, I think, within our lives, within the context of the church and the world at large, that it’s very important we spend some time talking about it.

This week, as I turned over this subject of patience and forbearance in my mind over the week and meditated on these things and what God’s word has to say about them, it was interesting how many occasions we have during the day to think about that how either we’ve been patient or we haven’t been patient. Normally we haven’t been patient. How many things there are in life that causes us to be forbearing toward other people, towards circumstances or whatever.

It strikes us every day. I’m sure that probably a good portion of you sitting out there this morning had to exercise some patience or should have exercised some patience even this morning getting ready for church and getting here on time, etc., etc. And certainly those of us with family members, wives or children or extended family, that takes in just about all of us, have had to exercise patience and forbearance within the context of the family.

So it’s an extremely important thing. I had a couple of—several long-distance phone calls this week from Alaska, Texas, talked to Steve Carmichael down in California. And you know, in every one of those conversations, something relating to patience and forbearance would come up. And there are many problems that exist in many churches that are a direct result of failure to apply these structures that God puts upon us this morning in terms of patience and forbearance.

It’s extremely important. It’s important and it’s also hard to do and we’ve talked about that in relationship to all these other things. The ethic of the unity that God has called us to. God tells us to be diligent to do these things because they’re not easy to do. We talked last week how it’s not easy to put somebody else’s best interest in front of our own. It’s not easy to humble ourselves, to think of ourselves secondly after we think of some other people.

And this morning, it’s even going to be more difficult as we think about forbearing of people who not only are different but actually do things incorrectly or wrong or offend us in some way and actually act outside of the bounds that God has placed them in their trespasses. So, it’s very difficult to do it particularly this age that we live in. This is an age of rights. This is an age of looking out for number one and of doing to others before they do unto us.

I thought that probably is somewhat peculiar to our age. But then I was reading a quote by Calvin when he was talking about patience and he quotes a French phrase that I won’t attempt in the French. But the translation of the phrase is that this is a common phrase at the time in France apparently: “I am watching him as he watched to do a bad turn to me.” Again, you know, the same kind of ethic that we have at work in our day and age or lawless day and age today was in place in France at the time of Calvin as well.

So it probably isn’t particularly new and novel, might be somewhat new and novel though the fact that people actually openly espouse that sort of attitude and that kind of blasphemy against God’s decree but any event is extremely important to understand these things and so we’ll talk about them a couple of minutes here.

We’re instructed quite plainly in these verses before us to be patient. Now the word there longsuffering in Ephesians 4:2 is translated by other people as being patient or long-suffering. The word actually comes from two Greek words put together: makro and thumia. We’re familiar with makro these days—we know about microcomputers or small. Makro means big or long as opposed to micro which is short or small and the other Greek word on the other half of this conjunctive word here in Greek is thumia which means temper. So being patient quite simply means to have a long temper.

And the reverse of that, of course, would be to have a short fuse. And unfortunately, that’s our sinful nature, to have short fuses, one toward another. But we’re called to exercise long-temperedness, longsuffering, to have long fuses, as it were.

Now, why do we do this? Well, first of all, God is patient toward us. We’ve always talked in this church, and we prayed this morning through the song that we sang after the reading of the sermon scripture that God would reveal himself to us in the scriptures. The scriptures are primarily a revelation of the person of God and then to us in relationship to him through covenant. Well, we find out in the scriptures quite early on that God is indeed long-suffering and patient. He’s patient toward us. In 2 Peter 3:9 and 15, we read that the Lord is not slack concerning his promises as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish that all should come to repentance.

Verse 15: “And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you.” So we know quite clearly that God is patient and longsuffering toward us and that the purpose of that is our salvation. It’s for our benefit that he is patient toward us.

Now his very character itself also encompasses that long-suffering merciful nature. In Exodus 34:6, we read the following: “And the Lord passed by before him, him being Moses, and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands.’” God identified himself to Moses in this context that he was long-suffering, merciful, and gracious.

It’s important to recognize the context of that. The context was the people of Israel had sinned grievously before God. Moses had broken the first set of the commandments. And now Moses was going back to God to receive the Ten Commandments again. And God reminds him here that he is certainly being longsuffering toward the nation of Israel by not wiping them out entirely through their disobedience. Moses has just prayed to God that he wouldn’t do that, that he would spare his people after all. And God says, “Okay, I’ll do that and I’ll give the law again to you graciously because I am longsuffering.” It’s part of his very character and was demonstrated as such in the giving of the law that he gave us to define the covenant relationship we had with them.

So God in his very essence or in his character is long-suffering and patient. And so it’s extremely important then that we image God in that same way. He calls us to be patient and long-suffering.

Now we know that this means in relationship to a lot of different things. First of all to be patient toward everything the circumstances that we find ourselves in. Now that isn’t really imaging God in the same way as some other ways of patience are. I mean after all, God isn’t patient when he encounters circumstances that are out of his control. That’s not the sort of patience he has. But he calls us to that. He calls us to trust in his decree and in his providence and recognize that all these things come into our lives for our good and beyond that for his glory.

And so to be patient toward all the things that occur in our lives that we don’t particularly like or understand. It’s important in relationship to that to—I’ll just throw in as a sideline here that patience is one of the attributes that’s required of eldership. I meant to say this for a couple of weeks and I’ll say it now. All these things we’ve talked about the last couple of weeks being merciful being humble rather and being meek and being diligent to preserve the unity that God has given us. All these things are primary qualifications of eldership.

Now we’re going to move here in the next month or so into a prolonged study of the Old Testament offices leading up to a discussion New Testament eldership. But it’s important that we recognize that we’re really not—this is not a separate subject here. We’re laying some foundation here, foundation work here in terms of the correct attitudes that elders must possess as they work with other people within the church.

But in any event, we’re required to be patient. Now, God’s decree and providence of course is the basis for that patience. In what we read this morning, Psalm 103:14 says that God knoweth our frame. He rememberth that we are dust.

Now in commenting upon this there’s a quote from William Gurnall who said this: “Not like some unskilled empiric who hath but one receipt for all strong or weak young or old but as a wise physician considers his patient and then writes his bill. Men and devils are but God’s apothecaries. They make not our physic but give what God prescribes. Balaam loved Balak’s fee well enough but could not go a hair’s breadth beyond God’s commission.”

Now, there’s some old English in that. What he’s saying is physic is a prescription. He says that men and devils are God’s prescription for us for our health. They’re not outside of the will of God somehow. They’re part of God’s providence for us. He remembers our frame. He treats us according to our needs. He’s the great physician. And part of that treating of us is a decree that he in his providence brings these things into our lives that we often chafe against.

All these things are related of course and the fact that meekness is a being broken to God’s harness accepting his bit in our mouth as it were to move his way implies that everything that we come across in life is part of that bit. And to say that to be impatient with things or people or circumstances is to try to spit that bit out of our mouth. Well, we can’t do it. Number one, you know, we just can’t do it. It’s not going away. It’s there. We can bloody our mouths in that bit. But that’s the only effect of our chafing against God’s will be that we’re hurting ourselves as it were.

All these things come into our lives as part of God’s prescription for our souls.

I was listening to a tape by James B. Jordan this week and he was talking about Jacob and Jacob wrestling with God and I thought he said some very perceptive things. Whether or not his interpretation of the story is quite accurate, we know what he was suggesting was is that when Jacob began to wrestle with this man at dark, wrestled all night long with him. He didn’t really know who he was. And we know that’s true in the story.

And he could have supposed, I suppose, that it was Laban. Laban had been had problems with Laban, and Laban was upset about him actually getting out with the goods and everything that he had. He could have thought it was Esau. Esau, after all, we know he’s afraid of Esau’s actions toward him as he moved back toward his land. And Jacob could have thought he was one of these two fellas. And yet, he realized at the end of the wrestling match that it was God he was wrestling with all along.

And whether or not Jacob had those sort of thoughts as he was wrestling with God. We don’t know. But we do know that the trials and tribulations brought upon Jacob through Laban and through Esau were part of God’s wrestling as it were with Jacob. God training Jacob for strength and perseverance and correct action in light of various trials and tribulations.

And we know we wrestle with our kids. Almost all of us here who have children have wrestled around on the floor with them. And we do it part of the reason why we do it is to strengthen them. And to teach them, you know, how to be wily and strengthen their muscles and everything. And God does that with us. He brings these trials and tribulations, the way that he brought Laban and Esau and other just other problems and tribulations into Jacob’s life for the purpose of training Jacob in righteousness. And Jacob responded correctly.

We’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but Jacob came out of that wrestling match blessed by God. So, we should be patient under various trials, recognizing that God’s decree is what brings things to pass, is what has determined what will come to pass. His providence brings those things to pass. And within that scope, he is doing these things for our good if we’re the elect of him. And we should be patient then, taking God’s bit in our mouth and not trying to spit it out.

God raises up various trials to train individuals and to train his church as well. You could say that God has raised up Satan for that very purpose. Certainly of showing his power over all principalities and powers and those things that would raise themselves up against him, but also for the purpose that we would be trained and righteous to understand our necessary necessity for our perseverance.

Now justice is not done away with however through our patience. It’s wrong to simply think of patience as a waiting or a forbearing under some load without some other aspect being involved.

Well, now how do I know that? Well, we quoted Exodus 34 a little bit ago that God identified himself as being long-suffering. He goes on in Exodus 34:7 to say that he forgives iniquity and transgressions and sins, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children under the third and fourth generations. He reminds Moses that though he is long-suffering and patient, that does not mean that his justice is not at work. He goes on to say then that although I am long-suffering and patient, by no means will the guilty be cleared.

Longsuffering has the connotation and endurance and forbearance of holding up until another time. It’s the postponement of God’s wrath that is his patience toward us. It’s not somehow winking the eye at sin.

Now, there’s some very good verses that talk about this as well in the book of Revelation. Revelation 13:10 talking about the beast: “Now, he that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity. He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” Well, that’s an interesting verse. Same thing in Revelation 14. “The third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If any man worship the beast in his image, receive his mark in his forehead or on his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, 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 ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast in his image. And whosoever receiveth the mark of his name, here is the patience of the saints. Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.’”

Now, we’ve talked about this work a few weeks ago to show the relationship between the keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. But this verse also teaches us that this is the patience of the saints.

In both those verses, what’s he talking about? He’s talking about the fact that we know God’s judgment comes upon those people who are in rebellion and ethical rebellion against him. We don’t think that God’s justice will never be satisfied. Just the reverse, we’re patient because we know that God does act in the affairs of men, that he is sovereign in history and in time as well, and that he brings various eschatological endpoints, judgments against people who are acting in rebellion and in disobedience to his law.

Patience is never seen in the scriptures without a corollary accompaniment of hope. Okay? So patience is waiting with hope because we know that God’s justice will be forthcoming in the world and in eternity as well. So it’s wrong to think of patience is somehow winking the eye at sin and that’s not what we’re implying this morning. God’s justice is a part of our patience and our patience is identified with the sure word of God that his wrath comes upon unbelievers.

Patience is awaiting with hope. In Romans 8:24-25 we read: “We are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why do he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it?” You see the correlation there between patience and a hoping for things that we know will come forth from God’s hand. So our patience has its firm foundation in reality. And the reality of the matter is that we have a God who judges righteously.

So those things are all really in context of our patience towards circumstances, toward the ungodly and yet these verses really are talking about something different, aren’t they? In a way, a different application, different focus point. And that focus point is the church. It says we’re to be patient in the light of our keeping the unity of the spirit for bearing one another in love. Our patience then has to do with the church specifically in these verses.

And that patience is seen in the verse we just read in verse three from Ephesians 4 as issuing forth into the act of forbearance. Patience issues into forbearance and a holding up as it were is what the word means of putting up with a bearing up with a bearing with one another in the body of Christ.

Now this isn’t easy for us to do either and sometimes it may be even more difficult for a church that understands the abiding validity of God’s law and the theonomic perspective to exercise forbearance. Forbearance is not always been associated with the theonomic mindset necessarily of individuals who are identified with the theonomic perspective or with the Christian reconstruction.

Frequently, we’re seen and portrayed as those who want to get even. You know, now that we know God’s law says this about homosexuals, let’s go do something about it. Let’s make sure God’s justice comes together right now. Let’s get out there and exercise the death penalty. Now, we know that the communists are diametrically opposed to the faith of Jesus Christ, and that’s their whole purpose. They hate God, and they hate life, therefore, and love death. Well, let’s do something about it. Let’s go wipe them out.

Now, that we know that criminals should receive restitution. Let’s get them paying for what they’ve done. Let’s get this thing in order here and let’s start exercising God’s justice today. Keith Bahnsen’s talked about, you know, theonomic jihad. So, we to wage now holy war as it were in the name of theonomy. He said that jokingly of course. Clearly that can become the mindset of us in a church like this that understands the validity of God’s law and the necessity for justice. We want to get things moving right now.

And that kind of thing can transfer over into the churches and I’ve seen it happen in a number of churches where the same sort of mindset permeates the church. There’s any problems in the church. Let’s take care of them right now. There’s trouble with a disobedient child. Let’s get on them. Let’s get that child quiet. Get him to bring that child into obedience. Otherwise, we shouldn’t have him at the table. Let’s start moving on this stuff and let’s start making God’s law applicable in our lives right now.

And it kind of reminds me of that movie Network, you know, where I don’t remember the name of the news reporter, but in that movie he went and wanted everybody to go out to their windows and scream, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Well, sometimes that’s the way we can feel when we understand the necessity for God’s justice in the world. We’re mad and don’t want to take it anymore. But that’s not what God calls us to. God calls us to patience and forbearance, recognizing that God’s justice will be done in the earth.

And we are to work for godly reform in the civil courts. We are to work for a strengthening of the unity of the spirit in the church. And we are to work for that kind of lawful abiding of God’s law in the church as well. But in the context of that, God calls us to patience and forbearance as these things could work through.

Well, who really wants to live in a world of networks, perfect justice as it were, being mad as hell and not taking anymore and making people pay right now for what they do wrong? Who wants to live in that world really? Are any of us willing to stand forward in that world and to accept the judgments that’ll come forth?

What is perfect justice after all? Perfect justice has to be defined in the context of the perfect author of all things, God. And what did we just read in the responsive reading this morning about God’s action in history? Psalm 103:7-14: “He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, he rememberth that we are dust.”

God is characterized by patience and forbearance toward us. And so we recognize that perfect justice is not immediate retaliation for every wrong suffered. That’s not what God does with us. I suppose there’s not a one of us here who in the last 24 hours, well, there may be some of you, but probably most of us in the last 24 hours have had have spoken words, committed deeds, or had thoughts that if we received perfect justice, being complete retaliation now for the sins that we commit, would not stand here today. We couldn’t stand in God’s presence. We would be killed by him. Yet, we know God doesn’t treat us that way. He’s put his wrath upon Jesus Christ and not upon us.

Not one of us could live in that kind of world of perfect justice, as it were, of exacting all the requirements of God’s justice for all disobedience. Right now, this is also true in the civil arena. There are rules, there are limitations that God puts upon us in the civil arena through the scriptures as to evidence. For instance, we may be absolutely certain that somebody has killed another person. But if you don’t have two witnesses, one of which of course could be circumstantial evidence, but if you don’t have two witnesses, you can’t convict the man. Period. I don’t care how sure your knowledge is. God’s put limitations upon us. And so, the idea that we can completely work these things out right now in time in history is wrong.

Now, as I said before, it doesn’t mean that God winks at sin. God will receive recompense against those who raise up against him. But it does mean that we should be patient and forbearing and wait for God’s wrath to accomplish what we cannot. And it also means that specifically in the context of the church, we’re to be forbearing of all those little hurts we might suffer at the hands and mouths of other people and their thoughts as well in the church.

Now, this is real obvious in the family context. And that’s one of the things that God uses here. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear him. Well, God looks upon us as his children. And so we all should have that same kind of pity and compassion one for another within the church.

You know it during our communion service we have a statement in there. We believe in giving our children who are baptized in the visible covenant community. We believe in giving them the sign of continuance to that community which is communion. And we always have in the admonition part we always exhort the fathers to examine their children and see if they’re in the faith and see if they’re walking in basic obedience to the covenant. But we always have a phrase in there making allowance for their foolishness of hearts. A child as he grows up is not going to understand completely his sin. He’s not self-conscious in it yet. Well, the same thing is true of us. We have foolishness in our mouths, in our in our thoughts. We don’t walk in perfect obedience. We slip. We trespass. We fall outside of the bounds that God has given.

Toward one another, and yet God doesn’t have civil penalties for some of those things. Doesn’t really call on us to work every one of those things out in the context of the church. It’s just like at home in a marriage. And some of the situations I was talking about earlier, the conversations I had to do with marriage. A marriage in which there’s no forbearance, in which there’s no patience with one another’s faults, and a forbearing of the wrongs suffered at the hands of the mate is a marriage that is going to go down the tubes either through divorce court or through just a growing stoniness and a coldness that grows between the couple.

We have to be forbearing with one another’s faults. Every time our wife says something that we don’t like or that is not and it really is somewhat hurtful to us, we can’t expect to go to her and get that thing resolved right now. And we can’t expect the wife similarly can’t think that same thing about the husband. God calls us to overlook certain things. He calls us to do that in love toward one another.

Now, we can thank God for his mercy and overlooking as it were and being forbearing with our sins in the context of our relationship to him. As I said earlier, we all would suffer the death penalty if we wanted perfect justice today. God overlooks those things. He’s forbearing. He’s patient with us as we mature in the faith. And he deals with us in specific areas at specific times. And we can thank God for that.

It’s a parable in the scripture about the master whose one of his slaves owed him a tremendous amount of money and the master forgave him and the slave then went out and had other people that owed him money and he didn’t forgive him. He wanted his money in full today and that man suffered the wrath of God, the wrath of the master when he went back to him and he found out that unfaithful servant was now exacting full price from others when full price wasn’t exacted from him.

Well, that’s the same situation we’re going to find ourselves in if we go into our prayer closets and thank God for his forbearance of our sins and his patience toward us in bringing us into a maturity of the faith. If we thank God for that and then go out of that prayer closet into our families and don’t exhibit that same forbearance one toward another or if we come to church and don’t exhibit that same forbearance when somebody says something that kind of sets our teeth on edge. We must be forbearing in these things.

Now there’s many ways which that forbearance can come through. Calvin talking about the need for patience says that you know you got a couple of different ways that people deal with patience or impatience. One person can rail at the mouth right away. You know you come across a situation that you don’t like. For instance a couple weeks ago my car won’t go through DEQ. Still won’t go through DEQ. And you can rail against that and get mad at God and curse and whatnot. And that’s the way some people handle that kind of thing.

Other people don’t say things like that. They close their mouth and don’t blaspheme God with their mouths and yet inside their hearts they’re just churning mad about the whole thing and great anger is welling up inside them well either way is really not the correct attitude to have is it. Not patience is to just close our mouths and yet let these things bubble up inside of us to have these bad attitudes toward God and his providence well the same thing’s true in the church you may not actually talk about somebody who has offended you may not go to somebody and spread that spread that around and so increase your sin.

But you may not resolve it in your own heart either. Some of the one of the saddest things I’ve seen in life are older people who frequently will tell you about all the wrongs they’ve suffered throughout their lives. They’ve never learned that God has called them to forbearance and to a patience, waiting for God’s justice to be done.