When Saint Teresa of Avilla went through a difficult period in her life, she complained to God about her mistreatment from so many different people. God said to her “This is how I always treat my friends.” Teresa never minced her words. She simply replied, “Well, that must be why you have so few!”
But Teresa of Avilla did eventually go on to acquire the patience of, well, a saint.
Have you ever noticed that whatever checkout queue you choose, it turns out to be the one that progresses slowest of all? Even if I take my time to study the different queues to identify the fastest moving one, once I join it, it grinds to a halt. Customers in front of me will have a problem with their debit card or their purchases will have barcodes that the scanner fails to recognise, requiring a long discussion with the checkout manager - who will happen to be at tea break, or the cashier will have to change the till roll - for the first time ever and will need assistance. Lord, teach me patience! Am I alone in this?
Here is the Oxford definition of patience. “Patience: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.”
But the Bible says that irritating inconveniences and drawn out delays do not occur by accident. God’s word teaches us that they are permitted by God for a very specific purpose, (to grow character and fortitude and stature in us).
So next time you are held up by dithering drivers, incompetent cashiers or tea-drinking tradesmen you can say “Praise the Lord, that he is so meticulously concerned about my sanctification!”
How patient are you? (get interrupted by mobile phone and talk for several minutes, turning back on congregation)…
Now where was I? Uhm... Do you know I can't find my place. Sorry about that. Uhm... Let me start again. When Saint Teresa of Avilla went through a difficult period in her life...
See, how many of you found yourself getting a little bit annoyed just then?
Does it matter how longsuffering you are? It really does. God’s word says here that patient endurance is one of the keys to blessing.
Jeremiah and Job
What does that look like in real life? James says, “Well take a look at the prophets and Job. These people are really good examples of patient endurance. Let’s read v10-11 again:
“Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered.”
Take, for example, the prophet Jeremiah. When Kathie is trying to say something to me and I fail to listen to her, gracious and considerate as she is, she gets a little fed up with me. You can understand that – and possibly even sympathise with her from personal experience.
But Jeremiah takes that indignity to a whole other level. He was almost completely ignored and rebuffed his whole life. Try and put yourself in his shoes. How do you think that would have felt to go through life, week after week, month after month, year after year with everyone switching off and blanking you as soon as you open your mouth? No wonder he looks so thoroughly fed up in Rembrandt’s picture of him.
Word for word, Jeremiah is the longest book in the Old Testament. It contains nearly 40,000 words. (I counted this week – with the aid of a computer you’ll be relieved to know). But just hold that number in your minds for a moment; 40,000 words. The average sermon you hear at All Saints’ is 1,200 / 2,200 words.
Now let me tell you the story that you find in Jeremiah 36. It’s about a scribe who reads out Jeremiah’s urgent prophecy to wicked king Jehoiakim. Jeremiah pleads with him to heed God’s warning of imminent disaster, and lead the nation to repentance to avoid catastrophe. King Jehoiakim takes a penknife and cuts up the scroll inch by inch, as it is read to him, and tosses Jeremiah’s life work into the fire, piece by piece. (That’s how they shredded documents in the 6th Century BC). 40,000 painstakingly penned words - all shredded and burned in one evening. And when it’s all over, God says to Jeremiah, “Now then, I want you to take a new parchment and a pen and write it out all over again. Every word.” That’s an example of the sort of patience James is talking about in v10.
It puts waiting for a late bus or putting up with a delayed telephone engineer into perspective doesn’t it?
And then James says in v11, “You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about.”
Job had to suffer more than Jeremiah, much more than Teresa of Avilla, and much, much more than a supermarket customer in a hurry. If you’re not all that familiar with the story of Job it goes like this:
Job is a good man, who loses in one day, his livestock (symbolic of his source of income) and all his servants, (symbolic of his wealth). It's already a bad day when you lose your job and your life savings. But there is worse. On the same day, shortly after Job prays for each of his children, his house collapses on them, leaving no survivors.
In a single day, he loses everything he has. And there is more to come. Shortly after all this, Job is afflicted from head to toe by a painful skin disease. He scratches his itchy festering skin with pieces of broken pottery and sits on a pile of ashes well outside the city, because nobody can bear to look at him. He is ugly and disfigured. People hide their faces.
It is at this moment that his wife begins to nag him. “You should curse God and die” she says. “Go on! Maybe he will put you out of your misery.”
Job probably just needs a little love and support, but in four little words (Curse God and die) his wife abandons her faith, washes her hands of her husband and wishes him dead. “Thank you darling, I feel better already.”
It's easy to criticize this woman when we read about it in black and white. But to be fair to her, she has just lost everything too. It is so painful when a loved one is really suffering and there is nothing you can do to help. It may be that Mrs. Job cannot stand seeing him suffer and just wants his ordeal to end. Yes, she is wrong to encourage her husband to turn away from God. But she is in shock, she is traumatized, she has lost everything.
But poor old Job. I guess after all this he probably just wanted to be left alone - which is when his four talkative friends turn up to offer him a bit of well-meant advice. Actually a lot of well-meant advice. And a fair bit of criticism too.
Job is so wretched, so disfigured by his afflictions, that at first they don’t recognize him at all. When they finally realize that it's him, the Bible says they “start crying loudly,” which was the custom at funerals. What an extraordinary blessing that must have been… How encouraging.
Without going into too much detail, Job’s four friends fill up thirty-three chapters with unfair criticism, simplistic platitudes and unhelpful advice. They end up basically saying that there is no smoke without fire. If you suffer, it’s because you must have sinned badly. Glenn Hoddle could have told him that…
Job’s friends did not see that there was a bigger picture. It was in fact an affliction visited on Job by Satan and was authorized by God himself. Suffering is usually much more complex than we imagine. If you’re going through the mill right now, it is not necessarily a spiritual attack, simply because it was for Job. But it might be. If you are going through a long tunnel of misfortune it is not necessarily a consequence of sin; in the Bible, it hardly ever is. It is, in fact, difficult to discern clearly what is going on spiritually when we, or someone we love, are struck by illness or adversity.
Take a look at the list of all Job lost. He was left bereaved, wretched, afflicted and penniless. But in the Bible here, it is not the poverty or the pain but the patience of Job, which is the important thing.
I read the book of Job back in June and I noticed then that, with all the grief he got, he was never aggressive or violent. It is true that he got very, very low and he did take his friends to task for being so simplistic and annoying. He was only human after all. But what does Job’s patience look like in the face of ignorance and provocation? It looks composed, even-tempered and gracious.
And what does Job’s patience look like in his prayer life? In Job 1.21 he says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
In other words, he says “God knows what he’s doing. He owes me nothing anyway. I trust him. He is always worthy of praise. Nothing else is more important than that.” Job didn’t understand at all what was happening to him, but he did know that God is good. All the time.
The Lord likes to give grace to patiently endure inconvenience, injustice, even injury - and to be victorious over it. Think of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus Christ showed matchless patience under intolerable pressure from excruciating pain. No suffering will ever plumb the depths of the torment that Jesus Christ endured for me and for you. He didn’t say “Excuse me, what about my human rights?” He took the full weight and the eternal consequences for all the wrong we suffer, whether we are innocent or guilty. He was completely blameless and yet he endured hell’s fury so that we might receive grace and forgiveness and life in abundance.
God does test our patience this way because he wants us to be like him – slow to anger and abounding in love.
God does test our patience this way because he wants us to be like his Son – remember the words of Paul: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst… that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense... patience.”
And I want to say this if you feel this is all a bit academic: The lives of Jeremiah and Job are absolutely relevant if you find yourself tested at the moment in any of the following areas:
- The exasperating waste of your time
- The humiliation and indignity of being ignored
- The pain of personal grief
- Stress to do with the family
- Strains in marriage
- Pressure and tension from work
- Worries about money
- The burden of relationships that pile false guilt on you
I say “overcame” because, in the end, both men triumphed over adversity by patient endurance.
Jeremiah was vindicated. He went down as one of the great characters of the Old Testament. In fact, such is the greatness of his legacy that when Jesus said to his disciples “Who do people say that I am?” they replied that some thought he was Jeremiah.
Job was also vindicated. At the end of the book of Job, God said that his friends had spoken foolishly and Job became twice as prosperous as before - and doubly blessed.
“We count as blessed those who have persevered… You have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”
I believe the Lord wants to minister his grace and power amongst us this morning.
Some of you here know that the Lord is speaking to you about things on that list on the screen.
- For some here this morning, today is a day of release and healing
- For others, today is a day to receive a new word of revelation from the Lord
- For others still, today is a day to receive grace to endure and be victorious
- For still others, today is a day to put down heavy burdens at the foot of the cross
Let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 4th September 2011
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