We begin reading in Exodus chapter 34. Exodus 34, let's stand together for the reading of God's word. And the Lord said to Moses, cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. So be ready in the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai. and present yourself to me there on the top of the mountain. And no man shall come up with you. And let no man be seen throughout all the mountain. Let neither flocks nor herds feed before that mountain.' So he cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. Then Moses arose early in the morning and went up Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him. And he took in his hand the two tablets of stone. Now the Lord descended in a cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation. So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped." Now turn with me over to Ephesians 4. In light of the new life we have in Christ, that Paul has written of largely in the first three chapters. He says, I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Thus far, the word of God, let us pray. Lord, our God, we seek you and Our service of worship, we come to you to hear you speak forth from the pages of scripture as you've appointed them to be taken up, opened up through the preaching of the word. We ask, Lord, that you would instruct our hearts as we continue to understand what it is that our lives are to be adorned with, as you have appointed that we should bear fruit of the spirit. Father, as we consider what it is to be long-suffering, Lord, help us to see you who are the picture and the example, the very embodiment of long suffering, that we might learn what it is as your children to walk and live in the power of the Spirit in the same manner. Lord, be glorified, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. When Moses returned to Mount Sinai, as we find it in chapter 34 that we've read, God commanded him to bring with him two stone tablets because God was going to write on that the law that he had written before. So Moses did so. He cut two additional, two new stone tablets, which he took with him and went up early the next morning to meet with God on the mountain. And the Lord descended, as we've heard here in Exodus 34, he descended into the cloud to strike you as wonderful and marvelous that he stood before Moses were told elsewhere in his exodus that God stood as a man, speaks with a man face to face and met with Moses. We understand that this would be the second person of the Trinity, the only manifestation of the Trinity that we see that is God, Jehovah, Christ stands with Moses and meets with him and makes this powerful declaration as the word of God concerning the character of God. Now remember what's happened prior to this. Prior to this, God heard the cry of his people in Egypt. They were in a house of slavery. They were in a house of bondage and heavy was the weight of their task upon them. The Egyptians were oppressive and God heard their cry and he appointed Moses. He met him literally on the backside of the desert, one who had once lived in Egypt and who had fled away. And God met with him and appeared to him and called him and sent him to bring and lead his people out of Egypt. And so Moses went down into Egypt and with a powerful demonstration of God, 10 plagues were afflicted upon the Egyptians. God striking a blow on each of their false gods, humbling the Egyptians, exposing to them the depravity of their hearts, the idolatry of their hearts, indeed the vainness of their worship of these false gods and indeed demonstrating to Israel the majesty of their God. that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of their fathers, was the one true and living God. And he brought them out with a strong hand. He brought them out of the house of bondage and he delivered them even at the Red Sea. As they came to the Red Sea and Pharaoh had the change of heart to come out with what was left of his army, pursuing them. And they were terrified. God mercifully parted the waters of the Red Sea and they crossed on dry land, as we sang earlier from Psalm 106. And they were on the other side safely The Egyptian army pursued them and God sent the waters over them and destroyed them. Then he took them and cared for them in the wilderness. He fed them with bread from heaven. He opened up rocks in dry desert places and brought forth streams of living water to sustain this great mass of humanity that was known as the sons of Abraham. And in time he brought them to Mount Sinai Again, consider the majesty and the might and the demonstration of power of God that they had seen. This generation, it had happened to them and before them. And they come then to Mount Sinai and God tells them to prepare themselves. And then he visits Moses on the mountaintop and the mountain rattles and shakes and thunders. There's cloud and fire on the mountaintop. It's a terror to them. God clearly manifesting his majestic might. And so Moses was on the mountain and God with His finger wrote on tablets of stone the law of God. And while Moses was up there receiving instruction and commandment for the building of the tabernacle, a place where God would meet with His people, where God would come into their presence and be with them as their God, the people became impatient. And they demanded of Aaron, Moses' brother, to make for them gods. And so Aaron had them bring their gold earrings He took and fashioned the gold from the earrings into a calf, a golden calf. And the people begin to worship the idol in the image. and having broken out and broken away from fear of God and giving themselves over to this false worship, then they also manifest all manner of wickedness. And so Moses hears the cry and God hears the cry and he comes down with Joshua and finds the people engaged in all manner of iniquity and immorality. And in his rage, he throws down the stone talus, the covenant that God was making with his people as they were in sin. And God declared that he would destroy the people and raise up and make for Moses a new generation to follow and serve him. But Moses interceded. God demonstrated that he was merciful. He demonstrated even through all these events, through all these glorious events that we've just hit the high points of, they were grumbling, murmuring, and complaining, and rebellious, and disagreeable, and God was long suffering with them. And that's what we want to consider this morning. And God was long suffering in that God appointed Moses to return back up onto the mountain. And as we've read from verse six and seven, when Moses came back up before this God who has shown them mercy, God declared himself the Lord, that is Jehovah, the Lord Jehovah, God's covenant faithful name, Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth. We want to consider what is the spiritual fruit of long-suffering is our first point. Then we will consider why should a Christian seek to bear the fruit of long-suffering? And finally, as been our pattern, how does a Christian bear the fruit of long-suffering? We begin then with what is the spiritual fruit of long-suffering? God is long-suffering. It's one of his attributes. And all those who have new life in Christ, we know from the scripture should begin in varying degrees to reflect God's character in them. Those attributes of God that can be communicated to us. There are parts of God, his character that he fashions and forms in us. And there are other ones that are not. We cannot be infinite and eternal and unchangeable like God, but we can be loving and kind and good and long suffering. will form this spiritual fruit in us. First, there's many things we could say that long-suffering is not, but let's just take up some things that might be familiar to us. Long-suffering is not grinning and bearing it. That's what the world does. You hear that? Just grin and bear it. That is not long-suffering. It's not knuckling down and enduring. It's not just bucking up or gritting your teeth to get through it. Just get through it. That's not long-suffering. It's not going outside and taking out your anger that you want to give to someone and you give it to the dog. That's not long-suffering. Indeed, long-suffering is not even just putting up with others. So, as I said, much more could be said. But longsuffering is. What is it? What is longsuffering? Well, to understand, let us consider that longsuffering and patience are not just holding up. until it's over. In other words, as I just said, it's just greening and bearing. It's not just holding up until it's over, whatever it is. We are to look beyond. In long-suffering, we look beyond the trial to the victorious outcome. We look beyond that matter. Indeed, the death of sin in the flesh, we look on to life in Christ. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. That we look beyond the here and now. We look on to the life that we have in Christ and the life that is to come. There are a number of examples in the scriptures of what this long-suffering or patience is. Jesus says in Luke 8, 15, bring forth fruit that is steadfast in endurance, steadfast in endurance, steady, enduring. Steadfast endurance, another word for long-suffering, in your souls. It's according to the steadfast endurance to do good. Paul writes in Romans 2.7, through steadfast endurance let us run the race, as the writer of Hebrews says. And that we are to have patience or steadfast endurance in Hebrews 10.36, the preface to the chapter on faith. So what is steadfast endurance? What is long suffering? It's the idea that we see here, it's a tenacity of spirit that waits upon the Lord for his timing. a tenacity of spirit that waits upon the Lord for His timing. Notice there's something in here of submission. Long-suffering deals with submission to God and a dependence upon God, that God is God and that we are not, that we are His servants, yea, we are even His slaves as we've been bought by Christ. And God wisely appoints trials for us and we look to Him, dependent upon Him through the trial, waiting on Him to bring the reward that is surely to come through the difficulty. through suffering and trials and afflictions, even persecutions, God is at work in us to form Christ more in us. And so you see, long suffering is a matter of perspective, that we're looking at the ultimate outcome, that we will become more Christ-like. Indeed, there is a day when we will inherit that which is already ours in Christ Jesus. And so we remember that in the midst of the here and the now. The best way, I think, for us to understand what long suffering is, as a spiritual fruit in us, consider how God himself demonstrates it. If you look again at our texts from Exodus 34, six, God declares of himself that he is long suffering. We've in some sense rehearsed what that is, but let us think about it in even a bigger picture, not just Israel coming out of Egypt, not just the chosen people of God wandering in the wilderness, but remember in the garden, what if God told Adam, It says, all this abundance is yours, except for this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And we know what happened, the serpent came, Satan entered the serpent, tempted Adam and Eve, they gave way to the temptation and Adam ate of it. and he immediately spiritually died, did he not? He did not immediately physically die though, but he did die. And as Moses records in Genesis 10, this is so-and-so begat so-and-so, and he died, and so-and-so begat so-and-so, and he died, and he died, and he died, and death surely came into the world. We see something of the long suffering of God. You notice when you read Genesis three, that as soon as Adam took hold of the fruit offered to him by his wife and did eat of it, God didn't immediately send a lightning bolt, destroy him. God was long-suffering. Indeed, judgment came, but God was long-suffering. And then we go on, we have that remarkable account of God declaring the gospel, at first telling the gospel that this same woman, there would be the seed of the woman that would come forth. And the seed of the woman, which we know from later revelation is Christ, would crush the serpent's head, even as the serpent bruised his heel. A very shadowed, even mysterious declaration of what would happen. About 4,000 years later, outside of the walls of Jerusalem, when the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, about 4,000 years later, a lot of people lived from the garden until the time that Christ was crucified. And if we think on that, we're seeing something of the long suffering of God. Nahum in 1.3 tells us that God is slow to anger and great in power. And we see that in the work of Christ on the cross. God was slow to anger. It was not until then that God's wrath for the sins of his people was spent. It was not until then that God sent his wrath and spent his wrath even upon his own son. And indeed, there's that demonstration of the great power of God to judge sin and to punish sin and to breed the righteous and just condemnation upon sin. So the name it says, God is slow to anger. Something there in that description of long suffering. There's an important truth here. God's power moderates his anger. God can and does restrain his anger when sinful man provokes God's wrath, when God would be just to exercise his wrath in the garden. God would have been just immediately to absolutely destroy Adam and Eve. It would have been just to do that, but his power moderates his justice and his anger and his wrath because God had a greater purpose here. God has power over himself and therefore he is slow to wrath, he's slow to anger. And we see that demonstrated in the long suffering of God. He's not quick to crush and destroy us. Christian, you know something of that. You have life in the Son. You've been born from above. The Spirit of God is in you. You've been given power to live an obedient life. How many times when you've sinned and that sense of guilt for sin is upon you, do you have something of a wavering, a quavering within, wondering, will God just let me out? And we know something of the long suffering of God is His children. And so it has been with man. God is not quick. to judge. Now we need to understand that God's long-suffering is not due to or caused by His own impotence. It's not that God is powerless that He's long-suffering. Indeed, it's because of His power He is long-suffering. You see, that's what wicked men think. Wicked men sin and in their mind nothing happens. They go on and they sin again. and nothing happens. And so then they sin more boldly. They take on bigger things and they're tempted to greater sin and they go on until they become bold and brash and brazen. You can read in the book of Kings about some of the kings of Israel were greatly given over to wickedness and they sin boldly. They heard the prophets words and nothing seemed to happen to them. It was that very thing that Asaph was troubled by and is recorded in Psalm 73, as he looked at the wicked, sinning boldly. And one of the other psalmist says, look at the wicked, God. They eat up your people like bread. It's so easy for them to sin. It's so easy for them to persecute. It's nothing more to them than just eating a meal. And so men conclude that God is impotent. But Asaph remembered, there is a day. And so it is with the wicked. who think that God is unable and unwilling to punish them, when that day of their last breath comes, they do find out that God is a God of justice, and God is a God of power, and God is able to destroy and to punish sin. And so it is that God's long suffering is not due to His impotence, nor is God's long suffering does it mean that God condones sin, The two go together as we've seen. Longsuffering then is therefore God's slowness to wrath to justly punish the wicked for their sin. And so a man may live out his days in sin and God giving him 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years, 80 years even. is an opportunity to heed the call of the gospel, to hear the call of Christ, to repent and turn to the Lord in faith and repentance, seeking the salvation of God. And yet they do not. This longsuffering then, as we said at the outset, is one of God's divine attributes. And it is communicable to us. God shows a willingness to defer, to delay his wrath, both to delay for the wicked, but deferring that during those times from Adam's sin until Christ came, God's wrath must be spent upon the sins of the wicked. God waited until in the fullness of time and at the right time when Christ came into the world to be the sin bearer for his people and then God having deferred, if Paul says in Romans, he says boldly, I mean it's almost disturbing when you read it, he says that God in former times overlooked their sin. It's not that God winked at it or that he swept it under the rug, in his long suffering he deferred and waited and tell in the fullness of time. And at the right time, Christ was crucified. The sin of those many souls in those first thousand, 4,000 years, and indeed many more to come after it, were then accounted to Christ, then taken upon his account. Then he who knew no sin became sin. And as he bore the sin, then the wrath of God was justly spent upon the sin of all those who were hidden in Christ by faith. The long suffering of God is actually seen at the cross. As well as leading up to it. God does not rush to pour forth his justice. He is forbearing. He's not willing that any should perish. We read from Psalm 103 verse 8 or we heard it in our assurance of forgiveness that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger. Abounding in mercy. God does not destroy in the first propagation. That's what we're inclined to do. Provoke to anger, quickly bringing retribution. But God is slow to anger. And God's patience is part of His goodness. His long suffering or his patience is part of his goodness and mercy. Yet it is different from both of those. Mildness is always the companion of true goodness. And the greater the goodness, the greater the mildness. And God is infinitely good and therefore he is able to be infinitely mild or long suffering. The slowness to anger is part of God's mercy. It is not the same end as it, but it is part of it. Psalm 145 tells us in verse 8 and 9, the Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. Now, longsuffering is a display and a part of his goodness, though it's not the same, and longsuffering also is different from mercy. Think of it this way. Mercy sees sinful man as miserable. God looks down from an eye with a perfect eye and great clarity. He sees us in our sin. He sees how miserable we are in our sin, how miserable sin makes us and how we go on in it in our state or a state of sin and misery as our catechism speaks of. God sees that. And he pities, mercy pities those who are in this misery. Long suffering also bears with the sin that brings about man's misery. God's long-suffering is a part of his glorifying grace. Paul writes of this to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1.6. He said, for this reason, I obtained mercy. Paul speaking of himself, a great sinner, that in me first Christ might show all long-suffering as a pattern to those who are going to believe in him for everlasting life. Think about Paul. What was his name before? It was Saul. What did he do? Even there when Stephen was arrested and Stephen was put on trial, Paul was there present as a young man. And as they took Stephen out to stone him, Paul took and held the coats of those that were stoning this righteous man who lived for God's glory, the first martyr after the birth of the church and the new covenant. There was Saul. guilty. And that was not enough for Saul. He went on then and obtained authority from the priest in the Sanhedrin and he went throughout Israel. He went up and down the land looking for those who were of the way, as Christianity was called at that time, seeking to persecute them, harass them. He was cruel and heartless and mean. God would have been just to have wiped him out, to require his life from him at that moment and bring him into his throne room in heaven and send him unto eternal condemnation in the lake of fire. Paul understood that when he writes to Timothy. He says, For this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ might show all longsuffering. God was longsuffering, and His power He restrained. waiting, knowing that he had appointed a day when Saul, that same man, would be journeying to Damascus and on the way Christ would appear to him in a glorious light and speak to him and transform him and change him so radically that he no longer was called Saul, but he was then called Paul, the long suffering of God. Again, God's slowness to anger or long suffering is not because he lacks power. My friends, when you and I sin, God has the power to crush us in that moment. He has the ability, but he also has the power to restrain. Think about it when we consider the cross. What a picture of God's long suffering at the cross when wicked men seized the only begotten Son of God. He was the Lamb, spotless, pure, altogether lovely and right. In Him was no deceit, no fault was in Him, that there was no sin in Him. And wicked men seized Him. Polluted men falsely accused the Holy Son of God. God is seeing. God is looking on. He is watching these things unfold. Vile men, full of bitter venom, arrested the spotless Lamb of God. They beat Him. They spat upon Him. They pulled His beard out from His face. They beat Him with rods. They beat Him with their fists. And they crushed a crown of thorns upon His head. He was smitten and afflicted. So disfigured, the prophet tells us, that He was not even recognizable as a man. No longer could you look and say, oh, that's Jesus from Nazareth. It was just an awful, cruel, bloody, pulp, wicked man. And God sees this is His only begotten Son. God looks on and in long-suffering, He does not act. He does not send 10,000 angels to rush in upon the scene. He does not speak one word and bring an end to this. It is the long-suffering of God, for God has appointed Him. to suffer. It was a manifestation of the long-suffering of God that at this time, all the wrath of God that had been built up during the many generations of sinful men that He had appointed unto salvation at that time, Christ received that weight, that debt of sin for His own. And then God spent His wrath. Friends, if we would understand long-suffering, look at the cross. Look at what Christ did, even what the father did. The father restrained himself so that those who were committing this crime, indeed, men who had falsely accused him, who wickedly put him to death, who abused him with delight in their hearts, the father restrained himself. If you read further on in Acts, we find Luke records that down the road, there were some of the priests Some of those who would have been guilty of casting the boat in the Sanhedrin, those who would have condoned that, those who were a part of that, and perhaps we're not told, but even some of the Roman soldiers, perhaps some of those that came with that throng to the garden, that it was God's good pleasure to give life to in His long suffering. He waited while they were a part of that crime, the greatest crime of humanity, God waited because in time God had a plan. that he would give life even to such men and women as committed such crimes as that. And so it is that God demonstrates to us what longsuffering is. We said earlier that longsuffering and patience are not just about holding up until it's over. We see that in the cross. God wasn't in heaven just cringing and biting His tongue and just waiting until this horrible act outside Jerusalem was over. No, He was in it. It was His purpose. He had decreed it. He sent forth His Son, and yet His justice required that penalty be paid to men. And for some, the penalty was paid in His Son. For others, the penalty is paid when at the end of their days they are assigned a place in the lake of fire for their sin. And so it must be with us that we are to look beyond and even through the trial to the victorious outcome. That in our death, those of us that are in Christ in our death, it is over. And at that point, whatever suffering and affliction we've had, indeed, the war that we've had with sin. Is over. We look beyond that and we can be long suffering in it. This tenacity of spirit that waits on the Lord in his timing. For but for the foundation of the earth, the Lord appointed His Son to pay for His people's sin. And so God looked beyond the provocation. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so we are called in Him to be long-suffering. As we take up the second Well, before we take it up, let us consider application. My friends, we've touched on the gospel. We've talked about the gospel here. What Christ has done, the long-suffering of God, and the purpose of God in His Son. God, who presents Himself to you, my friends, is holy and just. He will surely punish sin. And if indeed there's sin in your life, you know that sin is in your life, and you go on in it. Some say, waiting for the other foot to drop. You never see it coming. How is your response? Is the long suffering of God leading you to more sin? Or do you see the long suffering of God as a manifestation of His goodness and His mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ that you should come to Him, that you should seek Him for salvation? That's what's declared here in our passage in Exodus 34. Notice what verse 7 says. Again, beginning, the Lord announced the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That's what we've been talking about. But it's not for all. Notice what God goes on to say, by no means clearing the guilty. He's merciful to the guilty, but no means clearing the guilty. He visits the iniquity upon the fathers and unto the children. and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. The gospel's there, my friends. The long-suffering of God to save those that would come to Him. And the punishment of God to those who would reject Him. If we would be free from this burden of sin that we need to come to Christ, for in Him there is the power of God unto salvation. Salvation is found in Christ alone. God's long-suffering in your life is to bring you to repentance, an opportunity to look to Him. God's long-suffering to you who have repented and believed is that you would turn away and turn back, that you would be done with the things of this world and be engaged in living for the glory of the one who has saved you. We can consider, secondly, why should a Christian seek to bear the fruit of long-suffering? Simply put, a Christian should seek to bear the fruit spiritual fruit of long-suffering because it is the character of our Father. We belong to the Father, we're children of the Father, and we want to rightly represent Him. We should have within us that which is within Him. Those attributes of God that can become ours by the working of the Spirit, we should desire them, we should want them, we should delight in them. Someone has said that a truly great man is one who can rule over himself. One who is a master over himself. He masters his passion. And indeed, if we're honest, we've tried that. When we try to master our own passions, we fail. When we try to reign in our own emotions and control them, we fail. No man, hear me, not one of us can be long-suffering to our neighbor apart from God. As we're born from above and born of the Spirit, then and only then, Injustice and offenses that abound between man and man, even between brothers and sisters and sisters and sisters, there's that tendency to be quick to respond. Even in our littlest children, you see that a child comes along and takes something from them, and they want to go back and smack them and take it back. That's our impulse of our heart. Someone says something cruel of us, we want to be cruel back. But you see in that, we don't reflect the father in our lives. We need to seek the Lord and desire that this fruit of long suffering should be born in us. What's the response of the world when we do that? If somebody does us great harm, and we do not bring retribution, we don't pay them back in kind, people will think, oh, he's weak, he's easy, I can take advantage of this situation. But indeed, if we're children of the Father, We are long-suffering. God calls us to be like Him and enables it, and we will leave the outcome of it to God. We will suffer injustices. There are Christians today who are being long-suffering by the grace of God, and they're waiting. But the Lord will someday bring His justice to bear. As sinners, we're driven by impulse. We feel rage rise. We give way to it. Isn't that what James writes about? In James 3, where he talks about the tongue, it's just that little member, that tiny little member that's just part of our whole body, and he says, who can control his tongue? He says, a man who can bridle his own tongue is able to keep his whole body in check, and yet we cannot do this apart from Christ. And so James teaches us that we, by the grace of God, can control this tongue. We can be long-suffering towards others, and we're called to do so, because then we stand out. We stand apart from the world that is around us. As children of God, we should seek to show and to bear this spiritual fruit of longsuffering because it gives glory to God. We adorn the gospel in our lives. When we're walking by the spirit and we're longsuffering with others, the aroma of Christ is upon us. We were talking about it in Sunday school this morning, how when we live as God's people, when we're obedient, we will stand out from the world. Others will ask us, why are you different? What is this hope that is within you? How is it that you behave this way and I see other people behave differently? Why are you so different? That's what we should expect. That's one reason we would live this way. so that others will notice Christ as we bear witness. Jesus told us this in Matthew 5, 16, let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. By being among suffering, our light, which is Christ in us, shines before men. And we give a reflection of the Father to the world around us. We read from Ephesians 4, and as we consider what it is, why we should desire this, this really comes in the heart of the church, It goes hand-in-glove with our One Another series that we recently finished. Paul says, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord Jesus, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Paul has been telling us the glorious things we have in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. You read the first two chapters. In Him, in Christ, He's made us alive. He's forgiven us our sins. We have life in Him. And then he says, therefore, walk worthy. Live differently, walk worthy. What does that look like? With all lowliness and gentleness with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love. Why? Endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. We are called to make every effort to do what? To preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. If we're at peace with God, we talked about this last week, through Christ, living for Christ's glory, for peace with God, we should desire that that peace be demonstrated to others. And in the church, we are to have that. We are at peace with God and we're to dwell at peace with God. And Paul says we're to walk worthy, exhibiting these fruits so that the unity of the spirit will be preserved. So what Paul's saying is we're focused particularly on long suffering. When we're long suffering one with another, We're preserving the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. We're working for the good of the church. We're under the reign of the Prince of Peace, the Lord Jesus Christ, and each of us as members play a part in preserving this unity of peace in the church, and we do so by long-suffering. It's part of our walking worthy. Do we provoke one another? Sure we do. Do we sin against one another? Yes, we do. Do we bring offenses against one another? Yes. Are we weak? Do we stumble? Do we hurt one another? Yes. But we're called to be long-suffering. We should remember when someone provokes us, when we're prone to response, we need to step back for a minute and say, you know what? I'm no different. I've done no less. I'm no better than they are. I'm just as prone to those things. And so we'd be long-suffering. In this sense, remember this idea of long-suffering is we're looking beyond this moment. We're looking to the outcome. In that, we say, you know, they're a work in progress, just as I'm a work in progress. Christ is not fully formed in them any more than he is fully formed in me. There is a day when Christ will be fully formed in them. There is a day when they will do all things right, but it's not that day for them. or for me. And so rather than respond and retaliate, we are long suffering. Because remembering there's a day coming when it'll be right, but now we want to preserve the unity and the bond of peace. Same thing with the world. When the world does us harm, we remember, you know what, that's where I used to live. That's how I once conducted myself when I was apart from Christ. That was the kind of person I was. And there were those in the church who had Christ in them. They were long suffering with me. I said some awful things. I did some awful things. And by the grace of God, they were long suffering. And I saw that. And it was winsome. It was attractive. I was drawn by Christ. I wanted to know where it came from. And God used them as an instrument on my life, even as they were waiting on him for when he would do that. They were looking beyond this moment in long suffering to when God might bring even me to himself. But what about when the church is persecuted? What about when you and I are persecuted? And they're not appointed unto life. We don't know who they are. We remember. that there's a day coming when every wrong will be righted. We remember that there's a day when God will no longer bear with the wicked. There's a day coming when Christ shall come with a shout, and we shall be gathered home, and the wicked shall be gathered up, and God's justice will fall upon them. Whatever harm and hurt and harassment, even martyrdom that has fallen upon the people of God, God sees it, and He is powerful to judge it. It will not go unresponded to. He will respond to it. And so is that quote from Luther I've given to you before. We live this life this day in the light of that day, living this day in the light of that great day when Christ shall come helps us that we should be long suffering. Remembering there's a time coming, even as the father, when he overlooked, as it were, the sins of his people during those years leading up to the crucifixion of Christ. God knew there was a day when his justice would be satisfied and he was long suffering with his people. So we can be. and reflecting Christ to the world. Well, the third question that we've been always asking with this is, well, how does a Christian bear this fruit of long suffering? Well, the answer is no different for this than it has been for the other. We've got to consider, are we impatient? Are we given to fits of wrath? Do we often seek to bring vengeance for ourselves, to retaliate, to feel there's been some injustice given to me, I must set this right. We all know something of that, don't we? There are times when when that breaks out in our lives. How do we put an end to that? How is it that we be more faithful and exhibiting this fruit of the spirit of being long suffering? Well, it's first we must have new life in Christ. But then we must be with Christ. We must spend time with Christ. We must abide in him. And we need to be purposeful, as with each of these fruits, we should be purposeful to say, Father, my fuse is short. My wife could say two or three things, sometimes it's like she's pushing my buttons and I just go off like a powder keg. Or maybe you're one of those that simmers in it. You see that in yourself. Your children, they just have a way to get at ya. Or the boss at work, or some neighbor. Or maybe it's somebody you don't even know on the highway. That's your weakness, when you're driving, you're driven, and you got this agenda, and somebody cuts you off, or there's an accident, there's a coal truck, whatever it may be, and your day is upset. Are you long-suffering? Maybe you see that. And so you begin to pray, God, I want to have the fruit of long-suffering in my life. Based on what we've heard from the Word of God, I know that means I need to look more to that day when Christ will come. There is a day when those things will be right. There will be a day when traffic doesn't get jammed up and starved. There will be a day when my wife never provokes me or my children. There will be a day, but it's not that day. And Father, I want Christ reflected. I want to be long-suffering. Lord, would You help me? I will commune with You. I will fellowship with You. I will be in Your Word and cultivate in that walk with You. That I will have that intimacy, desiring, delighting, and having the fullness of the Holy Spirit in me so that this manifestation of the power of the Gospel will be in my life. That I will be long-suffering with others. That I will be a reflection of You, Heavenly Father, on earth before men. That they would see that hope that I have. They would ask for the reason that I'm different, but also that within the church, within the visible body of Christ, I will be promoting the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace to the glory of God. Amen. Let us pray. Father, help us. As we've considered what it is to walk in humility, to bear the fruit of love, joy, and peace, Father, as we come to long suffering, we're now into the nitty gritty This is where we live, Lord. We fail in this so often, and yet you have called us to it. You called us as children of our Father to have these spiritual fruits in our life, adorning our lives for the glory of our God. Lord, would you help us to take to heart, help us, Lord, to consider how it is with us, how faithful are we in bearing the fruit of being long-suffering who are manifest within us through the demonstration of the Spirit's power, that the world should know that the Lord our God is holy, merciful, mighty, long-suffering, and strong to say, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.