What Is Taking Him So Long? - 2nd Peter 3:8-13
We are supposed to be patient people. I mean, after all as we have learned on
Wednesday nights, patience is one aspect of Jesus Fruit that we are all
supposed to have if we are abiding in Christ as He abides in us. I typically try to be a patient man, at least
I think I do. There are times where my
children, Joshua, and Anita might have disagreed with that statement. There are times where it is hard for me to be
patient. As a kid, like most kids, I had
little patience for how long it took to make a trip or how long it took for my
birthday or Christmas to arrive (and with both of them in December it made for
a long year). Like many men, if I take
my wife clothes shopping, it is hard to be patient…especially an hour or two
into the shopping trip and not even the first article of clothing has been
purchased to show fruit for the time spent.
However, this year has proved to be a new test of patience for me. Most of you know that Joshua and I planted
our very first raised fruit garden, full of pepper and tomato plants. While Joshua’s cherry tomato and hot banana
pepper plant took off quick and have been abundantly full of their choice
fruits, my pepper and tomato plants did not.
There have been a lot of leaves and a lot of flowers, but for most of
the summer there have been no tomatoes and no pepper pods. Through the last two months I was growing
rapidly impatient, ready to just pull all the plants up. Anita kept saying, “it’s okay, this was just
y’all’s first try, maybe next year will be better.” One reason for my impatience was that I know
from my previous experience with my Carolina Reaper plant that it takes a long
time for the peppers to ripen once the pods form and I wanted to make sure that
I had plenty to harvest before the nighttime temps drop too low this fall. I decided to wait it out and I’m glad because
while they haven’t ripened, the pods are starting to form on the hottest
peppers, the tomatoes are popping out , and along with Joshua’s hot banana peppers,
I’m already enjoying jalapeños. Patience
pays off…
Jesus had been crucified. The stone had been rolled away. The resurrected Jesus spent forty days with
His disciples. Then, as related to us in
the first chapter of Acts, Jesus ascends to heaven. His disciples, who were gathered there with
him, just stood looking to the sky where Jesus had just departed. We can probably capture a mental image of
them standing there: some with their mouths hanging open, others tight-lipped
with tears running down their cheeks, or still others with a dazed and confused
stare. As they are staring at the sky,
“two men in white robes stood by them.
They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward
heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken
up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into
heaven.’”[i]
From that point forward, God’s people
began watching the sky and everywhere else for Jesus’ return. They had felt that it was imminent; I mean,
after all, the last time he was only gone for three days. They thought Jesus
would quickly make that return trip to gather up all of the faithful. And they
waited, and they waited, and they waited.
Decades passed, and there was still no sign of Jesus’ return, no trumpet
blast, no widespread resurrection of the dead, no Day of the Lord breaking in
on a fallen earth wiping out all evil and forever establishing God’s Kingdom.
Folks were getting a little
agitated. Like the child on a trip
asking, “are we there yet?” Or a husband, “have you found anything yet?” or me
constantly checking the garden to see if anything was happening yet, God’s
people were watching the sky to see if Jesus was coming back yet, and they had probably
starting to do a little grumbling. “When
is God going to do something? We’ve been
waiting for his return for like forever.
He’s moving too slow. He needs to
come on back now. Is there anyway we can
light a fire under God and get Him going?”
You can imagine the talk. If you
have every waited on anyone or anything, you can imagine it.
Peter steps into this conversation,
these grumblings, and addresses them: “The Lord is not slow about His promise,
some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but
all to come to repentance.”[ii]
In this verse we have a clear
indication that God is not sitting up in heaven just waiting to send some of us,
or others in the world, to hell. In
fact, from Peter’s words we come to see that God doesn’t really want any of us
to end up eternally separated from Him.
His desire is that everyone might come to embrace the salvation He
offers, the gift of an Eternal Life spent with Him. The God we gather to worship is a God of love
and a God of mercy and a God of redemption who longs to have a relationship
with each and every member of His created earth…He has promised since Isaiah
that there will come a day that “every knee will bow, every tongue shall swear”[iii]
that He is God.
What we find is that we have a God who
is patient, who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness….”[iv] If you are like me, I hear the passage from 2nd
Peter and I begin thinking about how wonderful it is that we have a God who is
patient and is waiting for all those other folks out there to have a chance to
repent and come into a relationship with Him.
God wants them all to become like us.
We want God to hurry up and come, but we are okay (or at least pretend
to be) that He is waiting for everyone to come to the same place we are. At least that is how I had always read it
until a year or two ago when I read it once more for my morning devotional
reflection.
I was probably doing what is called a
lectio divina reading of the Scripture for my devotion that morning in which
you take a verse and read it slowly, at least three times, listening or being
attentive to God’s leading as you read it, seeking out what God is trying to
convey that day. It is an especially
good way to read familiar passages. That particular morning as I read it, a
phrase jumped out to me in a way it never had before: “The Lord is not slow about
his promise as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not
wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But is patient with you. But is patient with you. God isn’t slow to act, but he is patient with
me, with you.
Peter was not telling the church that
God is not slow but is being patient with all those heathens outside the church.
He was telling the Church that God was being patient with them…with us. In this instance, Peter says, with all
apologies to Rick Warren, it is not about them, it is about us.
What is God waiting on us for? Why is God having to be patient with us? Haven’t we repented? Haven’t we knelt and proclaimed that Jesus is
our Lord and Savior? Aren’t we the ones
who are already faithful?
Perhaps so, perhaps not. Have we really come to terms with what it
means to surrender our lives to Jesus as our Lord and Savior? Have we truly surrendered all of our lives
over to Him? I know that we want to say,
“yes,” but have we? Before we declare
that we have, remember the fate of Ananias and Sapphira in the early church who
declared that they had sold all of their property and given it all to the
Church (while in truthfulness, they had kept back part of it for themselves). Are there parts of our lives that we have not
truly surrendered to God? Are there
places and things that we are still holding on to? Are there activities that we do not want to
give up? Are there those that we truly
do not want to forgive? Are there still
people and places and things that we give more of our time and attention and
resources to than we do God? If so,
perhaps God is waiting on us to completely surrender, to completely give our
lives over to Him as our Lord, because He does not want us to perish in the
same way that Ananias and Sapphira did.[v] Maybe it is that God is patent with us
because he wants us in His Kingdom, not forever separated from Him.
Maybe it is that God is being patient
and waiting for us to fulfill the commission Jesus gave as He departed. He told the disciples , which passes on to us,
to begin in Jerusalem, go into Judea and Samaria, and then all the rest of the
world, making disciples, baptizing them and teaching them everything that He
had commanded.[vi] That commission is to all who would call
themselves disciples of Christ, and that commission is not complete until each
and every person across the globe has had the opportunity to hear the Gospel
message and through our acts experience the love and mercy of a God who would
meet their needs and welcome them in loving fellowship. Jesus did not tell the disciples to sit and
let others do it, to show up on Sundays, worship him, and go about the rest of
their business throughout the week, while someone else spreads the Gospel. He told them all to go…He tells us all to
go. Perhaps God’s patience is that He’s
waiting for us to do what He told us to do—like a parent waiting for their
child to clean up their room or make the bed they were told to take care of. So perhaps God is waiting on us to act. Maybe He’s waiting on us to hasten that day
when every “knee will bow…and…every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”[vii]
because he doesn’t want any to perish…and if we’re not already about this work,
sharing the Gospel through our words and acts of compassion, that takes us pack
to the first possibility, for if we are not doing what God has told us to do,
it questions our surrender to His Lordship of our lives.
Yet, either way, we must remember…that
God is not slow to act…He is going to act…we have that promise…we don’t know
when it will be…it will come like a thief in the night…but He is being
patient…with me…with you…. May we be
faithful, so that when that Trumpet sounds and we stand before that Judgment
Seat, God’s patience will have paid off as we will find ourselves entering the
new heavens and new earth where righteousness is at home.
In the Name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[i] Acts
1:10-11
[ii] 2nd
Peter 3:9
[iii]
Isaiah 45:23
[iv]
Exodus 34:6
[v]
Acts 5:1-11
[vi]
Blend of Acts 1:8 and Matthew 28:19-20
[vii]
Philippians 2:10-11
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