The Patience of God

As I read through the history of the divided kingdom – Israel and Judah – I am struck by the incredible patience of God. From the moment they split, the northern tribes, then known as Israel, went astray. Because they couldn’t go to Jerusalem to worship anymore (it was in the region of Judah), they established places of worship in their own territory. Quickly, these devolved into pagan shrines honoring the very gods Yahweh had forbidden them to worship. Without exception, the kings of Israel refused to clean up their act, and the treachery, assassination and bloody coups which smear their history prove the error of their ways.

Yet, to my amazement, God put up with Israel’s faithlessness for almost 200 years before He finally turned them over to the Assyrians who dragged them off the land and dispersed them across their empire. Judah’s track record is slightly better, having a few kings who tried to follow David’s example of righteousness. Ultimately, though, even they were deported to Babylon for their 70-year captivity about 100 years after Israel was taken. Here again, Yahweh’s patience shines forth in His promise to return them to the land after they had served their sentence.

From our vantage point on this side of Calvary, we can understand that Judah had to be saved so that the Lion of Judah could appear to do the work God had planned. We may wonder at the centuries-long process to bring about the culmination of the plan, but we should remember that with God, “a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.” Realistically, the true time period of the redemption plan starts even further back just outside the Garden of Eden when God promised to effect a rescue from human fallenness by the “Seed of woman,” later identified as Jesus Christ.

I can only begin to understand the reasons for God’s patience when I consider His larger purpose. As I have recently discovered (See Understanding Salvation and It’s Not All About You), from the moment of creation, God has been in the business of developing a race of creatures who can serve as His agents in the process of turning Earth into His fellowship garden. He had that for a minute, walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, until the deceiver ruined the plan. I believe He still wants that, and Jesus’ announcement that the Kingdom of Heaven had come to earth marks the next phase of its development.

After years of sermons and seminaries teaching me that salvation is about saving souls, I have come to the realization that we have missed the point. Getting saved is not about going to heaven when we die. It is about getting with the program and bringing heaven to earth now. As N. T. Wright points out in Surprised by Hope (yes, him again), doubters might say that there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of heaven on earth 2,000 years after Jesus announced its arrival, yet there are plenty of signs if one wishes to see them. The Soviet Union was toppled in large part by the efforts of a Polish Pope. Apartheid was dismantled through the efforts of an African bishop. Nations and neighborhoods are being transformed by the persistent pressure of the coming kingdom in many large and small ways.

I fall prey to the same thinking that prompted Peter’s contemporaries to ask why God has delayed His coming. Look what he answers: “The Lord is not delaying the promise, as some consider slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” There it is again: the patience of God. Why is He so patient? Because He is gradually building His family of co-heirs with Christ to complete the original plan: make Earth His garden.

Many ancients believed their gods dwelled on a mountain in a garden. In our case, Zion is the mountain of the Lord – the garden of His delight. Revelation predicts that the whole earth will one day be filled with God’s glory. For now, according to Hebrews, we have come to Mt. Zion, but only in a spiritual sense, obviously. We are waiting for the final chapter when the new heavens and the new earth will bring the kingdom of heaven fully to earth.

I am not saying like many used to believe that we can make earth a heavenly kingdom so that Christ may return. I am saying that our kingdom work begins now because the real meaning of kingdom is rulership. We can announce the rulership of Jesus as Lord right now. When the disciples asked Jesus on the day of His ascension if He was restoring the kingdom at that time, His answer is misunderstood. He didn’t say, “No;” He said, “Yes, but the kingdom is going to look quite different from what you have imagined.”

Quoting Wright again: “What Jesus has in mind is every bit as much the fulfillment of God’s long-delayed plan for Israel and the Kingdom. Jesus has been raised from the dead… [and] is the world’s true Lord…. His messengers, his emissaries, are to go off into all the territories of which He is already enthroned as Lord and to bring the good news of His accession and His wise and just rule.” We must do what the first disciples did: go into our world and summon everyone to believing obedience to the “new sheriff” in town.

While doing this, we follow Micah’s advice: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God.” Or as someone once said, preach the good news always and everywhere; when necessary, use words. God is waiting patiently for us to help Him gather the full complement of His people. Once that’s done, God will renew us and the rest of creation so we can continue the business He started in Eden, finally bringing Him all the glory and enjoying Him forever.

Related posts: It’s Not All About You; Understanding Salvation