Understanding God - Longsuffering

Longsuffering is an archaic word which means “long and patient endurance of offense.” This act of grace and mercy on the part of God is demonstrated many times in the Scripture narrative. I believe the first is Adam and Eve after their failure in the Garden of Eden. They had sinned against God and were deserving of destruction. Instead, God in His great Love, demonstrated the need for the blood to be shed for sin when God made them garments of skins. In addition, their punishment of expulsion from the Garden was great, but not unbearable. The additional curse of the earth and the ground was a reminder of how we should depend on the Creator. God then exercises more longsuffering when He give the wicked people of Noah’s day 120 years before He executes His wrath. In Genesis 6: 3 “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” The people of the prediluvian world had the knowledge of God’s impending judgement by the testimony of Noah and his family. Noah preached the coming judgement, but the wickedness of man prevented any repentance. Second Peter 2:5 “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;” Another example of the longsuffering of God is the testimony of the city of Nineveh. If you remember from Sunday school, God had called on Jonah to travel to Nineveh in order to preach repentance to the wicked people of that city. However, instead of 120 years, God gave the inhabitants of the city forty days to repent before judgement would come. Jonah 3:4 “And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The people of Nineveh responded to the preaching and quickly repented of their wickedness. Jonah 3:5 “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.” God is exercising His attribute of longsuffering even today. God loves man so much that He is offering every possible chance for men to repent. I believe judgement is close, for men today are the same as the men of Noah’s day. Compare these verses: Genesis 6:5 “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” And compare Job 22:15-17 “Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood: Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?” Jesus also warned people in Luke 17:26-27 “And as it was in the days of Noe (Noah), so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” God is indeed very patient, allowing man another opportunity to repent. We do not know when, but the scriptures are clear: I don’t take Sunday lightly anymore, for another week is further demonstration of the Longsuffering of God and His love for Man. Second Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” See you in church. --- Bro. Louis