Sermon: Repentant Goats

Developing God's Longsuffering
#1680A
Bill Onisick
Given 12-Nov-22; 32 minutes

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As Jesus Christ concludes His Parable of the Sheep and Goats, the sheep are given eternal life, but the goats are cast into the Lake of Fire. There is no doubt we would all like to distance ourselves from this parable, thinking perhaps it only applies to the time after Christ has returned here on earth and is ruling.

Matthew 25:33-34 "And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'"

Matthew 25:37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink?'"

The sheep here are not surprised by the king's judgment, but they are taken back and surprised by the reasons He gives for His final judgment. His final judgment, interestingly enough, does not mention anything about obedience to the letter of the law, and make no mistake, obedience is required. But that is really elementary God-being curriculum and criteria. His final judgment, He says, is based on the master level God-being curriculum, His Spirit of agape.

His final judgment, He tells us, is based solely on how we treated Jesus Christ in the flesh. The sheep are a bit surprised. Where were You? Did I did I miss this? When did we do these things to You, Lord? And Jesus clarifies His judgment is based on how we treat those in whom Christ lives. Those who have His Spirit.

Matthew 25:40 "And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'"

So whatever we do to our brothers and sisters in the greater church of God, we are actually doing to Jesus Christ. I think if we all remembered that and started each day meditating on that, we would probably have better days. When we walk in God's Spirit of agape (Ephesians 4 and 5) we are walking as His sheep, united and peacefully grazing together. We can tie this perfectly to I John 3:10, "In this the children of God. . . are manifest," he tells us. We know that we have passed from death unto life because we [agapeo] the brethren (verse 14). Again in John 13:35 we read, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have [apape] for one another."

Matthew 25:41 "Then He will also say to those on the left hand, "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

Matthew 25:44-46 "Then they also will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?' Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

So our sins of commission and omission are sins against Jesus Christ. Both the sheep and the goats are judged with the same criteria, based on what they did or did not do to those in whom Jesus Christ lives. Our final judgment then is based on what we do or do not do for our brothers and sisters in the church of God. And this parable is indeed to the end time church.

Now, if I ask for a show of hands right now. All the goats in the room, please raise your hand. No doubt I would not see any raised hands here. (And I am quite certain Tom Brady is not listening in either.) So, good news then. We have got all sheep and no goats here! Well, that is certainly what Satan wants us to believe. He wants us to believe that we are sheep, we are safe. All we need to do here is just graze peacefully in the green meadows, waiting for our Shepherd to return. We do not really need to change. And that is a good thing because we do not like change. Change is hard.

But now some really bad news. Statistically speaking, we cannot all be sheep in the greater church of God. And through the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, we learned they are both judged for how they treated their brethren in the church, how they treated those that Christ dwells in. The Parable of the Tares also confirms that the good wheat and tares grow together in the end time church. But before we start pointing fingers at each other's horns that are starting to grow, we need to hold up a mirror and we need to ask ourselves a hard question: Do I have goat-like tendencies? Could I find myself on the left hand side when Christ returns?

Now I am going to be a bit vulnerable today and tell you that my name indeed fits me. From time to time I am a bit of a Bill-y goat. In fact, I am convinced that we all have some goat-like tendencies. And if we are not becoming more self-aware of them, if we are not overcoming them, then we will indeed be goats on the left at Christ's return.

We are going to start today by refreshing a bit on the typical goat-like tendencies and then we will spend the rest of our time examining one key tendency that we all likely share just a bit—and that is not a good share.

As Mike Ford explained in his, "Goats on the Left" 1994 Forerunner article, goats are impulsive, they are unpredictable. They are devious and contrary. They are always stubborn and never content with what they have. The grass for them is truly always greener on the other side of the fence, and they are working relentlessly to escape those fences and find that better pasture. They are by nature impatient. Goats are not good followers, nor do they have a strong flocking or herding instinct that we find in sheep and cattle. Goats prefer leading or going off on their own.

Quoting Mike, "A goat follows only its own lead, creating disunity when he comes in contact with others in the flock. Because of his independent nature he often finds himself in contention."

Please turn with me to I Corinthians 13. You had to know we were going to get there at some point in time.

Now, I was having dinner with a colleague not too long ago and he owns a ranch out west. He told me of a really scary incident that happened to him several years back. He was fixing a corner of fence in his pasture and he had his back to a large goat, and apparently he did something to irritate that goat. It might have just been his presence, it might have been the fact that he was fixing the hole that the goat was using to escape. But he heard some galloping behind him and he turns around just in time for that goat to hit him head-on in the chest. Boom! Cracked several ribs, knocked him down. His life was actually at risk, but he had a cellphone and was able to get called out of there and he survived. But the goat did not have much luck after that.

Goats are indeed quick to retaliate if they feel threatened or slighted, and you can go online actually and view hilarious videos of goats screaming as they become impatient at feeding time. They bleat, but it sounds like a human screaming. And this brings us to my goat-like tendency that I suspect I might share with some of you. If you, like me, struggle with patience, if you, like me, would prefer short-suffering versus longsuffering.

Please stay with me on this self-awareness journey. We know Paul uses the entire chapter of I Corinthians 13 to describe God's omni-agape character. All the descriptions there are actions because agape is an ever-burning desire that is always linked to action. Action that is always in alignment with God's law. Action that is always in alignment with what is best for that individual. That is agape in action.

I Corinthians 13:4 [Agape] suffers long.

Here we find the very first description of God's very essence. Agape is longsuffering and the Greek verb translated "suffers long" here is Strong's #3114 makrothumeo meaning to be long-spirited, forbearing, longsuffering, and to patiently endure. We find this in a related noun which is Strong's #3115 makrothumea, translated forbearance, longsuffering, and patience throughout the New King James. Both of these words are from the underlying Greek root word, Strong's #3116 makrothomos, which is a compound word here. We have a compound word here makros, meaning long or enduring, and thumos, meaning temper. So "long to temper" basically is the underlying Greek word. The Lockman Foundation Amplified Translation reads, "Love endures with patience and serenity," and sometimes yes, we occasionally want to yell out serenity now, especially if your son-in-law picks your favorite song.

There are two primary applications of longsuffering and patience that we need to be thinking about: circumstances and people. We have to have longsuffering with circumstances. We apply it to ourselves to be longsuffering, to not become angry or disgruntled as we persevere patiently, and endure the trials for ourselves or those that we love. And second, people. We have to have longsuffering for God's people. We must learn to be patient in bearing the offenses and shortcomings of others. To be longsuffering is to be slow to anger and to never avenge a wrongdoing.

Longsuffering is indeed the opposite of anger, the opposite of disappointment that comes from our impatience with the situation or a person. Our anger usually creates a spiteful outburst in retaliation for someone who has done us wrong. This is indeed a goat-like tendency. To bleat or scream is in clear opposition to God's instruction in Romans 12. We are to bless those who persecute you, repay no one evil for evil, do not avenge yourselves.

Now, our evil heart will often excuse our short-suffering, our anger. And sometimes we think it is because we are being righteous, we are maybe taking up God's side against sin. We are defending God's law. But almost all human anger is self-centered and sinful. Brother James puts it clearly in James 1:20, "The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God."

Please turn with me back to Psalm 86. We know God does not change. So let us look at a few examples of His longsuffering back in the Old Testament.

Psalm 86:14-15 O God, the proud have risen against me, and a mob of violent men have sought my life, and have not set You before them. But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and in truth.

Here we have two Hebrew words that are used for longsuffering in the Old Testament and it is found four times these two words are used together. Arek, Strong's #750, meaning long, patient, or slow combined with aph, Strong's #639 the nose or the nostril, rapid breathing in anger. And so we can see in these Hebrew words, God is slow to anger. And it is a great word picture. What happens when we get irritated or angry? We start breathing very rapidly. We breathe in through our nose loudly.

We are going to go to one more. Let us go back to Exodus 34:6, and this time we are going to pick up God's description of Himself to Moses. We will see the same two Hebrew words used together, long nostril and slow to anger translated again longsuffering.

Exodus 34:5-6 Now the Lord descended in the 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, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth."

We can jot down Numbers 14:18. It is a parallel scripture, almost word for word. Jeremiah 15:15 is the other place we see these two words used together for longsuffering. This is where Jeremiah is pleading with God to revenge him from his persecutors and to not take away God's longsuffering.

God's Spirit, His very essence we see is underpinned by His longsuffering and that is a good thing, because if it was not for that, none of us would be here. We would have been scorched instantly a long time ago when we sinned.

Let us go over to the New Testament now. We are going to look at Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.

We could probably blame modern technology for our lack of patience. It has definitely made us more impatient as our expectations now are instantaneous in real time. Our dwindling attention spans (Richard talked about this at the Feast), are certainly a sign of that, a sign of our growing impatience. But when we peel it back, a lack of patience, a lack of longsuffering or impatience is the feeling we get when we have a goal and then we come to realize it is going to take more work or more time than we thought to reach that goal. Impatience is simply the result of poor expectation setting within our mind. We simply have not properly counted the actual cost of that goal and so we get frustrated when it takes us longer to get there. Hold on to that.

I am sure we have all experienced the impatience of waiting in a grocery store and the line next to us is moving faster. We got the slow clerk, so we move and then we find out that line is even slower. Same thing on the highway, right? We are on a highway in a traffic jam. We are impatient, we switch lanes, and sure enough, that lane ends up being slower.

Now I do not know exactly how it started for me, but I have always been on a quest to save time. As a kid, I would load up a wheelbarrow sometimes higher than me and my granddad would tell me, "That looks like a lazy man's load to me." And I would look at him with kind of a weird face. "What do you mean?" Of course, halfway there I would hit a bump, I would lose control of the wheelbarrow, the dirt falls on the ground, and it takes me twice as long to clean it up. He is like, "Yeah, that's how lazy men do it. They look for the shortcut and it always takes longer." I could also blame my job. I mean, I have spent decades using technology to make things faster and easier.

There is probably a lot of contributing factors, including perhaps the premature death of my father. Ever since, I have had a constant feeling that life can be cut too short and perhaps that helped fuel the go, go, go inside me. It is almost comical though how far I will go to try to save a little bit of time. I have my hair dryer mounted in a cabinet that I built just for it so I can save the ten seconds of time it takes to pull it out of the drawer and plug it in, only to unplug it and put it back in the drawer when I am done. It is 20 seconds a day, 120 minutes a year. That is two hours a year I saved. Woo-hoo! I also will not fill up my car until it is on fumes because, you know, over the course of a year it will save me a couple of fill ups and you know, that is a few minutes of time across the course of the year. Yes, please pray for my wife. This is what she has to live with.

But I will tell you as I reflect, I am really embarrassed at the number of times that I have lost my patience—traffic jams, bad drivers, bad service, computers—talk about creating patience—colleagues at work, on the golf course every other swing, and various other circumstances with my family, my pets, friends, brothers, sisters. Yes, God has blessed me with an abundance of opportunities to work on my patience, but for some reason I have not figured it out yet. He has blessed me with sports teams who are prone to lose in the biggest of games and with my Texas brethren who are prone to remind me of the same (a little too soon, guys).

I have been on a self-awareness journey for a long time now as respects patience and I am making some progress, but not as fast as I would like. I am certainly not allowing myself to get too wrapped up in sports anymore. I try to temper my expectations for people and circumstances, but I know I have a long way to go. I need to better manage my expectations. I need to remember the cost of the real goal.

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness.

Here we have the noun form makrothumeo for longsuffering. And it is interesting that we see this same word used twice in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18. We are not going to go there for the sake of time, but it is used first when the servant falls down, he begs his lord to have patience (makrothumeo) with him for the debt that he owed. And his lord does have patience. He forgives the debt. But when he now is in the same position and someone that owes him money falls down and begs him have patience (makrothumeo), he throws him in jail.

This highlights the hypocrisy of anyone in God's church who does not have patience and forgiveness and longsuffering, knowing how much patience and longsuffering God extends to us each day. It is hypocrisy. God hates hypocrisy.

Turn with me to James 5 now, and as you are turning, please jot down I Thessalonians 5:14 where Paul exhorts us to "be patient towards all [men]."

James 5:7-10 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until he receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door! My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience.

So James repeats four times that we must be longsuffering in both the circumstances and people that God puts into our lives. Be patient, he says. Have long patience, be you also patient, follow the prophets' example of patience. But it is interesting. He adds some cumulative force here in verse 8 with that word "also." It is as if he is saying, "Be long longsuffering." That is the cumulative power of that preceding word there. And establish your hearts. That is where patience is established. It is in our hearts, it is not in our emotions, it is in our hearts. And we have to work hard to overcome our carnality.

Over to Romans 2 now please. But let us remember this stern warning against impatience here. And let us also remember the warning of not having a grudge, any grudge against our brethren. If we do, he says, we will be condemned by the Judge standing at the door. We have many brethren who are living examples of longsuffering with an illness or thorn in the flesh that makes it very difficult. Over the last several years, the Ritenbaugh family, and many of us with them, have been suffering long with dementia and other age-related afflictions. First with Evelyn, now with John. And it makes you realize, there are things worse than death. When you see someone you love so deeply unable to move, unable to remember much of anything, it really forces you to take a step back. What are we supposed to learn? We do not like longsuffering. We like short-suffering.

Now, as I read scriptures to my spiritual mentor, having to remind him of the many times he read these scriptures to me, sometimes I just want to cry. But I know this is part of God's plan. It is part of His awesome plan. He is using it, not for John, He is using it to teach us something and each of us have to reflect and think, what is it we need to learn? For me, I believe God is teaching me to finally become so disgusted with my goat-like tendency to be impatient, to be short-suffering, that He has motivated me to work harder to overcome it.

Romans 2:4-8 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who "will render to each one according to his deeds": eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality [those are the sheep]; but to those who are self-seeking [the goats, I will add] and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath.

Paul makes it clear here again how dangerous it is for us to take God's longsuffering for granted. Again, we see the source of our impatience is from our evil heart, our evil heart that makes us feel justified in being short-tempered, short-suffering in our responses. By and through His presence in us, He can change our heart to become more patient, to be ready to resist the sin of being short-tempered. We need His help to cleanse our hearts that are all full of pain and anger from our prior circumstances in life. We need a spirit to help us unwind that spring within us that is often wound so tight it is just waiting to explode in anger. We need His help to properly manage our expectations and count the cost of the ultimate goal.

How often does our goat-like attitude of impatience and our underlying hypocritical heart drive us to bleat or scream, just like that goat impatiently waiting for their food? We open our mouth and say something we should not. We stick our nose where it does not belong when someone is not doing something that we think they should do, we are compelled to speak. It is our way or the highway. Our view is so right, we just cannot hold it in, and so we blurt it out.

Our goat-like hypocritical heart will make us realize that what we want and how we want to spend our time is more important than what our brethren need. And so we will, through neglect, sin by not taking care of our brethren who are in need, when all a lot of times what they need is just a little bit of our time. That is the final judgment, right? The final judgment is how we treat Jesus Christ here on earth. How we treat our brethren in the church.

Please turn with me to I Timothy. The warning against those that are contentious is very clear. Our goat-like impatience and quick temper will earn indignation and wrath.

I Timothy 1:14-16 And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.

Paul was making it clear the grace of God was exceedingly abundant through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, by which Paul says we obtained mercy. Jesus Christ shows forth all longsuffering, a pattern for us to follow, a pattern for all who believe on Him to have eternal life.

Now God's Spirit of longsuffering is a pattern that we must follow if we want to have eternal life and be sheep on the right. We can tie this to Peter's reminder in I Peter 3:20 it was through God's longsuffering that He waited for Noah to finish building the ark.

Please turn with me to Colossians 1 as we start to turn the corner on the gun lap of this message. The Parable of the Sheep and Goats should give us all great pause and probably a bit of discomfort. Both the sheep and the goats are judged for what they did or did not do to those whom Jesus Christ is in. Our final judgment is based on what we do or do not do to our brothers and sisters in the greater church of God.

We must become more self-aware of our goat-like tendency of impatience and short-suffering that results in sins towards our brethren, that results in neglect of our brethren who are in need. As we examined just briefly today, our lack of patience comes from our hypocritical heart, our heart that wants to have God's longsuffering towards us, but lacks the faith and trust in Him to extend that longsuffering out to others, and into ourselves in circumstances and the people that He has put into our lives.

God tells us, "My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me." And He has given us His example of longsuffering as a pattern that we must follow to inherit eternal life, a pattern that we must follow to be the sheep on the right. And it takes daily work. This is not something that comes naturally to our carnal minds. It takes daily work and feeding on God's Word to come before Him in prayer and meditation and beg Him for help to overcome that hypocritical heart. We must ask for Romans 5:5, for the agape to be poured out in our hearts through His Spirit so that we can develop His Spirit of longsuffering.

We must work harder to manage our expectations for the inevitable offenses and trials that God allows in our life. We are all imperfect people and we sin every day. We cannot retaliate, brethren. We have to be become very self-aware of our goat-like tendencies. By and through His presence in us we can become more patient and ready to resist that sin of being short-tempered.

Colossians 1:10-11 That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.

We can tie this perfectly to Ephesians 4. We must walk worthy of our calling, brethren, with all lowliness and meekness and longsuffering. Over now to Colossians 3 and we will conclude.

Colossians 3:12-14 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against you, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on [agape] which is the bond of perfection.

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