H.H. Pope Tawadros II delivered his weekly sermon at Wednesday’s evening sermon from the papal residence in Cairo. The sermon was held without presence of the public and broadcast live on Christian satellite channels and the C.O.C. channel of the church’s Media Center on the internet.
The sermon, entitled “Wait for the Lord and be patient with Him”, was part of a series of reflections offered by his holiness about Psalm 37. His Holiness addressed the subject of man’s waiting for God, and His Holiness focused on the fact that God’s timing is always right, and when man waits for God he receives many blessings and God’s promises come true for him.
Starting September 1, His Holiness began a new series of sermons at Wednesday’s weekly meeting, about Psalm 37, entitled “Lessons in Wisdom”.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. One God. Amen. May His grace and mercy rest upon us, from now and forevermore. Amen.
Sermon Highlights:
~ God Himself is patient
~ 3 benefits of patience
~ 4 ways we can attain the virtue of patience
~ Review of the wisdom lessons thus far:
1-Do not fret over evildoers
2-Trust in the Lord
3-Dwell in the land
4-Guard the faithfulness
5-Delight in the Lord
6-Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him
Introduction
This is our sixth in our series of wisdom lessons from Psalm 37. This Psalm is composed of 40 verses and they are essentially a series of lessons in wisdom, and so if you are a person who wishes to be wise and live your life according to wisdom, read this Psalm regularly and apply it in your life; study and learn its statements and its teachings and lessons. Let us begin by reviewing our first five lessons and a reading of the Scripture.
Psalm 37 wisdom lessons to live by
1- Do not fret nor be envious of evildoers because success that comes from wrongdoing is temporary, is quickly cut down like the grass, and is of no heavenly/eternal value.
2- Trust tin the Lord, and do good. We are to trust in the Lord and not in ourselves, nor in others, nor on wealth or money. In addition to that, we are to also do good; to take advantage of every opportunity to do something good.
3- Dwell in the land. During our time here on Earth we are to maintain a sense of being a stranger or temporary guest, while at the same time inhabiting, populating, cultivating the land and protecting the health of the environment.
4- Cultivate faithfulness,or rather, be a faithful person.
5- “Delight … commit … trust” yourself in and to the Lord, and the Lord Himself will bring all things to pass [for you, on your behalf].
Psalm 37
1Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.
2For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
3Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness.
4Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.
5Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.
6He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.
7Rest (be still, hushed, waiting) in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
8Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret—it only causes harm.
9For evildoers shall be cut off; but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.
10For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more; indeed, you will look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more.
11But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
The grace of God the Father be with us all. Amen.
Introduction
I would like to begin by congratulating you on the anniversary of October 6th 1973, a very glorious day in the history of Egypt for the victory won that day. And although many of our young people will not remember that day and the celebrating Egypt did 48 years ago on this day, but they were days during which Egypt’s stature truly stood tall among all the other nations.
And I invite all our young men and women to read and study about these glorious victories that made Egypt overcome what had happened in 1967 and begin a new journey of growth and progress. I congratulate all Egyptian people as well as our armed forces and officials, and I encourage all of our young people to study and learn in order that they would know the greatness and importance of this historical victory, as well as all that our armed forces and nation do for us. I give my appreciation and respect to all.
6th Wisdom Lesson from Psalm 37
The sixth wisdom lesson we learn from Psalm 37 is stated in the first part of verse 7: “Rest (be still, wait for) in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.” This truly is a very important piece of wisdom, but before we begin our contemplation of this part of the verse, I want you to notice the second part – “do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass,” because here again we see the words “do not fret” being repeated, and then again in verse 8: “Do not fret, it only causes harm.” So why are the words “do not fret” repeated so often in this Psalm? Because “do not fret” is the first lesson, and so he keeps repeating it.
Let us now pause at verse 7 and study the wisdom that the prophet David is teaching us here. He says, “7 Rest (be still, wait for) in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him,” and please, try to go deeply into these words. To “rest” requires that a person believe in the promises of God, as well as to wait for and until God steps in and responds to our prayers and supplications.
A few psalms earlier in Psalm 27 it says, “Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!” (Ps 27:14) And so you are to put all of your trust in the Lord, not just a little bit of trust, and to trust Him does not mean to put your trust Him and yet all the while be uncertain or shaky. Wait on the Lord.
God has His own timing and His own ways and plans, and the virtue of waiting is a powerful virtue for us to learn. Nature itself teaches us this virtue, for example, when we plant a seed, we have to wait for some time before it shoots forth a tree and roots and leaves and fruits and flowers.
Also, included within the virtue of waiting are [other virtues, including the virtues] of discernment, patience, and endurance. You may have also noticed that a person who is impatient or impulsive falls into and experiences many troubles, and oftentimes his haste will cause him to miss out on many blessings in his life. I will give you some examples of this.
Let us look at our father Abraham the patriarch, who was from the very earliest parts of the Old Testament, how God had promised him that he would have so many children and make his descendants like the stars of the sky and so on, God gave him this promise at a time when Abraham was not able to have any children at all, so how could it even be possible to have “so many children”? The two realities were in direct opposition to one another, but Abraham waited and at the right time, his wife Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to the son of the promise. Just these mere words alone – “son of the promise” – sound beautiful. Scripture tells us, “The LORD did for Sarah what He had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him” (Gen 21:1-2, NIV). And so the promises were fulfilled but in God’s timing, because time and timing from God’s perspective are different than they are from our perspective; we only [think and perceive] with our narrow minds.
Another example is that of Racheal, who did not benefit from the lesson [she could have] learned from her grandmother, Sarah, but instead, Racheal repeated the same mistake and told her husband to marry the maidservant in order to produce an heir for her. [Scripture tells us that] Rachel said to Jacob, “Here is my maidservant Bilhah. Sleep with her, that she may bear children for me, so that through her I too can build a family. Then she gave him Bilhah her maid as wife, and Jacob went in to her” (Gen 30:3-4). And yet later on, but at the right time, God Himself did in fact open up Rachel’s womb and gave her a son, Joseph; the same Joseph who later did great wonders in Egypt, the same Joseph who became one of the Old Testament’s great characters.
God Himself is patient
Patience is not just for us humans to practice, but God Himself is patient. God waits for sinners to repent. Recall the parable of the weeds and the wheat (Mt 13:24-30, 36-43). It says that, “While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way,” (Mt 13:25).
Weeds are harmful and poisonous plants, while wheat is a nutritious and edible plant, and so when the servants of the land saw the two [growing together, side by side], they went to the owner of the field and asked him, “Do you want us then to go and gather them up?” (Mt 13:28), but what was the owner’s response? He said, “Let both grow together until the harvest” (Mt 13:30). He was talking about the plants, but let us look at the spiritual meaning of this; that God waits for a sinner’s repentance.
Listen to what it says in Isaiah Chapter 5: “3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. 4 What more could have been done to My vineyard That I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, Did it bring forth wild grapes?” (Isa 5:3-4) God had given this land and vine a chance to produce grapes, to bring forth something good, but unfortunately, it produced something bad.
Same thing with the people of the Old Testament, God had given them many chances to repent but they were a stiff-necked and rebellious people (cf. Deut 31:27). Through Moses, God had taken them out of the land of Egypt, but when the prophet Moses was just a little bit delayed on the mountain while receiving the two tablets of the Law, the people made a golden calf and said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exo 32:8), and they did not wait for Moses to return back down from the mountain! God was patient with them and gave them many chances, but they did not take advantage of these opportunities. And so it is with us, God continues to give us many chances.
God waited on Saul of Tarsus’s repentance, until he became the apostle Paul. God waited for Augustine’s repentance, until he became St. Augustine, the son of tears. God waited for Moses the Black’s repentance; he had been a criminal, but God waited for him until he became a saint and a father of monks. God waits for the repentance of sinners everywhere (in all places) and in every age. God also awaits your repentance, and through this repentance you can become a saint. God waits.
We also read in the history books about Arianus, Governor of Ansena (current day Minya Governorate), and what a tyrannical dictator he had been, but God waited for his repentance and he in fact did repent and died a saint.
But it is very possible that the most beautiful image of God’s patient waiting in the Holy Bible is that of the Prodigal Son. The son asked for his rightful portion of the inheritance – maybe he was anticipating his father’s death – and surely his father advised him two or three times [against this choice he wanted to make,] but the son insisted. And so his father gave him his portion and the son left his father’s house.
He had felt that his father’s house was like a prison and that he was now liberated from this prison, so when he left he felt joyous that he was now free. And he left, and lived, and carried on, but then things changed, and after he had been living a very comfortable and honorable life at his father’s house, he ended up in a state of neediness and poverty.
But in a moment of wakefulness he came to himself and said, “I will arise and go to my father” (Lk 15:18). And I imagine that this father, whose heart had been broken when his son left him, this father must have waited for his son daily, and I imagine that he waited for him with much weeping and many tears, and I imagine that this was his constant state – eyes always full of tears, and with his old age, these two things together may have challenged his his vision, but he waited.
And the day he caught the first signs of his son [and suspected that that might be his son coming in the distance], joy filled his heart and he received his son with a wide-open embrace. And even though his son was in very bad shape, yet the father accepted him and restored him to his honorable position, to his previous greatness, and to his authority within the home. God awaits the repentance of sinners.
3 benefits of patience
Today’s wisdom lesson tells us to “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him,” but why is that important for us to do? I want to give you some of the benefits of waiting patiently for the Lord.
- By patience we inherit the promises
As the prophet Jeremiah said [in the Book of Lamentations], “It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD” (Lam 3:26). It is good for a person to wait; it is good, and as I told you, even nature teaches us to wait. It is said that a person who sows the seed of a palm tree will not eat of its fruit for another 20 years! And so some plants take a long time before they bear fruit. Also, other plants bear fruit, but not the exact same crop every year. Still yet, other plants require a very long time to develop their roots to be sufficiently strong and built up, and only then, after many years, only then may they begin to produce their first fruits.
Waiting teaches people how to attain promises. There is a promise you have received from the Lord, wait for it and you will attain it. When the Lord promised Moses that the people would inherit the land, what did He say? He said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exo 3:7-8).
Later on, the Lord spoke to the people through Joshua to remind them that He had fulfilled all His promises to them. Joshua said to them, “You know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one word of them has failed” (Josh 23:14).
And so be patient and wait. And because the One speaking and promising is God Himself, then put all your trust in God’s Hand, and wait; God has His own timing.
- By patience we defeat the demons
Another benefit we get from learning to wait is that waiting defeats demons; patient waiting overcomes demons. St. Anthony, the father of monasticism, moved out into the wilderness in stages, and during the early years of this journey of transition, Satan, the enemy of Good, tried very hard to get him to fall, but with the help of God, St. Anthony defeated Satan and gained the victory.
Another example we hear of is that of St. Isadore, [St. Moses the Black’s spiritual father,] and how during the early stages of St. Moses the Black’s coming to the Lord, Satan would try to get him to fall by trying to lure and drag him back into the [old ways] of error – because this is, after all, spiritual warfare – but St. Isadore would encourage and strengthen Moses the Black. And so through patience and waiting, St. Isadore was able to transform Moses the Black from a wicked person to a saint. [Through patient waiting] we defeat the demons, that is the end of the matter, and the end of a matter is better than the beginning of it. Does the enemy of Good fight against us? Yes he does, and he tries to make people fall. But you, through the virtue of patient-waiting, will attain the promises, by the virtue of patient-waiting you will defeat Satan and stand on firm ground.
- Patience cures hastiness / impulsivity
Another benefit of the virtue of patient-waiting is that it will enable you to cure a weakness called “hastiness,” that is, taking decisions before having thought them through. Impulsiveness and hastiness always have very negative consequences on a person.
There is a nice saying that says, “Hurry is always harmful, except in one thing: repentance.” Anything done in a hurry or haste is not good, for example, cooking in a rushed way, the food does not turn out right; if a person rushes on the road, this puts his life in danger, if a student is rushed in answering test questions, he may forget the right answers and miss some marks. And so hastiness is always harmful, except when it comes to repentance; when one makes a decision to repent, as we saw with the Prodigal Son, he should arise and offer repentance immediately.
And so we cure impulsiveness with patience. Oftentimes when a person, in a moment of haste or anger says something they later reconsider, they will say, “What was I thinking!?” or “Where was my mind at when I took this decision?” In haste, and that is [exactly] why the enemy of Good deceives, provokes, and encourages people towards impulsivity and haste. For example, we see this a lot when young people come together and want to be married or make a family; they are in a great rush and hurry, and thus, they may not take sufficient time to carefully consider things through, and this can lead to problems down the road. They want to make a commitment after just one week of knowing each other, but then problems begin to surface.
I remember a very nice statement Pope Kyrillos used to say, “Do not swear an oath nor give thanks before a year and six months,” meaning, do not give an opinion about anyone before sufficiently coming to know that person, and even then, give [the matter] at least a year and a half. So for example, if you are engaged for a year, making it six months longer would be even better, but beware of being impulsive and rushing into decisions because it can lead to wrong results.
One of the impulsive people we read about in the Holy Bible is St. Peter the Apostle; he was always impulsive, that was his personality. An example of this was at the time just before the events of the cross when Peter impulsively said to the Lord, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” (Mt 26:35), and it wasn’t but just a few hours later that he did just that, as Christ had told him earlier, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times” (Mk 14:72). The Apostle Peter denied Christ before a servant girl … “You also were with Jesus of Nazareth” (Mk 14:67) she said, “But he denied it, saying, ‘I neither know nor understand what you are saying’” (Mk 14:68). So Peter, where is your commitment? Where is your impulsive promise now?
Another example of Peter’s impulsivity is when he “drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear” (Jn 18:10), but it is apparent that St. Peter learned his lesson well, and learned that being impulsive and acting in haste cost him much, and that was why he began to train himself in the practice of the virtue of patience, as we see [in the Book of Acts]. After the Holy Spirit’s decent, Peter gave his famous sermon on the Day of Pentecost and began to preach and serve, and we see that he had become a disciplined person and that his haste and impulsiveness had left him, and he had become a person who was a successful servant.
4 ways we can attain the virtue of patience
Now that we know the benefits of waiting and patience, the question is: how does one attain this virtue or learn how to be patient?
- By observing others
Being patient can, of course, be a matter of one’s upbringing and how one learned from the example of their parents and how they dealt with the issues of life, or by observing how people, in general, can have a dream or a hope for something yet at the same time have the ability to wait [for its fulfillment]. And so a person can learn [patience] by observing others.
- Have faith in the promises of God
Have faith in God’s promises. When you read the Holy Bible you will meet with many promises, put your faith in these promises of God and in God’s perfect timing. Also consider that when you attain the virtue of patience, this becomes a strength to you and will give you additional ability to wait for God and His timing.
I had mentioned Psalm 27:14 to you earlier, it says, “Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart be courageous and wait for the Lord.” I want you to place this verse before you because as we have said before, the prophet David wrote the Psalms out of real life experiences, and we know that he endured a vast array of experiences, such as being mistreated and persecuted by King Saul, as well as many other troubles, but David came to understand the virtue of patience and he eventually became king over Israel.
And we now remember David, the prophet and king, every day, for there is never a Liturgy nor a prayer meeting where one of his Psalms are not read. We also say that the Messiah is “the Son of David” (cf. Mt 1:1), and so what closeness, what connection! The virtue of patient-waiting.
Also, the righteous ones of the Old Testament waited for the Christ. David himself, who preceded Christ by nearly 2,000 years, waited for the Lord; he waited for salvation, he waited for the work of the cross. And so the most important thing you should keep in mind in order to attain the virtue of patient-waiting is that you have complete faith in God.
Another story we may all remember is that of Elimelech and Naomi (Ruth 1:2). They immigrated to Moab, leaving their native land of Judah for reason of famine there. Elimelech did not wait for the Lord to bring the famine to an end and bring the people relief; his faith was weak and he did not believe that the Lord would be able to care for him in the midst of a famine.
We are told that Elimelech died at a young age and so Naomi became a widow. His two sons also died, so their wives (one of whom was Ruth), also became widows, but Naomi and Ruth returned to Naomi’s homeland and lived there, by faith. And we all know the story of Ruth, the widow, and how she lived with her mother-in-law, Naomi, and the love that was between them, and how the Lord unfolded a good plan for them, and how Ruth was counted among the grandmothers of Christ (cf. Mt 1:5).
Your faith. Your faith is what gives you the ability to wait patiently, and it is your faith that will teach you the virtue of patience and waiting.
- It is a process; patience grows with practice
This is the third point; you must, for yourself, attain or come to possess patience. On the cross, Christ saved us, but we ourselves are to attain our own souls through patience and waiting, as it says, “By your patience possess your souls” (Lk 21:19).
Growing patience is exactly like raising a child; when we raise our children, we are patient with them. Raising a child is a process and it begins with being pregnant, then being patient with them in their first days and weeks of life, and as they grow day by day by day by day. And as we continue being patient with the child, patience is also growing in us – day by day, and year by year.
And just as the child goes from first grade then to second grade, and from stage to stage, we also enter one stage of patience, we grow, we leave that stage and then enter into the next stage, and then university, and so on; it is a journey, the journey of raising a child!
[The Bible repeatedly reminds us of the need for patience, as we read in the parable of the sower] in the Gospel of Luke, where He tells us, “But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience” (Lk 8:15), and again in the Epistle of St. Jacob (James), it says, “knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience” (Jam 1:3).
Patience is a wonderful virtue for a person to have, as St. Peter the Apostle tells us, “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness” (1 Pet 1:5-6). Self-control and perseverance are forms of patience, because they require patience.
Waiting for the Lord is a very important thing, do not forget that in the Old Testament, the children of Israel refused to wait for Moses to come back down the mountain, so what did they do? They “made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it” (Exo 32:8). To that extent you are impatient?! You couldn’t wait until Moses came down the mountain? No, they did not wait, and that is why I am telling you that acting in haste has [great] potential for error and sin.
On the other hand, we see patience in how David dealt with King Saul, though we do not know why King Saul was so jealous of him and fought against him. David’s attitude was that of patient-waiting on the Lord, as we see in this Psalm where he says: “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.” And so from among all the lessons in wisdom, this is one of the most powerful lessons: Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.
A wise person waits. They used to say that a person could only be wise if they had white hair; that only if a person had grey hair they might be wise, and why? Because, they said, that was a sign that he was an old man, an elder, one who had had much life experience. But in the New Testament, now that the Holy Spirit of God is with us and dwells in us, the Spirit of God can make a person wise even if they are young in years, and so wisdom is not a matter of having white or grey hair.
- By wisdom
We attain the virtue of patience by observing it in others, by having faith in the promises of God, by attaining it for ourselves as we practice it day by day, and we also attain patience by wisdom. But, you may ask, aren’t we studying lessons in wisdom, so all of this is wisdom? Yes, but I would tell you that every time you practice a wise action or decision, you are attaining more patience.
We all remember Solomon the Wise; God gave him great wisdom and understanding. It says, “God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding, and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore” (1 Kg 4:29), and why did God give him largeness of heart? So that he could decide on and resolve problems with wisdom and patience, with right thinking and consideration.
A very beautiful attribute for one to have is that when confronted with a matter or facing an issue of any sort, how to give it a sufficient period of time for consideration; a chance for prayer, a chance for seeking and receiving counsel, a chance for patience, a chance for waiting, to give God a chance to work.
There is a person who is always in a hurry, always rushing everything, and that is why this wisdom lesson is very important, to “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.”
Review of the wisdom lessons thus far:
1-Do not fret over evildoers
2-Trust in the Lord
3-Dwell in the land
4-Guard the faithfulness
5-Delight in the Lord
6-Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him
Conclusion and Benediction
As I told you many times, the prophet David repeats the words “do not fret” several times. Patience and waiting are a virtue and are among the lessons of wisdom, but it is not possible for a person to be wise and at the same time be in a hurry; the two do not go together. Wisdom requires time and faith and patience, it requires that a person think things through and well, and that a person take time to “come to know.”
I also want you to know that these lessons are all related to one other, so do not take any of them individually and consider to be a stand-alone lesson on wisdom. All of these lessons support one another, because we are building a life of wisdom, an existence of wisdom, as David the prophet would teach it to us.
This lesson is an important one, and as I have told you before, I hope that you read this Psalm regularly and that you review the lessons we have already covered, and may God give us more contemplations in the weeks to follow, so that you may have a complete wisdom curriculum for your life.
To our God be all the glory and honor, from now and forevermore. Amen.
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