God calls us to self-control and endurance. What does that look like? How do we do it? Pastor Tim considers that with an exploration of our continue struggles with these things from the very beginning.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor uses the metaphor of “scrolling” to connect modern social media habits with Adam and Eve’s temptation in Genesis 3. How does this comparison help illustrate the concept of discontentment, and what are other modern examples of how we “scroll” looking for fulfillment outside of what God has provided?
In the Cain and Abel passage, the pastor emphasizes that God doesn’t explicitly tell us why He favored Abel’s offering. Why do you think this ambiguity is important, and how does it relate to the broader theme of learning to trust God even when we don’t have complete understanding?
The sermon identifies two interconnected problems: lack of self-control (chasing desires) and impatience (losing confidence that God is working). How do these two issues fuel each other, and can you think of a personal example where one led to the other?
Reflecting on Cain’s response in Genesis 4, how do we sometimes turn others into obstacles or scapegoats when we lose patience with God’s timing, and what does it look like to “rule over” that sin rather than feed it?
The pastor challenges viewers to consider what their social media presence communicates about their priorities. What do you think your online activity reveals about what you consider important, and how might that differ from what you claim to value spiritually?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening, and welcome back to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you tonight. We’re continuing our series, Follow Me. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been thinking about the fruit that God brings out of our lives, looking at the list that Peter provides in 2 Peter chapter 1, and thinking in particular as Peter reflects on this, how he’s reflecting on what it looks like to follow Jesus, to answer his call, that as we show these things, that we’re showing who Jesus is.
Last week, we thought about knowledge and how we’re called to know more about God, and this week we’re going to self-control and patience, and I really don’t think that we can ever genuinely reach a place of self-control and patience without knowing who God is. These two go together. It’s no mistake that it is in that order.
So let’s go ahead and come to our God and pray that he would guide us as we get to know him more as he shapes us and enables us to do what he’s called us to do. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness and your love. Thank you for being with us tonight, and Lord, as we reflect on how you’ve called us to lives of self-control and patience, would you help us to be enabled by your Spirit to do these things because you are the one who gives us the strength to do it. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Perhaps one of the most straightforward, simple, right-in-our-face examples of struggling with self-control may be social media. Now as I say that, I realize that you’re probably watching this on social media, and so don’t feel like you need to immediately click away and go do something else. Hang on, but think about it for a moment. Maybe you even discovered this video tonight this way. You’re scrolling because you don’t want to go work on something. It’s a great way to procrastinate. You just scroll and see, well, maybe there’s something that will amuse me. Maybe there’s something that will make me happy or inform me if I scroll down a little further, or maybe it’s time to go to bed for the night, and you think, I just don’t feel like getting up. I’ll just scroll a little further, and we just keep scrolling and scrolling, looking for something to make us happy or amused or what have you.
We think, well, that’s a very modern thing. We’re just constantly searching by scrolling, looking for something. But if we think about it in the history of humanity, we can go all the way back to Genesis chapter three and see where essentially Adam and Eve were just scrolling, looking for something else, something other than what God had given them. That’s what we see when we turn there.
So let’s go ahead and look at Genesis chapter three right now. It says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
What do we see there? We really boil it down. Satan tempts Eve and says something that isn’t quite true. He says, isn’t it true that God won’t let you eat anything in this garden? You’re basically starving to death, Eve. You should just be so unhappy. And Eve does correct the record. She says, no, God has only said we can’t eat from one tree. But Satan’s chipped away at her contentment a little bit there.
We see that today. He does that to us today. Our own hearts do that to us today as fallen human beings such as we are. We often chip away for ourselves, and we think, if only I had something else. If only I could hold on to these things that I don’t have that other people have. We start scrolling, looking for that thing that’s going to make us happy again. That’s what Satan causes Eve to do.
And then she sees that fruit and she thinks, well, why wouldn’t God want me to eat this? It looks good to eat. It looks delicious. So she eats it. And then Adam does the exact same thing.
We see this example, essentially, of the process of discontentment coming into the world. That in that moment, surrounded by the beauty of everything that God has made, this wonderful garden that he has given to them to enjoy, his own very presence that is with them, they find the one thing that he has said they can’t do, and through that temptation, decide that is what they need to be happy, to be fulfilled, to have what they really want.
That’s Satan’s lie over and over again, all the way into our present lives today. We’re constantly searching for that happiness, scrolling along, looking for something that’s going to fulfill us, and often looking away from the very things that God has given us.
Instead of self-control, we feed into what the ancient world considered its exact opposite, which is desire. That we desire things. We want them. We think, I need this. I need that. That will make me happy.
That leads us to our first question that we need to ask ourselves, that every human being throughout history has needed to ask. That is, am I keeping my eyes on what God says is right? Because so often what we are asking ourselves is, is this thing that I’m going to do, or is this thing that I want going to make me happy, is it going to please me? What we’re not asking is, is it pleasing to God?
So often we kind of shove that aside because we think, well, it’s not really doing any harm. It’s not doing any harm to eat of a piece of fruit. It’s not doing any harm to just keep scrolling and scrolling.
What do we need to do? We need to ask if it’s right before God. And a lot of times it’s really obvious. We should just ask the question, is God directly forbidden what I’m thinking about doing, or what I want? Oftentimes, as we look through his Word, remember again, knowledge feeds into this. If we know what God has called us to do, if we know his Word, we can turn there and we can see very clearly.
Eve could say very clearly, God has forbidden me from doing the thing that I’ve decided I want to do. She could have turned away at that moment and said, well, it’s not going to really genuinely make me happy and fulfilled if God has forbidden it from me. But she didn’t.
Now you might say, well, that’s really great when God is walking in the garden with you and he’s actually saying, okay, that one thing over there, you can’t do it. But what about today? Today we live in a world that has thousands of things going on around us. And some of them are good and some of them are bad. Some of them are kind of in between, it seems. And we’re not walking in the garden with God.
So we can’t just say, God, can I do this? Can I do that? And have him immediately vocally say back to us, yes or no. Some things are more challenging and we’re called to come before God in prayer. We’re called to bring in those around us that God has placed in our lives, who love God to help guide us and to think about these things.
But even in the most ambiguous of circumstances, we can often wrestle with these things quite effectively by simply going back to what Jesus says are the two greatest commandments—to love God and to love our neighbor.
And the vast majority of the time, when we’re chasing after something that’s displeasing to God, we can immediately see that it doesn’t fulfill one of those two commandments. That’s where we need to start. That’s the question we need to ask. Am I keeping my eyes on what God has said is right?
Because our hearts don’t want to. Our hearts want to chase after what makes us allegedly happy. And of course, it always ends up being empty. We thought that apple would make her happy. Adam then thought that apple would make him happy, or whatever kind of fruit it was, but it didn’t. And when we chase after our forbidden fruit, it doesn’t either.
But why do we do it? I think it often is because of a second problem we see very early on in Scripture that ties in with that first one and ties in with these two virtues we’re talking about. The first one is that lack of self-control because we want to chase after what we desire. But just as important is that we have patience as God is working, but we lose confidence God is working.
We look and we say, well, not only do I desire this, but God doesn’t seem to be coming along here. He’s not moving at my speed, doing what I want.
We see that in the very next chapter of Genesis, in Genesis chapter 4. We read the story of Cain and Abel. It says, “In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock, and of their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.”
There’s a whole bunch of things happening here. And the immediate question is, well, why does God like Abel’s offering and not Cain’s? And there’s lots of good speculation about that. It’s been thought that maybe Abel was giving the very best that he had, and Cain was withholding. Or maybe Abel was really eager to give to God, and Cain wasn’t. We’re not told. And I think there’s a reason for that.
God doesn’t want us to know just one example here and say, ah, this is what was wrong, and so I just need to avoid that. He wants us to wrestle with the whole issue here, the bigger issue, which is that Cain is not content because he doesn’t get what he thinks he should get from God.
He sees what Abel’s getting, that Abel’s getting God’s favor, and he says, well, why him and not me? That quickly falls into a very dangerous pattern that we’re very prone to, which is that we start to see others as obstacles. That we see the others around us and we say, the problem isn’t what’s going on with me, it’s that Abel got what I wanted. I wanted God’s favor, and he got it instead. And so he quickly turns Abel into the scapegoat for his problems.
We see that so often. Again, as we’re scrolling through that social media, what feeds us, what causes us to keep wanting to do it, oftentimes it’s all the posts that talk about how the other, someone else, is the problem. And we think, yeah, that’s good, and we start to feel maybe not happy, but we feel something inside us being fed.
It’s that desire to have someone to blame. We want relief now and not later. We don’t want to wait until God works and pulls everything together in our lives, but at least we can look at our Abels and say, that’s the reason things aren’t going the way that I want in my life. That’s what we see as this goes on. This is what’s happening in Cain’s mind.
See that starting in verse 6. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Cain isn’t thinking about God’s goodness and the provision of the life that he has, and the fact that he has things to offer to God. All he can see is that Abel has something that he wants, and of course, this is a very familiar story. We probably all know what happens. Cain kills Abel, and so we have the first murder.
Cain embraces his lack of patience, his unwillingness to come before God and to wait to see God work and to examine his own heart, and so he feeds that lack of self-control. He feeds into that desire, and then he feeds into impatience, and it all comes together in this horrible, ugly murder of Abel.
God confronts him before it happens and says what Cain needs to do. He needs to turn away from it. He says that sin that you want to embrace, that anger that you’re feeding, that lack of patience, that lack of focus on what I’ve given you is going to consume you. It’s against you, but you have to turn away from it.
Cain doesn’t, so often we don’t. We see this over and over again in the pages of Scripture where there’s some reason that, say, the kingdom of Israel isn’t being blessed, and instead of turning back to God and patiently waiting for him, waiting for him to work, what do the people do? What do the kings do?
They go and make an alliance with some kingdom that’s opposed to God. They compromise on what God’s called them to do because they think, in this way, I don’t have to wait. I can write my own destiny. It’s time to take matters into my own hands.
This is woven into our very society, this idea that all I need to do is actually just take matters into my own hands, pull myself up by my own bootstraps, and I will make things right. I’ll watch out for myself.
It’s hard to be faithful when we’re hurting. It’s hard to be faithful when we’re uncertain of what’s going on. That’s one of the reasons Peter mentions this in 2 Peter. Paul refers to it repeatedly as well. We find it in Hebrews. We find it throughout the New Testament and the Old Testament.
Why? Because there are times when, even as the people of God, even as those following the Lord, we’re going to find ourselves feeling alone, wondering where God is, wondering why things haven’t come together in our own time, and the temptation is going to be to lose patience, to quit waiting on what God is doing.
Peter, as he wrote those words in 2 Peter, knew there were multiple reasons for this, for the people that he was writing to in that day would struggle with this, and he knew the people after as well. But during that time period, as he was writing to them, he knew they were facing persecution.
And when you think about it, what really would cause someone to question more whether they should just take matters into their own hands than if they see themselves and the people around them being persecuted for their faith? And they say, well, if God was going to solve this, he wouldn’t let this happen. So I just need to go and maybe I’ll follow some other God because this isn’t working. Maybe I’ll just go follow some Greek philosopher because this isn’t working right now. I’m not happy. My desires aren’t being met. I’m tired of waiting.
Then there was also the other matter that Jesus hadn’t returned yet. He said he would return, but he wasn’t back yet. Obviously we’re still waiting, and again, that’s a challenge for us that we think, when is he going to come? When is he going to make everything right?
These things can cause us to lose patience, but as we do, then we miss out on the blessing of what God has for us. We miss out on embracing his goodness because as we’re being impatient about those things and then going and running after our desires instead, we’re losing that self-control. We miss all of what God is doing in our lives.
Think about this a little more. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. My friend’s name is Winston, and Winston is a praying mantis. I didn’t really know that much about praying mantises. They’re interesting. I would run into them every so often, but I’ve learned a few facts about praying mantises this week as Winston has been hanging around the garden.
Winston is right in the midst of my hot peppers, and he’s taking very good care of them. I haven’t seen very many bugs bothering those peppers, I presume because of Winston’s careful tending of the garden. But Winston doesn’t move much. I’ve been able to get some great pictures of him because he just stands there. He’s just tucked in, and you almost miss him. He just looks like a leaf until you really start to look, and then you see him perched there with his little arms just staring.
One thing I didn’t know until this week was that a praying mantis can actually catch something as large as a hummingbird. When you think about it, this little bug can reach out as a hummingbird goes flying by and grab it. He can reach out and grab large bugs that seem kind of fierce that might make us fly away. Metaphorically, at least. I wish we could fly, literally.
There was actually a video I saw earlier this year of a praying mantis grabbing a murder hornet and catching it, making it his lunch. So they have this amazing ability, but apparently praying mantises are also very susceptible to birds. So if they’re out and about and they start scurrying around and they start, say, chasing after hummingbirds out in the open, they’re going to become someone’s lunch instead.
Winston has to be patient and stay in those plants and just wait for his meal to come to him. But what does he have? He has faith that he’s going to have it. Jesus spoke about how God takes care of even the sparrows, and in some way I’d like to think that Winston is thinking about how God is going to take care of him, too.
But he has to have patience. If he tries to force it, if he tries to move too fast, if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do, what’s he going to do? He’s going to be eaten, rather than tending to my garden.
And that’s something that we need to ask ourselves, too. And here’s our next question. Am I falling into the temptation for shortcuts? Because so often we do. So often we think, I can just find a faster way around to get what I want, to make everything the way that I would like it to be.
Sometimes it’s that scapegoating of other people around us like Cain did with Abel. I think we’ve probably all experienced that at some point, where someone blames us for something that’s really their own fault. But it’s easier for them. It’s easier for them to think about how they’re going to get what they desire by blaming us instead.
Sometimes it’s that matter of taking things into our own hands, thinking that I’m just going to do whatever I want, and I’m not even going to really worry about what’s pleasing to God at the moment. Or God wants me to have this, so it doesn’t matter how I do it.
What other gods, so to speak, do we follow? What things do we chase after as we seek to feed our desires, rather than being self-controlled and patient for God? What do those scrolling through social media and seeing my own posts think is important to me?
I posted that question a few weeks ago. Do the people that look at your social media, the people that look at my social media, understand what’s genuinely important in my life? Are they seeing all kinds of other things, those things that I’m feeding my desires with, whether it’s things that I want to buy or things political that I want to see achieved or whatever else that I might post?
Are people seeing that God is what’s most important to me as they’re scrolling, looking for whatever’s happy to them, whatever they can fulfill themselves with?
We need to ask what shortcuts we’re taking, because inevitably, every time we do, we’re going to find that we ultimately end up straying from where God wants us to be. God doesn’t call us to take shortcuts. God calls us to be patient and wait on him, and to follow him, to want to please him.
How do we do that? How do we do that when things just aren’t seemingly going right, when we’re tired and we’re weary, when we just want God to answer our prayers and we think, if I just do this my own way this time, I’ll be where God really wanted me anyway?
What do we do? That’s where we circle back to what we were talking about at the beginning, which is that we look to Jesus. We fill ourselves with knowledge of who Jesus is. We realize what Jesus has done.
Listen to what the author of Hebrews writes in chapter 12 of Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
The author of Hebrews was writing to others being persecuted. Maybe you feel persecuted right now. Maybe you feel like things are crashing down around you. What does he say we do? We run the race faithfully. We are self-controlled. We’re patient.
And how do we do that? We don’t do that because we say, I’m such a great person. I can be patient. Now, come on, hurry up, God, I’m being patient. No. We look to Jesus. We look to the one who would go to the cross for us, who ran the race faithfully, looking faithfully to the will of the Father and doing it for us.
When we look through the pages of God’s Word, we see over and over again his faithfulness to us. And through that, he enables us to be steadfast, to be self-controlled, to be patient, even when we don’t feel like it, by the power of his Spirit. We look to the one who is steadfast, and as we do, he makes us those who are steadfast.
We do it on our own. It’s almost like just another example of taking matters into our own hands. We fail. But when we look to him who is steadfast, he brings out that patience, that self-control, that steadfastness, and makes us those who are steadfast so that we can stand when things don’t go right, so we can stand when people seem opposed to us for our faith, so we can stand when life just doesn’t come together, because we know that God will ultimately show his faithfulness to us.
That’s the hope we have tonight. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness and your faithfulness. Even when we’re in the midst, even when we’re waiting, that’s so hard, Lord, that we know that you are faithful. Lord, you help us to fix our eyes upon Jesus, to look to the one who is steadfast, and then by the power of your Spirit to be steadfast ourselves, that we might run the race in a way that’s pleasing to you, that we might turn away from everything that tempts us, all the desires that beckon to us in the world that are not what you want us to have.
Would you help us to ask the question, are we doing what’s pleasing to you, and then help us to stand firmly fixed on the purposes that you have placed before us? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, we’re going to continue again next week, and we’re going to think more about this string of virtues, these fruits that God brings out in our lives. And next week, we’re going to think about what it means to be godly.
In some sense, you might say, well, that’s what we’ve been thinking about this whole time. That’s very true. But Peter sets that aside as a separate virtue, to think about godliness. So we’re going to explore that and understand better what it means to be godly, to follow Jesus.
So I hope you’ll come back next week and join me as we do that. I hope this has been encouraging to you tonight. Perhaps there’s been something that you’ve been struggling with that you haven’t felt very self-controlled on, that you haven’t felt very patient on. It’s encouraging to you as we reflect on the one who is steadfast for us.
And if it is, I hope that maybe you’d consider liking this or sharing it. When you like and share and comment on these videos, you help more people get to see them. Maybe someone else can be encouraged. Maybe someone else just needs to hear, not that they need to just be better people, but understand the one who is better and who is with them.
So if you’d help us with that, we would be so grateful. You can like us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, subscribe on YouTube. These things actually genuinely make a difference, and I’m so grateful when you do them.
Also, if there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, feel free to shoot me an email at the email address on screen, or you can leave the prayer request right down in the comments. Likewise, if you have a comment or question about what we’ve been looking at tonight or something else, you can leave it down in the comments, send it to me privately by email, whatever you’d feel most comfortable with.
But certainly, I would love to have the opportunity to pray with you about whatever you are facing, whatever areas you might not be feeling steadfast this week. Because when we come together and we pray, God gives us the strength to do the things he’s called us to do.
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. I hope to see you back here next week at 7 p.m. on Monday night. And in the meantime, remember that God, who is always steadfast, who has run the race before us, is with you throughout this week.
Have a wonderful week. Amen. Amen.