JONAH---DELIVERING GOD'S MESSAGE
Series: As God's Messenger, Should I Not Be Concerned?
by Doug Goins
Do you ever listen to yourself while you are talking about the Lord?
Sometimes when we do that we find that our heart doesn't exactly match up
with our words. We might catch ourselves singing a hymn of praise without
being in sync with its truth. Or we might be talking about biblical reality
with a friend and realize that our heart is not in the advice we are giving.
Or we might be praying with somebody but sense that there is a bit of hypocrisy
in what we are expressing.
At times I have recognized the nagging sense that I am not really living
out what I am affirming verbally about faith in Christ Jesus as the Savior
of sinners and the Lord of our lives. And we see an example of this in Jonah's
strong condemnation of idolatry and adamant commitment to praise, worship,
and obedience to God in Jonah 2 verses 8 and 9. He says:
"Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their true loyalty.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to thee;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Deliverance belongs to the LORD!"
That is great truth, but within Jonah we are going to find a bit of cognitive
dissonance going on. Before we pursue that any further, let's review the
story of Jonah.
Remember, God called Jonah the Israelite prophet to a ministry of reconciliation
in the capital city of the Assyrian empire, Nineveh. In chapter 1 verse
2 God said to Jonah, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry
against it; for their wickedness has come up before me." But Jonah
disagreed with that calling and disobeyed God, running the opposite direction.
We saw in 2 Kings 14 that prior to this Jonah had enjoyed a successful prophetic
ministry to his own nation of Israel. Nineveh, however, was an evil, violent
city of cruelty and idolatrous disregard for Israel's God; and Jonah hated
the Ninevites. I can't say that enough because I want you to get the point!
He was convinced that these people were fully deserving of any wrath, punishment,
or judgment that God could throw at them.
Jonah wanted no part of preaching against their wickedness, because there
was the strong possibility that if he did preach judgment, the people would
repent of their sin and be forgiven by God. From the beginning of the story
Jonah admitted that he didn't want the Ninevites to experience God's salvation.
In chapter 4 verse 2 he was arguing with God and said, "Is not this
what I said when I was yet in my own country? That is why I made haste to
flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil."
Chapters 1 and 2 tell us of Jonah's attempt to avoid his calling as God's
ambassador, and of God's miraculous intervention first through a powerful
ocean storm and then through a whale to capture this rebellious prophet.
He confronted him with the fact that nothing was going to work out in his
life without submission to God's purposes and plan for him.
Verses 8 and 9 are the conclusion of Jonah's prayer of gratitude for God's
saving activity in his life. The final line of the prayer in verse 9, "Salvation
is from the Lord," falls at the exact center point of the story structurally.
Jonah deliberately crafted the story that way. This statement is the central
theme of this prophetic message that he writes for his own nation Israel.
In this book Jonah shares with us his struggle, as he gradually gave territory
inch by inch to the Lord, to understand the universality of that truth that
salvation is from the Lord. God is sovereign over whom he saves, and Jonah
could not pick and choose the recipients of God's grace and love.
Finally---Obedience!
As we come to chapter 3 we find Jonah finally ready to deliver God's message
of salvation to Nineveh. The great English preacher Charles Spurgeon said,
"Faith and obedience are bound up in the same bundle. He who obeys
God trusts God, and he who trusts God obeys God." Remember, when God
first called Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah simply couldn't trust that God
was right in giving his enemies an opportunity to repent. He didn't think
that God knew what he was doing.
Now, we have no reason to assume that Jonah has changed his basic prejudices
about the Ninevites when the second call to Nineveh comes. His harrowing
escape from death in the ocean did force him to trust God for his own survival
and did shock him into promising that he would obey God. So God starts over
again, accepts Jonah's verbal commitment to obedience, and says, "All
right, I'm going to use you." The willful prophet had run away from
God and then in a terrible crisis he had run back to God. And now in chapter
3 he is going to run with God in delivering this message of salvation.
As I started out to say, there is some hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance
in the message he delivers, for in chapter 4 he is going to explode in anger
against God and what God does. But right now he does and says what God asks
him to, and out of that obedience, a great revival breaks out. There is
no parallel to it in all of the Old Testament Scriptures.
Let's look at Jonah 3 verses 1 through 4, where we're introduced to the
God of second chances and new beginnings:
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying,
"Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message
that I tell you." So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the
word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days'
journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey.
And he cried, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown [or
destroyed]!"
This section opens with Jonah's being recalled to ministry. In chapter 1
verse 1 he was identified as Jonah the son of Amittai, but here in chapter
3 verse 1 his parentage is dropped and in its place is the phrase "a
second time." This emphasizes the need for a chance to start over.
The call that God issues him has a different preposition as well. In chapter
1 verse 2 Jonah was charged to cry against the great city. But here
he is instructed to preach or proclaim to the city. Perhaps after
Jonah's experience at sea he is prepared to communicate more mercy than
before. God hasn't changed in his message or purpose, but he has a more
cooperative, submissive servant to work with this time around. The text
emphasizes that fact in the contrast again between chapters 1 and 3; here
he arose and went, whereas in chapter 1 he arose and fled. There is identical
movement, just opposite directions.
Finally, in verse 3 it says that Jonah went "according to the word
of the Lord." Remember, Jonah has composed this for us very carefully.
He wants us to understand the change in him. He will do what God says.
As I was thinking about these verses in the context of the whole story,
it occurred to me to think about my own responses to God over a lifetime.
The question is probably more significant the longer you live the life of
faith and the more history you have with the Lord. Let me ask you: Has the
discipline of God, the distress that God has brought into your life because
of sin, made you more obedient or less obedient to him? In the long haul
have you become more flexible or less flexible in responding to God's heart
desires? Are you more submissive to his will or less submissive? Has the
stress made you bitter toward God, or better in serving him and following
him? Are you more consistent in running with him and agreeing with him?
I thought of two men in our body who are friends of mine, men I consider
older brothers, and look up to in the Lord. I thought of the parallels in
both their lives to the life of Jonah to this point. Both of these men in
very different ways had been used powerfully and effectively of God among
us through the years. And both of these men made a choice to run away, disobey,
and disregard God's heart for the world and for them. They both experienced
severe consequences; there have been suffering and struggle for them. They
have both had to wrestle with their failure. They have both experienced
God's severe mercy toward them and come back, and there has been wonderful
reconciliation and restoration. In a sense they too were recalled to ministry,
because today both of them again serve among us very effectively and faithfully.
But the thing that struck me is that the kind of suffering they have experienced
as a consequence of sinful choices has softened them. It has made them more
submissive and pliable to the Lord Jesus. They both have very gentle servant
hearts; they are responsive and sensitive to people, especially with regard
to the struggles that people have with their own rebellion. God has made
both these men healers and reconcilers.
Now, verse 3 tells us two things about the city of Nineveh to which Jonah
is called: its size and its significance. Jonah says that it took three
days to walk through it. Archaelogical excavations of Tel Nineveh show that
there was a walled city that was relatively small around which sprawled
many suburbs like a big metropolitan area. That greater Nineveh area was
probably sixty miles in circumference. It would very easily take three days
to walk across a city of that size. In the hill country of Israel the cities
were made up of multilevel buildings scrunched together in a compact space.
Here in the Mesopotamian plain the cities were all spread out.
Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria and its center of military, economic,
and religious power. It was an overwhelming city in terms of its importance,
a world-class city as I have said before. I remember reading that the population
of Samaria, the capital of Judah, was only thirty thousand people. In Israel
that was a big city. So this city is enormous from Jonah's perspective.
But verse 3 also calls it "an exceedingly great city," literally
in the Hebrew, "a great city to God." Jonah wants us to understand
that God cares a lot about this city and the people who live there. Yes,
it was important politically and because it was big, but God has sovereignly
chosen to extend grace and mercy to this city. From his perspective it is
really important.
I was thinking about times when I have ridden on horseback up to the top
of Windy Hill Preserve on Skyline Boulevard with Don Miller. I remember
realizing one especially crystal-clear day that as far north as I could
see to San Francisco, and as far east as I could see to the East Bay hills,
and as far south as I could see to the Santa Clara valley, there was city
sprawling in every direction. It struck me that this was a very beautiful
area, but what the Lord put on my heart at that time was that it was populated
with millions of people, the vast majority of whom had no relationship with
the Savior and were captives of sinful choices, living in blindness.
That is the sort of perspective that God has for the city of Nineveh: It
is a big, important city filled with lost people. In chapter 4 verse 11,
God's final word about the city in his ongoing argument with Jonah, he asks,
"And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right
hand from their left?" His words are a picture of people who don't
know right from wrong, like babies who have not yet developed any moral
or ethical sense.
The Message of Judgment
In verse 4 Jonah enters the city and immediately begins to communicate God's
concern for it, preaching the message that God promises to give him in verse
2. God says to Jonah, "Say what I tell you to say, and nothing else.
I will give you the message." The sermon is very simple: "Yet
forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" It surely had to have
been longer than that, but Jonah purposely and with great humility and honesty
minimizes his role as an orator. He wants to focus on the heart of the issue
that these people were confronted with. He himself is going to disappear
from the story as soon as the message is delivered. He is trying to back
himself out of the picture, because what we're going to see is the work
of the sovereign God of the universe, who has decided that it is time for
him to confront this people.
Jonah says two things in the condensed sermon. First, he says there are
forty days before judgment will come. Throughout the ancient Near East that
would have had religious significance. It always suggested a time of waiting
for divine activity, or a period of divine activity. Think of some of the
instances in the Old Testament: Forty years that Israel wanders in the wilderness,
forty days of the flood. And in other ancient Near Eastern cultures it had
similar religious significance. So when they hear that in forty days something
bad is going to happen, it comes like a trumpet blast of warning: "There
is danger coming and you had better pay attention!" And all ears would
prick up.
The other thing Jonah says is that Nineveh is going to be destroyed or overthrown.
This is an unambiguous announcement of judgment or divine wrath. Remember,
in God's first call to Jonah in chapter 1 he said, "Cry against [this
great city]; because their wickedness has come up before me." Nineveh
is going to be destroyed as a consequence of its sinfulness. That is really
the heart of the message. And sin is always going to be judged in the life
of an individual, a community, or a nation; that message is very consistent
in the Scriptures.
In the next section beginning in verse 5, we are going to be surprised at
the immediate and wholesale response to this simple message of impending
judgment. But what was it at work in Jonah and these five words that convicted
the Ninevites?
In Matthew 12 the Lord Jesus identifies himself with the prophet Jonah.
(In fact Jonah is the only Old Testament prophet with whom Jesus personally
identifies himself.) Confronted by the Pharisees' desire for some kind of
miraculous sign authenticating his claims, he says to them in Matthew 12:39,
"An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and
yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, for
just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster,
so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation at the judgment
and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and
behold, something greater than Jonah is here."
In the parallel account in Luke 11, Luke adds another note to Jesus' response
to the Pharisees. Jesus said, "...just as Jonah became a sign to the
Ninevites, so shall the Son of Man be to this generation."
There were two things at work in both Jesus and Jonah that authenticated
this common ministry of salvation that they had been called to. First, both
Jesus and Jonah spoke only the words that God gave them. Jesus emphasized
over and over again that his words could be trusted because he said only
what his heavenly Father told him to say. There was no being creative with
the truth or ad-libbing about spiritual reality.
Secondly, Jonah's miraculous deliverance from the whale prefigured Jesus'
own deliverance from the grave. Both of these men demonstrated the power
of the resurrection at work. Your own faith in Jesus Christ is grounded
on his death and resurrection. "If you...believe in your heart that
God raised [Jesus] from the dead, you shall be saved." (Romans 10:9.)
It is foundational for our faith. And Nineveh's response to the message
of judgment that Jonah delivered to them was based on his own authenticating
experience of deliverance from the belly of the whale.
In the ancient Near East, both in Israel and in all the surrounding nations,
it was important to have two or three eyewitnesses to confirm any event
in a court of law. Jesus said Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, which
indicates that it was a process. Probably when he was vomited up on the
shore by the whale back in Palestine, there were witnesses who saw him crawl
out of the mouth of the whale, perhaps even some Assyrian traders traveling
in caravans who attested to the sign of Jonah as he preached: "You
wouldn't believe what happened to this guy. We saw it!" And so Jonah
became a sign to the Ninevites as that miraculous event authenticated his
message.
Jonah, just like the Lord Jesus, was living evidence in his own being that
God meant what he said about judging sin. Remember, Jonah's sin was judged
and he ended up in the ocean. Jesus took on himself the sins of the world,
and he was crucified and buried. They both suffered because of sin. Jonah
brought a message to Nineveh that because of sin there would be judgment,
and the people believed him. Look at their response in verse 5. Revival
breaks out instantaneously, starting at the grass roots:
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast,
and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
Notice that Jonah doesn't say that the people believed his preaching; he
says they believed God. They hear God speaking through this reluctant, perhaps
somewhat self-righteous prophet. And now God sovereignly moves in the hearts
of the Ninevites. In the little phrase, "they believed God," the
Hebrew text makes it clear that they personally trust God; it is a response
of faith. The exact same construction is used in Exodus 14 to describe Israel's
response of faith for what God had done to release them from Egyptian bondage.
It is clear in the Scriptures that faith is a gift only God can give; it
is not a human achievement. Jonah wrote this first for his own people, and
this account of God's sovereignly endowing faith on the Ninevites would
have had a profound impact on them. Their view of saving faith was very
narrow, limited, and exclusive. It would blow all their categories to read
this---the pagan Ninevites repented! They had thought that was their province
and their privilege. Jonah wrote this book partly to expose their distortion
of the grace of God at work in the world, as well as to expose the limitations
of their faith.
In verse 5 these Ninevites don't just believe cognitively, but they act
in two ways: fasting and putting on sackcloth. These were both common acts
of repentance in the ancient world. The entire city responds in sincerity;
the phrase "from the greatest of them to the least of them" includes
young and old, rich and poor, powerful and weak---every stratum of society.
Word of the revival spreads very quickly up to the royal court. Look at
what happens when the king gets wind of it in verses 6-8:
Then tidings reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from
his throne, removed his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat
in ashes. And he made proclamation and published through Nineveh, "By
the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor
flock, taste anything; let them not feed, or drink water, but let man and
beast be covered with sackcloth; and let them cry mightily to God; yea,
let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his
hands."
It is amazing that what the king is doing is following the lead of his people
as he exchanges his own royal robes for sackcloth. To put on that scratchy
burlap covering acknowledges that one deserves God's judgment and affliction.
It symbolizes grieving over one's own sin. For the king to sit in ashes
means he leaves his seat of authority and humiliates himself. He prostrates
himself before God in repentance. These are powerful symbolic actions in
leadership. When the king issues this royal decree, although it comes in
response to the people's initiation of mourning and fasting, it does add
official sanction and impetus to what is already going on.
Some interpreters have seen humor in the king's edict requiring that even
the animals have sackcloth put on them and that they fast along with their
owners. But it speaks of the seriousness of it all that the animals along
with the humans with whom their lives are totally intertwined must symbolically
represent the heart of the whole population, like visual aids, so that everybody
sees, wherever they turn, humans and animals alike prostrating themselves
before God, grieving over their own sin and the judgment it is bringing
upon them.
In verse 8 there are three important phrases in what the king asks the people
to do. He says first of all to "cry mightily to God." That refers
to wholehearted prayers of repentance, physically using one's whole being
to cry out to God. Second, he talks about the fruit of repentance, or the
evidence that there has been genuine "turning from their evil way."
The phrase "evil way" is a description of a general lifestyle
of immorality and disregard for the Lord. The king tells them to turn their
backs on that lifestyle. And he further tells them to turn from "the
violence which is in your hands," which is always used in the Old Testament
to denote social injustice or taking advantage of other people because of
one's superior position. This king is not calling the people to some sort
of simple, short-term reform. He is talking about a radical lifestyle change
for himself, one hundred twenty thousand adults, and their children.
Now, we don't know who this king was; there is no mention of him in all
of the historical records of the Assyrian kings, which are quite extensive.
But I am not surprised, as arrogant as these people were in recording their
histories and always exalting the kings, that there is no record of a lone
Israelite prophet coming into the city and turning it upside-down for the
Lord. That is not the kind of thing the Assyrians were going to keep records
of. But this king's leadership is amazing in his being willing to exercise
this kind of spiritual modeling as he gives this edict. We know that he
is really going against the grain of what kings normally did in Assyria.
The kings of Assyria ruled with an iron fist. They were despots who controlled
the religious, economic, and military establishments with cruelty. They
tried to cultivate terror of them and their position in the populace.
I wonder what member of the court had the courage to bring the king word
of this revival going on in the city. Imagine what would have happened if
the king had refused the stirrings of the Spirit of God within him and rejected
him. That could have suppressed the spiritual renewal in the city or caused
a bloodbath.
Let me ask you, as you think about evil kings or people who are in positions
of political authority over us collectively, how you view your responsibility
toward them, especially political leaders that we have named as the spiritual
enemy, leaders whose influence we fear and oppose. I remember when some
of you defined the Bush Administration as the hated Ninevites, deserving
God's judgment and figuring that what Bush experienced when Clinton was
elected was probably the judgment of God on the Republican party. But since
November I have heard others of you express anger and fear and frustration
about the influence of this Democratic administration and its priorities,
and now we have Clinton as the "king of Nineveh." But no matter
which side of the aisle you are on politically, it is easy to feel helpless
about having any spiritual influence on your political leadership, especially
those with whom we disagree on issues of biblical ethics and morality. Who
is bold enough to walk into the king's chamber to bring truth, to tell him
what God is doing in his land?
Craig Duncan told me a story this week that he had just heard from Joe Kempston,
the Young Life director in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Joe told Craig
of six women who had spent their careers ministering to teens through Young
Life. They are now in their fifties and sixties and retired from that work.
A few years ago they moved to Washington, D.C. to work with the ministry
of The Fellowship, an organization that has great evangelistic influence
on Capitol Hill under the leadership of Doug Coe. On the staff of The Fellowship
these women have been performing ministries of hospitality and caring for
people who travel through. They also have a ministry of regular intercessory
prayer for the issues on Capitol Hill and the people in leadership, and
they of course were praying fervently through the process of transition
for the Republican and Democratic administrations.
But these women felt burdened to do more practically, so they came up with
a wonderful, creative adventure. They wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton
and Tipper Gore introducing themselves and inviting them to lunch. They
said, "We are concerned about the pressures you are under in your positions.
And we just want to offer you some gifts to help you during your husbands'
tenure." Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Gore accepted the invitation and had
lunch with them. At first the two were concerned about what the agenda was
and why they were there. But what these women had done was put each fruit
of the Spirit in Galatians on a 3x5 card; and with it they had written a
biblical summary of its significance, how this fruit of the Spirit at work
in the lives of these women would affect them, and what the resource was
that it provided them. They said, "We're committed to praying for you,
and we're going to pray that you allow Jesus Christ to be Lord in your lives,
and that he would express these fruits of the Spirit through you."
Both Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Gore were amazed by their openness. That was
a courageous, creative, and constructive way for these women to speak truth
to political leaders they may have opposed or feared.
Verses 9-10 give us the conclusion of the king's decree and God's response
of compassion:
"Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce
anger, so that we perish not?"
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented
of the evil which he had said he would do to them; and he did not do it.
The king of Nineveh came to understand some profound theology during this
time of crisis. You could call it a theology of repentance. He came to understand
that, at least from a human perspective, repentance seems to work two different
ways: repentance toward God and repentance from God. If the king and the
people sincerely repented, or turned from their wickedness, it would appear
from a human perspective that God might turn from his decision to destroy
the city and change his mind about judgment. The king says in verse 8, "Let
everyone turn from his evil way...." That is the Hebrew expression
for repent. "...God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger."
The same word in Hebrew is used for both the people's repentance and God's
repentance. Then Jonah adds in verse 10 that when God sees the people's
repentance, he repents of his plan to destroy the evil city.
We need to understand here that God's plans and purposes for humanity never
change. He himself is immutable; he does not change. He is always committed
to judging evil wherever he finds it. But he is also always committed to
forgiving anyone who repents of evil. He is always against sin, but he is
always for us in relationship to sin. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy
2:3-4 of "God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come
to the knowledge of the truth." And the apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter
3:9, "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness,
but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to
come to repentance."
God's heart is merciful, long-suffering, loving, and committed to salvation,
but we can never presume on his compassion. We cannot fly in the face of
his righteousness and justice. The words we have just read do not connote
some sort of naive or superficial universalism in which everyone is going
to be saved because of God's great heart. No, the Scriptures are clear that
the wages of sin is death, and Jonah experienced that. God persists in warning
us and confronting us until we turn away from sin and accept his forgiveness.
He did that to Jonah through circumstances that got his attention. And he
did it to the city of Nineveh through the preaching of judgment by Jonah.
But what is even more awesome to me is that God is the one who instigates
our ability to repent and turn back to him. His activity precedes as well
as follows our repentance in a three-step process. In this account we see
God first sovereignly choosing the city of Nineveh on which to focus his
love; out of grace he elects these people to salvation. Second, the people
respond to God's word through Jonah and repent of their sin. And then third,
God seems to repent in granting forgiveness for sin and withholding judgment,
but in fact that was his purpose all along. So in the story of the king
and people of Nineveh, the full circle of repentance takes place, and Jonah
is strategic in that process because of his obedience, ambivalent as it
is, to God's will and God's message. There is an unparalleled outpouring
of God's Spirit in Nineveh. A revival like this never happened even in Israel
throughout biblical history.
Every one of us has the same struggle as Jonah in trusting God's heart for
the world. Let me ask you about a very specific group in our culture that
you may struggle with viewing as Jonah viewed the Ninevites: What is your
attitude toward the homosexual and lesbian population in our country? Do
you have a degree of ambivalence toward those people, either the whole group
or the individuals that you find yourself face-to-face with? Is there within
you a degree of homophobia, an out-of-control fear of these people and their
influence on us and our culture? Are you convinced, as Jonah was about Nineveh,
that in their wickedness they deserve all the wrath and judgment God can
pour out on them?
How did you deal with the march and the rally in Washington, D.C. last weekend
and in the early part of the week? Like you, I saw all the media coverage
of that event. I've talked to many people in this body this week, and I
asked specifically what their reactions to it were. I got an amazing variety
of responses. Some people were in denial and didn't want to deal with it
at all. Some people were incensed at what they saw. And yet those homosexuals
and lesbians, three hundred thousand in number, don't know their right hand
from their left; they are in bondage, totally confused about their identity
and their sexuality. They don't have a clue about how God views them.
There is a young man in our church who would not in any way consider himself
a spiritual hero, and yet God used him uniquely last weekend in Washington,
D.C. He had been there on business the week before, and on that Thursday
he realized that this event was coming up. He is a rather shy young man,
not a charismatic, powerful communicator. But he said God burdened him for
what he could do to make a difference, to witness to these homosexuals and
lesbians. So he went to a quick copy place, rented a Macintosh computer,
and adapted Campus Crusade's "Four Spiritual Laws" booklet to
homosexual and lesbian people. He told them how much God loved them and
how they were created in his image. He told them how sin had distorted that
image and separated them from relationship with God. He printed up twelve
hundred copies and went out by himself all day Saturday and handed them
out. He was surprised at the openness and responsiveness, and he had some
very good conversations with homosexuals and lesbians.
On Sunday he went to a church that had been recommended to him and told
the people there about what had happened on Saturday. He asked many of them
to help him go out with him again on Sunday. But he couldn't get one person
to go with him to the mall to pass out fliers. And Sunday was much more
difficult when he went out; he met with much resistance and anger.
Again, in no way would this young man consider himself a hero. But he is
beginning to understand God's heart of redemptive love for a segment of
our population that is totally lost and confused. He was willing as Jonah
was to walk into a frightening city like Nineveh. He was scared, but he
did it out of obedience because he was convinced that this was what God
wanted him to do. I pray there will be a growing desire in each of us to
want to live that way, too.
Catalog No. 4344
Jonah 3:1-10
Third Message
Doug Goins
May 2, 1993
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