Wrestling Satan ~ Ganeida.

As you read through your bible it can be hard to discern some things.  We are told to refrain from some things.  We are told to do other things. We are warned about yet other things then told to do impossible things.  Living the Christ life is, in fact, very simple, but it is not simple until we grasp one simple fact: we can do nothing in our own strength.

Everyone say In Christ. This is the key to everything.  One of our favourite verses is based on 1 John 4:4.  I know you all know it so say it with me:  He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world!

What I want to show you today is how that is true & why you can truly say that the Christ in you is greater than anything satan throws at you.

We are going to start by looking at just 3 verses from Ephesians 6.  I am not going to study the armour because we have looked at that in depth elsewhere.  I do want you to understand the warfare satan is engaged in against you so you understand how important it is to understand Christ in you.

 A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. ¹² For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

The KJV renders fighting as wrestling & that is perhaps the translation most of us know best: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood… However it is translated most of us are going to miss what this verse is saying because we don’t know our history & we don’t understand the Greek.

In English our idea of wresting is the fake stuff we see on t.v or perhaps the sumo wrestling of Japan but whatever idea is in our minds we view it as a sport with rules, a scoring system, a contest of strength & cunning with the winner determined by a points system. That is NOT how the Greeks viewed it.

The word translated wrestle or fight or struggle is palē.  Remember I don’t need you to remember the Greek.  I need you to remember the meaning. Every Greek reader would have immediately understood this as a reference to the palaestra. This was where elite athletes trained in the sports of wrestling, boxing & pankration, a combination of wrestling & boxing. In each of these sports there were almost no rules, no time limits, no space limits & the fight continued until one was defeated due to submission, knockout or death. Death was not uncommon & was not considered murder. They were called the *heavy* sports because the men who took part were big, brawny men trained to never show weakness & who were capable of snapping an opponent’s fingers, breaking their back, grabbing & twisting genitals ~ doing whatever it took to win.  Enduring whatever it took to win.

This is our enemy.  He does not fight fair.  He does not play by any rules.  He is brutal, vindictive, vicious & he will not give up until one of you is dead, submitted or knocked out. Our goal is to keep him submitted or knocked out.

Now that might seem a little overwhelming ~ especially if, like me, you are a rather small woman & adverse to brutal warfare but Paul has already told us how we win in verse 10: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Endynamoō means to be empowered, to be invigorated. We do this *in the Lord*. Remember John 15:5 Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

When we are *in the Lord* the armour Paul describes already covers us. If I have understood the Greek grammar histēmi [stand] is a completed action so that we are able to resist [anthistēmi]. We cannot stand unless we are *in the Lord.*

The next thing I want to address is our understanding of who Christ is. We have a problem because our art & our English bibles have given us a picture of Christ that is weak, timid, even effeminate ~ just think all those Catholic icons where they depict Jesus with long hair & an almost girlish face. This is not the picture we should have.

The picture we should have is the one from the Garden of Gesthemene. Again the Greek will give us greater understanding.

Jesus has gone to pray & afterwards Judas arrives with, according to Matthew, Mark & Luke, a crowd.  John invariably gives us more detail & he says it was a speira. A speira was a Roman cohort of between 300 & 600 soldiers. I guess you could call it a crowd.

Jesus steps forward & asks who they are looking for. They are looking for Jesus of Nazareth.  Now when Jesus answers we get in English:  I am he ~ because that makes grammatical sense but the Greek reads: egō eimi ~ I AM. And John 18:6 tells us that the crowd drew back & fell to the ground.

Just stop & imagine the scene for a moment. Jesus has been praying ~ in agony, to the point his sweat was bloody. He has agonised before the Father over what is to come & then, there He is, in the midst of it.  It is happening all around Him. We know that an angel was sent to strengthen Him, that He had the Spirit without measure & He utters that great cry of God: I AM.

Never ever let someone tell you Jesus never claimed to be God.  He did.  Unmistakably. And He was understood to make it. Three times in John’s passage He utters: egō eimi.

There is enough power in that utterance to lay out 300 to 600 men.  Flat on their backs.  Prostrate. Can you see it? It must have been chaos.  Dark.  They would have dropped some of their swords; the torches; struggled to stand under the power of the Holy Spirit in that place. In that moment Peter seizes his opportunity, grabs a sword & goes for the High Priest’s servant with the intent to kill him.  That is what the Greek implies.  He wasn’t after a stray ear.  He was intent on removing a whole head! They had had days & weeks of the religious elite laying traps for them all over Jerusalem & Peter lost his cool.

The only one with their self possession intact is Jesus & He steps forward & says: Permit me…this thing… which is not what your English bible says but is, in essence, what Jesus is saying because He lays hands on Malchus & heals him.  It is, a pretty violent laying on of hands.  There is so much power exploding in that garden that no~one there could have done what they came to do except for one thing: No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded. [John 10:18]

You want to know how much power was in that Garden?  And do you know how I know?

Mark 14:51. And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him:

It’s all in the details.

What young man?  Seriously.  Who goes out on a Passover night basically draped in a sheet? Under a full moon? No~one.  Let’s be real here.  The garden was at least ½ an hours brisk walk outside the city, uphill, surrounded by graveyards. No~one, but no~one, was just going to wander by & certainly not in an undressed state. It’s not like there were houses close by.  It’s not like he could have spotted what was happening & wandered out to see what was going on. The very reason Jesus chose the place was for its seclusion.  Logistically the geography prohibits it.

But when we study the Greek we discover something very interesting. The young man was sindōn periballō.  Literally he had a linen cloth thrown about his nakedness. Sindōn was the expensive linen cloth rich people used to bury their dead. We know the Jews buried their dead naked; we know there were graveyards nearby. When Jesus uttered egō eimi, He released resurrection power & at least one newly dead young man rose from the grave…an oddity…so obviously out of place they tried to seize him but he escaped, leaving his cloth behind & escaping completely naked. Wow.

Jesus drives His point home in Matthew’s gospel:

Are you not aware that I can call on My Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? [Matthew 26: 53] That’s 72,000 plus angels! Jesus army trumped Rome’s!

Jesus was not some helpless namby~pamby meekly going to His death because He was too weak & powerless to fight.  If He hadn’t submitted they could never have taken Him ~ & we could never have been redeemed.

So when satan has you in the arena & he’s using everything in his power to take you out, to break you, rob you, destroy you, kill you how do you deal with him?

You remember that He who is in you in greater than he who is in the world!

If you belong to Christ then He has sealed you with His Holy Spirit & that Spirit  is the exact same Spirit that is in Christ & all Christ’s power & authority resides in you along with His Spirit.

Now we have been supplied with everything we need for victory.  All the armour Paul talks about in Ephesians 6 is available to us but we must be in Christ.  We are in Christ when we practice Shema~ to hear & obey. Now people try & tie this neatly up in knots because most people like rules: Do this, don’t do that.  But that is not how it works.  We are to *walk by the Spirit*. [Galatians 5:16]

The bottom line is that it is all about relationship.  It is about knowing & loving Jesus so much we can’t bear to wrong Him in any way.  We can’t bear to disappoint Him or disobey Him & as we come to know Him more & more, better & better Jesus promises If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends. [Revelation 3:20] Interestingly the following verse He speaks about the victorious.

Now I can instruct you, but only you can take the time to get to really know Jesus.  That takes time ~ your time.  It takes commitment.  It takes patience as you learn & make mistakes & offend the Spirit & repent & try again.  I can’t do any of that for you.  Each of us has to develop our own relationship with Jesus but remember this:  Trials & tribulations WILL come.  The enemy of our souls WILL attack. Only then will you be found standing in that *evil day* declaring:  He who is in me is greater than He who is in the world ~ because you will know that it is true!

 

Don't let the devil take you out. ~ Ganeida

This is last week’s sermon.  It was never preached as the Lord wished to do something else last week.  To be clear before we start:  I am not a Greek scholar; I do not expect anyone to remember the Greek; the Greek is there to show that there is a solid basis in scripture for what we are teaching.

What I want to teach on today is how the devil manages to take out most believers without them even realising it. I am hugely indebted to Rick Renner for the Greek basis of this teaching.  It highlights how important it is to not just read the word of God but to study it so that we understand what it is really saying rather than what we think it is saying based on our understanding of how the scriptures have been translated. This is part of our ongoing study on Revival & integral to our understanding of standing in faith to believe for what has been promised.

We will be taking our instruction from James, the ½ brother of our Lord Jesus.  Writing to Jewish Christians James addresses certain doctrinal errors amongst these early believers.

James 1:2 begins: Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 

The first thing I would like you to note is the little word *when*. When troubles of any kind comes… not if they come but when they come. As Jesus Himself informed us In this world you will have trouble. [John 16:33]

Christianity is not a * get out of jail free* pass to a trouble free existence.  However when we understand how the spiritual powers & principalities of this world work we are equipped with the tools we need to be overcomers.  So we understand that at different times of our lives we will face various trials & tribulations: big ones, little ones, earthshattering ones, ones that threaten to overwhelm us, ones that threaten to undermine our faith.  What we do when that happens determines how we will come out of what we face.

The word translated various can mean many coloured [poikilos] ~ so the meaning is for all the various troubles that can occur to us during our lifetime.  Whatever it is, James is telling us, here is the way to deal with it.  Firstly he uses the word peirasmos for trial. This can mean either a test or a proof. The easiest way to understand this is that the devil tests us but we can use it to prove the reality of our faith.

We understand this from the second part of this verse: For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. Know is ginōskō which according to Mounce determines *whether the action be inceptive or complete and settled* In other words do you believe what you have been taught & can you put it into action?  Is it something you are just learning or is it something you have tried & found to work? In order to determine if something works we have to endure. 

This is true of our entire spiritual walk with the Lord.  Does God heal?  Scripture says He does so you have to endure until healing occurs.  One thing’s for sure; if you give up you won’t be healed!  If you say, well God only heals sometimes or God doesn’t choose to heal me, then guess what?  You won’t be healed! If you don’t believe God blesses financially you won’t see financial blessing in your life.  If you have prayed for wisdom you must believe you have it before you will see it manifested in your life.

So you see James is saying just knowing something with your mind isn’t much help to you.  Your mind can be changed by your circumstances but the Greek means unending: know that you know that you know that you know…forever.  It is something ongoing & not subject to change.

He says right at the beginning to count it all joy…He doesn’t say enjoy all your trials & tribulations.  Rather he says add it up. See what it equals.  What do you get?  Trouble plus trouble = double trouble! No! The testing of your faith produces endurance.  More than that, it slams the devil.  It puts him firmly in his place as a defeated foe. It is taking a stand & declaring who you actually believe.  Do you believe the Father of Lies whose chief job is to rob, kill & destroy or do you believe you are victorious in Jesus Christ because He paid the price for your life on the cross?

When Jesus died on the cross He took all our pain, all our sickness, all our punishment, all our sin ~ everything.  Every last bit.

Now I am going to say something here that I learnt from studying literature because I have heard way too many Christians get muddled up & attribute things to God that God does not attribute to Himself because they believe the person who is saying them. Like Jonah last week.  Jonah is an unreliable witness so not everything he says can be believed.  His understanding of God, who He is & how He acts was skewed by his wrong thinking.

So when I look at James I must ask, how reliable a witness is he?  In other words, can he be believed? 

James was part of Jesus’ family that declared him mad.  Mark 3:21 When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. "He's out of his mind," they said. James didn’t become a believer until after Jesus’ resurrection. Yet having once become a believer he is stalwart. He doesn’t budge from his firm convictions.  He has been an eyewitness to the life, death & resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. I therefore consider him to be a reliable witness.  So when he says something is so, it is so.

James says the man who remains steadfast when tested is blessed. [1:12] By verse 13 James has something very interesting to say:  And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else.

Now the word James uses for tempted is peirazō & it means to devastate, to crush, to destroy. Jesus came to give us life ~ James has assured us we will receive that life as the genuineness of our faith is proven.[1:12]  Who is it that seeks to devastate, crush & destroy?

Be very clear.  It is never God who seeks to destroy us.  James is even more adamant.  He says that God doesn’t even permit it as from a distance. Our understanding here is based on 2 little Greek words.  

The 1^st is apo.  James is saying, Don’t say God has allowed this to happen ~ as from a distance.  He doesn’t allow bad things indirectly [apo] or directly [hypo]. If that were so the whole point of the cross would be invalidated. In the strongest possible terms James is saying: You’re to stop saying what you’re saying!  How dare you accuse God of such things?! Don’t even think it!

We have a good God ~ & a bad devil.  Don’t get them mixed up.

Now the thing I want you to understand, & that James wanted his readers to understand, is how very much satan hates this sort of thinking.  He hates Christians who really understand who they are in Christ, Christians who can’t be moved positionally, Christians who know that they know that they know ~ because however hard & long he fights he knows he cannot win.  We say he is a defeated foe but we prove it when he tests our faith!  If he can move us, if he can get us to deny the goodness of God, if he can move us into doubt & unbelief, he wins!  Sadly all too often that happens.  We don’t receive our healing immediately so we doubt God’s goodness.  We doubt His ability to heal.  We doubt he cares about little old us.

The thing is when we move into a position of faith by saying that we are going to walk in divine health or prosperity or any other spiritual promise it triggers a spiritual attack.  The last thing satan wants is for our faith to grow because our prayers have been answered.  Instead he wants to sow discord & unbelief & doubt because that keeps us weak & helpless & no real threat to him!  It makes unbelievers think we are weak & useless because there is no proof in our lives of what we say we believe.

Now we can know a teaching but it doesn’t become very real to us until we receive illumination through the Holy Spirit & then practise it by faith.  I will give you some examples from my own walk in faith. 

I struggled with why God doesn’t appear to heal some people.  Why this one but not that one?  Is that person in sin? Does God play favourites?  Scripture say he doesn’t play favourites.  He is completely impartial.  

Then I heard Todd White, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, say: Scripture says God is a Healing God so it doesn’t matter what I see with my eyes or experience in the flesh.  It doesn’t change the fact that God heals.  I’m a word person so that grounded me.  God says He heals.  I believe what He says even if I can’t see it, even if I’m not experiencing it.  God still heals.  He is the God that healeth me.[Exodus 15:26]

Now I grew up during the years when prosperity teaching first became big & I grew up in a denomination that didn’t think much of this teaching so I wasn’t big on asking God for prosperity.  To me it seemed greedy, selfish, avaricious…just plain nasty.

So when this subject came up in bible college I was pretty sceptical. I had heard the Give & it shall be given unto you… until I was tired of it.  I was embarrassed by the avariciousness I detected in certain preachers & I didn’t want to be like that.  I don’t think God likes that either.  However my understanding was off.

Why should we want to be blessed financially?  So that we can be a blessing to others!  Once I understood this, given illumination by the Holy Spirit, I determined to walk by faith for my financial needs ~ & guess what happened?  Yep.  Satan attacked!  Just because my head & my spirit understood didn’t mean my flesh was in agreement.  I had to endure while satan attacked our finances.  I found it nerve~wracking. But he is a defeated foe ~ & God is good!

God is good all the time.  God is good when satan is testing our faith to see if we actually believe what we say we believe.  God is good when satan tries to destroy us.  God is good when satan attempts to crush us.  He is good when we encounter various trials & temptations.

We can take great assurance from Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. As psalm 30 says:weeping may endure for an evening but joy cometh in the morning. 

So whatever trials are in your life predetermine that Jesus came that you might have life & have it abundantly. Claim it.  Speak it.  Believe it.  Do not let satan steal the life Jesus bought you with his lies.

 

 DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES THERE IS NO SERMON THIS WEEK.

Doing a Jonah ~ Ganeida.

People often say: The Holy Spirit is a gentleman; He doesn’t barge in where he’s not wanted. As we see from the story of Jonah, that’s not quite true. It’s not true because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. [Romans 11:29]

Jonah was a prophet & despite what he did he continued to be a prophet.  He continued to operate as a prophet even while he was being disobedient. He confessed the God of Israel.  He confessed his sin.  He even knew that if he was thrown into the sea the storm would cease. He knew his God well enough that he was the only man sound asleep in the hold during a life~threatening storm!  In that way he reminds me of Jesus.

All the time the Holy Spirit was keeping an eye on things because God was in the storm.  He even used Jonah’s disobedience as a testimony but what He did not do was let Jonah get away with it! From the moment Jonah stepped out of the will of God for His life things started to go catawampus ~ & God let them!  He did not intervene. He did not say: Well, I’ll just raise me up another prophet who will obey me. No.  God is the master of *tough love* & he let Jonah run. He let him run till there was no place left for Jonah to run.  He let Jonah run till he ran out of options.  We see the same principle at work in the N.T story of the Prodigal Son.

Meanwhile Ninevah was still under threat of destruction. Not only was Jonah not going there, no~one else was going there either. 

So here we have 4 tiny islands.  When I first came here you had 2 choices for churches: either you were Catholic or you were Anglican. The number of churches has tripled but our evangelization has not. We hide away in our churches & say we are worshipping God when the reality is we are disobedient children because God has said Go! Most of us are doing a Jonah & running just as hard as we can in the opposite direction.

Now you need to understand there are a number of different words translated as *worship.* Shâchâh  is one.  It means to prostrate oneself. ?âbad is another. *This term literally means to work in any sense, but by implication to serve or enslave. It is used more than 250 times in the Old Testament, most often translated as "serve" and 31 times in conjunction with shâchâh*.

[ http://www.theopedia.com/worship]

I have pointed this out because we need to understand that in the Hebrew mindset there is no distinction between prostration & service.  One aspect of worship is service! So too in Hebrew to hear [shema] implies both to hear & to obey.  Always, always God expects action, not passive acquiesce.

Jesus reinforced this idea in John 14:23 Jesus replied, "All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.”  Here we are better of than Jonah for the implication is that we will be enabled to obey. That is part of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Jonah understood that also for as a prophet he was anointed with the Holy Spirit to operate in the office to which he had been called.

As individuals & as a church body we have been called to preach the Good News ~ & this good news I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. 1 Cor 15:3

We cannot complain we have not received revelation or know the further will of God when we have not obeyed His clear instructions.

When we willingly & knowingly disobey we place ourselves beyond the protection of the Blood of Christ. When we repent & confess, the Blood covers us. If we do not, we give access to satan & this is what we find with Jonah.

Jonah blames God for the storm.  See the only way we can know most of Jonah’s story is from Jonah himself. We know from John 10:10 that The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.  The thief is satan ~ & he was perfectly happy to destroy Jonah & thwart the plan of God for Jonah’s life.  God’s purpose & desire is to always bring us into His life. He wasn’t fazed by Jonah’s running. He knew how it would all play out & he had that big fish ready & waiting! Jonah then claims the storm is *all his fault* ~ which is the height of arrogance for Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? [Matthew 6:27]

In amongst Jonah’s confused theology God is still working. Here is our starting point.  Wherever we find ourselves God is working.  It is easier if we co~operate with Him but it is not necessary.  God is God & He will continue to work out His purposes.

We see God let Jonah run as far as it was possible to run.  It was only when Jonah ran out of Himself that He admitted what we all know is true: Salvation comes from the Lord.[2:9]

We need to stop running.  Satan loves to keep us running.  Busy, busy, busy.  No time to think.  No time to praise.  No time to reflect on the goodness of God.  

I am going to share with you a joke I heard many, many years ago that is pertinent to Jonah, to us & to how we deal with our Ninevahs.

The devil was instructing his minions on how best to seduce people.  He asked the first one, What would you do to convince people not to believe in God? And the minion answered, I’d tell them there’s no devil.  Satan laughed & said, Oh, no.  They know I’m real alright!

So he asked the second imp, What would you do to convince people there’s no God?  And the imp replied, I’d tell them there’s no God.  Satan shook his head.  No.  There will always be some people who will believe.

So he asked the 3^rd imp, What would you do to convince people? & the 3^rd imp replied, I’d just tell them there’s plenty of time…

Bingo!

 When Jonah landed inside that big fish he was brought to a crashing stop!  He wasn’t dead ~ yet, but he had nowhere to go & nothing to do.  He was stuck inside a dark smelly fish [with a decidedly limited future] & a fish that was busily trying to digest him & surprise, surprise, he suddenly remembers the God whose prophet he is.  Mind you he’s still blaming God.  God never drove him from his presence, Jonah ran from it!

We need to remember whose children we are, the Spirit who lives in us. What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Romans 8:31.

2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

We need to be honest with ourselves & before God. We need to be honest about the heart of God for wherever & whatever our Ninevah is, God cares about it. God made his heart abundantly clear to Jonah: Ninevah has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?

On this island alone there are more than 3 000 souls perishing; shouldn’t God care about them?

We sing, God open the eyes of our heart…but do we mean it?  Have we counted the cost?  Are we prepared to obey?

Now for some practical application.

The first thing is to hear the call of God.  We know there is a general call to all God’s people to tell others the Good News but we learn from Jonah that God is pretty specific.  He told Jonah exactly where he was to go & to whom he was to preach. I know this was true for us. We tried a number of different approaches but we knew by the Holy Spirit when we had understood how God had called us specifically! If you don’t know ASK!! Luke 11:9 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  This is a broad, general spiritual principal. Ask who it is that God wants you to speak to specifically.

Secondly: Pray!  You see in Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 both positive & negative confession. He admits his wrongdoing & disobedience.  He admits he’s in rather dire straits. He also proclaims the goodness & mercy of God.  He affirms God hears & answers.

Thirdly: OBEY. Jonah got a second chance.  Not everyone does. One day we will not have a tomorrow. We will not have *plenty of time*. There will be no further opportunity to share the gospel with those who are perishing & what excuse can we give before God for not speaking out when we knew their end?

Fourthly: learn from Jonah’s hardness of heart. In the end Jonah did what was asked of him but it brought him no joy & no satisfaction! He would much rather Ninevah had gone up in flames; for fire & brimstone to rain down & to be able to say: See!  I told you so! He admits this to God.  Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish!  I knew that you are a merciful & compassionate God, slow to get angry & filled with unfailing love.[4:2]

Like Jonah we sometimes get more satisfaction out of saying: I told you so, than seeing the redemptive power of God work in a sinner’s life ~ until it hits a lot closer to home.  Maybe it is an unbelieving parent or a lost child but that is exactly how God feels about each & every person on the planet.  His heart is the heart of a parent whose child has strayed & is in perilous danger.  He is asking those of us safely in the fold to act on His behalf showing the unfailing love & compassion of the Lord to others.

The last thing is something we often get wrong but it is the one thing Jonah got absolutely right!  He didn’t mince his words.  He wasn’t *seeker friendly*. He didn’t compromise the truth. He didn’t beat about the bush.  He served it up straight & simple exactly as he got it from the Lord: Forty days from now Ninevah will be destroyed.

There is something powerful about the Truth.  It is compelling.  People mightn’t like it but generally they will respect it.  See the Holy Spirit is The Spirit of Truth [John 16:13] And when he comes, He will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment.

Our job is not to save anybody ~ because we can’t!  That is the Holy Spirit’s job.  He convicts them & the Father provides salvation through His son, Jesus Christ.  We have one job & one job only: to preach the Gospel! Why?  Because faith comes by hearing & hearing by the word of God. [Romans 10:17

Running to Tarshish ~ Ganeida

 We began this series on revival with 1 Peter 4:17 ~ For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God's household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God's Good News?

We began by defining sin & the purpose for which God’s law was given.  We acknowledged that all have sinned & fallen short of the glory of God. [Romans 3:23] Redemption from our sin was the purpose for which God sent His only begotten son;  He loved the world that much. We then looked @ the reason for the Holy Spirit & His purpose for coming into the world, His role in the life of the unbeliever & His role in the life of the believer.

This brings us to our study of the first great revival recorded in the bible. As judgement begins with the household of God, so too does revival for we must acknowledge our sin when it comes to our unbelieving neighbours before we can move into our rightful position of helping the Holy Spirit bring in God’s harvest. If nothing else motivates us to share the gospel of Christ surely this should: what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God's Good News?

We don’t like to think about hell & there are plenty of people, good people, even Christian people, who will tell you there is no such place, that a loving God would never condemn His creation to an eternity in a place of torture.  Scripture teaches otherwise. I will give you 3 references though there are plenty of others.

·       The wicked go down to the realm of the dead, all the nations that forget God. Psalm 9:17

·      But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.” Revelation 21:8

·      They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

2 Thessalonians 1:9

God did not create Hell for mankind but for the fallen angels [Matthew 25:41] However those who choose to give their allegiance to satan will find themselves there by their own choice & despite what the songs say there is no partying in hell. It is a place of torment & gnashing of teeth. We were created by God to reflect His image & enjoy Him forever but those who choose satan & this world neither reflect God’s image nor can they enjoy His presence, therefore they cannot abide in the presence of God.

So come with me to one of the minor prophets: Jonah. I love Jonah.  He so reminds me of God’s people! Here is this man of God ~ & let’s be clear; he was a man of God. He came from Gath~Hepher, a few miles north of Nazareth, so he was a Galilean like our Lord Jesus, a country bumpkin, like our Lord, & he came from a region, as we have discussed before, that was passionate in its allegiance to God’s Torah. He was a Torah observant Israelite & he lived @ a time when the byword for immorality & cruelty was Assyria. Jonah didn’t have much time for the Assyrians.

Already he is more like us than is comfortable.  He was doing the right things according to the Torah ~ & he was self~righteous because of it. This is true of many Christians.  We do the right things, live moral lives ~ & become self~righteous because of it!

 He was passionate, as many Christians are, but like us He forgot that God’s love is not limited to those who obey Him  because God wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth [1 Timothy 2:4]

I want to deviate briefly here because so many of us have the wrong idea about what love is because biblically speaking love is not about how you feel about someone or who you have sex with.  It is about who you are prepared to die for.    There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. [John 15:13] That is how God showed His love for us [John 3:16] For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Hebrews 10:2 says But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honour at God's right hand. That sacrifice can be claimed by anyone but there is a proviso in Hebrews 10:26: Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. 

So let us not be confused.  

On our salvation we receive the Holy Spirit & He sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts [Romans 5:5] but this is not a snuggly, cuddly, woozy~doozy feeling but a robust call to the action of self~sacrifice where we become willing to be seen as fools for Christ’s sake in order to share the Good News For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. [1 Corinthians 1:18]

It is here the gospel becomes a stumbling block for so many Christians, just as it did for Jonah. Jonah knew the truth. He understood God’s requirements.  He knew the voice of God but when push came to shove his reaction was:  They don’t deserve it!

And he was right!  They didn’t! The people of Ninevah were bloodthirsty Assyrians.  They invented & practised the most barbaric of cruelties.  They were hated & feared by every nation they had contact with.  They were idolaters ~ they were the worst of the worst. Going to Ninevah, warning them, was obviously not Jonah’s idea of justice.

Jonah 1:1 The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai:  There was no confusion.  Jonah was a prophet of the Lord.  He got the message ["Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me."… 2]; He understood the message ~ & he didn’t think much of it. In fact he thought so little of it he got up & headed as far in the opposite direction as it was possible to go!

There is no confusion in the New Testament either: Matthew 28:19~20 “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

As Jonah ran so has most of the church.  Somehow we have got hold of the mistaken idea that this command was only for the select few.  It is not.  It is for every disciple of Jesus Christ.  Somehow we think it refers to missionaries who go into foreign countries.  It does not. It refers to every nation, every state, every suburb, every street, every household. Their blood is on our hands. Ezekiel 3:18 says If I warn the wicked, saying, 'You are under the penalty of death,' but you fail to deliver the warning, they will die in their sins. And I will hold you responsible for their deaths.

We know the truth; why are we so reluctant to share it?

One reason, though not the only reason, is very much like Jonah’s: We believe sinners deserve what they get! We don’t care that they are perishing. We don’t want God to care. We don’t want them to repent [It would make us look foolish for saying God was about to destroy them, just as Jonah felt] Ultimately this is an issue of the heart & Jonah reveals the hardness of his heart when he admits: This is why I ran away from Tarshish, I know that you are a merciful & compassionate God, slow to get angry & filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. [4:2]

Where is your Ninevah?

·      It is the people who make you uncomfortable

·      Ninevah is the place God calls you where you don’t want to go.

·      It is the people that God tells you to Go & give them my message that you don’t want to speak to.

·      Ninevah is those that God loves deeply, that He died for just as He died for you, whom you do not care for.

·      Ninevah is the crossroads of obedience & choice.

When it comes to sharing the gospel every believer has a choice, just as Jonah had a choice. Jonah ran & he went down! He went down to Joppa, down into the hold of the ship, down into the sea & finally down into the belly of the great fish. The further he ran the further down he went ~ & God let him run! Be warned.  Satan will always supply *a ship to Tarshish* when we are disobedient.  We can probably even convince ourselves God supplied the ship but it will do us no good.

Here is the first great challenge for every Christian: Are you willing to go to Tarshish?

Romans 2:4 says this:  Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

We often speak lightly of the Grace of God but we need to understand grace does not sit in the heavenlies, far away & out of the reach of men.  Grace came down to earth.  Grace walked amongst sinners.  Grace did not partake of those sins.  Grace did not condone those sins but God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

As God’s grace reached down & plucked us out of satan’s hand so too does he desire to save others.  We have been given a huge responsibility; a great privilege, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? Romans 10:14

Jesus paid the same price for others that He paid for you & me.  He shed His blood upon the cross. As we look further @ the story of Jonah next time we will find some principles for sharing our faith under the power & anointing of the Holy Spirit.