Survivor Series

Pastor Phillips' Sermon

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we pray this night, this Wednesday night, in the middle of our week, you will help us not to be distracted from everything going on around us by our life's work and the battles we face daily but that we will draw near to you at this time, that your Holy Spirit will enable us to focus entirely on you, that you will speak a message to our hearts, it will strengthen us and encourage us in our faith, and we will know you love us and your love does indeed survive in a hostile world like this. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

The question posed this week is How Can Love Survive in a world like the one in which we live, torn by sin, continual battles against different struggles? It's just amazing. How can love survive in this midst of all this? Well, this is the season of Lent, a time when we reflect deeply on God and on Jesus and what He's done for us on the cross, the price He paid for our sins. And it's just about impossible to avoid thinking about our sins at a time like this. When we think of what He did on the cross, it draws us to why He did it and our personal need for Him to do it. And so it can be a discouraging time when we think about our sins and what's going on around us.

A look at the headlines today tells us North Korea fired missiles out into the ocean, threatening violence and danger to the region. The greed of Enron was on display as the defense cross examined their star witness. Terrorists continue to bomb. Abuse cases continue to take headlines. Legislation about abuse, people accused of abuse. All this kind of stuff. General Motors announced they are reworking their formula for calculating accruing interest in pensions. This is the world we live in. This is the reality of our everyday lives. Struggles, challenges, problems, violence. How can God's love survive in such a place?

Well, the book of Jonah gives us evidence and shows us God's love can indeed survive in a wicked world. Case in point: The city of Nineveh is so wicked and so evil that its wickedness rose up to the heavens and God reacted to it. Now, in the past, God might have said, “Well, I've had enough of Nineveh and, just like Sodom and Gomorrah , I'm going to destroy it, wipe it off the map, and punish those people just as they deserve.” But, in this instance, God's love survives in that, in spite of the wickedness of Nineveh , He sends His servant to preach the good news, to call them to repentance, to invite them to receive God's blessing and cleansing.

In the commentaries I read, the wickedness of Nineveh was described in this way, “They were known for violence. They were accused of plotting evil against the Lord. They were also well deserving of a reputation for cruelty and plundering in war. Prostitution and witchcraft were huge problems in their society, and commercial exploitation was part of their way of life.” Hum. Some of those things sound very familiar when we read our headlines, when we think about the world we live in, a place like Nineveh . God's love survives in Nineveh because, even though they deserved destruction, God looks with compassion on them, God looks with hope on them, and He sends His servant, Jonah.

Jonah, the prophet, the great Jonah. “I'll send Jonah, the best of the best, to that wicked city and he will be a missionary to those people lost in sin.” What that shows us is that, in the midst of our tragedy, in the midst of our catastrophe, in the midst of our disaster, our pain, and our struggle, God pays attention. God is concerned. He's tuned in to what you and I are feeling. He doesn't avoid our mess or ignore it. Instead, He sends His servant into the midst of it. He comes to us even when we're not coming to Him.

Nineveh was not concerned about God, but God was concerned about Nineveh . So God send Jonah. A great idea except Jonah didn't agree. And it says Jonah runs away. That's the story. Jonah runs away. He flees, as it says in our text. The Hebrew word is bârîach and it doesn't mean to run in fear. It means evasion and escape from continuing unpleasant situations. Hum. Does that sound like something we occasionally do? Evade and escape unpleasant situations, tensions, and tragedies. How can God's love survive when his servant disobeys Him? God's great act of love for Nineveh was to send Jonah and Jonah derails that plan by running the other way, avoiding an unpleasant situation. How can God's love survive in the face of disobedience from His servants?

It's because God doesn't stop there. He doesn't walk away and say, “Oh, well, I tried.” He continues to interact with creation. He continues to be concerned about Nineveh . He continues to have compassion on every citizen in that wicked city, and He continues to guide His servant toward obedience. It says Jonah went down to Joppa and he got on a ship headed for Tarshish. God doesn't say, “Okay, Jonah got away. That's the way it is.” He sends a strong wind. That's what the words of our text say. “God sent the wind.” It wasn't just a storm that came up on them. God sent the wind because He continued to have love and compassion for the city of Nineveh . He sent the wind, and the wind caused a violent storm so powerful that the ship Jonah was in threatened to break up.

God effectively disabled His servant's plan for disobedience. On board the ship, all the other sailors are scared. Jonah is down below sleeping. They're scared. They're calling out in their own pagan way to their pagan god which, as we know, is no god at all and cannot save them in a storm or anything else. They call out to the best of their ability to their gods and nothing happens. The ship's captain finds Jonah sleeping down below. He wakes him up. He says, “Don't you care? We're all about to drown.” And they encourage him, “You call on your God, too. We're all calling on ours. You call on yours. Maybe one of them is going to answer.”

Then they cast lots. It was kind of a customary way of determining something. They wanted to know who it was that had behaved in such a way that they brought this disaster upon them. The lot fell on Jonah, the only one who knew the true God. The lot fell on him. So they questioned him, “Who are you? What do you do? Where are you from?” And it gave him occasion to give a testimony, but I hardly see this as a wonderful witness. He said, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord God who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and the land and everything in it.” They heard him speak and something in the words he said made them terrified, which I'm thinking is pretty amazing because they're already terrified. They're already afraid they're going to die because of the storm that's about to destroy their ship. But what he said cut them to the core. “I worship the God who made everything, made this. Made the sea.” And they asked him again, “What have you done?”

That's as far as our text goes tonight. But I think there's a lot we can learn from just that little bit. Because we are in the same place as Jonah. We are God's servant and He speaks to us and He calls to us and He sends us and He commissions us to go. And sometimes the places and the things He's calls us to do might seem a little bit unpleasant. Are we going to be like Jonah and flee? And is that going to disable God's plan to bring His love into that situation?

The great news we can get out of Jonah's story is God's love is never disabled. And God's love never fails. In the Old Testament, there's a word called cheçed. I know that's a weird word but cheçed. It means steadfast love. And you might remember it like this, used in a Psalm. “His steadfast love endures forever.” That's God's love, cheçed, that looks at a sinful city like Nineveh , a sinful country like America , a sinful person like me and does not give up.

God continues to come into our situation, into our life, into our home, into our heart with His love again and again and again, that steadfast love that endures forever.

In 1 Corinthians, the word for love is agape and we know that's the same thing. This unconditional love of God. 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” I'm not talking about my love for you or your love for me or our love for each other. I'm talking about God's love. It never fails, and that is very comforting because we often fail. And every time we fail, we can confess it to God and His steadfast love announces to us that we are forgiven in Jesus' name.

Romans 5:6-8 describes God's love in this way, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” In place of ungodly, you could put Nineveh . “Christ died for Nineveh .” Or in place of ungodly, you could write your name. “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for me.” Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though, for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God's love survives and overcomes our sinful mess because God comes into the midst of our lives. He enters into our catastrophe and brings His loving cure. Jesus entered into our sinful world to be our Savior. God's love survives the disobedience of His servants because Jesus, His servant, was perfectly obedient. And God, through Jesus, has saved all of us. He was perfectly obedient to the plan of salvation as He offered Himself on the cross for our sins.

God's love survives. In Jesus' name, Amen.