I am currently teaching a Sunday School class on the minor prophets. It has been an exciting study for me, because I have never done an indepth study on these books. I am presenting them in chronological order, so that we can get the words of the prophet in the historical context.
Last weeks prophet was Jonah, the ONE minor prophet we all know, so I didn't want to just go through the story again, but prayed for some new insights. What I saw was Unexpected Mercy and Unexpected Methods.
We know the story of
Jonah very well.
God called Jonah, told
him to go to Ninevah to preach judgment and repentance.
Jonah headed out in the
other direction, to Tarshish.
God caused a huge storm,
Jonah had to be thrown overboard to stop it.
God sent a big fish to
swallow Jonah, where Jonah had to rethink his plan.
Jonah repented, the fish
spit him out, he headed to Ninevah.
Jonah preached about
God’s judgment that was coming, Ninevah repented, God relented, Jonah got mad.
That’s the basic story
that we all know, so let's move on.
God shows unexpected mercy.
Jonah 1:1 Now the word of
the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 "Arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up
before me."
Jonah's wrong attitude
was due to God’s unexpected command.
God commanded the prophet
to go to Israel's enemy, Assyria, and give the city of Nineveh opportunity to
repent. Jonah would much rather see the
city destroyed. The Assyrians were a cruel people who had often abused Israel. Jonah forgot that the will of God is the expression of the love of
God (Ps 33:11), and that God called him to Nineveh because He loved both Jonah
and the Ninevites.
Jonah expected that God would give him words to speak that were full of
mercy for Israel. Jonah did not expect God to show mercy to Ninevah.
Ninevah was the capital
city for Assyria. Assyria was the new superpower on the world scene. Up to this
time, Egypt was the dominant world power. The Egyptians were a peace-loving
people and had left other countries alone, except when a new power threatened
their station.
The Assyrians were
strong, cruel, and bloodthirsty. Assyrias policy was to use terror and
propaganda to soften up any opposition and to deploy its irresistible military
might against all who offered even the slightest resistance. Those who resisted
were tortured to death in hideous ways. Conquered people were forcibly
uprooted and deported.
Jonah was aware of this,
and surely he thought that God hated the Assyrians as much as he did. They were
a constant threat to God’s people, and should be destroyed without warning.
God shows unexpected
mercy. What are the words that God uses
to describe Himself?
Exodus 34:5-6
5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him
there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and
proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Those are the words that God used to describe himself...merciful and gracious.
There are two Hebrew words that are often translated mercy:
"racham" "to
have compassion, be merciful, pity." "bowels; womb; mercy." The first use of rechem is in its primary
meaning of "womb": " The greatest
frequency is in this figurative sense of "tender love," such as a
mother has for the child she has borne.
Racham is the Hebrew word used in these verses.
Ps 103:13-14 As a father shows
compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. 14 For he knows our
frame; he remembers that we are dust.
Isa 49:15-16
15 "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that
she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet
I will not forget you. 16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.
The other word used for mercy or compassion:
checed--"loving-kindness; steadfast love; grace; mercy; faithfulness; goodness;
devotion." The term is one of the most important in
the vocabulary of Old Testament theology and ethics.
The Septuagint nearly
always renders checed with
In general, one may
identify three basic meanings of the word, which always interact:
"strength," "steadfastness," and "love." Any
understanding of the word that fails to suggest all three inevitably loses some
of its richness. "Love" by itself easily becomes sentimentalized or
universalized apart from the covenant. Yet "strength" or
"steadfastness" suggests only the fulfillment of a legal or other
obligation.
It is one of His most central characteristics. God's
loving-kindness is offered to His people, who need redemption from sin,
enemies, and troubles.
These verses use the word checed
Ps 23:6
6 Surely goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.
Neh 9:17-18
17 They refused to obey
and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they
stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in
Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger
and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
Ps 36:5-9
5 Your steadfast love, O
Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. 6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of
God; your judgments are like the great
deep; man and beast you save, O Lord. 7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The
children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast on
the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your
delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.
Lam 3:22-23
22 The steadfast love (checed) of the Lord never ceases; his
mercies (racham) never come to an end; 23
they are new every morning; great is
your faithfulness.
So, God is merciful and gracious. We are pretty aware of that, but we sometimes forget how he extends mercy to those who least "deserve" it.
Jesus always showed
unexpected mercy. The Pharisees hated that. They were righteous and thought
that the unrighteous sinners should be punished.
They often complained
that Jesus hung out with sinners. They were shocked when he showed mercy to a woman actually caught committing adultery (John
8:3-11).
Unexpected Mercy
God is showing great
mercy on many muslim people. I have read and heard of many muslims who have
seen Jesus in a dream or a vision, and have turned to Christ because of that. Here are a few examples I found.
“Iran today is a closed
land with countless open hearts,” said Yeghnazar. “It is the most open nation
to the Gospel in the entire world. Tens of thousands of Iranians are turning to
Christ.”
“Betrayed by the
government, disillusioned with the religion, depressed by the prospects of the
future, Iranians when they come to know the Lord Jesus Christ are completely
transformed,” he said. “They proclaim Christ in the marketplace. Entire
families, men and women, are coming to Christ.”
Two weeks ago, two of
Yeghnazar’s people were imprisoned and within a week they brought six people to
Christ, he shared.
JERUSALEM, Israel --
Several years ago, Ali took the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca known as Hajj.
"Of course when I
went to Mecca I was going there in order to pay hommage to the Kabba and to
fulfill the requirements in Islam," he recalled.
But the trip became more
of a spiritual journey than he could ever imagine.
"That night I saw
Jesus in a dream. First, Jesus touched my forehead with his finger. And after
touching me, He said, 'You belong to me,'" Ali recalled.
"And then He touched
me above my heart," he continued. "'You have been saved, follow me.
You belong to me,' he said."
Ali's story in Mecca was
told and dramatized in a DVD called "
More Than
Dreams."
"I decided I'm not
going to finish the Hajj, the pilgrimage. Whatever it takes, I'm going to
follow that voice," he explained.
The film documents and
dramatizes Ali's story and several other Muslims who came to faith in Jesus
through a dream or vision.
"We're seeing that
all around. We're hearing about people that have never even thought about Jesus
as savior," Tom Doyle, with
e3 Ministries, said. "They're content Muslims and
they're having dreams over and over."
"I think our God is
a fair God, that He's righteous and just, and people are seeking and they don't
know where to go," Doyle said.
"Maybe they don't
have a Bible, maybe there's no missionary in the village," he said.
"He'll get the message to them somehow."
The phenomenon of dreams
and visions has surfaced throughout the Muslim world, from Indonesia to
Morocco.
"In the church if
you ask how
people came to Christ, 80 percent will say, 'I
saw Him in a dream,'" one woman in central Asia told CBN News. Her
identity is being protected for security reasons.
A Christian friend
challenged her to ask God to speak to her personally.
"So I decided to ask
Him," she said. "The next day ... in my dream I saw Jesus ... I
decided to come to Him."
Hazem Farraj hosts
"Reflections," a satellite program for Muslims. He said he often gets
feedback about dreams and visions.
"I had one lady
write me ... she said, 'I turned on the television and there you were ... the
words that were coming out of your mouth were so peaceful I fell asleep,'"
Farraj recalled.
"She said, 'When I
fell asleep I ended up having a vision of Jesus and I saw the Lord,'" he
continued. "She said, 'As soon as I looked over I knew that Christ was the
sacrifice, the son of the God."
Doyle said the dream or
vision is usually the start, not the end, of a Muslim's conversion.
"Nobody goes to
sleep a Muslim and wakes up a Christian, but it knocks down the false barriers
that are inherent in Islam," Doyle explained.
The Doyles said beneath
the current revolution in the Middle East, there's a spiritual earthquake.
"As things heat up
politically and spiritually within Islam, man, the Holy Spirit is moving even
more powerfully," Joanna said.
"This is the time
when hearts are open, people are desperate, governments are changing," her
husband added. "Everybody's foundation has massive cracks in it and Jesus
is the answer that can come in and fill that need."
Many veteran missionaries
to the Muslim world say dreams and visions, along with satellite television, are
introducing Muslims to Jesus in unprecedented numbers.
They add that more
Muslims are coming to Jesus than at any other time in the 1,400-year history of
Islam.
The Doyles want believers
in the West to join this spiritual revolution.
"Not everybody is going
to go the Middle East. But they can pray," Doyle said.
"And no government,
no leader can block intercession around the world," he said. "So we
need to pray as believers that God would continue to push the gospel out to the
ends of the earth."
As many christains in
Amercia see muslims of the middle east as enemies, as dangerous, a people to
hate, God is having unexpected mercy, going to extreme lengths to touch their
hearts.
God also had unexpected Mercy on
individuals. Here are a couple of examples.
I recently heard that Jane Fonda had come to Christ. I searched and read her testimony. Here is a small snipet from one blog.
"I am frequently asked
about my faith. At the end of my marriage to Ted Turner I became a Christian.
For several years prior, I had begun to feel I was being lead. I
felt a presence, a reverence humming within me. It was and is difficult to
articulate.
Today I think I know what
was happening: I was becoming embodied, whole. I had spent 60 years
dis-embodied, trying to be perfect so I could be loved."
Her wording was not very theological, but she expressed a sincere faith in Jesus. Jesus just pulled at her heart until she surrendered to him.
Brian Welch of Korn
Since 1994, Korn has been
a driving force in the rap-metal genre as they fused hip-hop beats with heavy
guitar riffs. Their lyrics, mostly based off of the tramatic childhood
experiences of frontman Jonathon Davis, are dark, sexually explicit, and
disturbing. Condemned by the Chicago Tribune as being
“perverts, psychopaths, and paranoiacs”.
Brian Welch was BAD, and a bad influence on young people.
"[One night I
prayed] 'Lord, if You're real … please take these drugs from me. Make them go
away. Reveal Yourself to me and all that.' I think in a week or two, I got the
urge to throw away all the drugs with the help of a friend. I was done."
"All I know is that
I was chasing all that stuff (fame, sex, drugs) and it left me empty. And I was
a complete empty shell – just totally like nothing inside. I had everything. I
had the money; there were girls everywhere, all the drugs – pills, doctors'
prescriptions, illegal drugs, everything. And it was just empty, so empty. And
as soon as I went to church, I felt the love from Jesus. That's when I was
fully satisfied. And I was totally done with everything in the world because I
was satisfied inside, and I got filled up."
There are many many instances of God showing up in miraculous ways to draw people to him, maybe people we would be hesitant to try to share faith with.
Unexpected Methods
God prepared a large fish
to swallow Jonah, save his life, give him time to think, pretty unexpected.
I sometimes hear a Christian say, “That could not be God, because God
doesn’t work like that.” I often wonder
how they can say that. I believe that if Moses followed that reasoning, he
would have never stopped to listen to a burning bush. Just because God has never done something
before does not mean that He will not or cannot. Think about it.
Told Noah to build an ark
Abraham to sacrifice his
son
Spoke to Balaam through a
donkey, a talking donkey
Told Joshua to march
around Jericho for 7 days, then blow trumpets
Gideon's story
Birth of Jesus; God, as a
newborn baby, born in a stable.
Jesus put mud on a blind
man’s eyes
Saul’s conversion
Peter’s vision of the
sheet with all kinds of critters, and God telling him to eat them
Conelius household having
the Holy Spirit poured out before they took any steps of conversion...
Basically, if the people in the Bible used our philosphy, nothing would have ever happened, because God was always doing somehting He had never done before!
Isa 55:8-9
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Rom 11:33-35
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?"
35 "Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?"
John 3:8
8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
I am ready to be
surprised. I hope that my expectations in no way limit what God will do.
