Letting God Be the Star

Genesis 12:1-9
Our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 12:1-9, recounts the pivotal moment when a man named Abram--who would later be known as Abraham--left all that was familiar to him in obedience to God’s call and in response to God’s promise.

On first blush, the central character of the lesson seems to be Abram, the one who picks up stakes and moves to who-knows-where with his wife, his nephew Lot, his possessions, and his servants.

But, in truth, the central character is God. Abram was just a member of the supporting cast.

As his life unfolded, Abram did well and played a critical role in the revelation of God’s purposes in the world--in other words, he was blessed--when he remembered Who was the star and who wasn’t.

Abram made a mess of things--in other words, he was cursed--when he thought that he was the star of his own story.

We would do well to remember this, to trust in God to take the lead and to be good for all of His promises in our lives too. That’s a big part of what the lesson can teach us today.

Let’s take a look at it. Verse 1: “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you…’”

The first thing to say about this passage and then move on quickly is that, we may think, “Lucky! God gave Abram clear directions.” But not always; one scholar estimates that God spoke to him about once for every twenty-five years of his life.

The truth is that in discerning God’s direction and will for our lives, we have an advantage over Abram.

• We have the Bible, God’s Word; Abram didn’t. If we want God speak to us as God spoke to Abram, all we need to do is read His Word. 
• We also have the Holy Spirit; Abram didn’t. 

Through a few minutes of daily Bible-reading, followed by prayer in Jesus’ name that’s powered by the Holy Spirit, you and I can hear more from God than Abram ever did in his whole life time.

More importantly, consider who takes the initiative in this verse. God calls Abram to leave behind everything he knows in order to go someplace that God will show Abram.

Imagine how crazy Abram’s decision to leave must have seemed to his family and countrymen. They were all idol-worshipers, their lives spent placating all sorts of gods. The whole notion of there being just one God Who created and cared about His creation would have been foreign to them all. So would the idea of leaving family, friends, and the familiar for parts unknown.

But here’s the deal. If God really is the God of all creation, He has every right to be obeyed when He calls us to do things that may not be easy. Things like putting God first in our lives, or loving even those who hate us, or taking the risk of telling others the good news of new life for who turn from sin and trust in Jesus as their Savior and God. Isaiah 45:9 asks: “Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?'” The creatures--human beings--get in trouble when we start to ignore the Creator Who made us.

We knew some folks who, when their kids were in their teens, moved into an area with a number of Lutheran churches. They finally settled on filled with older people and no youth program. "Why did you do that?" their friends asked. "Why be part of a church that has nothing to offer you?" Our friends explained that, first of all, it wasn't true that the church they decided to join had nothing to offer. But, more than that, they explained, "We were looking for a church where we could serve." That couple understood that God doesn't always call us (or sometimes, command us) to the easy path, only the best path.

Of course, God gives all sorts of commands to the human race, commands that we ignore. Just think of the Ten Commandments. Millions of people push to have the Ten Commandments erected in stone on court house grounds, but only a small number of those millions can actually name more the four of five of them.

We're not good at keeping God's commands either. Abram himself would later show a penchant for ignoring God’s commands.

That penchant for sin has been baked into the human DNA since Adam and Eve fell into sin.

God could bark His commands--His Law--at us from now until Jesus returns and those commands wouldn’t cause us to do what God tells us to do. The most that God's Law can show us is where we fall short as human beings and just how desperately we need God's help and forgiveness.

God’s Law can’t change or move us. But God’s promises can.

And, as we’ll see, when he left his home behind, Abram wasn’t just obeying a command given to him by God; he was also responding to a promise. It was that unlikely promise that compelled Abram to call in the moving vans!

Look, starting at verse 2: [God says:] “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Abram, as we’ll see, was seventy-five years old when God spoke these words to him. His wife Sarai, later renamed Sarah, was ten years younger. Abram’s name, which means exalted father, hung over him like a sick joke because Abram and Sarai were childless. In that culture, in those times, you were thought to be cursed if you didn’t have children.

But this God Who has chosen to introduce Himself to the idol-worshiping Abram says that the childless exalted father is going to become the father of “a great nation.” God promises that Abram is going to be the conduit through whom God will bring His blessings to the whole world. You and I know that it will be among Abram’s descendants that God’s Son will be enfleshed and raised, will die and rise. Abram didn’t know that then, though. He just believed and acted on that belief.

As we said earlier, if Abram shared the reason for his departure with his family members or friends, they would have undoubtedly thought that he was crazy. “Why can’t he just accept that he’s not going to father a single child, let alone a great nation? Is he out of his mind?”

Listen: Jesus calls you and I to be Abrams, too. We’re to act as God’s OB/GYNs, overseeing the rebirth of friends, family, classmates, and co-workers as we share Christ with them. What if Abram had turned a deaf ear to God’s call? Chances are, God would have found someone else to act as the father of nations. But Abram did believe! And he did obey! And because believed and obeyed, you and I are here this morning!

Verse 4: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…”

Are you and I going where God tells us to go? Are we doing what God tells us to do?

You and I have the promise of God-enfleshed Jesus, “I am with you always…” And we also have the same command as Abram, to “go and make [children of God, that is] disciples of all nations” [Matthew 28:19-20].

This command isn’t just for spiritual superstars. There was never anything spectacular about Abram, nothing in his idolatrous background to commend him to God. But, whenever Abram was able to get out of God’s way and get over himself, God’s word of promise created the gift of faith within him. And through that obedient faith, God was able to set off His salvation plan for the human race. God wants to make us agents of His salvation plan.

God wants to bring His Word of command and promise to the whole world--and to our little corners of it--in and through you and me. God may not call us to pull up stakes and go somewhere He’ll show us on the way. But how can we share God’s Word about Christ in our familiar haunts, places like Dayton, Centerville, Springboro, Miamisburg, West Carrollton, Kettering, ot Lebanon?

In verses 5 and following, we find Abram in the land of Canaan. God is giving Abram a sneak-peak of the land his descendants will one day inherit. “This isn’t your people’s land yet,” God was saying, “but one day, it will be.” Each time God reiterated His promise to Abram, Abram erected an altar to give God thanks and then moved on.

And here’s what Abram learned: This world is temporary. Each of us is mortal and one day, the universe we know will be burned up. As was true of Abram, God calls us to hold onto this world and this life loosely, to be prepared to move on, to do whatever He calls us to do, to live in obedient faith. First Peter 2:11 says: “I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”

For whatever sin God calls us to repent, we need to repent today because whatever in this world tempts us to sin is going to die.

For whatever good God would have us to do, we need to do it today, because the clock is running out on this world and because the good we do in Jesus' name will have eternal significance.

And in whatever ways we can encourage each other to lives of obedience and faith, we need to do it today. Hebrews 3:13 tells us to “encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.”

Above all, you and I must avoid getting too comfortable with this world or its ways. Like Abram, who became Abraham, we must be prepared to move on to whatever God calls us to next.

The beauty and the comforts of this world are but a glimmer of the eternal beauty that God has in mind for us when Jesus returns and ushers those who have believed in Him into “a new heaven and a new earth” [Revelation 21:1], the place He has prepared for all who believe in Him [John 14:2-3]. That’s the true homeland that Jesus secured for all who believe in Him and in the power of His death and resurrection.

This past week, John Ylvisaker, the Lutheran composer best known for I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry, passed away.

In the next to last verse of that love song from God to baptized believers in Jesus, we sing:

When the evening gently closes in
And you shut your weary eyes
I’ll be there as I have always been
With just one more surprise. 

It no doubt came as an enormous surprise to Abram when God introduced Himself to him, and an even bigger surprise when God told Abram that he would become the father of all who believe in Him.

But, as Ylvisaker’s song reminds us, the greatest surprise of all belongs to those who trust in the God Who revealed Himself to Abram and then ultimately, to all the world through Jesus Christ.

The great surprise is this: Despite our lack of qualifications, despite what we deserve, we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus Christ alone. To those who believe in Christ, God gives an eternal homeland.

And no matter how long we roam on this earth, God will keep calling us to that homeland.

Let the God you know in Jesus Christ be the central character in your life. Be a cast member in His kingdom. It will be the role of an eternal lifetime!

Let God save you.

Let Him guide you.

Let Him love you.

Let Him free you.

Let Him sustain you with the promise and the certainty of citizenship in His eternal homeland that you received at your baptism.

And keep following Him until that day when you too, awaken to see that God is waiting for you “with just one more surprise.”

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the message from worship on March 12, 2017.]

Thinking About the End

Mark Allan Powell, a New Testament scholar with whom I often disagree, writes this about the Gospel lesson that will be front and center in most churches around North America tomorrow, Mark 13:24-37:

Modern Christians often think, "Since the time of Jesus' second coming cannot be known, we need not think much about it." Mark [the writer of the New Testament's second gospel] draws the opposite conclusion: since the timing is unknown we should think about it all the time.

Not to quibble with Powell, but I think Mark got this conclusion from Jesus Himself.

Be that as it may, Powell makes an important point. We modern day Christians are complacent to the point of functional disbelief when it comes to Jesus' promise of a second coming, when He will end the life of this time-bound, sin-bound universe to usher in "a new heaven and a new earth."

That isn't to say that Christians should get caught up in speculation about when Jesus will return. The very words of Jesus that Powell explores tells us that only God the Father knows when Jesus will return and that all the conditions for that return had already been met in Jesus' generation.

But how might it affect the lives of Christians if we really believed and lived out of the belief that Jesus could return at any time? Even right now?

How would it change our priorities?

Would it cause us to live with less fear?

Would it cause us to be less concerned for ourselves and more concerned for the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors, not to mention Christ's call to treat them with love and justice?

Those are good questions to ponder, I think.

(By the way, thinking about and believing in the End that Jesus promises will come is not to be confused with "rapture theology," a la Left Behind. See here.)

Peace with God

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 12:49-53
Among the hymns we sing at Christmas time each year is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. The second line of the hymn, based on the song the angels sang on the night when God came to the world in the human flesh of Jesus, the Christ, says: “Peace on earth, and mercy mild.”

Jesus, the Prince of peace we confess in this hymn, brings God’s peace into this world.

The apostle Paul talks about the peace that Jesus brings in Romans 5:1. Paul writes: “Therefore, having been justified [that is, having been saved from sin and death by God’s grace] by faith [in Jesus], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 2:14, puts things more succinctly when it says of Jesus, “For He Himself is our peace...”

When we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as our only Savior, God, and King, we have peace.

Knowing all of this may be why Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel lesson are so jarring to us. Take a look at the first few words that Jesus speaks in our lesson, Luke 12:49-53: “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Those hardly seem like the words of a “Prince of peace,” do they? More like the words of an arson! What is Jesus talking about?

Take a look, please, at another passage of Scripture, Acts 2:1-4. The words describe some of the scene on the Pentecost in Jerusalem fifty days after Jesus had been raised from the dead and ten days after He had ascended back to heaven. The disciples have been gathered for prayer, awaiting what God would do next and what God would have them do next. Then this:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 

Now, when Jesus spoke the words that begin today’s Gospel lesson, He knew what lay ahead.

He knew what had to happen in order that you and I, here in Logan, Ohio in 2013, could hear and come to believe in the good news that God so loved the world He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish--will not be lost to God forever--but have eternal life.

Jesus knew that before you and I could get the chance to hear, receive, and believe in that good news, He would first have to offer His own life on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

He would have to rise from the dead in order to tear down the barriers of sin and everlasting death that otherwise will keep human beings from having peace and life with God.

He would have to send the Holy Spirit into the life of every believer so that every believer could make disciples by sharing the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus.

In the first verse of our Gospel lesson, then, Jesus is saying that He came to the earth in order to unleash the fire of His Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the one true God, is the fire that enlightens us about our sin, about our need of God’s grace in Christ, and about God’s love for us given to us on the cross.

After enlightening us, the Holy Spirit then fills the willing with the fire of saving faith in Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is the fire Who, as we repent for sin and turn to Christ alone as our righteousness, burns away our sin, our excuses for sin, and all that is unholy in us.

And the Holy Spirit does this so that, one day, when we come face to face with Jesus, by God’s amazing grace, all that will remain of each of us is the child of God we were made to be. As we submit to Christ, the Holy Spirit unleashed by Christ works in us to make us worthy to stand in the presence of God the Father by the death and resurrection of God the Son, purged of sin and death, living once more in the innocence of Eden God will ultimately give to those who believe in Jesus.

“I can’t wait to get the ball rolling on Good Friday, and Easter, and Pentecost,” Jesus is saying as He sets His face for Jerusalem and all that He will accomplish there for our salvation.

Look now at verse 50. Jesus says: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished.”

Jesus is here underscoring the fact that the fiery Holy Spirit will come to His followers because He has undergone His own baptism, the baptism of His death and resurrection.

You know, every time a person is baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Baptism of Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection from the tomb is reenacted. We’re submerged in the water and we emerge again made new by God’s grace.

Romans 6:4 says to baptized Christians: “...we were buried with [Christ] through baptism  into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.”

By undergoing the baptism of death and rising from death, Jesus makes it possible for you and me to live.

Through His Baptism, Jesus makes it possible for us to drown our old sinful selves through daily repentance and sorrow for sin and to be raised again to live in His grace as we trust in Him alone as our only hope!

In verse 50 then, Jesus voices His desperate desire to accomplish His baptism so that we can be saved to live with God now and in eternity. If that doesn't make you feel good, nothing will make you feel good. God counts you worth all the suffering and dying that Jesus underwent in order to give you a life that only comes through Christ, and through faith in Christ and His grace and His Word, alone!

Then, in verse 51, we hit these words from Jesus:

“Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

It’s jarring when Jesus says that He came to earth bring division.

Does this mean that the angels were lying when they sang of "peace on earth" on the night of Jesus’ birth?

Actually, when Jesus says that He came to bring division, He’s using a turn of phrase common in the language He used every day, Aramaic. His turn of phrase here is an Aramaism. He’s not saying that it’s His purpose to bring division. He’s saying that it’s inevitable that He will bring division.

And Jesus is right, isn't He?

Once Jesus shows up or when someone talks about Jesus, people will inevitably have an opinion about Him.

Either they will bow down to Him as God in human flesh--as God incarnate--or they won’t.

Either they will accept His claim to be the only Savior of the world--or they won’t.

And some who reject Jesus for Who He claims to be will do so with hostility, insults, persecution, even death.

Truly: When we confess that Jesus is Lord, we are set smack dab in the middle of a conflict with the same world that nailed Jesus to a cross two thousand years ago!

A wise Christian woman recently told me about a conflict that happened in her church a few years back. Someone had asked this woman, “How can Christians fight like that?” She said, “Because they’re Christians. And because some truths, the truths revealed by God in Scripture, are worth fighting for!"

For that woman, that meant that when the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the Bible, the truth of Jesus’ Lordship were at stake, Christians won’t attack, but they also won’t budge from their good confession. They will proclaim the grace of God given only in Jesus Christ. 

They will proclaim the truth about sin and the truth about the common human need for repentance and for the new life only Christ can give. 

And they will do that even if it makes others upset with them, father against son, mother against daughter, just as Jesus says. 

We might add that they'll do so even if it causes disagreement between church member and church member.

Those who believe in Jesus have peace with God. Yet not all people who hear the good news of new life for those who believe in Christ experience God's peace. They refuse to believe in Jesus. They refuse His peace.

So, peace isn’t yet a fully accomplished fact in this fallen, world. Our peace as believers in Jesus comes from the fact that one day, Jesus will return, closing the curtain on the life of this planet, judging the living and the dead--those who have turned from sin and trusted in Him as their God will live eternally with God, those who haven’t repented or trust in Christ will be condemned and separated from God.

Only then will the kingdom of God will be fully and finally perfected in what the book of Revelation calls “a new heaven and a new earth.” Only then will the peace Jesus came to bring be fully realized.

Until that time, even in the midst of the chaos, sin, and death of this world--in the midst of the chaos, sin, and death that roils inside each of us--and even in the face of opposition from all quarters, believers in Christ experience what the Bible calls a “peace that surpasses understanding,” a peace insusceptible to empirical proof, but a peace nonetheless experienced by anyone who knows that Jesus will never allow any who trust in Him to be taken from Him.

“Peace I leave with you,” Jesus once said to His first disciples--and went on: “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you...”

We believe that Jesus Christ is the “Prince of peace,” the One Who has come to bring peace to us, even if violent, hateful people refuse His peace and even if others treat us with hostility, misunderstanding, or hatred. Even in these circumstances, even in the moment of death, we have peace with God because of Jesus.

We may find momentary peace and happiness in the sins this world offers. People may enjoy (and should enjoy) the beauties of this world.

But real peace, the peace of God, stays with us even when our lives are going crazy. The peace of God can belong to us even when, like Job, we endure multiple tragedies and our family and friends tell us that we must have done something wrong or that we’re naive to hold onto a God Who lets bad things happen to us in a bad world. The peace of God belongs to us even, when, like our sisters and brothers in Christ in places like Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, we face persecution, thuggery, and violence. Even then, we still have the peace of God as we hold on tightly to the God we know in Jesus Christ.

A sinful world today rejects Jesus and those who follow Him as much as a sinful world two thousand years ago once rejected Jesus and put Him on a cross. But whether being a Christian is in fashion as it once was or is out of fashion as it is in America today, doesn’t matter. Whether the world or unbelieving Christians--wolves in sheep’s clothing--will live in peace with God’s people who trust themselves, their sins, their pasts, their present, and their futures to Christ alone, the people who do trust in Christ alone will always have peace.

Life daily presents us with a stark choice between peace with the world or peace with God through Christ. Blessed, eternally blessed, are those who choose Christ’s peace. May that be our choice always! Amen

It Starts With Us

[This sermon was prepared to be shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on January 22. We had to cancel worship because of icy conditions. But the sermon was shared via the local radio station that carries our Sunday worship services and has done so since 1962.]

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
This morning, I want to walk through the six verses that make up our first lesson, taken from the Old Testament, Jonah 3, verses 1 to 5 and verse 10, and see what God wants to reveal to us this morning.

Jonah 3, verse 1, says: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” 

I love the understatement of this passage! You may remember the first time that God’s word came to Jonah, a prophet who lived in the Judean coastal city of Joppa eight centuries before Jesus was born. The first time God called Jonah is recounted in Jonah, chapter 1, verse 2. It says: “Go at once to Ninveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

God gave Jonah simple instructions. He was to go to Nineveh, the most important metropolis of the Assyrian nation and decry their sin.

In those days, all of God’s people, the Judeans, probably feared Assyria, a rising world power. But Jonah clearly hated the people of Assyria and its major city, Nineveh.

So, instead of doing as God directed, Jonah booked a berth on a ship headed for Spain.

Things didn’t go well for him after that! God stirred up a storm on the Mediterranean. Jonah knew that the lives of all on the ship were threatened by his faithlessness toward God.

So, he told them to throw him overboard. As soon as they did so, the storm ended. They were spared.

But what about Jonah?

As you know, God caused him to spend time in the belly of a great fish. Jonah was there for three days, praying. Finally, the fish vomited him onto dry land.

After trying to thwart the will of God, Jonah was exhausted, filthy, and smelly.

You know what I’ve learned over the years, folks? This world can be a hard place. We have no control over the evil that the devil and this world sometimes bring against the most faithful people we know. That’s hard and horrible.

But there are others kinds of suffering we may undergo over which we do have control. It’s the suffering that comes to us when we who claim to believe in the God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ, but deliberately contradict the Word and the will of God. It's the kind of suffering Jonah caused himself when he refused to do what God told him to do.

I once counseled with a man, a pillar of his church, who gave generously to Christ’s causes in the world, but who was deeply unhappy. As I scratched below his surface talk, I leaned that he was having an affair. He was alienated from the kids he constantly discouraged. He was drinking to excess, which, in turn, was a major cause for multiple hospitalizations and ever-worsening health. 

It was clear why he was so unhappy: As was true of Jonah when God sent the storm to disrupt his Mediterranean escape, God hadn’t given up on this man. So God was making this man miserable, waging war for his soul. He was still close enough to God to feel badly when he continued to do what he knew in his soul and from the Word of God was wrong!

When we who claim to be believers in the God revealed in Jesus turn our backs on the will of God, God will put us in the vise of what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance: the miserable condition that comes to those who claim to see reality in one way, yet live in a different way.

If people who confess Christ brazenly violate the will of God—using God’s Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, for example; or, cheating others in business dealings; or, spreading unconfirmed rumors without knowing the facts; or, having a sexual relationship outside of the marriage of a man and a woman; or whatever the sin may be—God will hound them until they have either repented and returned to Christ or until they have totally stopped their ears and hearts to God.

After he headed for Spain, God didn’t given up on Jonah.

God had apparently not given up on Nineveh, either. If God hadn’t wanted the people of Nineveh to repent for their sins and believe in Him, He wouldn’t have called Jonah to go to them, either the first or the second times.


If you're listening to me today, having taken the time to go to worship or listen to the Saint Matthew radio broadcast, it shows that God hasn't given up on you...and, whether you're willing to admit it or not, God hasn't given up you either!

Listen, folks: Pray that God will always make you miserable when you ignore His will.

If your conscience bothers you when you realize you’re guilty of sin, that is a very good sign. Only those who have left themselves within range of God's loving arms feel guilt for their wrongs. And it's only when we're touched by guilt that we go to God for the forgiveness and the power for living eternally with God that only Jesus Christ can give.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline?”

Followers of Jesus Christ will rise again to live in God’s new heaven and new earth and God disciplines us to prepare us to be the useful, joyful people you and I are going to be in eternity. Earthly pains can yield heavenly gains!

Verses three and four tell us that Jonah, battered from his battle with the God he claimed to serve, “…set out and went to Nineveh, according to the Word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, 'Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'” 

Jonah may have said those words with relish. He hated the Ninevites, after all.

But even if Jonah meant his message for evil, God meant it for good!

Jonah hoped that the words he spoke from God would fall on deaf ears and that God would destroy the Ninevites.

He underestimated the power of the Word of God, though. Through the prophet Isaiah, God says, “My Word…shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God's Word has the power to melt the hardest of hearts and turn them to God! If we let it, God's Word can penetrate our darkest times with the comfort of His presence and the promise of eternity.

When I get up to preach on Sunday mornings, I believe that, even if it happens in the life of just one person, the sermon will accomplish something.

• It may cause one unrepentant sinner to ask for God’s forgiveness. 
• Or lead one atheist or doubter to turn in faith to Christ. 
• It may bring comfort to one grieving person, hope to one despairing person. 

I believe all of this because I’m confident that when we lift up the Word of God in all its fullness, God’s Word will accomplish great things.

Jonah was a less than enthusiastic preacher. It didn’t matter. He was speaking the Word of God and the Word of God has power!

Look at verse 5 to see how much power: “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” 

I almost have to laugh every time I read this verse. Jonah never mentioned God! But the power of God’s Word is such that those who are open to it know it when they’ve heard it.

Folks, there are people you know who are steeped in sin who are just waiting to hear your invitation to turn from sin and believe in Jesus. You won’t be judgmental if you deliver this message to them. You’ll be sharing the greatest love the world has ever known: the love of God that saves sinners from death and futility to live with God, imperfectly today and one day in eternity, in complete perfection.

Don’t be discouraged when people aren’t receptive to your word about Jesus. I turned down people's invitations to follow Jesus for years before God used my wife, Ann, to introduce me to a group of joyful Lutheran Christians whose faith was so infectious, I wanted follow Jesus. During my atheist decade, I was once invited to a Christian movie at the Ohio Theater in Columbus by a friend. As we sat in the theater afterward, I told him, "No, I don't want Jesus in my life." Little did I know that thirty-plus years later, I would be captain of the team that counseled thousands of people who said, "Yes" to Billy Graham's invitation to follow Jesus during Dr. Graham's 2002 Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Mission at Paul Brown Stadium. Just because people say no to your invitations to experience or follow Jesus the first time doesn't mean that's their final answer. As a disciple-maker for Jesus, you aren't responsible for other people's answers, only for praying for them and sharing Christ's invitation.

And don’t be surprised when people take you up on your invitations to join you for church or Sunday School or Bible study or prayer. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold,” Jesus once said. “I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice.” You and I are called to be the voice of Christ in this world! If we’ll just be open about our faith in Christ, we’ll be amazed at how many people are receptive.



In Jonah, chapter 3, verse 10 we're told: “When God saw what [the Ninevites] did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed His mind about the calamity that He had said He would bring upon them; and He did not do it.” 

God’s character is never changing and constant:

• God will always love you passionately. (Sadly, hell will be filled with people God loves. But God will not force His love and forgiveness on anyone.) 
• God will always hate sin and not allow it in His presence. 
• God will always command that you repent for sin and trust in His Son. 
• God will always welcome those who repent and believe, like the father who welcomed the prodigal son.
• God will always have a place ready and waiting for you in His heart and in His kingdom if you're willing to turn from sin and give your life to Christ. 

Even though God is unchanging, God can change His mind. He did so when it came to His planned destruction of Nineveh. God used Jonah's half-hearted preaching to turn people from enemies of God into children of God. God wanted to save the people of Nineveh from condemnation and hell. He wants to do the same thing for every person in Logan and Hocking County today.

So, I challenge you (and me) to do two things with our lives. First, to take stock of our own lives, asking God to show us what we may need to repent for. Make this a daily practice. In Psalm 51, King David prays to God, “You desire truth in the inward being.”

When we get honest with God about our sins, He gives us forgiveness and helps us to live our lives differently. God’s Holy Spirit will help us to be sensitive to how we can keep walking in the will of God and to remain sensitive to the call to repentance that will put us back on the right track. When we daily repent and renew our trust in Jesus, God will help us to live the faith we profess.

Second, don’t be reluctant about going to your friends with the truth about their sin and their need of Jesus’ forgiveness. This is not being judgmental. When Jesus says, "Judge not, lest you be judged," he is warning us against making judgments that are unfair. But if a friend of yours was stepping out into traffic, you wouldn't decide to say nothing because of some fear that you would be casting judgment on your friend's bad decision, would you? No way. You'd yell loudly and clearly, "Stop!" Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, which Jesus commands of every Christian, must entail caring enough about others to tell them that their favorite sins are hurting them, hurting God, and putting their eternities at risk.

I'm convinced many people want to hear the simple message Jesus delivers in today’s Gospel lesson: “Repent, and believe in the good news.” They're just waiting for the Christian who is bold enough and loving enough to share it with them. It's a message I want to share with you today. If you have wandered far from God, then I invite you to turn from sin and death and turn instead to Jesus and the life that only He can give. Life on this earth isn't perfect. But you don't want to draw another breath or take another step without Jesus Christ as your God and companion. And you surely don't want to step into eternity, whenever that might happen, without Jesus as your Savior and king. Turn to Him now and live!

God has a simple plan for renewing the people of the world. It begins with us.

First, we daily and consistently repent and trust in the God we know in Jesus.

Second, we invite others to repent and trust in this same God.

If the Ninevites proved open to this message, maybe the Loganites will too. Maybe the people of the world will be open to it.

Are you ready for that?

Then, start with repentance for your own sins and trusting Jesus to forgive you and make you new each day.

Then, start telling others what an amazing God He is. Amen