Considering Mexico 2011- Updates and Final Thoughts

Soon this will make sense

Sometimes stuff just happens.  You forget things.  For instance, one of the joys of re-hydrating at a late dinner each night is that you wake up 3 times in the middle of the night.  I felt like a guy with prostate problems.  I forgot to share that special joy with the world.

I forgot to share some other things- my final thoughts.  But before I get there, there was an update.

I went to get my oil changed today.  I should have gotten it done last week, but life goes on.  The guys at Midas pulled me out to the garage to show me that the new tires I bought in Yuma were the wrong size.  The front tires were 215s, but these were 185s.  Glad to discover this.  The dealer had a franchise nearby, so that was my next step.  The invoice had the correct size tires listed, so I paid for the right ones.  But the guy who installed them pulled the wrong tires.  So tomorrow I go back tomorrow and have the right ones put on.  Yeah, they didn’t have the right size.  So, that was a little fun.  Not as much fun as getting up to pee 3 times a night, but fun none the less.

I had a few take aways for our slide show presentation at the church.

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Considering Jonah 4

Jonah 4 seems to be the key chapter of the book (yes, hard to say for such a short book).  Everything has been pointing to this showdown between God and Jonah.  Yet both Ferguson and Estelle cover this in far too pages.  Ferguson takes 3 (short!) chapters to address it, while Estelle takes one longer one.  What they do say is good, I just hoped for more in light of the multiple chapters written on the other chapters in Jonah.

Here we get to why Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah in the first place- he was afraid God would be merciful!  He didn’t want mercy for the Ninevites?  Is there some person or group of people you don’t want mercy to find?  We all struggle with that.  But Jonah 4 reveals that mystery that Paul discusses in Romans 9-11 which was earlier unveiled in Genesis and Exodus.  God is sovereign in His distribution of mercy- He has mercy upon whom He has mercy, and shall harden whom He shall harden.  Despite Jonah’s fears and misgivings, God has had mercy upon Israel’s enemy!

But it is not just about God’s sovereign mercy toward Ninevah.  It is also about God’s continuing pursuit of Jonah’s heart.  Jonah 4 contrasts God’s responses with Jonah’s.  They are at odds, but God moves toward the once again retreating Jonah.

“But God was not willing to give him up.  That was why, in all likelihood, his misery was so miserable.  Jonah was caught between the vice of his own self-will on the one hand, and and the strong hand of God on the other. … He was bound to remain miserable until either he or God let go.  He knew that God had no intention of giving up!”  Sinclair Ferguson

God illustrates the problem for Jonah.  He provides a vine to provide some needed shade from the sun and the hot east wind (which God also appointed).  It may have been his companion, much like Wilson in Castaway.  The Lord gives …. and the Lord takes away!  He appointed a worm to eat the plant.  Jonah was ticked about the demise of this plant.  The word of the Lord came to Jonah a 3rd time!  Jonah was again confronted with the need to either commit himself to God’s purposes or to disobey.

Ferguson continues with this internal struggle in Jonah, relating them to the common missionary experience.  Proper doctrine is not enough, and is not the same as love for Christ.  Jonah had orthodox doctrine, but his heart was not in line with God’s.  Like the commom missionary experience, the pressures of the task brings out the worst in them.  Ferguson quotes a missionary-

“I never knew what a heart of stone and filth I had until I went overseas.”

The key, for Ferguson, is how we react to hardship.  This is a better barometer of where we are.  How do we react to failure, rejection, affliction etc.?  He then talks about success from the life of Martin Luther.  After seeing the progress of the gospel in significant ways “the devil rode his back.”  He experienced great temptation and affliction.  Dan Allender talked about this on a visit to RTS Orlando some years ago.  Elijah experienced a deep depression after his showdown with the prophets of Baal.  Our reaction reveals how much more progress the gospel needs to make in our own hearts.

Another issue Ferguson takes up is the rise in nationalism.  Sadly, Christians (and denominations) are often more American, or British or Kenyan than they Christian.  They are shaped more by their culture and national agenda than by the gospel.  We can care more about how our country propers than about whether or not the gospel prospers around the world.  Like Jonah, we can be more concerned with our comfort than the salvation of anyone.

I was reminded of this last night and this morning.  I returned home from vacation to discover I had no phone (digital), no internet and no digital cable.  A power surge had wiped out my cable modem and DVR.  A minor inconvenience, even the DVR’d movies I’d planned on watching while the family was away.  This morning I discovered my old laptop was also knocked out by the surge.  I had not backed it up before leaving, so months worth of photos, updates to resumes, questionaires were lost.  I can’t apply for a position from home now.  I was surprisingly non-apopyletic.  I was reminded- the Lord gives, the Lord takes away…

I need to remember that many people like the Ninevites are around me.  They are trapped in sin, and don’t know how to get out.  They need people like me to instruct them in all Christ has done to save sinners like us.  We must keep in mind that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and that He now sends us out to tell other sinners of His saving acts.

Sinclair Ferguson ends his book with a bit of a surprise.  He notes, again, that Jonah is biographical.  What we read here really happened.  But he says it operates like a parable (he calls it a parable).  What he means is that the story ends without Jonah’s response to God.  It is ambiguous precisely because Jonah represents us all.  We struggle with the same issues he did.  The point becomes, what will you do?  Will you embrace all that Christ has done for you both in His earthly ministry, and the special providences of His heavenly ministry has He pursues us?  Will we embrace His call and Commission?  Or will we  remain blinded by our selfishness and prejudices?  The ambiguous ending of Jonah puts the ball back in our court, so to speak.  Having heard, what shall we do?

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Considering Job Part 1

While we are away, I thought I’d work my way through Job, again.  It can be a good place to go when you are suffering precisely because it doesn’t offer prepackaged answers.  It is not all neat and tidy.  He’s in pain and becomes confused at points.  His friends are not quite helpful.  They speak truth, but not the right truth- it was not true in Job’s situation and as a result was not loving.

Job 1-2 set the stage for this theodicy (defense of God).  Job does not know why all these horrible things happened to him.  We know since the author gives us access to the heavenly council.  But Job never knows.

This is instructive to us.  We usually don’t know why we suffer.  Oh, he knew about the Sabeans, Chaldeans and “natural disasters”.  But our souls long for something more than evil guys and a fallen world.

At first Job was ‘content’ to worship and trust God.  He exhibited great faith, boldly acknowledging that God is ultimately at work.  He suffers from a wife who like Peter had the wrong things in mind.  She tempts him to ‘curse God and die.’  In other words, ‘get it over with, God obviously hates you.’

Job’s friends, seeing how devastated he is, sit silently with him for a whole week.  This was the wisest thing they did- it all goes downhill from there.  But it is Job who breaks the silence…

With his first speech, we move into wisdom literature in poetic form.  Lots of white space as my professors used to say.  Flowerly language and lots of word pictures.  Definitely not succint.  Job curses the day he was born.  He does not curse God, but rather himself.  He wished he had never been born rather than suffer these devastating losses.  He buried all his children and was immediately bankrupt.  It was an incredibly profound reversal of fortunes.  He is understandably upset.  At this moment, all the years of good fortune seem insignificant.

This is what we often do in those moments.  The scales seems quite unbalanced and we lose all objectivity.  I’m not poking a finger at Job here.  I do this- we all do this.  We are people of the moment.  Life is as life currently is- apart from the sustaining grace of God to keep it all in context.  His greatest fears have come upon him!

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Considering Hebrews 12

I spent the last 2 Sundays preaching on Hebrews 12, well, the first 11 verses of it anyway, at a local PCA church.  There sermons were The Race of Faith and Instruction Thru Hardship if you are interested.

It was a more traditional environment, and the congregation was generally older.  So, to be all things to all men (1 Corinthians 9), I didn’t have any illustrations from movies or other aspects of pop culture.  You have to speak it so they’ll get it.  I hope I did that.  I changed the tenor of things, but the message is still the same.

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