Arise Go to Nineveh

I'd like to begin today with a passage we read and reread, but we need to read it again today. Matthew 16, 13-18. Now, when Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do men say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter the rock, and on this rock, this confession that you made, I will build my church, and the gates of death shall not prevail against it.

We keep coming back to this passage because it conveys a vision of what we, as the body of Christ, have been ordained to be. We've been ordained to be a people whose confession that Jesus is Messiah, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, is so real, so much a part of our daily life, so central to everything we think and do, that with this confession, we go forth into the world, break through those gates of death, and truly set the captives free. Here Jesus gives us a picture of a church, which has an impact on the world around us.

A church which is so full of the life of God, that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. A church which drives back those gates of death, those powers of Satan, and shines as a light in a dark place. Now surely anything less than that is a waste of time.

If all we do is come here week by week and draw enough strength so that we can survive spiritually in this absurd world ourselves, it's only a matter of time before we're going to sink in that sea of despair which totally surrounds us. The Church of Jesus Christ is not an association of nice people who huddle together in the midst of a wicked world. Our goal is not survival, but conquest.

This Church, the Body of Christ, and every manifestation of it, every congregation, is meant to be the spearhead of the Kingdom of God in this world, and to drive back those forces of Satan. And yet if we honestly look at ourselves, in terms of what we've been called to be, surely we have to admit that this vision of a conquering church is hardly what we are. In fact, the idea, the concept of being a conquering church doesn't even appeal to us.

Most of the time, it scares us. Corporately, our corporate life shows us to be very, very much like Jonah. Jonah, the first three verses.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.

So he paid the fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. God says to us, Go to Nineveh. Arise, go to Nineveh.

And we, like Jonah, buy our ticket and get on the ship to Tarshish. Nineveh is the world, the hard, fast, money-hungry, power-hungry, bigoted, narrow-minded, racist, unjust world. Now when you're in Nineveh, the only way to survive, really, is to mind your own business.

But God says to us, Go there, go to Nineveh, and preach Jesus, live Jesus, talk Jesus, sing Jesus. Now if Jesus is for us, in fact, the Christ, the Son of the living God, if we truly believe that by His death on the cross He overcame sin, death, and the power of Satan, that He's alive, that He's Lord, how come we keep it such a secret? Now this tendency to grab a ship for Tarshish has been with the Church of Jesus Christ since its earliest days. In the Apostolic Church, right off the bat, the command from Jesus was that they would take this gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

They started out great. On the day of Pentecost, they moved out into the streets and proclaimed the gospel and stirred the whole city. But for much too long a time, they never got beyond the confines of the city of Jerusalem and they never talked to anybody but Jews.

Spiritually, see, they were already on the ship to Tarshish. And they would have remained on the ship to Tarshish, no doubt, if God had not dealt with the Apostolic Church. To get Jonah turned around, and to get the Apostolic Church turned around, and to get us turned around, God, in His mercy, introduces two things, disruption and death.

Jonah and his ship are hardly out of the harbor before a tempest comes down upon them and disrupts this voyage. Pretty soon it looks like the ship is going to break up. Jonah still tries to escape.

He goes down into the bowels of the ship and escapes in sleep. And they find him down there and they grab him and they shake him and tell him to wake up! Pray to your God! And now we see a description of the disruption that comes to this man Jonah. And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come to us.

So they cast lots and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then they said to him, Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? Whence do you come? What is your country? Of what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

And the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Okay, now he's been found out and he's been disrupted. And now, on top of the disruption, it's a Jonah.

And they said to him, What should we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, Take me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.

Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they cried to the Lord, We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life. Lay not on us the innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it please thee.

So they took Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. In a very similar way, the Lord deals with the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. Same thing.

In order to somehow shake them out of their routine of preaching the gospel only to Jews and only inside Jerusalem. And he does it, first of all, by sending some mild persecution. And it finally comes up to the place where Stephen is martyred, killed.

Remember now, you say, well, that's a terrible thing to do to Stephen. But if you were to talk to Stephen about it, at this moment he would say, no, it isn't. I didn't mind.

Praise God for what he allowed me to do. But we see here, disruption, death. And in the same way, God deals with us.

To get us moving and wake us out of our slumber, he introduces these same two things. Now we think all too often that we're really not doing too bad compared with other congregations here and there as far as reaching out. I mean, we do reach out.

We have our door open. We try to welcome everybody and all that. But we're talking about a matter of the heart.

We're talking about our corporate heart. Can we honestly say that our heart is consumed with the desire to speak to Nineveh in obedience to the Lord? That this is really what we desire to do. And honestly, we have to admit the desire to go out and crash the gates of death.

Now when we have a message which has the power to bring cleansing and hope and healing to Nineveh. And instead of taking the message out, we sit on it. Two things begin to happen.

First, disruption. And then some kind of death to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we move over and yield and go with the purposes of the kingdom of God. Disruption.

So far the disruption among us has been relatively mild. But even the mild disruptions that we've experienced lately have within them the voice of Nineveh crying for help. Example.

The last month and a half there have been two break-ins in the building. No serious damage and no serious death. The officer who came to take the report the first time said it was probably some Cuban refugees.

Probably looking for food or money. That's all they do. They just look for food or money.

They don't normally tear anything up. And within maybe a week and a half of the time he came, maybe two weeks, back comes a Cuban refugee with an electric fan begging for forgiveness. Asking for prayer.

It's beautiful. But we say, Lord, what can we do for those people? Why, we can't even speak their language. You can't be sending us out there.

What can we offer? And the Lord says, Go to Nineveh. Go to them. Go to the Cubans.

Go to the world. Go to the people you work with. Go to your neighbors.

Go to your long-lost cousins. And he says it in love for our own good. Another example.

And I'm sure Brother Leroy won't mind my mentioning this, but we're praising God that Leroy is back with us today. Leroy was confined to his house for so long. A few weeks ago he was up in the balcony and he just was overcome with a fear that he was going to have convulsions.

And so there came kind of like a disruption to an already disrupted service as Leroy cried at the top of his lungs, Help! Help! Help! As it worked out, Leroy didn't have convulsions that day. Praise God. And he was quite satisfied with the way things worked out.

He was very happy when he left. You know, he got a little bit, and who doesn't need a little bit of attention? But it's important for us to listen. It's worth reflecting on those words that we heard coming right up there from the balcony.

It was as if God sent the city of Nineveh right into our midst with a cry, Help! Help! And the Spirit says to us, Can't you hear the cries of Nineveh? Arise! Go to Nineveh! Then, in order to turn us around, to turn Jonah around, to turn the Apostolic Church around, and to turn us around, God introduces factor number two, some form of death. In Jonah's case, it was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. And then he cries out to God.

Listen to his own description of this. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish, saying, I call to the Lord out of my distress. And he answered me, Out of the belly of Sheol, the grave, I cried.

And thou didst hear my voice. For thou didst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. And the flood was round about me.

All thy ways and thy billows passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out from thy presence. How shall I again look upon thy temple? The waters closed in about me.

The deep was round over me. Weeds were wrapped about my head at the root of the mountains. He comes to the end of himself, and from his grave beneath the sea, cries out to God.

God speaks to the fish. It spits him out on the dry land. And then God says to Jonah again.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. This time he gets up and goes and gets the job done.

Now the same thing happened to the apostolic church. They kept fooling around in Jerusalem, having a nice time with each other, talking about Jesus between each other, having wonderful services, wonderful time in Jerusalem. But they don't move out until the death of Stephen and the violent persecution which followed.

And references were made to that in the lesson that Caroline read, the first lesson today. But here's another passage which refers to this in Acts 8. On that day, the day that Stephen was killed, a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

It took them to get them moving out beyond Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and the Gentile world. Now, what it will take, what kind of death it will take to get us moving, only God knows. But whatever it is, it will be something that has to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we finally cry out to him, get our eyes off our own program, and our own idea of things, and then yield utterly to him.

We cry to him, he delivers us from our death, and then he says to us, go to Nineveh, and then we get up and get the job done. Peter and the apostles, standing by the cross, Good Friday afternoon, experienced a death as they watched their Lord die. On the third day, they were spit up on the dry ground as Jesus, alive and the dead, said to them, Arise, go to Nineveh.

As the Father has sent me, so send I you. Go make disciples of all nations. Now, what kind of death is up to the Lord? Not to get negative or morbid, but to face the way things really go, the way it really happens in real life with the real God.

Whether it's some kind of crisis we have to go through corporately, or maybe going through and don't even know it yet, or whether it's some inner crisis of our heart, whether it's a spirit of repentance that just floods down upon us and drives us to our knees and closes us before our faces, before the Lord, and give up our pride. Whatever kind of death God should choose to send, we will know as Jonah moved that we've now come to the end of our own road. And as Jonah, we will yield it up.

He will raise us from our death, and he will say to us again, Arise, go to Nineveh. And this time we will get up and go and get the job done. Let's take some time before him in silence.

We're asking again today, Lord God, that by the power of your Spirit, in your great mercy, you would deliver us from the distractions which have distorted our vision of you and our vision of your purpose. Fears which hinder us from moving ahead in the light we already see. And we cry out that you would so pour out upon us the help that we need as a body of believers, that even this day and in the days that follow, we might by your grace begin to move through death into life and answer the cry of Nineveh and the command of your own mouth and voice.

We ask it in Jesus' name.