Into God's Ways

From Isaiah 55, starting at verse 8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.

It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. The proof that we are Christians is certainly not found in whether our doctrines that we cling to are free from heresy or not. The proof that we are Christians has to be found in whether or not our hearts, which only God can see and we get some idea what's in there, whether or not our hearts have begun to take on a likeness to the heart of God.

Surely, if we've been to Calvary and we've eaten the flesh of the Lamb of God and drunk His blood and peered into the heart of God and seen it broken with anguish and pain for this world as it is, surely this is going to somehow affect the way we look at the world around us. How can people who are following Jesus, who have been lifted up into God's heart at the cross, remain indifferent to the multitudes who have not yet tasted the mercy of God? And yet there is an indifference, a fear, and really in many cases a revulsion which is increasing in the hearts of people who claim that they're following the Lord. This is only increased in the confessing or professing church.

Everybody loves to talk about the rapture. We're going to be raptured away. And it gets to the point where if God doesn't rapture us soon, then we'll rapture ourselves.

We'll get out of this thing somehow, this wicked world. Perhaps it's because of the pressures. Many of us can remember playing musical chairs as children or maybe since.

We've got ten people marching around nine chairs and the tension isn't too obvious until the music stops and everybody scrambles for a chair. Now if you multiply it to a hundred people marching around ninety chairs or eighty chairs, the game gets rougher. And now if instead of taking away chairs you start taking away people's food, their money, it really gets rough.

And the truth is that vast areas of this world in which we live, that kind of game has been going on for some time. Every time the music stops, people starve to death or they're locked up or they're killed. And there have been subtle signs which most of us have recognized this summer that this game has somehow finally got to this land.

And we seem to know that pretty soon the music's going to stop here too. And already the game begins to have the atmosphere of getting rough. Oh, but I don't want to play musical chairs.

Let's get out of here, say most of the Christians. And so we lock the doors of our fellowships and cling together with each other under the pretext of learning to love each other more. Got to get to know each other and love each other.

Or we all pull up stakes and move north on the strength of some convenient prophecy. Or we withdraw into our private lives and start getting ready for when the music stops. There is an an increase of this mentality that looks upon the world out there, the pagan world, as so dirty and so evil that we don't even want to touch it.

And so we look up appropriate scriptures like, um, Go ye out from among them. Touch not the unclean thing. Come out of her, my people.

And we withdraw. But what if God is in fact telling us to go out there and play musical chairs and get into this mess? What if the word of God to us at this time is not only come out of the unclean harlot babbling the spirit particularly of religious covetousness, but what if the spirit of God is also telling us go to Nineveh. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

So 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 him to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.

See, Jonah, he doesn't want to play musical chairs. He doesn't want to contaminate himself. He cannot reconcile in his mind how a righteous God could care for this wicked Nineveh.

And so he withdraws. My thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

Now he takes the ship to Tarshish, and for us the ship may not be a ship or a plane or whatever. It may only be an attitude. But we have wonderful ways of also heading the other way.

You know, we see these people on the street every day, stand in line with them at the checkout counter at the supermarket, wave to them over the back fence, but in fact it's as if these people were separated from us by a thousand miles. We're off on the Mediterranean Sea, and they're in Nineveh. We resist.

God says, go to Nineveh. We say we know what? We weren't no part of Nineveh. Let them go to hell.

And for many of us, Nineveh is symbolized by specific things like city government, General Motors, Democratic Party, Republican Party, the union, school system, the institutional church. The punks who run the alleys of the city like wild dogs. Middle class suburbia.

Our relatives. We're sick of them. Let me get away from them.

Nineveh is any person or people or city or nation or race or place that we would just assume brought out of existence from our minds. But once the call of God has come to us to go to Nineveh, you don't get out of it that easily. It follows you wherever you go.

Jonah may think he's safe sleeping down there in the insides of this ship, but pretty soon, for him and for us, the storm comes, and that ship begins to be tossed around like a matchbox on the boiling sea. And pretty soon, they wake him up and want to find out what's going on. People, their lives are in jeopardy by being around us as we run away from the will of God.

Then they said to him, What shall we do 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 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 and lay not on us innocent blood for thou, O Lord, hast done as it has pleased thee. And so they took Jonah up and threw him into the sea and the sea ceased from its raging.

Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a 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. And so his escaped ship is no longer a feasible thing.

He is thrown out of it and instead of sleeping down in the insides of this ship, she is now wide awake in the belly of the fish. You wanted to be isolated so now you're isolated. You're brought into a time and a place of total darkness and in that time and place of darkness all the self-pity and the bitterness and the rage give way to prayer.

Lord, help me. Deliver me. How merciful God was to Jonah.

God could just as easily have pushed Jonah aside and raised somebody else to go and speak to Nineveh. But instead of doing that he isolates Jonah inside the fish and gives him a chance to think it over and that's precisely what God does to us. He sets us walls us in sets us aside and gives us a chance brings us to the place where we're utterly desolate and in extreme need and now we begin to pray once more and when we pray the fish vomits us up and the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land and the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time Arise, go to Nineveh that great city and proclaim to it the message that I told you.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey and he cried Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown and the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them then tidings reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne and removed his robe and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes and he made proclamation and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles let neither man nor beast herd nor flock taste anything let them not feed or drink water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them cry mightily to God yea, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands who knows God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger so that we perish not when God saw what they did how they turned from their evil way God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them and he did not do it now you think Jonah would have been thrilled the people repented the city is saved hallelujah but not Jonah this throws Jonah in a terrible depression see here I am I look like a fool but marching up and down saying 40 days and the city is going to be overthrown now nothing is going to happen and how does that make me look but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry and he prayed to the Lord and said I pray thee Lord is not this what I said when I was yet in my country that is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and repentant in the midst of evil therefore now oh Lord take my life from me I beseech thee for it is better for me to die than to live and the Lord said do you do well to be angry then Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there he sat under it under the shade of it until he should see what would become of the city maybe God will change his mind and still destroy the city I'm going to wait maybe I will still be vindicated as a prophet and the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade to his head to save him from discomfort so Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant but when dawn came up the next day God appointed a worm which attacked the plant so that it withered when the sun rose God appointed a sultry east wind and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he was faint and he asked that he might die it is better for me to die than to live but God said to Jonah you do well to be angry for the plant and he said I do well to be angry angry enough to die and the Lord said you pity the plant for which you did not labor nor did you make it grow which came up into being in a night and perished in a night and should not I pity Nineveh that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle now if there was ever a picture of you and me it's this picture of Jonah it's like pulling teeth for God to get us to go to Nineveh and when we finally do go to Nineveh we still don't particularly expect or desire anything good for the Ninevites there are all kinds of people that we rush by as if they didn't even exist and the truth is we don't like them so why does God have to send us to those people why can't he send us to people who appeal to us if we're going to be servants of God we will save ourselves much much misery by forsaking our own way for his and by beginning to look at Nineveh the way he does and he'll help us when God looks at Nineveh it's not as if God winks at the sin God sees the sin of Nineveh he sees sin in Nineveh such as we can't imagine and it breaks his heart troubles him causes him to weep we have a God who weeps this seems fantastic that there should be such a thing but when we're looking at Jesus weeping over Jerusalem we're seeing a manifestation of the heart of God breaks his heart and so God takes his one treasure tears it out of his own heart and gives it up to redeem Nineveh and when he sends his only begotten to the Nineveh of this world Jesus doesn't run away on a ship to Tarshish he doesn't have to be isolated in some kind of fish he goes freely willingly empties himself of that blazing light comes down to where we are proclaims his message and is rejected killed by the very ones he comes to save including you and me and just as Jonah spends three days in the belly of a fish the Messiah spends three days in the bowels of the earth but when he comes forth into the kingdom of glory the door is now open for Nineveh to come out that's why he did it that's our gospel the resurrection of the Lamb of God who has made atonement see but what good is this gospel if all we ever do with it is tell it back and forth to each other the gospel was meant for Nineveh how can we say we're following Jesus we trust him he's our friend when somehow or other we constantly balk at going to Nineveh he doesn't gather us inside these walls so that we can stay here and huddle together away from the wicked world he gathers us here to instruct us and empower us with his mercy teach us how to weep and care and expose ourselves to pain any kind of pain all kinds of suffering we're going to experience and then to go out into Nineveh with the gospel of his death and resurrection trusting that whatever happens to us God will be with us even if we get killed we stand today between the way of Jonah and the way of Jesus if we want to we can bring our Jonah hearts down to the altar today as we commune and exchange these Jonah hearts for the heart of a lamb that's really what the communion is this is what it means to eat his flesh and drink his blood and if we go forth from the altar today with the heart of a lamb surely this means we're going to see that world out there with his eyes his mercy his compassion his love that lays down its love may God help us to see Nineveh the way he does and then go to Nineveh and speak to Nineveh words that come from his very heart four my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways says the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways my thoughts than your thoughts for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and return not thither but water the earth making it to spring forth and sprout giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth it shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing to which I sent it let's just wait on God and prayer okay?