He arrived looking like a character out of a Wes Craven movie. He definitely wasn’t dressed for success and pretty wasn’t a word that would be used in describing him. His skin was bleached a pasty white, his hair was matted and there was a slightly fishy smell about him. If you were to describe the man most likely able to reach a city for God he wouldn’t look anything like this guy looked. And surly, tell you what, this guy arrived with a chip on his shoulder the size of a large pizza. All he wanted to do was to leave as fast as he had arrived.
It was incredible, he arrived in a strange city and started preaching on street corners, his message was simple; it was “Turn or Burn.” Well maybe not in those exact words. What he actually said was “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” Not a very seeker sensitive message, you’d think that perhaps he could have worked a little more on his content, perhaps used less threatening words, words that would connect with his audience in maybe a more positive light. Maybe he should have emphasized their good points and the love of God. But he wasn’t and he didn’t. Maybe it was just because he was cranky, and he had a lot to be cranky about. His name was Jonah and we’ve talked about him before, he was a prophet from Israel and one day God tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go to the great city of Nineveh and preach repentance.
Well you know the story, not only did he refuse to go but he turned and ran in the opposite direction. And you can’t really blame him. Let’s pull up a map here and take a look at what God was asking him to do. Here is a modern political map of the Middle East, here is Israel and over here is Nineveh, in what is now called Iraq but in Jonah’s day it was called Assyria. And there was as much bad blood between Assyria and Israel back there as there is between Iraq and Israel today. The city was known as a place of wickedness and immorality and for whatever reason God decided that he should at least warn them of his impending wrath. And so he sent Jonah, and Jonah didn’t go at least he didn’t go at first.
Instead he ran in exactly the opposite direction, he ran to Joppa where he caught a ship sailing for Tarshish, which we know today as Spain, and it was in the opposite direction of Nineveh and it was considered to be as far as you could go by the people of Jonah’s day. Beyond Tarshish there was the Atlantic ocean and beyond that there was nothing, at least that was the popular world view of the time. God however wasn’t content to allow his servant to escape that easy, so he caused a storm to almost destroy the ship Jonah was sailing on. As the storm grew worse Jonah advised the crew they needed to throw him overboard, which they reluctantly did and the storm stopped.
If you remember your Sunday School and Bible story books then you know all this, and you know how Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish or whale, it was kind of hard to tell it happened so fast. He spent three days in the beast’s belly and after praying to God and saying he was sorry he was spit out on a beach and God spoke to Jonah again and said Jonah 3:2 “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message of judgment I have given you.”
Jonah would have said that his Mother didn’t raise no fools, so he went to Nineveh and preached, not willingly, not with much enthusiasm but at least he went.
And a strange thing happened, as he preached people listened, everybody listened. The bible says that The people of Nineveh believed God’s message and from the greatest to the least they repented. The King himself said Jonah 3:8-9 Everyone is required to wear sackcloth and pray earnestly to God. Everyone must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence. Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will have pity on us and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.”
And it worked, the very next verse said Jonah 3:10 When God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he had mercy on them and didn’t carry out the destruction he had threatened. You gotta love a happy ending. But that was then and this is now. The scripture that Heather read this morning was from the book of Nahum which is the 34th book of the bible. The author of the book is Nahum of course, he is an otherwise unknown prophet whose name means “Comfort.” The book was written about 100 years after Jonah had visited the city of Nineveh and lead it’s people into repentance. So somewhere between 663 and 609 BC when Assyria was defeated by Babylon. Why was it written? Interesting although the letter is addressed to the city of Nineveh it is intended for the people of Judah and it was written to assure them that evil does not endure forever.
Remember that 100 years before Jonah had preached repentance and the people had turned away from their evil and followed God. A hundred years later and listen to how Nahum describes these same people Nahum 1:11 Who is this king of yours who dares to plot evil against the Lord? And in Nahum 3:1 Nineveh is described as “the city of murder and lies!” And then in Nahum 3:4 All this because Nineveh, the beautiful and faithless city, mistress of deadly charms, enticed the nations with her beauty. She taught them all to worship her false gods, enchanting people everywhere.
So what happened?
Well first of all 1) Nineveh Had A Past This letter can’t be taken in isolation, there was a certain amount of history that Nineveh had with God and with his people. Good history when the people of Nineveh repented and turned away from their evil ways and bad history when the Assyrian’s invaded the Northern Kingdom and took the people captive.
We all have a past, sometimes it’s a good past and sometimes it’s a bad past, but we all have a past. There are things that we are proud of and there are things that we’d rather forget and hope that everyone else has forgotten them as well.
It’s tough to put the past behind us and it’s way to easy to dig it up and marvel at the great things that happened to us yesterday, which may not have seemed so great when they were actually happening. And to mull and stew over the slights and hurts, both real and imaginary that we may have felt in the past. To think about things that were done to us or not done for us and to think about how things may have been different if the past was different. And when we get into the “what if” mode we know that if things had of been different back then, then thing would have been better now. Very seldom do we stop and think, “You know if things had of been different then we’d be really messed up now.” No, our nostalgia usually leads to unrealistic conclusions.
As a church we have a past. Last week Deborah and I had the chance to drive up to Sussex for a day, she hung out with her friends at the Bible College and I spoke to the perspectives of Church Planting class and told them the Cornerstone story. The good the bad and the ugly. We have been worshipping together as a church for nine years and we’ve seen lives changed and some really neat things happen, we have pushed the envelope through those years. We were one of the first churches in the city to have a website, to use PowerPoint on a regular basis, to sing songs from Hillsongs Australia. And it was exciting to talk about those things, it was exciting to tell them about the Capital Campaign last year and how we’ve committed $358,000.00 as a church family toward our new church home. But along with those great times there have been some frustrating times and discouraging times in the life of our church. 3 different times in the past nine years I’ve taken outside employment to keep things afloat, we’ve have approximately 5,000 people move out of the HRM and leave our church because of their moves, well maybe not that many but it seemed like that many. We’ve had folks leave because they were looking for a bigger church with more programs, if they had of all stayed we would have been a bigger church with more programs, go figure.
But the one thing that Nineveh’s past, our personal past and the church’s past all have in common is that there are all in the past. And if anyone ever tells you that nothing is impossible tell them to try dribbling a football or changing the past. I heard a health professional on Television the other day speaking of longevity and he said that genetics were critical so if you wanted to maximize your chances of living longer then you should choice your parents carefully.
Lee Iacocca summed it up when he said “Yesterday ended last night” and Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I know that we can’t completely forget the past, but we can’t live there either. The people of Nineveh had once served God but that was yesterday.
So the second thing is that 2) Nineveh Had a Present Their past was gone, and Nahum was not writing about the past instead he was writing about the here and now. What the people of Nineveh were doing right at that moment.
He was talking about their view of God that day, their behaviour that day, their morality that day. It was not enough that their forefathers had repented and turned to God this was something they had to do as well. It was Horace who said Carpe Diem or Seize the Day. We are responsible for what we are doing right now with what we have right now. Somewhere somehow in the previous hundred years the people of the city had forgotten about Jonah and his message, somehow the judgment of God had lost it’s urgency and the people had drifted back into their old ways. We don’t know how long they had walked according to God’s way maybe it had only been 1 day or perhaps it had been 99 years but that was irrelevant because right now they were living in disobedience.
We all have a past and we all have a present. Regardless of what happened yesterday, regardless of how blessed you were or how hurt you were it is gone and you are left with today. And God wants you to serve him today. I remember when I first became a Christian I heard the story about the old farmer who used to stand up in church every Sunday and testify saying “I’m not making much progress but I’m firmly established.” One day a couple of young fellows from the youth group were passing the old guy’s farm and saw him sitting on his tractor completely bogged down in the mud. And one of them yelled, “Hey Brother Smith, you’re not making much progress but you are firmly established.” He had been stuck in the mud for years and didn’t know it.
We can’t rest on our laurels and talk about how great yesterday was we need to look around and see what today is all about and ask ourselves, “What would God have me do today?” It’s easy to say “When I have more time I will do . . .” “When I have more money I will give . . .” or “I used to do . . .” or “I used to give. . .” But if God requires it today then any other time is too late or too early. Obedience is something that needs to be spoken about in the present tense. Something we are doing not something we’ve done or will do.
The church needs to minister today. It was neat talking to the students about what has happened in the life of our church, of the lives we’ve touched of the people we’ve introduced to God of the difference we’ve made. But that was yesterday and this is today. What is God requiring out of us today? We can talk about the people we’ve invited out to church in the past or the people we will invite out when we get our own building, but what about the people we need to invite out today.
The challenge for any church is to stay culturally relevant and not cling to the past too tightly. If we are committed to reaching people in 2004 then we need to meet their needs in 2004. Not 1604 or 1904 or 1994 or 2024 but in 2004. We need to ask ourselves as a church, “What would God have us do today?” How do we reach the people of Bedford today. The temptation right now is to kick back and say “Well when we get into the new building then everything will be wonderful and everything will be easier.” No all we can guarantee is that things will be different. And if we aren’t doing what we are supposed to be doing in October of 2004 there’s a pretty good chance we won’t do what we are supposed to be doing in October of 2005.
Yesterday’s the past and tomorrow’s the future. Today is a gift -- which is why they call it the present. So before today is over ask yourself what are you supposed to be doing with this present you’ve been given, how will you make a difference in the life of your family, your church and yourself today? Will tomorrow be better or worse or simply the same because of our actions today? Good questions.
You say I can’t do it, whatever it is, it’s too tough. But you only have to do it for today. Robert Louise Stephenson said “Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, until the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.”
There is a lot of truth in the adage “one day at a time.”
Well I’m sure that you’ve figured out where this is going by now. That’s right 3) Nineveh Had a Future. It’s wasn’t long after Nahum wrote this book that Assyria and it’s capital city had been overrun by the armies of Babylon and the city of Nineveh was destroyed. Assyria became nothing more then a mention in the pages of history. There is still an Israel but Assyria as a nation has not existed for 2500 years. However there is an interesting footnote in all of this, while Assyria as a nation has disappeared there were some people who hung on to their culture within Babylon and settled at the base of the Kurdish mountains. A small ethnic minority of Assyrians. With all the hype over Iraq over the past year and half have you heard any references to the Christian Church in Iraq? If you had paying attention you would have discovered that there is a Christian minority in that country and for all the villainization of Saddam Hussein there was more religious freedom in Iraq then there in any other Muslim Country. But you wonder where that church came from? Who established it and when? British missionaries perhaps or North American Missionaries? Actually it is one of the oldest Christian Communities in the world, in 70 AD the message of Christ came to that little ethnic minority living at the bottom of the Kurdish mountains and they embraced it. And for two thousand years they have continued as a church. That’s pretty cool.
We can’t change our past, but through our decisions today we can change our future and the future of others. No guarantees though, remember what Yogi Berra said “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Today is simply yesterday’s tomorrow. You ever marvel at how quickly the present becomes the future. How quickly tomorrow becomes today. It’s like I wondered why a Frisbee got larger the closer it came and then it hit me.
We all have a future and well you can’t live there you can certainly dream about what it will be like and put steps in place to see those dreams become a reality. We plan for our financial security for the future, and we plan for our children’s future we are very careful to make sure that they have good grades and learn to do and be all kinds of things in preparation for tomorrow. What about our spiritual future, have you thought about where you want to be spiritually next year or in five years? Jesus asked his disciples in Luke 9:26 And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose or forfeit your own soul in the process?
Are you investing in the spiritual future of your kids? Do you provide them with Christian music to listen to and Christian books to read. Do you teach them through your example that church and Christ are important, because if it’s only an after thought to you think of how much less it will mean to them. And parents here is the bottom line, if your kids grow up and win a Nobel Prize, if they become incredibly successful and wealthy and can support you in your old age but don’t know Jesus then they will have succeeded for this life and failed for eternity. And you can’t make that decision for them but you can help make it easier for them to make that decision.
And our church has a future. I believe that, if I didn’t believe that I would have walked away a long time ago, I believed in the future that Bedford Community Church had and I believe in the future that Cornerstone Wesleyan Church has. And yes it includes a permanent church home but that is only a small part of what the future holds for us, and we’ll never see it if we don’t believe it.
Because if we don’t think about the future then we won’t have one. I love the words of Oprah Winfrey who said “When I look into the future, it is so bright it burns my eyes.” Our future is bright and I want to go there with you and I want you to have a part and be a part in our future so when we get there we know that we couldn’t have done it without you.
Yesterday is gone, let’s live to make a difference today so that we can change tomorrow.
Hope you enjoyed this message, PowerPoint may be available for it. Email me at denn@powerpoint4preaching.com
