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I’ve spoken numerous times before about my call to gospel ministry and how those events unfolded, but for those of you who haven’t heard me do so before I will give a quick recap. Amy and I were riding back from her parents’ house sometime around late 2005 and I started talking with her about my feeling called into gospel ministry. All of this conversation ultimately ended with her asking me who I was running from. Upon my acknowledging that I was running from God, she asked if I thought I could win, and the rest is history. Now, that part you know. The part that most of you in this room don’t know is that that was not the first conversation that I had had with someone about my entering into pastoral ministry. You see, back in the summer of 2004, I went to the General Assembly meeting of the denomination that I was a part of at the time with a man named Dr. Morris Taylor. We didn’t travel together, but while the events of this meeting were taking place, we spent pretty much the entirety of the four days of that meeting together. During those four days, we talked about a lot of different subjects, one of which was my call to ministry. Now, I will tell you that I never told Dr. Taylor anything about my feeling called to ministry prior to or during that trip. However, it was as if he seemed to know without me even having to tell him. I have often been puzzled at how he could have known something that I had never shared with him (or anyone else for that matter), and I fully believe that it was God’s working through him to speak clearly to me. To sum up all of our conversations, Dr. Taylor basically told me that I needed to get over my resistance and get my butt in seminary after I was done with college that coming spring. Now, to back the story up even further, 2004 wasn’t the first time that I had thought about seminary and vocational gospel ministry. You see, there was a time around 2002 or 2003 where I really felt God doing something in my life that was different from most folks. I witnessed God call a lot of folks into a relationship with Him, but there was something different about what God was doing in my life that I started to really wonder if my calling was different from that of what we might call the “everyday, average Christian disciple.”
Well, what does all of this have to do with the book of Jonah and particularly our text for today? You see, I can identify a lot with Jonah in some aspects. Now, I may not have had the ministry success that Jonah had prior to that first feeling of being called by God back in 2003, but I had seen some fruitful times in ministry working with kids at various camps/conferences ranging from third grade to graduating seniors. I had seen myself be used by God to bring about change in the lives of some folks and to bring about their seeing the light from the midst of the darkness. I may not have been a trained theologian like Jonah, but I did know without hesitation that God had called me and drawn me into an eternal relationship with Him. That was something that I most definitely was sure of. So, you might be asking, where’s the similarity that I see between myself and Jonah? I mean, I can kind of see a similarity, but it’s a stretch. Well, the real similarity is in what happened to both Jonah and myself the moment that we stopped trying to actively flee from God’s calling. Back in 2003, God called me to ministry and I resisted. Again, in 2004, God was calling me into ministry, this time through a very trusted friend and pastor, and I resisted. Finally, in 2005, God called me into ministry again using the person whom I was (and still am) the most influenced by. Finally, I stopped all of my resisting and gave in to what God was calling me to do with my life. And do you know what the astonishing thing about all three of these calls to ministry is? The message remained the same. The feelings, the callings that I received in 2003, 2004, and 2005 all said one thing, “Tommy, go into pastoral ministry.” There was no difference between the three messages despite the time difference, or despite my hesitance and resistance to the prior calls. It wasn’t so much three separate calls to enter into pastoral ministry as it was one call that repeated until it was answered the way that God had ordained for it to be answered. In other words, God’s command for me never changed, I just had to come around to it and wake up from my idiotic delusions that I could deny something of God.
Our text for today opens up by saying, “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.’” Now, if you feel like you’ve already heard that message be delivered to Jonah by God it’s because you have. As a matter of fact, the book of Jonah opens up with the words, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’” You may be asking yourself why this is of any interest to us, and that’s not an uncommon question. The answer that I, and many other pastors and Bible nerds, would offer up to you is that it defies our natural tendencies. If I were to give one of you in here the check to mail so that my monthly mortgage could be paid and you forgot or simply just didn’t do it, then there is a good chance that I probably wouldn’t ask you to mail that check for me in the future, especially not the next month or any time in the foreseeable future. It would be an understandable thing (from our perspective) for God to remove Jonah from this place of privilege that he has occupied as a prophet of God. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for us to understand if God wanted to say to Jonah, “Jonah, I’m thankful for your years of service. I’m thankful that you’ve repented of your sins and I’m thankful for your prayer of confession and thanksgiving that you’ve offered up. I know that you have a newfound desire for serving as a prophet and doing what I’ve commanded you after that fish spat you back onto dry land, but I just can’t trust you anymore.” We wouldn’t bat an eye or give a second thought to it if God didn’t want Jonah carrying out this ministry to the people of Nineveh would we? How do we know that he won’t try and run from his responsibilities again? How do we know that this time will be any different than the last? As I said, that’s the way that we would (and so often do) look at it.
However, God doesn’t look at it the same way that we do. God doesn’t look at things with begrudging eyes and prejudiced hearts. God doesn’t hold past experiences and occurrences against us. God doesn’t look upon us while keeping another eye upon our prior indiscretions. No, God simply calls us in whatever state we are in to carry out His will. We may be in a season of great spiritual nourishment and growth, or we could be wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. Either way, God calls us into Christian service. An African American Baptist pastor in Philadelphia named William Banks wrote a really wonderful commentary on Jonah in which we find these words in the section on these verses: “We are moved to speak of Jonah’s God as the God of the Second Chance. But honest sober reflection compels the saint to speak of Him as the God of the 999th chance! Such gracious mercy as was extended to Jonah here, and to David, and to the thief dying upon the cross, and to Peter—surely it has been granted to all believers through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.” You see, if God were a God who only worked through those who completely and totally obey Him the very first time they are called, then the list of workers would be pretty short. One of the only ones that comes to mind is Abraham. After all, we are told in Genesis 12 of God’s simply calling Abraham to go in v.1, followed by his actual going in v. 4. However, even Abraham had his moments of failure after his initial obedience to God. We know well the lies that he spoke about his wife Sarah and his laying with Hagar and fathering Ishmael. The truth of the matter is that there has only been one person, Jesus, who could be of any use to God if our sin/failure completely eliminated us from Christian service.
We had a presbytery meeting this past weekend in Mobile, AL. One of the main things that we are tasked with as a presbytery is the examination and ordination of candidates for ministry, to become Teaching Elders in the Church. As part of the examination process, the candidates are to give a brief testimony of their life and Christian experience. To me, these are the places where I find out the most about a candidate and I probably focus more upon that part of the process than any of the questions that follow about their knowledge. I bet I can count on one hand the number of testimonies I’ve heard in all my years of attending those meeting that didn’t contain some mention of a time when these pastors were fleeing from not only their call to ministry, but from God himself. I’ve spoken with I don’t know how many people who have given me a similar testimony about their own wayward journeys that have found them not just distant from God, but actively fleeing from Him. And all of these testimonies of pastors and laypersons end the same way, with God ultimately winning out and His purpose for their lives ultimately being accomplished. You see, as the words from Rev. Banks pointed out earlier, God is a God who works through broken and fallen people, people who have already failed to fulfill the calling that God has placed upon them. Jonah was just like us in that regard, yet God used him to accomplish his purpose and to bring about one of the greatest revivals the world has ever seen. Don’t think that because you’ve messed up, made some mistakes, or don’t feel particularly qualified in a particular area that God can’t or won’t call you to a particular and specific ministry in order to bring about the glorification of His kingdom.
Now, it’s worth pointing out one small difference that does exist between these two calls. Some of you may have already noticed it, but the wording is a little different at the end of each of these two calls made to Jonah. The initial call by God told Jonah to “call out against [Nineveh], for their evil has come up before me.” In the second call, we find God saying, “call out against [Nineveh] the message that I tell you.” And this difference in wording prompts the question about what the message might have been. Now, there are countless theories out there as to what exactly is meant by “the message that I tell you.” Was God referring to the call to repentance that we see in verse 4? Was God talking about the message in a general sense like that that we mean when we speak of the Gospel? Although, it is worth noting that the Gospel is actually a specific message about the good news of the resurrection of Christ and not just some general word about God. Well, regardless of what we may take that message (or literally, the preaching that I preached unto you) to be exactly, the essence of what God is saying to Jonah is that he is to go to Nineveh and deliver to them what God wants him to deliver. After all, what matters isn’t that Jonah’s message is all that great, but that the message of God is spoken through him, which is obvious given the type of message that comes out of Jonah’s mouth that we will look at in greater detail next Sunday.
However, before we bring to a close our time for this morning, I want all of you to really think about Jonah and his story thus far. We know that a revival and a mass repentance were coming and we will see that soon enough. However, look at what we’ve seen. We’ve seen a man who was specifically called by God to take a specific message of repentance to a specific people fail at what he was supposed to do. He didn’t just fail to deliver on his assigned task, but actively tried to fail. Ending up getting thrown overboard the ship and ending up in a fish’s stomach is one way to not deliver the message to Nineveh. However, despite Jonah’s waywardness (which still isn’t completely over, mind you), God still calls Jonah to deliver that message to them. I said a couple of weeks ago that we too have a call upon our lives like that of Jonah. Our calling is to fulfill the Great Commission. Our calling is to go forth out into the world, taking the good news of the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ and sharing with all whom we come in contact with. And do you know what? We’ve failed in that mission. At times, not only have we failed, but we’ve actively worked at failing. However, that doesn’t mean that the calling that God has for us has in any way changed or diminished. Our goal ought to still be to go out and deliver the message that God has revealed to us through His Son Jesus Christ. We ought to go out and carry the story of the cross, the news of the resurrection, and the fact that Jesus lives this very day, seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. It doesn’t matter how broken you are spiritually, physically, or mentally. It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve tried running from your Christian duties. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past or what personality traits have to be overcome. The bottom line is that if God has called you to deliver a message or witness to someone or do something for the sake of His kingdom, then He has given you everything you need in order to accomplish that task. God uses broken people to do amazing things every day; He has too. There is no other choice because there is no such thing as a perfect and unbroken person. Don’t be discouraged to the point of failure by your brokenness, but seek diligently to preach the preaching that God has given unto you through His Son Jesus.
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