A Persistent God

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A Persistent God An Unrelenting Mission Jonah 3
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Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second
time "Go to the great city of Nineveh and
proclaim to it the message I give you." Jonah
obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh.
Now Nineveh was a very important citya visit
required three days. On the first day, Jonah
started into the city. He proclaimed "Forty more
days and Nineveh will be overturned." The
Ninevites believed
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God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from
the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When
the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose
from his throne, took off his royal robes,
covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in
the dust. Then he issued a proclamation in
Nineveh "By the decree of the king and his
nobles Do not let any man or beast, herd or
flock, taste anything do not let them eat or
drink. But let man
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and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone
call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil
ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet
relent and with compassion turn from his fierce
anger so that we will not perish." When God saw
what they did and how they turned from their evil
ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon
them the destruction he had threatened.
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Baldwin Godwill not be frustrated by the
effrontery of a prophet, nor has he allowed the
prophet to wander indefinitely off course.
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Nixon We long to emerge intact, to retain our
equilibrium, to remain strong. God calls us to
places where we will be weak, vulnerable and
exposed to the cross, to death, for only then can
we know the power of his resurrection.
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Jer. 15 16-19When your words came, I ate them
they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I
bear your name, O LORD God Almighty. I never sat
in the company of revelers, never made merry with
them I sat alone because your hand was on me and
you had filled me with indignation. Why is my
pain unending and my wound grievous and
incurable? Will you be to me like a deceptive
brook, like a spring that fails?
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(Jer. 15 16-19, continued) Therefore this is
what the LORD says "If you repent, I will
restore you that you may serve me if you utter
worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my
spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you
must not turn to them.
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Carson Western evangelicalism tends to run
through cycles of fads. At the moment, books are
pouring off the presses telling us how to plan
for success, how vision consists in clearly
articulated ministry goals, how the knowledge
of detailed profiles of our communities
constitutes the key to successful outreach. I am
not for a moment suggesting that there is nothing
to be learned from such studies. But
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(Carson, continued) after a while one may perhaps
be excused for marveling how many churches were
planted by Paul and Whitefield and Wesley and
Stanway and Judson without enjoying these
advantages. Of course, all of us need to
understand the people to whom we minister, and
all of us can benefit from small doses of such
literature. But massive doses sooner or later
dilute
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(Carson, continued) the gospel. Ever so subtly,
we start to think that success more critically
depends on thoughtful sociological analysis than
on the gospel Barna becomes more important than
the Bible. We depend on plans, programs, vision
statements but somewhere along the way we have
succumbed to the temptation to displace the
foolishness of the cross with the
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(Carson, continued) wisdom of strategic planning.
Again, I insist, my position is not a thinly
veiled plea for obscurantism, for
seat-of-the-pants ministry which plans nothing.
Rather, I fear that the cross, without ever being
disowned, is constantly in danger of being
dismissed from the central place it must enjoy,
by relatively peripheral insights that take on
far too much weight. Whenever the periphery
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(Carson, continued) is in danger of displacing
the center, we are not far removed from
idolatry.
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Vs. 6 The captain went to him and said, "How
can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe
he will take notice of us, and we will not
perish."
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Luther If I profess, with the loudest voice and
clearest exposition, every portion of the truth
of God except precisely that little point which
the world and the devil are at that moment
attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however
boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the
battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is
proved, and to be steady on all the battle field
besides is mere flight and disgrace if he
flinches at that point.
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Pinnock Decisions not yet made do not exist
anywhere to be known even by God. They are
potential yet to be realized but not yet
actual. God can predict a great deal of what we
will choose to do, but not all of it, because
some of it remains hidden in the mystery of human
freedom. . . God too faces possibilities in the
future, and not only certainties. God too moves
into a future not wholly known because it is
not yet fixed.
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Piper When the writer says that God repented or
regretted or changed his mind about making Saul
king, he realized that he has said something very
liable to misunderstanding. So he adds verse 29
to limit and clarify what he has said. How does
he do that? He does it with the words, "For He is
not a man that he should change his mind or
repent or regret." In other words, God's changes
are not like man's
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(Piper, continued) changes. Changing for God is
from one situation to another, but not the kind
of changing a human mind would do. God is not man
to change like man changes.
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Genesis 156Abram believed God and it was
credited to him as righteousness.