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Category Archives: Encounters with God

Encounters With God: Shunammite Woman Receives a Son – 2 Kings 4:8-30

The pa

ssage breaks down or centers around 2 key events: (a) The Shunammite woman receives a son (4:8-17) and (b) she received her son back from death (4:18-37).

A MINISTRY OF HOSPITALITY AND FAITH (2 Kings 4 8-13). One day Elisha went on to Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to eat some food. So whenever he passed that way, he would turn in there to eat food. ⁹ And she said to her husband, “Behold now, I know that this is a holy man of God who is continually passing our way. ¹⁰ Let us make a small room on the roof with walls and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there.” ¹¹ One day he came there, and he turned into the chamber and rested there. ¹² And he said to Gehazi his servant, “Call this Shunammite.” When he had called her, she stood before him. ¹³ And he said to him, “Say now to her, ‘See, you have taken all this trouble for us; what is to be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?’” She answered, “I dwell among my own people.”

This story primarily centers around this great woman of faith. There are four other actors in this drama–Elisha, his servant Gehazi, the woman’s husband, and of course her son. But the central figure is this woman and her ministry of faith by which she showed hospitality to Elisha as a man of God.

Elisha is seen here as a prophet moving about the country carrying on his ministry to the people while also stopping at the various schools of the prophets. Elisha was involved with his work, but he had special needs of his own and we see here how God graciously works through the lives of other believers to meet those needs.

The faith of this woman and that of her husband was developed because they had not neglected gathering together at the proper times for fellowship with believers and for instruction in the Scriptures:

2 Kings 4:22-23 (ESV) Then she called to her husband and said, “Send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may quickly go to the man of God and come back again.” ²³ And he said, “Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.” She said, “All is well.”

These verses suggest they gathered together with others to hear the prophets on certain holy days to get biblical teaching.

This is why the woman’s husband was surprised when she wanted to go to the prophet other than on one of these special days. Their normal routine was to gather together with others for that purpose on those special days. This was the key to this lady’s faith in these terrible days of apostasy.

“Where there was a prominent woman . . .” Literally, “a great woman.” The word “great” is sometimes used of wealth, influence or character (1 Sam. 25:2; 2 Sam. 19:32), so it may mean “great in importance, influence and character (1 Kings 10:23). From our passage it is easy to see that she was a prominent lady in the community, was somewhat wealthy, and undoubtedly exercised a considerable influence by her spiritual perception and godly character. She was a great lady for a number of reasons–she was full of faith and good works and undoubtedly had a great deal of love and respect for the teaching of the Word.

Her godliness and respect for the Word is seen in her hospitality. As we see in these verses, she willingly opened her home to those in need. She extended her hand to the needy; she shared in the good things God had given her.

In Ancient times there were no Holiday Inns or Motel 6’s. Those who traveled were dependent upon the gracious hospitality of the people in the land, especially the prophets in their itinerant ministries as they traveled about from place to place.

In the New Testament this is one of the signs of maturity, a qualification for elders, and a general responsibility for all believers, especially to fellow believers or members of the body of Christ.

And it is especially mentioned as one of the requirements for widows to be placed on the list for support (cf. Matt. 10:40-42; 25:35-40; 1 Tim. 3:2 and 5:10).

Our cultural situation today in our country is quite different, but there is still the need and the application of this principal in numerous ways. Believers need to open their homes for Bible studies, for baby-sitting during the studies, for times of Christian fellowship, for visiting missionaries and speakers, for youth gatherings, and for lifestyle evangelism or out-reach to neighbors.

This lady was also great because she was interested in and wanted to promote the work of God, especially the preaching of the Word. She did what she did for Elisha because she perceived he was a man of God, that is, a prophet teaching the Word and doing the work of God (vs. 9).

By her concern and her actions she was promoting the preaching of the Word.

This godly lady took God seriously and got involved with God’s work according to her abilities and the opportunities God gave her. She made no excuses, nor sought any. She was available and as a result she became a vibrant testimony for the Lord and a source of comfort and encouragement to Elisha who for the most part was ministering in a hostile and idolatrous environment. This family was like an oasis in the desert.

In verse 10 we see a third way the Shunammite demonstrated her prominence; she was great because of her discernment and the degree of her concern.

First, as a discerning believer she demonstrated her concern for God’s work. She did this with respect for her husband’s authority and leadership. She politely involved him in this matter and appears to have left the final decision up to him. This beautifully illustrates the influence, aid, and support a godly wife can have on her husband.

Our wives often show a special capacity for the benevolent concerns of others that men are so often blind to. The point is that husbands and wives are a team. Scripture describes her as the husband’s helpmeet, a helper especially suited to him. They are to compliment, help, and fulfill each other’s needs and potentials. However, husbands must recognize this, and capitalize on it, rather than react in proud arrogance or stubbornness. Men, draw on your wife’s insight and perception. Further, wives must be wise and submissive, showing respect for their husband’s position of leadership as did this Shunammite woman.

Second, she also discerned the degree of Elisha’s need and their responsibility to the prophet because of the ability God had given them. She was not simply satisfied with a place for Elisha to turn in. She knew he needed a private place, a place to pray, meditate, study, relax and be alone with the Lord. This woman knew they had the capacity to do all of this. What a thoughtful and caring lady.

The principle is she was concerned for the details of his needs. In general, women tend to generally be more detail-oriented whereas men tend to think in more general terms.

It reminds me of a man who wants to surprise his wife with a two-week Caribbean cruise, so he plans the date, buys their tickets, and plans how he will surprise her. Thinking he’s taken care of everything, he takes his wife out for a special dinner and presents her with the tickets. Immediately her mind goes into gear: Who’ll keep the kids? What about the dog? Who in the world can I get to teach my Sunday school class on such short notice? Help! I don’t have anything to wear! I’ll need a perm! How in the world can we afford a trip like this? The poor man is totally surprised because it takes her a while before she can respond with any semblance of the excitement he expected!

This was manifested in her actions and in God’s reward for her faithfulness.

(1) As one who shared in the things Elisha taught, she wanted to share with him in all good things which she had (vs. 6). So she saw to it that all his needs were met according to her ability.

(2) She was sowing, properly using the blessings God had given. She was laying up treasure in heaven.

(3) She did this while she had the opportunity; she didn’t procrastinate. She used her blessings for the blessing of others. How we need to seize the opportunities and redeem the time.

She was a great lady because of her contentment. When Elisha, being appreciative for her warm hospitality, wished to reward her by offering to use his influence with the king or his military commanders, she politely refused.

She had no desire for worldly advancement; she was not wanting to climb the social ladder of success. She was content with what God had provided her and with her place of service and ministry in the community. She was content with her home, her position, her friends, and her ministry. What a rare attitude! She knew and believed she was where God wanted her and with that she was content. This lady had it together!

GOD’S REWARD OF HER SERVICE (2 Kings 4:14-17)

¹⁴ And he said, “What then is to be done for her?” Gehazi answered, “Well, she has no son, and her husband is old.” ¹⁵ He said, “Call her.” And when he had called her, she stood in the doorway. ¹⁶ And he said, “At this season, about this time next year, you shall embrace a son.” And she said, “No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your servant.” ¹⁷ But the woman conceived, and she bore a son about that time the following spring, as Elisha had said to her.

First, note that Elisha was very appreciative and thankful for what this woman had done for him and his servant. There is a mental attitude of thankfulness and appreciation that characterizes the godly.

One of the products of a Spirit-controlled, Word-filled life is thankfulness, not only to God, but to others for what they mean to us, to our ministry, and to others (cf. Eph 5:18-20 and Col. 1:9 with vs. 12 and Phil. 4:10-19).

Second, Elisha was not just thankful, he wanted to express his thanks in concrete terms so he sought something he could do for her to show his appreciation. People cannot read our minds, we need to say and do things to express our appreciation. That is encouraging to them and honors the Lord.

So, in verse 14, Elisha turned to his servant and said, “what then is to be done for her?”

First, this illustrates a bit of on-the-job-training. He was involving his servant in his ministry and at the same time even seeking his help. This is bound to have been encouraging to Gehazi.

Gehazi had noticed that she was without a child, which for Jews was a great burden. So he called this to Elisha’s attention. This showed discernment on the servant’s part. He was learning to watch for needs and he knew that God could meet such a need because God had provided Abraham and Sarah a child even when they were old.

When Elisha promises she will embrace a son next year, she begs him not to raise her hopes unless he could truly deliver what he promised. Undoubtedly she said what she did because it had been a real matter of grief to her for many years.

But Elisha was speaking for the Lord, the One who is able to bring the nonexistent into existence and to make dead things alive (cf. Rom 4:17f).

The Shunammite’s Son Resurrected – 2 Kings 4:18-37; Hebrews 11:35 (ESV) Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.

The NIV Bible Commentary has a good summary of the events described in verses 17-37: “So it came to pass, at the appointed time the child was born and in time grew into a young lad. One day as he helped his father in the field, the lad was taken suddenly critically ill and died. After placing the lad’s body on the bed in the chamber of the prophet who had first announced his life, the Shunammite lady immediately set out for Mount Carmel where Elisha was ministering. Her faith convinced her that somehow Elisha could be instrumental in again doing the seemingly impossible. He had previously announced life for her who had no hope of producing life; perhaps he could once more give life to her son. Bypassing Gehazi whom Elisha had sent to meet her, she made directly for Elisha; and grasping tightly his feet, she poured out the details of the tragedy.”

2 Kings 4:29-30 (ESV) He said to Gehazi, “Tie up your garment and take my staff in your hand and go. If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not reply. And lay my staff on the face of the child.” ³⁰ Then the mother of the child said, “As the LORD lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So he arose and followed her.

Elisha quickly sent Gehazi ahead with instructions to lay the prophet’s staff on the dead lad. Although the author of Kings assigns no reason for Elisha’s instructions and actions, Elisha surely did not send Gehazi on a hopeless mission. Because he was young, Gehazi could cover the distance to Shunem quickly; and it was imperative that a representative of God arrive there as soon as possible. Very likely Gehazi’s task was preparatory and symbolic of the impending arrival of Elisha himself.

But the woman, who apparently had never trusted Gehazi, would entrust neither herself nor the final disposition of her son to him but rather stayed with Elisha until he could reach Shunem. Her faith and concern for her son’s cure were totally centered in God’s approved prophet.

2 Kings 4:31-37 (ESV) Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the face of the child, but there was no sound or sign of life. Therefore he returned to meet him and told him, “The child has not awakened.” ³² When Elisha came into the house, he saw the child lying dead on his bed. ³³ So he went in and shut the door behind the two of them and prayed to the LORD. ³⁴ Then he went up and lay on the child, putting his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands. And as he stretched himself upon him, the flesh of the child became warm. ³⁵ Then he got up again and walked once back and forth in the house, and went up and stretched himself upon him. The child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. ³⁶ Then he summoned Gehazi and said, “Call this Shunammite.” So he called her. And when she came to him, he said, “Pick up your son.” ³⁷ She came and fell at his feet, bowing to the ground. Then she picked up her son and went out.

As Elisha and the mother approached the city, Gehazi reported that, though he had carried out Elisha’s bidding, nothing at all had happened. Perhaps Gehazi had expected something extraordinary. But the merely routine fulfilling of one’s duties will never effect successful spiritual results.

Elisha went straight to the dead lad and, putting all others out and shutting the door, besought the Lord for the lad’s life.

Elisha stretched his body on the lad’s so that his mouth, eyes, and hands correspondingly met those of the lad; and the boy’s body grew warm again. After rising and walking about in continued prayer, he repeated the symbolic action. This time the lad sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Having sent Gehazi for the mother, Elisha delivered the recovered lad to her. The woman gratefully thanked the prophet, joyfully took up her son, and went out.

As in the case of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, both Elisha and the Shunammite woman had seen their faith successfully tested; and they were rewarded with the desires of their hearts and corresponding increase in their faith.

Conclusion

As with all the events and miracles in the life and ministry of Elisha, 2 Kings 4:8-37 illustrates and teaches a number of very practical truths:

(1) It strongly illustrates the loving and providential care of God for all His saints: young and old, rich or poor, weak or powerful.

(2) It demonstrates God’s involvement in the lives of men in all walks of life if they will respond to His loving grace.

(3) It also demonstrates the necessity of faith for everyone regardless of their social standing or financial position in life.

(4) Demonstrates that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17).

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Posted by Gary Davenport on November 28, 2024 in Encounters, Encounters with God

Encounters With God: The Healing of Naaman -2 Kings 5:1-27

25 Nov

The prophet Elijah is named twenty-nine times in the New Testament while Elisha is named only once. “And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27, nkjv).

Naaman was a Gentile and the commander of the army of an enemy nation, so it’s no wonder the congregation in Nazareth became angry with the Lord, interrupted His sermon and carried Him out of the synagogue. After all, why would the God of Israel heal a man who was a Gentile and outside the covenant?

He was an enemy who kidnapped little Jewish girls, and a leper who should have been isolated and left to die. These people knew nothing about the sovereign grace of God. Like Naaman, they became angry, but unlike Naaman, they didn’t humble themselves and trust the Lord.[1]

The story of the healing of Naaman in 2 Kings 5:1-27 is the account of a man with a very serious medical problem—leprosy. He found no help in his own country, but he had heard that there was a cure available in Israel. He commenced a “top down” approach to bring about his healing, but, to his dismay, found that this method didn’t work. He learned that God had a “bottom up” solution to his problem.

Our text describes how God graciously frustrates Naaman’s “top down” approach and initiates a “bottom up” solution. The fact of the matter is that God is not impressed or moved by man’s “top down” efforts, because it is God who is at the top, and not men, not even men of position and power, like Naaman, or the kings of Syria and Israel. We should listen well and learn about this “bottom up” system, because it is normally the way that God works, especially when it comes to the salvation of men.

An Encouraging Word, From an Unlikely Source 2 Kings 5:1-3 (NIV)
¹ Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
² Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife.
³ She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

The first thing we are told about Naaman is that he was a great man, highly esteemed by his master, the king of Syria. This is the kind of thing which impresses men. It is also the kind of thing which causes some people to think that God should be impressed as well. They foolishly reason that powerful people should gain a hearing from God.

He was a “giant” in the mind of his master, the king of Syria. He had been incredibly successful in leading the Syrians in their attacks against Israel. Our author goes on to inform us that Naaman was indeed a great warrior (verse 1), but then he goes on to tell us something that neither Naaman nor his king knew—Naaman’s military success was not primarily the result of his courage or military skills; it was the result of God’s sovereign plan and purpose: “for through him the LORD had given Syria military victories” (verse 1).

Naaman’s success in his battles with Israel was God’s judgment on Israel, because of the sins of His people: “The heavens above your heads will be as brass and the earth beneath you as iron. 24 The LORD will make the rain of your land like powder and dust; it will come down upon you from the sky until you are destroyed.…” 45 “All these curses will fall upon you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you do not obey the LORD your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has demanded of you. 46 These curses will be as a sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you have not served the LORD your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 48 you will instead serve your enemies whom he will send against you bringing hunger, thirst, nakedness, and lack of everything; they will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you” (Deuteronomy 28:23-24, 45-48).

As great as he is, Namaan has one very serious problem—he has leprosy. He is still highly esteemed by his master, the king of Syria, but there is hardly a disease which could be more devastating to Naaman. The king of Syria was Ben Hadad II, and as commander of the army, Naaman was the number two man in the nation. But with all his prestige, authority, and wealth, Naaman was a doomed man because under his uniform was the body of a leper. It appears from verse 11 that the infection was limited to one place, but leprosy has a tendency to spread and if left unchecked, it ultimately kills. Only the power of the God of Israel could heal him.

It would surely spell the end of his military career, and in time, perhaps his life as well. I am sure that he attempted every possible cure that money could buy in Syria, but with no success. A ray of hope came from a most unlikely source—an Israelite slave girl, the servant of Naaman’s wife. She had been captured by the Syrians on one of the raids they had successfully carried out against Israel.

The girl was a slave, but because she trusted the God of Israel, she was free. Even more, she was a humble witness to her mistress. Her words were so convincing that the woman told her husband and he in turn informed the king. Never underestimate the power of a simple witness, for God can take words from the lips of a child and carry them to the ears of a king.

This Israelite slave girl is a most remarkable person. She has every reason to hate Naaman and his wife. Her master is responsible for many raids against Israel, and therefore the death of many Israelites—perhaps even this young girl’s parents. Instead of hating her master and finding a certain amount of pleasure in his humiliating disease, this young girl seems to genuinely care about the well-being of her master and her mistress. She manifests true submission, which is seen in her desire to bring about what is in her master’s best interest.

Naaman’s healing and salvation are directly attributable to the faithfulness of this young girl. The word “young” in verse 2 is translated “little” in several versions of the Bible (KJV, NAU, NJB), and “young” in others (NET Bible, NIV, NKJV). The word in the original text seems to be almost the opposite of the word “respected” in 2 Kings 4:8, describing the Shunammite woman. I believe the author is not only telling us that this “little” girl is “young,” but that she is a person of no social standing whatever. She is on the bottom rung of the Syrian social ladder. (By the way, as a leper, Naaman is nearly on a par with her, socially, perhaps even a bit lower.) It was no doubt humbling for Naaman to have to act on the advice of his young and insignificant Israelite slave girl, but he was a desperate man.

A Top Down Response to Naaman’s Problem – 2 Kings 5:4-7 (NIV)
⁴ Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said.
⁵ “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing.
⁶ The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
⁷ As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

Naaman couldn’t leave Syria without the king’s permission, and he also needed an official letter of introduction to Joram, king of Israel. After all, Syria and Israel were enemies, and the arrival of the commander of the Syrian army could be greatly misunderstood. Both Naaman and Ben Hadad wrongly assumed that the prophet would do whatever the king commanded him to do and that both the king and the prophet would expect to receive expensive gifts in return. For that reason, Naaman took along 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, plus costly garments. The servant girl had said nothing about kings or gifts; she only pointed to Elisha the prophet and told her mistress what the Lord could do.

Neither Naaman nor his wife seems to have doubted the testimony of the Israelite servant girl. He is faced with a very real problem with protocol. How does a Syrian military commander like Naaman go about requesting the help of an Israelite prophet?

The prophet is the prophet of Yahweh, the one true God. This means that for all intents and purposes, Naaman will be admitting that his “gods” are powerless to heal him, and that only Israel’s God can do so. This also places Naaman in the very awkward position of having to travel to Israel, a country that he has often entered in his official position as commander of the armies of Syria.

In the past, he has come to Israel to attack it and to take prisoners. Now, he needs help from an influential leader in Israel. How does one handle a sticky situation like this?

There seem to be only two possible approaches. The first is the ego-saving method of using the “top down” approach. The second would require Naaman to humble himself and to ask for healing—the “bottom up” approach.

Not surprisingly, Naaman and his master, the king of Syria, chose the “top down” approach. He obtained the king of Syria’s permission and assistance to pursue healing in Israel. The king of Syria (Benhadad I, 890-843 B.C.) wrote a letter to the king of Israel, Joram (Jehoram, 848-841 B.C.), politely demanding that he see to it that Naaman be healed. And if the letter would not intimidate the king of Israel into arranging for Naaman’s healing, there was also the incentive provided by the offer of the money which Naaman had brought with him.

Besides, paying well for his healing would keep Naaman on “higher ground” (i.e., higher status), thus enabling him to maintain his dignity. (If it is embarrassing to have to ask for a ride in someone else’s car; it is not embarrassing for you to ride in the Rolls Royce for which you paid a small fortune.)

The king of Syria’s request was one that the king of Israel could hardly refuse, and yet it seemed that he had no way of fulfilling it. As the reader can see, it was really not a problem at all, but the king of Israel failed to see the solution. The king of Syria assumed that there was a close relationship between the king of Israel and the prophet of Israel, as there should have been. Upon receiving this letter, the king of Israel should have called for Elisha the prophet, who could heal Naaman. But because the kings of Israel had ceased to seek divine guidance, and because they assumed that the prophets always spoke against them, it never entered this king’s mind to turn to Elisha for help when he was in trouble.

The king’s words, “Am I God? Can I kill or restore life?” (verse 7) are most enlightening. The king knows that only God can restore a man to life or cure a leper. The reader knows that both Elijah (1 Kings 17:17-24) and Elisha (2 Kings 4:18-27) have raised someone from the dead. If the curing of the sick and raising of the dead is work which only God can do, then why does it not occur to the king of Israel that the prophet who speaks for God can heal Naaman? Is it that the king does not think of seeking God’s help through the prophet — or that he refuses to do so?

In spite of the king of Israel’s folly, Elisha heard that the king had torn his clothes and so he sent word to the king. His words were a rebuke for the king’s distress, which was completely inappropriate in this situation. There was no need for the king to tear his garments; all the king needed to do was to send Naaman to Elisha to be healed. In this way, Naaman would come to know that there was indeed a prophet in Israel (verse 8).

No Red Carpet Treatment for Naaman – 2 Kings 5:8-14 (NIV)
⁸ When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.”
⁹ So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
¹⁰ Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
¹¹ But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.
¹² Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
¹³ Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”
¹⁴ So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Naaman arrived at Elisha’s house with his whole retinue of attendants. It must have been a most impressive sight to behold. I believe this is precisely what Naaman hoped for, because he was still seeking to be healed from “the top down.” Can you imagine what Gehazi must have thought as he looked out the window and saw this entourage arriving?

Surely Naaman expected the “red carpet” treatment, because he was a VIP. He was a revered and feared military commander. He had a letter from the king of Syria, and he had just come from the king of Israel, with whom he had an audience, even though he had dropped in unexpectedly.

Naaman had his own preconceived ideas about how his healing should take place. He assumed that on his arrival, Elisha would be duly impressed with his power and prestige, and that he would take note of all the chariots (not just one) parked outside his door, along with those who accompanied him. He would have liked to have been able to point out that he had come with silver and gold and fine garments to pay for Elisha’s services. He could not imagine anyone not seizing this opportunity.

Likewise, he expected that this “miracle for hire” would be performed with all the pomp and circumstance that such an occasion required. After all, if you go out to eat at a fine restaurant, you expect the service to greatly surpass that which you would receive at a fast food restaurant.

In Naaman’s mind, he envisioned Elisha coming out personally and giving him his undivided attention. Naaman anticipated that the miracle would then be performed immediately, in some dramatic fashion (not unlike some religious folks perform for their television audiences today). He would certainly call on the name of his god and wave his hand over the diseased area, healing Naaman with the style and dignity that suited a man of his stature.

Things did not go as Naaman expected. From what we can read, there is no indication the king of Syria’s letter ever was read to Elisha, or that anyone even had the chance to explain why Naaman had come. As a prophet (or seer) of God, Elisha would not necessarily have had to be told why Naaman had come—he could have known (see 2 Kings 5:26). And of course the prophet could also have been informed by someone who had been there when Naaman appeared before the king of Israel.

I am inclined to think that Gehazi came out and began to convey Elisha’s message to Naaman before this Syrian commander had the chance to say anything. This was a way of letting Naaman know from the beginning that Elisha was in charge. And so Gehazi conveys Elisha words to Naaman: Naaman is to go to the Jordan River and to immerse himself seven times, after which he will most certainly be healed of his leprosy.

When Naaman hears this message, communicated to him by a (mere) servant, he becomes furious. He is insulted that he has not been treated in a manner worthy of his position. He expected to deal directly with the prophet and to “take charge” of his healing.

Elisha knew that Naaman had to be humbled before he could be healed. Accustomed to the protocol of the palace, this esteemed leader expected to be recognized publicly and his lavish gifts accepted with exaggerated appreciation, because that’s the way kings did things. But Elisha didn’t even come out of his house to welcome the man! Instead, he sent a messenger (Gehazi?) instructing him to ride thirty-two miles to the Jordan River and immerse himself in it seven times. Then he would be cleansed of his leprosy

Naaman had been seeking help and now his search was ended. He wanted the prophet to heal him immediately and in the manner he expected. He was insulted that he would be told to immerse himself. Worse yet, he was greatly angered that he would be told to immerse himself in the muddy waters of the Jordan. In his homeland, there were many beautiful rivers. If he had to immerse himself, he would do so in one of the crystal clear rivers of Syria, like the Abana or the Pharpar.

Why is Naaman so angry? What is the problem? If Naaman began his journey at Damascus, then he had traveled over one hundred miles to get to Samaria, so another thirty miles or so shouldn’t have upset him. But it did, for the great general became angry. The basic cause of his anger was pride. He had already decided in his own mind just how the prophet would heal him, but God didn’t work that way.

The Lord had already been working on Naaman’s pride and there was more to come. King Joram wasn’t able to heal him, the prophet didn’t come to court or even come out to greet him, and he had to dip in the dirty Jordan River, not once, but seven times. And he a great general and second in command over the nation of Syria!

If he were to be “saved” from his incurable disease, he wanted to be saved “his way,” in a way that was easy on his ego, and which left him in control of the situation. It was humiliating enough for a Syrian celebrity to come to Israel and to seek healing from an Israelite prophet. But to be told he must be healed in such a humiliating fashion was more than he was willing to tolerate.

Fortunately for Naaman, his servants reasoned with him and prevailed. They were very diplomatic with their master, and their argument was convincing. Naaman was desperately in need. He was willing to pay a very high price, or to do something very difficult, if necessary.

Once again, the Lord used servants to accomplish His purposes (vv. 2-3). If Naaman wouldn’t listen to the command of the prophet, perhaps he would heed the counsel of his own servants. Elisha didn’t ask him to do something difficult or impossible, because that would only have increased his pride. He asked him to obey a simple command and perform a humbling act, and it was unreasonable not to submit.

When he came up from the water the seventh time, his leprosy was gone and his flesh was like that of a little child. By his obedience he demonstrated his faith in God’s promise, and the Lord cleansed him of his leprosy. One writer said, “He lost his temper; then he lost his pride; then he lost his leprosy; that is generally the order in which proud rebellious sinners are converted.”

Naaman gave a clear public testimony that the Lord God of Israel was the only true and living God and was the God of all the earth. He renounced the false gods and idols of Syria and identified himself with Jehovah. What an indictment this testimony was against the idol-worshiping king and people of Israel!

Naaman grasps the logic of the argument and concedes the point. He goes to the Jordan and dips himself seven times in its waters. And when he comes forth after dipping the final time, his skin was like that of a young child. He was completely healed.

No Tipping Please – 2 Kings 5:15-19a (NIV)
¹⁵ Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. Please accept now a gift from your servant.”
¹⁶ The prophet answered, “As surely as the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.
¹⁷ “If you will not,” said Naaman, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD.
¹⁸ But may the LORD forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I bow there also–when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the LORD forgive your servant for this.”
¹⁹ “Go in peace,” Elisha said….

The man who did not even see Elisha when he first arrived outside his house now has a face-to-face conversation with the prophet. Naaman’s words are exactly what we would hope for in a new believer. I think our author meant for Naaman to be a rebuke to the Israelites who would read this account. Here was a man whom we would have called a “raw pagan” at the time he first arrived in Israel. There is a radical change in this man’s attitudes and actions after his healing. Naaman came from a country that worshipped false gods, and yet after his healing, he was able to confess, “I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel” (verse 15).

It is one thing to say that God alone is God, but Naaman sought to apply this newly obtained knowledge. First, Naaman sought to apply this knowledge as it related to his personal worship. It may seem somewhat strange to us, but Naaman asked Elisha for two mule loads of earth to take back to Syria with him. Here is a man who recently boasted that the waters of Syria were far superior to the waters found in the River Jordan. Now, he finds Israelite soil more precious than Syrian soil. How can this be?

Naaman was starting to grow in his understanding of the Lord, but he still had a long way to go. Elisha refused his gifts, but Naaman asked if he could take some native soil with him to Syria to use in his worship of Jehovah. In those days, people had the idea that the gods of a nation resided in that land, and if you left the land, you left the god behind. But Naaman had just testified that Jehovah was God in all the earth (v. 15)! However, taking that soil was a courageous act, because his master and his friends would surely ask Naaman what it meant, and he would have to tell them of his faith in the God of Israel.

In his second request, Naaman showed unusual insight, for he realized that the king would expect him to continue his official acts as the commander of the army. This included accompanying the king into the temple of Rimmon, the Syrian equivalent of Baal. Naaman was willing to perform this ritual outwardly, but he wanted Elisha to know that his heart would not be in it. Naaman anticipated that his healing and his changed life would have an impact on the royal court and eventually lead to the king’s conversion. Instead of criticizing believers who serve in public offices, we need to pray for them, because they face very difficult decisions.

It’s interesting that Elisha didn’t lecture him or admonish him but just said, “Go in peace.” This was the usual covenant blessing the Jews invoked when people were starting on a journey. The prophet would pray for him and trust God to use him in his new ministry in Syria. Naaman’s leprosy was gone, he still had the treasures, he carried soil from Israel, and he knew the true and living God. What a witness he could be in that dark land—and Naaman’s servant girl would join him!

Naaman was concerned about his worship in another way, which concerned his work. As commander of the army of the king of Syria, it would seem that he was also the king’s bodyguard. As such, he would accompany the king wherever he went, providing him with protection. This included the king’s worship of his heathen god at the temple of Rimmon. The king would literally be leaning on Naaman’s arm as he bowed down to his god, and this would require Naaman to bow down, too. Naaman assured Elisha that even though he might be bowing down with the king, he would no longer be worshipping Syrian gods. That was now a part of his past.

With these words, this new convert, Naaman, revealed insight which the people of Israel lacked. He knew that to truly worship God, he must worship as God had instructed. He knew as well that to worship God alone meant that he could worship no other gods.

Naaman responded in another way to his newly found faith in God. He sought to show his appreciation by offering Elisha the payment for services rendered which he had brought with him. He had originally planned to purchase his healing, and Elisha had overruled that plan. But now that he is healed, I think Naaman simply wishes to meet Elisha and to sincerely express his deep gratitude and appreciation. We know that he wanted to discuss his concerns about worshipping the one true God appropriately.

Naaman was prepared to express a great deal of gratitude. He had brought with him 10 units of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 suits of clothes (verse 5). It is difficult and probably impossible to express this in monetary terms that would be meaningful to us, but one Old Testament text makes it clear that this “payment” was worth a great deal of money.

In 1 Kings 16:24, we are told that king Omri of Israel paid Shemer two talents of silver for the hill on which he then built the capital city of Samaria. The silver alone which Naaman brought was worth five times this much, and that does not take into account the gold and the clothing. Naaman came prepared to pay generously for his healing.

Naaman was completely healed, and he could not have been happier with the results of his visit to Israel. It is easy to see why he would wish to meet with Elisha, and why he would gladly leave all that he had brought with him to pay for his healing. He urged Elisha to take it, but Elisha firmly refused. This was a work of God’s grace, and he did not want Naaman to have any confusion on this point. Elisha did not want to leave room for Naaman to conclude that he had contributed, in some measure, to his healing. It was only after it became clear that Elisha would not be persuaded to take any gift that Naaman asked if he could take some Israelite soil back to Syria. As Naaman left to return to his homeland, it was apparent that he had gained much and had lost nothing but his arrogance and his leprosy.

[1] Bible Exposition Commentary (BE Series) – Old Testament – The Bible Exposition Commentary – History.

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Posted by Gary Davenport on November 25, 2024 in Encounters, Encounters with God

Faith in the Fire: God’s Still in Control #6 When They Call for the Lions – Daniel 6

04 Aug

I think we are well aware of the thousands of ‘believers’ in this world who have been murdered in recent years…all because they do not believe in a radical Islamic doctrine that is being taught. Amnesty International reports cases of Christian women hung by their thumbs from wires and beaten with heavy rods, denied food and water and shocked with electric probes.

Elsewhere in the world, Christians face other tortures and persecutions. In Egypt and Pakistan Christians have been imprisoned and tortured merely for preaching their faith. Pakistan recently passed a blasphemy law that forbids speaking or acting against the prophet Mohammed. The punishment for violators is death.

A 12-year-old Christian child was recently sentenced to death under this law and was freed from Pakistan only by international pressure. He is now hiding in a Western country with a bounty on his head similar to that which keeps Salman Rushdie on the run.

Sudan is perhaps the worst violator. Its Islamic government has engaged in a policy of forcible conversion. Many of the black Sudanese in the southern part of the country (the north is Arab) have resisted conversion, in many cases because of adherence to Christianity (a criminal act under Sudanese law). As punishment, the Sudanese government has denied food and medicine to Christians in famine areas and has sold thousands of Christian children–some as young as 6–into slavery.”

Here in the U.S., of course, when we talk about persecution, our idea is having people call us names or City Hall refusing to let us put up religious symbols in the park, or hand out Bibles in the public schools.

What do you think would happen to churches in America if it became illegal to be a Christian as it is in Iran and other Moslem countries? How do you think your own faith would fare under such circumstances?

In one sense, there is really no way to know until you’re there, and “there” is a place where most of us, myself included, don’t want to have to go to find out. Is there anything a person can do to prepare in the event something like that might happen here? None of us would want to lose our faith under such circumstances.

In the earliest days of Christianity, when enemies of Christ wanted to put a stop to the testimony of someone who refused to compromise his faith, they would call for the lions. Christian men, women, and children were put into the arenas with hungry lions when they refused to recant their faith.

In much the same way, as we come into the sixth chapter of Daniel this morning in the last message of our series called “Faith in the Fire: God is in Control” that is what has happened. Daniel has refused to violate the basic tenants of his faith, so they’ve “called for the lions.”

What can we learn from Daniel that might help us in the event it ever comes about that someone should “call for the lions” in the good old USA? Said a little more plainly, what can we do to prepare in the event that the ultimate sacrifice was called for in our lives? How could we remain faithful under that kind of pressure?

Before we read Daniel six, let me inform you of a couple of things that will help you understand what is happening here.

First, Daniel was 80-90 years old when they called for the lions. Don’t picture a young man as we read this chapter.

Second, the lion’s den was the primary form of capital punishment to the Medes and Persians just as the furnace of fire was to the Babylonians, stoning was to the Jews, and crucifixion was to the Romans. It was a means of certain, violent death.

Daniel 6:1-2 (ESV) It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; ² and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss.

Apparently Darius used some of the men from the cabinet of Belshazzar, the king he conquered.

Daniel 6:3-4 (ESV) Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. ⁴ Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him.

We see here a simple case of jealousy with these men. Daniel was appointed over them and they didn’t like it, so they set about to get him out of their way. When they could find nothing immoral or shady in his public service, they decided to frame him in the one area where he might be vulnerable.

Keep on Being What You’ve Been. There is a consistency revealed about Daniel that shows what kind of person he was.

He was one who “distinguished himself” among the others, according to verse 3. Daniel wasn’t a slacker. He had worked hard in the courts of two kings already. Now he was doing the same in the third.

Verse 4 tells us that his opponents could find “no ground of accusation or evidence of corruption” in him. He was morally consistent. The set up a “sting” operation. They went through his files and his trashcans. They hid in the bushes and watched him at home. But they could find no hidden dirt.

The next phrase says “he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption was to be found in him.”

Daniel didn’t suddenly realize he was under surveillance and scramble to cover his tracks like we’ve seen many governing officials do in our day. There was no “Watergate,” “Whitewater,” “Travel Gate,” “Nanny Gate,” or any other kind of Gate in his life!

He was free from corruption in the present because he had been free from corruption in the past. He was already faithful. We’ve seen these things in his life since we began this series. When they called for the lions, he had merely to continue being what he had been.

Occasionally, when watching an interview with athletes before an important game, you’ll hear a reporter ask, “Well, how do you intend to handle this biggest game of your career?” Looking for a story, he’s hoping the athlete will reveal some bright, new, never-heard-of strategy. To that the athlete will say something like, “I’m just going to go out and do what I’ve been doing every day in practice since the beginning of the season.” Nothing new to him. He’s been doing it all along.

You don’t wait until the day of the race to start getting into shape. You don’t wait until the day of the game to start learning to pass the football. You don’t wait for the day you’re investigated to start living a life free from corruption.

What do you do when they call for the lions? You don’t change a thing! You keep on being what you have been. If you’ve been faithful, you’ll continue to be faithful.

Of course, the assumption behind that is that you have been working on being what you ought to be when the pressure isn’t on so that when they call for the lions, you don’t have to change anything.

Daniel 6:5-9 (ESV) Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.” ⁶ Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, “O King Darius, live forever! ⁷ All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. ⁸ Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.” ⁹ Therefore King Darius signed the document and injunction.

Darius fell for their scheme.

Daniel 6:10-15 (ESV) When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. ¹¹ Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. ¹² Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, “O king! Did you not sign an injunction, that anyone who makes petition to any god or man within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions?” The king answered and said, “The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.” ¹³ Then they answered and said before the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.” ¹⁴ Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed and set his mind to deliver Daniel. And he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. ¹⁵ Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, “Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.”

Instantly the king realizes he’s been had. I can imagine him calling in his lawyers trying to find some way around this frame-up. But they could find nothing.

Keep on Doing What You’ve Done. Daniel 6:10: When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.

Prayer and thanksgiving were nothing new to Daniel. His windows were already open. (The Jews of the captivity always faced Jerusalem when they prayed.) Daniel’s habit was to pray three times a day and he always gave thanks when he prayed.

Upon hearing the news of the edict, he didn’t panic, run upstairs to his room, get out the crowbar because the window on the east side of the house was painted shut or stuck. It was already open because he used it three times a day! The keywords in that sentence are “as he had been doing previously.”

What do you do when they call for the lions? Keep on doing what you’ve been doing – provided you’ve been doing what’s right.

Being ultimately able to face the lions is a lot like cruise control. You set the speed where it ought to be, then keep it there, consistently. You don’t start and stop. That gets you the best mileage and gets you there the quickest.

But it isn’t like an autopilot. You can’t just tell it where you want to go and take a nap. You still have to pay attention!

Making a big trip consists of covering a lot of little miles. Preparation for facing the big trials of life consists of a whole lot of facing the little ones. If you are listening to this message hoping to find some profound secret about the faith, there isn’t one, unless it is profound in its obvious simplicity. Keep on doing what you’ve done.

Daniel 6:16-23 (ESV) Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” ¹⁷ And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. ¹⁸ Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him. ¹⁹ Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. ²⁰ As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” ²¹ Then Daniel said to the king, “O king, live forever! ²² My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.” ²³ Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

Keep on Trusting Whom You’ve Trusted.
Daniel 6:16: Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!”

Daniel’s unabashed trust in God is obvious here. Even the king knew about it. And the king was even wishing for a rescue!

¹⁹ Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. ²⁰ As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” ²¹ Then Daniel said to the king, “O king, live forever! ²² My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.” ²³ Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

Was this level of trusting something new in Daniel’s life? Hardly. Remember chapter one and the issue of the king’s food? Remember chapter two and the confidence Daniel had that God could interpret the king’s dream? Remember chapter four where Daniel had the confidence in God to tell the king the truth? Remember chapter five when Daniel trusted God enough to turn down honor and prestige?

Whenever someone fails to trust God in the clutch, it is probably because he hasn’t trusted God in the days when the pressure was lighter.

Daniel is safe. Now the king turns to the guys who framed him.

Daniel 6:24 (ESV) And the king commanded, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. And before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.

At the king’s command, the men who had falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the lions’ den, along with their wives and children. And before they reached the floor of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones.”

Those lions were even hungrier because they hadn’t eaten all night!

Daniel 6:25-28 (ESV) Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: “Peace be multiplied to you. ²⁶ I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever; his kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end. ²⁷ He delivers and rescues; he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, he who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.” ²⁸ So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

O.K. We’ve seen what Daniel did when they called for the lions. Let’s look more closely and consider what we should do under similar circumstances.

When the army of Saul was cowering in fear of the Philistine giant, Goliath, and David stepped forward and volunteered to fight him, do you remember what he cited as his confidence? It’s in 1 Samuel 17:36-371 Samuel 17:36-37 (ESV) Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.” ³⁷ And David said, “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you!”

David fought the biggest battle of his life successfully because he had learned to trust God in the smaller battles of his life. He simply kept trusting Whom he had been trusting.

Polycarp, was believed to be a first century disciple of the Apostle John. He was one of the early Christian martyrs. Just before his execution, he was asked if he had anything more to say. He said “Eighty and six years I have served Christ and He has done me nothing but good; how then could I curse Him now, my Lord and Savior?” He was burned alive.

Do you want to be strong when they call for the lions? How are you doing trusting God in the lesser things?

Conclusion

A Nashville newspaper carried a story a few years back about Mrs. Lila Craig who hasn’t missed attending church in 1,040 Sundays, though she was in her eighties at the time of the article. The editor commented, “It makes one wonder, what’s the matter with Mrs. Craig? Doesn’t she ever have unexpected company?

How is it that she never goes anywhere on Saturday night so that she’s too tired to attend morning worship service the next day? Doesn’t she ever ‘beg off’ to attend picnics or family reunions, or have headaches, colds, nervous spells, or tired feelings? Doesn’t she ever oversleep or need time to read her Sunday newspaper?

Hasn’t she ever become angry at the minister or had her feelings hurt by someone and felt justified in staying home to hear a good sermon on the radio or TV? What’s the matter with Mrs. Craig anyway?”

I suggest to you that Mrs. Craig was doing the same thing Daniel was doing when they called for the lions:
Being what she’d always been

Doing what she’d always done

Trusting Whom she’d always trusted

How about it? If you were investigated right now for integrity, what would be found? If you kept on being what you are right now, would it get you through the ultimate test?

Are the prayer windows in your life open or shut? If you kept on doing what you’re doing right now, would it carry you through?

How about this issue of trust? Consider the last two or three crises in your life. When it was all said and done, did you trust God?

If you said “no” to any of these, you need to get to work! If you said “yes,” then don’t change a thing!

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Posted by Gary Davenport on August 4, 2022 in Encounters with God

Faith in the Fire: God’s Still in Control #5: When They Call for Your Honor – Daniel 5

01 Aug

faith under fire Have you ever seen a tragedy coming and could do nothing to stop it? One evening as Terry and I left a Florida Marlins baseball game in South Florida (we’re Cubs fans and they were in town), a car passed us at a high speed and eventually lost control as it sped by.

Careening out of control, the car bounced along the center concrete median. Sparks flew as the underside of the car scraped the concrete curb. It stopped quickly and several other cars bounced around slightly—it was scary and tense and very, very quick in happening. No one was hurt, as it turned out, except for damage to cars.

Reading Daniel 5 gives me that same feeling of helplessness and distress. From our distance in time, our knowledge of history, and the account of Daniel, we know the king, and likely those dining with him at his royal banquet, are destined for destruction. Yet we can do nothing to prevent it. Helplessly, we look on as judgment day comes for king Belshazzar.

Announcement of the king’s coming judgment begins by a mysterious hand writing on the wall of the banquet hall. Crying aloud, the king summons the wise men of Babylon. Their inability to fulfill his instructions only adds to his frustration. When his ability to interpret such matters is made known to the king, Daniel enters the scene.

It was in chapter 2 of the Book of Daniel that king Nebuchadnezzar had a distressing dream, which he demanded that his wise men reveal and interpret; they could not do so. Daniel revealed the dream and its meaning to king Nebuchadnezzar, and in so doing spared the lives of the wise men. In chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar had yet another dream. Once again, the king first sought the meaning from the other wise men of Babylon. When all others failed to explain the king’s dream, Daniel revealed its meaning and called on the king to repent, so that the threatened outcome might be delayed or prevented.

Another king now sits on the throne in Babylon. His name is Belshazzar.

Nearly 25 years have passed since the events of chapter 4 and over 70 years since chapter 1. Now advanced in years, Daniel is a senior statesman in Babylon. He has outlasted a number of kings and in his time Belshazzar, the last of the Chaldean kings of Babylon, will be killed and Babylon will pass from Chaldean rule to rule by Darius the Mede.

In chapters 1-4, we have an account of the life of Nebuchadnezzar, the first Babylonian king to rule over the captive Jews. The account looks at several events in the life of this great king, which eventually bring him to his knees in worship and praise of the God of Israel. Daniel then passes over several kings, giving us this brief account of the last day in the reign of Belshazzar, the last of the Chaldean kings.

The death of Belshazzar at the hand of Darius is a partial fulfillment of the prophecy revealed to king Nebuchadnezzar by his dream in chapter 2. There, Daniel informed Nebuchadnezzar that his kingdom was the first of four kingdoms to precede the coming of Messiah. His was the kingdom of gold, to be followed by a lesser kingdom of silver (Daniel 2:39). The kingdom of silver is introduced in Daniel 5, when Darius captures Babylon, and Belshazzar is put to death. The Medo-Persian kingdom is born, fulfilling the first part of the prophecy revealed through Daniel.

Belshazzar’s Feast (Daniel 5:1-5)

The great feast of Belshazzar takes place about 25 years after the events of chapter 4. Nebuchadnezzar is long gone and the Persians have surrounded the city of Babylon hoping to conquer it.

The great feast probably happened on October 12, 539 – The night that Babylon fell. Greek historians wrote that a great banquet was in progress that night. These types of feasts were displays of wealth and power.

Understanding how things went from bad to worse in these verses is not difficult. Such seems to have been the scene at Belshazzar’s banquet.[1] One thousand of the king’s nobles were invited, along with their wives or other women. The king was responsible for what happened, and too much wine seems to have contributed to his poor judgment. A false sense of pride and self-sufficiency seems to have dominated the dinner party. The king remembered the expensive vessels which Nebuchadnezzar, his father,[2] had taken when he defeated and captured Jerusalem. How much more impressive the evening would be if they drank their wine from the gold and silver vessels from the temple in Jerusalem.[3]

And so the vessels were brought in. The wine continued to flow freely, and toasts began to be offered. That these pagans were engaged in a kind of drinking bout with the sacred temple vessels was bad enough, but the ultimate blasphemy was toasting the gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone.

God has a limit to how far He will allow men to go in their sin. In His longsuffering and mercy, God may allow men to continue in their sin for a time. But there is a time for judgment. The king and his Babylonian dinner guests crossed the line that fateful night in the banquet hall of Babylon. Judgment day had come, and the writing on the wall announced its arrival.

The Handwriting of Doom (Daniel 5:6-16)

Against the whitewashed walls of the palace the writing of the “hand” must have been amazing. The words written were in Aramaic, yet the astrologers and magicians could not decipher them. Their ignorance in the face of a true mystery is a familiar theme ion the book.

Daniel’s refusal of the King’s gifts may indicate the confidence and focus of a man of 90 years of age. His rebuke of Belshazzar contains the telling phrase “though you knew all of this…” The king had not acted in ignorance.

Verses 7 through 9 relate the promise of the king to give rich rewards to anyone able to interpret the writing, but all the wise men failed.

Knowing the power of the Babylonian kings, Belshazzar must have seen many men stand in fear and trembling before him. One might have thought the king was having a heart attack. Barely able to stand, his face was ashen and seized with terror. The raucous laughter turned to deafening silence with all eyes on the king. The king’s eyes were fixed upon the hand as it wrote. As a sense of foreboding and panic fell on the crowd, all eyes turned to the mysterious writing on the wall. The king’s actions alarmed all who were present.

Crying aloud in fear, his speech probably slurred, the king immediately summoned his wise men to the banquet hall. What did these words on the wall mean? He must know. A tempting reward was offered to anyone who could interpret the meaning of the handwriting on the wall.

The queen has great confidence in Daniel’s ability based upon his track record in the history of Babylonian affairs. Her summary of Daniel’s accomplishments in verse 12 suggests that Daniel performed other amazing tasks throughout the lifetime of king Nebuchadnezzar. Those recorded in the Book of Daniel are but a sampling of Daniel’s ministry to the king.

Her confidence does seem to produce a calming effect on the king and his guests. The king summons Daniel to appear before the king and his guests that very night.

The king offered the same reward to Daniel that he had previously offered to anyone who would interpret the handwriting on the wall. It is interesting that he fulfilled his promise to Daniel at the conclusion of this revelation, even though the reward was short-lived.

The Meaning Revealed (Daniel 5:17-30)

1) The inscription is three simple Aramaic words:

Mene, Mene Numbered, Numbered

Tekel Weighed

Peres Divided

Having admonished the king, Daniel next proceeded to interpret the writing: Now this is the inscription that was written out: “MENE¯, MENE¯, TEKE¯L, UPHARSIN.” This is the interpretation of the message: “MENE¯”—God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. “TEKE¯L”—you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. “PERE¯S”—your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians (vv. 25–28). [4]

Each word stands for a short sentence. The Babylonians were renowned for their expertise with numbers, and God speaks to Belshazzar in those terms. In the interpretation Daniel dealt with “MENE¯” only once. Many ancient manuscripts do not repeat “MENE¯” in verse 25, thus corresponding exactly with Daniel’s interpretation. “MENE¯,” literally means “numeration” or “evaluation.” “TEKE¯L” literally means “weighing,” and “PERE¯S,” division. Fortunately, we are not left to try to determine the meaning of such a message, for Daniel gave the interpretation.

Though Daniel accepts the gifts, they did not effect the outcome of the prophecy. Further, being elevated to third highest ruler in Babylon was not much of a prize.

Daniel begins by turning down Belshazzar’s reward. Let the king keep his gifts or give them to someone else. Why would he decline Belshazzar’s offer? Daniel knows that the king’s gifts are virtually useless. What good would it do Daniel to be given the third highest office in the administration of Belshazzar when his reign would end that very night? Daniel was God’s servant, divinely gifted to interpret dreams. He would not prostitute his gift by using it for his own gain. Daniel was not “for hire.” As God’s prophet, Daniel spoke to men for God.

Verses 18-24 are fascinating. In these verses Daniel explains the guilt of king Belshazzar. Unfortunately, Belshazzar had not learned the lesson from Nebuchadnezzar’s mistakes (v. 22). Thus the hand was sent from God (v. 24). The writing on the wall, explained in verses 25-28, speak of the imminent judgment of God which will fall upon Belshazzar and his kingdom, due to sin. Daniel spends more time on the king’s guilt than on his punishment, as he devotes more time to explaining the reason for the writing than the meaning of the writing.

The events of Daniel 4 are now repeated, as a lesson which not only Nebuchadnezzar learned but which Belshazzar his son should have learned as well. God sovereignly granted Nebuchadnezzar power, glory, and majesty, and he exercised that power and authority over mankind. But his heart became proud, and he acted arrogantly. God temporarily took away his power and his kingdom, and he became like the beasts of the field, eating grass and living in the elements without shelter. All this happened so that he might recognize God as the ruler over mankind and recognize that all human authority is delegated to men by God, from whom all authority is derived.

Verse 29 indicates that Belshazzar kept his promise to Daniel. He “gave orders, and they clothed Daniel with purple and put a necklace of gold around his neck, and issued a proclamation concerning him that he now had authority as the third ruler in the kingdom.”

BABYLON’S FALL (5:30)

“That same night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain” and the kingdom was conquered (v. 30). Thus ended the Babylonian Empire.

The “head of gold” of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision (chapter 2) was now replaced by a breast and arms of silver—the Medes and Persians.

Lessons for today

Remember The Real Issue.
It’s so easy, in a situation like this, to get your eyes on the wrong thing and forget what those clamoring to honor you are really asking you to do. Flattery can be a heady thing. You can lose sight of what is really going on.
   Of course this issue isn’t always so cute. It must have been flattering for Daniel, probably forgotten and on “inactive duty” since the death of Nebuchadnezzar, to be called once again into the palace for advice. Then for a former captive of a defeated nation to be offered third ruler in the kingdom!
   The promise of honor and acclaim can be a heady thing. It can cause you to lose sight of your ideals.
   The thing Daniel needed to remember in the midst of this incredible offer of honor and acclaim was that this same king had just been hosting a dinner in which the keynote issue was mocking God!
   Sure, the honor might be nice, but will you line up with pagans to get it? Will you participate in their blasphemy? Will you mock and dishonor your Maker in order to be honored yourself? Is it worth that much?
   “Well, when you put it that way, no. But it isn’t always so clear cut. Sometimes it’s in the gray area.” Yeah, I know. The greater the promise of honor and prestige, the grayer it gets! Yet we must discern.
   Someone has aptly written, “Flattery looks like friendship – just like a wolf looks like a dog!”
   What I’m saying is this: Remember the real issue! Get your eyes off the glory and get them back on your God! Discern the issues! Know what is really going on. Don’t let the flattery blind you to the facts.
   Don’t Change the Message.
No one else in the room recognized that Aramaic writing on the wall. He could have said it meant anything he wanted and no one would ever have known the difference. No one, that is, but God.
   Oh that men feared God and feared changing His message more than they craved the attention of men!
   The New Testament warns us about changing the message for the sake of personal desires. After an exhortation to “preach the word,” Paul told Timothy in II Timothy 4:3: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.”
   Listen to what God said to His prophet, Ezekiel: Ezekiel 3:17-19: “Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the
house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die’; and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself.”
   Fear God’s Judgment.
Perhaps you have, at times, used the phrase, “The handwriting is on the wall,” meaning that what is going to happen is very evident and there is no stopping it. That phrase originated from the story in this passage.
    BIBLE KNOWLEDGE COMMENTARY says this about what happened: “Belshazzar had a false sense of security, because the Persian army… was outside Babylon’s city walls. Their army was divided; part was stationed where the river entered the city at the north and the other part was positioned where the river exited from the city at the south. The army diverted the water north of the city by digging a canal from the river to a nearby lake. With the water diverted, its level receded and the soldiers were able to enter the city by going under the sluice gate. Since the walls were unguarded the Persians, once inside the city, were able to conquer it without a fight.”
   You only get so much warning and then “the handwriting is on the wall.” God will warn of impending judgment only so long, then the ax falls.
   It also should be a warning to cause us to fear God when we’re tempted to put acclaim ahead of principle.

[1] For similar events, recorded in the Bible, see Esther 1 and Mark 6:14-29.

[2] It is generally understood and accepted that the term “father” was used more loosely in the Old Testament of one’s forefather, who may have been a grandfather or even a more distant “father.”

[3] See Daniel 1:2; 2 Kings 24:13; 25:15; Ezra 1:7, 11.

[4] Truth For Today, Life of Daniel series by David Rechtin & Neal Pryor (much of this material is a result of the two issues put out by these two fine writers and this publication, from Searcy, Arkansas

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Posted by Gary Davenport on August 1, 2022 in Encounters with God

Faith in the Fire: God’s in Control #4 – When They Call For Truth – Daniel 4

28 Jul

I spend a great deal of time daily pondering the requirement as a teacher to tell the truth about important spiritual matters…even when it isn’t popular. That is something that’s expected of teachers/ministers, but not always appreciated.

Think of a circumstance when an individual would suddenly grab his side in pain, double over and fall to the floor. Paramedics were called and he was rushed to the hospital. After a battery of tests and X-rays they found he had a cancerous tumor the size of a small football in his stomach. The doctors give radiation treatment and 3 months later they
operated to remove the tumor, now shrunken to the size of a golf ball.

Many people say sin is a negative subject. So is cancer. If you have a cancerous tumor in your stomach the size of a football and they rush you to the hospital, you don’t need the doctor to tell you, ‘It’s just a stomach ache. Take some Mylanta and you’ll be OK.’ You need to know the truth.

How would you like to be the doctor who has to deliver such bad news? It probably wouldn’t be on anyone’s list of favorite things they like to do.

What is true of physical life and the threat of cancer it also true in the case of spiritual life and the reality of sin. Before people can understand and accept the good news of God’s forgiveness and salvation, they need to hear from us the bad news of their condition before God in their sins.

Because telling the truth about sin is quite similar to the doctor who must break the news about cancer, many people shy away from it. They prefer either to say nothing, or to water down the truth so as to somehow soften the blow.

Sadly, preachers and other Christians can become pretty good at watering down or disguising the truth so that it no longer appears to be bad news. Perhaps it is the reason why so many sense no joy in their salvation – they’ve no idea how bad their condition was so they don’t appreciate their deliverance from it.

Delivering good news is a joy. Delivering bad news is unpleasant. Yet it can get even more complicated than that. Imagine delivering bad news to a superior with a penchant for temper tantrums and the power to kill you. Surely the temptation in such a situation would be to tell a little less than the truth, or perhaps some version of “what they want to hear.”

That is the situation for Daniel in the fourth chapter of the book we’ve been studying. Daniel is the “doctor.” The “patient” is Nebuchadnezzar and he has a deadly sin in his life called arrogance. God has decreed his judgment and it is about to come upon him unless he changes his ways. Daniel must deliver the bad news.

This is sermon number four in our series from Daniel called, “Faith in the Fire: God’s in Control.” We’re looking at dealing with calls from the world. This message is titled, “When They Call for Truth.”

Daniel 4:1-37 (ESV)
¹ King Nebuchadnezzar to all peoples, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you!

Notice that this chapter differs from the previous three in that it is written by Nebuchadnezzar himself in the first person. It describes what brought him to become a believer in the God of heaven. It involved some bad news. Penned after the fact, this was either a decree he sent out across his kingdom after the events described, or something he wrote in his memoirs for posterity. Note his high praise for God in the next two verses.

² It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me.
³ How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation.

It wasn’t always that way. Listen as he describes what happened”
⁴ I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace.
⁵ I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me.
⁶ So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream.
⁷ Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation.
⁸ At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods—and I told him the dream, saying,
⁹ “O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw and their interpretation.
¹⁰ The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great.
¹¹ The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth.
¹² Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it.
¹³ “I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven.
¹⁴ He proclaimed aloud and said thus: ‘Chop down the tree and lop off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it and the birds from its branches.
¹⁵ But leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, amid the tender grass of the field. Let him be wet with the dew of heaven. Let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth.
¹⁶ Let his mind be changed from a man’s, and let a beast’s mind be given to him; and let seven periods of time pass over him.
¹⁷ The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’
¹⁸ This dream I, King Nebuchadnezzar, saw. And you, O Belteshazzar, tell me the interpretation, because all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known to me the interpretation, but you are able, for the spirit of the holy gods is in you.”

What a story!

Recall now what we are looking for in this passage. We’re looking to see how we should deal with a situation where someone from the world asks one of us for the truth. A careful look reveals four necessary things for the truth-teller to get his message across. The first is…

1. Credibility
Notice back in verses 7 and 8 that Daniel was one of Nebuchadnezzar’s leading advisors. By this time, Daniel had established a track record in the palace, not only of telling the truth, but also knowing it. I have no idea why the king chose to call Daniel in last, after he had consulted the others, unless he wanted to evaluate his advisory team the way he did back in chapter two.

Look at his description of Daniel: “in whom is a spirit of the holy gods.” Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t a believer yet, but he recognized Daniel had something the rest didn’t. From his previous encounters with Daniel, he must also have known that Daniel wouldn’t back away from telling him the truth.

When the world calls on one of us for truth, it will likely be because their observations of our actions have built credibility in them. We have become authentic. Usually unknown to us, the unbeliever has been watching and evaluating us in other circumstances. They’ve noted it when we had the courage to tell the truth and they’ve also noted it when they saw us
hedge. That is why it is so necessary to be truthful in all areas of life, big and little.

Who do you suppose if watching you right now, evaluation your truthfulness? It might surprise you to know who and how many!
If we expect the world to listen to the truth when we tell it, we don’t get there by waiting until they ask before beginning to tell the truth. We tell it now, in the little things that we face every day, knowing that the world is watching. We also don’t go to the world’s shifting standard of truth to learn how to do it (like the Indians learning to make smoke
signals from the movies.) We must be in God’s eternal source of truth, the Bible.

If you were called upon by the world to tell the truth today, would your message be heard or ignored? A lot depends upon your credibility.

Concern
Though it has been repeated to the point of being trite, it is still true that “they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” We see here in the example of Daniel a genuine concern for Nebuchadnezzar.

¹⁹Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was dismayed for a while, and his thoughts alarmed him. The king answered and said, “Belteshazzar, let not the dream or the interpretation alarm you.” Belteshazzar answered and said, “My lord, may the dream be for those who hate you and its interpretation for your enemies!

Daniel could have said, “Well, it’s about time God dealt with you, you Pagan, for what you did to my people and my family back in Jerusalem!”

We must tell the truth, but we must tell it with compassion. We should preach and teach “as dying men to dying men.”

Our message isn’t delivered from a place of condescension! Without God’s offer of grace to us, given while we were still in our sins, we are no better off than this pagan king! We must never forget it.

3. Candor
Candor is forthright honesty. It’s what you want from your doctor. It’s what you should want from those who teach you. It is what the unbeliever who comes to you seeking truth, needs desperately from you.

When you arrive at the absolute truth about a matter, things that contradict it cannot be right! That makes them wrong in case anyone needs some help figuring it out.

When we speak of telling the truth with candor, we mean telling it like it is, not like we want it to be or we wish it were or our favorite version of it!

From time to time there are people who are with us in the church for a while, then they leave. Often it is because they run aground on this very issue. They get upset because the leadership of this church will not go against the clear commands of scripture to accommodate their situation.

Those of you sitting here this morning don’t always know the issue behind some folks leaving, but you may hear them as they go mumbling things like how “unfair” the shepherds/minister are. My experience has been the “unfair” they are talking about is that these shepherds, who will account to God one day for their stewardship in this place, would not change the absolute truth of the situation to make it convenient for them to disobey God.

In those statements, I said you don’t always know the issue. The reason is that we don’t usually parade people’s personal lives before the church. If you have a question about something said about the elders, though, the best approach is to ask. They are open to questions and not above accountability for their actions. It is just that I can say with certainly that they (and I) are more afraid of some twisting the word of God than they are of someone’s threats to leave.

Candor – forthright honesty – is what is needed when the world calls for truth. We dare not let them down. To do so is fatal.

Though he risked the king’s wrath, Daniel told the truth with candor.
²⁰ The tree you saw, which grew and became strong, so that its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth,
²¹ whose leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in which was food for all, under which beasts of the field found shade, and in whose branches the birds of the heavens lived—
²² it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. Your greatness has grown and reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth.
²³ And because the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, ‘Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven periods of time pass over him,’
²⁴ this is the interpretation, O king: It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king,
²⁵ that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.
²⁶ And as it was commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that Heaven rules.

To the person in the church, we need to tell the truth about the need to obey God. To the outsider, we need to tell the truth about their sin and the coming effects of it.

Those of you who have used “Sin-Savior-Salvation” lessons to teach someone else the gospel: that is why the lesson on “Sin” comes before the one on “Salvation.” People need to know the truth that, because of their sin, they are lost and could be bound for Hell. Only then will they be interested in Jesus as a Savior and not just a nice man.

It is also true of those of us who have been baptized for remission of sins…our refusal to ‘walk in the light’ and to confess the willful sin in our life…puts our eternal condition in peril.

Credibility, Concern, Candor. These are all things we need when the world calls for truth. It is not the time to back away.

Correction
The call from correction is a call to fix what is wrong. It is the instruction to make straight what is crooked. Here it is from Daniel. ²⁷Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”

That is our ultimate goal when the world calls for truth. Jesus said, “Unless you repent, you will all, likewise, perish.”

Sin separates and alienates people from God. If it isn’t forgiven, they will go to hell. That is the truth. Repentance is the first step back toward God. It is the point where they change direction. They quit living for themselves and make up their mind they will start living for God.

Repentance is the hardest part of the message because it means a person must stop doing things only to please himself and start doing what pleases his Maker.

For the king it involved abandoning his arrogance and helping other people. It involved getting off the throne of his own life and putting God in His rightful place.

To those seeking truth it is no different. When we tell a person the bad news, that is, his sin has him bound for a fully conscious eternity in hell and that he cannot save himself, we show him God’s answer to his problem. Christ has died to take away his/her sin.

But he must turn from his sinning and accept Christ. He must be baptized to have his sins washed away. He must strive from then on to put God first in his life. In these things we cannot afford to be unclear or try to slip it by.

Daniel 4:28-37 (ESV)
²⁸All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. ²⁹At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, ³⁰ and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” ³¹ While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, ³² and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” ³³ Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.

³⁴ At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; ³⁵ all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” ³⁶ At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. ³⁷ Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

What Preaching is All About? By Wes McAdams

Preaching is the proclamation and explanation of God’s word. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of men who stood before God’s people and explained, “This is what God says, this is what it means, and this is how it applies to us today.”

The church needs to hear the proclamation and explanation of God’s word. We need to hear what it says, what it means, and how it applies to our lives today. When God’s word is proclaimed and explained:

it brings glory to God.
it unites God’s people of the present with His people of the past.
it makes us into a knowledgeable and disciplined community, by encouraging us to stretch our attention spans and develop an ability to hear the word of the Lord.

How We Turn Preaching Into a Competitive Performance

With singing, we often misplace our focus. We focus on the tune and the tempo, when the focus should be on the words of praise. With preaching, we focus on the preacher’s style and delivery, when the focus should be on accurately proclaiming and explaining the word of God.

But think about it, when we sit in the pew and make the sermon about the preacher’s performance – rather than our own walk with Jesus – it takes the pressure off us and puts it on the preacher.

When we have the luxury of sitting and measuring the length and style of the sermon, comparing it with other sermons we’ve heard, our job in the pew is easy. It’s much more difficult for us to accept our God-given responsibility to look beyond the flaws, shortcomings, and human limitations of the preacher in order to discern and apply God’s holy word to our lives.

Pride, Ego, and Self-Esteem

It’s easy to see the harm we do to those we criticize. It’s easy to see how it hurts a preacher’s feelings when we criticize his style; but we might actually be doing more harm to those on whom we constantly brag. When we constantly brag on a preacher’s style and performance, we might very well be stroking his ego.

How To Encourage a Preacher

So how can we show appreciation to our preachers, without being stumbling blocks? Here are a few of my favorite kinds of encouragement:

“That message really made me think. I’m going to have to go home and study some more.”
“I’m convicted. I’m going to make some big changes in my life.”
“God’s word is so powerful.”
“Thank you for telling us the truth.”

Conclusion
Some years ago a terrible railroad accident occurred, killing many people. A commuter train had stalled on the tracks just a few minutes before a fast freight was due to arrive. A conductor was quickly sent to flag down the approaching train. Assured that all was well, the passengers relaxed. Suddenly, however, the speeding freight came bearing down upon them. The crash left a ghastly scene of horror.

The engineer of the second train, who escaped death by jumping from the cab, was called into court to explain why he hadn’t stopped. “I saw a man waving a warning flag,” he said, “but it was yellow, so I thought he just wanted me to slow down.” When the flag was examined, the mystery was explained. It had been red, but because of long exposure to the sun and weather it had become a dirty yellow.

When the world calls for truth, our message must be clearly red, not yellow. It must be held up with confidence, waved with concern and candor, accompanied with a message of correction.

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Posted by TJ's Man on July 28, 2022 in Encounters with God

Faith in the Fire: God’s In Control #3 – When They Call For Open-Mindedness

25 Jul

We live in strange times. Everybody wants a piece of the action when it comes to making everyone else recognize and accept their way of doing things. Years ago, when an immigrant stepped off the boat at Elis Island, his first concern was learning American English and American culture. Today his greatest concern is learning to manipulate the political system to his own ends.

And our response to all of this? We’re supposed to welcome it. You’ve all heard of it. It’s described by words like “tolerance,” “broadmindedness,” “open-mindedness,” and the latest social retread: “multiculturalism.”

The idea seems appealing on the surface. We must be tolerant of others and their belief systems. After all, anything less is bigotry and who wants to be a bigot?

The Bible does teach us to be tolerant of others. “And just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way.” It also indicates we should be open to learning new truth. “Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger…”

The blindness brought on by arrogance and a closed mind can prevent one from seeing God’s truth. But this new “tolerance” and “open-mindedness” goes beyond that.

(Please listen to this statement.) It not only demands that we be tolerant of the rights of others to believe what they want, it teaches that the ways of each culture must be recognized as equally valid and right. It’s a mindset that says that no culture is better than any other, no matter what strange or destructive ideas it holds. If you say anything different, you’re a bigot.

Of course, the highway doesn’t go both ways.
· Have you noticed lately that some of the gurus of tolerance and multiculturalism seem just a bit intolerant of your Christian belief structures?
· Have you noticed that in today’s social climate, you can say and do almost anything you want as long as you don’t express your view that someone else’s belief or behavior is wrong?
· Why is it that those who scream “tolerance” so loudly today are so intolerant of the moral base on which this country was built and the people who represent it?
· Everything is tolerated, it seems, except the good old “Judeo-Christian ethic.”

Have you thought very long about what is happening? In first century Rome, people were allowed to believe and worship whatever they chose, much the same as we are today, as long as they first burned a pinch of incense in the name of Caesar and pronounced the words, “Caesar is Lord.”

It seems to me that we may be coming around full-circle. Many people today believe that all religions are true. “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere,” they say. It doesn’t even matter if the teachings conflict with one another.

No, the “Caesar is Lord” idea probably wouldn’t work. We’re too critical of our public leaders and know their faults too well. It isn’t likely we’ll be unified by consenting to view our president as a god.

But what about a unifying idea? What about an idea we enthrone like a god called “multiculturalism.” As long as you recognize that all cultures and religions are equally right, you are free to worship any way you choose. Note what I did not say. I did not say “as long as you recognize that all religions have a right to exist and compete for attention.” I said, “as long as you recognize that all religions are right.”
When the early Christians faced this issue, their belief in one God made them realize they couldn’t bow down to Caesar or say that all other religions were equally right. This put them on a collision course with their government.

If you’ve heard of the lions and arenas of that era, you know the results. I wonder how it will be if we end up facing the same choices? If the “god” of multiculturalism continues to be held up for admiration and worship until it is so socially acceptable that nothing else is tolerated, will Christians bow down and concede that every religion and lifestyle is true and their faith in one God who calls some behavior “sin” is the only remaining falsehood?

I cannot see the future. Whether such a thing as I have implied will happen in our day remains unknown. I believe, though, that we must be ready for it. We must clearly understand that we cannot bow down to the God of heaven and the god of multiculturalism, too.

So how does a Christian stand in the face of a world that is lining up against absolute truth? How does he/she resist being overrun? There are answers in the third chapter of Daniel that I want to consider with you this morning. There we find three very brave young men who worshiped the God of heaven. Their names were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Through God’s providence, they were members of a Babylonian king’s advisory cabinet. They lived in a culture that recognized many gods. One day the king set up a god for all his subjects to worship. He gathered them all together at a place called the plain of Dura, struck up the band, and told them all to bow down. The three young men refused. The king threw them into a furnace, then something very remarkable happened.

We’re continuing our series called “Faith in the Fire” from the first six chapters of Daniel. This is the third message. I’m calling it “When They Call For Open-Mindedness.”

Daniel 3:1-30 (ESV)
¹ King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.
² Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
³ Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
⁴ And the herald proclaimed aloud, “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages,
⁵ that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up.
⁶ And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.”
⁷ Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
⁸ Therefore at that time certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews.
⁹ They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, “O king, live forever!
¹⁰ You, O king, have made a decree, that every man who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image.
¹¹ And whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
¹² There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
¹³ Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king.
¹⁴ Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?
¹⁵ Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”
¹⁶ Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.
¹⁷ If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.
¹⁸ But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
¹⁹ Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated.
²⁰ And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
²¹ Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace.
²² Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
²³ And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.
²⁴ Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.”
²⁵ He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”
²⁶ Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire.
²⁷ And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them.
²⁸ Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.
²⁹ Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.”
³⁰ Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

What can we learn from the experience of these three men that might be helpful to us in sorting out the confusion of multiculturalism today? I’d like to point out five qualities they had that we should develop. The first is:

1. Clarity.
These men knew what they believed. When the king announced the requirement of bowing down to the image, they knew immediately that they could not do it.

One of the reasons so many Christians are so gullible and identify with the ideas behind multiculturalism is that they are not clear on what they themselves believe. They don’t realize that such a proposition is contrary to the faith they espouse. No wonder they’re confused!

Though I have been reading this chapter in Daniel off and on for nearly 33 years, it was only this past week that it occurred to me what must have really happened there on the plain of Dura. I had always assumed that when all these musicians got together, they all played the same thing, perhaps “Hail to the Chief” of something similar. But look back at
Daniel’s description of the music that was played before the people bowed down to the image.

⁷ Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

It is probable they weren’t all playing the same song or at least they weren’t playing it the same way!

What a striking illustration of multiculturalism! That is what it sounds like when everyone’s philosophy and belief is viewed as being equal and you’re not allowed to sort it out in the competitive free marketplace of ideas!

We need to know what we believe and why we believe it. Further, we need to know with razor sharp clarity what are the absolutes and what are not.

Have you noticed that in today’s political-religious climate, people who see anything clearly as an issue of ‘right or wrong’ are ridiculed and looked upon as backward?

“There are no absolutes,” we are told. “Everything is relative. We live in a gray world. Everything is fuzzy and unclear. It doesn’t matter who is right, because there really isn’t a right and wrong. That’s the trouble with you Christians. You see everything as black and white.”

Abraham Lincoln seems to have been one who loved wit and wisdom. I’m told that one of his favorite brain-teasers used to make a point with his constituents was to ask, “How many legs would a sheep have if you called his tail a leg?” Naturally, they would respond, “Five.” “Wrong!” Lincoln would reply. “The sheep would still have just four legs. Calling
something a leg doesn’t make it so.”

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! Front and center. How many gods are there in the world?” “Only one God.” “Well, we want you to bow down to a different god than that One.” “We can’t do that.” “Well, then you’re gonna burn ’cause we don’t like you saying we’re wrong!”

These young men knew what truth was and knew how to describe it. We should know the same.

2. Constancy
This was not the first time these young men had resisted giving in to demands that would compromise their faith. We saw them back in the first chapter when the issue was eating the king’s choice food. Remember?

Too many Christians today lack constancy. They’re on-again, off-again. They’re hot, then they’re cold. They’re up, then they’re down. They’re in, then they’re out. Oh, how we need that today!

Conviction
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY says of the word “conviction,” “a fixed or strong belief.” We sometimes say of a person, “He has a strong moral conviction.” What we mean is that his belief is deep enough to have become rooted and firmly established. It isn’t a passing thing. Then the dictionary gives another definition that suggests the way a person gets to that fixed or strong belief. It says, “the act or process of convincing.” When you or I hold a conviction about something, what it means is that we have weighed it and measured it to the point that we have become convinced that it is true beyond a reasonable doubt and that anything that goes against it is false. It is no longer something we hold in the realm of possibility. We have found it to be truth worth defending.
With that in mind, let me ask you, what religious convictions do you hold? I’m not asking you which convictions you’ll allow me to stand up here and promote. That is quite another thing. I’m not asking you about my convictions. I’m asking about yours. What principles are so settled in your mind that they have become facts that cannot be denied and must be defended?

One of the reasons a philosophy like multiculturalism can be so widely embraced today is that it takes no conviction to hold it. You don’t need to know anything. It’s a brainless, gutless choice.

You don’t have to stand up and defend it. You don’t have to consider the fact that it is illogical and doesn’t add up. It’s popular, so you can even congratulate yourself for being in such a broad stream of prominent people.
· Multiculturalism is the lord of the lazy.
· It is the deity of those who don’t think.
· It is the supreme being of those with no sense, who put their feelings ahead facts.
· Their common sense is on standby.
· It’s the adoration of the apathetic.

Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters.”

4. Confidence
{17} If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. {18} But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

These young men believed that God could rescue them if He chose to do so, even from a blast furnace so hot it burned bystanders. But even if God didn’t deliver them, they weren’t going to bow down. They were convinced that He would deal with them fairly even if they ended up dying for their faith.

To stand against the idol of multiculturalism that is being erected today, we too need confidence. We need to know that we are on God’s side. The only way we can have that assurance is to get on God’s side. Don’t expect God to come to your side. Get on His side! The only way you can do that is to get in His Book and learn what God’s side is!

5. Courage
Saying you believe something or have a conviction about it is one thing – standing by it is another. Do you suppose these young men were scared? I cannot imagine it any other way.

During World War II, a military governor met with General George Patton in Sicily. When he praised Patton highly for his courage and bravery, the general replied, “Sir, I am not a brave man — the truth is, I am an utter craven coward. I have never been within the sound of gunshot or in sight of battle in my whole life that I wasn’t so scared that I had sweat
in the palms of my hands.” Years later, when Patton’s autobiography was published, it contained this significant statement by the general: “I learned very early in my life never to take counsel of my fears.”

Jesus said this on the subject: “And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Do you want to master the fear of men? Work until you have a greater fear of God.

Conclusion
Let me challenge you with a pledge I found by an anonymous disciple of Jesus. It is called “The Fellowship of the Unashamed.” Perhaps you can find yourself in his words.

“I am part of the “Fellowship of the Unashamed.” I have Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. I’ve stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of His. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving, and dwarfed goals! I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by presence, learn by faith, love by patience, live by prayer, and labor by power.

“My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few, my guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, diluted, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I won’t give up, shut up, let go, or slow up until I’ve preached up, prayed up, paid up, stored up, and stayed up for the cause of Christ. “I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till He stops. And when He comes to get His own, He’ll have no problems recognizing me. My colors will be clear.”

Be sure your colors are clear.

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Posted by TJ's Man on July 25, 2022 in Encounters with God

Faith in the Fire: God’s In Control #2 – When They Call For Help

21 Jul

When They Call For Help

“…everybody has something that isn’t working in their life somewhere.”

Most of us in difficult conditions turn to our tried and true solutions first – you know, those little shortcuts and dodges that have bailed us out of trouble before. When these don’t work, we may confide our problem to a trusted friend or two. That failing, we may become desperate. We begin to entertain a willingness to open ourselves to things we haven’t considered
before.

In that condition, some of us are, perhaps for the first time, willing to listen to what God might have to say. If, at that point, there is a Christian near us whom we trust and who is ready to help us understand, we find ourselves listening with a new level of attentiveness. For some this can result in becoming lifelong disciple of Jesus.

This process of a crisis bringing the unbeliever to the believer for help has been repeated over and over. It seems to be a prime method God uses to call men and women to Himself.

In the Bible narrative we’re going to consider this morning, we have one of those “turn-to-God-in-time-of-crisis” stories.
This message is the second in a series based on the first six chapters of Daniel. We’re considering how God’s people should respond to the different calls of the world. The first message, based on chapter one, was called “When They Call For Compromise.” In it, we saw that we must resist the world’s attempts to homogenize us into its system.

This lesson: “When They Call For Help.” How should we respond when someone who doesn’t know God comes to the end of his/her rope and reaches out to us for help?

As we’ve noted already, often an unbeliever’s first serious consideration of his Maker comes in a time of crisis. In this case the unbeliever is the king of Babylon 600 years before Christ – a man named Nebuchadnezzar. The crisis is a dream he had (to him more like a nightmare.) We begin then, with the crisis of:

I. A Rattled King.
Daniel 2:1: “In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep.”

Because they possessed almost unlimited power and authority, Oriental leaders were notoriously temperamental and unpredictable, and here Nebuchadnezzar reveals this side of his character.

The Lord gave Nebuchadnezzar a vivid dream that he couldn’t understand, and it distressed him. That the Lord God Almighty would communicate truth to a pagan Gentile king is evidence of the grace of God.
That word “troubled” in this verse in the original language means “to be beaten, compelled, or pushed.” It was the kind of dream that causes one to sit up suddenly in bed, heart pounding, eyes wide, utterly terrified. It was so troubling that the King couldn’t go back to sleep. The plural “dreams” suggests that perhaps this same dream persisted night after night.

The King did what all people do when they hit a situation they cannot control. He turned to his familiar, tried and true solutions first.

Daniel 2:2-4: “So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king, {3} he said to them, “I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.” {4} Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.””

Now get ready. The king is about to put these men to a test that will expose the limits of their power.

Daniel 2:5: “The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble.”

The king wants not only the interpretation of the dream, he wants them to describe to him the dream itself! Without some sort of supernatural power, that is going to be impossible for them. As you can probably imagine, it didn’t take long for these Chaldeans to realize they were in deep trouble!
This in itself set the stage for Daniel to exalt the true and living God of Israel who alone can predict the future. By issuing this impossible challenge, the king was unconsciously following the plan of God and opening the way for Daniel to do what the counselors could not do.

Daniel 2:6-10: “But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.” {7} Once more they replied, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will interpret it.” {8} Then the king answered, “I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided: {9} If you do not tell me the dream, there is just one penalty for you. You have conspired to
tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me.” {10} The astrologers answered the king, “There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer.”

What a revealing statement of the limits of human resources in the face of some crises! “There is no earthly solution to a problem like that, O king!” That was the best their most advanced wisdom of their day could produce.

Daniel 2:11: “What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men.””

“Your predicament, O king, is outside the realm of man’s abilities.”

There is nothing surprising about such a declaration from our perspective. Most of us here have realized that there comes a point when man’s solutions run out. You have to wonder, though, what these guys had been claiming to the king about their powers and abilities prior to this that would provoke such a violent threat.

What we’re talking about here is this: all people, sooner or later, sense the limitations of human resources. The Chaldeans state it well: “It would take a god to do what you are asking!”

There comes a time in the life of every person when you realize you can no longer dodge the bullet. You can no longer get off easy. You can no longer sidestep or ignore the problem or dig yourself out of your predicament. You’re in trouble and unless there is something beyond the power of man, you won’t escape. At that point, sometimes for the first time, the possibility of a Supernatural Being who transcends human ability becomes relevant. You think, “perhaps there is a God.”

Zig Ziggler quips that there are three things that are hard to do. One is to climb a fence leaning toward you. Another is to kiss a girl who is leaning away from you. The third is to help someone who doesn’t really want to be helped. That is how it is most of the time we deal with unbelievers. They don’t want to be helped. But in time of crisis in the unbeliever’s life, that changes.

Those of you who have turned to God because of a crisis in your life, think back to the time you first changed your attitude toward the possibility of God in your life. How then do we respond to the world’s call for help? We must first:

1. Realize that unbelievers will come to us in time of crisis. To borrow from a recent popular advertising slogan, “If you build it, they will come.” If you build an authentic, consistent Christian witness, unbelievers in the time of their crisis, will come to you. God will see to it, just like He did here.

As one poet reminds us: “If each man’s care were written on his brow, how of them who have our praise would have our pity now!”

You never really know what is going on in the life of that unbeliever next to you until a crisis brings it out into the open. Realize that unbelievers will come to you in time of crisis.

2. A Ready Witness.
With the things we’ve said so far in mind, it seems rather obvious, doesn’t it, that God, who is seeking lost mankind, would step in to provide a witness to help such a person? In that day it was Daniel. Today it just might be you or me.

That God would provide a witness is no surprise. What is always surprising to me is how He goes about it sometimes. That is what we see next.
Daniel 2:12: “This made the king so angry and furious that he ordered the execution of all the wise men of Babylon.”

If you’ve ever heard or made the statement, “God works in mysterious ways,” you’ll recognize the truth of it here. Those words “destroy all the wise men of Babylon” would include Daniel and his three Hebrew friends who proved so faithful to God in chapter one. The King’s edict amounted to a death warrant for them. What is God up to? Mysterious ways indeed!

Daniel 2:13: “So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death.”

The Evil One is willing to sacrifice all his false prophets in the city of Babylon if he can destroy four of God’s faithful servants. Satan’s servants are expendable, but the Lord cares for His people.

Doesn’t it seem a bit strange to you that God would use a death warrant and the fear it would provoke in the minds of Daniel and his friends to bring the seeker and the witness together? Yet that is the way God did it.

Don’t ever think that the difficult circumstances in your life are without purpose in God’s scheme of things. We’ll see here that God can even turn a threat to your physical life into a blessing and an opportunity.

So Daniel got word of the edict. When the king and his soldiers knocked on his door, he was ready: Daniel 2:14-16: “When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact. {15} He asked the king’s officer, “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. {16} At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he
might interpret the dream for him.”

Those words in verse 16, “asked for time” are translated: “requested that he would appoint a time for him.” We saw back in verse 8 that the king had already denied the Chaldeans additional time to collaborate. What Daniel is discretely and wisely asking for here is an appointment with the king. Rather than just sit there like a dumb ox at the slaughter,
oblivious to what is going on around him, Daniel did the second thing we need to do when an unbeliever is in crisis: take the initiative with discretion and discernment.

Before I elaborate on that point, will you recognize what I didn’t say? I didn’t say, “call the preacher and turn the unbeliever over to him.” Of course, in some cases that might be appropriate, but I need to say a couple of things here. First, the unbeliever likely doesn’t know your preacher. He knows you. If your witness was authentic enough that he was
attracted to you he needs to hear what you have to say!

“What on earth could I say?”

You could tell him how God has made a difference in your life. You could promise to pray for him. If he sees the need for salvation you could have a few verses handy and show him what he needs to do. You could enlist a few other Christians to help you hold him up before God in prayer. You could spend time with him and encourage him to hang in there and not give up.

God has given evangelists and pastors and teachers to equip you for service, not to do your service for you! What am I saying here? I’m talking about taking the initiative with discretion and discernment.

When we recognize that God does things this way, that is, He brings crises into the lives of unbelievers so they will seek Him, and that He uses believers like you and me to deliver His message, we can move forward with enthusiasm knowing that God is with us. He can even help you in your ineptness!

What has always amazed me in reading Daniel’s response to all this is the degree of confidence he had in God – not in himself. “Before you kill us, Arioch, can you get me an appointment with the king?” He didn’t know what God was going to do! He hadn’t read the book of Daniel like we’re doing. He just knew that the king’s life was spinning out of control and that God was more powerful than any man or circumstance.

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY says of discretion: “showing prudence and wise self-restraint in speech and behavior.”

When an unbeliever is calling for help, it’s not the time to go out and club him with you trusty Bible or hit him and shoot him with your ever-ready ax and two thirty-eights. Yes, Scripture will ultimately be important, but remember, the situation calls for discretion and discernment. These twin qualities are some of the most important characteristics of an effective witness for Christ.

Of course, we should never face a situation like this alone. Intercession from the rest of the body to invoke God’s help is important. That is how Daniel saw it.

Daniel 2:18-19: “He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. {19} During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven”

3. Solicit support from God’s people.
In this case we’re talking about prayer support of others which led ultimately to answered prayer from God.

If God is instrumental in bringing crisis to the life of the unbeliever and brings the unbeliever into contact with the ready witness, we must recognize that this whole procedure is primarily His, not ours. We are simply His tools. It is only reasonable that we should go to God and seek his help and guidance through it.

We need strength to do it right. Someone has written, “In relation to his people, God works only in answer to their prayer. In prayer we exchange our natural strength for the supernatural strength of God.” I like that because at times like we are discussion, we need that supernatural strength!

Solicit support from other believers and God. O.K. An unbeliever has hit a spot where he has realized his need for God. You or I, realizing this, take the initiative with wisdom and discernment. We are confident God can help them, indeed, He has probably allowed the circumstance for this very reason. Then, God steps in and delivers them with a mighty hand! What now? I’ve called this next section,

3. A Revered God.
Let’s look again to see what Daniel did.

Daniel 2:19-28 (ESV)
¹⁹ Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
²⁰ Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might.
²¹ He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding;
²² he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.
²³ To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king’s matter.”
²⁴ Therefore Daniel went in to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him: “Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will show the king the interpretation.”
²⁵ Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him: “I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation.”
²⁶ The king declared to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?”
²⁷ Daniel answered the king and said, “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked,
²⁸ but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these:

Daniel 2:29-45 (ESV)
²⁹To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. ³⁰ But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind.
³¹ “You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. ³² The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, ³³ its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
³⁴ As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.
³⁵ Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
³⁶ “This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. ³⁷ You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, ³⁸ and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold.

³⁹ Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. ⁴⁰ And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these.
⁴¹ And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay.
⁴² And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.
⁴³ As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.
⁴⁴ And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, ⁴⁵ just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”

To sum up what the large image represented: four Gentile kingdoms:

The breast and arms of silver—The Medo-Persian kingdom (539-330 B.C.). Darius the Mede conquered Babylon ( 5:30-31).
The belly and thighs of bronze—The Grecian kingdom (330-63 B.C.). Alexander the Great established what was probably the largest empire in ancient times. He died in 323 B.C.
The legs of iron and feet of iron and clay—The Roman Empire (63 B.C.-ca. A.D. 475). Iron represents strength but clay represents weakness. Rome was strong in law, organization, and military might; but the empire included so many different peoples that this created weakness.
The destruction of the image—The coming of Jesus Christ, the Stone, to judge His enemies and establish His universal kingdom.

Nebuchadnezzar saw that his own kingdom would fall one day and be replaced by the Medes and Persians. This happened in 538 B.C. (Dan. 5:30-31).

When we consider these truths, our response ought to be one of joyful confidence, knowing that the Lord has everything under control. While God’s people should do everything they can to alleviate suffering and make this a safer and happier world, our hope is not in laws; political alliances, or moral crusades. Our hope is in the Lord.
What started out as possible tragedy—the slaughter of four godly men—was turned into great triumph; and the God of Daniel received great glory. Daniel gave the glory to God!

Pass on the praise.
It is a heady experience when God uses you to make a difference in the life of an unbeliever. It gets even headier if that unbeliever has fame or celebrity status like the king here. What do you think the temptation is at that point? Yeah, the temptation is to take the glory for yourself. This would have made an excellent opportunity for advancement in the king’s court for Daniel. Had he simply claimed to have power and special abilities himself, from human perspective, look at what he would have gained.

Ah, but Daniel realized that his purpose was to glorify God, not himself. In so doing, ultimately, God would honor him.

Daniel 2:46-48: “Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. {47} The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.” {48} Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men.”

Have you come to the place in your Christian maturity where you are willing to pass on the praise for anything you might accomplish to God and leave your advancement in the ranks of life to Him? That is really what this is all about. It is to call attention to God, not us! It is His power the unbeliever needs to see, not ours.

Do it that way and God will promote you. Do it any other way and you fail to accomplish the purpose of God.

Conclusion
Everyone has something that doesn’t work someplace… Everyone faces the reality of a crisis in their life sometime. …Everyone has a need somewhere, regardless of how together they seem to be.

It’s true of people right in the sphere of your influence. People who have been watching your life and listening to you for weeks, months, or even years. When the crisis comes, you need to be ready. Because we build a credible witness of Christ in your life, they will come.

Perhaps there is someone here among us this morning who is in a crisis but doesn’t know Christ. You’re the person who is listening to talk about God for the first time. I don’t want you to leave this building this morning without an opportunity to get help.

If you would like to talk to one of our ministers or elders, please take one of the attendance cards from the rack in front of you and write your name, phone number, and anything pertinent to your situation and hand it to one of these men. One of us will call you privately and discreetly this week. We want to help you.

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Posted by TJ's Man on July 21, 2022 in Encounters with God

Faith in the Fire: God’s In Control #1 – When They Call For Compromise

18 Jul

We would need to go to the grocery store to find the opening illustration for the sermon series I want to begin today. Rummaging through the items there, you would found the analogy on the side of a half-gallon carton of milk. The words: “Grade A, Pasteurized, Homogenized Milk.”

Pasteurization has to do with heating the milk to a certain temperature and holding it there until certain harmful bacteria are killed. Before the days of pasteurization, people would occasionally die from drinking a glass of milk. Homogenization is the process of mixing up the milk until it has a uniform consistency. We might say it is fully blended. You can always recognize non-homogenized milk because the cream separates and comes to the top.

It occurred to me this past week that homogenization is exactly what the world wants to do with Christians. The world wants to shake us up and blend us so effectively that there is no longer any difference between us and them. The cream no longer comes to the top. It is no longer a separate substance.

Once you’ve been a Christian for awhile, of course, you realize that, while that is what the world around you wants, it isn’t what God wants. He doesn’t want the cream so mixed up with the rest of the milk that there is no difference. He wants us to resist becoming “homogenized” with the world. Yet, staying with our analogy, He hasn’t called us to leave the bottle of milk either. (I believe somewhere I’ve heard the phrase, “In the world but not of the world” used among Christians.) In our day, that is no small assignment. But then again, it never has been.

So how do you pull something like that off? How do you maintain a dynamic, no compromise faith in a deluded world that wants to homogenize you?

This morning we begin a new six part sermons that I’m going to call “Dynamic Faith in a Deluded World.” The idea behind it is this issue of not becoming homogenized with the world. In the process of the world shaking the Christian up, God wants the cream to come to the top, and not to be reduced and dispersed so it is no longer seen.

We’ll turn then, to the first message, which I’ve called “When They Call For Compromise.” Compromise is the most common and straight forward means used by the world to homogenize Christians.

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY gives as the third definition under the word Compromise, “A concession to something detrimental…”

If you can be made to abandon key aspects of your faith by compromising what you believe, homogenization will be simple and complete. Watch for the call to compromise as we read the story in Daniel, chapter one.

It begins with the military defeat of what remained of the once powerful nation of Israel and the deportation of certain young men who survived the siege of Jerusalem. The time was 606 B.C.

A. A new home (vv. 1-2)
Daniel 1:1-2: “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. {2} And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god

No longer were they surrounded by the things of God in Jerusalem, and no longer would they have the influence of their godly parents and teachers.

B. New knowledge (vv. 3-4)

Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility–{4} young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.”

Imagine four Hebrew boys, teenagers, being snatched from their lovely homes in Jerusalem and moved to faraway Babylon. Since all of them were princes, belonging to the royal family, they were probably not accustomed to this kind of treatment.

It is too bad when the youth of the land must suffer because of the sins of the parents. The Jews had refused to repent and obey the Lord, so (as Jeremiah had warned) the Babylonian army came in 606-586 B.C. and conquered the land.

The policy of taking the youngest and strongest among the survivors of a defeated nation was common in that day. It insured a good flow of slaves for the conquering king to employ in his service and also made it certain that the defeated nation could not rise again against its conquerors.

The old Jewish wisdom had to go; from now on it would be the wisdom of the world, the wisdom of Babylon. They had to learn the wisdom and the language of their captors. The king hoped that this “brainwashing” would make better servants out of them.

In v. 3 we see what fine specimens these four lads were: they were physically strong and handsome, socially experienced and well-liked by others, mentally keen and well-educated, and spiritually devoted to the Lord.

Conservative scholars have placed Daniel and his friends who were among these captives somewhere in the age range of early teens. The next verses describe the plan for re-socialization. It was a clear, out-in-the-open effort to homogenize believers.

But a difficult trial lay ahead of them: the king wanted to force them to conform to the ways of Babylon. He was not interested in putting good Jews to work; he wanted these Jews to be Babylonians!

Christians today face the same trial: Satan wants us to become “conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:1-2). Sad to say, too many Christians give in to the world and lose their power, their joy, and their testimony. Note the changes that these young men experienced:

C. New diets (v. 5)
“The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service.

For the next three years, the four youths were supposed to eat the king’s diet, which, of course, was contrary to the dietary laws of the Jews. No doubt the food was also offered to the idols of the land, and for the Hebrew youths to eat it would be blasphemy.

D. New names (vv. 6-7)
Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. {7} The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.” The world does not like to recognize the name of God, yet each of the four boys had God’s name in his own name:
Daniel (“God is my judge”) was changed to Belteshazzar (“Bel protect his life”). Bel was the name of a Babylonian god.
Hananiah (“Jehovah is gracious”) became Shadrach (“the command of the moon god”)

Mishael (“Who is like God?”) became Meshach (“who is like Aku,” one of the heathen gods);
Azariah (“Jehovah is my helper”) became Abednego (“the servant of Nego,” another heathen god).

The Babylonians hoped that these new names would help the youths forget their God and gradually become more like the heathen people with whom they were living and studying.

The Babylonians could change Daniel’s home, textbooks, menu, and name, but they could not change his heart. He and his friends purposed in their hearts that they would obey God’s Word; they refused to become conformed to the world. Of course, they could have made excuses and “gone along with” the crowd. They might have said, “Everybody’s doing it!” or “We had better obey the king!” or “We’ll obey on the outside but keep our faith privately.” But they did not compromise.

They dared to believe God’s Word and trust God for victory. They had surrendered their bodies and minds to the Lord, as Rom. 12:1-2 instructs, and they were willing to let God do the rest.

Daniel 1:8-16 (ESV)
⁸ But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.
⁹ And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs,
¹⁰ and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.”
¹¹ Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah,
¹² “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink.
¹³ Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.”
¹⁴ So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days.
¹⁵ At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food.
¹⁶ So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

Daniel asked for a ten-day test, which was not very long considering that they had three years of training ahead of them; the head servant agreed with their plan.

The servant was afraid to change the king’s orders, lest anything happen to the youths and to himself, so Daniel’s proposed test was a good solution to the problem. Of course, God honored their faith. The boys were fed vegetables and water for ten days, thus avoiding the defiled food of the Babylonians. At the end of the test, the four lads were healthier and more handsome than the other students who ate from the king’s table.

“When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Prov. 16:7).

Daniel 1:17: “To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.”

A test for ten days is one thing, but what about the three-year course at the University of Babylon? The answer is in v. 17: “God gave them . . . ” all that they needed! He enabled them to learn their lessons better than the other students, and He added to this knowledge His own spiritual wisdom.

Daniel 1:18-21 (ESV)
¹⁸ At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar.
¹⁹ And the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king.
²⁰ And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom.
²¹ And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.

The “magicians and astrologers” in v. 20 were the men of the kingdom who studied the stars and sought to determine what decisions the king should make. They also claimed to interpret dreams.

Certainly Daniel and his friends did not believe the foolish religion and practices of the Babylonians, but they studied just the same, just as a Christian student must do when he attends a university today and is told to learn “facts” that he knows are contrary to God’s Word.

The king himself had to admit that the four Hebrew lads were ten times smarter than his best advisers. Of course, this kind of reputation made the astrologers envious, and it is no wonder they tried to do away with the Jews in later years.
What we have, then, in this passage is clearly a call from the world to compromise and it is no different in principle than the world’s call for God’s people to compromise in any other age, including our own. Yes, the circumstances are usually different, but the issue is always the same.

Someone has written, “Compromise is always wrong when it means sacrificing principle.”

Not all compromise is wrong. There are times when compromise is permissible or even desirable. Remember the dictionary definition of compromise? “A concession to something detrimental.” Note that Daniel and his friends didn’t object to the classes they were assigned to take or the new names then were given. Though they probably didn’t like being given pagan names in place of the ones their parents had given them, they were willing to concede these things. But eating the King’s choice food
was a clear violation of God’s law. That concession could not be made.

When the world calls on us to compromise then, we need to:
1. Be Reasonable. Know the difference between wrongful compromise and allowable concession. Every call for compromise need not be met by strong opposition by God’s person. A Christian should pick his battles carefully. It is only when God’s principles are at stake that we can refuse to be conformed.

When we are called to compromise, we need to know the difference between wrongful compromise and permissible concession. We see it illustrated here in Daniel. These men didn’t object to all that was put upon them. Only the thing that caused them to violate the law of God.

2. Be Resolute.
Look back at verse 8: The words to note there are those translated “made up his mind” or “resolved.” The Hebrew word behind that phrase was one often used to describe the making of a rope. Individual strands or fibers are gathered up and placed side by side, then twisted into a rope. Their combined strength makes a strand that is difficult to break.

The time does come to make up your mind and take your stand. When that time comes, stand!

After Daniel determined that this was an issue for which there could be no compromise, he gathered up every strand of his resolve and made a decision.

A big reason why many compromise, even when they don’t want to, is that they never come to this kind of decision. They know something is wrong, but they beat around the bush, hoping the unpleasant decision will somehow go away. Or, perhaps they try to somehow accommodate the best of both worlds.

It reminds me of the guy Paul Harvey described one time. His words were, “Remember the uncertain soldier in our Civil War who, figuring to play it safe, dressed himself in a blue coat and gray pants and tip-toed out onto the field of battle. He got shot from both directions.”

We need to be resolute. We need to make up our minds. If we don’t, we’ll soon be homogenized. We’ll be no different than the world.

3. Be Respectful.
1:8: “…so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.”

I suppose that Daniel could have gone on some hunger strike or something, but he didn’t. He could have protested loudly. Instead, he sought out the commander and respectflly told him his dilemma.

Remember that unbelievers around us need to see a good example so they, too, can be saved. A resolute stand doesn’t mean you should be mean-spirited and disrespectful. This is precisely where many Christians lose the battle and become just like the world.

I’m told that between two farms near Valleyview, Alberta, you can find two parallel fences, only two feet apart, running for about a half mile. Why are there two fences when only one would do? It seems two farmers, Paul and Oscar, had a disagreement that erupted into a feud. Paul wanted to build a fence between their land and split the cost (a reasonable thing to do) but Oscar was unwilling to contribute. Since he wanted to keep the cattle on his land, Paul went ahead and built the fence anyway.

After it was completed, Oscar said to Paul, “I see we have a fence.” “What do you mean, ‘we'” replied Paul. “I got the property line surveyed and built the fence two feet into my land. That means some of my land is outside the fence. If any of your cows set foot on my land, I’ll shoot them.”

Oscar knew Paul wasn’t joking, so when he eventually decided to use the land adjoining Paul’s pasture, he was forced to build another fence, two feet away. Oscar and Paul are both dead now, but their double fence stands as a monument to their stubbornness and uncalled for disrespect. Being right and doing right does not give us a license to be disrespectful of others. There really is no place for a cantankerous saint of God.

Daniel first sought permission from the commander of the officials to be excused from eating the king’s food. Does that mean if the commander had said “no” he would have gone ahead and defiled himself with the food? No! But it does indicate that, whenever something can be done respectfully, it should be.

Romans 12:18: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.”

4. Be Resourceful.
Don’t you think that proposal reflects some careful deliberation and wise, resourceful consideration? I think it is reasonable to believe that, after Daniel made up his mind he would not defile himself with the king’s food, he spent some time considering how to approach the overseer.
Even when intentions are good and God is please with a decision, we must be wise in our approach to the world. You might remember Jesus’ words were “wise as serpents and cautious [innocent] as doves.” (4)

Being on God’s side doesn’t excuse us from seeking a wise approach to dealing with the world. We must not be reckless in this area. Such seeking of wisdom is based at least partly, on human effort and concern for what is wise.

Two New Testament verses come to mind that are directed to Christians today on the subject of giving a wise response to the world when we have the opportunity:
Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned, as it were, with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person.”

1 Peter 3:15 says, “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…”

You don’t avoid the world’s homogenization by being a willful dim-wit to wisdom.

I don’t believe God hands a person wisdom like Daniel and his friends exhibited here without their human effort being involved. Do you seek wisdom to know how you should respond when the world calls for compromise?

Conclusion
An interesting thing to watch for from the window of an airplane is the winding path of the rivers below. No two waterways are alike, but they all have one thing in common: they are all crooked. They get that way because they conform to what stands in their way. Another way to look at it is that they follow the path of least resistance. Yes, rivers are crooked because they take the “easy way.”

We, too, can become crooked if we always take the easy way. The things that have been suggested here today from Daniel 1 are not the easy way. They take courage, conviction, and commitment. But if we practice them, they will yield a life that is straight as God intended – and we won’t be homogenized.

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Posted by TJ's Man on July 18, 2022 in Encounters with God

Encounters With God: Jonah, The Prodigal Prophet – Running Away From God – Jonah 4

16 Jun

Jonah swallowed by a whale | Manchester Ink Link

Encounter with Jeffrey Dahmer changed minister’s life

PORTAGE, Wis. — It was an average-sized room that resembled a doctor’s office. Nothing on the walls. Sterile. Roy Ratcliff sat alone at a table in the center of the room.

He noticed sweat trickling from his forehead, and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence.

Ratcliff, minister for the church in Madison, Wisc., was to meet with a prisoner who wanted to be baptized. He had never met with a prisoner before.The inmate was a murderer, and everyone would surely question his sincerity. Perhaps it was a stunt.

The door opened, breaking the silence. A 6-foot man with blond hair, blue eyes and glasses entered the room. Ratcliff stood up to greet him. The man shook his hand and said, “It’s good to meet you.”

The guard did not enter the room. The door closed behind Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, leaving Ratcliff alone with him.

Although Ratcliff was a little frightened to meet the serial killer from Milwaukee, Dahmer was the more nervous of the two in that room at the Columbia Correctional Institution April 18, 1994. “He was worried that his crimes would be the dominant theme (of the conversation),” Ratcliff said. He didn’t want to hear that from a minister.

Between 1978 and 1991 Dahmer killed 17 young men and boys. Police arrested him in 1991 and found victims’ decaying bodies in Dahmer’s apartment. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer practiced necrophilia and cannibalism.

“Do you have any religious background at all?” Ratcliff asked. He was surprised to learn that Dahmer attended a church of Christ until age 5.

Dahmer had started Bible study in prison through courses he received by mail after a “Dateline NBC” interview. A church member in Virginia, Mary Mott, and a prison minister in Crescent, Okla., Curtis Booth, sent him material. He studied on his own, and then inquired about being baptized. A minister in Milwaukee contacted Ratcliff.

Ratcliff realized that Dahmer was serious about his decision. They arranged to use a whirlpool at the prison. Dahmer climbed in and got into the fetal position to fit underneath the water. On May 10, 1994, three weeks after they had met, Ratcliff baptized one of the world’s most notorious serial killers.

After the baptism, Ratcliff insisted that he meet with Dahmer each week for Bible study to continue to bring God into his life.

Ratcliff knew little about the man he baptized, so he started to read books about Dahmer’s crimes. The monster he read about and the person he knew didn’t seem like the same man.

Dahmer mentioned his crimes on occasion, and showed a sense of sorrow for what he had done, Ratcliff said. But at no time in their conversations did Dahmer say why he committed the crimes. That was something Ratcliff — and the rest of the nation — could only guess.

A jury rejected Dahmer’s insanity plea in 1992, and based on his conversations with the inmate, Ratcliff agreed with the decision. “He knew it was wrong and tried to cover it up,” Ratcliff said.

On one occasion, Dahmer said he should be put to death for what he did. Ratcliff said he agreed. But Wisconsin has no death penalty, and Ratcliff told him suicide is a selfish act. He should strive to be a good prisoner and live to serve God.

“Most people struggle with the idea of Jeffrey Dahmer repenting,” Ratcliff said. “All they can remember is the heinousness of the crimes.”

On his answering machine at the church, Ratcliff received one profanity-laced message that said he was foolish to believe Dahmer was a candidate for baptism. However, to his face, Ratcliff received praise. “Can an evil person turn to God? I have to believe that,” Ratcliff said. “What part of the blood of Christ can’t save him, but can save you?”

Over the months, Ratcliff saw a gradual change in Dahmer. He went from a man with a death wish to a man who wanted to help other inmates with Bible study. Dahmer’s father, Lionel, noticed a change in his son as well, Ratcliff said.

But there was a part of Dahmer that remained immature, Ratcliff said, and he believed Dahmer had trouble distinguishing good from bad.

“(At age 34) he was still kind of a little boy yet,” Ratcliff said.

On July 3, 1994, a prisoner from Cuba taped a razor blade to his toothbrush and attacked Dahmer from behind during worship service. Dahmer survived with three cuts. Prison officials assured Ratcliff that great steps would be taken to make sure Dahmer was safe.

But as Dahmer and Jesse Anderson, another convicted murderer from Milwaukee, were doing janitorial duties Nov. 28, 1994, inmate Christopher Scarver used a steel bar from weightlifting gear to bludgeon both men to death, according to the Associated Press. Ratcliff acknowledged that he felt a sense of betrayal.

The Wednesday before his death, Dahmer had given Ratcliff a Thanksgiving Day card thanking him for his friendship. It said he was looking forward to seeing him the next week.

“I didn’t get an inkling he was in danger,” Ratcliff said. “I thought we would be two old men (someday) studying the Bible together. I wasn’t going to give up on him.”

Ratcliff led a memorial service with Dahmer’s family at the Madison church after the murder. A sister of one of Dahmer’s victims attended the service to support Lionel.

Afterward, Ratcliff said, she came up to Lionel and said she thought she could forgive Jeff now.

A decade after Dahmer’s death, Ratcliff still preaches, and now visits seven inmates in four state prisons.

“Because of him I have been involved in more prison work. There’s more of a compassion from me for people in prison settings,” Ratcliff said. “A part of my heart goes out to them.”

Ratcliff doesn’t believe Dahmer realized the impact of his actions and the black mark he left on Wisconsin.

It was Dahmer’s stepmother, Shari, Ratcliff said, who may have captured what Jeff wanted all along. At the memorial service she said, “he wanted to sink into oblivion and to be forgotten forever.”

Craig Spychalla reports for Capital Newspapers. This story is excerpted with permission from the Nov. 28, 1994, issue of the Portage (Wis.) Daily Register.

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If in chapter 1, Jonah is like the Prodigal Son, insisting on doing his own thing and going his own way (Luke 15:11-32); then in chapter 4, he’s like the Prodigal’s Elder Brother—critical, selfish, sullen, angry, and unhappy with what was going on. It isn’t enough for God’s servants simply to do their Master’s will; they must do “the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart, and that’s where Jonah’s problems were to be found. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry” (Jonah 4:1).

The remarkable thing is that God tenderly dealt with His sulking servant and sought to bring him back to the place of joy and fellowship.

Had Jonah been any other prophet in the history of Israel, he would have been overjoyed with the results of his ministry, the repentance of the great city of Nineveh. Throughout Israel’s history, her prophets had failed to turn the nation to God, and were rejected and even killed by the people. As Stephen put the matter, “Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” (Acts 7:52a).

In spite of joy at the repentance and salvation of so many, something for which his colleagues would have been overjoyed, Jonah was angry with God: “But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry” (4:1). Why would Jonah have been so angry with God? Jonah is not hesitant to explain, and so he prays this prayer of protest:

“Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life” (Jon. 4:2‑3).

God listened to Jonah (Jonah 4:1-4).

For the second time in this account, Jonah prays, but his second prayer was much different in content and intent. He prayed his best prayer in the worst place, the fish’s belly, and he prayed his worst prayer in the best place, at Nineveh where God was working. His first prayer came from a broken heart, but his second prayer came from an angry heart. In his first prayer, he asked God to save him, but in his second prayer, he asked God to take his life! Once again, Jonah would rather die than not have his own way.

This petulant prayer lets us in on the secret of why Jonah tried to run away in the first place. Being a good theologian, Jonah knew the attributes of God, that He was “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (v. 2, niv). Knowing this, Jonah was sure that if he announced judgment to the Ninevites and they repented, God would forgive them and not send His judgment, and then Jonah would be branded as a false prophet! Remember, Jonah’s message merely announced the impending judgment; it didn’t offer conditions for salvation.

Jonah was concerned about his reputation, not only before the Ninevites, but also before the Jews back home. His Jewish friends would want to see all of the Assyrians destroyed, not just the people of Nineveh. When Jonah’s friends found out that he had been the means of saving Nineveh from God’s wrath, they could have considered him a traitor to official Jewish foreign policy. Jonah was a narrow-minded patriot who saw Assyria only as a dangerous enemy to destroy, not as a company of repentant sinners to be brought to the Lord.

When reputation is more important than character, and pleasing ourselves and our friends is more important than pleasing God, then we’re in danger of becoming like Jonah and living to defend our prejudices instead of fulfilling our spiritual responsibilities.^2-4 Jonah certainly had good theology, but it stayed in his head and never got to his heart; and he was so distraught that he wanted to die!^2-5 God’s tender response was to ask Jonah to examine his heart and see why he really was angry.

Jonah’s anger is incredible. Let us take note of what his anger was all about.

(1) Jonah was angry with God. In the final analysis Jonah was not angry with himself, or with men, but with the holy, righteous, perfect God. Jonah’s anger was so intense that he would rather die than live. Having prayed in chapter two that he might live, Jonah prays now that he might die (4:3).

(2) Jonah was angry with God because He acted consistently with His character, and for doing exactly what Jonah expected Him to do.

(3) Jonah was angry with God, protesting those very attributes of God for which the psalmists praised Him. The psalmists of the book of Psalms praise Him for His lovingkindness, His grace, and His mercy (cf. Ps. 86:5, 15), but for Jonah this is grounds for protest rather than praise.

(4) Jonah was angry with God because He showed grace toward the Ninevites. God’s question to Jonah should have served to instruct this prodigal prophet. It should have called Jonah’s attention to the utter sinfulness of being angry with God in the first place. Who can sustain a holy anger against a holy and perfect God? Furthermore, the gentleness of God’s rebuke should have reminded Jonah that He was not only gracious to the Ninevites, but also to Jonah. Indeed, more so, for while the Ninevites had repented, Jonah had not. Jonah persisted in his rebellion.

The Plant and the Prodigal

Because of Jonah’s persistence in maintaining his anger toward God, God presses on with yet another experience for Jonah which will serve to expose the root problem of the prodigal prophet. This is accomplished by means of the giving and the taking away of a plant, which gave Jonah pleasure.

It would seem that the forty days have passed, yet the judgment of God does not fall upon the city of Nineveh. This is no surprise to the reader, but it was a great disappointment to Jonah. Jonah went outside the city, where he made himself a mini‑grandstand, a shady booth from which he could enjoy the spectacle of the destruction of Nineveh, perhaps in a hail of fire and brimstone like that which overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Here was Jonah, a spectator waiting for disaster to strike, so that he could watch, like the Romans who later would gather at the coliseum to watch the Christians eaten by the lions.

God caused a plant to grow, the shade of which gave Jonah great comfort (4:6). For the first time, Jonah is described as being happy, extremely happy in fact, over the presence of this plant. His happiness was short‑lived, however, for on the following day a divinely appointed worm came to do its work, which resulted in the destruction of the plant. When you stop to think about it, Jonah should have found it easier to identify with the worm than with the plant. He, like the worm, seemed to find greater fulfillment in the destruction of God’s creations than in bringing pleasure, as the plant brought shade and enjoyment to Jonah.

Along with the worm, which brought the demise of the plant, God sent a scorching wind, which caused Jonah great discomfort. While Jonah wanted the Ninevites to be “torched,” he himself was “scorched” by the heat of the wind (4:8). Jonah did not need to be here, and thus did not need to suffer, but he was determined to stay put. He once again begged God to die.

Jonah is angry with God again, now in regard to the plant and the worm. For the second time, God challenged Jonah to consider his anger: “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” (4:9). In no uncertain terms, Jonah reiterated his right to be angry with his God: “I have good reason to be angry, even to death” (4:9).

God comforted Jonah (Jonah 4:9-11).

For the second time in this book, Jonah abandoned his place of ministry, left the city, and sat down in a place east of the city where he could see what would happen. Like the Elder Brother in the parable, he wouldn’t go in and enjoy the feast (Luke 15:28). He could have taught the Ninevites so much about the true God of Israel, but he preferred to have his own way. What a tragedy it is when God’s servants are a means of blessing to others but miss the blessing themselves!

God knew that Jonah was very uncomfortable sitting in that booth, so He graciously caused a vine (gourd) to grow whose large leaves would protect Jonah from the hot sun. This made Jonah happy, but the next morning, when God prepared a worm to kill the vine, Jonah was unhappy. The combination of the hot sun and the smothering desert wind made him want to die even more. As He had done in the depths of the sea, God was reminding Jonah of what it was like to be lost: helpless, hopeless, miserable. Jonah was experiencing a taste of hell as he sat and watched the city.

A simple test of character is to ask, “What makes me happy? What makes me angry? What makes me want to give up?” Jonah was “a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8, nkjv). One minute he’s preaching God’s Word, but the next minute he’s disobeying it and fleeing his post of duty. While inside the great fish, he prayed to be delivered; but now he asks the Lord to kill him. He called the city to repentance, but he wouldn’t repent himself! He was more concerned about creature comforts than he was about winning the lost. The Ninevites, the vine, the worm, and the wind have all obeyed God; but Jonah still refuses to obey, and he has the most to gain.

God instructed Jonah (Jonah 4:9-11).

God is still speaking to Jonah and Jonah is still listening and answering, even though he’s not giving the right answers. Unrighteous anger feeds the ego and produces the poison of selfishness in the heart. Jonah still had a problem with the will of God. In chapter 1, his mind understood God’s will, but he refused to obey it and took his body in the opposite direction. In chapter 2, he cried out for help, God rescued him, and he gave his body back to the Lord. In chapter 3, he yielded his will to the Lord and went to Nineveh to preach, but his heart was not yet surrendered to the Lord. Jonah did the will of God, but not from his heart.

Jonah had one more lesson to learn, perhaps the most important one of all. In chapter 1, he learned the lesson of God’s providence and patience, that you can’t run away from God. In chapter 2, he learned the lesson of God’s pardon, that God forgives those who call upon Him. In chapter 3, he learned the lesson of God’s power as he saw a whole city humble itself before the Lord. Now he had to learn the lesson of God’s pity, that God has compassion for lost sinners like the Ninevites; and His servants must also have compassion.^2-6 It seems incredible, but Jonah brought a whole city to faith in the Lord and yet he didn’t love the people he was preaching to!

The people who could not “discern between their right hand and their left hand” (4:11) were immature little children (Deut 1:39), and if there were 120,000 of them in Nineveh and its suburbs, the population was not small. God certainly has a special concern for the children (Mark 10:13-16); but whether children or adults, the Assyrians all needed to know the Lord. Jonah had pity on the vine that perished, but he didn’t have compassion for the people who would perish and live eternally apart from God.

Jeremiah and Jesus looked on the city of Jerusalem and wept over it (Jer. 9:1, 10; 23:9; Luke 19:41), and Paul beheld the city of Athens and “was greatly distressed” (Acts 17:16, niv), but Jonah looked on the city of Nineveh and seethed with anger. He needed to learn the lesson of God’s pity and have a heart of compassion for lost souls.

God has the final word in the book of Jonah. His last words press to the heart of the matter:

“You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work, and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. And should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” (4:10‑11).

By means of the provision of the plant there is at last some common ground between Jonah and God. Jonah had compassion on the plant; God had compassion on the people. Jonah’s “compassion,” like his “psalm,” are inferior. God now presses His point, to show the self‑centered nature of Jonah’s “compassion,” especially when contrasted with His compassion of the people of Nineveh. Consider the following points of contrast between the “compassion” of Jonah for the plant and the compassion of God for people.

(1) Jonah had compassion on a plant; God had compassion on people. Jonah was willing for the entire city to perish in great pain, even though there would be many innocent victims, including 120,000 people and many cattle. Cattle and people suffer pain. There is no evidence that plants do. Jonah had compassion on the plant, but not on people or their cattle.

(2) Jonah had compassion on a plant, in which he had no investment; God had compassion in people, whom He had created, and for whom He had prepared and promised blessing. Jonah had no real relationship with the plant. He had not made it, nor had he contributed to its growth. God created man, and He is the Creator of every creature. God cared for that which He had made, so much so that He purposed to bless men through the offspring of Abraham, so much so that He would send His Son to die for men. Jonah cared for something that cost him nothing.

(3) Jonah had compassion with respect to the demise of a plant; God had compassion with respect to the eternal damnation of people. Jonah had compassion for a plant which existed for a day. Granted, the plant might have lived for a year, perhaps longer. But the judgment of men is for eternity. The “passing” of a plant has no real significance; the death of the people of Nineveh was the outpouring of divine wrath. The eternal judgment and damnation of people is vastly more important than the withering of a plant.

(4) God had compassion on the innocent; Jonah did not. He would have enjoyed watching the destruction of the innocent, along with the guilty. (Remember, it would be the descendants of this generation of Ninevites which would take Israel captive.) It was one thing to want the wicked to suffer for their sins, but totally another to want the innocent to suffer along with the wicked.

(5) Jonah had compassion on himself; God had compassion for others. Jonah’s “compassion” is not really centered on the plant, but rather on what that plant did for him . The plant made him very happy. Had the plant not pleased Jonah, he would have had no compassion toward it at all. Jonah’s compassion was really self‑centered. He cared for himself, but not for others. On the other hand, God cared for people, people who had greatly sinned and who had offended Him.

The Plant and the Point

For a long time, I thought that Jonah’s root problem was selfishness, that he wanted God’s grace for himself and for his people Israel, but not for anyone else, especially the Ninevites. It is my strong conviction now, however, that Jonah’s selfishness was only symptomatic. Jonah’s major grievance with God was His grace. The very nature of grace made it repulsive to Jonah. Let us pause to consider the characteristics of the grace of God which made it offensive to the prodigal prophet.

(1) The Nature and the Origin of Grace. The nature or the essence of grace is unmerited favor—a blessing which is not deserved. The origin or source of the grace Jonah disdained is God. Jonah did not like grace because it was not something which one could earn. One could never feel any sense of accomplishment or ownership, because it is given without cause. To put the matter in plain words, Jonah did not like grace because it was charity.

(2) The Recipients of Grace. The recipients of grace, those to whom grace is bestowed, are those who are undeserving and unworthy. Jonah did not wish to view himself as unworthy. Essentially, Jonah suffered from a large dose of racial pride. He felt that as an Israelite, God was somehow obliged to bless him and his people. The Ninevites, Jonah would gladly concede, were unworthy, which is exactly why Jonah protested against God’s grace shown to them.

(3) The Distribution of Grace. Grace, because it is unmerited, and is bestowed upon those who are unworthy, has no one who can claim it. That is, no one can legitimately feel that he or she has a claim on God’s grace, that there is something they have done or can do which obligates Him to respond with some gift of grace. Since grace is not given out on the basis of merit, it is sovereignly distributed, “just as He wills.” As God put it, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion” (Exod. 33:19).

(4) The Goal of Grace. The goal of grace, the purpose for which it is given, is holiness, not happiness. The plant which God gave to Jonah made him “extremely happy,” we are told (4:6), but it did nothing to make him holy. Thus, God took the plant away. Grace is not given to make us happy, to make us feel good, to give us pleasure, but to bring us into fellowship with Himself.

(5) The Means of Grace. If the goal of grace is to make us holy, then the means of grace include not only those things which are pleasant and comfortable, but also those painful experiences which cause us to turn from our sin and to trust in Him. If we are honest with ourselves and with God, and if we read our Bibles carefully, we must acknowledge that most of us grow spiritually more in painful experiences than in pleasurable ones.

Think about Jonah, for example. God did answer Jonah’s prayer that He would save him from drowning, but not with the most plush and pleasurable means possible. God saved Jonah by means of a great fish, and Jonah got to soak for three days in the stomach juices of that creature. Being vomited onto dry land was not exactly flattering to Jonah’s ego, either, but it was what was best for him. So, too, the shade of the plant was not furthering Jonah’s walk with God, and thus the destruction of the plant and the sweltering sun was given to him instead. God is not committed to our pleasure, but to our piety. Thus, He often uses painful means to bring us to holiness. These painful experiences, just as much as the pleasurable ones, are a gift of God’s grace. Grace is often experienced in the midst of the most unpleasant of experiences.

This explains all that God has done, as well as why Jonah disliked it. God could bestow the grace of salvation on the unworthy Ninevites because grace cannot be merited. Likewise, because grace is sovereignly bestowed, God can provide a plant for Jonah, and then take it away.

Because of these two characteristics of grace, Jonah wanted no part of it, and no part of life. GRACE, TO JONAH, WAS OFFENSIVE AND UNWANTED. It is easy to see why Jonah would resent the fact that God would be gracious to the Ninevites, but how can it be said that Jonah disdained grace, even when shown to him? BECAUSE GRACE IS REQUIRED ONLY BY THE UNDERSERVING, AND JONAH WAS UNWILLING TO ADMIT THAT HE WAS UNDESERVING OF GOD’S BLESSINGS.

How can a prophet protest the gift of forgiveness to the Ninevites? Only by believing that God’s blessing must be merited. How can the prophet protest when God takes away the gracious provision of the plant? Only by supposing that he deserved the plant, by thinking that God owed him the comfort of the plant.

Here, then, is the key to the entire book of Jonah, and to the sin of the nation Israel, which caused God’s people to assume that God owed them blessing and their enemies judgment. Jonah had rejected the principle of grace, exchanging it for a doctrine of works. THE ROOT PROBLEM OF THE PRODIGAL PROPHET WAS SELF‑RIGHTEOUSNESS. The only person who despises grace is the one who thinks that he is righteous. To the self‑righteous, grace is charity, which is demeaning to the recipient.

What Jonah had forgotten was that God’s choice of Israel and His blessing of Israel was due solely to His grace, and not to Israel’s righteousness.

6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face” (Deut 7:6-10, emphasis mine).

Take careful note of the term “lovingkindness” which is found in verse 9 above, for this is the basis for God’s kindness to Israel, just as it was the basis for God’s kindness to the Ninevites (Jon. 4:2).

God warned the Israelites that when they entered the land of Canaan and began to experience His material blessings, the blessings of His grace, that they would be tempted to take credit for their prosperity:

11 “Beware lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; 12 lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, 14 then your heart becomes proud, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. … 17 Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ 18 But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day” (Deuteronomy 8:11-14, 17-18, emphasis mine).

If this were not ample enough warning, God further warns Israel about taking any credit for their success or for their blessings, which He has given as a gift of His grace:

“Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people” (Deut. 9:4‑6, emphasis mine).

Jonah, and his people, the Israelites, had forgotten that God’s blessings were the product of God’s grace, not the result of Israel’s righteousness or superiority over the Gentiles. They had also forgotten that God had promised to bless all nations through Israel: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3b).

Jonah’s prophecy to the nation Israel, as recorded in 2 Kings, was the promise of prosperity, in spite of the nation’s sins. God promised to prosper Israel, not because of its piety, but in spite of its sin.

Look with me once again at this prophecy.

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned forty‑one years. And he did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath‑hepher. For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, which was very bitter; for there was neither bond nor free, nor was there any helper for Israel. And the LORD did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash (2 Kings 14:23‑27, emphasis mine).

Israel’s king was evil, as were the people. The prosperity which Jonah promised was not due to Israel’s spirituality, but in spite of her sin. The blessings he promised were thus the blessings of divine grace.

Jonah was also the recipient of the grace of God, and yet it is for being gracious that Jonah protests against Him, even to the point of preferring death to life. Jonah’s deliverance by means of the great fish, and his exodus from the fish were all provisions of divine grace. So, too, was the gift of the plant, which afforded him shade and comfort. Perhaps the greatest evidence of the grace of God to Jonah, however, is the way in which God responds to his rebellion and his protests. How easy it would be for us to have read that God burned Jonah to a crisp with a sudden blast of lightening!

Jonah typified Israel in that he no longer viewed God’s blessings as a manifestation of God’s grace to an undeserving people, but rather as the blessings which He was obligated to give a righteous people. No wonder Jonah despised the grace of God. He knew that only the undeserving received grace, and he and his people were not in need of divine handouts. The pride and the self‑righteousness of Jonah and of his people are now glaringly apparent. The reason for the sacking of Israel by the Assyrians is now obvious.

The marvel of an unanswered question (Jonah 4:11)

Jonah and Nahum are the only books in the Bible that end with questions, and both books have to do with the city of Nineveh. Nahum ends with a question about God’s punishment of Nineveh (Nahum 3:19), while Jonah ends with a question about God’s pity for Nineveh.

This is a strange way to end such a dramatic book as the Book of Jonah. God has the first word (Jonah 1:1-2) and God has the last word (4:11), and that’s as it should be, but we aren’t told how Jonah answered God’s final question. It’s like the ending of Frank Stockton’s famous short story “The Lady or the Tiger?” When the handsome youth opened the door, what came out: the beautiful princess or the man-eating tiger?

We sincerely hope that Jonah yielded to God’s loving entreaty and followed the example of the Ninevites by repenting and seeking the face of God. The famous Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte believed that Jonah did experience a change of heart. He wrote, “But Jonah came to himself again during those five-and-twenty days or so, from the east gate of Nineveh back to Gathhepher, his father’s house.”^2-7 Spurgeon said, “Let us hope that, during the rest of his life, he so lived as to rejoice in the sparing mercy of God.”^2-8 Alter all, hadn’t Jonah himself been spared because of God’s mercy?

God was willing to spare Nineveh but in order to do that, He could not spare His own Son. Somebody had to die for their sins or they would die in their sins. “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Jesus used Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh to show the Jews how guilty they were in rejecting His witness. “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here” (Matt 12:41).

How is Jesus greater than Jonah? Certainly Jesus is greater than Jonah in His person, for though both were Jews and both were prophets, Jesus is the very Son of God. He is greater in His message, for Jonah preached a message of judgment, but Jesus preached a message of grace and salvation (John 3:16-17). Jonah almost died for his own sins, but Jesus willingly died for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2).

Jonah’s ministry was to but one city, but Jesus is “the Savior of the world” (John 4:42; 1 John 4:14). Jonah’s obedience was not from the heart, but Jesus always did whatever pleased His Father (John 8:29). Jonah didn’t love the people he came to save, but Jesus had compassion for sinners and proved His love by dying for them on the cross (Rom. 5:6-8). On the cross, outside the city, Jesus asked God to forgive those who killed Him (Luke 23:34), but Jonah waited outside the city to see if God would kill those he would not forgive.

Yes, Jesus is greater than Jonah, and because He is, we must give greater heed to what He says to us. Those who reject Him will face greater judgment because the greater the light, the greater the responsibility.

The book of Jonah does not end nicely and neatly, with a “happily ever after” feeling. Far from it. We are left somewhat suspended by the final words of God to Jonah, words of rebuke. We are never told that Jonah repented. The reason is simple, I believe. It is because there was no final solution to the sin of self‑righteousness and to the waywardness of the nation Israel apart from the new covenant and the coming of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ. The conclusion of the book of Jonah is fitting, for it portrays the stalemate between Israel and her God which persisted till the time of Christ and indeed to the present moment. The last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, is a record of Israel’s belligerent argumentation with God, who is accusing the nation of sin:

The oracle of the word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi. “I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob” (Mal. 1:1‑2, emphasis mine).

In the final analysis, this hardness of heart will persist until the Great Tribulation and the return of Messiah breaks the stubborn pride and will of His chosen people, who will be finally saved, not because of their righteousness, but by His grace.

Jonah’s Self-Righteousness and the Israelites of Jesus’ Day

Not only did Jonah typify the spiritual state of Israel in his own day, he also prototyped the self‑righteousness of many Israelites, especially the religious leaders, at the time of the first coming of Christ. When our Lord was born, it was not to the religious elite that His birth was made known, but to the humble and the meek (cf. Luke 2). This was indicated in the magnificat of Mary (Luke 1:46‑55). The coming of the Christ was for the Gentiles (Luke 2:31‑32), as well as for the Jews, and so the magi were informed of His birth and came to worship Him (Matt. 2:1ff.). Our Lord’s introduction of His ministry in Luke chapter 4 (esp. vv. 16‑21) indicated this same emphasis on Christ’s coming to the poor and the oppressed. The Sermon on the Mount gives similar testimony to the recipients of God’s grace.

When Jesus commenced His ministry, much of His time and energy was devoted to “sinners,” which brought an immediate reaction from the religious elite of Israel, the scribes and Pharisees:

And when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax-gatherers, they began saying to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax-gatherers and sinners?” (Mark 2:16).

Why would the scribes and Pharisees be offended by the fact that Jesus spent more time with “sinners” than with them? For the same reason that Jonah was angry with God. The religious leaders felt that they were worthy of Jesus’ time and presence, and that the “sinners” deserved nothing but the wrath of God (cp. John 8:2‑11). They despised the Gentiles and even the masses of Israelites (cf. John 7:49).

Why did the scribes and Pharisees react so vehemently to the teaching of Jesus? Because He exposed them as sinners, and they were not willing to admit this. They were self‑righteous. Thus, they rejected God’s Messiah and instigated His death on that Roman cross.

Even the disciples of our Lord seemed, like Jonah, to be eager to have the “heathen” perish at the hand of God:

52 … And they went, and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make arrangements for Him. 53 And they did not receive Him, because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:52b-54).

Later, after our Lord’s death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, it was the Jews who opposed the proclamation of the gospel (cf. Acts 22:19‑23). Even Christian Jews drug their feet in the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles (cf. Acts 10‑11, esp. 11:19). Because some Jewish Christians felt superior to Gentile believers, they either segregated themselves or they sought to force the Gentiles to conform to their Jewish practices (e.g. Acts 15:1; Gal. 2:11ff.). Truly Jonah’s self‑righteousness typified a tendency among Israelites which has continued on throughout the centuries.

Conclusion

The book of Jonah has much to say to 21th century Christians, as well as to Israelites of all ages. Let me conclude by pointing out a number of points of application to our lives today.

(1) God’s dealings with men have always been on the basis of His grace, and not on the basis of man’s works. Dispensationalists (among whom I would include myself) must be very careful to avoid giving the impression that God deals with men today by means of grace, and dealt with people in the Old Testament by some other means. The distinction of this “age” as “the age of grace” tends to imply that God dealt with men according to some other principle in the Old Testament. Jonah was wrong because he forgot or had forsaken the principle of grace. God has always dealt with men according to the principle of grace. The New Testament and the new covenant simply enable God to bestow His grace more freely and fully. Let us never view God’s past dealings with men as anything less than gracious.

(2) Resisting and rejecting the grace of God are just as great and just as common a sin today as they were in Jonah’s time. Christians become angry with God today, and for the same wrong reasons as Jonah. We are just not as open and honest as Jonah to admit it. When do Christians get angry with God?

Whenever we think we deserve something from God and we find Him guilty for not giving it to us.
Whenever we think someone else to be unworthy, and we are angry with God for giving them blessings they don’t deserve.
Whenever God takes away some blessing from us, which we think He has no right to remove.
Whenever we are self‑righteous.

I believe that self‑righteousness had deeply penetrated the Christian community in America. Americans are very inclined to take credit for our prosperity. We believe that we have been “blessed” due to our intelligence, our ingenuity, our hard work, and our devotion to God. Conversely, we excuse ourselves from sharing our wealth and prosperity with others by convincing ourselves that other nations suffer poverty because they lack the righteousness which we have. Thus, while the nation India lavishes in poverty and starvation, we assure ourselves that their poverty is the result of their worship of cows. Simple, isn’t it? But in the final analysis, it is self‑righteous.

Some Christians today view divine healing as a result of one’s righteousness than as a gift of God’s grace. I do not wish to argue whether there is a gift of healing today; I am willing to grant that God does heal. What I wish to vehemently reject is the contention that God must heal, if we but have the faith to claim it. Is divine healing a gift of God’s grace? If it is, then it is undeserved, not earned, even by “having faith.” Is healing a gift of grace? Then God is free to give it to whomever He chooses, to a believer or an unbeliever, and He is also free to withhold it from one who asks for it, or claims it in faith. We don’t demand grace, nor do we dare to protest when we don’t receive what makes us happy (remember Jonah’s plant).

Let us remember, too, that God’s grace does not always come in the form which we might choose or prefer. God was gracious to Jonah, saving him by means of the great fish. Had Jonah been able to choose which form the grace of God would have taken, it wouldn’t have been in the form of a fish’s stomach. God is gracious to His children by chastising them, by bringing pain and adversity into their lives, just as He was going to do in the history of Israel. Adversity is just as much a gift of grace as is affluence. Remember the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount!

Job understood that God was both good and gracious, whether He gave prosperity or took it away, whether He gave pleasure or pain. Thus, when he received word of the loss of his family he responded, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).

Failure, suffering, and adversity are often the result of God’s grace, for when these things come into the life of the Christian they are for the purpose of displaying the grace of God, to us, to others, and even to the heavenly host.

The principle of grace, by which we are saved, is the governing principle of God’s dealing in all of our lives, whether He shows Himself to be gracious in bestowing wealth or health, or whether He shows Himself to be gracious in our hour of trial, by sustaining us and drawing us to a deeper trust and intimacy with Him.

The principle of grace is also to govern our relationship with others. Just as God is gracious to us, so we must be gracious to others, especially to the undeserving: the cruel and those who are our enemies, who would persecute and despitefully use us. Only by showing grace to others do we reflect God’s grace to us.

(3) The book of Jonah has much to teach us about evangelism and revival, which we desperately need in America. I believe that the book of Jonah informs that the following elements are required for revival. These are not the only elements necessary for revival, but they are essential:

Revival requires those who will go and who will warn the lost of the impending wrath of God on sinners. A deep conviction of sin and the motivation to be saved is rooted in the proclamation of the fact that men are sinners, destined to face the wrath of God.

Revival requires genuine repentance. There was revival in the city of Nineveh because men turned from their wicked ways. They not only confessed their sin, they turned from it. Revival requires repentance, and repentance requires change.

Furthermore, the book of Jonah confronts us with what is perhaps the foremost enemy of evangelism and revival—a smug self‑righteousness which detests the grace of God, and which expects and demands God’s blessings for us, but not for others. It was Israel’s self‑righteousness, pride, and selfishness which kept God’s people from sharing the blessings of God with the Gentiles. Likewise, I believe that it is our self‑righteousness, pride, and selfishness which hinders us from telling the lost of the salvation which God offers all who repent and who believe on His Son for salvation.

Imagine, for example, that God called you to devote your life to finding a cure for AIDS, or to give your life in ministry to the victims of AIDS. ‘But they deserve to die,’ you protest. The fact is that many suffer from AIDS apart from any willful act of sin on their part—an immoral spouse, a contaminated blood transfusion, an infant whose parent was infected.…

Many of us are just like Jonah. We are eager to condemn those suffering from AIDS as a whole, even though there are many innocent victims among them. Jonah was willing, indeed eager, to see the entire city of Nineveh perish, even though there were 120,000 innocent children among them, and animals as well. Jonah was not just seeking divine judgment for guilty sinners; he was condemning the innocent along with the wicked. (To Jonah, their “real sin” was that of being Gentiles. And by this standard, all Ninevites should perish, according to the prodigal prophet.) The fact is that the wicked repented of their sin when the prophet proclaimed God’s Word to that city. God was not only eager to save the innocent, but to save the guilty as well. Not so with Jonah.

All sinners deserve to die (the wages of sin is death), which includes every one of us. Isn’t it amazing that the sin of sexual immorality is (or at least was) readily condemned by Christians, but pride and self-righteousness are often tolerated, and sometimes even praised (a “good self-image”). We must remember that our Lord came to seek and to save the lost—those whom the self-righteous religious leaders disdained and avoided. Apart from his saving grace, we are all sinners, who deserve God’s wrath and should be cast out of the presence of a holy and righteous God. Surely those who have become the recipients of God’s grace should be the first to seek to show and to share that grace to others.

(4) God’s grace has come to men in Jesus Christ. The grace of God has been revealed to men in the person of Jesus Christ, who promises all who will believe the gracious gift of eternal life. All you need to do is to acknowledge that you need it, that you are a sinner who can never merit God’s blessings, and to receive God’s gift of grace in Jesus Christ. It is by faith in Jesus Christ that our sins are forgiven and we are declared righteous in God’s sight. It is by faith in Christ that we receive the gracious gift of eternal life.

There is no word that better sums up the goodness of God to men than the word “grace.” Jesus Christ is God’s grace personified, sent to men (cf. John 1:14, 17; 2 Tim. 1:9; 2:1; Titus 2:11). Salvation is God’s grace to sinful men, the forgiveness of sins and the provision of eternal life (cf. Acts 14:13; 20:24, 32; Romans 1:5; 3:24; Ephesians 2:8; Colossians 1:6; Titus 3:7; 1 Peter 5:12). We grow in and by means of God’s grace (2 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 13:9). We are eternally secure in the grace of God (Romans 5:12). When we pray we approach the “throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). When we serve, we serve by grace (Eph. 4:7ff.; 1 Peter 4:10), and we live by the standards of grace (Ephesians 4:29; Colossians 4:6).

But the real issue isn’t how Jonah answered God’s question; the real issue is how you and l today are answering God’s question. Do we agree with God that people without Christ are lost? Like God, do we have compassion for those who are lost? How do we show this compassion? Do we have a concern for those in our great cities where there is so much sin and so little witness? Do we pray that the Gospel will go to people in every part of the world, and are we helping to send it there? Do we rejoice when sinners repent and trust the Savior?

All of those questions and more are wrapped up in what God asked Jonah.

We can’t answer for him, but we can answer for ourselves. Let’s give God the right answer.

May the grace of God be precious to you, the basis for your praise of God, not your protest, as it was with Jonah.

–Appreciation to insights provided by Timothy Keller

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Posted by Gary Davenport on June 16, 2022 in Encounters with God

Encounters With God: Jonah, The Prodigal Prophet: Running to/with God – Jonah 2-3

13 Jun

Sometimes the prophets of the Lord tried to challenge His wisdom in calling them for divine service (see Moses in Ex. 4; Jeremiah in Jer. 1). However, Jonah is the only case in the record of Scripture where a true prophet of the Lord (see 2 Kin. 14:25) tried hard to thwart the will of God by fleeing from the task that God had given him (1:3).

There is something humorous in this account. How could a prophet of God hide from the Creator of the universe? The location of Tarshish may have been the southeast coast of Spain. In any case it represents the farthest place known to the people of ancient Israel. It is similar to going “to the ends of the earth.”

From an experience of rebellion and discipline, Jonah turns to an experience of repentance and dedication, and God graciously gives him a new beginning. Jonah no doubt expected to die in the waters of the sea,^1-10 but when he woke up inside the fish, he realized that God had graciously spared him. As with the Prodigal Son, whom Jonah in his rebellion greatly resembles (Luke 15:11-24), it was the goodness of God that brought him to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Notice the stages in Jonah’s spiritual experience as described in his prayer.

He prayed for God’s help (Jonah 2:1-2).

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. {2} He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

It may be asked, “How could Jonah either pray or breathe in the stomach of the fish?” Very easily, if God so willed it. And let the reader keep this constantly in view; the whole is a miracle, from Jonah’s being swallowed by the fish till he was cast ashore by the same animal. It was God that had prepared the great fish. It was the Lord that spake to the fish, and caused it to vomit Jonah upon the dry land. All is miracle.

His prayer was born out of affliction, not affection. He cried out to God because he was in danger, not because he delighted in the Lord. But better that he should pray compelled by any motive than not to pray at all. It’s doubtful whether any believer always prays with pure and holy motives, for our desires and God’s directions sometimes conflict.

God heard Jonah’s cries for help. Prayer is one of the constant miracles of the Christian life. To think that our God is so great He can hear the cries of millions of people at the same time and deal with their needs personally! A parent with two or three children often finds it impossible to meet all their needs all the time, but God is able to provide for all His children, no matter where they are or what their needs may be.

He accepted God’s discipline (Jonah 2:3).

{3} You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

It wasn’t the sailors who cast Jonah into the stormy sea: it was God. “You hurled me into the deep . . . all Your waves and breakers swept over me” (v. 3, niv, italics mine). When Jonah said those words, he was acknowledging that God was disciplining him and that he deserved it.

Jonah’s use of the pronouns You and Your in this verse are not accusations, but acknowledgments of the Lord’s sovereign control of his life (see Ps. 88:6–18).

How we respond to discipline determines how much benefit we receive from it According to Hebrews 12:5-11, we have several options: we can despise God’s discipline and fight (v. 5); we can be discouraged and faint (v. 5); we can resist discipline and invite stronger discipline, possibly even death (v. 9)^1-11; or we can submit to the Father and mature in faith and love (v. 7).

Discipline is to the believer what exercise and training are to the athlete (v. 11); it enables us to run the race with endurance and reach the assigned goal (vv. 1-2).

The fact that God chastened His servant is proof that Jonah was truly a child of God, for God disciplines only His own children.

He trusted God’s promise (Jonah 2:4-7).

{4} I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ {5} The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. {6} To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God. {7} “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

I will look again toward Your holy temple: The man who had run from God’s presence (1:3) was alone, yet he clung to the hope that God would not abandon him. The temple, the sanctuary in Jerusalem was the symbol of God’s presence.

Jonah was going in one direction only—down. In fact, he had been going in that direction since the hour he rebelled against God’s plan for his life. He went “down to Joppa” and “down into the sides of the ship” (1:3, 5). Now he was going “down to the bottoms of the mountains” (2:6); and at some point, the great fish met him, and he went down into the fish’s belly (1:17). When you turn your back on God, the only direction you can go is down.

What saved Jonah? His faith in God’s promise. Which promise? The promise that involves “looking toward God’s holy temple” (2:4, 7

By faith, he looked toward God’s temple (the only way to look was up!) and asked God to deliver him; and God kept His promise and answered his call. “I remembered [the] Lord” (Jonah 2:7) means, “I acted on the basis of His commitment to me.” Jonah knew God’s covenant promises and he claimed them.

I remembered: Jonah reaffirms his faith in the Lord and renews his commitment to Him (see Ps. 22:27; 63:6; 106:7).

He yielded to God’s will (Jonah 2:8-9).

{8} “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. {9} But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD.”

Now Jonah admits that there were idols in his life that robbed him of the blessing of God. An idol is anything that takes away from God the affection and obedience that rightfully belong only to Him.

Jonah closes his prayer by uttering some solemn vows to the Lord, vows that he really intended to keep. Jonah promised to worship God in the temple with sacrifices and songs of thanksgiving. He doesn’t tell us what other promises he made to the Lord, but one of them surely was,” I will go to Nineveh and declare Your message if You give me another chance.”

Redemption (Jonah 2:10)

(Jonah 2:10) And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

The focus in the story of Jonah is on the Lord’s sovereign control over creation to bring about His purpose.

The sign (Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29).

The “sign of Jonah” is seen in his experience of “death,” burial, and resurrection on the third day, and it was the only sign Jesus gave to the nation of Israel. At Pentecost, Peter preached the Resurrection (Acts 2:22-26) and so did Paul when he preached to the Jews in other nations (13:26-37). In fact, the emphasis in the Book of Acts is on the resurrection of Jesus Christ; for the apostles were “witnesses of the Resurrection” (2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39).

Some students are troubled by the phrase “three days and three nights,” especially since both Scripture and tradition indicate that Jesus was crucified on Friday.

To the Jews, a part of a day was treated as a whole day; and we need not interpret “three days and three nights” to mean seventy-two hours to the very second. For that matter, we can’t prove that Jonah was in the fish exactly seventy-two hours. The important things is that centuries after the event, Jonah became a “sign” to the Jewish people and pointed them to Jesus Christ.

Running With God – Jonah 3

The marvel of an undeserved commission (Jonah 3:1-2)

God met Jonah.

We don’t know where the great fish deposited Jonah, but we do know that wherever Jonah was, the Lord was there. Remember, God is more concerned about His workers than He is about their work, for if the workers are what they ought to be, the work will be what it ought to be.

Throughout Jonah’s time of rebellion, God was displeased with His servant, but He never once deserted him. It was God who controlled the storm, prepared the great fish, and rescued Jonah from the deep.

God Spoke to Jonah.

After the way Jonah had stubbornly refused to obey God’s voice, it’s a marvel that the Lord spoke to him at all. Jonah had turned his back on God’s word, so the Lord had been forced to speak to him through thunder and rain and a stormy sea. But now that Jonah had confessed his sins and turned back to the Lord, God could once again speak to him through His word.

God commissioned Jonah.

“The victorious Christian life,” said George H. Morrison, “is a series of new beginnings.” When we fall, the enemy wants us to believe that our ministry is ended and there’s no hope for recovery, but our God is the God of the second chance. “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time” (Jonah 3:1).

God challenged Jonah.

Four times in this book, Nineveh is called a “great city” (1:2; 3:2-3; 4:11),^2-2 and archeologists tell us that the adjective is well-deserved. It was great in history, having been founded in ancient times by Noah’s great-grandson Nimrod (Gen. 10:8-10).^2-3 It was also great in size. The circumference of the city and its suburbs was sixty miles, and from the Lord’s statement in Jonah 4:11, we could infer that there were probably over 600,000 people living there. One wall of the city had a circumference of eight miles and boasted 1,500 towers.

The city was great in splendor and influence, being one of the leading cities of the powerful Assyrian Empire.

Nineveh was great in sin, for the Assyrians were known far and wide for their violence, showing no mercy to their enemies. They impaled live victims on sharp poles, leaving them to roast to death in the desert sun; they beheaded people by the thousands and stacked their skulls up in piles by the city gates; and they even skinned people alive. They respected neither age nor sex and followed a policy of killing babies and young children so they wouldn’t have to care for them (Nahum 3:10).

The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God can’t keep you and the power of God can’t use you.

Jonah’s Preaching and Nineveh’s Repentance (3:1‑9)

For the second time, the “word of the Lord” came to Jonah: “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you” (vs. 2). It is not a new command that Jonah is given, but almost a repetition of the command given to him in chapter 1. This time Jonah obeyed, not joyfully or with a proper attitude, as we shall soon see, but at least Jonah went to Nineveh.

The population of the city of Nineveh, perhaps including its “suburbs,” was exceedingly large (cf. 1:2; 3:2; 4:11). We also know that the city was great in size. The city was described as being a “three days’ walk” (3:3).

Jonah’s message was simple, to the point, and frightening: “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (3:4).[1]

The marvel of an unparalleled awakening (Jonah 3:3-10)

From a human perspective, this entire enterprise appears ridiculous. How could one man, claiming to be God’s prophet, confront thousands of people with his strange message, especially a message of judgment? How could a Jew, who worshiped the true God, ever get these idolatrous Gentiles to believe what he had to say? For all he knew, Jonah might end up impaled on a pole or skinned alive! But, in obedience to the Lord, Jonah went to Nineveh.

Jonah’s message to Nineveh (Jonah 3:3-4).

“Three days’ journey” means either that it would take three days to get through the city and its suburbs or three days to go around them. The niv translation of verse 3 suggests that it would take three days to visit all of the area. According to Genesis 10:11-12, four cities were involved in the “Nineveh metroplex”: Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen (niv). However you interpret the “three days,” one thing is dear: Nineveh was no insignificant place.

When Jonah was one day into the city, he began to declare his message: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over-thrown.”

At this point, we must confess that we wish we knew more about Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh. Was this the only message he proclaimed? Surely he spent time telling the people about the true and living God, for we’re told, “The people of Nineveh believed God” (Jonah 3:5).

They would have to know something about this God of Israel in order to exercise sincere faith. Did Jonah expose the folly of their idolatry? Did he recount his own personal history to show them that his God was powerful and sovereign? We simply don’t know. The important thing is that Jonah obeyed God, went to Nineveh, and declared the message God gave him. God did the rest.

Nineveh’s message to God (Jonah 3:5-9).

In the Hebrew text, there are only five words in Jonah’s message; yet God used those five words to stir the entire population, from the king on the throne to the lowest peasant in the field.

God gave the people forty days of grace, but they didn’t need that long. We get the impression that from the very first time they saw Jonah and heard his warning, they paid attention to his message. Word spread quickly throughout the entire district and the people humbled themselves by fasting and wearing sackcloth.

When the message got to the king, he too put on sackcloth and sat in the dust. He also made the fast official by issuing an edict and ordering the people to humble themselves, cry out to God, and turn from their evil ways. The people were to cry “mightily” (“urgently,” niv) to God, for this was a matter of life and death.

Like the sailors in the storm, the Ninevites didn’t want to perish (Jonah 3:9; 1:6, 14). That’s what witnessing is all about, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, nkjv).

Their fasting and praying, and their humbling of themselves before God, sent a message to heaven, but the people of Nineveh had no assurance that they would be saved. They hoped that God’s great compassion would move Him to change His plan and spare the city. Once again, how did they know that the God of the Hebrews was a merciful and compassionate God? No doubt Jonah told them, for this was a doctrine he himself believed (Jonah 4:2).

He began by personally repenting (3:6). The king then made a proclamation which required all of Nineveh to fast, and to abstain from drinking water (3:7). Both men and animals were to be covered with sackcloth, and all the people were to call upon God and to abstain from their wicked ways and their violence (3:8).

If the Ninevites had but 40 days left, why would they cease sinning? One would think that they might be inclined to act in accordance with the expression, “Eat, drink, and make merry, for tomorrow (or 40 days) we may die.” Nineveh’s motivation for putting off the wickedness of the city is described in verse 9: “Who knows, God may turn and relent, and withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?” (3:9).

God’s message to Nineveh (Jonah 3:10).

At some point, God spoke to Jonah and told Him that He had accepted the people’s repentance and would not destroy the city. The phrase “God repented” might better be translated “God relented,” that is, changed His plan.

From the human point of view, it looked like repentance, but from the divine perspective, it was simply God’s response to man’s change of heart God is utterly consistent with Himself; it only appears that He is changing His mind. The Bible uses human analogies to reveal the divine character of God (Jer. 18:1-10).

How deep was the spiritual experience of the people of Nineveh? If repentance and faith are the basic conditions of sal

God took note of Nineveh’s repentance, something which involved more than mere words or token gestures. Verse 10 does not tell us that God heeded the words of the Ninevites, or even that He regarded their sackcloth and ashes, but that He took note that their deeds had changed, that they had “turned from their wicked way.” Here is genuine repentance. No mere words of regret, no trite, “I’m sorry,” but a change of conduct signaling a genuine change of heart. Nineveh had truly repented of her evil ways, and God therefore relented of the calamity which He had threatened.

[1] The word “overthrown” had strong connotations for Jonah. This term was used in connection with the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:21, 25, 29). It was also used in the poetic description of the overthrow of the Egyptians at the exodus (Ex. 15:7). It was also used in Deuteronomy 29:23 in connection with God’s warning of judgment on His people Israel, if they disregard His law. Cf. also 2 Sam. 10:3; 1 Chron. 19:3.

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Posted by Gary Davenport on June 13, 2022 in Encounters with God

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