We started to look at the book of Jonah, reading Jonah 1:1-16. Jonah is often known as the ‘reluctant prophet’, since he initially refused to obey God’s command to go to Nineveh and preach against the city. We are not surprised by his reluctance, for Nineveh (situated in Assyria, now modern Iraq) had a reputation for barbaric cruelty and fearsome warriors, but it turns out that Jonah’s reluctance is more to do with his awareness of God’s mercy than fear! One of the highlights of the Bible is that we see people are they are. Even prophets are human (see James 5:17) – we are shown Elijah’s depression and fear, Jonah’s stubborn reluctance to obey God, Jeremiah’s feelings of inadequacy very plainly. There is no place for pedestals in the Christian faith; God alone is worthy of our praise and worship.

God’s call to us may well take us to unfamiliar and unwanted places (literally or figuratively); there will usually be a battle between us and God in which we argue with Him and ultimately learn that nothing can thwart Him and there is no place to which we can run from His presence (see Ps 139: 7-12). All God’s people need to learn to surrender to Him, to pray ‘not my will but Yours be done.’ (Luke 22:42) We will find, like Jacob, that there is actually victory in our ‘magnificent defeat’ (Gen 32:22-32). We don’t have to go through the trauma of shipwreck and being swallowed by a big fish if we will learn to submit to God’s plans for our lives now!

Our new Bible study series on three of the minor prophets – Jonah, Joel and Amos – began last night. We talked generally about the role of prophets and prophecy in the Old Testament and New Testament, and saw that prophets can be both male and female (Exodus 15:20, Judges 4:4, Acts 21:18-19) and are those people who speak forth the word of God: ‘this is what the Lord says’ is a common phrase found in the mouths of all prophets. We often see the prophets as speaking about future events, and there are often ‘layers’ in prophecy, where they speak directly to people about specific events happening at the time, but their words can often be applied to future events as well. ‘Forth-telling’ and ‘fore-telling’ are words we use to distinguish between these layers in prophecy.

Deut 13:1-5 and Deut 18:14-22 give instructions about how to recognise prophets and prophecy, and it was acknowledged that prophets are not infallible and we bear a responsibility for weighing and testing their words against all we know of God (see 1 Thess 5:21). Prophets are those whose encounter with God and calling give them the impetus to speak His words; a prophet’s calling is often one which engenders fierce opposition and they need this life-changing encounter with the Holy One to carry them through the opposition they face.

The minor prophets are so-called because their prophecies are shorter than the major prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah), not because they are less important! Their prophecies may well speak to particular events at a particular time, but we should not treat them simply as historical records, for the themes they address – the rebellious nature of people, their tendency to substitute other things for God, their reluctance to embrace God’s ways in the faith journey of life – continue to apply to us all.

Today, after a week of dazzling sunshine, it has been overcast and we have seen some rain. It makes me ponder the need for equal doses of sunshine and rain to make things grow. Both are needful; both are not equally welcomed, as a rule!

When it’s cloudy, it’s easy to feel downcast and to wonder where the sun has gone! Rationally, we may know it’s still there, but we miss its warming presence. We can feel like that with God too. The warmth of His presence encourages us and blesses us, but when darkness seems to hide His face, we feel alone, bereft, vulnerable. The Bible assures us He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb 13:5), but an absence of light so often leaves us floundering.

Into this situation, what is our lifeline to God’s light? Nicky Gumbel says of encouragement that it ‘is like verbal sunshine. It costs nothing and warms other people’s hearts and inspires them with hope and confidence in their faith.’ (BIOY)

This is one reason we are encouraged to keep on meeting together, so that we may spur one another on positively and build each other up (Heb 10:24-25, 1 Thess 5:11). Everyone is prone to discouragement and disappointment; people are facing situations we know nothing about and there is no one who does not benefit from encouragement. A smile, a kindly gesture, words of affirmation and encouragement, are like vitamins to the soul.

Barnabas, known as the ‘son of encouragement’, is an inspiration to us in this regard. He spent a year in Antioch where ‘he encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts.’ (Acts 11:23-24) May we all do this every day.

In 2 Samuel 24, we see a strange event, a test which David failed, another of those incidents which seem innocuous to us but which have catastrophic consequences. David chose to take a census of Israel and Judah. We are so used to the idea of a census every ten years (2021 has seen yet another UK census) that we may fail to see why this became the source of God’s anger blazing against David. To us, a census is an eminently reasonable, pragmatic, practical thing to do; forward planning needs data; it’s good to know how many people we are dealing with! Counting people does not appear to have been universally despised in the Bible; there are many, many lists of numbers therein (even a whole book with that name!) So what’s the problem?

God’s people are constantly called to live in trust rather than to use the world’s methods and teactics. Even Joab – David’s chief of army, hardly the most spiritual man from all we read of him, protested against this measure (‘why on earth would you do a thing like this?’ 2 Sam 24:3) He was overruled (a reminder that those in authority don’t always get it right), bringing the news of 800,000 able-bodied fighting men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah (2 Sam 24:9) – presumably a great comfort to a king who was constantly facing wars on every front.

Far from providing David with reassurance and satisfaction, however, he came to realise that his actions had actually replaced trust with statistics (2 Sam 24:10). He had based his thinking and strategy on human ideas (protection in numbers, ‘might is right’ and so on), rather than on God. The man who had once defied all human strategy and logic in slaying Goliath, the man who had survived opposition and persecution through trusting in God, had succumbed to the age-old temptation to trust something visible rather than God.

David’s heartfelt sorrow and repentance remain the springboard to his ultimate success: he acknowledged his sin and asked for God’s mercy (2 Sam 24:10-14) There were terrible consequences (70,000 people died in a plague in a day), but there was ultimate restoration. It’s no surprise, perhaps, that the site of the temple later built by Soomon was the site where the plague stopped, a living reminder of this incident, a symbol that God can bring glory from our most serious mistakes and failures.

The human tendency is always to trust what we can see and understand rather than what is invisible, intangible and (frankly) inexplicable. Trust is at the heart of the gospel message, but it’s a message even Christians of many years don’t much like.

We will never earn God’s pleasure by following the crowd, wanting to be like the world and having neatly packaged answers to all of life’s mysterious questions. What pleases God is faith – and that will usually look reckless, adventurous, crazy and downright terrifying to us. Don’t be tempted to replace trust with anything at all. Trust in God has to be at the heart of everything we do.

J-P spoke tonight about the number 86.400… Imagine having £86,400 each day and having to spend it all, not being allowed to save any of it or carry it over to another day! Would you go on a spending spree? Would you buy a house? Would you help others? We may not have this amount of money each day, but we do all have 86,400 seconds every day.

We all have the same amount of time each day, but the question of time management means we are forced to think about if we are spending this time wisely. Do we do what we want with our time or do we understand that time actually belongs to God? Ps 24:1 reminds us that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it; even when we use our time to earn money, we have to acknowledge God’s help in giving us the strength to work.

Our priorities determine how we spend our time. Ex 20:8 reminds us of the importance of the Sabbath, giving time to God. This Sabbath time means we organise our day differently to usual, giving God our whole focus. Mark 12:28-31 reminds us that love for God must be our priority and we need to organise our time to give Him priority and to love other people as well (rather than things).

Our love is demonstrated through our obedience, our worship and our witness. We have to give ourselves – and our time! – to God and allow Him to direct and manage our time.

We looked at three things today which God definitely wants us to want:

1. To live in harmony and unity
2. To live with purpose
3. To seek God’s kingdom first

Living In Harmony & Unity

Harmony & unity do not mean that we are all the same. God is the God who made each one of us different. The God who made over 60,000 species of trees, over 69,000 species of flowers, over 8.7 million species of animals, 32,000 living fish species and 10,000 different species of birds can cope with variety! So He calls us to celebrate diversity and live together in harmony, respecting our differences and not trying to squeeze everyone into the one mould.

Harmony musically is not the same as unison. It’s infinitely more varied and adds much more depth (and pleasure) to music. When we live in harmony and unity, we achieve more together than we can possibly do on our own. Church, I believe, means we are ‘better together.’ (Rend Co Kids)

Living With Purpose

God has plans for our lives, individual plans and corporate plans, and there is nothing more exciting and fulfilling than living life God’s ways. So many of us once had dreams and ambitions, but perhaps life has got in the way, and we feel deflated and lacking ambition. Maybe we have never really had any clear idea of what life is all about and so we just drift on, never quite knowing why we are here or what God wants from us. God wants us to be like Caleb, living with purpose even in old age. (Joshua 14:12-14) He can take our dreams and make of them so much more (‘Dream For You’, Casting Crowns.) Though it may take time for these dreams to be fulfilled, we can live with vigour, passion and purpose.

Seeking God’s Kingdom

Seeking God’s kingdom first and seeking to be salt and light in our community means we live with purpose and hope. We can do this in many different ways, which may often seem mundane (litter-picking, distributing hearts and doves and painting murals, for example), but ‘each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.’ (1 Pet 4:10-11) We’re back to the ‘various forms’, to the diversity each one of us represents, but this is the wonder of God’s great plan: to use humans as His witnesses and messengers to transform the world from the inside out, so to speak.