One Way or Another IV

Welcome, everyone. I hope your Thanksgiving Day experience was as beautiful as that video. But it probably wasn't, right? I mean, you had a little mess up here and there. Anybody have that happen? I was tasked with carving the turkey, which is normal when we eat at our house, and I thought I was doing a great job until I realized that it was really particularly juicy little bird. Twenty-three pounder, I think my wife said. And I looked down and it was running, the juice was running down on my shoes. Those are the shoes that Pastor Scott borrows all the time, too. It really made me mad. But it's amazing what a mess I made out of that little… How many of you had somebody that didn't show up or something that didn't get cooked right or something that just wasn't perfect about Thanksgiving? Anybody? Oh, the rest of you are unbelievable. So just everything was just exactly right? Probably not. I mean, it's real life, isn't it? And after all, that's what we've come to realize, that life has a sort of expectation out there and we see it and we wish it could be perfect, but generally it's not. Even the smartest ones among us sometimes don't get it just right. There was a Boy Scout, the world's smartest man and a pilot in an airplane. They're flying along and it's a single engine plane. Suddenly the engine starts to sputter and fails. Look around, there are only two parachutes on the plane. Right away the world's smartest man grabs his shoe, goes to the door, he said, listen, I'm the world's smartest man. I have a responsibility to the planet. I've got to get out of here and jumps out of the plane. The pilot as the plane starts now to gently glide in toward the earth, looks at the Boy Scout and he says, you know, son, I've lived a good life and it's probably my time. You take the other chute and you go ahead and do your best. The Boy Scout looks up, he said, hey, relax, pilot. The world's smartest man just jumped out of the plane with my backpack. Didn't get it right. Okay. So anyhow, even the joke you can't get right. But nonetheless, I know some really smart people these days that are jumping out of planes with backpacks. They think they've got life sort of nailed down. They've, you know, done their best to put things in a box and figure out where God fits. And to whatever degree they've been successful at that, they're at peace. But when you really press them, they're honest about it and they say, well, you know, there's just some things that I don't have figured out. And I'll just have to deal with that tension. You see, ultimately in life, it comes down to all of us have to have faith in something. And it's interesting, even in the movies, in media, people seem to be reluctant. I really appreciated, we had here in Wexford this, during this service, one of the parents talked about the gift of faith during the baby dedication. And I've had people say, well, you know, I just haven't gotten that gift from God, so therefore, you know, I don't have to worry about it. But you see, it isn't quite like that. People all have some faith, the Bible says. It's what you do with it that really matters. Some have faith in science until they reach that specific place where they realize that science can't tell you everything, the why of everything. And even though people try to get to that point where they can have total confidence that science will answer all of life's questions, they can't really reconcile it. And really honest scientists do admit that they have questions that they don't have answers for, at least as I have looked into it. Some have faith in themselves, and they believe, you know, I've made it through life this far. I've done it on my own. And when I face that last final horizon, I'll get there on my own. But they should read a little of Blaise Pascal, the philosopher who wrote this interesting little piece called The Gamble, where he says in response to those people, well, yeah, you can take that bet. And if you're right, so what? Who cares? You're right, and life's snuffed out at the end. But if you're wrong, all of eternity will speak back to you that you gambled with your eternal life. And made a mistake. And so that's why really thinking people, and in my view, wise people, seek to put their faith in God. And I have to tell you, it isn't always easy. It doesn't always go the way we hope it will. But at least those people are, they're leaning into it. They're trying to wrestle through it. And that's what we've been looking at in this study of the book of Jonah. We've been looking at a man who did his best to have faith in God and to listen to God and to obey God. And we've been seeing him as he is, sort of the reluctant prophet. So what I want you to do is take your outline out of your notes if you haven't done that already, and notice with me that it's sort of a short outline. Here's the reason. We only had a few days this week to get ready for the weekend, and I'm imperfect enough that I could not get my outline in by Tuesday. So therefore, what you have is just my best shot, which turns out to be pretty far from what I'm going to talk about. But that's okay. I think there's room on there for you to write down just a couple things. And I urge you to do that because when you leave, you may want to talk about this maybe over your next meal or in your small group or whatever. First thing that I came up with as I was reading through this book one more time is that Jonah, number one, if you can just take note, Jonah is like most of us. He's just like most of us. What do I mean by that? Well, as prophets go, Joseph was not, I'm sorry, Jonah was not one of the big-time prophets. He wasn't Isaiah or Jeremiah. He wasn't Ezekiel or Daniel. His book just has four little chapters in it. In two of the chapters of his four, one of them he's talking to the sailors in the boat as he's running away from God, and the other one he's talking to the Ninevites, the people that he was told by God to go and ask and call them to repentance. And the other two he's talking to God, one in the belly of the whale, and we'll get into that in a little bit. And at the end, after he's completed his mission, he's still mad at God, and we read a little bit about that, and we'll check that just a moment. So four little chapters. And Jonah, the prophet, does what he's supposed to do, and at the end of his story, I love the end of his story, he says, you know, now that I've done this, I'm angry enough, I just want to die. I've got to tell you, how many have ever been really like angry with God? Don't put your hand up because it's — well, it's OK if you do. No big deal. All of us have moments. Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, I was feeling pretty lousy, and I called my dentist, who's a member of our church, and got me in, and I went in to see him. How many of you know that root canals can go bad? I mean, that has got to be diabolical, right? I mean, one of the worst things in life is a root canal. For a root canal to go bad is like, you know, it's like someone running over you and then getting out of their car and backing over again to see how you're doing, you know? I mean, isn't it? But anyhow, I wasn't doing very well at all, and it was like one of those things like, holy cow, just, you know, going into Thanksgiving, you can't chew. That's not a very good deal. Nonetheless, Jonah, interestingly, was all about being a prophet, and he wanted — I think Pastor Doug caught this very well in his message — the strict justice of God. As you recall, we talked about the fact that the Ninevites and the Assyrians, especially as an empire, were wicked. And Jonah's wiring as a prophet was to bring the Word of the Lord of judgment to these wicked people. And when God came to him and said, you know, Jonah, what I want you to do is go and tell them if they repent, I will forgive them. And friends, as I study this again in more detail, I mean, the atrocities of the Assyrians, it reminds me of some of the stuff we've been seeing in the media lately, of just the horrific things people can do to each other. That's the kind of reputation that they had. It would not have been unlike, as I said last week, someone going to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and saying, if you repent, you'll be granted a full pardon, and you can walk out the door. And how would some of us feel about that? That's what Jonah felt like. Now, I want to make the point that it's pretty unlikely that KSM is going to repent. I don't think he'd even pay any attention to someone that went to him with a word from the Lord, and nonetheless, the point of that thing is the feeling that Jonah had. This isn't right. It doesn't seem fair. How many of you have had things when you've said, that's not fair? What's going on isn't right? It doesn't seem like, you know, if I were God, I wouldn't do it that way. Anyone ever felt like that? If I were God, I would change this about that situation. Or in other words, I have honest doubts. Let me see your hand there. How many of you have honest doubts at times about how God's handling things? Let me see your hand. OK, good. I feel a little more comforted. I've had them. I have them all the time. But aren't you glad that even in your honest doubts, the Lord still speaks to you? He still loves you? He doesn't say, well, that's the end of our relationship. And I suppose if I have a message for us today, it's this. If we're going to really grow as a people, and we're to grow individually and grow as a church as well, we have to sort of honor that in each other, that we're going to have honest doubts and not pass judgment, but rather learn to live, encouraging each other to keep growing in our faiths together. I'd like to introduce you to the idea of maybe days or seasons of faith, if you will. Jonah probably lived most of his life in what I would call day one faith. Day one faith. That's faith for something. That's when you pray for something and you believe God and it happens. I mean, by and large, day one or first day faith is a good thing. Jesus said over and over again, you know, like to the centurion in Matthew chapter 8, He said, I've never seen faith like this in all of Israel. You know, your servant's healed. Jesus commended Peter for walking on the water, but then he doubted it. And He said, your faith is just a little too weak to stay up. The blind man, He said, your faith has healed you. So faith that reaches out and receives something is, I think, good and something all of us want to grow in. And actually, many people seem to sputter at times because when it doesn't happen right away, they think, well, I must not have faith. And let me just say that sometimes it takes just a little bit of pressing, but God so wants to answer our prayers. He so wants to come through. So don't give up at the first sign of resistance. There are many people who could tell you of God's miraculous interventions into their life in day one kind of faith. There's faith for something. It's part of the great joy of walking with God. But notwithstanding, there comes in all of our lives a time when we don't have the breakthrough, a time when we pray for something and it doesn't happen. The person isn't healed. The prodigal son doesn't seem to come home. The job that we need doesn't come through. The house doesn't sell in time, whatever it is. This first day faith seems to hit a wall. And now I'm talking to some of you where you are right now. It's like in 1 Samuel 4, I was reading devotionally about how the people had been praying that God would save them from the Philistines who were attacking them. And for a while God held them off, and then He let His hand of favor off of them. And the Philistines charged in and slaughtered 30,000 of the Israelites and then took the ark of the Lord away, you know, the symbol of God's presence. I mean, that's what happened. They just, they hit this horrible place where their faith wasn't operating. Or take Joseph. We talked about him being sold off into slavery and, you know, for years separated from his family and then in prison and all that. And we could talk about all kinds of characters in Scripture, Esther and how she struggled to obey the Lord with the king and so forth. And of course, even Jesus, the perfect man, fully God, fully man, finally hits the place where now His prayer for God to lift that will. No, He's going to go forward. They're going to go to the cross. And you see, it's at that point, friends, that we have to decide, are we going to live there just sort of isolated from God and one another and just sort of angry? Or can we, like Jonah, understand that there's another day of faith? I want to call it day two faith. Write that down if you're taking notes. Jonah learned this day two faith. This is the season in our lives, and this is where many of you are in my conversations with you. It's best captured in the story when Jonah is in the belly of the whale. Day two of faith is when there's mystery, there's uncertainty. You've asked God for something, and God hasn't provided, and you're just wondering, what is going on? Things like this come out of your mouth. I'm just so lonely. I don't know if I want to keep living like this. Why can't we get pregnant like those people we saw up in the States, that kind of thing? Where's this job, God? I've worked so hard to get through school, and now I have all these bills, and I need a job, and you're not answering my prayers. Or why did I get passed over again and again? And see, many of us know that experience. See, for Jesus, second-day faith is when? When He's in the tomb, right? He hit the place where He had to go to the cross. Then for three days, He's in that tomb. And we know the disciples and the followers felt, many of them felt that was the end. The one they thought had come to be their Redeemer was not going to be that one, and we could go on and on. You know, it helps if you stop in the midst of that, by the way, at times, and realize, you know, maybe this isn't all about me right now. Maybe God has something else that He's doing, and as much as I want God to just take care of me, maybe He's doing something else, and I need to just trust Him in this. Because here's one thing you need to understand. It's helped me a lot when I go through those times. If God loves me as we say He does, then just like a parent suffers when their kids are suffering, I mean, you know, God suffers with you if you're going through a time of suffering. Most of us have an underdeveloped theology of suffering, and we think that life should not ever give us difficult times. But I've come to realize that maybe in those suffering moments is when we've become most like God, and sometimes the only way out of those can be by just taking an action. You know, the time, the second day, back in the book of Samuel, lasted, that lasted seven months. For seven months, the Israelites were without the presence of God. And every place the ark went, God brought a curse on the city that the Philistines would put it. And so they'd put the ark down, and then God would bring some sort of plague in that city, and they'd move it. And finally, after seven months, the Philistines came back to the Israelites and said, would you please take this thing back? It's killing our people. But sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes you just have to take, in faith, a step outward, out of yourself, and just say, OK, God, I'm kind of stuck, and I want to go on. I heard of a story of a friend of mine, and many of us here at the Wexford campus have known Tim Reed for a long time. He and his family have been here for many years. And Tim was facing something like this, and he's going to come now and share with us his story of just how God nudged him at a time when he was in that second day of faith to take a couple steps and do some things that, well, he didn't know at the time would really change his life. So let's give him a warm welcome as Tim Reed comes to share. TIM REED Welcome. This is a story about a couple of mission trips to Cuba. My wife Marilyn and I first went to Cuba six years ago in 2003. A friend of ours was organizing a short-term mission trip and asked me if we would like to be part of that group. I wish I could tell you that the reason I went was because I heard God's voice, but the truth is that it was respect out of our friendship and belief in the missionary cause that were my kind of primary motivators. So we drove to Toronto and flew to Camaway, which is a town in the center of Cuba, on a Friday morning. I think we were the only flight to Camaway that day. The pastor of the church, we would partner with Metis at the airport along with our translator. And after the always interesting process of clearing Cuban customs, our team of five people split into two cars for the 45-minute ride to our destination of Florida. Now, it's just difficult for me to explain the initial feelings of being in Cuba. And all I can tell you is imagine being able to enter a time machine and returning to the 1960s, old cars going 80 miles an hour until they came across a horse pulling a buggy and had to almost come to a complete stop until they could pass, numerous bicycles, most of them with a couple of people on them. That was the interstate. And while people had told me that Cuba was beautiful, this part of the island seemed none too spectacular. The conversation on the way to Florida was largely in Spanish, which I don't speak, since the translator was in the other car. For the most part, the only communication between the Cubans and Americans in my car was in the form of numerous thumbs-up signs indicating agreement with whatever they were saying that they didn't really understand. After arriving in Florida, the church had arranged for lunch, which was shared with many of these same communication issues. There was one translator for the entire group, which seemed entirely insufficient to me. Well, after lunch, we were allowed to enjoy a siesta. And as I met my cop for the first time for the week, the first thought that went through my mind was, if I could get on a plane this afternoon and go back to the United States, I would do it in a heartbeat. I thought I had made an incredible mistake, and there was no way this week would be anything but an utter disaster since no one could communicate with each other. However, after dinner that evening, we were invited to the pastor's house, which would really be the evening that would forever change my life. It was the evening that I fell in love with my first Cuban. At the time, she was an eight-year-old girl that never stopped talking in Spanish the entire evening. She reminded me of my youngest son, Ben, with her zest for life and complete fearlessness of these strangers from America. Even though I didn't understand much of what she said that night, we communicated. And that evening, I went to sleep with an entirely different attitude, wondering what God would have in store for our group that week. Well, the rest of the week was filled with what I can only describe as the hand of God at work. My idea of short-term mission trips was you go build something or paint something. Well, we met with oppressed believers of a small church in the center of Cuba, praying for them and encouraging them to continue in the faith that we all shared. The change in my life was so dramatic that week that I remember lying on the same cot on our last evening in Florida, wondering how to explain this experience to my friends in Wexford. And the thought that I believe the Holy Spirit brought to my mind immediately was that the command of Jesus to us, his disciples, was to go to all the world, sharing the good news of his wonderful gospel. I remember thinking, well, wow, it was there all the time. Just go. See, without directly hearing God's call, I had experienced God's call. The trip was so powerful that Marilyn and I returned the following year. We experienced the same blessing of simply sharing his love with like-minded believers that were truly appreciative of our efforts. These trips taught us what God means when he teaches that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And the only dichotomy was our strong feeling that we were receiving much more than we were giving. A few weeks ago, after an absence of almost five years, we were able to return to Cuba to visit the same group of people for the third time. This time we were accompanied by North Way's own Charlie Beck, a veteran of more than 100 of these types of trips, and Sandy Stifler, a friend of my wife's who is an excellent translator and even a better sharer of God's word in Spanish. And while time doesn't permit me to describe many of the stories relative to this trip, one of the lessons I learned was that the impact a trip like this has on my witness. As a business person, I always find it difficult to find meaningful ways to share my faith. However, telling business people and business associates about Cuba seemed to naturally lead to conversations that were often significant and meaningful. But the point of my being here, I guess, is to share that God has called us to many wonderful things. One of the weaknesses of my Christian walk is my constant desire to hear God's voice directing my everyday life. And while in no way am I belittling the belief that God desires for us to share every moment of our lives with him, and neither am I denying that God still calls his people dramatically as he did Jonah, but my admonishment is that we need to be careful in seeking the call of God that we miss what God has called us to. In my case, I'm already called to be faithful to God's word, to love my wife, to forgive without concern for justice, to pray for those that despitefully use me, to not worry about food or drink or what I will wear. And while that could continue for quite a while, I think you understand the point. When we accept this unbelievable truth that an all-powerful God would be willing to suffer and die so we would have eternal fellowship with him, there's an unmistakable call in our lives. And in many times, I think the only question is our willingness to obey. So one more thing I do want to share relative to this trip, and it's kind of off of this subject completely, but one of the things we asked these two Cuban pastors that we worked with was, what would you share with the church in America? And it was interesting because we asked them both separately, neither one of them that I know of knew that we had asked the other one, but their answers were kind of the same. And their answers in this oppressed society was to the church in America, continue to pray, persevere in prayer because the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Persevere in prayer, persevere in mission, persevere in purpose. And that's from our friends in Florida, Cuba. Thank you. Thanks, Tim. So if you're in that second day of faith, maybe like Tim, you just need to act on what you know. And it may not come as a specific rhema from God. You just act. What happens is that many times the Lord will take that, and He'll act on that, and He'll move you into what I want to call the third day faith. And let me just quickly end with this. Jonah discovered third day faith. That's not faith in something. That's not the season of mystery or uncertainty. That's the faith in someone. In Jonah 2, verses 8 and 9, we're going to put those verses up for you. I want you to just see, this is how Jonah called out to the Lord in the belly of the whale. And again, whether you see that metaphorically as a place of deep isolation, darkness, or a real whale is immaterial to me. I believe that God wants us to hear His voice. And here's what Jonah said to him. Said, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord. You see, that's Jonah moving from the doubt and fear and running from God to saying, Lord, I'm going to make good on my promise. And notice what God does. Then the Lord commanded the fish and had vomited Jonah onto dry land. And so, as I understand the Bible, this actually happened. And this fish actually deposited Jonah out so he could go ahead and fulfill his mission that the Lord had called him to. This is third day faith, friends. This is the same faith that enabled Jesus to be raised from the dead and come back and establish forever His rule on the earth. It's interesting to me that Jonah, though really a very sort of atypical minor prophet, if you have your Bible, at least you could turn there or make a notation, he's one of the few prophets that Jesus quotes. Actually, in Matthew 12, He refers to him this way. He says this, See, that's one reason why I kind of take the literal version. Jesus tended to believe it. So the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up to the judgment with this generation and condemn it. See, they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here, Jesus speaking of Himself. And so, you see, Jesus mentions Jonah as one of the men who had this third day faith. And even though Jonah said in chapter 4, verse 9, for me, the key thing is learning to live in the tension of that sometimes, that it isn't going the way you want, but you still trust that God will come through. You know that God will be faithful, because the resurrection is the promise that forever says, if God raised Jesus from the dead, is there anything for Him that's too difficult that you're facing? And friends, this is where I believe we as a church, and maybe all of us collectively, and certainly personally, every one of us can raise it up just a notch in the times that we face. I believe we need it. We're going into a season when we're going to need to have faith in the power of God to do all things, third-day faith, even when the specific little things don't get done the way we wish they would. Tim mentioned missionaries. I want to mention a missionary couple that was in a small group with me for the last three years. Many of you know the hunters. They've returned to Turkey, and that's an incredibly difficult field. If you don't know much about the nation, I won't go into a lot of detail, just to say this. Imagine being in a land of 60 million people where there's probably in the neighborhood of 5 or 10,000, at the most maybe 20 or 30,000 believers, and serving your whole life there. And David and Betsy have yet to see the move of God that they believe is going to come in Turkey and change that nation for Jesus, but being in a small group with them for three years showed me this. They have third-day faith. When the bell was rung for them to return two months ago to go back to Turkey after a five-year sabbatical so their sons could be raised in high schools here and off to college here in America, they gladly went back. And I want to tell you something. In the three years that I was in that group with them, I saw their faith, deep faith, faith that would take in stride every disappointment, and they had them just like we do. When they didn't get their prayers answered, when they didn't get this or that, healing didn't come for a loved one, that kind of thing. But yet in their heart of hearts, they were always for us and our whole group an inspiration of third-day faith. So let me conclude with this. Jonah is like us, number one. Jonah went through a season of second-day faith, and all of us can relate somewhere in our life right now to this mystery of obedience when it's not going that way. But hang in there for the third-day faith, faith that lives with that sort of sense of tension. Maybe you, like Tim Reed, will just act on what you know, and as a result, you find that your faith gets sparked back to life. It's almost like, you know, someone puts the paddles back into your faith, and you find yourself alive again. We live in this tension, friends. But you know what I love about it? If we're honest enough, to me, that's what makes our life together attractive to people. I don't think people are looking for a church or for people who just feel like they have it all together. In fact, I think that turns people off. I think people are looking for a place where people are honest enough to say, I don't know everything, but I'm on the right path, and I'm doing what I believe God wants me to do, and and I invite you to come and search with me. That is very disarming, and it's very endearing to people. And I want to just urge you, as we move forward into this new year, as we head into the next season of whatever God has for us, and we know it's significant, we know it's going to be fruitful, that's the kind of authenticity that I crave. They're honest enough to say, we don't have God all figured out. Jonah, at the end of that whole story, goes and pouts on the side of a hill in Nineveh, and God covers him with a tree. And they have this little conversation, and God says, what's going on? And Jonah says, well, I'm just so angry I could die. And God said, well, there's 120,000 people in Nineveh that I spare. Is it wrong for me to have mercy on them? Jonah just keeps on pouting, and that's how the book ends. It's just such a, I mean, such a crazy story. And yet it's honest and reminds me of this. The only place to put your eyes is not on answered prayers, not on great miracles, not on some kind of great accomplishments, but on Jesus. For Hebrews 12, verse 2 and 3, if we'll put that up, please. Hebrews 12, 2 and 3. This is the focal point that sustains me all the time. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher or perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Let him be the one desire, the one focus of your life, and you'll have third-day faith. Let's stand and pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that for those who are in that second day, Lord, that day of uncertainty, that day that things haven't gone the way they hoped, that day where they've struggled to hear your voice or know what to do, that you'd sustain them through with their eyes on you, Lord, that their love for you would grow hotter, and their vision of you would grow more clear, and that you would be the light for them that shines in a dark place, that you'd be the desire of their hearts that never fails them no matter what. Lord, you are the one desire that we hold dear. Make it the passion of our hearts, in Jesus' name, amen. Let's be seated quietly and listen.