First
Presbyterian Church of Inglewood
100 North
Hillcrest Ave
Inglewood,
California 90301
Telephone
numbers: (310) 677-5133 Fax (310) 330-8342
Electronic
mail: PRESBYTS@SBCGLOBAL.NET
Sunday, January
31, 2010
Rev. Dr.
Harold E. Kidd
Jonah 3
THE WINGS OF
EVANGELISM
“On The
Wings of Love”
“Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah
a second time: Go to the great city of
Jonah 3: 1
And may the Lord bless the hearing of
these words by His church, for the times in which we are called to bear witness
to God’s unchanging love. All of us are familiar with the story of Jonah and
the whale. Jonah, you will recall, was God’s reluctant prophet who received the
call of God to go to the city of Nineveh with the message of doom unless they
repent. He was called to preach a message of doom to one of the most powerful
cities in the world of his day.
Jonah lived about the time of King
Jeroboam II, Israel’s most powerful kings following the division of the Northern
and Southern kingdoms, and was assigned the task of foreign missionary work.
The book of Jonah is a book of missions. Of how God will go to no ends to save
those whom he loves. The purpose of the book itself is to show the extent of
God’s grace. Amen. That God loves the good, the bad, and the ugly and that the
message of salvation is for all people.
Jonah, an Israelite, was called by God
to go to Nineveh, the capital of modern-day Syria, to preach God’s word. For a long
time Nineveh had been a plague to Israel. It was Nineveh that destroyed Israel
in 721 B.C. Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, had been a thorn in the flesh
of Israel. Jonah no doubt had grown up as a child and youth seeing Israel under
the dominion of Assyrian power as one of its vassal states.
So going to
So Jonah ran, the word says; he went
down to Joppa, where he found a ship sailing for Tarshish and ultimately was
swallowed up by a huge fish at sea, until he repented of his disobedience and
was willing to obey the will of the Lord.
Whenever we decide to disobey God, run from God, we only do harm to
ourselves. So reluctantly, Jonah went to
The message, however, while being one of
impending doom, was given by God to Jonah in order that it would move Nineveh
to repent from her wicked ways and seek the mercy of God. Reminding us that the
church is called to preach, teach, and bear witness to the message of God no
matter how unpopular the message may appear, yet God knows it is needed if
persons are going to turn from their wicked ways and seek the Lord. God is love, yet sometimes God knows that
what is initially needed is not a message of comfort but a message to shake us
out of our complacency.
This kind of vision and message was
radical and new to Jonah. That’s probably why he ran. Jonah didn’t mind
preaching to his countrymen, people just like him, Jonah had no qualms
evangelizing up and down the villages of
Wherein lies one of the great problems
of the 21st century church. We are for the most part, preaching to
the choir. Communicating the gospel to those just like us, sharing the gospel
with those who are within our comfort zone. Most church growth these days, they
tell us, is not through conversions, but membership migrations. Telling us that
there are yet many people, and families, whom God is still seeking to bring into
the ark of salvation.
Like Jonah, in this day and time, we’ve
got to be willing to take the message of God wherever the Lord will send us,
and sometimes this means to people, places, and settings that take us out of
our comfort zone. Nineveh is not coming to the church, so God in this text is
sending the church represented in Jonah to
Then God said to Jonah, “Jonah, you get
all upset because this vine withered up and died and is no longer giving you
comfort. You didn’t tend it, Jonah, you
didn’t make it grow, yet there are more than 120,000 people in Nineveh who
cannot tell their right hand from their left, and you could care less whether
or not they are saved. Should not I,
God, the one who provided you with the vine for shelter, be concerned about
their salvation?”
The message of God to Jonah is that we
do not exist for ourselves, but we exist to spread the message of salvation.
And the message has wings. Wings that lift the message out of the pulpit, and
out of the pew, and out of the church walls and take it to whosoever will. And
the wings of the message are the wings of God’s Love.
The primary message of the church has to
do with communicating the love of God given through Jesus Christ to a world in
need of being loved. Amen. We are coming to church to hear the word, but not
only to hear the Word but to be regenerated on the Word we have already
received. So that we can take it out into the various walks of our life, and by
the power of Christ’s love demonstrate in our walk and in our talk who Jesus
really is. Being loved is the most powerful motivation in the world. There is a
verse in the letter of 1 John which declares, “We love Him, because He first
loved us.”
The Preacher is preaching to get the
Word out. The choir is singing to get the Word out. The ushers and greeters are
ministering to get the word out. We are giving of our tithes and offerings, to
get to promote the good news of God’s love through the ministry of this church.
We’re not here just to be entertained, we didn’t come just to meet, eat, get
happy and then go home, but God has brought us together with the purpose of
refilling us, re-energizing us with the message of his love, that we can take the
message of His love back into a love-needy world, and touch somebody’s life
with His goodness.
Some have falsely labeled the current generation
as being bad. We don’t like their music, we don’t like the way they dress. Young people are not bad, are any worse than
they were in our own generation or my generation. Some of them are only
reflecting what they have been programmed to be, when they are programmed by
our violent culture, by a narcissistic way of life, when they are programmed by
things that do not enter into their God-created spirits but turn on the
flesh. And the only way you can have power
of the flesh is to have the spirit of God working in your heart. And so our young people are not bad, many of
them have just never been taught. And
what we have to offer them is love.
What the world needs now is the love of
God. The best news is not on NBC, CBS, CNN, or ABC. The best news is that God has visited us; the
best news is that God loves us, and we are not alone. You see, God has a Universal
Plan of Salvation now in effect. God always from the beginning loved everybody.
“God is gonna bring everybody who will, into the fold of God’s love.” It is his
desire, wrote Peter, “that none should perish”.
Being loved is the most powerful
motivating force in the world. You can love people into a changed life. That’s
what God did. He loved us out of our sin into a new creation. His love so
captured our hearts, til a change came over us. People who are not in church
are not bad; many of them just do not understand God’s law. “Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind. This is the first and greatest
commandment. And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
And the Bible says that perfect love
casts out fear. And love means we look beyond the fear and see the need. Love
will send one into the prison. Love will send one into the high school. Love
will send you into the convalescent home. Love will send you down to the
battered women’s shelter. Love will send you out into the community to round up
young people and invite them to come. Love is what motivates churches to feed
the hungry, to visit the sick, and to clothe the naked. Love is what inspired
Mother Theresa to go work with the lepers in India. The message soars on the wings of God’s love.
We have a living message. And that
living message is that God is a loving God. That living message is Jesus
redeems. That living message is that you can have divine companionship. That
living message is God loves you. And when people discover how much God loves
them, it will transform their lives. We are not alone, God is our creator, God
is our sustainer, our provider, our protector, and whatever else we need. God has prepared for us even before we got
here. And that message must be sent out and given out.
God has given his church an enormous
responsibility to make disciples in every nation. This involves preaching,
teaching, healing, nurturing, giving, administering, building, and many other
tasks. All is to be done out of our love and devotion to God. If we had to
fulfill this command as individuals, we would feel overwhelmed, but as the body
of Christ, we can accomplish more together than we would ever have dreamed
possible, working by ourselves. Working together, the church can express the love
of God, and the saving power of Christ.
Therefore our ability to remain in
unity, our commitment to encourage one another on towards spiritual maturity,
our willingness to practice tender loving care amidst the flock is essential,
in fulfilling the purposes which God has laid upon us. We have become the
television, the computer monitor, the cable hookup, the Internet provider
through which people see God. And the primary message that God wants people to
see through the Church is the power of his transforming Love. So you and I have
got to model the love we talk about.
On the message of His love, the church
will soar with wings like an angel. Without love as a motivation to spread the
message beyond these walls and within these walls, we become like Jonah,
complacent in our own world, sitting under the vine, not concerned whether
Nineveh lives or dies.
So often we become perplexed of how to
grow the church, when God has given us a simple plan. On The Wings of Love, take
the message of salvation to anyone and everyone. Go wherever and to whomever
God is sending you. Though we may have some apprehensions, and some anxieties,
go … and let God do the rest!