Thursday 4/5/12 - A Fourth Strike
Jonah 1:2: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
Devotional:
World Series – game seven. It’s the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded, two strikes and two outs. Your team’s up to bat trailing by one point. There’s the wind-up, and the pitch! It’s a drive right down the middle. The batter swings and….“Strike three!” the umpire yells. “You’re….still in. That’s okay, I’ll give you another chance. There’s too much to lose here. Have the pitcher pitch you another one.” The pitcher gets the ball again, but before anything else can happen, the crowd’s in an uproar. Some are enraged, knowing that it should have been over with that pitch and their team should have won. Others in the stands are relieved – as astonished as they might be at the umpire’s unprecedented call – it would mean that their team would have one more chance to bring home the trophy. But regardless of whose team people were rooting for, there definitely would have been a sense of injustice present in the crowd. Did the umpire have the right to make this call? Is it really fair?
Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was an evil city with wicked practices. They definitely exceeded their three strikes and in this verse, God says that Nineveh’s wickedness had come up before Him. “Here we go,” we might think. “Now they’re out; now God’s going to get them.” They were enemies of God’s chosen people, and if God was going to punish any city, it would definitely be Nineveh with all their wickedness. But surprisingly, when Nineveh’s wickedness came up before God, instead of immediately punishing them, God instead calls on one of His prophets to go minister to them. Why? Ezekiel 33:11a has the answer: "Say to them: 'As I live,' says the Lord God, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” God’s patient with others and their failures for the very same reason He’s patient with us – His love.
“Well, that’s it for me!” you might have thought at one point in your life. “That was my third strike, if not my fourth or fifth.” You’ve messed up so badly in your life, making decisions that you knew were wrong and doing things that you knew you shouldn’t have done. “Now God’s going to get me,” you think. Or maybe worse – maybe you remember a time in your life when you were just doing things your own way and didn’t even care if you were striking out or what God thought. Maybe you feel like Nineveh and know that your wickedness has gone up before God. And now you’re sure He’s ready to hit you over the head with a bolt of lightning. But for some reason, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We were enemies with God at one time but He saved us, nonetheless. And if He did that for us while we were still sinners, He’ll be more than merciful with our shortcomings and failures if we just come to Him – even if we already struck out three times. “So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm” (Joel 2:13). (However, it must also be noted that although God is kind and longsuffering, we are not to use his grace as an excuse to sin as the Bible makes clear in Deuteronomy 6:13-19 and Romans 6:1-2.)
Now concerning ministry, this is such an important lesson to keep in mind. God has had compassion on each and every one of us at some time in our lives. When we deserved His judgment, He gave us mercy – He gave us another chance. As we minister to others, there will be those people who we will be tempted to judge as “beyond help” or as someone who has completely given up on God and therefore we might assume God has given up on them and marked them for judgment when in fact He hasn’t. If we look at Nebuchadnezzar in the Old Testament, we see there an example of a man who, by human standards, would never turn to God. And yet, in Daniel 4, we see God opening his eyes. We don’t know what’s going on in the lives of the people we minister to, and we need only be obedient to God as He calls us to minister to these people.
Let’s learn a lesson from Jonah. When God called him to minister to the people of Nineveh, he didn’t want to because he didn’t think God should give His mercy and kindness to such a wicked, evil people (Jonah 4:2). Maybe he thought Israel was the only one who deserved God’s goodness. But while Ezekiel 33:11a (as mentioned above) talks about how God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, Ezekiel 33:11b shows us the context of the verse and who the “wicked” ones were that God was referring to at that time: “Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?” It was Israel! And although the book of Ezekiel was written after Jonah, Jonah still forgot about Israel’s history in the desert and how merciful God had been with them even as wicked and rebellious as they were.
So God’s merciful to us when we are rebellious and disobedient. He doesn’t write us off. He doesn’t call the game after the third strike although He has every right to. Likewise, if the judge of the world doesn’t do that, who are we to do that to others? After our third strike, God may give us or someone else a fourth, fifth, or sixth strike. I know there’s something in the heart of every human being that calls for justice, that calls for the umpire to uphold the rules of the game, especially in such a game as the seventh game of the World Series at the bottom of the ninth with two outs and two strikes. But before we start reprimanding God for not being a fair umpire, before we start calling on God to uphold His reputation of justice, let’s remember that when He makes His call, He sees what’s at stake. And what’s at stake is something more than the World’s Series: it’s the lives of those whom God loved and gave Himself to die for, as well as the reputation of His goodness, kindness, and longsuffering in light of His justice. So God’s an umpire who often decides to give a fourth strike to whomever He wills. And if He gives us a fourth strike when we need it; shouldn’t we also be willing to give it to others as well?
Matthew 18:33: “Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?”
Prayer:
Lord, thank You so much for having mercy and compassion on me not only when You saved me, but since then, when I’ve been rebellious and disobedient. Thank You that Your loving-kindness is new every morning. I pray that I’d be a vessel of Yours to show Your forgiveness, patience, and kindness to those You bring in my path today – especially those who seem like they don’t deserve it the most. Please give me the eyes to see them like You do, and give me the patience to interact with them as You would. Through Your mercy and longsuffering, may You bring many more souls into Your kingdom. Amen.
Related Verses:
Lamentations 3:21-23
Matthew 18:21-22
2 Peter 3:9
No comments:
Post a Comment