The Lord
gave this message to Jonah… “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my
judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” Jonah 1:1-2
What
an assignment! Nineveh
was not a popular city and judgment was not a popular topic. Jonah had not been
sent to the Ladies Garden Club to talk about roses. He’d been ordered into the
Jihadist camp to talk about their impending destruction. It may have been a
little easier if the message was health and prosperity. But judgment?
Wickedness? People don’t like to be told that God is angry with them—especially
people with whom God is angry. These people were bad news. They might mock him.
They might kill him. They might even call him “judgmental.” It’s no wonder he
ran the other way.
Would
you have run too? Are you running now? The Lord has given us a message for the
world: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). But nobody wants to hear the bad news. So we pick
through the Bible to find cheery verses we can tweet to the Ninevites, and
pretend we’re obeying God’s mandate. We agree with them when they confuse Biblical
truth with being “judgmental.” So we bury the need for repentance and salvation
under piles of all-inclusive, non-judgmental fluff and assure the Ninevites
that they are fine. An obedient servant of the Lord learns to define “judging”
the way God does. When we know we have a message people need, we are willing to
risk being misunderstood to deliver God’s lifesaving truth.
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