Evangelistic Success and Personal Failure

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There used to be a large kauri tree down the road from where I live, near the Centennial Park in the Waitakere Ranges of Auckland, New Zealand. It was enormous - I remember it taking something like four or five of us to encircle the trunk, holding hands. As kauri trees tend to, it supported all kinds of other plants in its high branches.

It's gone now. Not as the victim of a developer, or a storm, or any other external force. That magnificent-looking tree, with all its plants that it supported, just rotted away from the inside, and had to be removed before it fell across the road.

I have to be constantly vigilant so that I don't become like that tree. I think of the sobering words of Paul about his need for dealing strictly with himself 'so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize' (1 Co 9:27). I think of modern examples of people who have apparently had successful ministries, through whom non-Christians have been converted and Christians built up, but who have fallen and been publicly shamed - I don't need to name names - and have often taken down with them people who were clinging to them like the epiphytic plants on the kauri. And I think of Jonah.

Most of us, when we think about Jonah, remember chapter one - the man who tried to run away from God. We think of the storm, and the men casting lots, and Jonah thrown into the sea. And of course, the fish. But the story of Jonah goes on from there, and I want to look at the end of it - chapters three and four. Chapter three shows us Jonah's evangelistic success, and chapter four his personal failure.

Evangelistic Success.

Firstly, Jonah had an experience of God. He knew what God was like chapter two is a kind of psalm, a thoroughly conventionalized expression of Jewish religious faith. He'd read the Book; he knew that God was 'a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love'. He even heard from God directly - the first words of the book are, 'The word of the Lord came to Jonah.' But he didn't obey it. His heart was hardened, and he headed for Tarshish - in the opposite direction from the one God had told him to go in.

But then he experienced what he only knew intellectually - the power and the faithfulness of God Almighty, 'the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.'

'Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.' 'The sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.' 'Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice and made vows to him.' (God, in his sovereignty, used even Jonah's disobedience to bring honour to himself!) And then 'the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.'

Jonah had gone through an experience that taught him what he claimed to know already - the power and the mercy of God. In my weakness, I have also often needed to go through painful and difficult times to come to know a truth I had given intellectual assent to. Even that great lover of scripture, the author of Psalm 119, acknowledged, 'It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees.' If we really believed half our doctrine, we wouldn't need a quarter of God's discipline.

To Jonah's credit, however, he didn't rush off to the other extreme. He had an experience of God to undergird his ministry; he could speak in confidence that God had the power to fulfill his word against the city of Nineveh. But he didn't make the mistake of preaching his own experience.

Experiences are experiences. They are not the word of God. They are not scripture. They are not the rule by which all else is to be measured. They are experiences. I can't deny your experience, or you mine. I can't tell Oral Roberts (in the unlikely event that I ever meet him) that he didn't see a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him to build a 900-foot-tall prayer tower. He very likely did. All that I can question is his interpretation of that experience; and I can only do that in the light of Scripture, not my own experience. This is why I am concerned when I see people basing their practice on experience and not being prepared to submit it to the scriptures - as in a lead article in a nationally-distributed christian publication (Rise Up) which advised, "Don't let doctrine or logic get in the way . . . don't try to work God out."

Imagine if Jonah had preached his own experience. Imagine if he had walked into Nineveh, this great city, ruler of the world at that time, and said, "Look, you'd all better repent, because God is powerful. I know - I was recently vomited up by a huge fish after being in there three days." Unbelievers have always had trouble with that story, though Jesus seems to affirm it as fact and even based a prediction of his resurrection on it. They would simply have laughed at him.

Instead, the first five verses of chapter three tell us: 'Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you." Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh . . . . On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overturned."' Verse five is very significant. It doesn't say the Ninevites believed Jonah. The Ninevites didn't believe Jonah. It says, 'The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and each of them, from the least to the greatest, put on sackcloth.'

The Ninevites believed God. They accepted Jonah's message 'not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God' (1 Th 2:13). God's word carries its own power and authentication. It is living and active, because the Holy Spirit is intimately involved in communicating it. This is not to say that we should not be careful to do our best to communicate it; on the contrary, we dare not make it unclear or add more stumbling blocks to its understanding and acceptance, apart from the cross. But it means that, without violating free will, the power of God is at work when his word is proclaimed - even from wrong motives.

In Nineveh, every evangelist's dream became a reality. The whole city, over a hundred and twenty thousand people, repented and the king commanded fasting in sackcloth - even for the animals! He said, '"Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."' And the scripture goes on to tell us that he did.

It seems to me likely almost to the point of certainty that the words, 'Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned,' are a condensed summary of Jonah's message rather than a full statement of it. The results suggest that the message included a challenge to repentance.

Repentance is more than just turning from your evil ways. It's a radical change in your entire mindset. But it is certainly not less than turning from your evil ways. Paul, summarizing his message in his defence before King Agrippa, says, "I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds."

The Wittenburg Door, the christian satirical magazine, had a feature once on what might have happened if Jesus had responded to the rich young ruler's question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?", with a presentation such as a modern exponent of personal evangelism might have used. He proceeds through the four points and reaches the 'suggested prayer'. The rich young ruler prays the prayer and asks, "Is that all? What a relief! I was afraid you'd ask me to do something really drastic, like sell all my possessions and give to the poor, and then come and follow you, or something."

The fault is not in the evangelistic tool, which can be used or abused- to make the gospel clearer or to make it lesser. The fault is in the downplaying of repentance and of the cost of Christianity so that the 'converts' go away rejoicing but wither when persecution or difficulty comes - rather than going away sorrowful, knowing they have refused to pay the price. This is not to say we have to try to scare people off by telling them how tough it's going to be, either. We just need to be realistic, and communicate that Jesus must be 'President as well as resident' in their lives. He himself, in the sixth chapter of John, deliberately taught something difficult so that those who weren't serious turned away and no longer followed him. We may need to be prepared for fewer converts if we want more disciples.

So these were the elements of Jonah's evangelistic success. He wasn't reading drily from a book he didn't really believe - God had made an impact on his life. Nor was he preaching his own experience, but proclaiming the word of God. And his message didn't promise cheap grace for superficial repentance.

Personal Failure

'But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

'But the Lord replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"'

Jonah is essentially saying, "I knew you'd do that, Lord. It's just like you. If you act like that, you should expect me to flee to Tarshish." He's unable to accept the Lord for who he is; and for that reason, he's unable to accept the situation for what it is. It's a classic immature, sinful reaction; hurl abuse and then try to run away (in this case, by praying to die).

It's immature, sinful and straight-out foolish. Have you ever done it? I have. Unbelievers do it whenever they hold up the problem of evil, or the scriptural view of God as Judge, or any other feature of the reality of how things are and claim that as a reason for rejecting Christianity- because it doesn't suit their idea of what things ought to be like. But believers do it too - we who ought to know better. We who should know that God didn't, and doesn't need to, consult us on what he ought to be like or how the universe should be set up; we who should know that if anything isn't right it's our fault; we descendants of Adam, who blamed his eating the apple on "The woman you gave me," and Eve, who blamed it on the serpent. If I don't have enough money, what's my first reaction? "Well, I must have over-committed myself"? No! It's "God, that's not fair!"

Jonah, though, doesn't just abuse God because things have gone wrong or because life is hard. He is angry when God is not angry. And God suggests by his question that he has no right to do that. It didn't prevent evangelistic success, because God overruled - but it did bring personal failure.

Jonah was a prophet - he was supposed to represent the Lord. We, the church, collectively, are also supposed to represent him. How do we represent him if we don't share his attitudes - if we condemn when he does not condemn and are angry when he is not angry? If we are quick to anger and abounding in hate and, given the chance to send calamity, would certainly not relent from it? Jonah had not learned his whole lesson. He had learned the power of God, but not the mercy of God. The Ninevites were Israel's most powerful national enemy. Jonah hated them. He didn't want to see them repent - he wanted to see them judged.

After all, they were sinners. Nineveh, capital of the powerful Assyrian Empire, was, like all imperial capitals, the place where sin and vileness most abounded. And God hates sinners - doesn't he?

I know of at least one church in Auckland that teaches that he does. Their proof-text: "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." After all, how can we love sinners without condoning their sin?

Well, Jesus, our model, seems to have been capable of it. He looked at the rich young ruler and loved him. He tells us to love our enemies so that we may be like our Father, who makes the sun rise and the rain fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous. And unless we are like Jonah, going out and preaching to them because God has twisted our arms up our backs, why will we go and take the gospel to them if we don't love them?

Is it not rather that we are afraid to preach to them - in case these horrible people actually get converted, and then we'll have to have them in the church? (Ugh. Perish the thought.) After all, what would people say if we started reaching out to homosexuals and drug addicts and prostitutes and the homeless and the socially outcast - and even brought them into our churches - into our homes? They might say, "These people eat and drink with sinners."

Is it not that we are selfish, like Jonah, who was 'angry enough to die' when a short-lived vine that had shaded him from the heat died, yet had no concern about the many people of Nineveh?

Let God have the last word, as he does in the book of Jonah. 'The Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"'