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Based on Jonah 3:10-4:11
Trying to be a world class Christian can be a world class pain. Ralph Hult learned this the hard way. This Nebraska born Swede at age 32 went to Africa as a missionary, but on his first furlough in 1926 he was told there was no money to send him back. So he started a fruit farm near Springfield, Missouri. He was quite fruitful himself in that he had 10 children with his wife. He wanted to start a home mission church, but again he was told there was no money available. It was 1941 before the board could send him back to Africa, and then two years later he died of a heart attack.
His story sounds like a good reason not to bother with a world vision. But his story does not end with his death. His world class perspective was passed on, and 5 of his children became missionaries to Africa and other nations. His attitudes and values live on and fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord. The reason I start with this true story of a missionary who did not accomplish a great deal with his own efforts, yet did a lot by his attitudes, is because that is the key to being a world class Christian. You can read mission books by the dozens, and even go to the mission field, and still not be a world class Christian. It is not where you go and what you do, but it is your spirit that makes you a world class Christian.
Jonah is the best example in the Bible of a missionary who did not have a world class spirit. He went to Nineveh and preached the message God gave him, but he did not have the spirit of God at all. Jonah cared only about Israel and not the rest of the world, which was full of mere Gentile dogs. God was the God of Israel and He wanted to keep it that way. He did not want every Tom, Dick, and Harry of the pagan world finding out about the real God. Let them perish with their stupid man-made idols. That is what they deserve.
In Jonah we see the dark side that can be in even the most godly people. They can be so narrow in their perspective that they do not care about people who are not like them. They want God to love and care for them exclusively, and not waste His time with the worthless of the world. As far as Jonah was concerned, he wanted God to forsake the Gentile scum and just focus on blessing the people of Israel. When God had compassion on the people of Nineveh because they repented it made Jonah angry. He threw a hissy fit like none other we find in the Bible. He was so thoroughly discussed with God's love for these people that he did not want to live anymore. He did not want to live in a world where God loved everybody.
I have heard people say, "Who wants to bring a child into this evil fouled up world where there is so much hatred and violence." But here is a man of God saying, "I can't stand living in a world where there is so much love and grace shown to people who deserve to be wiped out. If that is the way God is going to be, then get me out of here, for I'd rather be dead." If you think that a man of God cannot be filled with bitter prejudice against those who are not of the same race or religion, you had better think again, for here is a biblical prophet who reeks with the foul stench of putrid prejudice.
You can't get any worse than Jonah, for he was mad at God for not conforming to his self-centered conviction that the Ninevites did not deserve to live. Jonah would have loved to fire God and get a new God on the throne who could see the need to narrow his focus and knock off this concern for the whole world. Godly people do not life God when He cares too much about the ungodly. The godly leaders of Israel killed the Son of God because He cared about people they knew better than to care about. Here is the ultimate idolatry. It is the worshipping of yor own feelings, convictions, and opinions. Even God is rejected by those who make these things their God.
The world is filled with people who are angry at God because He will not conform to their bigoted view point. He goes on loving Ninevites and other minorities all over the world just like someone who never reads the paper to see how despicable they can really be. God would be a lot more popular in every race if He would just love that race exclusively, and promise to send all the rest to hell. Jonah would have praised God and doubled tithed if God would have destroyed the Ninevites. Instead, he is complaining bitterly that God let him down by sparing them. I have heard of preachers being depressed because they feel their sermon did not touch anyone, but here is a preacher who saved a whole city from judgment, and he is depressed because of his success. He was hoping to report a totally fruitless ministry in Nineveh. He was hoping his message was a total flop and that not a living soul would pay any attention to his message.'
But alas, God failed to cooperate with his plan, and now he is stuck with the reputation of being the prophet whose message saved and entire pagan city. How embarrassing this must have been for poor Jonah. It would have been easier for him to die than to go back to Israel and his fellow Gentile despisers with this kind of reputation. His message brought great success, but he was a big failure because he failed to have a world class spirit. God is the God of all the world, and when His people do not have this perspective of His world wide love and plan they cannot dream His dream.
God made it clear in His covenant with Abraham thatmhis seed was to bless all the people of the world. God's plan has never been narrow and limited to blessing just His chosen people. The only reason for having a chosen people was to have an instrument by which He could reach and bless the unchosen people of the world. The Jews were chosen, not so they could be saved alone, but so that they could reach the whole world with the message of God's love for all.
The universality of God's plan runs all through the Bible. The Bible is world class from start to finish. All the Patriarchs in Genesis are told that their seed is to bless the whole world. Here are a few texts that give the world class perspective of the whole Bible: Psa. 33:8, "Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere Him." Prov. 8:31, has the wisdom of God "Rejoicing in His whole world and delighting in mankind." Isa. 27:6, "In days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit."
Jesus sent His church into all the world to be the light of the world, and He says in Matt. 24 that the end will not come until the whole world hears the Gospel. And we know they will for the final scene for the redeemed in heaven reveals that there will be people from every tribe, tongue and nation. Jesus died for the sins of the whole world and He will never be content until there are redeemed people from every part of this fallen world. To be a world class Christian is simply to be Christ like in recognizing that our God is global, our Gospel is global, and our goals are global. To be a good Christian means that you have to care about the whole world.
This is easy enough if you are an infinite God everywhere present in the world, but for us finite beings, who are so limited, this is more than we can handle. We have to focus on some parts of the world. That is what every Christian denomination does, and every mission organization. Nobody is trying to reach the whole world, but there are hundreds of different groups trying to reach parts of it, and together they will reach all of it.
It should be easier for us to be world class then it was for Jonah, for we live in a world where communication has made the world so much smaller. We can watch the Olympics with world-class athletes. Television brings the whole world into our homes. World-class musicians and singers are in concert. World-class scientists travel, speak, and consult with scientists in the U. S. World-class authors, artists, and leaders in all realms of life are a part of our culture. Being world-class is a part of the whole vast computer world of the internet where you can communicate with millions of people all over the world. The secular mind is becoming world-class, and the point is that Jesus told us to be world-class and concerned about people everywhere. The Christian should be more world-class than anyone, but it is not always so. The Jonah complex still exists in the minds of many of God's people.
Who cares about the pagan world and all the masses of sinful humanity in foreign lands? God says that He cares, and that you had better care too, for that is part of His dream for you. He wants you to make some difference in this world where over half of the population have never heard that they have a Savior who died for them that they might have eternal life. To make this happen often calls for us to break out of our comfort zones and pay a price to love people whom God loves. Here is a testimony of a missionary who was asked if he liked his work in Africa. "Do I like this work? No, my wife and I do not like dirt. We have reasonably refined sensibilities. We do not like crawling into huts trough goats refuse. We do not association with ignorant, filthy, brutish people. But is a man to do nothing for Christ he does not like? If not, then God pity him. Liking or disliking has nothing to do with it. We have orders to go and we go. Love constrains us."
This goes against the grain of our culture where the idea of sacrifice is taboo, and the goal of life is comfort and pleasure at any cost. The number of career American missionaries dropped by almost ten thousand between 1988 and 1992. it is harder and harder to motivate American Christians to break out of their comfort zone for the sake of a hurting world. Paul Borthwick in his book How To Be A World Class Christian quotes Tom Sine who said, "We all seem to be trying to live the American dream with a little Jesus overlay. We talk about the lordship of Christ, but our career comes first. Our house in the 'burbs comes first. Upscaling our lives comes first. Then, with whatever we have left, we try to follow Jesus.
There are none of us who can plead not guilty to the charge of being more self-centered than Christ-centered. Part of the problem is that we live in an age of information overload. There is so much information on so many subjects that we are all overwhelmed by our ignorance. We can't even keep up on all the information vital to our own well being in the world of health, insurance, investments, and a host of other issues. How in the world can we keep up with the issues missionaries face in foreign lands where we know so little of the culture and customs. The result is that our prayers for missionaries are often based on total ignorance.
A missionary family from Kenya home on furlough learned that people here were praying for their protection from leopards. They said they were in Kenya for 18 years and have prayed to be able to see a leopard, but with no success. They never heard of a missionary in all of East Africa who ever got attacked by a leopard. Many have been killed and injured, however, in car accidents. They face the same dangers we do here, and they need people praying for protection from the real dangers and not fictitious ones.
Lack of information makes prayer an exercise in futility. Prayer has to be informed to be of any value. People pray for the missionaries in Quito, Ecuador who live right on the equator, and ask that they be able to withstand the heat. Then they learn that Quito is 9 thousand feet above sea level and has a year around temperature of 70 with nighttime as
low as 55. Whether is the least of their problems, but in ignorance it becomes the main focus on those who do not know the facts.
We cannot know everything about every land, but we can focus in on some places and missionaries in order to pray for their real needs. That is being world-class. Missionaries are just like us, and they have the same needs. We often assume they are different, and so we do not minister to these normal needs. Paul Barthwick writes again and shares this testimony. "Carl, a missionary in South America for 20 years, lamented after a furlough visit home, 'in multiple visits with all my supporting churches, no one asked me about my spiritual health, and when I came home last June, my spiritual life was in a state of disrepair. I wasn't praying, my Scripture reading had lapsed, and I was thinking of quitting the ministry. People should never think that because I am a missionary, I am automatically spiritual.'"
Missionaries need people who show they care, not just when they are home on furlough, but when they are on the field. I pray for them, but I do not write to them and encourage them. Thank God for those who do, for they are world-class Christians on a higher level, and they keep missionaries striving to succeed. This is one way to become a world-class Christian. It is to become pen pals with a missionary family. Another way to care about the whole world is to recognize that the world is coming to us. Millions have come to live here from other lands. Tens of thousands
of the best students from all over the world come to America each year to study. Only a faction of these students ever get into American homes. They spend 2 to 4 lonely years in our country, and then go back to their land with no positive impression about Christianity. Thank God for exceptions.
A British couple took a student from the Muslin nation Oman into their home and showed him Christian love. They did not win him to Christ but they still changed the world for many others. This man became the Sultan of Oman and was totally favorable to Christians in his country. He even contributed land for the building of Christian churches. Christians in this Muslim land now have the freedom that most such nations never allow, and it is all because a couple in England were world-class Christians and showed love to students from other lands.
Any of us can do this, for there are abundant opportunities to befriend foreign students. You can help change the world by what you do right here with a world-class perspective. None of can do everything, but all of us can do something to help the growing movement to reach our world with the Gospel. We all need to hear things life this story related in Hugh Steven's book To The Ends Of The Earth. A witch doctor in Northern Brazil rejected the Gospel for he said, "I work to get spirits out of people. I don't want the spirit of Jesus in me." But when he was dying he had a dream of a large book with the names of all the people in the village who were Christians written in it. His, of course, was not there. In that dream he asked God to write his name in the book. When he woke up he told people he thought it was too late, but God gave him a chance to receive Jesus in his dream. He dyed joyful that he was able to trust Jesus even after years of rejecting Him.
It may not be true that it is never too late, but it is seldom too late for anyone, for God can even come to wicked people in their dying dreams. We ought not to ever give up on people but pray until their final breath, for they may with their final breath yet breathe a prayer of faith. God is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance. If we have the mind of Christ, that will be our attitude toward all the people of the world.
Tom Sine, one of the leaders in the Christian movement to resist the consumer life style of our culture, says it is never too late for Christians to start caring and sharing more with the poor of the third world countries. He tells of 6 Christian couples who gave the money they used to eat out together once a month to a literacy project in Haiti. This enabled parents to develop vocational skills so they did not have to sell their children into slavery. He challenges us all to come up with some creative way to make a difference in the lives of the poor. Anne Frank in her diary said, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." May God help us all to start right now by asking God to make us world-class Christians.
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