Chapter 7: Repentance to Glory
“I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
In a recent back porch discussion with some friends, the question was posed that if the books of the Bible were seeded like an NCAA bracket, which would be the four one seeds and which would be the four bottom seeds. Obviously we must acknowledge that all scripture is inspired by God and all is beneficial in its perfect way, but nevertheless the question prompted some really good discussion. The call for us as a generation is a call to repentance and I would love to spend some time in Jonah fishing that out. As I do it though, I will also be defending why I placed Jonah as a one seed caliber book.
It’s fair to question my pick, there are many incredible places to go when considering “the best four.” I’ll say that we all seemed to agree on Genesis and Romans, with the third going to either John or Acts. But the fourth was a little spotty on the answers. Isaiah and Revelation were kicked around as well as Matthew and Exodus. But Jonah seemed to ruffle some feathers when I presented it. Here’s the key verse for Jonah and why I’m looking to it here and why I pointed to it on the back porch that night; Verse five of chapter three says (after a roller-coaster of events), “So the people of Ninevah believed God, proclaiming a fast, and put on sack cloth, from the greatest to the least of them.” That is a huge deal and one that must be acknowledged right out of the gate. Ninevah was the capital city of an evil Assyrian people. History tells us that one of Assyria’s favorite form of torture was burying people to their neck and staking their tongue out on the ground in front of them to where they couldn’t close their mouth. Can you imagine witnessing that? When we survey the heartlessness and waywardness of our own society, Jonah is this wonderful reminder that God is bigger than our prejudices. God is here to save and redeem His people and out of His abundance of love we get to be a very small part of it. If that’s the story of the entire Bible, then Jonah is the illustrated advertisement for the main event.
The first thing to point out is the obvious and even acknowledged foreshadowing of Jesus (Matt. 12, 16, Luke 11). Jonah is this wonderful illustration of Genesis 50:20 which says “You meant all this for evil, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” And when we see God’s sovereignty at work we realize that there is nothing we can do to mess up His perfect plan. This is James 1:2-4 which says ”Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” This is Romans 8:28 which says “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Jonah is a picture book of some of the most profound and comforting truths in our Bible.
There is a certain level of relatability in the disobedience of Jonah though. God gives him clear instruction and Jonah is not only reluctant, but he flat out bails and goes the opposite direction. That’s often how I feel with public speaking, including this Further Up Further In project. Determined to avoid it at all cost not because of the clarity in scripture, but because of the guilt of my past. Who am I to be speaking to anyone about anything moralistic? But where I tend to look down at myself, Jonah is looking down at the people of Ninevah. I don’t feel like I’m worth it, Jonah didn’t feel like they were worth it. And immediately he becomes the very thing he is called to minister to. He ironically puts on the same characteristics of evil that he saw in them and is humiliated in the process. The first move of Jonah was this allegory of my own life like the language used in Eph 2:2-3.
Could you imagine carrying the message of Jonah into the city of Ninevah? Let’s compare that to the context that we live in today. Today, we all have people in our life that we pray for. For me, my heart beats for Godly manhood. What is it for you? Maybe it’s on foreign soil, maybe it’s friends with special needs, maybe it’s the homeless, maybe it’s something else entirely. Whether we are preaching grace or demonstrating grace, rarely do any of us communicate ‘repent.’ A ‘turn or burn’ sermon is not what people, especially in our generation want to hear, but sometimes it’s exactly what we need to hear. Does that mean grace ceases to exists? Absolutely not and that’s the best part. As He calls us to repent, as He reveals His holiness to us more and more, as He calls us further up and further in to that same holiness, we are met with new mercies every morning and a deeper understanding of the grace that was given in the first place. It’s a scary message to bring to a world that could be identified as the selfie generation. We are infatuated with ourself like never before. But we desperately need a message of repentance.
“Ninevah shall be overthrown.”
“America shall be overthrown.”
“We shall be overthrown.”
…unless we repent.
I’m reminded of John 8 and the story of the woman caught in adultery. What an incredible encounter between Jesus and a woman that is of very low social status, especially in that particular moment. That one story could be the summary of this entire book in your hands. In verse 11 Jesus says “I don’t condemn you.” And we love to leave it at that- just a beautiful display of God’s grace. But He doesn’t leave it at that and neither should we. Because a true encounter with that kind of grace should produce a changed life. It’s true in every encounter in scripture. We don’t become sinless but we are told to send less. Jesus completes the sentence with “go and sin no more.” He then turns and explains this to everyone who watched this scene unfold. He tells them, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” That is the most loving message of repentance. It doesn’t elevate issues and inflate sin, it simply says leave that darkness behind and walk in the Light. Repent! This is similar to John 4 and the woman at the well. Jesus knows everything about this woman and she drops what she’s doing to go tell her village to “come see a man that told me all the things I ever did!” He sees us and still loves us. He sees us and sees His redemption in us before we even know it’s there. That is the complete Gospel. Do you believe that Gospel? Remember Jonah at the beginning of the book doing everything in his power to not go where God told him to go? What does God call Ninevah? He calls it that “Great city.” What a beautiful illustration of the narrated heart of God seen in Hosea. Gomer is constantly being unfaithful to her husband Hosea and Hosea pursues her relentlessly. He never, not once gives up on His bride. Bring it into your home and read the Song of Solomon. What a tangible opportunity we have to pursue our spouse the way God pursued us. Has your spouse done something recently to get under your skin? Have you realized that they are imperfect? You now have been given the crayon of the Gospel. The 2D God we meet in our Bible becomes 3D in Godly marriages.
You know, personally I see myself most vividly in chapter 1, where Jonah is simply reluctant to “go.” Again, because I have such a destructive past, I’ve taken advantage of so many wonderful people, I often let guilt overwhelm me. This book has been something that has been brewing within me for years and I’ve tried to process through it on so many occasions and each time I crawfish out of it and even justify it by doing “good work” within my comfort zone. Even beyond the reputation I carry with some people, I’m also everything that “shouldn’t speak” right now- I’m a straight white christian male. I’m very hesitant to speak up for multiple reasons but this nudge of conviction inside me simply won’t go away. How do you determine God’s calling in your life? How do you know if it’s the right thing to do? We must start with the scripture. What does it call us to do? First it says be His disciple, then it says go make disciples. The only way to make disciples is to love people well and call them into more. All of the issues I talk about here are issues I have dealt with in great strides myself. And through it all, at my worst, I witnessed first hand God’s goodness. I felt it deep within my soul in an unexplainable way, but I also saw it in the most tangible ways by the people in my life. Some relationships ended, some new relationships were formed, and other relationships like the one with my wife were completely restructured around what matters most. The pain in my life suddenly made sense and I found hope that I never truly knew before I believed in Eternity. Lastly the peace in my life was a peace that truly surpassed all understanding. It’s important to note that the peace is important but it’s also the last thing to consider - Remember Jonah in ch. 1:5. Jonah was laid up like a house cat in the bottom of the boat while the storm raged around him. Was he at that time following the Lord? No. Peacefulness mixed with prayerlessness holds us back from experiencing our real calling. We must start with His word and chew on it like a glutton.
Millennials are now are in key leadership positions and can produce some amazing change. I’m not promoting government reform or peaceful protest. I’m promoting us to preach and teach to the world around us. It’s not rude to know Truth. You have permission to speak confidently on particular issues, no matter your degree of minority. We have an opportunity to be radically generous, but friends we must funnel it through the local churches, not global movements. We mustn’t start a new thing or make it more shiny. We just need to invite everyone we see in on the Big Secret. The whole world wants you to own who you are, to some degree, can we just give the world what they want? The local church is a beacon of hope, a lighthouse on shore, and we are drifting at sea as boat after boat sinks deeper and deeper. Are we encouraging people to try and drag the shore to their boat, or are we showing people how to drag their boat to the shore?
Revival is near and we shall be overthrown. Repentance is just us doing it willingly.
If I were to write this entire book about keeping people down in their limitations, that would be an awfully sad story and tremendous waste of energy. If I were to cast people out of the circle because they were unqualified to join our group of perfect people, I would be severely mislead on who I am as a sinner. If people I loved got left in the dust in an effort to prove how right I was, I would make the biggest mistake of my life. And yet, that is what people subscribe to everyday when they engage and identify in secular movements. Neither the Gospel, nor this book are about which political side of the isle you’re on, it’s not about the color of your skin, it’s not about your degree of victimization, it’s all about the degree of his amazing Grace and how He ultimately calls us further up and further in. I almost named this book “The Mistake- The Gospel in the Hands of Millennials.” That’s a testimony to the Lord working on my heart through this process. The Gospel doesn’t stop at the problem, and we cannot stop at the problem either. We cannot look to anything else beyond God in our life. His authority, His creation, His redemption, His calling; That’s the point of this entire book.
A few months back, while I was still very much in the middle of this book, I received a text from a friend. He had sent me a screen shot of someone who made a post saying “When we say Black Lives Matter we aren’t talking about an organization. We are talking about lives.” What he shared with me was that most people don’t even know what the organization is about, they just believe and ultimately promote the simple statement. So I asked him if that’s the case, does that make it appropriate to promote? Does ignorance justify promoting the dismantling of the family? Does ignorance justify placing a glass ceiling over a person just because of the color of their skin? Does ignorance justify turning a beautiful culture into a defiance culture? And for believers, when do we speak up about it? When do we let someone know that they are supporting something more than a statement? One could say “Just do it” is a personal mantra apart from an organization all they want, but Nike knows better. At some point you should know that Nike has that statement trademarked. It’s a brilliant marketing move when you look at it in that lens; an obvious statement wrapped in a truly evil agenda. Because by saying it’s not about the organization, by saying that it’s an obvious statement about lives, we are fueling the tank for the organization whether we aim to or not. Inbound marketing can be explained easiest in contrast to traditional or “outbound” marketing. Outbound marketing talks at you, Inbound marketing resonates with you. In the case of Black Lives Matter, they don’t have to promote themselves because the name of their organization is the attraction. Meanwhile, our emotions are the product, think about that for a moment. The name produces inbound marketing, you are both the product and the customer. It stokes the fire in the heart of people of all colors and then sells you tribalism instead of morality. It is wildly irresponsible to not admit that the liberal agenda and BLM are deeply interwoven. BLM’s slogan alone, with or without a direct link to the organization (if that’s even possible) now carries a factually false narrative that is built on dividing us more. They specialize in keeping people down in their limitations and they cast people out of the circle because of The Biblical Standard. If you find yourself disagreeing with me, it’s crazy to say this, but all I can do is point to the facts in both statistics and their own language. They aren’t hiding this playbook that I described and I’m not pulling things out of thin air. But also, If you find yourself agreeing with me, please don’t miss this: We can’t respond to this movement by saying “All Lives Matter.” That is just as ignorant as christians attaching themselves to it in the first place. Because while you may be equally and obviously correct, you are positioning yourself in opposition to an ignorantly thrusted good phrase - Black Lives Matter. Obviously black lives matter, obviously all lives matter, so the question is not which hashtag to use, the question is can the Christian finally make the distinction and refuse to associate with either movement. We already have a movement and it’s call Christ’s Church. Its mission is not to produce tribalism through race, it’s to call people further up and further in through grace.
Further up, further in is a calling that begins on Earth but will never be fully known on this side of Heaven. In The Chronicles of Narnia, it is this beautiful image of arriving in Heaven and quite literally you are being led further up and further in to the Glory of God. The fullness of the deity is being revealed to you around every corner. Past every relative and friend you once new as dead, they now welcome you into an eternal family where we’ve always belonged and never could describe. In the presence of the one true king we slowly forget everything we built in the old world and begin Chapter 1 of Real Life. I’m reminded of the distinction between mercy and grace. You’ve heard this one- Mercy is not getting what you deserve, like being let off the hook for a punishment. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, like ice cream after school on a Tuesday (to put it lightly). Ephesians 2:8 says “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Could you imagine if it said “For it is by mercy you have been saved?” That verse alone tells us everything we need to know about what we are being called into. The question is do you believe that? Do you believe the back half of the Gospel? The front half might be generalized as mercy - we deserved death and we didn’t get it. The back half is pure grace - as if avoiding death wasn’t good enough, an abundance of life is poured lavishly on our heads. Spurgeon said it like this, “A little faith will bring your soul to heaven; a great faith will bring heaven to your soul.” You can adopt a typical American faith and try your best to make church because you believe it’s the right thing to do. You can give to non-profits because it feels nice. Or, you can ridiculously surrender everything and open up your world to a promised life to the full. That doesn’t mean recklessness or poor stewardship, it doesn’t mean you live like John the Baptist in the wilderness all ‘granola’ and off the grid. It means releasing the grip on the things you hold so valuable and showing the world around you a love so amazing, so divine, that it demands your soul, your life, your all.
We began this little book with the tension of Ecclesiastes and Revelation. Is the world meaningless, is it a frozen & chosen Gospel message? Or is the world ending soon and it’s a turn or burn Gospel message? The answer is yes. Smack dab in the middle of those two books is where you will find the true Gospel- The person of God, the man named Jesus. This is where God becomes visible and the entire world is changed. Love and truth merge perfectly and encouragement and rebuke are spoken effortlessly. It is there that we lose sight of the human agenda and first see the Lighthouse from the Kingdom. We can wrestle over who is most qualified to speak, we can dispute authority in the name of oppression or elevate voices in the name of equity, we can completely lose ourselves in the magic show of man or we can wake up and see life for what it is. God is not interested in settling man’s fight, God is interested in calling us out of it all together. Luke 12:13-21 says this
“Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.””
We have a responsibility to take everything we have and share it with a lost world- To the neighbor and to Ninevah. It is not our authority that we carry but the authority we carry is sound. We don’t store up our own manufactured form of hope or justice, but we cling to and point to the author of it all. In Luke 12 we see Christ standing in the tension of mans dilemma and God’s wisdom being pure. He stood in that tension and He now has you in the tension. He made you, He knit you together in your mother’s womb, He placed you in your circumstances, and “no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13) He has made you and called you to be ready, to make disciples, and to call His people further up and further in to the richness of God. You are His delight, now go be His instrument.
