The Church Manual states that “The Church of the Nazarene recognizes all believers are called to minister to all people.” I love that statement. I love it because it really sums up how the Church of the Nazarene from its earliest days really felt the burden of the Great Commission and from the beginning wanted to follow that call and spread the Gospel across the world.
In his book, Our Watchword and Song, Stan Ingersol states, “Nazarenes took Matthew 28:19-20 as their Great Commission. A firm belief in the eternal ‘lostness’ of people apart from faith in Christ coupled with the desire to obey Christ pushed missions forward.”
I just finished my class on the History and Polity of the Church of the Nazarene. Most of you know that I did not grow up in the Church of the Nazarene. I actually grew up in independent Baptist churches, and as a result of my wife bugging me to find us a church after we were married, I wound up visiting this one, which we ended up joining afterwards. There was always one thing that I have loved about the Nazarenes since I first started learning about the Church, and that is that they were always so devoted, from the outset, to the Great Commission in Matthew 28. The Great Commission is of course “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The Church of the Nazarene, all the way back in 1908 grabbed onto this and stamped it on their heart, fully believing this was their mission, all members embracing it and doing whatever they could to contribute to that call.
And it worked. Within the first twenty years of the founding of the Church of the Nazarene, there were churches in Canada, India, Cape Verde, and Japan, soon followed by work in Africa, Mexico, China, the British Isles, Cuba, Central America, South America, Syria and Palestine. Here in America, the Church of the Nazarene was distinguished by their willingness to minister to the homeless and alcoholics. This was in the age when alcoholism was beginning to be recognized as a true issue. After World War 1, there was a dramatic rise in the abuse of alcohol among veterans who had just witnessed and endured war on a scale never before experienced, which gave rise to drunkeness. It was this issue that would give birth to both Prohibition, and later to Alcoholics Anonymous, but before either of these two events occurred, the Church of the Nazarene was already on the scene, giving out blankets, feeding the homeless, and ministering to those in need. The Church of the Nazarene was also instrumental in advocating for women’s rights, publicly supporting and pushing for the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, giving women the right to vote. The Church of the Nazarene has never been afraid to engage the culture, affect society, and spread the gospel. Because of this, the Church of the Nazarene, in just 110 years, has become the largest Church in the Wesleyan tradition, with over 2.5 million members worldwide.
That just amazes me! How did just one church organization accomplish so much in such a relatively short amount of time? From 1908 to 2018, the Church of the Nazarene grew from roughly 10,000 members to 2.5 million; from 200 churches to over 30,000 worldwide. It is really amazing, but how? The answer is pretty simple. They surrendered. They heard the call, the Great Commission given to every Christian, and they submitted.
I think this is the problem, not just in the Church of the Nazarene, but one that Christianity in general is facing today. Somewhere along the way, Christians stopped surrendering. They stopped selling out to Christ. Go ahead, and open your Bibles to the Book of Jonah.
-Jonah 1:1-3-
I think it would be fair to say that most of us if not all of us know the story of Jonah. We probably learned the basic story in Sunday School, have probably heard it taught and preached many times over the course of our lives. It is one of the most popular and widely told stories in the Bible, and because of this, I am not going to go through the whole thing, but just touch on a couple points that I believe are worth noting. We all know the highlights of the story; God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach, Jonah hates Nineveh and refuses, he tries to sail away, there’s a storm, Jonah gets tossed overboard and swallowed by a big fish, he prays while in the fish, gets vomited up on shore after three days, goes to Nineveh, preaches, and the people all repent and turn to God. Those are the basics. But I had a question when re-reading it.
Why didn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh? Is it because Jonah was full of sin? Was he deliberately rebelling against God? I don’t believe so, because he was the prophet of God, which means that He was God’s mouthpiece on Earth. There are not any other examples of evil prophets being used by God, so it wouldn’t make sense. Verse 2 here in Chapter 1 tells us that the city was full of evil, so is that why he didn’t want to go? I think that that plays a part, but again, being the prophet of God, Jonah’s entire purpose was to communicate God’s Word to people, and often that meant confronting evil. So while it plays a part, I don’t think that is entirely it either.
What if I told you that I think that Jonah’s reason for not wanting to go to Nineveh was entirely legitimate? That, if I were in his shoes, I would feel exactly the same way? I would feel pretty much the same way as Jonah, because Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. You don’t have to know that much about the Bible to know that the Assyrians were a thorn in the side of Israel all the way through the Old Testament, along with the Persians and the Babylonians and the Philistines. There’s more too, because the Ninevites were absolutely renowned for how they treated their enemies, which, of course, would include the Hebrews.
Historians actually have tablets written by various kings of Assyria, in which the kings brag about the things they did to people that they conquered, and to help illustrate what Jonah must have felt about going there, I wanted to read some of what has been written down.
“I destroyed, I demolished, I burned. I took their warriors prisoner and impaled them on stakes before their cities. I flayed the nobles, as many as had rebelled, and spread their skins out on the piles [of dead corpses]? many of the captives I burned in a fire. Many I took alive; from some I cut off their hands to the write, from other I cut off their noses, ears and fingers; I put out the eyes of many of the soldiers."
I slew two hundred and sixty fighting men; I cut off their heads and made pyramids thereof. I slew one of every two. I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chief men of the rebels, and I covered the wall with their skins. Some of them were enclosed alive in the bricks of the wall, some of them were crucified on stakes along the wall; I caused a great multitude of them to be flayed in my presence, and I covered the wall with their skins. I gathered together the heads in the form of crowns, and their pierced bodies in the form of garlands."
When you read that, you can begin to understand a little of how Jonah must have felt when God told Him to go to Nineveh. It was very much the same as asking a Jewish rabbi during World War 2 to go to Hitler’s house and invite him to temple. It was a death-sentence. And so, what does he do? He runs away. I kinda like the picture here. God comes to Jonah and says, “Hey Jonah, I want you to preach to the city of Nineveh.” And Jonah doesn’t even say anything. You see that? It says he arose and fled the presence of God. I get this mental image of someone who is out and about, at a store or something, and they see their ex-girlfriend or boyfriend, y’know? And so they pretend to talk on their phone and not notice them. “Yeah! I was just thinking about heading down to Joppa and catching the next ship to Tarshish. I need a vacation!” He just goes! No acknowledgement or anything!
But it makes sense, in a way, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m sure Jonah didn’t envision his career ending as a wall-covering. A human poster for some Ninevite kid. We can make the assumption that in everything else, Jonah was totally given over to God. I’m sure he prayed, he knew the Scriptures, he loved his people. Jonah was devoted, as much as we can tell, because God is incredibly patient with him. But this one thing, He held back. He wasn’t completely sold-out. In this area, he hadn’t submitted. So here’s the question; where are you holding back? What has God demanded of you that you keep telling Him ‘No’ about? I think this is something that all of us probably struggle with. I think it is something that all of Christianity struggles with. We have forgotten what its all about, and that is why we see all the things we do going on in the world. We see the rise in immorality, we see the opioid epidemic, we hear yet again about the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, we see denominations splitting over the issue of gay marriage, we see corrupt politicians flourishing in office, we see entertainment becoming more and more crude and filthy, and it isn’t just in the world. It’s in the church as well!
I said it before, but actual church growth has been at a near standstill for almost 20 years. For all the new fancy churches springing up all over the place, almost 90% of new church memberships are from transfers from another congregation. Most studies that you can find online are only showing 6-10% of new membership in any given denomination to be from new converts. What does that mean? That means that people aren’t getting saved. The gospel isn’t getting preached. Souls are not being won for Christ. When you boil it down, it means a lot of Christians do not care enough about their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family to tell them about Jesus, which means that a lot of people are dying and being doomed to an eternity in Hell. We, as the church, have become consumed with ourselves. Oh sure, we said a prayer. We accepted Jesus in our hearts, but after that, what did we do?
You see, God has a calling for all of us. Like I said at the beginning, the Church of Nazarene takes a stand on the belief that every believer is called to minister to those around them. Every believer is supposed to spread the gospel. When Jesus gave the Great Commission, He wasn’t just talking to His disciples. He was talking to anyone that believed in Him. We are all supposed to be ministers of His truth. We may not all be called to be missionaries, evangelists, teachers, or pastors, but we are all supposed to preach the Gospel.
For some reason, the Western Church stopped viewing that as an essential part of being a Christian. Christianity as a whole is viewed, by people that are Christians, as a private matter. We’ve taken the idea of a ‘personal relationship’ and turned it into a secret. Christianity, by many believers’ standard, is something where you said a prayer asking Jesus into your heart, and so now you try to live a good life. Sometimes you pray. Sometimes you read your Bible. Sometimes you go to church. Some people are a little more extreme, but by and large, that’s it. We’ve all held back. We’ve blinded ourselves to the reality of what Christianity is supposed to be.
So Jonah fled. While it may be intellectually understandable, from a spiritual standpoint it’s not. If you boil it all the way down, Jonah’s desire for self-preservation outweighed his desire for spiritual intimacy with God. Look again at verse 3. What was Jonah running from? It says from the presence of the Lord. And here we see a picture of so many of us today. Our desire to save face, our desire to keep our jobs, our desire to stay safe and warm, embarrassment free, keeps us out of the presence of God. When you look at it that way, we need to start asking why we are not experiencing the presence of God in our lives. Why is the church so spiritual impotent? Why is society guiding and impacting the church, rather than the church impacting society? Why is the world falling apart? Its because God’s people are more concerned with self than God. We cannot impact the world, we cannot see a change in the culture, we cannot win others for Christ if we do not carry His Word to them. We have to do it. No one is going to fulfill the calling that God places on your life unless you do it. See, when Jonah fled from God, God didn’t go and get another person to preach to the city. He could have, but that calling was for Jonah.
If you read further in the story, you see that God causes a storm to rise up, and the boat to Tarshish gets caught in it. The sailors are terrified and wondering what they can do to rescue themselves, and through conversation and other things, everyone comes to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to toss Jonah overboard. It is here that Jonah has his run-in with the big fish, gets swallowed, and three days later he finally breaks down and surrenders to God. There’s a couple side-notes here that really interested me and that, unfortunately, we can’t follow, but I just want to mention them. Did you notice that Jonah’s solution to the issue is to be tossed into the ocean during a storm rather than telling the sailors to turn around and take him back? In other words, he was still so set against God that he would rather potentially drown than to submit. Isn’t that like so many of us? We’re so set in our ways, so attached to things and activities, that even though we know that they are the problem in our lives, we keep them close rather than letting God have it? Addictions, habits, entertainment, friends, whatever it may be, we are so attached to that one thing keeping us away from God and His will that we would rather suffer than give it up. It reminds me of a sermon I was preparing a while ago, and I was going to preach on Adam and Eve, and what it really meant to make clothes out of fig leaves. You see, fig leaves cause a rash that can leave sores that rise 3 inches of the skin. They burn and break, and can leave scars afterwards. But, like Jonah, Adam and Eve weren’t willing to admit they were wrong. Jonah was willing to die to stay on his course, and Adam and Eve were willing to scar themselves and live in pain rather than admit they were wrong. And we are not so different.
Two other things to notice: The sailors couldn’t recognize Jonah was a prophet of God – Can people recognize you as a Christian.
The sailors didn’t turn to God until Jonah was tossed overboard. Are you keeping people from turning to God?
-Jonah’s calling to preach to Nineveh didn’t change. Jonah 1:2 and Jonah 3:2 give exactly the same directions. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you have been, what you do, God has placed a calling on you and it will not change.
*I was called to preach when I was 18 years old, but did not pursue it until I was 31.
Quote from Watchword and Song page 379.
We cannot be effective until we surrender. If we are not surrendered, we need some serious introspection. Have we ever surrendered? Coming to Christ is not a commitment, it is complete surrender of self. Paul called himself a slave to Christ. Jesus said to pick up your cross and follow Him. This meant a death sentence to self. No one survived a Roman crucifixion. They broke your knees if you lasted too long. You were doomed. When you follow Christ, it is to the abandonment of your desires and your dreams. You become captive to Christ and the calling on your life. What is the difference between commitment and surrender? When you make a commitment, you are still in control, no matter how noble the thing you commit to. One can commit to pray, to study the Bible, to give his money, or to commit to automobile payments, or to lose weight. Whatever he chooses to do, he commits to. But surrender is different. If someone holds a gun and asks you to lift your hands in the air as a token of surrender, you don’t tell that person what you are committed to. You simply surrender and do as you are told.
This is what made the early Church of the Nazarene so successful. As the founder of the Nazarenes, Phineas Bresee, once said, “We are debtors to every man to give him the gospel in the same measure as we have received it.” In other words, if Christ was so good to us, how can we keep him from others? He gave Himself for all men. Who are we to hold Him back from them?
And so that’s the question I want to ask today; are you surrendered? Have you given yourself to Christ? I’m not just talking about salvation. Of course, if you’re here and you’ve never given your heart to Jesus, I ask you to today. There are just a few things I know for certain. I know that we are all eternal beings. While these bodies may be temporary, I know that God created us with an eternal soul. I know also that all of us are going to die, and that our souls are going to spend eternity in one of two places. You see, God dwells in Heaven, where things are perfect and where He wants each and every one of us to join Him when we die. But there’s a problem; because of the sin each of us bears, we can’t make it there. No matter how little or how much you sin in life; whether you just lied once or stole a candy bar from the store, or whether you’re a serial killer, it doesn’t matter, sin small or little cannot dwell in the presence of God. We can’t make it to Heaven. We are doomed to die and go to Hell. But there’s good news as well. God wants us to join Him in Heaven so much, He loves us so much, that one day He decided to clothe Himself in flesh and come down here as the man Jesus Christ, live 33 years, never sinning but living as a perfect man, and then pay the price of sin for all of us. He was nailed to a cross and took the sins of all mankind for all time on Himself and made a way for us to go to Heaven. His blood washes away our sin. His death opened the gates of Heaven for us. And all He asks is for you to believe and welcome Him into your life.
Believer, if you’re here and you have heard this sermon, ask yourself what is it that I’m holding back from God? What is He asking from me that I am not giving Him? Are you experiencing His presence and power in your life? Is He blessing you? Or is worship becoming routine? Is your spiritual life empty, hollow? If so, I trust that God right now is pointing out an area of your life where you are resisting Him. Stop running. If you want to experience God’s power, if you want to experience true peace and joy, stop running and just give it all to God.
If you read the rest of the story of Jonah, you’ll notice that there is no happy ending. Jonah eventually goes to the city of Nineveh and preaches a half-hearted message. The entire city repents of their sin and turns to God. The Bible says that there were 120,000 souls in the city, but instead of rejoicing, Jonah becomes bitter. The Bible says he became furious with the city’s conversion, and the Book of Jonah ends with God rebuking the prophet. You see, Jonah committed to following the command of God; he did the very least he could do. Is that what you’re doing? Sure, you come to church, you pray, read your Bible, but you don’t witness, and you have things in your life that God has asked you to give up. We never see anything else about Jonah in the Bible. His story ends with a rebuke, and we never find out anything else about him. He could have been another Moses, another Samuel, or Elijah, but instead he ends in obscurity. What will happen with your life? Are you just going to coast by, doing the basics, ignoring God? Or will you surrender fully to Him, and see what works He may do through you?
