I am
heartbroken to learn of the tragic shooting at Sutherland Springs First Baptist
Church this past Sunday, where 26 people have been killed and at least 20
others injured. This is a horrific act of evil inflicted upon unsuspecting
Christians who had gathered together to worship the Lord God.
Let’s pray
for this precious church family and the entire community as they deal with this
unimaginable situation. May the God of all comfort and peace show His
extraordinary loving-kindness in wave after wave of mercy and healing power. May
His amazing grace be sufficient for help in every need and in every moment. And
may the Sovereign Lord bring good out of all that Satan has intended for evil.
Now would also
be a good time (once again) for us to pray for our nation. We need a great
spiritual awakening. We need to repent of our sins and we need to turn to
Jesus, the only One who can save us from this divisive, chaotic, violent, ungodly
mess we’ve made. And – praise the Lord – He eagerly waits to be gracious and
exalts Himself to show mercy.
You’ve
probably heard of the prophet Jonah. God called him to go to Nineveh, and he
flat-out refused to go. Instead he boarded a ship going the other way, found
himself in the midst of a raging storm, got thrown overboard, and was swallowed
up by a huge fish. He was in the belly of the fish for three days and three
nights before God commanded the fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land.
But I want
to ask you this question: Do you know why God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh in
the first place? Do you know what kind of a city Nineveh was?
Well, let’s
just say that Nineveh would never have made the list for “Best Places to Live”
in Time Magazine. They were an evil and violent people. The culture was awash
in immorality, greed, and cruelty. They did not fear the Sovereign God of
heaven nor desire to conform to His truth. Does that sound like any place you
know today?
And the reason God sent Jonah was
because their wickedness had reached the point of God’s justice, and He was
ready to destroy the city. So the Lord called Jonah to preach a message of
impending doom upon the city, and this was their opportunity to repent so that
God’s judgment might be averted from them and His mercy on full display.
Do you know what happened, after
Jonah finally agreed to obey the Lord and go to Nineveh, that is? Amazingly
enough, this ungodly people believed the word and they repented of their sins!
The king of Nineveh even called for a city-wide three-day fast for both man and
beast so that the people would cry out to God for mercy. He urged the people to
turn from their evil way and from their violence, reasoning that perhaps “God
may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will
not perish” (Jonah 3:9).
And God’s response? “When God saw
what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and
did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:10).
Friend, I believe that our nation
is racing toward the point of God’s justice against us, and if we don’t heed
the message to repent and turn to the Lord now, we may not get another forty
days. Let us cry out to God for mercy. Let us, in the words of the prophet
Isaiah, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while he is near. Let
the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the
Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will surely pardon”
(Isaiah 5:6-7).
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