There is an episode of The King of Queens where an accountant visits Doug and Kerry Heffernan. As they are going through preparation of their tax information, the accountant asks what charitable contributions they have made that year. After much consternation, they came up with about $15.00. After the accountant left, Doug and Kerry, had an exchange of justifying themselves insisting that they aren’t bad people but in reality have a giving spirit of generosity.
We all like to think well of our ourselves, but what we think or believe about ourselves sometimes is not the reality. We like to think that we are financially benevolent, but when we investigate our checkbooks, we find that we spend a lot but give very little. We like to think that we are gracious hosts but find that, within a year’s time, we have had very few people into our home. We like to think we care about the spread of the gospel, but when asked how we have graciously and intentionally shared the news of Christ or promoted the gospel, we find that we have not done so to any great degree. Like Doug and Kerry we believe that we are, deep down, good people in spite of all evidence against us. The evidence shows that we just flat out don’t obey the positive commands of God’s Word.
The late James Montgomery Boice, once pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, wrote, “Those of us who make a point of affirming the Bible’s authority must take note of this especially, because it is very easy to make a crusade of something while not actually allowing it to influence your life. You can wave a banner. You say say, ‘Oh, yes, I believe in the Bible.’ You can get people to cheer. But then you can go out and do something that is perfectly contrary to what the Bible says. You can even know the Bible enough to quote it back to God and yet disobey it.”
Jonah was a preacher who knew the Bible and went out and disobeyed it. Why? The real reason was that Jonah knew God’s Word and chose to ignore it. He knew that “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7), was true to His Word and was going to exercise mercy to Nineveh. Jonah, bold-faced before the Lord, disobeyed. It was not a question of not knowing the Word or not believing the Word. It was disobedience to the Word.
When the peeling is pulled back from our hearts and we are exposed for the disobedient people that we truly are, it is then that we begin to see our need, Lord willing, for Christ for us. Jonah had to be taken to the depths of suffering and completely out of any control of his own, before he would cry out to the Lord of mercy recognizing that only the Lord saves. When we see the magnitude of Christ for us, we should desire to trust and please Him rather than ourselves. When we understand Him as our Deliverer, we also should recognize that He is our King.
How are you reading, hearing, believing and responding to God’s Word?
In what areas are you least likely to respond positively to God’s Word to you?
Spend time in prayer asking God to reveal His mercy to you that you would be wooed from your self to His gracious calling.
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