Transcript
To be the elect is to be the bearer of a tremendous responsibility, not to be the privileged favorites of God. You only have I known of all the families of earth, a very strong statement of the unique relationship of Israel to God. Therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities. That unique relationship carries with it not primarily a privilege, but primarily an enormous responsibility. But this constant perversion of the promise of the gift of election
into a privilege rather than a responsibility is one of the themes running right through the whole of the Old Testament. And perhaps the most memorable and dramatic illustration in the whole of the Old Testament is the story of Jonah, perhaps the supreme missionary tract of the Old Testament. Jonah is God's people, Israel, the church, the elect. Jonah, so very much concerned about himself, and God, so very much concerned about Nineveh. And Nineveh, remember once again, is
Babel, is Rome, is Megalopolis, is the secular city, is New York, London, Chicago. The world in its most negative sense, God so much concerned about pagan Nineveh. And so God calls Jonah to go into the wicked city and there to bear witness of God's grace. And Jonah runs away, tries to evade, but God catches him. And while Jonah is still asleep, as the church so very often is comfortably asleep, the pagans are rowing with all their
strength to save themselves and Jonah from the storm. And finally, it is the pagans who have to come and wake up the church. They come down and say to Jonah, what sleeper, why don't you get up and pray? And then the church is brought to confess its own sin. Jonah confesses that it is his sin that has brought down the wrath of God. But even then the pagans try to save Jonah. They row still more energetically
to try to save him. But Jonah has to be thrown overboard. The corn of wheat has to fall into the ground and die. The son of man must be three days and three nights in the deep. The church must lose its life. The elect must be punished for the sake of those who are not the elect. Because it is Jonah who is the bearer of the promise and not those pagan sailors. But it is Jonah who
must be thrown overboard. And out of this, once again, there is a resurrection. There is a new life. The corn of wheat that falls into the ground brings forth fruit. And a penitent Jonah sets out to go and obey God's call to preach to the pagan city of Nineveh. And then there is a miracle, universal repentance. The whole city repents and is converted from the king down to the last beggar. And Jonah is thoroughly disappointed. There
is going to be no hell after all for the people of Nineveh. Hell is going to be vacant. And Jonah, thoroughly disappointed and angry, goes and sits down under his juniper tree. And I never understood what the juniper tree was until I heard a brilliant poetical sermon from a Tamil Christian poet in a big public meeting in Madras, who identified Jonah's gurd as the mission compound. You see just on the edge of the city, neither right
inside the city nor right outside, but on the edge where the church traditionally sits to see what will happen to the wicked city. And anyway, there is Jonah under his gurd, thoroughly disappointed that God is not going to punish the wicked pagans after all. And the story finishes with God pleading with Jonah for Nineveh. Should I not have pity on that great city in which there are more than four score thousand children who do not know
the right hand from their left and also must much cattle, even the animals, God is concerned about. And there the picture ends. Jonah sulking, God pleading for his pagan Nineveh and even for its babies and its cattle. Now, the most dramatic missionary tract in the whole of the Bible, and one that in a sense tells the whole story. And if you want a footnote to it, there is of course that other sea voyage, which is described
in the 27th chapter of Acts, where again you will remember that there was a there is also one man who is the bearer of God's message. On that ship in the Old Testament, it is Jonah who is the bearer of the message. On that ship in the New Testament, it is Paul who is the bearer of the message. It is he who must come to Rome. He is the only character on that ship in a sense,
which matters from the point of view of the story of salvation. And yet, in the story, we are told that Paul tells the sailors that God has appeared to him in a dream in the night and promised to them that God will also grant you all who travel with you in the ship. The pagan sailors are also remembered and God has a care for them. And you see the picture, which is, as it were, crystallized here.
It is a people elect called for the sake of the world as a whole. It is Jonah who bears the message. No one else but Jonah can take that message to Nineveh. Nineveh must hear it from Jonah. You only have I known of all the nations on earth. Now, why this should be so, why God's plan of salvation should proceed by the way of election and not, as Hinduism would take for granted, by a universal message
which is equally accessible for everybody, wherever he is and whoever he is. That question we must come to later. But at the moment, just see it as the Bible presents it to us. A people, which is a particular people, which is called to know God in a way that others do not know God, which is called to be the bearer of God's blessing, which constantly misunderstands that call in terms of blessing for itself, but which is
constantly being punished, being disciplined, being chastised, being recalled again to recognise that it is the bearer of a blessing, not for itself, but for the world, for the completion of God's purpose for all the nations. So that is the first part. It is a universal cosmic history, but it is cosmic history interpreted through election, through the narrowing down to a small strand in the whole story. And this also seems to me to be very important that,
if one may put it so, election is not an afterthought. Paul says that it was before the foundation of the world that God chose us in Christ. And that is the consistent message of the scriptures. That, if I may put it in a crude way, creation comes within God's purpose of election, not election within God's purpose of creation. Even the creation of the world, even the creation of mankind is within this gracious purpose of God, which
we express by the word election. It is because God has chosen to make himself known and loved and trusted, that he has created a world, that he has created human beings. This is in contrast, and let me bring out what I mean by stating the opposite. The opposite view, which we so often tend to fall into, is that the whole created world is simply a kind of staging on which the drama of salvation is carried out.
So that the world, the material world, the physical world, the secular world, if you like, is simply, so to say, the staging or the scenery. But the real characters are, so to speak, distinct from that. And when the play is over, then the scenery will all just be destroyed. That is not the biblical understanding. The biblical understanding is that the creation itself is part of the story, that this whole cosmos is part of the story. It
is within God's gracious purpose of election. Now this has enormous practical consequences, as we shall see when we go on. Because, you see, it involves our whole understanding of what is man. What does it mean to be human? Are we human apart from our involvement in one another and in the created world? Are we truly human as isolated monads? Or are we truly human as we share in a common world, a created world? This is a
crucial issue, I think. And as I understand the Bible, it is clear that the whole story of creation is within God's purpose of election. And that, as Paul says, we are elect in Christ before the foundation of the world. Now that means, therefore, a second point which really arises from the first. And that is that the story, the cosmic story, is about not our escaping from the world, but about God's coming to the world. I was
putting it very crudely, but let me say what I mean. If you look at the greater part of the religious literature of mankind, you will find that religion is understood to be primarily concerned with a destiny for man, so to say, outside of this world, beyond this world. Certainly, this is true of all the Indian religions and of Islam. I know that on many, many occasions I have been asked to join in a public meeting in
Madras, where representatives of different religions have been invited to say what they mean by salvation. And I have always found that all my companions on the platform were absolutely clear that when we talk about salvation, we are talking about something which ultimately involves escaping out this world. And when I have started talking on the platform about this worldly question, they have always thought that I was mistaking the subject. But it seems to me that one cannot
read the Bible in the light of an experience of living in India. One cannot read the Bible without being struck by the fact that in the Bible, the stress all the is not upon our escaping out of this world into another world, but upon God, so to speak, coming back to this world to complete what he has begun. This is, of course, very true, obviously, in the Old Testament. The great messianic passages in the Old Testament
all speak about God establishing his just reign in this world. Take, for example, one could take hundreds of passages, but look at the famous passage that we so often read in connection with Christmas, Isaiah 11. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch shall grow out of his roots, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding of counsel and might, of knowledge and the
fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist and faithfulness the girdle of his loins. The wolf shall dwell
with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them and so forth. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Now there is a picture of a kingdom of justice, of righteousness, and of peace that extends not only through the
whole human community but even through the community of the wild beasts and of nature. It's a picture of God reigning over a renewed earth. And when we come to the New Testament, again the central emphasis in the New Testament vision of the future is the vision of Christ coming to reign. He shall come again. Not we shall go but he shall come is the central message. Of course it is true that there are one or two
isolated passages like for example the saying of Paul in Philippians when he says that to depart and be with Christ is very much better but then one must read that in its context where he immediately goes on to say our commonwealth is in heaven and from it we await a saviour the Lord Jesus Christ who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power which enables him to subject all things to
himself. So even there the context is the hope of Christ's coming and of course the final vision in the with which the whole Bible ends is the vision of the holy city which is not the city that we build on earth it is not Babel it's not it's not this illusion that we are going to build the kingdom of God on earth no it is God's city the builder and maker is God but it comes down
out of heaven it does not remain in heaven it comes down out of heaven and the kings of the earth the nations the Gentiles the heathen will bring their glory and their honour into the city and that's the vision with which the Bible ends a vision in which the original promise given to Noah of blessing to all the nations is fulfilled and we see the kings of the Gentiles the heathen the nations bringing their glory into
the city which is a so that the stress is upon the completion of God's whole purpose with which he created all things so the the mission of God is concerned with the consummation of all that God has done is doing will do with his whole creation of God this is what it means to speak of mission as proclaiming the reign of God well now then we come to the to the second great question that I have
to ask and that is in what way does Jesus bring the reign of God in what way does Jesus bring the reign of God in go back again to the opening announcements mark 1:14 Jesus came into Galilee preaching and saying the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the good news a background of longing for the coming of God's kingdom a longing which has been nourished by the reading of the
Psalms and the prophets by faithful Israelites during all those centuries when Israel was a crushed despised persecuted little remnant when humanly speaking all hope was gone but where this faithful remnant continued to nourish its hope on the promises of the Psalms and the that God who is indeed the king Yahweh who is indeed the king will manifest his kingship over all the nations now this message means that that day has dawned but Jesus says that in
order to that it is dawned you have to repent you have to turn round you have to do a u-turn you are facing in the opposite direction and you've got to turn around I remember an occasion when I was visiting a village in South India where which was somewhat difficult to reach there was no road to this village in order to get to it I had to cross river and there were various possible places where
one might cross the village congregation had made up its own mind which way I was going to come and they had prepared a great reception at one end of the village where there was the band and all the fireworks and the garlands and everything waiting at this end unfortunately I decided that the better place to cross the river was about half a mile farther up and so I crossed the river and arrived at the wrong end
of the village to find a totally deserted village major crisis ensued I had to disappear totally while the village reorganized itself and got itself placed in position at the right end of the village and I then reappeared and was duly welcomed well this this is perhaps a little sort of parable you see Jesus comes to a people eagerly waiting eagerly waiting for this long promised visitation of the king of kings but Jesus says if you are
going to if you're going to see this you have to do you have to turn completely around and face the other way you have to repent you have to do a u-turn in your mind because this kingdom comes not in the way that you expect the coming of the kingdom as it is announced in Jesus does not mean that Jesus will now so to say take direct control of world history and become the ruler of
the nations in the sense in which devout Jews expected it Jesus does not become so to say the manager of world affairs paradoxically what happens is exactly the opposite that is why repentance is needed turning round because Jesus bears witness to God's rule by suffering not by overpowering the forces of evil but by taking upon himself the whole might and weight of evil if one puts it in a rather crisp way when Jesus was finally rejected
by his people when it was clear that his message was not accepted there were two things that perhaps he might have done which would have aligned him with forces in his own time one would have been to go the way of the Essenes to take his disciples out into the desert to form a community that would pray and wait for the coming of the kingdom as the community represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls was doing at
that very moment he could have led his disciples out into the desert to form a community withdrawn from the world which would wait watch pray until God himself would bring his kingdom or on the other hand he could have aligned himself with the with the freedom fighters who believed that the only possible way was to take up arms and with the help of God overcome the power of Rome but what Jesus does is neither of these
two things Jesus rides unarmed into the center of the city he does the opposite of what Jonah did he goes into the heart of the wicked city at the moment when its hostility to him is at its height he goes right into the heart of the storm and there takes upon himself the whole weight of human burden of Christ's teaching the reign of God is a mystery which can only be known by faith and which can
only be announced in parables in riddles you remember that there is a very hard saying in mark four when the disciples ask Jesus about his parables and Jesus answers it by quoting from the terrible words spoken to Isaiah in chapter six of Isaiah if you remember in the great vision in the temple in Isaiah which we very very frequently read in church but which we almost always stop with the words here am I send me we
very seldom go on to hear what it was that Isaiah was sent to do but if we read on we have these terrible words go and say to this people hear and hear but do not understand see and see but do not perceive make the heart of this people fat their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed
it's a terrible message that is given to Isaiah and when the disciples ask Jesus why do you talk in parables Jesus answers by quoting those words mark four chapter verse 10 those who were about him with the 12 asked him concerning the parables and he said to them to you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God but to those outside everything is in parables or as we might translate it everything is in riddles
so that they may indeed see but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand lest they should turn again and be forgiven the same terrible words that were to Isaiah are taken by our Lord himself to interpret the teaching of his parables