ASC 2018 Michael Ramsden Thursday Morning Eng

well thank you it's great to be here with you this morning I almost feel like praying for the person we just saw in the video they ran they went running but they managed to lose their dog at the end so maybe we should pray they're reunited before too long well it is a privilege for me to be with you and a privilege for me to be here and in the next four sessions together we will be looking at the Book of Jonah so if you have a Bible on your phone or on paper you may want to have it open there I would also like to say a word of thanks to the translators who have a very difficult job I find it interesting because I like to speak so fast and it will take enormous discipline to try to speak slowly and so pray for the translators because my job is I would like them to be blessed rather than dead by Friday night is a difficult thing to do now The Book of Jonah is a fascinating book out of all of the books of the Old Testament there is something which is rather unusual about it because in Jonah chapter one first one we read the word of the lord came to jonah son of Amitai now that is nothing unusual about that that phrase occurs many times but in each instance when we hear that phrase the next verses that I arose or you know Isaiah arose Jeremiah whoever it is and they obeyed God's word but Jonah is unique the word of the Lord comes to Jonah he hears God's voice he is God's prophet he has seen God's power he believes it is true he believes the word given to him is true but he runs away it's all fine to talk about running but you need to be going in the right direction and here we see Jonah the typical man he's running in the wrong direction he won't stop and ask anyone for directions and he gets as far away from God as possible and the question is why why does Jonah run away why is it that we read when God says to him go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because it's wickedness has come up before me but Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to Tarshish why does he do that well Jonah lives at the time of the Assyrian Empire the Assyrian Empire is for many ancient historians one of the most evil empires that has ever existed in human history they invented new means of torture new means of killing they ruled by terror and fear many people today would say even today we have never seen an empire so ruthless so evil and they are one of the superpowers of their time just imagine that imagine a group today some terrorist group but imagine they had the military power of America what damage could they do many of the groups we see today that live by fear are quite small but they do have a lot of damage but what would happen if they had an army and a navy and an Air Force how much more damage could they do so Jonah is living at this time the Assyrians are destroying his people and his country they're destroying and conquering everything around them now God comes to Jonah and says Jonah they're evil they're great evil has risen like a stench to heaven what they have done is so incredibly bad the bad smell of it goes all the way up to me up to heaven and you're to go and tell them they are evil and they're wrong and I will judge them now how would you expect Jonah to feel think of the person you liked the least the person you hate the most and God comes to you personally and says to you that person's evil is huge the smell of it has risen to heaven and you are to go to them and say you are wrong and God will judge you how would you feel now there are three honest faces smiling at me the rest of you are pretending you would not be happy most people would feel vindicated happy before God God is with me he's against them I'm right they're wrong let's go but that's not Jonah's response God comes to Jonah and says Jonah the people you hate their evil is great you go and tell them that they will be judged by me Jonah knows something else Jonah knows that God is gracious God is compassionate and God forgives and Jonah doesn't want that to happen Jonah is angry with God Jonah is angry with God because Jonah thinks God is doing something wrong he knows how powerful goddess he knows what God can do he knows that God is able to turn them around but he doesn't want that to happen Jonah lived at the same time as Isaiah Amos and Hosea now imagine that imagine this conference and you had four speakers Jonah Amos Isaiah and Hosea now that's an impressive lineup for prophets we'll get to here Jonah's testimony about the big fish will get to hear Amos and Hosea that will bring us to repentance in Isaiah while all of his sessions would overrun is a big book so he lived at that time now in each of these books those prophets speak to Israel if you read the last chapter of the Book of Amos God says Israel must repent God speaks through a moss and says if you repent things will be restored and if but if you don't repent you will be destroyed in the Book of Amos if you read the last chapter God says Israel you must repent and if you repent you will be blessed and here are all the blessings that will come to you but if you don't repent destruction will happen in the book of Hosea if you read the last book last chapter last two chapters God says if you repent you will be blessed same message but if you don't repent you will certainly be just and in Isaiah if you read the end of the Book of Isaiah Isaiah talks of all of the blessings again that will come because of repentance but for the unrepentant there will be judgment but Jonah knows something else as well because Jonah knows Amos is prophecy and Amos prophesied that God would use the Assyrian Empire to punish Israel did you hear that God will use the Assyrians to punish Israel so if Jonah goes to Nineveh and they repent God will forgive the Assyrians and they will live and then they will punish Israel but if Jonah doesn't go to Nineveh they will not repent they will be destroyed then God cannot use them to punish Israel because they won't exist anymore so what do you think Jonah wants to happen to the Assyrians he doesn't want them forgiven he wants them destroyed and Jonah is angry in Jonah chapter 4 we'll read how angry Jonah is with God he's incredibly angry he believes this is wrong God can't do this he wants justice he wants fairness he wants to get back what is his he's been cheated his people are oppressed they're being threatened he wants God to come and rescue he doesn't want God to forgive the Assyrians and he's angry with God one of the biggest issues for Jonah is this Jonah is not doubting God's existence Jonah is doubting God's goodness God are you really good are you really fair will you really do what is right and Jonah believes he knows what is right now to some extent this is true for all of us as you heard my father is was from a country which is as far west in Europe as you can go before you hit the Atlantic Ocean and then America and my mother is about as far east in Europe as you can go before you leave and go into the Middle East now I was raised as a child most of my life in the Middle East now in Saudi Arabia where I first was growing up I heard nothing about Jesus you organize a meeting like this in Saudi Arabia that is a crime punishable by death they remove your head with an axe this is a very effective deterrent they have no repeat offenders and I grew up therefore hearing nothing about Jesus Christ zero then my parents moved to Cyprus when we lived in the south and when I moved to Cyprus I was a teenager and as a teenager I only had one goal in life all of my energy all of my creativity everything was poured into achieving just one thing I wanted to be cool now as you can see I may not have achieved this but at 16 I was trying hard I watched a lot of movies growing up and I wanted to be like my heroes now there was one actor in particular who I thought of more than anyone else possibly one of the greatest actors who's ever lived amazingly he's never won an Oscar despite his incredible number of films I'm referring to a man by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger now I wanted to be like him in one of his movies it starts with him walking up a mountain on his shoulder he's carrying a tree and in his other hand he's smoking a cigar now I wanted to be like him well I don't have the build to carry trees so I took up cigar smoking in order to be like him another one of my heroes was James Bond I wanted to be like him James Bond if you read the books has a silver cigarette case I had a silver cigarette case I had my initials engraved on it I'll smoke filterless French cigarettes you can take one flick it so it spins and catch it you can always light the other end I thought this made me cool now this is sadly true you know on a box of matches there's that strip you like the match against it you strike it what I would take that and I would stick it to the bottom of my shoe so having flicked a cigarette into my mouth I could take a match lift up my boot and light it now this was inspired for me by the coolest man alive his name was Clint Eastwood as far as I'm concerned the coolest man ever to walk on this planet the story is told that he was being interviewed once the interviewer said why does everybody think you're so cool he took a little cigar he put it on the edge of a table he flicked it so it started spinning like this he caught it in his mouth and as he caught it he took a match from his back pocket he lit it under the table lit the cigar inhaled very deeply blew one big smoke ring three small smoke rings through the big smoke ring and then said I don't know but when I heard about Jesus something began to happen and after six or nine months I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was true he was the son of God he'd been crucified and raised back to life and he wanted my life and this made me unhappy I didn't want it to be true why well I was very happy I was doing well at school I came from a good family I had good education I was good at sports I was captain of the tennis team I was captain of the swimming team I was captain of the basketball team I was head of the debating society I was captain of the chess team obviously as you can see I was very good-looking and very humble so my life was up here I felt very happy but when I found out the Christian faith was true I was worried because if I became a Christian house woried my life would drop from here to here in other words my life would be worse as a Christian I'd have more fun more enjoyment more fulfillment as a non-christian than as a Christian that's what I completely believed at that level therefore I was also doubting God's goodness I was doubting God's desire and ability to fulfill me I didn't believe when Jesus said you will know life and life in all its fullness I believe the opposite would be true if I became a Christian life would become empty just before I became a Christian I went to some non-christian friends what happened was I someone suggested to me that we should make a Christian group I wasn't a Christian but it sounded he didn't he cheated me he didn't use the word Christian he said why don't you have a youth group for young people to come I thought that sounds interesting so I got a group we got a group of young people together my brother and I my younger brother and I and then they said there's someone who's very good at doing things with young people and they gave me his name so I went and I said I want you to start a youth group here in this country and he set one up now he was a Christian missionary I didn't know that at the time so I went on the first day with my friends and we discovered this was going to be some a Christian thing but he was interesting so we went back and we brought more friends and more friends and more friends after six months I saw the leader one day he was looking very sad I said what's wrong he said I want to take you away on a camp but I can't get permission from the government he says and then we've tried and tried and tried they've said no there's no way forward so I said to him I think we can help we are the government so my family my family were a family who can make things happen you know I mean so I'd seen this happen already when we first moved to Cyprus a long time ago we were told would have to wait three months to get a telephone line three months we make one phone call the next morning the president of the national telephone authority comes personally to our house he wants to apologize that he couldn't come last night he hopes he hasn't upset the family because he would never upset the family and then he stays to personally supervise the installation of the line and test it so it's that kind of family you know the kind of family yeah so I said mother I need your help she said what is it I said you know that group I go to she said yes I said we want to go away for a camp but we can't get permission she said whose help do you need I said do you know the Chief of Police she said yes she said when I was fifteen he was at the same school as me he asked me to go out with him for coffee I said what happened she said your uncle George came to him knocked out his two front teeth and said if he ever talked to me again he would kill him so I said can you bring him so she rings him and the guy says of course I'll do anything for your son I didn't know it was your family asking if it was the family we would say yes straightaway so you have my permission my mother hangs up she says you have permission from the Chief of Police who else do you need I said do you know the Minister for Interior she said of course we make one phone call he's on holiday in France two hours later we get a fax from France to his office ordering the release of the camp one day early I went up an auger to set up the camp the next day everybody arrived and the day after that I became a Christian so God actually had me organized and planned my own conversion now just before I prayed as I said I went to some non-christian friends who I brought to the camp and I said I need to tell you something I said I'm going to become a Christian tonight I'm gonna ask them to pray with me and I want you to know that from now on I won't be enjoying myself anymore and that's what it felt like that on the altar of truth I would sacrifice my only chance for happiness and so I went off to become a Christian expecting to feel worse that things would be bad now God did something very surprising but to all of us in this room to some extent there are times when we doubt God's goodness we doubt his fairness we doubt are you right Jonah is so sure that he is right at his thinking he's convinced God must be wrong in his and so we see a very big difference between Jonah for example and Adam and Eve when Adam and Eve sinned they ran away from God and hid because they had done something wrong but in the Book of Jonah Jonah runs away and tries to hide because Jonah thinks God has done something wrong he is completely convinced God is wrong which is why in Jonah chapter 4 when God forgives the Assyrians we read but to Jonah this seemed very wrong Jonah was sure God had just failed now there's something even bigger that's going on here when we ask these questions about God are you good can you be trusted we also have to be aware of the fact that we respond to injustice differently now please listen carefully now this will be some of the hardest things that I'll say when we analyze culture we sometimes talk about honor cultures in an honor culture the most important thing we look for the thing that we esteem in leaders is that they act with honor that's how you get status that's how you get standing that's how you get respect you defend your honor every culture works differently so at one point if you wanted to offend someone you would come with a white glove you'll come up to them and you'd slap them in the face what happens next out comes the sword and you have the jewel to defend your honor or pistols at dawn the next morning that sunrise you meet you each choose a gun you walk ten paces you turn bang and you shoot to defend your honor the way you have status the way you have standing is you defend your honor you protect your honor honor is the most important thing to you if I act with honor then I earn your respect now we would contrast these cultures with dignity cultures now in a dignity culture the narrative is different in a dignity culture the narrative is this I don't need to earn your respect by doing something you should respect me because of who I am and what we look for in our leaders what we esteem what we elevate what gives me status is dignity so in a dignity culture someone may attack my honor but I may choose not to respond I may say nothing publicly instead maybe I'll take the person to a quiet room I'll sit down with them I'll say why did you say this and I'll talk to them and when I come out of the room I'll say to people okay we've arranged it everything's fine and that would be a dignified response that would be acting with dignity and I would have status respect because I had acted in that way now the thing that honor cultures and dignity cultures have in common are two things number one if something bad happens to me the key question is how do I respond my sense I don't have honor if I go and get daddy to respond for me every culture has stories of a prince who's insulted and his father is the king if the Prince shields the knowledge from the King and deals with it himself honor but if the Prince goes to his father and says daddy they're being nasty to me and then the father comes and punishes them is that honorable no we have no respect for the prince in dignity cultures is the same someone attacks me do I go around telling everyone I know I keep it quiet and I go and speak with them I solve it out if I go to someone else and say so and so is being nasty to me and they go and punish the person being nasty to me does that have dignity no so an honor culture dignity culture first of all I respond I don't go crying for help and secondly I don't go around boasting about how much pain I'm in how hard it is for me how difficult I keep it quiet but increasingly today we talk about victim culture now in victim culture it's very different in a victim culture I get special status because of all the bad things that have happened to me so I am elevated I have standing I have status because of all the terrible things that have happened to me my job is to make you feel sorry for me the more sorry you feel for me the more status I have the bigger the grievance the bigger the injustice the greater the status which is why victim cultures we tell everything to everybody you insult me what's my first response Twitter Instagram and Facebook and there's a huge tendency to exaggerate or even to lie to make you feel sorry for me now in a victim culture the narrative quickly becomes this hey everything I do as a victim is motivated by love but everything you do if you disagree with me can only be explained by hate do you see everything I do is explicable through love but if you disagree with me the only explanation is you hate me that means if anyone disagrees with me they hate me so in a victim culture it becomes impossible to disagree if you say to someone I disagree their responses therefore you hate me if you work for any large corporation in the world right now in any country in any culture there are three powerful words you can use right now they are the three most powerful words you can use and it strikes terror into every HR human resources department in the world the three words are I am offended if someone has offended me as a victim it means the person guilty of the offense hates me all disagreement is hatred which means the entire population falls into one of two groups number one there are the oppressed the victims and number two there are the oppressors which one are you so if I've been oppressed and you don't agree with me well you're an oppressor too because if you were on the side of justice you'll feel sorry for me you would be with me now the thing with victim groups is this in a victim culture everybody in a society makes their little group they define their victimhood according to which group they're in so I'm in this group you don't like me because I look forum or I have a different accent or whatever it is but whatever you want their sexual preference political voting record whatever that is my group if you disagree with us you hate us what happens if you want to join my group well if you want to join my group you must articulate my complaint more vociferous Lee and more militant Lee than me so if you take up my course with militancy and a loud voice and make it even worse by saying it's terrible what they've done is awful then I say come join my group and now you're part of the group but if you disagree with me once you join the group you're out again ah you lied to me you really hate me which means we now live in a world where in almost every country our political leaders do the mathematics they count the number of different victim groups in their society they count how many votes are in each victim group and the leadership will advocate their complaint more militant Lee and more vociferous Lee than the group itself and so long as they got the mass right they'll win every time what that means therefore is that there are no calming voices there are no voices who try to diffuse the offense everyone is trying to maximize it which is why we have no statesmen and States women in our world today or very few if I ask you 30 or 40 years ago who are the statesmen who are the state's women who are the people who are bigger than the politics you could probably give me a few names people who are bigger than the disagreements bigger than the petty fighting in the politics but if I were to ask you today who were the statesmen in your country who are the state's women who are the people who are bigger than all the political infighting you're going to find it very hard to come up with names it's just very difficult you see in the past a statesman would come to a situation and say hey that was wrong but your response is wrong that's also wrong what they did to you doesn't justify you doing this to them and that would be a statesman like response they bring both people to a point of repentance and they bring peace but we live in a world now where peace is in short supply everybody thinks about the pain done to them and we constantly cry for justice we're constantly saying hey it's someone else's responsibility to sort this out you need to come and fix it and if you don't fix it then you're just as guilty as everyone else and the stakes are getting higher so in almost every University every government every employer every society we see this dynamic at work we're all talking about the injustice we've suffered and the pain we all want something to happen to someone else and we don't want anyone to disagree with us but this is a problem let me try to give you just two examples that happen in England recently there was a student who was one of the leaders of the National Union of Students so in England every student is made a member of this Union and they were having a debate she was being criticised because someone had published a letter against her attacking her and they were they were criticizing this student leader because she didn't reply in public and they said you need to reply how can you remain silent so in the debating chamber she raised her hand she raised her hand in order to say look I have tried to respond it's true I didn't publish a letter in the press back to her I wrote to her personally I have written her a personal letter I've asked to meet with them personally quietly away from the press but for raising her hand they wanted to make throw her out from the debating chamber why well because the National Union of Students has a safe space policy part of the safe space policy is to prevent hand gestures which denote disagreement the thinking goes like this if someone speaking and you make a hand a gesture with your hand that signifies you disagree then you're disagreeing with them that means you hate them that means their space is no longer safe it's like hitting them and that's unacceptable so then you must be thrown out so by raising her hand she denoted disagreement by denoting disagreement she's guilty of hatred therefore she has to be thrown out isn't that incredible think about a society that works that way shortly after that or shortly before that we had another even more famous incident incident Britain's most famous feminists Germaine Greer Australian born but lives in England she made comments about transgender people I can't repeat what she said she used lots of short very rude words now I could tell you because you're Christians you'll have to forgive me for using these words but she was very rude so the National Union of Students passed a motion preventing her from speaking at university even though she was an academic she was no platformed you cannot have a platform you cannot stand and speak here after she was no platformed a man by the name of Peter Tatchell came to her defense peter is one of Britain's best-known gay rights activists Peter Tatchell has been campaigning for gay marriage since 1980 he very famously at one point threw himself naked into the Archbishop of Canterbury's pulpit when he was on live TV you know to raise support for his course so Peter Tatchell had a press conference in which he said the NUS the National Union of Students is wrong to no platform Germaine Greer allow her to speak allow her to give her lecture ask difficult questions challenge her for doing this Peter Tatchell was no platformed by the National Union of Students for being homophobic now why was he homophobic well the student who passed the motion to ban Germaine Greer is gay and remember everything I do is motivated by love as a victim but if you disagree with me it means you hate me so now the student thinks Peter Tatchell disagrees with me he hates me I'm gay therefore he must be homophobic so they know platformed Peter Tatchell banning him from speaking at universities at this point a well-known academic in England called Professor Richard Dawkins had a press conference and it most of you will know who he is Richard Dawkins said that a group of university students who could look at the evidence and conclude Peter Tatchell was homophobic were so stupid they shouldn't have been allowed to go to university in the first place for saying this the National Union of Students proposed a motion to have Richard Dawkins banned from speaking at universities because of his hate speech now why am i sharing this with you we live in a global victim culture victim culture is against everyone who disagrees sometimes as Christians we think is just us sometimes we think they're just against us they are against everyone it affects everyone and it's in danger of silencing the world through tyranny but this is what happens and this is the story of Jonah that's why this book speaks so powerfully to our generations today Jonah has suffered real injustice yes real pain and real loss The Book of Jonah is not a book of prophecy the Book of Jonah is a book about a prophet the question isn't is God forgiving the question is can Jonah forgive will Jonah forgive and listen to what God wants him to do or will he refuse now these things are very hard it's very hard when you feel you've suffered great loss and great pain to feel that yes I want right but it's destructive this is a very live issue in this world as I stand on this platform my family on the Cypriot side used to own land here before 1974 so there's a possibility this land on which this hotel built is actually my family's you're all my guests since 1974 it isn't so how should I feel about that well what does God think of the Turkish people he loves them what's God's desire for the Turkish people that they should know him how should I feel well the same which is why it's an honor for me to have Turkish friends and be in this part of the world and to go and speak in Turkey when I was a young student someone wrote me a letter they were a senior Christian leader this letter calls great offense and there were a few friends with me they know I'd written and then they saw the response they said to me you should publish this letter make difficulty for this person embarrass them speak against them publicly and as I prayed about it I learned something I have never forgotten because as I praised I prayed I realized one big truth there was nothing this man could do against me which could ever equal the sin I had committed against God nothing there was no injustice I could suffer that would equal my sin that put Jesus Christ on the cross and if God had forgiven me how should I respond to him we have a lot of talks in the Christian world about money sex and power but I've met more Christians who've given up ministry because of cynicism than money I've met more Christians who've given up ministry because of unforgiveness than because of sex I've met more Christians who've given up ministry because of bitterness than anything else and so as we start this time together and then go into a time of reflection let me ask you this do you recognize this cultural problem that Jonah had can you understand Jonah's anger but more importantly what about your own heart as you sit here are you holding on to pain are you holding on to anger it's not a question of justice you may have suffered terrible injustice the question is how will you respond inside you can campaign for justice and ask for the right thing to be done externally but internally we have to learn to forgive so let me ask you one other last question and then we'll pray would you like to hear the word of the Lord would you like God to come and speak to you and say I want you to do this are you sure because this is precisely what happened to Jonah God Himself personally comes hi Jonah I like you go there and do this but Jonah is so angry he is so bitter he is so cynical he runs away he thinks God is wrong and the rest of this story is the story of Jonah who claims to be a prophet but thinks that God he is worshiping is morally wrong in what they're going to do I won't spoil the end by telling you how it ends and if it takes me this long to explain three verses imagine what we'll do with four chapters let's pray father we thank you that we have a word from you a word we can trust a word which is true the Lord we also know this word challenges us and so as we start these next two days together we bring our own hearts before you Lord examine our hearts are we holding on to offense are we bitter are we guilty of unforgiveness help us to let go on the inside Lord even as we campaign for justice in this world may we learn to love as you love and may we learn what true forgiveness is may we forgive others as we ourselves have being forgiven by you and so Lord where we need to repent we say sorry and father we ask that wherever you would have us go and whoever you would have us talk to that we may do so with peace and love because we're walking with you and we pray this in Christ's name

Channel: Cru in Eastern Europe

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Id: EEnSHEMjPxo

Length: 44min 5sec (2645 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2018