- [Tim Keller] Let me open with
prayer. Let me just pray. Our Father, when Christians get
together to learn, it's something... It's a form of fellowship,
it's a way of stirring each other up to love and good works,
it's a way of coming together and asking you to teach us.
O Holy Spirit, please teach us. So show us what we can learn
from the Book of Jonah that would be of help to how we live
in a society that is not one that any of us saw coming. A society that, in some ways,
is unique in the history of the world. What does it mean for us to be
Christians in this society? Help us because we spend this
time together. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. My title, and you must know it
or you wouldn't be here, is a "What a Minor Prophet,"
that's Jonah, the Book of Jonah, "what it can teach us
about race, grace, and mission." Race, grace, and mission. Now, some of you know I wrote a
book on Jonah but it was...because,
over my lifetime, I preached on Jonah three times,
all the way through, and it was my wife's favorite
book for me to preach on. And she just was after me for
almost 15 years to put the sermons into a book, and I did. So I hope she's satisfied.
And she says she is. And so, the Book of Jonah,
a lot of narrative books are difficult to...it's difficult to
determine exactly what their purpose is. There are many books that,
you know, what Paul tells you, you know, "I'm writing this to
you, Philippians, so that you will do this and this and this." The real question is why was the
Book of Jonah written? What's the theme?
What's it really about? It's a great story, it's a
narrative, but what is it about? And I guess I would say there
are three competing candidates. When I read the commentators,
some commentators, usually the more liberal ones, say,
"It's about race. It's about Jonah's nationalism
and his racism." Other people say,
"It's about mission. It's about how we must go into
all the world and preach the gospel, not be afraid to do
that, not be unwilling to do it." And some people say it's about
grace, not so many do say that but I'm going to tell you I
think if you have to choose between race, grace,
and mission, it's mainly about grace. When I wrote the book I made
a...the subtitle of the book is <i>Jonah and
the Mystery of God's Mercy.</i> And if you go through the entire
book, not a very long book now, you go through the entire book,
you'll generally see that that's Jonah's struggle, and here's the
struggle, "How can God be both just and merciful to such a
wicked nation as the Assyrians?" He's always saying, "Look,
I know you're a merciful God but you're also a just God. So how can you be both just and
merciful to this wicked, evil, imperialistic violent nation,
the Assyrians?" And the answer to that can't
happen inside "The Book of Jonah." In fact, the answer can't even
happen inside the Old Testament. The reason it can't is because,
in the end, the only way we're going to see how God can be both
absolutely just, and yet, absolutely merciful and
forgiving, at the same time, is when he gets to the cross. So, in one sense, I think,
and this is I think the main purpose of every book in the
Old Testament, and I actually think it's the main driving
force in the Book of Jonah, it's the thing that Jonah can't
figure out, "If you're this just God, how in the world could
you possibly be merciful to these awful people? How can you be both just and
merciful at the same time? I can understand you're being
merciful, but then, you're not just. I can understand you're being
just but how can you be merciful? How could you be both?" That's the driving question. That's what drives the narrative
and the plot. And actually, as you know,
the Book of Jonah, ends on a cliffhanger. The Book of Jonah is very odd,
it's almost like an Old Testament version of
The Parable of the Prodigal Son. You know, The Parable of the
Prodigal Son is about a younger son who rejects the Father's
love by running off and living with prostitutes and disobeying
the Father. But then, there's an older
brother who stays at home and seems to obey the Father but,
in the end, we see that he also has rejected the Father's love. And you remember that you
have...in other words, there's two ways to reject the
Father's love, one is by being disobedient,
the other is by being very obedient and thinking,
"Now the Father owes me." So you have the prodigal son and
you have the pharisee. And they're both ways of
rejecting the love of the Father, that's what The
Parable of the Prodigal Son is about. And you remember The Parable of
the Prodigal Son ends in a cliffhanger because,
at the very end, the Father is saying to the older brother,
"Won't you come in? Won't you give up your
self-righteousness? Don't you see what I have done? Don't you understand my grace?" And it ends as a cliffhanger. the Book of Jonah, many people
have pointed out, is exactly the same kind of story. Some people even thought that
Jesus, when he created The Parable of the Prodigal Son was
looking at the Book of Jonah. Because, the first two chapters,
Jonah is the younger brother. God asked him to do something
and he disobeys and he runs away. The second half of the
Book of Jonah he's the elder brother. This time he goes and he obeys
God and he preaches to Nineveh. But, in the end, of course when
Ninevites repent, he's furious exactly like the
older brother in The Parable of the Prodigal Son. He's furious, "Why would God
have mercy on these people?" And it ends with God looking at
Jonah and saying, "Shouldn't I have mercy? Shouldn't I have mercy on
120,000 people who don't know the right hand from their left?" Do you see how remarkable the
parallels between "The Parable of the Prodigal Son," in the
New Testament, and "The Parable of the Prodigal Prophet," in the
Old Testament, in which case Jonah plays both roles. And therefore, really the
Book of Jonah is mainly about grace and about his
inability to grasp grace, his inability to understand how
God could be both just and merciful. So it's about the gospel. Even though the answer to the
question doesn't happen inside the Book of Jonah,
you have to put the Book of Jonah in its context in the
whole Bible and see how it points to the New Testament
where alone, we have an answer to Jonah's
question. But having said that,
and some of you probably know me enough to know I would've said
that, that the Book of Jonah is about grace. It's also about race and
mission. So I want to do, over the
next...about half our time, is I'd like to talk about what
the Book of Jonah tells us about race and what it tells us
about mission. And maybe, if I'm well-behaved,
I'd love to have some time for questions. We'll see. It's a very big room but I would
hate to talk all the way through the end, I'd love to
hear some questions. So let me, first of all,
talk about what we call race. What do I mean by that? Well, the fact is that the
Book of Jonah contrasts Jonah to the very pagans that he
despises. God says, "I want you to go and
preach repentance to this group of people who are the Assyrians. They're another race,
they're another nation, they are pagans, they're
idolaters, and of course they're a major threat to the national
security interests of Israel. And I want you to go and preach
to them and call them to repent." Of course, Jonah resists that. First, he resists it by running
away, then, he resisted by going. And after they do repent,
he's furious. And it's very clear that he
despises the people that God has called him to care for. And yet, all the way through,
you can't miss this if you read the Book of Jonah carefully,
the author of Jonah is constantly contrasting Jonah
with the very pagans he despises, and the pagans
always make Jonah look bad. And the pagans are always acting
more admirably and acting in a way that is better than the way
Jonah is acting. So when he's on the boat,
you know, he goes into the hull of the ship, he doesn't pray to
God, he doesn't do anything. And the pagan sailors come down,
the pagan captain comes down and says, "Why aren't you
helping?" When they discover, by pressing
him, that the storm is because he is running away from his God,
they don't grab hold of him and they don't throw him overboard,
"You're the reason for all this," they try to get out of
the storm. In the end, he tells them,
"Please, throw us in," and they're afraid to, they don't
want to. And finally, at the very end,
they throw him in the water and, when the storm goes away,
they sacrifice to Yahweh. They sacrifice, they do
sacrifices to, not just to God in general, not Elohim,
but Yahweh, the Covenant name, they're converted. The very people that Jonah
said, "I'm not going to go to those filthy dirty pagans of
another race and preach the gospel to them." And look what happens. Even though he is doing
everything he can to avoid it, through him a group of pagans
get converted, the very people he doesn't want to help get
converted. And it's as clear as can be that
Jonah actually is a less admirable person than the
so-called dirty rotten pagans. And then, later on, when he goes
to Nineveh, he says...interesting,
by the way, here's his gospel presentation,
"40 days and you're going to be destroyed." Simple. Winsome. And very practical. No, no. He doesn't say, "Now,
here's how you can actually repent and get forgiveness." Now some commentators say,
"Well, of course Jonah must have told them how to repent. The text tells us all he said
was, '40 days and then it will be,'" you know, "'overturned and
destroyed.' He must have told them more." The text doesn't say that,
the Bible doesn't tell you that. And considering his attitude
toward them that you see in the last chapter, I don't think he
did. I think he came to them and
said, "You evil people, God is going to nuke you. In 40 days." But of course, they turn to God
without much help at all from Jonah, and it says they
repented from the least to the greatest. And they said "Oh Lord," you
know, they said, "maybe God will have mercy on us." And, in the end, they have more
trust in God's mercy, which of course comes through
because God relents and he doesn't destroy them. And, at the very end, Chapter 4,
he's furious, he's angry, Jonah, because of course now God didn't
destroy the city and God says, "Do you have a right to be
angry?" and he says, "yes, I have a
right to be angry. Angry enough to die," and he
says, "I knew you were merciful and loving." "I knew you were merciful and
loving, I knew you might do something like this." So here's the Ninevites with
much more happiness and trust in the mercy of God than Jonah. Here's the pagan sailors who are
considerably more considerate of his safety than that he is of
their safety. What's the point? Some people have said that Jonah
is the anti-Good Samaritan. If you put this Good Samaritan
parable of the New Testament together with the Book of Jonah
and the Old Testament, what do you get? Now, let me remind you what the
Good Samaritan is about. The Good Samaritan is a man
who's coming along and he's in a very dangerous place on a road,
the road to Jericho, infested with highwayman,
and he comes upon a Jew. And the Jews and the Samaritans
hated each other, two different races that despised each other. And he comes upon a Jew,
his sworn enemy, but he sees the man had been beaten up by
robbers, he was perhaps going to die, he desperately needed
medical help. But to even stop, for the
Samaritan to even stop on the Jericho Road was taking his own
life in his hand. One commentator says this,
he says, "The Good Samaritan stops on the Jericho Road to
assist someone he does not know in spite of the self-evident
peril of doing so. He gives him his own goods and
money freely making no arrangements for reciprocation,
in order to obtain care for the stranger. He enters into an inn,
itself a place of potential danger,
and he even enters into an open-ended monetary
relation with the innkeeper, an open-ended monetary relation
with the innkeeper, a relationship in which the chance
of extortion is very high." When Jesus is asked,
when Jesus says, "You have to love your neighbor as
yourself," and Jesus is asked, "what does that mean? What does it mean to love my
neighbor? Who is my neighbor?" Jesus tells the story of the
Good Samaritan. And what is that story? A man who gives practical
financial economic help to a person of a different race and
of a different religion. So when you ask Jesus,
"What does it mean to love?" it means...he gives you an
example, it doesn't mean that's the only way to love anybody,
but he gives the example of someone who gives a
sacrificial life-risking practical help to a person of a
different race and religion. That's what Jesus says,
"There's my example of what it means to love your neighbor." Which is exactly the opposite of
what Jonah does. Jonah does not want to risk his
life. In fact, he imperils the life of
the people that he despises. So if you take the anti-Good
Samaritan, Jonah, and you put him together with the
Good Samaritan, let's answer these questions from the Bible,
ask the Bible this question, "Who is my neighbor?" And the answer is anyone of any
race or any religion that's in need is your neighbor. "And what does it mean to love
my neighbor?" It means not just to say, "Go,
be warm and filled," it
doesn't just mean to have feelings of warmth to them. In fact, not at all,
there's no indication that the Good Samaritan looked at the Jew
and just had this great warmth in his heart for the Jew in the
road, it's to give practical help. If it's economic, it's economic. If it's physical, it's physical. If it's spiritual, it's
spiritual. Of course, the most important
thing you could possibly do, the greatest thing you could
ever do for anybody is to help them find faith and have their
soul saved for eternity through the faith in
Jesus Christ. That's obviously the best way to
love anybody. But it's not the only way to
love anybody, and Jesus makes sure you see that. He's my neighbor
anybody, of any race or religion, what does it mean
to love my neighbor? It means we're supposed to be
meeting the most basic needs. And then, thirdly, "How should I
regard my neighbor?" Notice, by the way, Jesus does
not put a Jew on the horse going along and finding a Samaritan in
the road, instead it's fascinating--
he's telling a Jewish audience, "What does it mean to love my
neighbor?" he puts a Samaritan on the horse
and puts a Jew in the road. Why? He was trying to say,
"You know these Samaritans? They don't believe in God. They're heretics, they're
racially different, they're religiously different but they
obviously are capable of great good, of great wisdom." And "The Good Samaritan
Parable," in some ways, is Jesus giving us a doctrine of
common grace. And the common grace is you do
not have to be a believer in the Living God in order to be a good
person. You know why? Because God loves to make all
kinds of people wise and good. He makes the world far better
than it would've been if the only good people there were
people who believed. And therefore, "How should I
regard my neighbor?" How should Jonah have regarded
his pagan neighbors? They were actually, in many
ways, more admirable than he was. So you see all those questions
lead us to this: racism is a sin because it's a violation of the
second commandment. And the second commandment,
"Love your neighbor as yourself," is based on the
doctrine of the Image of God. Every single person who's
created is in the image of God and, therefore,
of equal dignity and worth. John Calvin, of all people,
has a passage, in his Institutes, that is
absolutely astonishing, in which he works out the
social-justice implications of the doctrine of the image of
God. Listen to what he says. He's drawn some remarkable
implications, Calvin says that he's heard many Christians tell
him, "I do not...there's a foreigner in my neighborhood or
there are some immoral people in my neighborhood and they do
not deserve my help. So don't tell me that I have to
give practical aid and help to people who don't deserve my
help." Calvin turns around and says,
"Even if they are immoral, even if they are of a different
race or of a different religion, they're in the image of God." And this is what he says about
that. He says, "You may," this is a
quote from "Calvin's Institutes," this is the third
book, "say about the stranger before you that you owe nothing
for any service of his, but God, as it were, has put him in his
own place in order that you may recognize toward him the many
and great benefits by which God has bound you to himself. Sorry, let me translate that. "You say, 'This stranger
deserves nothing from me,' but God has put him in his own
place." Why? Because he's got the image of
God in him. Listen to this, "You will say,
'He has deserved something far different from me,' but what has
the Lord deserved?" This is John Calvin. Look at your neighbor.
Yes, your immoral neighbor. Yes, the neighbor
of another race. Yes, a neighborhood that doesn't
deserve your help. Look at that person and say not
what he deserves but what does God deserve because the image of
God is on him. And then, he goes on and says,
"Do not consider men's evil intention but look upon the
image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their
transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to
love and embrace them." Do you know how hard this is? This is John Calvin, okay? Supposedly a narrow and very
conservative reformed theologian. But listen, he says,
"When you see someone who seems to not deserve your help," he
says, "remember not to consider men's evil intentions
[inaudible] don't look at their hearts, don't look at
their character, but look upon the image of God in them
which cancels and effaces their transgressions."
What? "Cancels and effaces their
transgressions and, with its beauty and dignity, allures us
to love and embrace them." And then, he goes on to say
this, "Each Christian will so consider with himself a debtor
to his neighbor that he ought, in exercising kindness toward
them, set no other limit than the end of his resources." I'll read it again.
It's breathtaking. Each Christian will so consider
his neighbor, so consider himself a debtor to his
neighbors, because of the image of God in them, that each
Christian will exercise kindness toward them and set no other
limit than the end of his resources. So John Calvin says,
"If you just understand the image of God and you just
understand the call to love your neighbor, you understand
what Jesus Christ has said about that, you understand that
they have the image of God on them, that you shall set no
limit on your willingness to help them but the end of your
resources." No matter what their race,
no matter what their religion. Now what does that mean? The number one thing you do to
help somebody, the best thing you can ever do is save their
soul through faith in Jesus Christ. And therefore, building up the
church is the single most important thing in lifting up
gospel, the single-most important way to love the
human race. Okay? Nevertheless, the doctrine of
the image of God shows this is not a maybe, this is not
a...this is not an option. Is it secondary?
Yeah, it is secondary, sure. Is doing justice, as it were,
is loving your neighbor, is eliminating racism,
is helping the people in need, is it as important as sharing
the gospel? No, but it is absolutely
necessary. It's not an option, it never can
be an option because here we are. And what that also means is that
then we have to do what Jonah did not have to do. The commentators point out that
when Jonah was in that boat with all the pagan sailors,
they come down and they say, "Why aren't you praying
to your God? We're praying to our God. Why aren't you helping
us with the storm. What are you doing down here?"
You know what they're saying is? "We're all in the same boat.
Why aren't you caring about us? We care about you, why don't you
care about us?" Christians have to care about
the common good. Christians have to look at their
city, they have to look at their community. And the only way to love your
neighbor is to make sure they have the things that they need. And let me give you a little
list. "Everybody in your community
ought to have a safe environment rather than a community that's
plagued by crime or health hazards." "Everybody in your community
ought to have humane workplaces, a place where there's jobs that
are available." "Every community needs a state
of peace rather than one marked by violence between individual
races, groups, or nations." "Everyone in your community,
your city, needs a just social order rather than one marked by
corruption and by a justice system weighted against the weak
or the poor." "They need publicly-available
resources like good educational institutions." You know, what are we talking
about here? We're talking about loving your
neighbor. You say, "Oh, that's all that
social political stuff." Yeah, it is. But I don't know how you love
your neighbor without doing stuff like that. And this is the most important
thing that Christians can do now. I think the church's job,
as the church, is to lift up the gospel, I think
Christians' job is to both share their faith and also
love their neighbor. But it is not an option,
it's not like, "Well, you know, those of you who'd like to be
into that." No, it's not an option. And to work against racism is at
the very heart of what it means to honor the image of God and
love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. Now, the second thing I want to
talk about...that's race, and this is all in the
Book of Jonah. The second thing I want to talk
about for maybe 10 minutes is this, I've already mentioned,
it's a subject of justice. It's interesting that when Jonah
is thrown overboard, the pagan sailors look like they
convert. Now, it doesn't exactly say
that, but they offer sacrifices and they call on the name of the
Lord and it's the Yahweh, it's the covenant name. So it certainly looks like that,
weirdly enough, Jonah, by disobeying the call to win
pagans to true faith in the Lord, he actually ends up
winning pagans to faith in the Lord. What happens at Nineveh is
rather different. I've heard people say,
"Nineveh had a great revival," but what's interesting is,
if you read what actually happens... actually in here, I can probably
find it somewhere. Yeah, okay. This is Jonah Chapter 3,
"Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time saying,
'Arise. Go to Nineveh, that great city,
and proclaim to her the message
that I tell you. So Jonah rose, set out for
Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Jonah went a day's journey into
the city, and then, called out, 'In 40 days, Nineveh will be
overthrown.' And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put
on sackcloth. From the greatest of them to the
least, the word reached the king of Nineveh and he rose from his
throne, stripped off his robe, covered himself with sackcloth,
and sat in ashes. And he cried out and issued a
decree in Nineveh, 'By the decree of the king and his
Nobles, let no man or beast, no herd or flock, taste
anything. Let them not graze or drink
water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let
them call out to God with fervor. Let every person forsake his
evil ways and the violence that they are doing toward others. Who knows, God may relent and
turn from his fierce anger." Verse 10 says, "When God
examined their deeds, how they forsook their evil way,
He renounced the disaster He said He would do to them and He
did not carry it out." Now, look very carefully.
Did the city of Nineveh convert? No. Interesting.
When Jonah... First of all, the word Yahweh is
never used, the Covenant name's never used. It doesn't say they called Him
the name of the Lord, like the pagan sailors did. All the way through,
you have the Hebrew word Elohim, Elohim, Elohim. So they called to God...and
notice, it doesn't say they put away their idols, which is a
sign of conversion, it doesn't say they got circumcised. But what it says is,
the King says, "Turn from the violence you were doing to your
neighbor. Turn from your evil ways." What's actually happening here
is a form of social reform. What Jonah says is, because of
your evil ways, you're going to be destroyed. They changed their evil ways. And what's going on is we know
this about the Assyrians, they were a very violent
society. There was a great deal of crime,
there was a great deal of injustice, there was a lot of
slavery, it was a violent culture. And the king of Nineveh gets
convicted that, "We've got to clean up our act," but it
doesn't say that they converted. And so, Jonah comes and preaches
the wrath of God and the result is a social reform but not a
revival or a sort of conversion. What do we learn here? First of all, most commentators
point out that when Amos, when Isaiah and Jeremiah,
there are some places where God has the prophets speak to the
pagan nations. And when they speak to the pagan
nations, they generally speak to pagan nations about their
violence, about their injustice, about the way
they're treating people. This isn't a big surprise here. What you have is...what
is the mission of Jonah? Preaching the wrath of God and
bringing about social reform. Now, right now, from what I can
tell when I look around the world, I see people
preaching the wrath of God and not doing much at all about the
justice and injustices in society. Then I also see Christians who
are out there trying to help society and trying to do social
justice, but they don't preach the wrath of God. What you have, in Jonah,
is a mission in which God is very concerned about
injustice in society. Because look, even though they
don't convert, the Ninevites don't convert,
the fact that they turned from their violence is enough
for God to say, "I'll give you another chance." God relents, which means,
to some degree...obviously they're not saved, obviously
they haven't turned to true faith, and yet,
God is glad and he shows that he's glad that they did a social
reform. On the other hand, Jonah comes
in there preaching the wrath of God. And I just say that I believe,
I'll give you a couple of final ideas here because I'd like to
have 25 minutes in which you can ask me some questions,
I've said that I believe that the primary reason...here I'm
following, I'm absolutely tracking with my friend,
brother Kevin DeYoung, the primary thing the church is
supposed to do is to preach the wrath of God against sin and to
call people to repentance and to see people believe and have
faith in Jesus Christ. It's also true that the Bible
says, Jesus says, that Christians are supposed to be
salt and light in the world. You know what salt does? Salt penetrates the world and
keeps it from going...you know, salt goes into meat to keep it
from going bad. Salt goes into meat to bring out
the flavor and to keep it from going bad. And when Jesus says,
"You're the salt of the earth," He's talking about the fact
that, yes, gathered together, we're preaching the gospel but,
spread out, we're not only talking to people or friends
about the gospel but we're also loving our neighborhood,
we're also out there being good Samaritans. And it keeps society
from going bad. It keeps it from
becoming corrupt. To some degree,
there's corruption. To some degree. And therefore, what is the
mission of the church? In one way, I would say,
the mission of the church is to preach the gospel. What is the mission of the
church not just gathered but also scattered? Not just the church gathered,
as a body, but the church scattered all the
Christian individuals? It's to both do that
in word and deed. In other words, witness to the
gospel not only by sharing faith and calling people to
repentance, yes, we're supposed to do that with our friends,
but we're also supposed to be doing justice and caring for the
poor. And it's when those two things
come together that you really have a powerful mission. When the world sees Christians
only evangelizing and not caring about society, not doing the
Good Samaritan thing, when the world sees Christians
only evangelizing, you know what they see? They actually see people who
just care about increasing their tribe, increasing their
market share, increasing their power. No, that's not true but,
from the outside, they don't have the Holy Spirit,
what else are they going to think when they see you do
evangelism and the church grows and grows and grows. They're going to say,
"They're just like every other business in the world,
every other power block in the world trying to get a bigger
part of the market." But when they see us
evangelizing and pouring ourselves out for the poor and
the needy and caring about racial justice,
when they see us doing both, as Christians, then I think,
frankly, the preaching of the gospel makes a lot more sense to
them. I think I'll just say this,
there is, as you know, a fair amount of controversy,
in last couple of years, that when Christians talk about
doing justice, that sounds literal, sounds like the
social gospel. Keep this in mind, the Bible
talks about justice all the time and the world talks about
justice all the time, but those are very different
accounts of justice. The Bible's justice is based on
the idea that we're all made in the image of God and,
therefore, every human being, in the image of God,
has rights as it were. Let me just give
you a couple of examples of where the Bible talks
about...because of the image of God, what does the Bible say
when it talks about justice. So, for example, biblical
justice means giving equal treatment to people. So Leviticus 24:22 says,
"Have the same law for the foreigner as for the
native-born." You're promoting injustice if
you privilege one race or nationality over another. If you privilege citizens who of
one race over citizens of another race. A host of other biblical texts
announce, "Any judicial system weighted in favor of the wealthy
while disenfranchising the poor."
Okay. Secondly, the Bible says,
"Justice means having a special concern for those without
power." So Proverbs 31:8 and 9 says,
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Speak up for the rights of all
who are destitute. Defend the rights of the poor
and the needy." That's the Bible. So to say, "Speak up for the
rights, speak up for human rights,
defend the poor and the needy," that's just what the Bible says
about justice. But what's it based on?
It's based on love. I have to do that because I'm
commanded to love. When Jesus says, "All of the
commandments are comprised under two headings, they can all
be summarized by this, love God and love your neighbor
as yourself." That means that anything the
Bible says you must do in the law either
basically breaks down to a form of loving God and/or a form of
loving other people. And therefore, when I'm doing
justice, it's a form of love. When the world talks about
justice, it's not talking about the same thing. In fact, the world, when it
talks about justice, is almost talking about the
opposite of love. Have you noticed that? See, when I'm doing justice,
that means I'm loving not only the victim but also maybe the
perpetrator. If I'm saying to someone,
"You are doing something wrong," I'm doing that out of love for
them. Not only out of love for the
people that that person may harm and not only love for God but
love for that person because it's never loving to let
somebody go on sinning. It's never loving
to them at all. And so, if I'm trying to stop
someone from doing injustice, I'm doing it out of love. And if they decide to stop,
I can forgive them. Why? Because my justice is actually a
form of love. The world's justice is not the
form of love, the world's justice is the opposite of love. The world says, "I can either be
just or I can be loving. I can't do both." Loving means I accept everything
they do. Justice means I stop it. And then, of course if I stop
you then I can't ever forgive you because the world's justice
is not based on the image of God, the world's justice is
just an exercise in power. And the world's justice does not
know how to forgive perpetrators. You can see it right now every
day, read the newspaper. To say that the world's kind of
justice, and they're always talking about justice out there
in the world, that somehow that means the Christians shouldn't
be doing justice, we can't do justice, a social gospel's
wrong, it's wrong because the Bible talks about justice all
the time. But biblical justice is not the
world's secular justice. So there are some ideas from
Jonah on the mission of the church and there are some ideas
on race. And so now, what I'm going to
ask for the final 23 minutes and 55 seconds, 54 seconds,
53 seconds, is, if you've got a question, raise your hand,
I got two wandering mics. There's way too many people to
do this but I just can't imagine talking all the way
for 60 minutes. So... Okay, mic guys... Their names aren't actually
Mike but I'm going to call them...you know, 1 Michael,
2 Michael. Okay?
Choose somebody. Oh, you want me to choose.
Just right here, I can see her. Raise your hand, I'm kind of
nearsighted, an old guy. Right here. - [Female 1] What do you say
about the notion that Jonah is prefiguring Jesus? - Great. Does Jonah
prefigure Jesus? Yes. Now, he's, in some ways,
he's a bad prefigure. I mean, in Mark, Chapter 4,
when Jesus is asleep in the boat, look up a
commentary somewhere, and I'll show you that the
depiction of Jesus in the boat, in Mark, Chapter 4, and the
depiction of Jonah in the boat in, in Jonah, Chapter 1,
are almost identical. There's a wind that comes up,
Jonah is asleep during the storm, Jesus' asleep
during the storm, the sailors come in and say, "Don't you
care, what are you doing asleep?" And they both get up and they
both solve the problem. Jonah of course says that the
way for you to be saved from the wrath of God is to throw me into
the wrath, and then, I will die instead of you. Jesus of course, in the boat,
just stills the storm. But most, I think, wise
commentators say the reason Jesus could still the storm was
because that eventually, on the cross, Jesus was thrown
into the ultimate wrath of God, he bowed his head into the
ultimate storm, which is the wrath of God, and he took it so
we wouldn't die. And of course, there is that
reference in the book, in Matthew, where Jesus actually
says that his death and resurrection is the sign of
Jonah. So he even sees that Jonah's
death, and then, his resurrection, as it were,
from the fish, having saved people from the wrath of God is
a prefigure of Jesus himself. So thank you, I love leading
questions. Thank you for giving me an
opportunity to say something I should've said before,
I love that. Somebody else?
Right over here. Sorry, I'm not going to be able
to see everybody, but this is better. It's certainly better than just
talking for 60 minutes. Go ahead. - [Male 1] I'm from South Korea. I'm just curious, as a
foreigner, what do you think...or what
evangelicals in America think of the policy of
Donald Trump? I mean like immigrants, like,
you know, what Trump...yeah, [crosstalk] those things. - Thank you, brother. It's inevitable that somebody
would ask, but you see, the Americans didn't have the
same amount of courage that you did. Well, I don't think I want to
say anything... Listen, Donald Trump is part of
a movement, in the Western world, Donald Trump is
not alone, he is one of many leaders, in Europe as
well, that are saying, "We're having too many
immigrants and we are being overwhelmed by people
from other countries." So Brexit is about that,
there's political parties all through Europe that are also
saying, "We're having too many immigrants." And Donald Trump has also been
elected by people who are saying the same thing, "Too many
immigrants." Let me make a distinction
between the policy and an attitude. The policy is, I don't think,
I hope no one disagrees that every single nation has to have
some standards. So, in other words, no nation
can just be overwhelmed by immigrants, there has to be
some kind of policy. Every nation has to decide,
"Well, how many can we assimilate and not hurt our
economy? How many can we assimilate and
not hurt our school system?" So I'm not saying that there
shouldn't be standards for immigration. And I'm also not going to say
anything because I don't know enough to know whether America
has too many immigrants or not. I know it's possible and I'm not
going to tell you about that. But here's what I'm more
concerned about, biblically, an attitude toward people of
other races, biblically, an attitude toward immigrants
that can arise in a nation that sees all these foreigners here
taking our jobs and you start to develop an anger toward them
and a resentment of them, the Bible says, "That is an
unchristian position." So rather than say, "I know that
Donald Trump's policies are right or wrong about
immigration," I don't think I'm qualified to talk about that but
if, along with his election and many other people's election has
come an attitude that is anti-immigrant and also
racist...and I do see it, yes, I do see rising racism right now
in our country. In spite of the fact that
African Americans certainly have more rights than they did 100
years ago, even 50 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago,
I'm not saying there's been no improvements at all. But there is right now an
attitude against immigrants that I do think the Book of Jonah
speaks to. So I'm just trying to be
careful, like I'm not saying...I've had people tell me
that Donald Trump is fixing our immigration policy and it was
broken, and I've had other people tell me that he's making
it worse. And I don't think that's
necessarily my job, as a preacher of the gospel
to be sure. I don't think I have
to tell you here. My job is to tell you about what
the Bible says. The Bible says we
musn't have that hard attitude toward immigrants that I do see
rising in this country. Whether to blame Donald Trump or
not, I don't think I want to do that.
Somebody else. Let's go back further,
we shouldn't privilege the front.
That may be unjust. Wait a minute,
we got here first. Okay. - [Male 2] Hi, Tim.
Excuse me. I started receiving your
sermons, in 1990, when you got to Manhattan. - You're not a young man,
are you? Go ahead, go ahead.
- No. And I just want to thank you
from the bottom of my heart. I came here to give you a hug
but I would love it if we could hear your heart, if you would
summarize in a three-point way. If you were to praise Jesus for
what has happened, from Hopewell until now, could you give us
something about your heart, about that? - You're getting personal. Or maybe you're trying to make
me get personal. You should ask my wife.
But she's not here. Well, you know, Kathy...oh,
I don't know. You know, you get the cigar...
Do you smoke? ...for the hardest question.
Yeah. Listen, the one thing I've got
that is a natural...you know that place where Paul says,
you know, "I feel like a fool because you're making me talk
about myself, but I got to do it."
Okay. I have a really good memory. I mean I'm 68-years-old and I
don't know how much longer this is going to last, I haven't felt
it slip yet, it's got to eventually, but that is the
one thing...it's not a virtue, I didn't work on my memory. I've unusually good memory and
that is the one advantage I've had, as a preacher,
that I remember what I read very well. And yet, you know, there's
nothing to be proud of about it. It's not even necessarily
intelligent, I have to tell you though, a great memory makes
you really sound important. I mean that doesn't necessarily
mean you understand what you've read in the books and all that. Apart from that, I think
Kathy and I would say, and I'm talking about us both,
is we're stunned by how good God's been to us because
actually we were never the first one chosen in sports, you know,
we didn't date anybody till we got to college because we were
just scared and we were wallflowers and, you know,
we weren't...you know, I don't have a PhD, I've got a
Doctor of Ministry, which is, you know, is actually a Master's
of Practical Theology but the accreditors all got together and
said, "Nobody will pay for those."
So we have Doctor of Ministry's. And so, I'm not actually an
academic, and yet, you know, God's blessed us. So our favorite verse is,
"God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the..." You know, "The foolish things
of the world to shame the wise, the weak
things of the world to shame the strong." "The lowly and despised things,
even the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that
are, so that no one may boast in His presence."
So yeah, we were just never. We were never the people that
people said, "Oh, they're going to be successful," and we're
kind of glad that God sort of backed us into a certain
amount of fruitfulness at this point. So that's it, I'm not going any
further and... Anyway, okay.
Somebody else please. I know it was very well-meant,
I appreciate your encouragement. Yes? Right behind you.
See? Right behind.
Sorry. - [Male 3] So if I could jump
back to Jonah real quick. - Yeah, get away from Tim. - So, the Book of Jonah,
it ends, like you said, on a cliffhanger but with Jonah
writing the book. How do you kind of see Jonah
being able to write a book about himself in that light? - A great point. Now, I don't know that Jonah
wrote the book. It doesn't indicate he wrote the
book but it's clear that he must have been the source of the
material...or how would you know what he had said in the fish?
You know. How would you know about his
dialogs with God? So even though I think it makes
most sense to say that someone, later on, wrote down what Jonah
told about himself. And I think most commentators
even think it's a total legend, as you know, plenty of them
think it was just made up. I'm not one of those. I got my reasons, I mentioned
them in the beginning of my volume, I try to explain
some reasons why I don't think it's a fairy tale. The people then who do think it
actually happened would not say that Jonah necessarily was the
author, but he certainly was the source of it. It probably was the story he
told about himself. And here's the great thing about
that. Jonah is sort of like Peter,
they say that the source of the Gospel of Mark
was probably Peter's reminiscence. Read the Gospel of Mark, Peter
looks terrible. Absolutely terrible. He looks worse in that gospel
than any other. And yet, tradition says he was
the source of that gospel. So my guess is Jonah,
somebody we don't know who wrote Jonah, Jonah was the
source and somebody wrote it down. But he looks terrible,
why would anybody tell a story that makes him look so bad? And the answer is I do think he
must have understood the grace of God in the end. Only a repentant sinner,
only somebody who understood the grace of God would ever tell a
story that made him look so bad. So I actually have, when people
say, "Well, what do you think happened to Jonah?" I say, "I have fairly good
assurance that he got it, he figured it out. He gave God a good answer and he
began to see that he was as wicked as the Ninevites,
if not worse, and that he also was living only
by the mercy of God." And I think, when that finally
hit him, I think it changed him. And the only possible way he
would've told a story like that...in some ways,
the Book of Jonah is Jonah's confession. So that's what I think happened. Somebody else?
Ten more minutes. Yeah, right here, somebody down
front. Yeah, either of you. - [Male 4] I want to be a better
teacher and I was wondering if you had any advice. - By the way, you mean teacher
of Christian stuff, Bible stuff, or just teacher, period? Yeah, a Bible teacher,
a Christian teacher. Okay. Well, here's something that all
teachers should know, you should know a lot more about
the subject than you're going to talk about. If you're going to talk on topic
A, you need to know three times more stuff about topic A
than you actually can cover. Not only will that mean that,
as you talk, you won't just be tied to your notes because
you'll know more than when you've actually got down there. Also, sometimes, as you're
teaching, you'll suddenly realize, "Wait a
minute, I need to bring something else in," and you'll
have something to bring in. And if you get questions,
there's something to say. So one little thing is:
know a whole lot more about the subject than you know. Secondly, you really need to do
rapid reading of the Bible. It's really really important,
whatever you're going to teach on has to be put in perspective. For many many years,
I got this idea, of course, from John Stott, and he got it
from Dr. Lloyd-Jones, that the M'Cheyne
Reading Calendar or something like that...but here's why I
like the M'Cheyne Reading Calendar, you get
through the Bible in a year but you also get through the
New Testament twice in a year and the Psalms twice in a year. And I would say whatever you're
going to teach, basically whatever you're teaching,
you've got to know the Bible. And the only way, get started
now because it takes a number of years, but you'd be amazed at
how it accumulates. I don't know how long it would
take for many of you, it means reading four chapters a
day every day. And what John Stott used to say
is, "Be careful because. You're going to read a lot of
things that you wish you could study more, and you won't have
the time or else you're going to get behind. You got to do it
and do it and do it." In about 4 or 5 years,
it'll really start to pay off. But give yourself enough time to
have one thing, every single day, that you read that
you go, "What?" or, "Huh?" and that you look
up in a commentary. In other words, one thing that
you look up in a commentary, take a couple of notes. It should probably take you
about 20 minutes, 30 minutes, something like that. The only way you're going to be
a good Bible teacher in anything is just to know the Bible. And so, rapid reading of the
Bible and know more than you're going to, you know do. The other thing is: know your
audience is the last thing to say. The best thing for you to do is,
when you're writing your talk and you have some idea who your
audience is, which isn't always possible, but as you're
writing your talk, imagine the kind of questions or problems or
concerns that your listeners are going to have. If you're going to teach a Bible
text, as you're studying the text, imagine all the kinds
of questions that you'd probably get from people. So imagine their questions
before they ask them, know three times more about the
topic than you actually are going to deliver, and just have
this underlying reading of the Bible, which actually
means you're actually not going to be a great teacher...I mean
you're not going to be as good a teacher now as you will if you
start...it accumulates going through the Bible over and over
and over again. So there's three ideas. I'm sure there's more but I'm
just speaking off-the-cuff here. Somebody else? Go about halfway down behind... I'll tell you what, okay,
I'm going to do both. The person pointing to herself,
which of course is rather self-referential.
But go ahead. - [Female 2] You get this
because I sat up front. Speaking of audience,
I work in a 3,000-member church in the suburbs, we're very
white, very similar socioeconomically. So what you just shared about
the poor and all the Book of Jonah, I'd like maybe
some specific practical ways that we can care for those
around us. We'd love for the fabric of our
church to change a little bit, but it seems... I don't want that the reason to
be reaching for the poor but... Anyway.
Thanks. - Yeah.
Okay. And by the way, the guy behind
you is next. Behind her.
But not just say it. I don't know
that I'm going to... I can, again,
speak very off-the-cuff. There's an awful lot of books
out there talking to people...if you live in a very affluent
homogeneous place, and there's plenty of places like that,
keep in mind that they are going to...that's a shrinking part of
the American Pie, the very white, very affluent. Some people feel like this is
going to go on forever but it's not going to stay that way.
That's all. So, in some ways,
I should be patient and it'll come up to you,
but you want to be getting ready. I think you want to be talking
about, you should be talking to people...you need to do the
biblical teaching first. I don't know, I've read a book
"Generous Justice," trying so hard to, not only make sure
we're being biblical rather than political, trying to
balance those things. So, for example, one of the
balances you want to say is that, if you're going to be
caring, in the neighborhood, as much as you can, the best
thing...even in a homogeneous place, you've got
elderly people, you've got single-parent families,
you've got disabled handicapped people of various sorts right
there. These are all people who
actually are somewhat disempowered,
for various reasons. And you're going to have them
anywhere. I remember, over the years,
telling people, "At least start there and find out what those
needs are and make space in your church." The other thing is those are
people that, fairly easily, probably don't have as much of a
cultural problem coming into your church. In other words, you don't have a
cultural barrier. The second thing to say is that
I am of the belief that what your church can basically do to
reach really needy populations maybe a little further away is
to try to get people to start their own little non-profits. I do think it's a danger for...I
mean, in New York City, for example, one of the things I
often saw was very...church is very concerned about the
neighborhood, [inaudible] preaching
the gospel. So, let's just say, you have
five elders over this church, they're preaching the gospel,
and set up a low-income housing, they bought a home, you know,
to do low-income housing, and they started a drug rehab
center over here, and they started, you know,
a ministry to prostitutes. I remember, years ago,
there was a Nazarene Church, right in Times Square,
back when Times Square was a really wild and ruly place. Thirty years ago, it was a
frightening place to walk through. And they said, "We're here in
Times Square, we're going to meet..." And they said, "Drug addicts,
and poor people, and homeless people, and
prostitutes," and they had ministries to all of them. And it killed the poor elders
because the elders, not only had to run a church, but what do
they know about those things? What do they know about drug
rehabilitation? And what we learned,
over the years, was to say, "Encourage your people and
promote those people but let people, in your church,
you've got a real heart for, needy populations, form their
own 501(c)(3)s and get their own expertise." You also don't need ministers to
do those things. Laypeople very often are better
at it. You need teachers and doctors
and people like that. So let your laypeople form these
501(c)(3)s to get out there and do it, instead of making the
church itself try to run all those ministries, which I don't
think is the main job of the church, it's to preach
the gospel. Okay?
So there's the two ideas. There was a hand...what was the
hand that I was sent before this? There was another hand. Yeah, okay.
Right there. - [Male 5] Tim, I want to thank
you for your...and thank the Lord for your ministry. I am a former Seventh-day
Adventist pastor and I resigned early this year. And I joined the staff at an
event at a local church, in the Northwest part of this
state. And I thank the Lord for your
ministry, you taught me, you and Edmund Clowney taught me
how the entire Bible is about Jesus. And I want to ask you if,
in your ministry in New York or wherever you've seen,
what are your thoughts on Hispanic churches and
Spanish-speaking churches here in North America? I haven't seen anything yet that
works well for all those generations? I know it's a complicated thing,
but if you have any thoughts on that.
Thank you. - Well, listen, I have 1 minute
and 16, 15, 14, 13...okay. So I'll just say I no longer
work for Redeemer I work for Redeemer City, a city which
was our church planting department that's spun out
in its own 501(c)(3). And we help people, in cities
around the world, plant more churches in their biggest
cities. In New York, for whatever
reason, we probably have more Hispanic staff than
African-American, and even more than Asian. And so, actually what you might
want to do is...I have 36 seconds. What you really ought to do is
contact Redeemer City city and talk to, say, Michael Carrion.
Think of that name. He's Dominican I think.
Dominican. And what's happening in the big
cities, in New York, is an awful lot of neighborhoods
that used to be mono-ethnic, that were all Haitian,
were all Dominican, or all Puerto-Rican, or
that...they're actually...they're all becoming
multi-class and multi-ethnic. Changes in cities are happening,
across this country, in which it used to be, "Well,
this is a Dominican neighborhood so we can just start a service
in Spanish," and suddenly, you've got Jewish people and
you've got young Korean hedge-fund people, and you've
got, "What are we doing?" And so, it's intriguing. In the past, white churches have
had to say, "How do we bring in people in the neighborhood of
other races?" But now, non-white pastors are
asking the same question. New York is always a little bit
ahead of the curve, I know there's a lot of arrogance in
that sort of thing, but it tends to be. Very often New York and LA
change started and they filtered to the rest of the country. You might want to just get a
hold of Michael...and anybody else here who wants to talk... Redeemer City city, at this
point, has more Hispanic staff workers than any other. And they might
be of help to you. But now, I went past my limit,
I'm in the red, it's red now to me. And I think that means I need to
close in prayer. Okay? Let's pray. Father, thank you for giving us
some time to just connect as brothers and sisters here,
at the end. And I do thank you that you
brought us here, the Gospel Coalition, to stir each
other up to love and good works. I pray that we just did that,
I pray that you would help us to strike these balances at a
time in which we do find the church pulled by the Left and
the Right. It's a time of great hostility
where Christians are criticizing Christians. I pray that we come out of this
conference with more clarity than ever and more ideas than
ever about how to be your people in this cultural moment and this
time and place. And we thank you for our time
now, and we pray that you continue to be with us as we
continue to learn from you. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. You need to get on.
Thanks.
