Indivisible

Introduction

Good morning Encounter Church.  My name is Ryan Hanson and I serve on the preaching team. It is so good to be back, and even better to be able to have some of you here in the sanctuary.

When Dirk approached me about delivering the message today, I was super excited about the series and especially this topic.  It has been great the last few weeks walking through the Pledge of Allegiance and Re-Framing the “one nation, under God, indivisible” section through the lens of how God wants us to act within society.  Dirk gave us a great reminder that even though we live in the USA, we are first and foremost citizens of Heaven.  Tim did a fantastic job showing us that God is for everyone.  This week I’d like to discuss the last section of the pledge; indivisible.

For me, as evidenced by my FaceBook news feed, this message could not have come at a better time.  I think it is safe to say that we are a divided nation.  When it comes down to it, I think the reason for most of the division in my life is that other people don’t agree with me on everything (Joke, tell with a humorous expression).  I’m joking, but seriously the main cause of the division I have with other people is because they literally have a different vision of how they think the world should work.  I find it interesting that the word di-vision, literally means “two visions”.

di-vision

di = two

di-vision = two visions

When my vision of how I think things “should” be doesn’t align with someone else’s vision of how they think the world “should” work, we have division.

A major example of this in my life came when I became old enough to vote.  My aunt’s family is HYPER-POLITICAL.  One election they decided they would send me propaganda weekly to try to convince me to vote for their candidate.  Now they post multiple politically related memes / articles to FaceBook daily.  Every time I see them in person, they are trying to get me to vote for their candidate in whatever upcoming election is occurring, or complaining about how the other party is ruining the country.  Now, I am a self-proclaimed independent and don’t vote straight party, but try to look into the individuals and vote based on who I think aligns with my values and who seems most qualified to actually get stuff done (if that is possible in politics these days).  Needless to say, I’ve had my fair share of division with my aunt and her family, because I have not always agreed with their political leanings.  It came to a head when I got married.  Now that I had a wife, I had options for holidays (again say humorously).  You see my aunt always hosted Thanksgiving, which is when most of the division occurred.  When I got married, I thought the best option would be to flee from the Thanksgiving political drama and go as far away as I could.  I headed east, all the way to Flint, where my wife’s family is.  Heck, I got so good at fleeing from my problems, I even took up running (point out running shirt as joke).  My solution to the two differing visions of how to engage in holiday political discourse, was to flee the tension and give up on the relationship with my aunt’s family.  The problem is, this year will be our 10th year of marriage.  The farther I ran (i.e. more Thanksgivings I missed) the larger the divide between me and my aunt’s family has grown.  I think this is true of all division.

The farther you run, the larger the division grows.

It bled outside of Thanksgiving.  They have skipped many Easter dinners (which we host at our house).  They stopped coming to my daughter’s birthday parties.

In a congregation this size, I can’t be the only one who has fled from a holiday meal because of politics.  Whereas a meal is still a problem, the fact that division grows over time, creates HUGE relational problems.  I know plenty of people who have quite jobs over disagreements with their boss.  I know of someone who ended a friendship because they didn’t agree with a book they had on their bookshelf.  I know of someone who recently told me that they unfriended their grandma on Facebook because of their political posts.  I know of too many people who have left church, and even faith in God because of division they have with Christians.

Who are you currently divided against?

What relationships have you ended over a difference of visions?

We’ve got to stop running from the division in our lives, and figure this out.

Luckily for us, this is nothing new.  The Bible has a story of another person who ran into a conflicting vision of how he thought the world should work and also thought fleeing was the best solution.  Please join me as I turn to the book of Jonah.  Jonah is a small book in the Bible about how one man dealt with the reality that his vision did not align with God’s vision.

Body

The book of Jonah doesn’t waste any time getting to the root of the issue.  Please join me, starting in verse 1.

Jonah 1:1–3 NIV

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

Jonah was called to go and preach to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria.  On the surface this seems reasonable.  God asked His prophet to go and preach to a group of people.  That’s what prophets did.  But in an unexpected twist, Jonah flees to a city called Tarshish.  To put that into perspective, Jonah went 2500 miles in the wrong direction just to flee from God’s call.  Here is a map of the region.  Tarshish is in Spain, literally the farthest west one could go at the time.

📷

When I read something like this in the Bible I have to stop and ask “WHY”.  Why would Jonah run so far from a city that God is calling him to preach to?  Doing a little historical research, Assyria was known for their brutal war strategies.  Historians have described them impaling soldiers on spikes, flaying nobles, burning captives alive, and indiscriminately cutting off body parts of those captives they let live (hands, noses, ears, fingers, eyes).  Assyria and Israel had their issues and Jonah would have known about these horrendous acts.

The issue I found, was that Nineveh / Assyria weren’t all bad.  Assyria is credited all kinds of great cultural things that we still use today.  They invented the lock and key, a system for keeping time, the 360-degress of the circle, paved roads, a postal system, the library, plumbing, flush toilets, and aqueducts.  All of which, I appreciate to this day.

Jonah’s vision of Nineveh was a one-dimensional picture based on the way they went to war.  God looked at Nineveh and saw the whole picture; not only what they were, but also what they could become.  God’s vision isn’t what is, but what could be; He sees potential…redemptive potential.

We can’t see what God sees if you’re sowing division and running away.

Let’s continue.  Verse 4 says…

Jonah 1:4 NIV

Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

Because of Jonah’s disobedience, God sent a storm to impede Jonah’s path.  What I find interesting are the words sent and threatened.

sent (ṭûl) – means “throw – hurl an object”

threatened (ḥāšab) – means “consider / plan”

God literally threw an obstacle in Jonah’s way to give him time to reconsider what he was doing.  My question to you (and to me) is…

What obstacle is God throwing in our way to give us time to reconsider our vision of how things should be?

For me, God threw my wife in my path.  Over the last few years, my wife has been the one asking to be more equitable with how we spend holiday time between the families.  She’s been challenging me to reconsider fleeing from the family drama and learning how to re-engage with it.

Jonah on the other hand took a different approach to the opportunity God gave him.  In verse 5, we learn that…

5 Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep

Jonah didn’t respond to God’s opportunity to reconsider his plan to flee, but chose to ignore it.

When it was clear that the storm was not going to subside and everyone’s lives were in danger, Jonah offers a solution in verse 12.

Jonah 1:12–13 NIV

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before.

Jonah gave up.  He thought it would be better to die than to obey God and preach to Nineveh.  Not accepting Jonah’s offer, the sailors tried to row to shore.  It is interesting that the word used for “row” literally means “dig into”.

row (chathar) – means “to dig into”

Have you ever dug your heels into a vision of how you think things should be?

What beliefs are you so “dug into” that even God can’t change your mind?

I was “dug into” the belief that political opinions should be private, and not talked about.  Political conversations never go well for me.  I know many households that have “no politics” rules.  With my aunt’s family, the more political conversations that occurred, the more I disengaged, and the bigger the divide for me grew.  So I avoided all of them.  Back to the story.

The sailors, realizing that they were not going to out row the storm, eventually gave in and threw Jonah overboard.  It is at this point where we get to the part of the story that everyone knows.  Please flip ahead to verse 17.

Jonah 1:17 NIV

Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Now if you believe this literally happened or not, I’m not sure it matters for the purpose of this message.  I would challenge you, that if you believe that God created everything from nothing, raised people from the dead, that Jesus died on the cross and 3 days later came back to life himself paying the consequences for your sin, and will some day raise you from the dead to live eternally with Him in heaven…a fish swallowing a guy doesn’t seem impossible to me. (Tangent over, back to the story)

In Jonah Chapter 2 Verses 2-9 Jonah is in the fish.  During the 3 days and 3 nights, Jonah prayed to God.  It was a time when Jonah was confronted with his sin and his lack of compassion for the people of Nineveh.  God used this time to teach Jonah.  My question to you is…

What “fish” is God putting in your life right now to get you thinking and praying so He can teach you to that His vision for the world is better than your vision?

Sometime when we ignore the storm God throws in our path, God gives us a fish to force us to stop and think.  Maybe your “fish” is the loss of a job, big loss of money, sickness, but God does allow us to be put in positions where we have no option but to stop, think, and re-consider what we’re doing.

The story continues in Jonah 3:3 when Jonah obediently went to Nineveh.  In Jonah 3:10, the people of Nineveh turned from their evil ways and God relented and withheld the destruction He threatened. The book of Jonah concludes with Jonah mad at God for showing the people of Nineveh grace and compassion.  Jonah 4:1 says

Jonah 4:1 NIV

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.

Application

God saw the sins of Nineveh and wanted to redeem, forgive, and pay for those sins because He cared so much for the people.

Unlike God, but like Jonah, I fled the awkward relationship with my aunt’s family.  I sinned by putting my comfort ahead of my relationship with family.

Just like God wanted to redeem / forgive the sins of Nineveh, He wants to redeem and forgive my sins, and your sins.

I’d like to leave you with a visual that has helped me start to see God’s vision a little more clearly.  Genesis 1:27 states that we were all created in the image of God.  The problem is that as I get to know people I lose that image.  I start to see all their faults.  It is like they start as a perfectly white dish cloth.  Every time I learn something about them I don’t like, their image gets tainted.

They lied to me (add iodine)

They broke a promise (add iodine)

They didn’t follow through with a commitment (add iodine)

They stole something (add iodine)

You fill in the blank…

Just like Jonah couldn’t see past the atrocities of war with Assyria, I can’t see past the faults of others either.  I see people for what they’ve done, not who they can be, and not what God created them to be.

You see in the NIV translation of Jonah 1:2, God called Jonah to preach to Nineveh.  The word translated as preach is actually the Hebrew word for “cry”.

preach (qara') - means cry

It is only after we have personally felt the love of God, experienced His grace / mercy / forgiveness and been brought to tears over our sins, that we can offer that same grace to those that we disagree.

Have you been brought to tears over your sin?

Only after you have come to grips with the reality of your sin, that you can see others through the lens of Christ as broken people who were created in the image of God and have the potential to redeem past sins.

Jesus gives us an image of potential He sees in us / the church in John 17:20-23.  He prayed…

John 17:20–23 NIV

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Jesus challenges us to be unified.  We all have different visions of how we think things should be.  We need to learn to look past our differing human visions and look toward the single vision that God gives us in verse 23, a world completely united by the Love that God has for us.  Just look at the disciples.  Peter was a zealot, which meant he was zealous for the law of the Old Testament and carried a knife called a siccar to kill those who were harming Israel (Roman soldiers, tax collectors, etc).  Now Matthew, another disciple, was a tax collector.  Realistically when they were both in the same room, there should have been a heir of homicide in the air, but because they were so unified by the love of Christ, they build the church that we’re attending today.

We need to stop focusing on what is and pray that we can join God in seeing what could be.

Dunk iodine cloth in the bleach water

We need to see others as God sees them; image bearers, loved, forgiven, and created for a purpose.

Final Thoughts

My story with my Aunt’s family doesn’t yet have a great ending.  Motivated by the preparation for this sermon, I reached out to my aunt.  I acknowledged my failure in how I’ve handled Thanksgivings over the last 10 years, attempted to start rebuilding the bridge that I had burned, but it was not received well.  The whole experience was very uncomfortable.  I think God is teaching me that there is no quick fixes to the division we have in relationships.  I laid the first brick in the bridge of reconciliation and I am committed to continuing to rebuild.

What bridges have you burned, that the Holy Spirit is bringing to mind right now? Could you imagine what God could do if we all followed Jesus call to pick up a phone and have a conversation with those people?  My challenge to you this week is just that.

Call someone you have division with and lay the first brick of reconciliation.

Let’s all do our part in ending the division in our lives, and live out Jesus call to be a people in complete unity, indivisible, especially over politics.

Prayer

God, we are a broken people.  We naturally focus on the faults of others, flee from uncomfortable situations, and create division with people.  Yet you call us to be united, and indivisible people.  Bring us to tears over our sin.  Help us to feel the weight of our failures and experience the mercy, grace, and forgiveness that you have offered to us.  Help us to see past the faults of others and see them through your lens for the potential they have.  Help us reach out to those we have already created division with and start laying the bricks of reconciliation so we can be the united / indivisible church that you call us to be.

Song

Good Grace by Hillsong United – “People come together…”

Benediction

Let’s go out this week and live out Jesus call to live an indivisible life, united by His love for us.  Take the first step toward rebuilding the burned relational bridges in your life by picking up the phone and laying the first brick of reconciliation.  Go in peace.