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Jonah Conclusion – What is the Book of Jonah About?

By Jeremy Myers
1 Comment

Jonah Conclusion – What is the Book of Jonah About?
http://media.blubrry.com/one_verse/p/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/369231869-redeeminggod-100-jonah-conclusion-what-is-the-book-of-jonah-about.mp3

What is the book of Jonah all about? Is it about God’s heart for all the people of the world? Is it about how God wants you to get involved in world missions?

No, it is not about either one of these things, even though this is often the way you hear it taught in sermons and during Mission’s Conferences. In this final study of the book of Jonah, you will learn what the book of Jonah is all about.

Jonah conclusion

In this discussion of Jonah we look at:

  • Common theories about what Jonah is all about
  • The true message of the book of Jonah
  • What you can learn from the story of Jonah

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God is Redeeming God, Redeeming Scripture Bible & Theology Topics: enemies, evil, Jonah, love your enemies, One Verse Podcast, violence

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Laugh a Little: Love Your Enemies

By Jeremy Myers
5 Comments

Laugh a Little: Love Your Enemies

Love your enemies

God is Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: laugh a little, love your enemies

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Your Enemy is Your Prophet

By Jeremy Myers
12 Comments

Your Enemy is Your Prophet

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matt 5:44).

Since love for enemies is one of the most unnatural things for a human to do, I believe that enemy-love is one of the clearest and most defining characteristics of a true follower of Jesus. Show me someone who truly understands the heart of God, and I will show you someone who loves his or her enemies.

In recent months, I have discovered that one reason we can love our enemies is because they, above all others, might tell us the truth about our actions and behavior.

Normally, we humans tend to gather around us the people who will affirm our beliefs and behavior, and tell us that everything we think, do, and say is correct and loving and godly.

love your enemiesOf course, it is true what Proverbs 27:6 says, that “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiples kisses,” but this principle can often be reversed as well, in that friends often overlook our faults and failures because they love us (and maybe because they have the same issues), whereas enemies see through our self-righteous attitudes and hypocritical charades and are more willing to criticize and call us out for our many failures.

Yet when they do this, we tend to ignore what they say, because we believe they are only saying such things from spite and anger. And maybe they are.

But might there also be truth to what they are saying? If so, could it be that the criticism from our enemy is actually the voice of God to us?

I am reminded of the prophet Micaiah in 1 Kings 22. King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat were planning on going to war against Ramoth in Gilead. So they call all the prophets together to tell them whether their war will be successful or not. They have a parade of prophets — 400 of them — who tell the two kings to go to war against Ramoth, “for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:6).

King Jehoshaphat finds this a little strange that all 400 prophets say the same thing (or maybe they were not all prophesying in the name of Yahweh), so he asks if there is not a prophet of Yahweh around to ask what they should do (1 Kings 22:7).

And I love what King Ahab says. He tells King Jehoshaphat, “Oh sure… there’s Micaiah. But I hate him because he never tells me anything good.”

In other words, King Ahab viewed Micaiah as his enemy. He hated Micaiah.

Nevertheless, they had Micaiah come in, and initially, he agreed with the other 400 prophets in telling the two kings to go to war, for they would be victorious. But King Ahab knows Micaiah better than this (and I imagine that Micaiah’s tone of voice of flippant and sarcastic), so King Ahab says, “Stop lying to me. Tell the truth!” (1 Kings 22:16).

And Micaiah does. And he is the only one who prophesied correctly.

The King’s enemy was the only one who prophesied truth to the King.

I think the same thing is happening today within Christianity.

We have gathered around ourselves teachers who tell us what our itching ears want to hear, and we ignore and silence the prophetic voices who tell us what we need to hear because these prophetic voices come from those many Christians love to hate.

Our enemy is our prophet, but we ignore what he says because he is our enemy.

Like who?

Who is our prophetic enemy?

How about atheists?

Christians love to hate atheists. We feel we do not have to listen to them, because “They don’t believe in God.” They live “secular” lives. They “live in sin.” They “don’t believe the Bible.”

Atheists are prophets for Christianity.

Atheists often point out real problems with Christian theology, Christian practice, and Christian hypocrisy. They often show us how our portrait of a loving God is not very loving, how a God who accepts everybody really doesn’t, and how the values and priorities of many Christian churches and organizations do nothing to help with the real problems in this world.

In my opinion, we Christians fail to listen to the prophetic word from atheists at our own peril.

How about Muslims? Especially Muslim terrorists.

I watch the angry Muslims on TV calling for the death of America and waving signs about “the Great Satan.”

I believe they are flat-out wrong, but at the same time, I have to ask myself, “Why are they saying these things? What have we done to make them think such things about us?”

It is too “easy” of an answer to say that they are just delusional or that they have been lied to about Americans. Certainly they hear lies about us, just as we hear lies about them. But at the same time, we must listen to the complaints they have about American values, American greed, American morality, and American intervention in foreign affairs and recognize that our Muslim “enemies” might be making some good points.

This is especially true when the Christians in American offer full and complete blessings on everything the United States does overseas, including the killing of Muslims and the bombing of cities. Why is it okay for Christian leaders to call for God to bless us in killing our “Muslim enemies” but it is not okay for Muslim leaders to call for Allah to bless them in killing their Christian enemies?

Whatever happened to Jesus instruction for us to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?

How about the LGBTQ community?

When they tell us that we Christians have treated them with hate and contempt, our response is, “No, we haven’t! We’re just warning you about your sin! It is loving to do so. If you don’t repent and change, God will judge you and our nation!”

Their response is, “See? That right there was hurtful. We think our lifestyle is loving, not sinful. Furthermore, it is not right to blame us for all the ill that happens to our country.”

“Well, you’re trying to put Christians out of business!”

“That’s true. Some people are doing that. Just like you Christians have done to us for hundreds of years. Are you saying it’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s wrong when you do it, but not when we do it, because God is on our side. You’re on the side of the devil.”

“That right there was hateful also.”

And the conversation goes on from there. Or more likely it stops.

But I believe that in these sorts of situations, Christians need to stop and listen to the LGBTQ community and what they say about Christian hatred. In this case, they are prophets, bringing to us a revelation from God.

Listening to Our Enemies is One Way to Love Them

In his excellent book, Engaging the Powers (I HIGHLY recommend it!), Walter Wink talks bout the gift of our enemy. He says that our enemies bring us revelations of ourselves that we cannot get from any other source:

These “revelations” (and they are precisely that) need to be treasured, because that is the gift our enemy may be able to bring us: to see aspects of ourselves that we cannot discover any other way than through our enemies. Our friends seldom tell us these things; they are our friends precisely because they are able to overlook or ignore this part of us. The enemy is thus not merely a hurdle to be leaped on the way to God. The enemy can be the way to God (Engaging the Powers, 273).

Do you have someone you consider to be your enemy? Do you know of a group of people that are considered the “enemies” of Christianity? If so, do not seek to harm, discredit, or ignore them. Instead, listen to what they have to say, for their words may in fact be the very voice of God to you and to me.

If you want to hear the voice of God, start by listening to your enemies.

listen to your enemy

God is Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: 1 Kings 22, love your enemies, loving others, Luke 6:27, Matthew 5:44, prophecy, Proverbs 27:6

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How do you heap burning coals on the heads of your enemies?

By Jeremy Myers
37 Comments

How do you heap burning coals on the heads of your enemies?

burning coals on the headProverbs 25:22 instructs us to heap burning coals on the heads of our enemies. 

But what does that mean?

Initially, this sounds like a terrible thing to do, but this strange command is in the context of giving bread to our enemies when they are hungry and water to our enemies when they are thirsty.

Pastors and other Bible teachers have noticed this connection, and many have gone into great hermeneutical contortions trying to explain how it would be a good think to light your enemy’s head on fire.

I even heard one pastor say that when we were kind to our enemies, but they refused to repent and become a Christian, this would only increase their suffering in hell.

Isn’t that nice?

Aside from the troubling idea that anybody who is not a Christian is our enemy (!!!), what sort of person only serves others so that their future suffering in hell will intensify?!

This is probably an extreme Christian view (I hope so anyway), but most commentaries I have read on this text interpret the burning coals in some sort of figurative way so that it refers to something along the lines of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, or a searing of the mind with the truth of God’s Word, or bringing upon your enemy a red face of shame, or something like that. Regardless, most Christian teachers believe that heaping coals on the head of your enemy refers to some kind of pain or punishment inflicted upon your enemy.

A while back I decided to study Proverbs 25:21-22 for myself.

Proverbs 25:22 and Burning Coals

As it turns out, heaping coals on someone’s head is not figurative after all. And it is definitely not talking about hell or anything negative.

To the contrary, the statement about heaping burning coals on the heads of our enemies is parallel to the statements about blessing our enemies with food and water. When this Proverb was written, people heated their homes and cooked with fire. But sometimes, a person’s fire would go out during the night, and before they could cook their breakfast, they had to go to a neighbor’s house to get a coal so they could relight their fire.

So Proverbs 25:22 teaches that if the fire of your enemy goes out, and they come asking for a coal to relight their fire, instead of turning them away or giving just one, we should be be extravagantly generous. How? We must keep one coal for yourself, and give all the rest of the burning coals to our enemy.

One commentary that gets it right is the Bible Knowledge Commentary on Proverbs. It says this:

Sometimes a person’s fire went out and he needed to borrow some live coals to restart his fire. Giving a person coals in a pan to carry home “on his head” was a neighborly, kind act; it made friends, not enemies.

Proverbs 25:22 instructs us to give our enemy so many burning coals they have to carry them the way burdens are carried in the Middle East: in a container on the head. Then they can go back and immediately bake their bread without having to wait for the wood to become suitable coals for cooking.

burning coalsThis is quite different than setting someone’s head on fire.

This understanding of the burning coals makes more sense, doesn’t it? Yes, and especially in light of Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount to bless our enemies and pray for them. Jesus points that God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous and the sun to shine on the evil and the good and we should do the same (Matt 5:45). And of course, this is exactly how Paul used the passage about burning coals in Romans 12:20-21, where he concludes by saying, “overcome evil with good.”

This reminds me of how Abraham Lincoln responded when asked why he did not seek to destroy his enemies, but showed them leniency instead. He said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

We are to Love Our Enemies

God does not want us to be nice to my enemies so that their judgment will be worse in the end. That is not love. He wants us to show love and kindness to our enemies simply because our enemies are people too and God loves them just as much as He loves us. Though our enemies may never turn to Jesus as a result of our kindness, we are to love them just the same.

This post is part of the February Synchroblog where bloggers were invited to write about the topic of loving our enemies. Here is a list of the other contributors. Go check out what they had to say on the topic!

  • Todi Adu – Love is War, War in Love
  • Todi Adu – Love is Your Weapon; Fight for Love
  • Carol Kuniholm – Circles of Love
  • K. W. Leslie – Love Your Enemies
  • Doreen A Mannion – Easy to Love
  • Liz Dyer – Uncomfortable Love
  • Mike Donahoe – Love Your Enemies Really
  • EmKay Anderson – On Loving While Angry
  • Glenn Hager – The Opposite of Love is Not Hate
  • Josie Anna – On Love Because I am Loved
  • Edwin Aldrich – Loving All of Our Neighbors

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: burning coals, Discipleship, love like Jesus, love your enemies, loving neighbors, Proverbs 25:22, synchroblog

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