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In a sense, the Apostle Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, which we talked about. It's this idea of reconciliation. You see, we have to be reconciled because of the fall of mankind. There was a chasm and a divide that was there. Our sin separates us from God, and God settled this conflict. He resolved it with the lamb, his son. His son reunited us again with God and bridged the gap for us. We see this in verse 18. It says, "Now all these things are from God who reconciled or restored us to himself through Christ. So he's reconciled us back to him through his son, and now here's a key. He gave us the ministry of reconciliation." Do you hear that? He's reconciled us to himself, and now we are commissioned with this ministry of reconciliation. Our lives are supposed to be spent on reconciling the world back to himself. This is our ministry that we engage in, and the message that we delivered. You see, we are ambassadors for Christ in verse 20. It talks about that. We are ambassadors for Jesus Christ. It says, "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us." And do we have this mindset that we are ambassadors? I think when we think of ambassadors, we think of modern day ambassadors who get to dress up and their fancy gowns, whether it's their tuxedos or dresses. They go to all these dinners and banquets. Maybe they're there at the UN and their politicians per se, but they don't really, if we would say, do much actions. They just make faces and they don't really settle any tensions. You see, when the apostle Paul was talking about ambassadors, it had the mind and idea of what Roman states were like. There were two different types of Roman states. The first type of Roman state was peaceful. There wasn't any need of troops to be stationed there. They were called senatorial states. The other states, which were turbulent, they needed a station troop there, and that's where not only one, but multiple ambassadors would go to, were called imperial states. You see, in these imperial states, the idea was that the ambassadors had to deliver the message, the mandate to the defeated people, what the terms would be for their reconciliation. The ambassador would do these things, determine the boundaries of the state, draw up a constitution, put together an administration. They were literally responsible for bringing the people into the family of the Roman Empire. Their goal was to assimilate them into the culture. The unique thing about ambassadors, and a lot of the reason Paul used this term for Christians is they were to spend their lives amongst people who spoke different languages, had different traditions and were from a completely different way of life. Others had to carry a definitive message, carry out specific policy, and do it all in honor of their ruler, their empire, emperor. Now do we not, as Christians, have this same mandate? We have a definitive message that is a gospel, and we carry out his policy and his assignment. You see, what I'm going to talk about tonight is, we read from 2 Corinthians 5, but we're going to be looking at, mainly, the book of Jonah is, I think, for Christians in our day and age, we have something that I would call the Jonah virus. We see, we have something that lives deep within us that doesn't force us to be part of God's ministry of reconciliation, that doesn't push us to really be ambassadors like we should be. You see, Jonah was a prophet who was supposed to carry a message to the Ninevites, but he was a reluctant prophet. He didn't really want to carry this message, and in reading through the book of Jonah, you see that when God told him to do this, he fled away and didn't want to take part in it at all. What I'm going to do with this, and teach us about the Jonah virus, is compare and contrast it with a man named Henry Gurkey. Henry Gurkey was a pastor from St. Louis, Missouri, who was actually born in the farmlands outside of it, and his command date, his commission, was during World War II, he was supposed to be the chaplain for 15 of Adolf Hitler's henchmen, during the Nuremberg trials. The Nuremberg trials was the military tribunal for the worst criminals of World War II and the Holocaust, and Henry Gurkey was given this command to be the pastor for these men, and we're going to see, as we talk about Jonah and Henry Gurkey, how one exemplified the Jonah virus, but one didn't, and I want us to see the differences in their life. You see, for Henry Gurkey, he was ministering to men who literally were the primary agents of the war, who carried out the plans. He was in charge of a man named Hermann Goring that was second command to Hitler, or Fritz Dockle, who was literally in charge of taking prisoners of war, Jews, and other countries that they captured, and he would be considered the 20th century's master, slave, master, like he was extreme at it completely. What I want to do is compare and contrast Jonah and Henry Gurkey and just teach us what it means to be a minister of reconciliation. You see, the first thing that indicates that we have this Jonah virus is this. We choose comfort over difficulty. We choose comfort over difficulty, and this is one of the symptoms. You see, Jonah was in a place of comfort. Background in the book of Jonah in 2 Kings 14, verse 24 and 25, Jonah is mentioned as a prophet of God. And as a prophet, he was serving a wicked king, King Jeroboam II, and typically when prophets would go on, like Jeremiah and Isaiah, they typically brought bad news to the king. So not all the times where they liked. Elijah wasn't necessarily liked to remember he had to run away because he was fearful of what would happen to him. But Jonah's prophecy was good. He was going to say to this wicked king Jeroboam II that Israel's land is going to be in to be restored, and God is in fact going to expand the land. So even though this king was unfaithful, God was going to be faithful to him and the people. Can you imagine he gets to give good news to the people? And he would have been liked. The people would have loved him that he's talking about expansion. They get more elbow room. So the thought for him to take a message to their wicked enemy, the Ninevites, to take a message to them that in 40 days, if they don't repent, that God is going to destroy him, he didn't want any part of it because he didn't want to give a message to the Ninevites at all. You see Jonah was a nationalist. He was not thinking about spreading the gospel to all nations. And so he fled and in reading the book of Jonah, you see that when he did go and preach this message to the Ninevites that they did repent. And in Jonah chapter 4, verse 2 and 3, let me read this to you because he was not happy about it at all. As he prayed to the Lord and said, "O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? This is why I made haste to flee to tarshes, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding instead fast love, relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." Jonah knew that God was merciful and gracious, slow to anger, that he would forgive wickedness, rebellion and sin, and he hated this fact. Now keep in mind, the Ninevites were a wicked people. We would consider them our modern day Isis. They were ones that they would kill women and children, they would burn them, they would skin prisoners alive, they were wicked people. And so to Jonah, under no circumstance, do you want to take part in God reconciling the Ninevites back to himself? And this message did not bring comfort to him because this would attack his freedom. This would attack his livelihood. How would people perceive of him if he is taking a message to these Ninevites and they actually repent? What would they think about him? And see, we see this as an indication. He chose comfort over difficulty and he fled. But this wasn't the life of Henry Gurkey. Henry Gurkey was the pastor of those Nazis and he had to push through uncomfortable situations all throughout his life. He had to push through difficulty to be part of God's mission for reconciliation. Like I said, he's from the farmlands of Missouri and he was at a Billy Sunday rally where he got saved. And at that rally he determined that he was going to join God's gospel ministry but there was a roadblock that was there. You see, his father told him that if you want to go into the ministry, I'm not paying for your school. You have two choices, son. You can either become a farmer or be a school teacher. If you become a school teacher, I will pay for half of your tuition. But if you choose the ministry, you are on your own. So he had a choice there. Would he take financial comfort? Would he take the approval of his father or would he join the ministry and take the sacrifices that must be there in order to fulfill God's calling upon his life? And early in his life, he chose to pursue ministry. So he had to work in janitorial services, cleaning toilets at a department store. He worked harvesting wheat farm as a laborer in rural Kansas. And so he had to push through comfort in his early life, but it wasn't just that. He went on to become a Lutheran pastor and started the St. Louis city mission. And this ministry was vibrant in its day. They had a mission school, prison ministry. They were doing orphan work. They were taking care and doing hospital visitations. He was preaching on Sundays four to six times on Sundays and different churches and prisons and hospitals. On top of this, he had a radio station where they literally said, as he received letters, there were thousands of people trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior because of this. He had to choose to leave this comfortable position at the age of 50 to go and serve his country in World War II. And he departed, went and served his country in World War II, and he served in hospitals in England and in Germany. And he was at one hospital where they received most of those that were wounded in action during D-Day. You see, he was in Germany. He was there for over a year as a chaplain in the hospital. And now, a knock came on the door. His colonel was summoning him and saying that a transfer request had been placed. You see, he's at the age of 50, but they're asking him, now, can you please go be in a chaplain for Hitler's men at the Nuremberg trials? Mind you. He has not seen his wife in over two years, okay? There was no FaceTime or WhatsApp, okay? There is no even calling on the phone. The only way he communicates with his wife is through writing a letter and those take weeks at a time to get there. So he had a choice to make. Would he go and serve these wicked prisoners or would he go back home? Then he had to ask himself, would his face sustain him in this time? You see, during his time as a chaplain in Germany, he went to Dauschia. He went to and saw the aftermath of the Holocaust and as he's writing in his memoirs, I don't know if this is true or figurative, but he said he literally at the concentration camps, he said he touched the walls and he said his hands came away, smeared with blood. So he saw the atrocities of the Nazis and he's being called by his country to go and be a chaplain for these men. He would have to sit down with the architects of the Holocaust and the destruction that ravaged all of Europe and he had a choice to make. Would he share his faith? The thing that's most precious and dear to him with these men and he chose to do that. He chose the thing that was not comfortable and he chose to serve. For you and I, do we have the Jonas sickness where we choose comfort over the difficulty that is there? You see, it's comfortable to just be consumed with what the Bible calls the cares of the world. It's comfortable to be consumed with being a parent or working a job, even to be busy doing ministry work but not really being involved in expansion of God's reign and rule in our nations. You see, we can get lazy and we can get lackadaisical in our pursuit. You know what also is comfortable? The perception that people have of us. In this day and age, it's going to become more and more difficult to be a Christian and to be outspoken about your faith and your workplaces. I know for some people in our church at the workplaces, they're not supposed to mention Christ at all. So for us, do we want to push through this uncomfortableness and this difficulty because we have a mission and the ministry of reconciliation? Back to Henry Gerky, because he went on and served these Nazis, he received hate mail. Some of his hate mail he received from people said that he was a Nazi lover. The worst hate mail that he got that actually bothered him tremendously were from Jewish Americans who called them anti-semitite, who conspired with these men to bring redemption on them so that they wouldn't be responsible for the destruction of the Jews. And this tormented him all the time he was there. But he knew it was going to cost him and he still pursued. And we know it's going to cost us to be ministers of reconciliation, but will we still pursue that? Not only that, we have to push through comfort. We have to ask ourselves, the second symptom of the Jonah sickness is do we have a lack of concern for the loss? You see, in Jonah's life, it indicates all throughout the book of Jonah that he did not care about anyone else besides himself. When Jonah flees away, when he thinks he's running away from God's presence, he's in a ship and there's a storm that is literally about to destroy the ship and destroy all the mariners that are there. You see, the mariners, they cry out because they are afraid what is happening to us and the Bible says that Jonah is in the inner part of the ship, had laid down and was fast asleep. He had no care in the world what was going on. When the mariners found out that it was indeed Jonah whose fault this storm happened, they asked him, "What shall they do?" And Jonah says, "Hey, it's my God. My God is the God of the land and of the sea and he's caused the storm. Throw me into the ocean and the storm will calm down." But they didn't want to be responsible for his blood. Okay, if you say your God is in control of all this, now you're saying, "We should kill you in order to get out of this, I don't want to be responsible. What will your God do to me?" You see, they eventually do pick him up and chuck him out of the boat and God is gracious to him, sends a fish and delivers him. But we see in chapter three, as he's proclaiming this message to the Ninevites, he only says these in the Hebrews, five words, but he says this, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." He's walking through the middle of the city, if you can imagine some random person walking in and saying, "Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown." He doesn't give him any indication of what they should do so they shouldn't be overthrown. He doesn't give him any indication of how to get out of this and who their God is. There's no other thing to the message at all. He didn't care about the Ninevites at all. We see this in Jonah chapter four verse one when it says this, this is very important to see, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry. He had no love at all for the loss. And verse two and three says in essence this, "Kill me now, God, I can't take you anymore. I'd rather be six feet under than to see these people receive your grace." We see the Jonah virus was consuming him and he had no love for the loss. For Pastor Gertie, this wasn't the case. He didn't exemplify the Jonah virus. He wrote one point before joining the military at the age fifty. He said this, "When we think of spiritual matters, we know the command of Jesus that we are to go out, get this and bind the lost and wandering for heaven." As he was thinking whether to join and serve Hitler's men and be the chaplain, Christ's forgiveness loomed large in his thoughts and prayers. And he realized that God wanted him to do something amazing. He was staring into the darkness and as if, number four, he said this, "He could hate the sin but still love the sinner and he thought this was the time. So he chose to go to Nuremberg and be the pastor to Hitler's inner circle." And he said this, "I was there as the representative of all loving father. I recalled too that God loves sinners like me. These men must be told about the Savior, bleeding, suffering and dying on the cross for them." You see, but this was his whole life, thinking of others about giving them the message of hope. He said this earlier in his time in the St. Louis missions. He said that it was a ministry we were after souls, lost, strayed souls and this is important. Some will miss hell because you have sent us with the gospel. Some will miss hell because you have sent us with the gospel. We are here during missions month and I cannot say as I am wearing this that my family is from Ghana, Africa. One thing that is an interesting fact, and this is a little side story but I thought you would enjoy, is that my dad, growing up I thought my dad's first name and his name was only David Lardi or David Leyte Larti, okay? But I found out when I was in college that my dad actually, when he was baptized at the age of 12, he gave himself the Christian name David. Why is that? He's from Ghana, Africa and this is the attire I'm wearing. It's because of the missionary David Livingston. You see David Livingston was from United Kingdom and took the gospel to Africa, to the continent of Africa and he trailblazed through Africa proclaiming the gospel. In fact it was true, he buried his heart in Africa. So my dad is crazy and then realizes but he's David because he's thinking of this man who trailblazed through Africa proclaiming the gospel. So then I stand here today before you because someone said this, some people will miss hell because God has sent me to proclaim the gospel. What else about David Livingston and this is important for us to hear? He gave his life to serve Christ in the exploration of Africa for creating access to the gospel. He was the first European to cross the width of Africa and he set his eyes on the Victoria Falls. He laid his eyes on the horrors of the East African slave trade and he devoted his life to with passion to its abolition. And he was talking in a university and they're asking him, okay, you're old now, you're a doctor, you have money, why would you spend your life in Africa with those people? Why would you sacrifice so much? And here's his response when they say that it's a sacrifice for him to spend his life being part of God's ministry of reconciliation. He says this, "For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I made and spending so much of my life in Africa. Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward and healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought, it is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather, he says this, "It is a privilege, anxiety, sickness, suffering or danger now and then with the foregone of the common conveniences and charities of life may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us." He says this, "I have never made a sacrifice." These non-sacrifice is why I stand here today proclaiming the gospel. Maybe that be too with our lives that we are reaching out to people and generations go by and they are standing proclaiming God's word because of the risk and cost that we make proclaiming God's fame among all the nations. You see, church family, we are representatives of an all-loving Father and our Father loves sinners so much. He wants us to take this gospel and share it with other people. Do our lives demonstrate this amazing truth that God loves the lost? Do our bank accounts indicate that we love lost people? Do our social media accounts give the impression to others that Jesus is King, He is Lord and our primary focus in life is not to live for ourselves but to expand God's kingdom and be blessed by what He's done for us. Do we treat everyone like Jesus died for them because Jesus did die for all of mankind? You see, the Jonah sickness is so pervasive. It's pervasive and it can infiltrate my life and the lives of all of us that are here. We can get distracted and want comfort over difficulty and we can have a lack of love for the lost or lack of concern for the lost. So what is the antidote? What is the prescription? What takes care of this? You see, the antidote to this is the radical love of God, the radical grace of God. Jonah throws a pity party. He is a temper tantrum and he wants God to kill him because he didn't want the Nine of Myths to get saved but God isn't finished with Jonah yet. You see, Jonah went out to the city and sat on the east part of the city of Nineveh because you remember he said, "Yet 40 days in Nineveh will be destroyed." The people did repent but it seems as if Jonah is standing at the top and waiting to see maybe the Nine of Myths will repent of their repentance and God will judge them because that's what they deserve. That's what it seems like. But God isn't finished with even Jonah yet and he has an object lesson. He appoints a plant for him and made it cover Jonah's head that it might shade over him the discomfort that was there from the sun and Jonah loved this, okay? He was quite happy in verse 7 it says, "But when the dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and he asked that he might die and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry?" And he said, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." God is asking him, "Is your anger justified Jonah? You didn't create the plant. Is it right for you to be angry, angry enough for you to want to die?" And the Lord says this, "You pity the plant for which you did not labor nor did you make it grow which came into being in a night and perish in a night. It should not I pity the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the right hand from their left and also much cattle." God is asking Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry? Is it right for you to be angry about this plant and whom you didn't create?" God is asking him, "Hey, I have created this people. Don't I have a right to want to save them if I want to save them? Don't I have the right to send you as my prophet to deliver them from darkness? They shouldn't go through this destruction without getting an opportunity to hear this message that they can repent." The amazing thing in this story, in the book of Jonah, is that God was working not only to save the Ninevites, but we see that God was working in Jonah's heart to cure him from this sickness of being consumed with himself and not focusing on being part of this ministry of reconciliation. God says a storm when he's sleeping. He sends a fish to rescue him from his death. He sent a tree to give him shade to cover his burnt head. He sent a worm to teach him a lesson about sorrow and disappointment and loss. He sent the wind and brought pain and affliction and distress. He did it all because he loved Jonah and he's going to do whatever it takes to bring people to himself and he will use any means necessary. Church family. Back to 2 Corinthians 5, what is our motivation for ministry? 2 Corinthians 5, 14, and 15 says this, "For the love of Christ controls us." Because we have concluded this, "That one has died for all, therefore all have died." And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him through the sake died and was raised. Notice what the apostle Paul is saying. The love of Christ, not our love for Christ, but Christ's love for us. It controls us, it compels us, it inspires us, it motivates us, it drives us to pursue reaching people with the gospel. We think about God's grace in our lives and so we want to take this message to see others as well. You see, this love of Christ is what transformed Pastor Gurkey's life and it's what made him have such an impactful ministry that eight of those prisoners, who all of them, except one, would face being hung for their crimes, their atrocities that they committed, they trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior. Because of this man, you see, what happened right before the end of his time there, there was a rumor that was going around throughout the camp that he was going to be sent home that his wife wanted him to come home. But I want you to see the impact this man had because he had the mindset of God's radical grace in his life and wanted to give it to others. When the men thought that he was going to leave, they wrote a letter to his wife and they said this, "Miss Gurkey, your husband, Pastor Gurkey, has been taking religious care of the undersigned defendants during the Nuremberg trial. He's been doing so far more than half a year. We now have heard, dear Mrs. Gurkey, that you wished to see him back home after his absence of several years. Because we also have wise and children, we understand this wish of yours very well. Nevertheless, we are asking you to put off your wish to gather your family around you at home for a little time. Please consider that we cannot miss your husband now. During the past months, he has shown us uncompromising friendliness of such a kind that he has been come indispensable in our lives, our lives that are filled with cold disdain and hatred. Our dear Chaplain Gurkey is necessary for us as a minister. We simply have come to love him. It is impossible for any other man get this than him to break through the walls that have been built up around us in a spiritual sense, even stronger than a material one. Therefore, please leave him with us. Certainly, you will bring this sacrifice, and we shall be deeply indebted to you. We send our best wishes for you and your family. God be with you. His love for those prisoners, those disciples of Hitler, made them write a letter like this, made this man. He did choose to stay and see out, and he did see the executions that were there. He had this mindset to reach people with the gospel. May we push through comfort. May we understand that we do need to have a concern for the loss because we were once there. May we, in the words of Pastor Gurkey, as he ended his radio station each month have this mindset, "Lord, lay some soul upon my heart and love that soul through me. May I always do my part to win that soul for thee." Let's pray. Father, I pray for us all. I pray for us, Lord, if we are showing that we have symptoms of the Joan of Virus, Lord, that you would bring it to our minds that we would recognize this and repent of this. Lord, help us, help us in this life, not to take for granted your amazing grace, but help us, Lord, to love you and to pursue making you known in United States of America and all throughout the world. We love you and thank you for this day and your precious name, amen. You all are dismissed. We'll see you this Wednesday.
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