Jonah by Dr. R.T. Kendall June 1st/2023






 The greatest curse that can ever be brought to a nation is for God not to discover its sin.  The greatest curse of all is when He ignores sin.  Look what happened as described in Romans chapter one.  We are told that they refused to retain God  in their knowledge and God just 'gave them up.'  It didn't say God pushed them, it didn't say God clubbed them.  There were no flaming letters in the sky to say what God was about to do.  God just 'gave them over to a reprobate mind'; that is, a mind void of judgement, a mind that cannot grasp the truth.  The worst thing that can ever happen to you is for God to pass over your sin in that way.  Maybe you feel you are pretty clever because you have sinned grievously and you have not been caught.  Don't feel good about that for God has by passing over your sin indicated wrath for you, not mercy.  There are those who hide b' - ehind the doctrine of justification by faith.  This is the folly of some antinomians.  They say, 'God doesn't see our sins.  It is one thing to know that 'as far as the east is from the west that is how far our transgressions are removed from us' (Psa. 103: 12); but when there is unrepented sin and God overlooks it, that should worry you, , not give you cause for rejoicing.  For, I say, the greatest curse is for God to pass over your sins in that way.  There is that interesting verse - I have been fascinated by it for years - in Psalm 147 verse 17 when the Psalmist raised the question: 'Who can stand before His cold? - when God just ignores you.  So, when we see a nation that is accelerating in its wickedness and its sinfulness and God, seemingly, is doing nothing about it, it's a time not of rejoicing but it should be the basis of our mourning.  You see the evil that is in the world, the wickedness, and you wonder, 'why doesn't God take not of it?'  This is what is meant by this Old Testament phrase 'discovering sin'.

Let me tell you this: as an individual, you had better be like David who said: Search me and try me, and see if there be any wicked way in me  (Psa.  139: 23-24).  For if God deals with you directly and discovers your sin and grants you repentance, thak Him for it.  And so it is with the church - the church that is in retreat - we must pray that God will discover our sin and have mercy on us.  And as a nation, whether in the United Kingdom or the United States, where the Marxist threat is so real and where wickedness and unconcern are accelerating every day, we ought to fall on our faces and ask God to discover us!  It is a great mercy when this happens; and so it was to Nineveh.  'Go to Nineveh, for their wickedness is come up before me.'




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