Immediately

Immediately. Immediately

Jonah 3:1-5,10 1And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, 2Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. 3So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. 4And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 5So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. ... 10And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31 29But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; 30And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; 31And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.

Mark 1:14-20 14Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 16Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 17And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. 18And immediately they forsook their nets, and followed him. 19And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets. 20And immediately he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.

So there, KJV, we have our three Bible readings for next Sunday, Epiphany 3. What’s going on? The people of Nineveh hear Jonah’s urgent message of impending doom, change immediately and are saved. Paul is an apocalyptist teaching that the End Time has come and anyone who would be saved must submit immediately to the God of Israel before it is too late. [In 1 Corinthians chapter 7 Paul talks about relations between men and women, but it is set within the framework of Paul’s apocalyptic view that the End Time has come: the eschatological immediacy is the essence of it]. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus calls his first four disciples, Peter, Andrew, James and John, in an atmosphere of immediacy; and it is apocalyptic, End Time, urgent, because the kingdom of God is at hand. In all three lessons the end has come and one must immediately make ready before it is too late. 

The Bible is to be taken personally. Get inside the stories, this is not History-101, we are being confronted with the Word of the Lord, God himself is speaking. If one gets inside any one of these three messages, Jonah, Paul, or Mark, one must feel the urgency of no longer casually assuming that tomorrow, or even today, will be the same as yesterday. And look what happens. Not long ago, I met with the family at the bedside of one near death. He had been admitted to hospital for a minor ailment and phoned home asking to be brought some personal comfort articles. Literally within minutes, as loved ones were leaving the house to take those things to the hospital, another call came: emergency, he had lost consciousness and stopped breathing, was being put on ventilator and rushed to ICU. Come immediately. Immediately.

But immediate was fleeting, and had fled. End Time comes, personal Apocalypse happens, and had done, and he was gone. He was ready, he might well not have been ready, but he was ready, I bore personal witness to that. Unreadiness was loved ones and friends left behind with things undone and words unsaid.

It can be too late. But we have three lessons. If I won’t hear Jonah, maybe Paul will get my attention. If I won’t listen to Paul, surely I will hear the call of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

TW+