Biblical Recorder - If Kangaroos Could Talk

8. March 2010 by D.E. Parkerson

Several years ago Paul Harvey told of an experience the Italian team had when they were racing in the America’s Cup. The race that year was held in Australia.

On one of their days off, the Italian team decided to rent a Jeep and go into the outback to enjoy the scenery and see if they could get a glimpse of a kangaroo or two. The team had been completely outfitted by the Italian designer Gucci. They wore Gucci jackets, carried Gucci bags, and wore Gucci watches.

As they were driving through the outback, a kangaroo hopped directly in front of them. Unable to stop the Jeep in time, they hit the kangaroo and it fell on the road in front of them — apparently dead. The team members all jumped out to take a look.

Someone suggested, “Let’s at least take a picture!”

The driver said, “Before we take the picture, I’ll put my jacket on it so it will look as though even kangaroos wear Gucci clothes!”

They put the jacket on the limp animal, and as they stepped back to take the picture the kangaroo suddenly revived and hopped into the bush — wearing the jacket! Unfortunately the driver’s keys, wallet, and American Express card were in the jacket.

If kangaroos could talk, I can just imagine what other kangaroos would have said to him: “Hey, where did you get the Gucci jacket? And keys to a Land Rover! And an American Express Card! Wow! We are impressed!”

I share this story in order to segue into making a very important theological point. Many in our world assume that all you have to do to become a Christian is to decide one day to join a church, act as though you are spiritually revived, then hop back out into the old environment with nothing really changed, carrying Christ in your heart and a guaranteed one-way ticket to heaven in your back pocket.

It doesn’t happen that way! Prior to conversion we are spiritually dead — hopelessly, helplessly lost! Condemned — and in bondage to the darkness of this domain. Ultimate despair and death is all we could look forward to in the future.

Then God the Father calls us, and the Holy Spirit draws us to the cross on which Jesus Christ, God’s Son, took our penalty for sin, which is death, upon Himself. Having been touched by His marvelous grace, we are rescued by His sovereign power from enslavement to the adversary of our souls, and made citizens in the Kingdom of God.

I love what the Apostle Paul said to Timothy when he instructed him to gently correct those who oppose the gospel so that “if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:25-26).

Note that it is God who gives a spirit of repentance, raising our awareness of sin, which starts the process of regeneration and transformation. Without this gift of grace we may look like Christians, and even think we are Christians, but it will not be true.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Parkerson is a native of Georgia, a graduate of Mercer University [B.A.], Southeastern Seminary [M. Div. and Th.M.], and Campbell University [D.D.]. He has served as pastor of one church in Georgia and five churches in North Carolina. Following retirement as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Sanford on Sept. 30, 1996, he has served nine North Carolina churches as interim pastor. His column, The Paper Pulpit, has appeared weekly in a few newspapers and other publications since 1958. He and his wife, Jessie, live in Wilmington near their daughter and family.)

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Norman

Great analogy!

posted Tuesday, March 09, 2010 11:25 AM | Report Abuse

Dr. James Willingham

Excellent, Del. You have hit the nail on the head. In all of my researches in Baptist history and in my reflections on what was involved in the the events that we know of as the First and Second Great Awakenings and the launching of the Great Century of Missions as Kenneth Scott Latourette called it, I ran head long into the doctrines of grace, man's deadness in sin, his diaability and depravity, and, yet, how he was commaned to do the impossible, to repent, to believe, to arise from the dead. In short, to do the impossible, and yet the impossible is preisely what we must face, realize, and come to grips with, if we are going to see this terrible situation turn around.
The key, I came to believe after many years of painful thinking, could well be summed up in the idea of paradoxical interventions. Just google paradigms of paradoxical interventions, and I think you will be surprised at what the various schools, movements, etc., in counseling have begun to her in the way of insight into, and appreciation for, the use of paradoxes as a means of dealing with various problems. They even note the rapidity with which situations respond to the use of such therapies. Baptists, however, have long been the people who employ and benefit from paradoxical interventions. For some years now I have been trying to call attention to this phenomenon and renew an interest in seeing, understanding, and employing truths that seemingly are the very opposite of what seems to be demanded.
Consider the idea of a message of judgment without the slightest hint of mercy as in the case of Jonah's message to the city of Nineveh "Forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." There is a literal statement which did not turn out as the literalists have claimed that such statements should. The prophet himself did not say as some have insisted, "If you repent, God will spare you." In fact, he did not want the Ninevites spared, but he expcted God would use his totally negative message of judgment to turn that cty around which is precisely what happened. Interestingly enough, God will use the whole affair to teach the prophet that He is a God who has greater compassion and mercy upon poor sinful, fallen humanity than that prophet desired. While God's grace is greater than we could ordinarily expect, it is His method of paradoxical intervention that stands out; His use of seemingly contradictory and contrary opposites that can work to bring about change. As the old King of Nineveh asked, rhetorically, "Who can tell?"
We might well think that predestination, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints and reprobation could not conceiveably be the means of the most winsome expressions of grace. After all, we have the examples of the Primitive Baptists who shriveled up on the vine with their preoccupation with such doctrines. And yet when we look back at those Awakenings and the beginnings of the Missionary movement, we find the same doctrines to be the motivating and compelling and most wonderfully inviting truths. Indeed, we are perplexed. How coul it be?
Dr. John Eusden, former professor and chaplain of Williams College in New England and translator of a recent edition of William Ames' Marrow of Divinity (Marrow of Theology in the last reprint), declared in his introduction to his translation of the first theology textbook of Harvard in the 1600s: "predestination is an invitation to begin one's spiritual pilgrimage." Could it be that all of these truths are actually invitations of the most attractive kind to needy souls? I once expressed to a fellow minister, Gene Spurgeon, that I believed salvation was irresistible. Shortly afterwards, he won a young lady to Christ who responded to his simple plan of salvation so readily that he ask her why. She said, "O, it was so wondeful that I could not resist it." He said when she said thatk, what I said flashed into hi mind,. He did not change hi mind, but siad he was thinking about it. That was in 165-66. In 2003 he was still thinking about it. By 2007 he had come to the belief that the woman was right. Interestingly enough, by that time Dr. Gene Spurgeon had found out that he was some kin to C.H. Spurgeon. I think God has a wonderful sense of humor, and I think any of these truths embraced involves the realization that God is revealling Hiself in His expressions of truths designed to maximize the help of His grace in our salvation, continuaton, and glorification.

posted Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:57 PM | Report Abuse

Corrections on line 4 "disability" an line 9 "counseling have begun to gather"

posted Wednesday, March 10, 2010 1:01 PM | Report Abuse

Gene Scarborough

What a great image: wearing fine clothes, but still a kangaroo!

Do we ever have a bunch of kangaroos running around today in the CR emblazoned designer jackets--without much love in their hearts because they now have the "joy of salvation" and a "peace that passes understanding."

K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple, Stupid!

No kangaroos are impressed with fancy clothes and a credit card!

posted Thursday, March 11, 2010 9:46 AM | Report Abuse

If Kangaroos Could Talk

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