Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.
It is a good morning. I'm listening to them talk about
there being an abundance and overflow with tithes. And
I was thinking about growing up in my
mom and dad's church. Once a month we had, they would
do a. What was called a pounding for the pastor. It
means a whole different thing now, but
back then you would walk out and there'd be some
groceries on the steps of the porch or there might be a chicken casserole,
which you probably needed to be careful about eating. But anyway,
tithing sometimes looked different
out there where there wasn't much money and people would bring the little and then
they would bring the extras. And that was always such a blessing to see what
God was going to do. We are going to
open with just for a second. I want us to pray for Pastor Kevin,
who's still on sabbatical and I'm not bitter and.
But we miss him so. Father God, I thank you so much for our pastor.
I thank you, Lord, for this season where you've offered him rest. And I pray
that he get that. I said in first gathering, Lord, it would be
awful nice if he had a hammock somewhere where he could
just spend some time, Lord, in your presence. And I just ask that you cover
he and Shari and the girl. I just ask that you bring him that
back refreshed. We know when he comes back, Lord, he'll be up to something.
So Father, help us. In Jesus name, Amen.
That came out wrong.
Sometimes you just put the comma in the wrong place.
I have to tell you, I got tickled. Last week Pastor Allen
had shared, you know, he said, you know, in his benevolent
heart, he did not send in his request for
which book he wanted to teach on. And he said that he would sit back
and let everybody get it. And he wound up with Hosea.
And I saw nothing wrong with that. But anyway, I
just wanted Alan to know that none of us got what
we asked for, but what we
did get was what Pastor Kevin prayed about and
said, no, I think you are carrying the word for this one. And that's what
we always want, right? So I got Jonah
and
it's been so good and it's all for you guys.
And no, it has just been so rich. And
I'm so encouraged by what the Lord has to share with us.
And I love that God always has an
on time word. And
nothing has surprised him about this day, this
week, this month. Nothing has surprised
him. And he sends his word. To do what? To heal
his people. Amen. So we are going to stand up, we're going to read a
couple of verses, and then we are going to turn off the
slides and we are just going to dig into this for a
minute because I need a word from the Lord. Do you need a word from
the Lord this morning? That's what we're going to do today. We are going to
talk about being so much like Jonah,
so much like Jonah. And man, I'm owning that this
morning. To go, God, I see myself in these scriptures and I ask, Lord, that
you help me to overcome this. So let's read it. As Pastor
Kevin would say with gusto. The word of the Lord came
to Jonah, son of Amitti, go to the great
city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its
wickedness has come up before me. But
Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for
Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he
found a ship bound for that port. After paying
the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish
to flee from the Lord. Father. God,
help us. Help us, Lord, to see
ourselves in your word, Lord, and to see your instruction in the
Word. Father, this morning we're going to come under your truth. Father. God,
there's a whole lot of opinions and a whole lot stuff in the world right
now. But Father, what we need is your truth. And so, Father, that's where we're
submitting ourselves. Today I ask, Lord, that my
stuff fall and your stand. And Father, I'm asking for hearts that
are teachable. You said you would awaken our hearts morning by morning
to be taught of you. And today we have come to learn from you,
Father, settle us, Lord, I ask in Jesus
name. Amen. I find it so
interesting that Jonah.
Ah, Jonah. I look at
that passage of scripture and it says that Jonah decided to
flee from the Lord. And I just have to tell you, Psalms was
written before Jonah. And I'm Pretty sure the
139th Psalm says this, starting with
verse 7. Where can I go from your
spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If
I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed
in Sheol, behold, you are there. If I take the
wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even
there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will
take hold of me. If I say, surely the darkness will
cover me and the night will only be light around
me. Even the darkness is not dark to you and
conceals nothing from you. But the
night shines as bright as the day darkness
and light are alike to you.
You can run, but you can't hide. You
can run, but you can't hide. And we're good at running, aren't we?
We're really good at deciding that the word that the Lord has given us
is not the one that we wanted. And so it's obviously wrong.
I look at this book of Jonah. If you got your Bible, just go there
with me. It says in chapter one,
verse one, it says, now the word of the Lord came to
Jonah, the son of Amitti, saying, go to
Nineveh,
but Jonah ran away to Tarshish.
I don't like that word. That's hard to say. Tarshish. Say
it three times. No, don't. Tarshish.
So we're going to say that city. So they ran. He ran away
to that city. And actually, that's probably better anyway, because
there are a lot of places that we like to refer to as that city,
right? We look at it and we
go, the word of the Lord. He had a word from the Lord
and he ran. I mean, was this an audible word
from the Lord? Was this in the middle of the night, dream from the
Lord? It doesn't clarify that. But he had a word from the Lord. And we're
like, how do you turn away from a word from the Lord?
And he wasn't just, you know, he was a prophet.
He was a prophet of the Lord, and he
had a word from the Lord.
And we can look at that and go, what? But you see, Jonah only had
one instruction. We got the whole manual. We
got it all right here, the last Will and Testament.
These are the words he left for us. And there are instructions for
every single situation we may find ourselves in. And
there are instructions for how we comfort ourselves
and how we respond to situations, especially
situations that are hard and that we don't understand.
But it says that Jonah gets up early.
One of the translations says he got up early and
headed for Joppa, and he paid the fare
to get on that boat to go to Tarshish. Shush, shush.
He wasn't just, like, detouring just a little bit off the path.
He wasn't like, I'll go to La Verne and then the Lord won't be able
to see me over here in Smyrna. No, he
went so far. He got as far away from God as he could
possibly get. It is literally the mileage
from New York City to Los Angeles within about six miles.
He went all the way to the other coast. He's like, maybe
If I'm over here, maybe God won't see where I am.
Isn't that funny? But we do it all the
time. He can't see me
here in this mess that
I have paid good money to get myself into.
But it says he wanted to get as far away
from the Lord as he could get. Why? Because he didn't like the word that
he'd been given. And he had his reasons for not liking that word that he'd
been given. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. But if you
look down a little bit further, you'll find in chapter one
that a storm comes, a bad
storm. And everybody on the boat is
frightened and they're terrified, and they don't like this situation.
And I think it is so interesting that it says
all of this is going on all around. And Jonah went
to the deepest part of the boat and was sound asleep.
Sound asleep. You know what I do? I look at that and I go,
jonah knew the Lord. And sometimes when
we're running and we're trying to get as far away as possible,
yet we know the voice of the Lord. We have
this tendency to try and shut down everything on the
inside. If we can just buffer that voice for a little bit. If we can
just medicate that voice for a little bit. If we can just step
into this place where we can dull our ears. And enough
that we don't hear the correction or the call of the Holy
Spirit. So we go as deep as we can get,
and we put ourselves to sleep. Spiritually,
we do, because it's the only way we can go on in our
disobedience. It's the only way that we can do it.
And God hadn't forgotten
or lost sight of Jonah. Just as God has not
forgotten us and lost sight of where we are, whether
in obedience or disobedience in the planet,
God has not missed one thing. And
all of the men up there, they're all up, they're despairing
because it looks like they're getting ready to go down. Things look bad. You know,
sometimes when things look bad, we can panic and we can respond in a way
that we shouldn't respond. When what we really need
is to get to the core of the matter, right? And
so I actually really respect this
about Jonah. They wake Jonah up
and they cast lots, basically draw straws. And
the short straw falls to Jonah, and Jonah
fesses up. He said, it's me,
it's me. And there's something on the inside of us that
Holy Spirit of God that will bring conviction, that will cause us
to go, it's me. It's me. I'm in
disobedience. But then there's this other element here that takes place
that to me sounds like the Enemy because it says,
Jonah says, throw me overboard. You know,
sometimes when we've really, really messed up, when
we've really missed God, one of the things
the Enemy does love to do is tell us how bad we are.
And he wants you to despair to the point of death.
And he wants you to go, I don't deserve to live. I have messed this
up so many times. I have run from God, and now I'm
in this ditch and I'm in this mess, and I do not deserve to
survive this.
Throw me overboard. Throw me overboard. Let me
tell you the difference. The convicting work of the Holy Spirit
will go. Kurt, you missed it. Tina,
you missed it. But if you'll return to me, I will
return to you. If you will call on me, I will heal
you. There is promise in the convicting work of the
Holy Spirit. The promise of the Holy Spirit is, well, if you
will correct this, if you will allow me to change, if you will
repent, I will heal this area of your life. But the voice
of the accuser of the brethren, which is Satan, will come and go,
you're not worth saving. You are worthless.
You are pitiful. Nobody wants you to get out of this.
Nobody thinks you should be healed. And everybody sees what you have done.
You're not worth it. But you are
always worth it. God loves
you. God loves us. Even when
we are in the depth of the boat, when we've gone to so much
disobedience that we're still trying to hide. When that realization comes
of what's actually happening in our lives, it would be my hope and it would
be my prayer that we would go, God save me.
God help me. Not that we would despair of life.
He is a life giver. But here's something else, guys. You know what? I
see this
scripture says that the men didn't want to throw him overboard.
They didn't want to do that. They didn't want to be held accountable for this,
for his life. And
sometimes there have been
situations in my office where I'm
watching a family go down for the last
time because they refuse to release something
or someone that God has another plan for, that
God has a plan of rescue that maybe they can't quite get
under your roof or within your advice or
whatever. When you've done everything that you can do. Sometimes we have to release
things to God. We just have to go. God, I don't know what to do
here. But these men, they finally reach the point
and they're like, okay, we've got to throw him. We've got to throw him over.
We've got to let this go. But God.
But God. Can you say that? But God. But God. Now
look at this. In the very last verse of the
first chapter, it says, and I'm reading from the amplified
version, it says, now the Lord had
prepared, appointed, destined,
a great fish to swallow. Jonah.
Appointed, destined, prepared.
Guys, if he can appoint, prepare, and destine a fish, what do you think
he's got for you? What kind of plan do you think he has for
your life? I listened to Pastor Wayne sharing a few weeks
ago about God destining a woman on the other
side of town, a medical worker, to be in front of his house at the
very moment that he had his accident.
God prepared that. And I think about this fish being
on the other side of the ocean going, I don't know why. I just feel
like I need to turn left.
I feel like I'm just supposed to be over there for some reason.
Guys, pay attention to that. Turn left.
Whatever. God di. Unction. If he can prepare and
destine and send a fish, how much
more? How much more does he have
for you? And then this one cracks me up. I
so love this. Guys, you can't. As Joseph says, you can't make
this up. Well, some. Well, never mind.
Isn't this just like us? So much like Jonah.
Jonah. I gotta get as far away from the Lord as I can possibly get.
I'm gonna take my money and I'm gonna give it to these people, and I'm
gonna go with them over to the other side. We look for a group
to run with, don't we? When we're ready to run from the
Lord, we don't like to do it by ourself. So we will immerse ourselves
in people who are going in that same wrong direction. Don't you think?
I was telling the first gathering many years ago,
I vacuumed in
and I was
vacuuming a white rug, okay?
Everything else was a brown rug, and I was vacuuming a
white rug. And there on the white rug was a brown
penny. And I was able to see that penny and
go pick that penny up and vacuum around it. And me
being the master cleaner that I am, I tossed it onto the brown
carpet because I wasn't vacuuming there
yet. Then I turned around and I
couldn't find the penny. Cause it blended so
well with the rest. And sometimes
that's what we want, isn't it? We just want to go blend in with the
brown carpet for a while. We don't want to stick out like a
sore thumb in the middle of a white carpet.
Stick out, stick out. And
don't become deluded to think that you're actually part of that, because
you're not. You might be laying on top of it, but you ain't part of
it. And so
Jonah and his buddies, the ones going as far away from God as they can
possibly get. Now Jonah has been swallowed up by a predestined
whale. There's the quote for next week's Facebook.
And don't you know you find Jesus in the storm.
I titled this next portion whale song.
Yeah, because I'm just that warped anyway. But there he
is. He's drowning. He's in that water. And
who knows how long he's been in that water. It doesn't give us a time
frame. But Jonah finds Jesus because he
says, oh, Lord, my God. When my
soul was fainting within me, I remembered the Lord. You think,
I'm not making fun of Jonah. I'm making fun of all of us
because this is what we do. Everything's great. I'm having
a wonderful day. This is. Oh, and there's a storm. Jesus, I need you.
And then he says,
but as for me, I will sacrifice to you
with the voice of thanksgiving. And I shall pay that
which I have vowed.
The translation. Okay, I'll go do what you asked me to do in the first
place. That's the translation.
I love this. I was thinking about him
out there, you know, Jonah, let's get as far away from God as
we can possibly get. Hove him in the waves. Draw near,
oh, God, draw near. Send the angels, send the
trumpets. God, get us close. I need you, Jesus, to come to my rescue.
Suddenly we want him as close as he can get
right now. Let me show you what the grace. I believe
this is such a marker of grace
in the life of Jonah. Because in chapter 2, verse 10,
it says, so, Jonah. So the Lord
commanded the fish, and it vomited
Jonah up onto the dry land.
Now, see, God could have gone just Mr. Well, just ease up next to
the shore, open your mouth and let Jonah walk out, couldn't he?
But that isn't what he did. Why? Cause
sometimes our deliverance doesn't need to be pretty.
Sometimes when we're coming out of those situations and those hard places,
sometimes it needs to be remarkable. Sometimes we
need to remember why Proverbs 26:11 says, As a dog
returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to
his folly. And sometimes it might
take the smell of vomit to cause you to not go back there
again. Sometimes. You know,
one of my favorite quotes by Bishop Garlington was, I'm so grateful for
every time that God has delivered me in the privacy of my own
mind. But sometimes deliverance
doesn't look like that. Sometimes it shouldn't look
like that. Sometimes that day needs to be marked
to remember and not go back. Amen. Well,
I know that for me. And now it says
chapter three, verse one. Now, the word
of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, go to Nineveh,
the great city, and declare to it the message that I'm going
to tell you. And it says,
and Jonah got up and went straight way to Nineveh.
Picture it with me,
I'm going to Nineveh. I'm on it, God.
Straightway to Nineveh.
And Jonah goes to share this message
that the Lord has given him. And there's a part of me that kind of
wonders a little bit. See, Jonah didn't want Nineveh to be
saved. And he says that. He says, this is the whole
reason that I didn't wanna go. Why?
Because Nineveh was bad.
Nineveh was bad. They couldn't stand people
who didn't agree with them. They didn't like people who didn't worship their same gods.
If they had somebody come into their land that they didn't want there,
they cut off their ears and they cut off their nose and they would send
them back. There was human trafficking. There was
all kinds of sexual immorality. There were murders that says there were bodies in
the streets. They
were a people that
Jonah had decided weren't worth saving.
And isn't that just how it goes sometimes? We
pray God mercy for me and justice for them.
When God is going, what if I have compassion on
everybody? What if I decide? And
so Jonah, I'm thinking about this. He doesn't want them to be
saved. He is moving and going to do what he's called to do. You know,
sometimes we can go and be obedient and not do it with the best heart
that's possible. But it says that Jon went to the
heart of the city and he began to share the message that if you don't
repent in 30 days, this city is going to fall. And
it says that the people began to repent. It says
this it says, the king says, when the word reached the king of
Nineveh. This is verse six, chapter two. When the word
reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, he
tore off his robe, he covered himself with sackcloth, and
he sat in dust and in repentance. And he issued a
proclamation. And it said, in Nineveh, by the decree of the king,
no man, animal, herd or flock is to
taste anything. They're not even to drink water. They
must be covered with sackcloth. And everyone is to call on
God earnestly. And who knows,
God may turn in compassion and relent and
withdraw his burning anger.
It says in verse 10, God saw their deeds.
It says God had compassion and he relented
concerning what he had said would befall them.
But here's the thing.
Once we make up in our hearts who God needs to
judge, it's hard for us to let go of that.
And we'll justify it and we'll move in
that and go, lord, these people deserve mercy and
these people deserve judgment. But we don't get to make that call.
Because the word of the Lord tells me that he would, that none.
None should perish. None should perish. He's
not slow. He's not being held back by anything other than
his love and compassion for humanity.
And it's interesting to me because it says
at the beginning of chapter four,
it says, God had compassion in chapter three and relented
concerning the disaster he had declared. He didn't do it.
Then it says this, but it greatly displeased
Jonah. And he became angry.
He became angry how, Lord, you've seen
what they've done. You know the people's lives
that they've destroyed. You know the pain, you
know their wickedness, and you have had compassion
on them. I have to wonder if maybe the
smell of the whale vomit had dimmed just a bit in his life.
He wasn't as willing and as open to what God
had in that moment. But here's the cool thing. Well,
it's not necessarily cool, says Jonah does.
If you read the passage of Scripture, Jonah basically does what he did in the
beginning. He takes off to the outskirts of town.
He takes off to the outskirts of town and he sits down in the hot
sun. And I
will just call it sulking. That's the
Barbie amplified version. But he sits down in the
sun and it says he is angry to the point that he wants to
die because the Lord has had
compassion on these people that he's already formed
his opinion about and probably already had
Experiences with. And he was right. They
were wicked. They were bad. They had no morality to
them. They had nothing good
to recommend them. Except when
this king heard the word of the Lord, he did what Jonah
didn't do. He obeyed it. He
obeyed it. And the Lord had compassion on him. Now, this is
interesting to me. I'm gonna get the worship team to come out. Cause I'm going
to do this very long.
Jonah's sitting out there. God has had compassion on these people
that Jonah didn't want compassion extended to. Guys,
we got to constantly check our hearts. We got to
constantly check our hearts. Because we
judge and we pray down curses on people
that perhaps God is wanting to save. Maybe God's
wanting to do something here. And that's what we see. He even has compassion
on Jonah. Jonah's sitting out here in the dirt and the sun's beating down on
him. And the Word tells me that the Lord caused a plant
to grow up over Jonah and to shelter him.
And Jonah loved that plant. It brought him comfort.
And he loved that he now had a covering in that plant.
That was God's grace. His mercy
took. Son, that was acting out again.
But then it says this. The next morning,
the Lord sent a worm to eat the plant.
And it ate the plant. And once again, Jonah is
mad enough to want to die,
to want to die over this plant.
And God steps in and he says,
you will grieve and you will be angry.
This plant. But there are
120,000 people.
120,000 people. And one of the translations
says that doesn't know their right hand from their left.
They are innocent. Not because they haven't done anything, but because
they don't know. They don't know. And God says, you
are going to invest your anger and your frustration
in this one thing when the picture is much
bigger. The picture is much bigger than this
one moment, this one thing that's happening in your world that
casts away. You know what else it tells? This is just me.
But I'll look at this and I go, God basically gave
him 24 hours to sit in his mess.
24 hours to get over the fact that we
serve a compassionate God who would not that one would
perish, Even that one that wish would.
The God that we serve is slow to anger.
And he is compassionate. And sons
and daughters of God, and future sons and
daughters of God that we don't know what's going to happen. If God will turn
their lives around, if God will save them, what he will do. But what we
do have to have is a heart posture of compassion for
humanity. Not just part of it,
all of it. Because God didn't say
there are 110 souls, but those other
10,000. You just stay mad at them or you be upset with them.
No, God said, what if there's a bigger picture?
You grieve over the one thing
and grief is right,
but there's a bigger picture. There's a bigger
picture and we're not always going to understand it.
But what we can know is that we serve a very, very
good God. And he is compassionate
and he is slow to anger. And when people
repent, he does forgive them. So how can
we withhold that?
Here's the thing, guys, that was
120,000 souls we
have.
We have 8.2 billion people
on this planet, a majority of which don't know
their right from their left. The majority of which
that we attribute evil motives to. And they don't know Him.
They don't know Him. And it would be
my heart that we would search our own
hearts and find God's compassionate nature.
Because what the enemy wants is for all of us to rise up and be
angry, just like Jonah was angry, but it did not serve him well.
We find that at the end of the book of Jonah, there is no resolution.
It isn't as if Jonah says, oh, I see it, God. Everything is
fine now, God. And sometimes you just gotta sit
with the discontent while you're sorting through whatever
God wants to sort through in your life. Whatever heart posture that God
wants to sort through in our lives. But I know this much, he
wins. I know this much,
I know that God wins.
If we are going to rise up, let us rise up in compassion.
If we are going to pray, let us pray for the souls of the lost.
If we are going to be grieved in our soul, let us grieve that there
are people who are dying every single day and leaving
this planet without knowing Him.
Let our heart be like his.
Let us be compassionate.
8.2 billion people.
You know, it's not the end of the story.
Because in the book of Nahum, about 150
years later, those same people who had
repented that same lineage that
had given their hearts to God turned away and
Nineveh was destroyed. But I'm so grateful
for the 150 years.
God is a God of second chances and third chances
and fourth chances and fifth chances. And we want
all the chances for us, but Lord cut them off here.
But may our hearts be God of compassion,
have compassion on us and have Compassion
on them. That none would perish.
That none would perish. If you'll stand
with me,
this is what I believe. I know that there are some people that
are kind of that are just questioning this morning
and have pain in your hearts,
grief in your hearts. But what I'm going to ask you to do
is they're going to play some songs and we're going to just come into
the altar for a few minutes
and we're going to lay all that at an feet. All
of the things that go. God, I don't understand
God. And I don't. I. I don't understand. But
God, you are faithful and you are sovereign and you have a plan. And
Lord, just like with Jonah, there's a bigger picture.
There's a bigger picture. So we're going to dim the lights for just a minute
and we're going to sing. I need you, Jesus.
Give me Jesus. And if you have a place that you need to work out
in your spirit, it would be my prayer that when you get up from
this altar space, that
your heart would be for the 8.2 billion.
That your heart of compassion would see as
God sees. And that we would rise in our spirit
man and become intercessors and warriors
in the kingdom of God that speak peace, that bring life,
that bring truth. Because that's the only way they
know they're right from the left. It's the only
way is when the Lord uses you
to bring truth to a world. To offer
compassion to those who we've decided do
not deserve it. So, Father, that's what we're going to do. Do.
We're going to find a knee. We're going to
lean into you, Father God. And all of this, Father, all of the
rebellion, all of the things, Father God, that you see not just
in the world, but Father, in our own hearts. God, that you would
correct those. Bring softness back where the enemy wants our
hearts to be hard, Father. Bring compassion where the enemy
would love to bring judgment. And Father, I ask that you bring peace
where the enemy would love to bring turmoil. We are your kids,
not theirs. And so, Father, we come under your hand.
Prince of Peace. Prince of
Peace. Fill this place with your presence. I
ask in Jesus name. Amen.
Amen.