I grew up as what I call a church rat, and what that means
is that your parents served in church probably every service that there was, and
you were left to your own devices. And so me and my brothers and
some of my cousins we would just like prowl the hallways. And when this
church started, it was over at the community center. I'm probably pointing in
the wrong direction, but it's in the community center there in Fife. And
church would end, and my dad was a part. I don't know,
I think might have ran it, but the setup team and the tear down
team, and nobody wants to do that job, but it's a tough job.
But we did that. Every single Sunday. We would cruise in.
My mom was a part of the worship team, and church would end and
nobody would come and get us, so they just let us out and me
and my cousins would start running around the parking lots. And there was a
fountain that is there and people would throw their change in it and just hope
for something amazing, and me and my brothers would promptly jump in there after
service and scoop all that up. The Lord. Yeah, I did not
tithe off it. The abundance of the Lord shall make one rich. Hallelujah.
Well, I got caught, and after you get caught, you get
made part of the setup team, or sorry, the tear down team.
My job from then on out there was this big carpet that we'd roll across
the gym floor and we'd put the chairs on it, and mine and my
brother's job was to roll that carpet up every Sunday. And I hated it,
but now I look back fondly at it. And so after first service,
honestly, I got a little bit emotional. And the word that the
Lord keeps giving me this phrase leaning into legacy, and I think that might
resound with you guys, but it's just cool. It's cool to see what
God does in our life that he doesn't give up on us. I'm so
grateful he didn't give up on me, guys. I was that kid.
And I don't know if you guys know this, but we had a youth
camp that New Horizon put on. We joined several other churches and I I
surrendered my life to Christ at that camp and that was when I got the
call of God on my life, and it was just wow. Sorry,
I'm getting a little choked up. The nineties were a really weird time in
church. There was a we joke about it now and you see it all
these videos on YouTube, you see it on Instagram or whatever platform that you
use, and it's like Benny hen with a lightsaber with his towel and whole
sections are falling over. And it was a little bit weird time in church.
But I can tell you I encountered God in a real and powerful way
that I'll never forget, and was overpowered by his presence in a positive way
and just touched me forever, change me forever. So parents, get your
kids in church. Make church valuable. There's no baseball game that's more important.
There's no job that's more importance. I'll tell you this. I know
I'm a pastor, but we've made our kids quit jobs like they can't stop
scheduling on Sunday, you're out. We do church as a family. We'll
never put God before being in the House of the Lord, so you won't
regret it at all. Let me pray and let's dive the word God.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here, Thank you for your word that
it is a life to us. We thank you for that incorruptible seed that
goes into our heart and that it bears fruit. And we invite the Holy
Spirit into this room, into our life, who is our comforter, who
is our guide, who leads us to the place of truth, into a
place of repentance. And so we just open up our heart up to you
God. We say, we want to be who You've called us to be.
In Jesus' name. Everybody said a men, A men. I'm going
to teach on Jonah this morning, and Jonah is one of the most misunderstood
books in the Bible, and to prepare myself for it, I had to
make sure that I watched the veggietail version of Jonah first. Has anybody seen
that, y'all is wild? I don't know. If it's been a while,
you should go back and watch it again. But that starts off,
and here you have Jonah cruising down to the ship because of the word of
the Lord comes to him. And Jonah's this almost English looking vegetable. I
don't know how that's possible, but it is. He's got a monocle on
his eye. He's very distinguished. And he gets off and into the boat
and then the whole story kind of goes on. He gets thrown in.
He says, you have to throw me over, and they do, and
then all the other vegetables stand there and watch, and then this giant whale
comes out of nowhere and swallows him, and Jonah is lamenting inside the whale
with his monocle, and then out of nowhere the choir shows up like a
whole, like full on sister act. There's an old movie for you,
Like the choirs there in white robes, they're singing, they're dancing, they're
doing their thing. And then Jonah gets spit up onto the shore and I'm
like, wow, this is wild. He gets the ninevia and the thing
that they needed to repent for these Assyrians, these people in history who have
done some pretty horrible things. But in the Veggietail version, they had a
problem where they had this thing where they like to slap people with fishes,
and so in a Veggietails version, he says, stop it, stop slapping
people with fishes. And so one of the challenges of reading the Bible and
studying the Bible is that you often have to unlearn things that you've been taught,
and it's really challenging. Sometimes you read something and you'd heard it.
It taught a certain way when you were a kid. And you know,
when I grew up, before everything was on video, we had flannel graph
boards, and every character looked the same. It was like Joseph had a
cot of many colors. You just take the color thing off and then you
give them a staff and then he's Moses right like you like, it was
like like legos or something. You only needed a couple of figures, and
which is truly incredible. But there's times when you go back and you read
as an adult and you're like that, that's not at all what I was
taught. And Jonah is one of those books. And so it is truly
one of the greatest books in the Old Testament in my opinion. And I'm
not helping my cause any but if you remember the movie Shrek, when he
describes himself, he says, ogres are like onions. Right, we have
layers. There are incredible, incredible layers to the Book of Jonah. And
so I want to start out with talking through a few common misconceptions of what
Jonah is. And the very first one is that Jonah is a children's book.
It maybe gets taught to children all of the time, but it is
not a children's book. I read this one book that it was a children's
book, and in it they represented Jonah as a prophet who had a huge
heart for the Ninavites, that he was so sad at the sin that was
in their life, and it ended with him going to Nineveh. Of course,
they had to leaf off the fourth chapter because that would really mess with
their whole supposition that he was this incredible guy. And the truth is Jonah
was the opposite. He disliked them so much that he fleed the opposite direction
and said he would rather one hundred thousand men, women, children, and
cattle not receive the grace of God than him go there and bring a message
of hers. He did not love the Ninavites. He couldn't stand them.
The second thing that people say is they'll say it's a story about a guy
getting eaten by a whale. It's not a story of him being eaten by
a whale. If the Hebrew word for there is actually dag, it just
means great fish. That could mean a whale, but really it just means
a great fish. The whale is only mentioned nor The Great Fish is only
mentioned twice. Chapter one and verse seventeen it says that the great Fish was
sent by God, and then chapter two and verse ten, the great Fish
is commanded by God to spit him out. That's it. See only two
mentions in the entire four chapters and that entire scroll. Those are the only
time the Great Fish is mentioned. It is a side character to the story.
The best way that I could present it is if you're thinking about how
Jesus rides into Jerusalem and he before he gets there, he says to his
disciples, I want you to go into town. I want you to find
a cult, and you're going to find one that has never been written before.
And if they ask, you, tell those people the Master has need
of it. Which is an incredible story all in itself right. And so
the disciples bring that back. And then Jesus rides this into Jerusalem and the
people are shouting Hosanna, and they're waving the stuff, and they're laying their
coats down, and they say, surely this is the Son of God.
It would be like reading that story and walking away with going, man,
what a great story about a cult. It's not a story about a whale.
The whale just happens to be in it. Another objection that people have
to the Book of Jonah, or a misconception, is they believe that Jonah
wasn't real. Also incorrect. Jonah was real. He was also a real
prophet. You could read about him in Second Kings, chapter fourteen and verse
twenty four. We won't turn there. But he's during the reign of an
evil king named Jereboam. And the truth is he was a pop prophet,
which is rare, Like it's rare to be a popular prophet, like most
of them are hated. Great, the prophet's come into town, like nobody
was excited to see him. Could you imagine like being like the prophet comes
to town and you're like a priest of bail, I just leave, like
we're gonna die today, Like something bad is gonna happen. Right, nobody
was excited when the prophets came to town. It meant that somebody was going
to take a step of faith. It meant something crazy was gonna happen,
that God was gonna show up. And a lot of the Israelites spent a
lot of their time not so sure. They wanted to get that close to
God, because when they did, stuff happened. And the prophet comes to
town and he is a popular prophet. He prophesies that the border of Israel
will expand. It is the only time in Israel's history outside of Solomon,
that the border actually expands closer to what God said that they would be able
to have. And so King Jereboam said, you're all right, you can
stick around. And then at the same time, there was another prophet who
lived in that same era to Amos, and he said, Jerreboem, you're
gonna die by the sword. And Jereboam said, ISRAELI isn't for you.
Get out of here. So he got kicked out and sent the other way.
So he was real. He was a prophet, and he was a
popular prophet. It's also mentioned by Jesus. Jesus mentions the sign of Jonah
as he's talking to the religious people, and that in their day that even
the people of Jonah during his time would celebrate what Jesus was doing. He
also said to them he compared in the same way that Jonah was in the
belly of a whale for three days and three nights. So the son of
Man shall also be speaking of his own death in his time inside the grave,
so we know that Jonah was a real person. And the last is
that it's just a story. Theologians use fancier words. They'll say it's a
narrative, And I'm okay theologically if you believe that it's a narrative, as
long as it's not because a miracle took place. That's where I wrestle with
it because people will say, but yeah, but the region, the whales
can't live there, the whales can't live there. It can't be true.
Then, like do you read your Bible? Have you not read your Bible?
If you haven't settled that miracles are something that God gives us as signs
and wonders should follow us as believers as we present the gospel. People get
healed, people get delivered, people get set free. It is a power
of God unto salvation. It's a good thing. We should desire those things
inside of our life. I settled this with Genesis chapter one and verse two,
or sorry, Genesis chapter one. In chapter two, if you can
believe he said, let there be light, and there was. If you
can believe that, why can't you believe that God can take a great fish,
swallow a human being, sustain the human in it, and sustain the
whale wherever it goes. I've just settled that in my heart. I know
there are those that don't believe that, but I just believe in a God
of miracles. He's done too much for my family. He's due a ton
too much for me. I've seen too much people. I'm grateful for the
power of God. So I believe it's more than a story. So let's
get into what Jonah is really about. The story of Jonah is a story
of race, grace, and divine divine commission. Divine commission. All of
us have been given a commission to go into all the world and to preach
the Gospel. And so Jonah is given sort of a type of what you
and I have been given by Jesus. He said, all authority has been
giving in to me, and you go and baptize people into the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For going to all the world and
preach the Gospel, making disciples of everyone. Jonah is given a divine commission.
It's a divine commission. It's called the Great commission because it's divine.
It's great because it was given by the divine and so you and I have
been given that exact same one. It's a cautionary tale of what happens to
people or people groups when they start thinking of themselves as special over some other
group of people. Israel was a covenant people. They had covenant laws,
and in the process of that, they struggled with this idea of exceptionalism that
they were clean and others were dirty. You see, just because God had
a plan for the Israelites and the Jewish people didn't mean that God didn't love
the Gentiles. That's you and I, we're the Gentiles. He had a
plan for the Gentiles, and it's found in Jesus after the Cross. In
the Book of Acts, Paul said, Hey, this gospel is now going
to the Gentiles. We live in the time of the Gentiles. God has
entrusted you and I with a furthering of the Gospel to all around the world.
And He still has a plan and a heart for the Jewish people.
In Romans chapter eleven, it says that they would redeem it and they would
be Jesus following people. So it doesn't mean that he loved them less or
that he loved them more. God loves all of us. He cares about
all of us. And if we give into an idea of my group is
more exceptional than another group, then you limit God's ability to use you to
reach that group, and we start to look like Jonah. It's a cautionary
tale of what happens when we try and be the dispensers of God's grace to
those who we think deserve it. What a dangerous place to be to where
you look at others is their sin is too great and the things that they've
done are unredeemable. Y'all, friends, I got good news for you.
We don't clean up to come to Jesus. We go to Jesus because He
is good, not because we're good. I've been made the righteousness of God
in Christ Jesus. It isn't my righteousness, it's his. He gave it
to me, and I am in Christ, Oh Man. Every good and
perfect, acceptable thing, everything that I have is because of Jesus. And
Jonah looked at a group of people and said they're unredeemable because of the sin
that they've done, these great calamities that they've caused on other cities. And
he decided that the dispenser of God's grace himself, that he would not be
a part of God's message. It's a cautionary tale of what happens when God's
people stop caring about the divine mission of God of going to all the world.
There's an undercurrent in America right now of isolationism, to think that our
problems are so great that we need to focus inward and not worry externally about
other people. The problem with that is we never advance the kingdom when we
believe that what we have is not enough. When we believe that what we
have is not enough, we believe in scarcity. I've got to hold back.
I gotta hoard what I've been given. There's nothing about that scripturally that
you can find anywhere. Jesus said to the woman who gave two, might
she gave more than all, y'all Because she gave all, I'm not telling
you to empty everything that you have. What I'm saying is, don't get
so focused on what you don't have. Look at what you do have.
Because the little that we do have in the hands of Jesus, he makes
it a lot. I can't help but think about the story with the five
fishes and the five loaves, and Jesus is in the wilderness and he's done
an amazing miracle and the peoples are following him and emptied out the city.
And he looks at the disciples. This is hilarious, and he's like,
how much money we all got? And they told him not enough. So
he says, well, aren't you gonna buy food for all these people?
And the disciples are freaking out and they bring them a little boy. They're
like, well, this kid's got some loaves of bread and some fish.
Like who's the disciple that they put bored to have to do that? They're
like, John, he likes you, best you do it. John's like,
hey, Jesus, I know it's not enough to feed five thousand.
But and then Jesus takes the little that this boy offered, he breaks it
and multiplies it, and he does much. I don't know what God has
given you. We are not limited to just resources. You have influence,
you have time, You have stewardship over something that God has given. You.
Return that to him and he will take your little and he will turn
it into a lot. Jonah was guilty of all three of these cautionary tales.
We can see in his life the area is to where he fell short,
where he wanted to be the dispenser of God's grace and wanted to decide
who was worthy of forgiveness and who wasn't. In Jonah, Chapter one and
verse one, we're gonna read a few verses and they'll put them up there
on the screen for if you don't have your Bible. But it says now
the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of him, mindse
saying, arise God, nin of it that great city, and call out
against it, for their evil has come up before me. But Jonah rose
to flee to Tarshish from this presence of the Lord. And he went down
to Joppa and found a ship that was going to Tarshish. So he paid
the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away
from the presence of the Lord. We all know the truth is that we
can never get away from the presence of the Lord. No height nor depth,
nothing shall separate me from the love of God. Where his love is,
his presence is, where God is his love is, God is love.
But I know in the story it says In his mind, Jonah felt
like he could flee the presence of the Lord. Jonah believes in the grace
of God, but he also believes that they are unworthy of it. Jonah's
struggle, which is something all of us have to guard against, is that
Jonah had a justified offense. We wrestle with this idea of God's mercy and
God's jefe, which is truly what the story of Jonah is all about.
Jonah had a justified offense. The Assyrians are evil people. If you read
history, I'll let you do it on your own and have time for it.
They're one of the most barbaric and cruel civilizations to have ever existed.
The things they did after they conquered a city, it is absolutely horrible,
truly terrible evil. And Jonah says, those people are not worthy of your
grace. He had an offense that in his mind was justified. You ever
have somebody wronged you and you didn't deserve it? Isn't it in those moments
that we desire the justice of God for their life and the mercy of God
for ours. I know nobody likes to hear that I'm guilty. I want
others to get what they deserve, but I want the grace of God for
myself. Judge me based off my intentions, not the things that I do.
But that's not the way that it works. Aren't you glad that Jesus
never said you get what you deserve. I'm so grateful for it. I
have to remind myself of it. I am grateful that I don't get what
I deserve, but my flesh doesn't always feel that way. I'll put it
in a super easy illustration we've all experienced. You're driving down the road,
maybe you're on I five, and the person behind you is riding up behind
you, and you're like, man, I'm in the slow lane over here,
go around me, and they next thing you know, they cut over
and they just floor it. And then a mile down the road you see
their car and they're pulled over by the police. You're like, that's what
you get, right, Something inside you feels a little bit good about that.
We shouldn't be the kinds of people that hope others get what they deserve,
because that's the kind of person that Jonah was. I want you to
put yourself in the position of the sailors on the ship. That's kind of
interesting if you think about this story from their perspective. You're hanging out at
the docks in this distinguished gentleman with a monocle, who we're to believe Vegietails,
shows up at the dock and says, I want to go to Tarshish.
Tarshish is way out there. They believe. It's somewhere around Spain,
anywhere from twelve months to get to to eighteen depending on who you talk to.
With the kind of boats that they have, it is way Not only
is it the opposite direction, it's way out in the middle of nowhere.
When people would say we're going to Tarsha should be like us saying we're going
to timbucktoo, just means you're out in the middle of nowhere, right,
And so that's what he decides to say. Okay, well, we're sailors,
we're gonna go there, and they pack up their journey. They've got
all of their supplies, they're loading it up, and they get out and
they launch into the waters and aways out there they get I have no idea
far or how far they got, but far enough that they feared for their
lives. When a storm, a generational storm came out of nowhere. They're
mining their business. These are professional sailors. They've probably been sailing since they
were young children, and now they're out in the seas and suddenly a storm
comes up that is unlike any storm they've ever seen before. Y'all, when
the professionals get nervous, we should be nervous too. If you've been on
a plight before, and all of a sudden, you see the steward is
doing this back to buckle up. I'm like, oh, help me,
Jesus, I am tightening that thing down, because when the professionals are nervous,
we all should be nervous. And that's what's happening. It's that level
of a storm. The wind is howling, the waves are crashing over,
They're not able to steer anymore. They got to bring the sail down,
and they start to cry out and say, who has offended their God?
And this where's this passenger? I don't understand. And somebody goes in underneath
the ship and this guy's asleep. He's asleep in a generational storm. I
lived in Oklahoma for a little time and the thunder would hit and the house
would shake. I didn't sleep through that junk. Woke me up, terrified
me. If you've ever been in a tornado, warning, it's scary stuff.
This guy's asleep. They wake them up and they say, a ri
I's, oh sleeper, how can you sleep during this time? And they
bring him out and they do this thing to where they basically roll some dice.
They call it casting lots. It's just this thing that's all throughout the
Bible, and they cast lots and the lots show up. That is the
one that messed up. And these guys worship the God of the sea,
and Jonah says, it's because of me. I worship Yahweh, the one
true God. He invokes the covenant name of God, who is the god
of the ocean, who is the God of the land, and who is
the God of the sky. He's saying, he's a god over everything.
He's over everything. Now these people are freaked out because they don't know what
to do because this man has offended the god who they believe is in charge
of their god, like their god is middle management. You made the CEO
mad. So they say what do we do? And he says, you
gotta throw me overboard. What a weird response. I'm gonna be honest with
you. If I'm in the boat, I'm tossing him right quick, like
sorry, Deuce is Jonah. We'll pour one out for you later. But
they didn't. They said you would make us a murderer. And they begin
to row even harder. And they rowed because they didn't on it. They
had more compassion for Jonah than Jonah had for one hundred thousand lost souls.
The pagans who he despised, are doing everything they can to save his life.
Who don't know Yahweh, the God of all. Finally they stop and
they pick him up and they throw him into the sea, and they say,
Yahweh. They actually used his covenant name. Don't hold this man's blood
against me so powerful. And then imagine being in the boat and the sea
is raging and he hits the water and everything's calm. That freak me right
out. Wouldn't know what to do with that didn't taper off. It says,
the seas became still and as they're watching this man drown. According to
the chapter two of Jonah, it says that as he was about to drown,
the god rescued him, and the way that he rescued him was a
great fish. Because you imagine being in the boat, You're like, this
dude's gonna die. I don't know what he did to his God, and
he's about to drown. A fish comes up and swallows him. I'd be
like, I don't know what that did. That guy did, but he
done messed up. Truly incredible. And here's the coolest part of this entire
It's actually one of my favorite parts of this entire story because it's so amazing,
because this is just how cool God is this group of pagans. After
he's swallowed by this great fish. The Bible says that they made an altar
and sacrificed to Yahweh and repented and called upon his name man. Even in
Jonah's mess ups, his mistakes, God still used him, even a people
group that he didn't even like. God's will would not be subverted, even
in his disobedience. And then Jonah chapter two comes and I'm gonna cruise through
this and Jonah chapter two comes, and you see that Jonah's inside the belly
of this great fish, and it says he begins to pray this prayer,
and the prayer on the surface looks really spiritual, looks really good. It's
actually in the same shape poetically as the Book of Psalms and the way that
David did. But the difference was that when David wrote his Psalms, when
he cried out to God, it was always with a heart of repentance.
It was never with an expectation that he didn't do anything wrong. But in
chapter two, Jonah talks about himself in his prayer twenty three times in eight
verses and in only three phrases that he mentions what God did for him.
And before he says what God did, he makes the focus on himself.
He says, I called upon the name of the Lord. Can I ask
you to do something just for a moment, Not to put any guilt and
condemnation on you, but would you analyze your prayer life? How much of
it is about you? Man? I'm guilty. I got needs, I
got stuff, I got family, I got four kids, I got a
young adult and three teenagers. I have mercy on my soul. Like this
gray hair came. I mean, it happened that quick. I pray.
It's like, Lord, bless my family, bless my kids. How much
of your prayer is for a dispossessed people group that you'll never meet, and
you've never seen how much of your prayer is for those who can never add
anything back into your life. We'll never have a word of wisdom or a
prophecy to give you, but that you would pray for them because you've been
given a divine commission. You can't always meet people where they're at physically,
but spiritually we absolutely can. A discipline is maybe in your prayer journal or
through your prayer list, add in things that have absolutely nothing to do with
you. I'm so grateful there's been people who prayed for me. I had
a guy stop me and said, you've been on my heart for the last
ten days. I've been praying for you. I was like, Wow,
no reason to think of me. They just pray, and because of it,
my life has been impacted. And I had no idea. Let's be
those kinds of people. So we move into chapter three and Jonah reluctantly obeys
God gets to the point where God says to him. He says, Jonah,
only say what I tell you to say, y'all, if you're a
prophet and you're in that bad of a spot where God says don't say anything
extra. That's a bad place to be. It says that he walks a
day, in a day's journey into the city, and he only says eight
words. He says, forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. That's
it. And right there is the greatest revival, the fastest revival that's probably
ever hit us. Eight words, five Hebrew words. That's it. That's
all he says. And it says he begins to sweep through the people,
and they begin to pray, they begin to fast, They sit in sackcloth,
sackcloth and ashes, which is a Jewish tradition, and yet here they
have the people of the Ninavites doing the exact same thing. It gets to
the king and it's such an amazing thing. He says, Let this be
the decree that none of us will eat and drink. That maybe the Lord
will read relent. He fasted for a maybe for a maybe church is doing
prayer and fasting coming up, even if it's just for the Maybe it's worth
it that the Lord might relent on our nation for a Maybe I'm willing to
suffer a little bit of indignity, a little bit of hunger, so Jonah
in chapter four then moves out of the city. The whole place is starting
to come before the Lord. They're doing their thing, and the Bible says
that Jonah went east and he goes up until like the high places, so
that he can watch the city because he was waiting for God to destroy it
in the same way that the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorro, which would have
been familiar to him as a Jewish person. That that's what he's expecting,
that the fire of God would come down and consume these people that he disliked.
And it picks up in verse one it says, but it displeased Jonah
exceedingly. That actually rate there. That's the Hebrew word raw, which means
evil. In other words, Jonah displeased that what the Lord was doing was
evil, and he was angry. He received the grace and mercy of God
in chapter two, but now he's calling that same grace and mercy evil because
it's for a group of people that he doesn't like. Oh Lord, is
this not what I said when I was yet in my country? That is
why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are
gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding and steadfast love,
relenting from disaster. This is a powerful section of scripture because this is almost
word for word what Moses said, when the glory of God is passing in
front of him and he sees the backside of God and it messes him up
for days, he says this exact same thing. It becomes a Jewish prayer
that they pray regularly all the time because Moses interceded for the nation of Israel.
And here we have Jonah who's called to go to the nations, and
he refuses, and he takes that exact same phrase that brought grace to Israel
and said, I knew that you would give this to the nations, so
I went the other way. Just a slap in the face of the grace
and the goodness of God. And yet God still loves him and doesn't give
up. This was so astounding. If we're all should be grateful, I'm
not God. We all should be grateful. You're not God. People don't
do something like that, like nobody will miss you. We were just gonna
move on, but God didn't. In fact, the Lord grows up a
shelter in a shade behind him to help him be out of the sun.
Because the Lord loves him so much that even in his rebellion and even in
his heart heartedness, he still has a heart for Jonah, and he has
a heart for his people. The divine commission is for you and I to
go to people, groups that we may not understand, that may not look
like us, that may have different customs, they just don't fit into the
mold of Western thinking. We are called to go to that group. Sometimes
that's financially, sometimes that's leveraging influence, and sometimes that's showing up and being
there. I would invite you to show up on a trip overseas. I
promise you it will change your life forever, forever. Yes, it's an
investment, but it's one that is worth it. As I close, my
prayer is not that you would feel shame or that you would feel guilt,
but that the Holy Spirit would enter into your life and produce a conviction to
fulfill the divine commission. A conviction, Hype just passes in a moment,
shame goes away. But if we can have a conviction, this house has
a conviction. It's a conviction and I pray that that same one would go
into your heart when I ask you seven questions that are contemplative, and I'm
not going to really teach through them, but there are lessons that we can
learn from here, and I believe that at least one of these will land
on your heart. You just pick one and then meditate it on it this
week and ask God what he would have you do. The first question is
this, have you ever wanted your way over God's will? In what ways
are you resisting God's will? Number two is are you inclined to settle for
the comforts of what is familiar to you over the cost of going to people
and places that are unfamiliar to you or even foreign to you, especially those
that are perceived as enemies? Number four? Have you ever questioned in your
mind the justice and the mercy of God? Number five? Is it possible
for you to know about the character of God but not show the compassion of
God? So many Christians that are educated beyond their obedience level. We know
the character of God, we call him good, but curse those around us.
I don't all. I said I was gonna teach on this, but
this just resounds in my heart, the way that we talk to one another,
the way that we talk about each other. We know the character of
God, the goodness of God, the grace of God, the mercy of
God. But what comes out of us is death and not life. I
don't want to be that. I don't want to be the one that joins
in in the gossip and treats another group of whatever political party you don't like.
Is if they're filled with the devil and evil, that as a child
of God, and He as a plan for their life and they just need
to get to Jesus. If you ever question in your mind the justice and
mercy of God, is it possible to know the character of God and not
show the compassion of God? At number six, do you sometimes care more
about your earthly desires over eternal destinies? Number seven? What do you truly
want more? A comfortable life in your nation or the spreading of the Gospel
to all nations. Let's remember what the scripture tells us. For I'm not
ashamed of the Gospel, because it's the power of God that brings salvation to
everyone who believes. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who
live but Christ who lives in me. I am not the master of my
own life. I declared him Lord and him Savior. His words, his
commands hold weight because He's Lord and He's Savior. Salvation is the greatest gift
that we can share with another human being. I'm gonna end with a story.
I was young in ministry, came out of Bible College. I went
over to Sedan. It was a country that was at war at the time.
Honest I didn't have any business being there, but I was there and
in my mind and coming, I'm gonna We're gonna heal people, people are
gonna get born again, Miracles are gonna happen, crusades like, I'm just
all fired up. I'm ready to do this thing. And we end up
in the middle of this area. It's miles off the road. There's kids
who had never seen white people before. Like, honestly, children were fainting
when we got there, and I'm like, the power of the Holy Ghost
has come. No, They've just been told their whole life that the white
monster would come and eat them. We were the Boogeyman and I didn't know
that. And so we go to this area seventeen years they'd live off the
road with no connection to what was going on. And our interpreter said,
hey, Jeremy, there's a termite mound there. We're outside the market.
They're about seven eight feet tall. They're these huge type deals, and I
climbed up the back of that and he said, you're gonna preach the gospel.
And I was like, I've dreamed of this moment. This is this
is it as a pastor, as a young minister. I'm like, yes,
finally, like all the stories I've read, I'm living it out and
I'm standing up there and I'm declaring the goodness of God and I'm declaring that
it must be born again. I'm doing my whole thing through an interpreter,
and I give an altar call and like four or five people come forward,
and I was a little disappointed. I thought the whole market, the city
would empty. John the Baptist Incarnate has alived. And a man came forward
who was very old, And it turns out he was only forty, but
he had lived a very hard life and he looked like he was eighty five.
Just an unhealthy it just a hard, hard life, and he had
a growth on his side that was the size of a cantalope. It was
just massive and he had to support it. I don't want to groscery.
I just want you to understand the magnitude of what this man is living with
in an area where there's just not medical help for him. And I came
up to him and I said, man, I pray for healing for you.
And so I laid hands on him and we prayed for healing, went
through this whole thing. And I looked at him and I pointed at it,
and I said, how do you feel? Is the pain gone?
And he looked at me. I'll never forget it. He looked at me
with confusion in his eyes. This was such a monumental moment from my life.
It just changed me forever. He looked at me with confusion, and
the gist of it was, why do you care about that? And he
said this to me through the interpreter. The whole that I've felt in my
heart, my entire life has finally been filled. He had given his life
to Jesus. All I cared about was signs and wonders and how I looked
in the story that I was going to tell later, I'm a footnote in
that man's story. He may not even he'd not remember. In me,
some guy came and preached the gospel. It gave my life to Jesus.
He's probably not alive anymore, to be honest with you, but he turned
his life over to Jesus. Number underestimate the power of salvation. It's it.
Jesus is the prize. Jesus is the goal. He's the way,
the truth, and the life, and he is the only way that we
enter into heaven. And we've been given a divine commission to preach the Gospel
to every living thing. And we should not stop or give up no matter
what happens in America, no matter how bad things get. Every where we
go, every place our foot is. We are going to preach Jesus in
our workplace and our families in another country. Wherever we go, his name
will be proclaimed. God. I pray for my friends. Thank you for
the gift that you've given us in salvation, that you came to set the
cap to free healed the broken hearted, to give recovery of sight to the
blind. God, we thank you for all the things that you've done for
us, But most of all, we thank you for Jesus, we thank
you that you loved us in our mess, in our disaster, and that
you called us righteous, that you made us better than we could ever be
ourselfs and help us never ever take for granted the gift that is salvation of
being right and spending eternity with you. Thank You for sending us a savior
who knows what it means to suffer, who was tempted and beaten and broken,
but went to the cross willingly and rose for the dead from our justification,
for our sins, not for what he could benefit, but to bring
us back in right relationship with you. Thank you God for the miracle and
the gift of salvation in Jesus' name, Amen.