Christ our Hero

Good morning.

We want to uh do two things before we look at God's word together.

Uh remind you there's a congregational meeting, those are always very exciting, right after this service.

Um we'll receive the 2017 budget, and then we'll um elect our incoming officers, elders, and deacons.

So that's right after this service, right after the doxology.

Secondly, I want to give you an update on Lucy Poole, and I've gotten permission from Conyers to give you this.

Uh for those of you who are not aware, Monday will be a week that uh, well, today a week that the pools went in at 8:30 p.m.

for a scheduled uh induction for their first child.

Monday morning at 5 after Lucy had delivered Max in an emergency C-section, she had experienced significant complications.

And uh in the words of the doctors who were there with the family and those of us who were there during the that portion of the morning, she was as sick as she could be.

Um the Lord in his mercy and through really courageous and heroic efforts on the part of the doctors and the nurses and the staff there at St.

Vincent's cared for her with uh remarkable skill.

Lucy now, perhaps one day we'll look back, I said to Conyers, and on this day and laugh about this.

She now holds the record for the most blood received of any patient in St.

Vincent's ever.

It is a miracle that uh she survived.

Her heart had stopped, and the doctors were able to revive her.

And um, friends, the last tube was removed last night, and she slept through the night.

She was able to hold her son for the first time on Saturday and uh hopes to move to a regular room soon.

So thank you for your faithfulness in praying for the pools.

Uh for those of you who signed up uh during the regular hours of the day, thank you.

For those of you who were late to the sign up and got the 2 a.m.

shift, thank you also for your faithfulness.

Um, before we look to God's word, I'm just gonna let's let's stop and let's let's thank the Lord again.

Heavenly Father, um, as we prayed in the hospital that morning, we don't know how to pray as we ought.

But your word tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And we ask him to do so now.

We thank you for preserving the life of Lucy and Max.

We prayed that you would continue to heal them.

We thank you for these people who have shown the pools what it means to be the body of Christ so faithfully, and I pray that you would bless them as they have prayed and as they have sought you in this desperate time.

And we give you glory and honor and rejoice with you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, let's turn to God's word now.

I know that's what you want.

Jonah chapter 3, verses 1 through 10.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

The reason we're there, we've got a little bit of a different service in the 11 o'clock service, but I was thinking about preaching two different sermons, but I wanted you to hear those things that we needed to say in the 11 o'clock service for for this service here.

And the reason is we're installing our uh new executive pastor, Jamie Peterson.

Jamie and his wife, Michelle, come to us from Oxford, Mississippi.

They have four children, Corbin, Davis, Anne May, and Jack.

And we are just delighted to have them.

Now, what is the what is the the title executive?

That's sort of like set defining Hoover.

You know, it's uh it's very ill-defined because it looks different in different churches.

Um, but in this church, the way that it is newly defined is that Jamie will care for and shepherd our staff, he will, uh, which is uh seems to be growing by the moment.

Um he will care and shepherd our ministry team leaders, which is also growing by the moment, and he will uh help with specific ministry initiatives.

So uh a real uh real value uh to the kingdom has come here, and we're thankful for him.

So welcome.

And um was going to say that last week, but um I would have been the only one here.

Uh the driveway was so icy.

Uh so why are we in Jonah?

Is Jamie like Jonah and is Nineveh Birmingham?

Uh that's not the comparison that we're trying to make.

Um but I wonder if you remember the story of Jonah.

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah.

God says to Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh and cry out to them.

Their sins have come up against me, but I will forgive them if they repent.

And so Jonah gets up and goes the opposite direction to a city called Tarshish.

He's on the boat, on the way.

He's doing everything uh contrary to the word of the Lord, and God, not finished with Jonah yet, sends a great storm.

And uh the sailors who are sailors by profession are terrified of the storm.

And so they begin to lighten the load, they begin to throw all the cargo, all the extra stuff off just to survive.

And uh Jonah, meanwhile, is asleep in the hold of the ship, uh, asleep fast in his guilt and um in his stubbornness and his sinfulness.

The sailors wake him up, get up, get up, don't you care that we're we're dying?

And Jonah, rather than repent, tells them, it's my fault, throw me overboard.

He'd rather die than go to Nineveh.

So uh the sailors do that.

They cast him overboard, but God's still not done with Jonah, and God sends a great fish to rescue him by swallowing him whole.

And Jonah spends three nights in the belly of this great fish.

Well, there in the dark recesses of death, so to speak, Jonah cries out to the Lord, and God hears Jonah's cry and commands the fish to spew Jonah out on the dry land.

That's where chapter 3 starts, which is the climax of the whole book of Jonah.

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah the second time, go to Nineveh, call out against them, so on and so forth.

So Jonah goes, he's obedient to the Lord, and guess what happens?

The people repent.

And Jonah's mad about it.

Why would we consider such a text for such a day as we look to the installation of another pastor here among us?

Because Jamie and I and you need to know that Christ, not Jonah, is the hero of every story.

Listen to God's word.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I will give you.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.

Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days in Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh believed God.

They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.

The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and he issued a proclamation and published to Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd, nor flock taste anything, let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God.

Let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands, who knows?

God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we might not perish.

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for the power of it, for the truth of it, for the reality that you are the hero.

We pray that you would teach us what that means today as we think about our own lives.

And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Imagine the scene with me, the basement of a home early before school, crowded with half a dozen to a dozen teenage boys, most of whom are football players.

What are the sights and sounds and smells of that room?

Well, you can imagine disheveled hair, baggy jeans, a lot of ego, bad breath, and just a gross appetite.

Put in the mix there, one of them dressed in khaki pants, uh, buttoned-down shirt tucked neatly into his pants, and brown leather loafers.

His head is bald, not by uh not by genetics, but by choice.

And um fresh out of college, uh, Jamie Peterson is the Bible study leader of myself and a handful of other guys that crowded that basement uh every week.

He knew how to speak our language, but the thing that stuck out most to me was his faithfulness.

Every week, opening God's word with a bunch of unruly, gross guys, week after week, faithfulness.

But I have something for us to consider this morning as we think about what that means.

Did God need faithfulness and khakis to save those guys?

Or maybe a bigger question, a more a more close question for us today.

What does God need to accomplish the redemption, the saving of his people?

Does God need you?

Did God need Jonah?

Well, of course, we know the answer.

Our minds, the answer is no, he doesn't need Jonah.

In fact, we see God pursuing Jonah over and over and over again, despite Jonah's uh lack of repentance, despite Jonah's sinful patterns.

And I'm not saying that Jonah's Jamie and Jamie's Jonah, Jamie's Jonah, but we ought to say this Christ, not Jonah, is the hero of this biblical text.

And if that's the truth, if Christ is the hero and winner of souls, then what do we need to know as a congregation, both as a congregation and what we are saying as we tell our staff, what do you need to know that our staff is hearing over and over and over again?

Well, they need to hear, you need to know that they hear this.

They are to repent.

As leaders in the church, they're called to repent.

Of what are they called to repent?

Sometimes when God calls people to be leaders in the church, we have a tendency to think because we speak and represent God in a public way, we have a tendency to think that we know what God wants.

Jonah was like this.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah and said to him, Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it.

Well, Jonah thinks he knows what's best for Nineveh, and he doesn't want to go.

You know why he doesn't want to go?

We find out in chapter 4, because he knew that God would allow them to repent, and not only allow them to repent, but would save them.

He knew that God would relent from the disaster.

So why go?

But more than just that, maybe it was that he didn't want the Ninevites to repent.

Because we have to remember that when the word of the Lord comes to Jonah, it says, go and call out against it, it says in verse 2, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city.

That word great city in verse 2 is used differently than the word great in verse 3, the exceedingly great.

In verse 2, it's talking about its importance.

That really important city to me.

Now that would be perplexing to Jonah, because the Ninevehes, those those people were the people that treated the people of Israel so terribly.

And all the surrounding nations, they were horribly wicked.

They worshiped pagan gods.

How could God possibly care for these people?

And so because he represents God, he thinks he knows what God thinks and what God would do.

And sometimes the temptation is to assume that because we represent God, we know what God would do, and so we just choose our own way.

And so we've got some repenting to do.

So that we call those who are in leadership positions in the church, and also all of us in the congregation, that we're to we're to repent.

But what does that repentance look like?

Actually, the king of Nineveh gives us a really good picture of what that repentance looks like in verse 6.

He rises from his throne, in other words, he gets up from his continued privileged position.

He takes off his robe and he covers himself with sackcloth and he sits in ashes and he calls everybody else to repentance.

It's a beautiful picture of recognizing your own wickedness, calling sin, acknowledging this is what it is, believing God and turning from it.

So there's a sense in which we're called, because Christ is the hero, there's a sense in which we're called to repent.

But there's another sense, it just doesn't stop there.

There's another step that's involved.

There's a believe.

Think about all the hours Jonah spent working on this message.

You know?

All the hours he spent reading the commentaries and in his study and taking notes and coming up with great illustrations and poignant applications.

And why don't they believe me?

Well, the Bible doesn't say that.

The Bible says they believe they believe God.

But not only do they believe God, but the sense of the word believe isn't just this theological ascent to a truth.

It's the same word that's used in Genesis 15, verse 6, when it says, and Abraham, do you remember what it says?

Genesis 15:6

And Abraham what?

Believed God.

And God counted to him as righteous.

It's an active word.

It's not just a theological heady word, it's an active word.

But what is it that they believed?

They believed that Christ, as the hero, that God, as the biblical hero in the story, actually wanted to show them mercy.

That he was ready and willing and active, ready to show them mercy.

You know, but just because we repent and believe that God is able to save, and that God is God is ready to show us mercy, delighting to show us mercy, doesn't necessarily mean that that mercy delivers us out of hard circumstances.

The pools know what that's like.

Just because God was there and was merciful didn't mean that Conyers didn't have to go through anguish for now a week.

God's mercy didn't deliver him out of it, but it rather rooted him in it.

He found strength to be faithful to the Lord because the Lord delights in showing mercy.

So as we think about what it means to hold up Christ as our hero, not only are we to say that that we're called to repent because we recognize that sometimes we believe that we know what's best for God, and these people will never repent.

That person will never put away their damaging habit.

That person will never get out of that damaging relationship.

This person will never stop doing the things that keep on dragging them down.

And we think we know what's best for God's people, but God calls us to repent of that.

And when he calls us to repent of that, he calls us to believe afresh that Christ is our only hero.

And as our only hero, he's the only one capable of saving.

And not only is he capable of saving, but he delights in so doing.

And when we begin to recognize that, that's when we can point others also to Christ, who is our real hero.

Out of that mercy that we've experienced from God, that forgives us of our sins calls us to believe again.

Out of that strength, that's when we're able to point others towards Christ.

But what happens if you are like Jonah?

I know what that's like.

You know what that's like.

You know what it's like to run from the Lord.

You know what it's like to not want to see somebody's good, if we're all honest.

What if we are like Jonah?

How do we point people to Jesus in the midst of feeling like that?

Well, Jesus himself tells us in Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

And what he says, he says that Jonah was assigned to the people of Nineveh.

You know what that means?

It means that the people of Nineveh looked on Jonah as somebody that was disobedient to the Lord, and God still delivered Jonah through the rescue of the tumultuous sea and the swallowing of the fish and the spewing out of dry land, that God, that Jonah was a sign to the people of Nineveh that God stood right.

Ready and willing and desirous of showing them forgiveness and mercy.

And then Jesus says, and one greater than Jonah is here.

And what he means is, just as Jonah was a sign to the people of Nineveh, so also is Jesus a sign for us.

That we who are disobedient to the Lord, always thinking only for ourselves, and needing to repent and to believe again, can look to one who, unlike Jonah, was faithful when God said, Go to earth and call out against it, for their sins have come up before me.

And so the Lord, removing his royal robes, came down and lived among us and became a sacrifice for us so that we can call on him.

And when we begin to believe that, when we begin to understand the reality of the resurrection and the person and work of Jesus, we're able to call others to repent, believe, and point to Christ, who is our only real hero.

And so that's our calling to our leaders, to our pastors, and also for all the all those who call this place home.

Christ is the only hero.

He always has been, and he always will be.