Why Are You Angry?

Hand clap of praise for God. You're already doing it. Amen, hallelujah. I got to say one thing first, cuz I forgot to last service. You know who drew this.

This is a pink microphone. My, my daughter, Micah, drew it. And, she told me yesterday. She walked up to me and, I'm going to say it, but picture her saying it, if you know what she looks like. Just, she's a four-year-old, pretty little girl.

She came, she said: hey, Daddy, I drew you a microphone. It's a pink microphone that you can use to preach at Orbit Church tomorrow. And, I promised her that I would mention it and I forgot to mention it. Rally, I forgot to mention it during the first service. So, you all have the luxury of seeing my daughter's beautiful pink microphone.

U, Hannah told me to wrap my microphone in it and I said: I use a headset so I can't do that, but I love my daughter. Yeah, hey, hey, you know I'll take whatever praise I can get, because that's the best I do during the week is to say what I just said. That's great. We're going to be in Jonah, chapter 4, today. I'm going to read the last verse of chapter 3, but without belaboring.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

An introduction to this passage. I want to catch you up really quickly and then I'm going to read the passage for today, because sometimes I can preach, like off of one little Bible verse, but today I think the passage speaks for itself, like it preaches its own message. So I'm going to catch you up and then I will read the passage. To catch anyone up who- maybe it's your first time- we've been going through a series called not Jonah, not Jonah J, not Jonah cuz. We don't want to be like Jonah, we don't want to be like him.

He did the opposite of what God called him to do. God called him to go to the city of Nineveh, which is the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. Long story short, that was way back, about 700, 800 years before Jesus existed or before he came to Earth, and, that was a long time ago. It was a very brutal Empire. They would skin people alive, they'd cut people apart.

This is why you put your kids in-, the kids areas- because I talk about that kind of stuff anyways-, God called them to go there. Of all places, Jonah didn't want to go, so he went the opposite direction, hops on a boat goes to a place called tares, a big storm comes and in order to rid themselves of the storm, Jonah realizes that since he doesn't want to call on God- and he's the problem- he needs them to throw him out the boat. They throw him out the boat, he gets swallowed by a fish. In three days and three nights he's in the belly of said fish and then he prays to God in the belly, he repents. Essentially, God relents shortly after and the fish spits him out on dry ground and then God, because he's so good, he gives a second chance to.

He called Jonah again and Jonah went to the land of Nineveh, or the city of Nineveh, and he preaches a very basic message. It's not a good one. He says: repent, otherwise in 40 days your city will be overthrown. That's the full extent of his message, not full of grace, but it is the truth. And they respond positively.

That was the message last week. Is there a way we can adjust? It's coming like ring it into the speakers. We might adjust it a little bit. And from the, the, the animals, all the way to the king of Nineveh, they put on sackcloth to signify mourning and fasting and they don't eat food or apparently even drink water, and they call urgently on God Yahweh to see if he might relent of his coming judgment.

And in chapter 3:1 it says this: when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Let's jump into chapter 4, and I'm going to read this whole thing, because it preaches is for itself. But to Jonah this seemed very wrong and he became very angry. He prayed to the Lord. Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?

That is what I tried to forall by fleeing to tarses. I knew that you were gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending Calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it's better for me to die than to live. This dude's a drama queen. But the Lord replied: is it right for you to be angry?

Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, or a booth, in other translations, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord, God, provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed the plant so that it withered.

When the sun rose, God provided a scorching East Wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint, weary. He wanted to die and said it would be better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah: is it right for you to be angry about the plant? It is. He said.

And I'm so angry I wish I were dead. But the Lord said: you have been concerned about this plant, that you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals? Today I want to ask you this question: why are you angry?

Why are you angry? I think, like I said, this passage speaks for itself. I think you all have heard the message just now. Whatever God wanted to speak to you, I think he spoke it to you. As I read that passage.

I'm not special, I just try to deliver additional information, to what God's word has already said. So I pray that it spoke to you, but I want to talk to you about this question. Why are you angry? Anyone in this room get angry once in a while. Be honest, please, please.

I appreciate honesty. I didn't say: are you an angry person. I said: do you get angry once in a while? I get angry. I get angry.

I mean, we live in Phoenix. I read a study one time that said: I love Phoenix, right. But I read a study one time that said: , Phoenix is the capital of like for road rage. It is the, the- I don't know the city for the most road rage in the country. I don't know why I worded that incorrectly.

But people here apparently have a lot of Road Rage, which means they got anger somewhere. Just cuz someone cuts you off, don't mean you got to flip them off. You know, but I've seen it. I was passed by someone the other day and they had passed me in a parking lot and they, they were already like, like the roads right here. They were right here, like they'd already crossed it.

You know what I'm saying, like the joke's over, at that point chicken crossed the road. He's standing right here and I'm driving, and I was even driving quick, I think. The speed limits like 5 to 10 m hour. I was probably going 11 or 12, so not that quick. I was going a little above it, as you do in a parking lot.

Come on somebody, and I was driving and this dude, I know he had a kid with him, but the kid was that way, you know, like I, I, I waited for them to cross, but I passed by and this dude's like looking, you know the look, oh, I was trying to kill this kid, goodness gracious. But he looked at dude has anger problems, and I got driving problems apparently, but you've done the same thing. Someone cuts you off and they're like you're so consumed in your own world, then they cut you off and you're like, how dare they? Inconvenience, or like frustrate, or you know, like cut me off, how dare they? That's an anger problem, that's not a cut off problem.

Many of us, we, we have anger that's not even deep seated. It just, you know, just kind of Sprouts out whenever your wife asked you to do something that you were going to do 10 minutes later than she asked you, and then you're, like, all of a sudden, really, really harsh, speaking of, we got a marriage series starting on June 9th. It's. It's not just a marriage series, though. It's a relationship series.

Can y' toss up the slide? I was going to call it four horsemen, but that didn't make any sense. It made sense to me, but not to you all, so I just called it a marriage series, but then I want to add the relationship aspect, because not everybody's married. A lot of people going to get married. They need this.

A lot of you been married but you're not currently married. You need this. It's about relationships in general. I'm going to talk about four activities that couples participate in, or just people participate in that that causes them to continually disconnect from one another, right? Those that struggle with stonewalling or contempt, or like criticism, all those things we're going to talk about.

I think it'll be really, really helpful. Those of you who are healthy: it's going to shape you. It's going to be good. Those of you in marriages that aren't not healthy: it is going to shape you too. It's going to be really helpful.

And those of you who are not married, maybe kids or, older students, or maybe you've passed that season in your life. It's going to be helpful for you too, because we've all got relationships in our relationships. We tend to struggle with anger. You know, I had perfectly good kids and then they grew up a little bit and they're not perfectly good like they were when they came out. You know it.

And so I get angry, I get frustrated. We, we all, struggle with anger and I hope to diagnose for you at least two to three reasons of why you're angry and how can we combat those. Where does that come from? And so when I look at Jonah, I see a person who becomes angry and it's crazy, like if you're reading Jonah 4, verse one, it says this: but to Jonah, God's relenting of Calamity on the ninevites, right, this is, this is how he's responding. But to Jonah, say this with me: this seemed.

It might not be up there, but to Jonah this seemed very wrong, seemed. My first point for you is: you've got to check out the seams right. Seams on your clothing are when one part of clothing comes together with another part of clothing. You've got seams in your mentality where you're trying to put two and two together. You're trying to ask God the question: hey, why did you do this?

You're taking what you see and what you know about God and you're trying to put two and two together, but your seams tend to make you angry. For Jonah, it made him angry. It seemed wrong that God would relent on his Calamity toward the city of Nineveh. Well, why did it seem wrong to Jonah? I think we've got to break that down a little bit before I try to make it relevant to you.

It seemed wrong because the nvite people group were the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. They were involved in a Westward Expansion and they had conquered a portion of Israel- Northern Israel, in fact. This is where Jonah is from. He's from Israel, and so he's probably got some family, some friends, some distant relatives or or even just some people he's aware of who have maybe been captured and enslaved by the Assyrian Empire. He's got people in his sphere of influence who have had negative interactions with the Assyrian Empire.

Jonah does not like this people group. This is why he went the opposite direction of God's calling, because God was calling him to a group of people that, it seemed to him, were not deserving of God's grace. Now, before you judge Jonah, let's be real. We all have prejudices against certain people. I don't even need to talk about the current day prejudices that none of you guys participate in.

I, I could talk about some basic ones, because I think God calling Jonah to the city of Nineveh is the equivalent of calling someone in this room or someone way back in the day to Berlin in 1941. I know you don't like the comparison because you've been hating on them your entire life, right like I. I know I have two, I. I don't like the comparison because the ninevites and the Nazis- they're totally different. The ninevites existed way back in the day, the Nazis were much more recent, but it is a fair equivalent.

When you look at all the empires in history, one of the most brutal empires in all of history was the Assyrian Empire. It didn't last as long as some others, but they were brutal. Like I said, they would cut people apart. They would skin people alive. About a month ago I showed you guys an incription and on that inscription were pictures of people getting cut apart- y'all.

They wrote about this stuff. That's the kind of stuff you hide, but they were proud of it, the Assyrian Empire. They were brutal and God called Jonah to go to it, and so I think it's a fitting comparison. It would be like if God called you today to go to a land where there are people who have wronged your family. It is Memorial Day, for example, and I'm scared to go there a little bit, to be honest with you, because I don't want to offend anybody, but I think God offended, Jonah, and I think it's helpful for us because we're going to find ourselves offended by The Calling of God if we're not careful to embrace his attributes and character.

So it would be similar to those of you who maybe have relatives who have been impacted by their time in the military over. Maybe it was Desert Storm, maybe it was Vietnam, maybe it was over the last 20 years in Afghanistan or Iraq. It would be like God calling you to go to the very people who wronged them and telling you: ha, go in there, but like he, he it. That's the extent of what God is calling him to. I think that's the extent of love he has for his creation and that's the extent of his calling for each one of us to go to those who have wronged us, but let me bring it home because this might not be relevant to some of you.

There have been people very close to you in your life who have wronged you, and I'm not going to speak about it, but I was punched in the face by a family member when I was younger- not my brother, that's a normal thing- by someone who shouldn't have punched me in the face, and it affected, like, some aspects of my life, and God's- God's- put that person or those people in my life so that, eventually, what I have heard about God would then be imparted to those very people who have wronged me. Some of you, you grew up in a household that wasn't perfect. I could go beyond that. Some of you grew up in a household that was catastrophic, or at least you feel like it is. You know the very thing you bring up in conversations when somebody else seemed to have had a perfect household.

They grew up. Their parents purchased stuff for them that they, your parents- didn't purchase for you. You know all the, all the SOB Stories We Tell ourselves. Some people are, so stuck in the comparison, that they look back at their family and they think that they have been done wrong and then some people have actually been done significant Wrong by people in their family and I can give you example after example that I have personally interacted with where people have been done wrong by the people in their family. It would be like God is calling you to that group of people.

And if God called me, to the person who wronged me more than anybody else, my natural, my default position would be anger, because we do it. It's kind of natural to us to get angry when God blesses people we don't believe deserve blessings. It seems to us to be wrong. It seemed to Jonah to be wrong, I said: but this seemed very wrong to Jonah and he became angry. Verse two: he prayed to the Lord.

Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forall or stop by fleeing to tarses. I knew that you were gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sining Calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life. I know y'all don't go that far.

When God wants to bless somebody through you that you don't like, you don't go so far as to say, well, God, just take my life like this is a thing for Jonah, right, like happened in Jonah chapter 1. He's like, hey, the storm's battering the boat, guys, just throw me out, just kill me, let me die. I'd rather do that than than go to Nineveh, than honor God's calling on my life. You might not say that Jonah's got himself a little prophetic death wish, but you, you just simply don't want to do it. And when God calls you to do something you don't want to do, you're kind of like you find the excuses.

Jonah 1 · chapter mention

Jonah had plenty of excuses. God, don't you know that they killed my siblings? Don't you know that they enslaved them? God, don't you know how this group of people acts. If we, God, if we Empower them now to repent, then another guy's going to show up and they're going to do the exact same thing.

God, why would you allow this to happen? When things seem wrong to you, you've got to recognize something that is very true: that God sees higher than you. I think of it like this: , it was so eloquently said by one of our volunteers who led our volunteer rally this morning. He said: we see what's right in front of us or what's right behind us, but God sees the whole timeline right. He sees past, present and future and he knows how to organize and adjust it in such a way that he's blessing one person and, surprisingly, strangely enough, I've learned this about God: that he can bless somebody else and he's powerful and enough to also Bless you.

That's strange. We feel like we have this scarc. We have the scarcity mindset that says that, because, because God is blessing one other person, that means that I'm not abundantly and equally or even more than them blessed. We have this weird mentality because we think, because we've only got so much cash in our hand, that only so many people can get blessed, but God's got it all in his hands. He's got the whole.

I got, I'm going to preach, I'm. He Got the Whole World in His Hands. He's got, he's got everything in his hands. He sees the timeline that you don't. We are limited and what seems right or wrong to you is limited.

Here's an example I'll give you. I, I, I, I used to be a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, and sometimes I still am, but I used to be here's where they, here's where they got me. It's when they went into like multiverses, oh and. And then like the show came out called Loki, and it was all about this big timeline and I'm not going to go any further cuz I would be confused. I started looking at that show and that's where they lost me.

I said I can't keep up with this whole timeline thing because my mind it's finite, like it's not infinite. God is infinite. I am finite, meaning I can look at what's in front of me, I can look at what's around me, I can kind of perceive that which is spiritual a little bit, but the things that seem to me as right or wrong are always limited. You see, because I can be having a conversation with one of you and I might be talking about myself, I might be talking about you, we might be having an equal conversation, but what I don't ever know is where you came from. I don't ever know what you're thinking when you say something.

We say this in theology. It's called philosophical hermeneutics. We talk about this that there's what someone says, there's what someone means when they say it, and then there's what I interpret, and I can't even figure that out. In my marriage I can't figure out what what my wife is thinking when she says something. She says all the time because I keep interpreting it the way she doesn't want me to interpret it.

And then argument ensues. Come to June 9th relationship series, because I, I am finite, I don't see everything. Now it's important for us to get better at communication, but here's something you will never comprehend: what God is thinking about, amen. So my encouragement to you is to recognize this is a great step to reducing your anger. Right?

If you feel like Adam Sandler in Anger Management right now saying Goose rub all the time, you can shift it, you can shift it. And the first step to shifting it is to recognize that you are finite, you are limited and what seems right or wrong to you is not always correct. You've heard it. I was looking for a quote on like things aren't what they seem, but the only one I found is: things aren't always what they seem. That's true, that's a very true statement.

Things are not always what they seem. And Jonah? It seemed to him very wrong. He's frustrated, he's ready to die because of what he thinks about, because of what things seem like to him. But God sees bigger, God knows more, God has more power.

God is able to bless abundant ly two parties at once, at the same time, in the same context. God can bless Jonah and the ninevites, God can bless Israel and, through Israel, bless the entire world. Isn't that the vision that God gave Abraham way back in the Book of Genesis? You and your descendants will bless the entire world, but they forgot- and Jonah is a good type or embodiment of that mentality in Israel at that time, where they forgot the call of God and they were seeking their own blessing rather than being a blessing to the rest of the world. When things seem seem wrong to you, what you tend to do is turn inward and get frustrated or angry.

And the question that God's asking you is the same that he asked Jonah: is it right, is it like, is it valuable for you to be angry about this very thing? That anger was preventing him from encountering a blessing. But it doesn't stop there, because Jonah goes out and God gives him a metaphor in the form of a historical story. God goes out- I mean Jonah goes out, and he sits down, builds himself a booth or a stall, and it gives them some shade. And it says this: God provides a leafy plant.

This plant grows up around Jonah and gives him more shade. But then it says God provided a worm. Isn't that interesting? God provided the things. That was a blessing, but God also provided the thing that would take away that very blessing.

God provided a worm. And then it says again: God provided an Eastern wind, a scorching Eastern wind, after the worm had destroyed the plant. Now, to many of us who were stuck in what things things seem, we're going to get frustrated at God. Be honest with me: how many of you have ever been frustrated at God? You don't have to be totally honest if you don't want to, but I'm being honest.

I've been frustrated at God. No, you didn't give me this, God, you didn't give me this. I am exhausted and frustrated to the point of death because you didn't give me this very thing in this world that somebody else down the street has, that I don't currently have. And yes, I know I live in, one of the greatest countries in the world, and I have all the stuff that I need for sustenance, but I don't have this very thing that I would like. It's a luxury, yes, I know, but I don't have it.

And I'm frustrated to the point of death because what I don't have is worse than what I do have, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, this is where we land. We get so frustrated and inward focused when God doesn't give us something that we're asking for? This is, say Jonah, keep in mind, Jonah came from Israel. In the Old Testament and even in the New Testament, that is the people of God who he chose when he chose Abraham to be the vessels through which he would bless the entire world.

They have access to God that nobody else in the world had. They had Revelation about who he is. This is the fact that Jonah can even say. This is why I went the opposite direction, because I know you and you're compassionate, you're kind and you relent when people seek forgiveness. I knew this about you, God, and so that's why I went the opposite direction, because it seems to me that these people don't deserve Grace.

In one sentence, he is talking about all the things that he has, that these ninevites don't have, that the sailors didn't have, but he's got it, and he's complaining because somebody else is about to get blessed through him. When things seem wrong to you, here's what you do: you rid yourself of a lofty position. Let me make sense out of that. Do y'all think Jonah had to be sitting in a stall outside the city after he preached that message that the king heard and then proclaimed to everybody that they can't eat, drink and have to wear sackcloth for the 40 days. Do you think Jonah needed to sit in that stall?

Just yes or no? No, dude, that dude could have had. He could have been up in the palace. I can't. I can't say that for sure.

Maybe he would have been the only prophet in history who preached a word that everyone believed and then got kicked out the city. Maybe, but chances are, had that dude continued preaching, the king of Nineveh would have been like: bro, hey, dude, talk, talk about the Oracles of God. To me, won't you preach a little bit more than just: we're going to be destroyed. We're trying everything that we can. If you can, a little bit more information about how to follow this Yahweh God character?

That would be super helpful. In fact, you can sit in my Palace, you can do whatever we do. You want to be my adviser? This is the position that Jonah could have been in, and I think that's valid because when God blessed other nations through other people like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and Daniel, guess what they got lofty position. But Jonah, look at your neighbors say: don't be like Jonah.

But Jonah, he is forsaking a high position in this, this world, not because Christ called them to take a step down, not because God told them to take a step down, but because he wants them to be judged. He's missing on out on all the blessings that God would lavish on him, because God will not only bless those he calls you to, he will bless you in the process. This, this is what we got to understand about, us with our spouses. Your spouse might not be perfect, but as you trust God, seek him first and then, like, interact with your, your spouse in such a way that God would want you to. He will bless them by your love, but then, over time, He blesses you through that endurance.

This is what, this is what James says. He says it's the testing of our faith that produces endurance. So let endurance have its perfect result: that we may become complete and mature in our faith. That's James, chapter 1, and it's similar to Jonah, because God not only provides vicious provision, God not only provides blessings, to other people. He not only provides leafy plants, but he also, Al, throws in the worm and the storm and the, the cramp side of the fish and the Eastern wind.

James 1 · chapter mention

He provides those so that you can be tested and shaped to the point where you recognize that even when I'm struggling, even when I'm in pain, God can still utilize me to bless somebody else. And when he uses me, I know him better, which is the blessing. When you get stuck in what things seem, you miss out on what God can do through you. And this is where Jonah's stuck, and he's sitting here frustrated again, not just about the ninevites, but about this plant that died. And he gets angrier about the plant than he did about God judging Nineveh.

I just want to be clear. He said I want to die when it came to neva, but he said it like three times. He said it's, it's. Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? He said I'm so angry I wish I were dead.

And then, before that, he said it would be better for me to die than to live. And even the narrators, like: when the sun rose, God provided scorching East went and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, right, like he says it three times here, which tells you Jonah is stressed out about the leafy plant and what God's trying to communicate to him is the second point, which is about his concerns, his concerns. Here's what it says. It says verse 10.

But the Lord said: you have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It spring up overnight and it died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals? You've got to understand how comical this text is. It's serious, it's real, it's historical, but it's funny.

I need you to know. It's funny. What God is saying to Jonah is: you didn't do anything for the leafy plant. You didn't water it, you didn't plant the seed, you built yourself a booth. That's all you did.

It grew up and then it went away, like you did absolutely nothing. And it went away. And now you're frustrated when you didn't even. You didn't make it, you didn't grow it, you didn't do anything to it. You're frustrated.

And then God retorts with this. But here's what I'm concerned about. You're concerned about the leafy plant, but I'm concerned about this. 120,000 people who don't know me at all. If he were to continue in a monologue, he would say I'm concerned about the syap phenician Sailors in chapter 1, who didn't know me at all but they were perishing.

And then he, he makes it clear you're concerned about this plant, but I'm even like. The animals are more important than that. I'm concerned about the people and I'm concerned about the animals. So if you can zoom out, look at your other neighbor, say, zoom out, because God is seeing something bigger. Your concerns and God's concerns are different because his ways and your ways are different.

Don't get stuck in what things seem and don't be so consumed in yourself that you're only concerned about what affects you, because God cares about bigger things. You could say he's got bigger fish to deal with. Get it chapter one, chapter two. He in the fish came to me. I thought it was funny.

Thank you for laughing. I appreciate the engagement. He has bigger concerns. Like it's so funny to me that he gives us a great commandment and it says this: love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength or might. And he says the second is like it, love your anyone, neighbor, neighbor as yourself.

You know what's not included in there. Like I, I think. I think you should love yourself. I think you need to become self-aware of your own emotions and you need to really work on yourself. Sometimes you do need to take some mental health days or or whatever you really do.

I think it's important. I'm not just making fun of the new culture that has takes them every Monday, but, like I, I think it's important for you to care about your health. That's something that was missing way back in the in the day. I wasn't alive then, so I'm not going to make fun of any specific generation. I think mental health is important.

I think you need to care about yourself. You got to put your own breathing mask on before you can help other people. I think that's really important for us to recognize. But the way the Lord lists, it is him them than me, him them. Love your neighbor as yourself.

That's the order, and Jonah's got this order wrong. Jah, who represents Israel at that time period in history? They've got it all wrong. They've got the order wrong. They're Yahweh them or Yahweh the nation, and then the rest of the world.

But God said: you're always called, you're always meant to be a blessing. Your, your concerns. Where are your concerns? Let me let take a step off this Pulpit for a second. I get it.

You got to concern yourself with your wife, your kids, your husband, your job, like your extended family, your hobbies, like there are a lot of important things in life. You should concern yourself with those things. I'm not telling you not to, but what I am saying is, if you concern yourself first and foremost with those things, you're going to get to the end of the day frustrated, empty and lacking joy and you wonder why you're angry. It's because your concerns are off when it comes to their order. And if you can order it differently, that's my encourage: order it differently.

Right God first. Seek you, first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things will be added right like: look at Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who, for the joy set before him, endured suffering the cross shame. He did that because God called him to do it. His mindset was on things regarding God, and God always calls us to zoom out and to look outward first. And so look at the people that God's called you to be a, a blessing to.

And we've been so frustrated with the way things seem that our concern has been inward. I got to fight for myself. I got to get mine. I've got to make sure that I'm stepping up in my career and I don't know. I just feel like God's not for the next step in way.

Right, you got to step on people's neck in order to get your place. I think he's into the feet washing style. I think he's more into the, the stepping down off his place in heaven in order to interact with each one of us, in the midst of our hostility. In fact, we serve a God who, for the joy set before him, died on a cross so that he could sit at the right hand of God, the Father, after his resurrection from the grave. Jesus is the opposite of Jonah here.

Jonah is stuck in his own concern and- and he's angry because that's the question God ask him again. He says about the leafy plant. Is it right for you to be angry? Every single person in here. You have a right to feel the way that you do, but you don't necessarily have a right, in the grand scheme of things, to live in the way that you feel.

Let me. Let me say that, again, you have a right to feel the way that you do. You can't always control your emotions, but God would. God would encourage you to do this very thing. Paul says I, I beat my body and I make it my slave.

Paul says I am taking control of my thoughts, taking them captive to The Obedience of Christ, that when I feel a certain way, I am going to give that feeling to God and recognize that when I'm feeling angry, that is not the character of God. In fact, Jonah says it, the psalmist says it, the New Testament, helps us encounter that as well, that God is actually loving, he's patient, he's kind, he's compassionate, he's longsuffering. God is actually very, very patient with us and he's slow to anger, rich in love. That's who God is. And so when I feel angry, what I do is I say: Seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness.

I guess I'm going to take this anger and I'm going to give it to God, CU, I'm going to love God first and then I'm going to let him return that to me. And when I give anger to God, he always returns me with reduced anxiety, with increased Joy. With better perspective on how to operate. Sometimes he gives me a higher perspective than the way that things seem. I, I, I get to the place where I'm not going to question God first, I'm going to question my own feelings first, because of my concerns are off, says the.

The way of the man, the way of men, is, is void of good very often. So I'm going to question my own judgment before I question God's judgment. And I get it. No, and you, I get it. I get that God has allowed things to happen in your life, and I also get that in Jonah it says he, he, he sent the storm, he sent the fish, he sent the worm and he sent the scorching East Wind.

And got to believe that, while he sends the leafy plant one day and then he sends the worm the next day, that on his timeline it makes sense, while to me it doesn't seem right. And, and the third thing- the first one is the way things seem. The second one is our concerns kind of being being out of order. The third thing- and this is kind of a bonus point- is: , your, your comparison is making you angry. Your comparison makes you angry and I don't have to preach to you, I'm just preach to myself here if it hits you.

Cool, my comparison makes me so angry like I wish I could just get rid of Instagram. But that's how half you came to church, right? So can't quite get rid of Instagram, but I wish I could get rid of it, because every time I'm scrolling, oh my gosh, their life's so cool, their church is so much cooler. Like all this stuff, I keep scrolling and I keep seeing and then, if I'm not careful, I'm in the same position as Jonah, where he's probably comparing himself to all the other Israelite problem prophets who got called to the nation of Israel, like Jeremiah. He's forgetting that Jeremiah had a very unsuccessful Ministry in Israel, but he's like Jeremiah, it happen a little bit later.

He's probably looking at Isaiah like that dude's got a whole school of Prophecy and a lot of people following suit and he got to interact with-, the Kings and rulers and his teaching span like three generations of Kings. Like that's cool, could be. Like all these other guys who who were in Israel didn't have to go to Nineveh. And he's comparing himself to the rest of the people who are probably going to be judging him when he gets back, cuz he went and preached repentance to the group of people who, 10 years later, are probably going to come in and then slave them all over again. Jonah's like man.

I wish I was like somebody else, and so are we like. As a church planter, I find myself in that spot because, as much as I see what God has done, it's easy for me to jump ship and find myself in a negative head space that looks at what he hasn't done yet. But I've got to remember: sometimes he's going to send the plant, sometimes he's going to send the Worm, but every single one of them is intentional to teach me his ways and to help me accomplish his calling on my life comparison. Oh my gosh. Comparison makes you so angry, like.

If you want to stop being angry, stop hopping on Instagram, unless you're on the Instagram team, in which case I need you to help us with the church stuff, but you can cut off yours anytime you want. And same with Facebook, and same with whatever shows you're watching that make you compare yourself to these people on shows that don't make any sense, right? I still don't understand how Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a thing. I just don't even get it. I don't get it, but people keep up with the kard, they keep Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

I don't know if they're comparing themselves, or or what. But I don't want to be in a place where I've got to look at what somebody else is doing to gauge whether I'm successful, to gauge whether God is still good, to gauge whether I'm in the right place in my life, to gauge whether, when I'm doing what God's called me to do, I'm actually like, to gauge whether I am being who God's called me to be, I. I don't want to live in that place any longer where comparison kills my joy and then subsequently makes me completely angry and I would. I think it's fair to say- and this is a comparison I'll use a lot, but I think it's fair to say- that none of us really should complain that much, because on God's timeline, that includes not just Nineveh of the ancient world, But it includes the whole continent of Africa in the current world. It includes southeast Asia, it includes, the Middle East, it includes Russia, it includes Australia, it includes all of South America, it includes the rest of the United States, and there are people in those places, and even here in the US, where, where they don't have anywhere near what each of us have to accomplish, what God has given us.

The fact that you are literate, meaning you can read a book, is still rare in the world. So, God, sitting here like I want you to know me and understand me at a deeper level. Yeah, but I can't read the Bible like the pastor, or I can't read the Bible like that person who grew up in church. Man, I wish I just grew up in church, it's like, but at least you didn't grow up in India in the slums. You're here and you have what you need in order to accomplish God's will in your life, and so it's important for us to recognize this truth.

That comparison goes both ways. You can compare to where you're not, but you can also compare to where you were or where you could have been, and when you do that, woo, it's a different ball game, it's much more enjoyable. And I know some of you are thinking, yeah, but he doesn't know where I've been. No, I don't, I don't know where you've been. But I know what God says, and What God Says applies to me where I've been and it applies to you where you've been.

I don't have to know it to know this, because God is so good at relenting of the coming Calamity on each of our lives, so good that Jonah couldn't even comprehend the way that he would relent in the future. It seemed to him that it was wrong that he would relent on the ninevites. I wonder how he would have felt when he relented on the entire world who would trust in him. That's crazy, but what a benefit. And so when we read Jonah, here's what we got to understand.

We got to understand that God's Vision has always been that all people would know him at a deeper level. So we can't get stuck in the way things seem. We got to trust God. We can't get stuck in the wrong concerns. We got to start with God and then others than ourselves.

We can't get stuck in comparison, at least in the wrong direction if you want to compare, compared to where you were and where you are, because that's of crazy amounts of benefit. Again probably thinking about how good it would have been to be a prophet back in Israel. But he's sitting here in the land of Nineveh getting to do- or the city of Nineveh right outside, at getting to see God do one of the most gracious things that he had ever done. That was something that you know Abraham didn't even get to encounter when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah Moses didn't get to encounter that type of Grace. When the firstborn in each family was, you know like killed in Egypt.

Like this is something that no one had ever experienced, I think, up to that point in history. And then you and I, we get to experience it at an even crazier level. All you have to do is call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. It's that simple. I don't see any of you wearing sackcloth.

I don't see your animals wearing sackcloth. Half of us don't even call on God regularly, but he is still relented of the Calamity that comes to each of us who don't have his son in our life. All you had to do was try trust in Jesus. What Grace, what Grace that we live in. And here's why: because God has concern not just for Nineveh, but for everyone on the timeline who don't know their right hand from their left.

There's one thing I'm trying to teach my kid right now- and I'll close with this- it's that things don't have to be perceived as fair by him for them to be right at a higher level. He tells me all these said I'll tell him to go, I'll grab something or whatever, and he's like it's not fair, mik didn't have to do it, and what I realize is I'm asking him to do it for a reason: he's older, he's more developed, he has more knowledge and she doesn't. In the same way, God is asking each of us in this room right now who have more knowledge, even if you don't think you have it. You have more to be a vessel through which he can bless other people and in so doing, you're going to find yourself in what's it say, heavenly places because of your obedience to God. If you want to be in Heavenly places, you got to do Heavenly things right.

The first Heavenly thing that the people in this room can do is trust in Jesus, but I think it would be. It's incumbent upon me to mention what Paul mentions to the Philippian church. He says: , make my joy. You've made my joy complete by participating in the Gospel, in the good news. So I want to encourage you guys who do have knowledge of who Jesus is: make my, make God's joy, make your joy complete by being a vessel and by participating it what God is doing.

But for those of you who don't know God, I want to give you an opportunity right now. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes. We're going to pray a prayer, all of us together, out loud, for the benefit of those praying for the first time. You might say something like this. Y'all repeat: God, I believe God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, I believe he died on the cross.

Di on the and Rose from the grave, from the grave. Father, forgive me of my sin, father, forgive me of my sin, make me a new creation, a new creation and I will follow you. I will follow you for the rest of my life, rest of my life. Today is the day. Today is the day that I follow you, that I follow you.

It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Can we celebrate those who made that decision?