Jonah Ch.4: God Relents

If you don't know who I am, I'm Brandon. I'm the lead pastor

of the church. I want to welcome those that are watching online and those

that might be listening to this podcast. Next week, Sunday night, we

have a revival gathering six o'clock. We care so much that we have conveniently

planned the revival Sunday on a Seahawks bye week. You are without excuse,

come six o'clock Sunday night. My pastor Glenn Bertow will be speaking. If

you were here last year when he preached, I know you'll be here this

year. If you weren't here last year, You're gonna want to come.

You're gonna want to come early. It'll blow you away. It's gonna be

a huge emphasis on the Holy Spirit. He's gonna preach one of my all

time favorite sermons for all of you that he preaches. He is super funny.

God is gonna move six o'clock next week as a dimension. Next Sunday,

starting our Daniel series. And I'm super excited about this series. I

think you're gonna grow. I think you're gonna be totally interested. It's gonna

challenge you. I think you're gonna learn things even if you've been at church

your entire life that you never knew before, and it's gonna be great.

So as dimensioned read Daniel chapter one in preparation. One of the most enjoyable

things for our staff is always the opportunity to connect with all of you that

are new to venture, and we do coffee appointments and lunch appointments, and

oftentimes we're given the privilege of having conversations with people that are in a faith

journey. They're seeking like many have been coming to church for weeks months but

have never really made a full faith commitment to Jesus, but they're exploring faith.

We love that if you're someone who's exploring faith, or your newer of

faith, or maybe you're somebody and you want to just develop more of your

knowledge and learn how to answer some questions. We have a class that we're

doing on Wednesday nights that I'm doing with Jenner Meant. It's called who Is

Jesus. It's three weeks long. It will be for one hour, and

we want to invite you to sign up. You will learn exactly who this

Jesus is and who he claims to be and the things that He's done and

it will be really helpful for you. We want to invite you to consider

signing up for that again. You can sign up via our app in the

Growth Group class section. It's one of our Venture You classes that is beginning

to be offered. But three weeks. Who is Jesus? Please don't leave

me there by myself, Grab your Bible turned to Jonah. We're finishing up

our series on the Book of Jonah. I hope this has been as enjoyable

for you to learn from and hear as it has been for me to study

it. Jonah, Chapter three, verse ten. When God saw what they

did they meaning Ninevah, and the they as they repented, and how they

turn from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them destruction

as he had threatened. It's this incredible reminder that if you and I repent,

God will relent. Today. I want to ask you this simple question,

does what concerns God actually concern you? Everybody, by your heads,

close your eyes, repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say Dear Jesus,

speak to my heart change my life in Jesus name. Amen. So you

know the story. Now God tells Jonah, who is the prophet to go

to Ninevah and preach and tell them that if you don't repent, God is

going to judge you well. As I shared with you, Ninevah was the

capital city of the Assyrians. The Assyrians were the enemies of God. They

were the enemies of the people of God. They had done ruthless things.

They were the current ruling empire. And Jonah not only loved God, but

he loved his nation, and he loved his people, and he hated the

Assyrians and God, in this really bizarre twist of fate, tells the man

of God to go to Ninevah and give them an opportunity to repent. Well,

Jonah was like, there is nothing that I want to do less.

I would rather die than go to Ninevah. So he hops on a boat

and he runs as far as away as he can and he heads to Tarshish.

But just like you and I, when we run from God, God

will oftentimes bring circumstances into our life that kind of get us back aligned with

Him. And so God fin a storm and it eventually leads to Jonah in

this water thinks, finally I'm going to die. This is it? At

least I don't have to go to Ninevah, and God sent a great fish

that swallowed Jonah. Jonah wakes up in the belly of a whale. God

spares his life. God gives Jonah a second chance. How many of you

are thankful for second chances? How many of you are thankful for twentieth chances?

Jonah given this second chance. This time, he responds to God with

obedience. He goes to Ninevah and he preaches repentance. And guess what,

as Day talked about last week, the people of Ninevah repent. This completely

pagan idol worshiping city full of godless people. They repent, They care down

their idols, they destroy their altars, they declare a fast, and they

begin to worship God, and revival breaks out in this city. It's amazing

when we repent, God relents. Such an amazing story. Prophet finally obeys

the call of God, a city repents, revival comes to a city Jesus

wins. Be so amazing if that's the way Jonah ended, wouldn't it.

I mean, it's got everything that Hollywood has to offer. This amazing plot

twist of this guy who gets thrown into a water gets swallowed by a whale.

Then they live happily. Ever after the city of Ninevah, they repent,

God spares them, Jonah lives. He writes the Book of Jonah to

tell us the story about this gray and merciful, gracious, slow to anger

God. If the Book of Jonah ended with Jonah three verse ten, Jonah

would go down in history as the greatest prophet ever. But it doesn't end

that way. Today, I want to tell you how it actually ends.

Does what concern God concern you? It's really what I want you to do

this morning is I want you to evaluate yourself. Does what it ultimately concerns

God? Does it concern you? Or do you find yourself relating a little

bit too much to the person of Jonah. So get this setting cities in

revival. They're having a party, the worship band is up, They're singing

worship songs. It is like rainbow over the city. The sun is shining.

It is amazing all the things that God is doing. And Jonah is

up on a hill looking down at the city, watching it all. And

here's what's going through Jonah's head Verse one of chapter four. But to Jonah

this seemed very wrong and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord.

Isn't this what I said, Lord when I was still at home, This

is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew God that

you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love,

a God who relents from sending calamity. And then he praised this. Imagine

watching a city and revival. The revivalist who sparked the revival in the city,

praise this prayer after seeing it. Now, Lord take away my life.

It is better for me to die than to live. Jonah praised the

best prayer of his life in the worst place, in the belly of a

whale. Praise this deep heartfelt prayer of repentance in the darkest place. And

now we see Jonah pray the worst prayer in the best place. Now he's

praying, Lord, take my life. I want to die in the midst

of revival. When I was the youth pastor in Modesto and again you're about

You're gonna see my former senior pastor in Esto next week. One of my

jobs is the youth pastors. I was the airport shuttle guy I lived in

Modesto. There wasn't an airport within two hours in any direction, so it

was not a glorious job. I came to love it though, because I

got a lot of one on one time with these guest speakers that we would

have. And we had a guest speaker for a series of meetings and his

name was Steve Hill. Now Steve Hill had always been a hero of mine

because he was the revivalist that helped spark the Brownsville Revival. Now, the

Brownsville Revival permanently marked mine and Dy's life. Many of my former youth students

that were there that are now adults that will testify that it marked their life.

So I have read every book that Steve Hill has ever written. I

have listened to countless sermons that he has preached. He is one of my

heroes, unbeknownst to him. And now I get to pick him up from

the airport. And at this point, the Brownsville Revival is long over,

and at that time four and a half million people had actually gone to the

Brownsville Revival, but it was years later. And this is the point in

a minister's life where he's supposed to retire. So Steve Hill, for all

intents and purposes, should have bought a place in Palm Springs and been retiring.

But instead he's still traveling around the nation preaching. And I wanted to

know why. So I asked him. I said, after this incredible revival

that you were a part of, and your years of ministry, how come

you're not retiring. Why are you still going to churches like ours and preaching?

And he made this statement, he said, I keep preaching, anticipating

and hoping to be a part of the next great revival. Again, that's

the way that a revivalist thinks. A revivalist doesn't think look down at the

revival, fold your arms and say, I wish they would have been burned.

Since it didn't happen, God, will you kill me? But that's

the way that Jonah responded. Jonah praised his first prayer out of a broken

heart. He praised his second prayer out of an angry one. Did you

know sometimes the commitments that you and I make to God don't even last to

the end of the service we made them in So Jonah is in the belly

of a whale. He's in shield which some people referred to as hell,

and he praised this deep prayer repentance, and he says things like, those

who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. That was

Jonah being totally transparent that he had an idol. He was repenting of it.

He said, God, I love my nation, I love my people,

and I need to repent because my nationalism has superseded my love for you.

My love from my country has become an idol. And Lord, I

acknowledge that if I cling to a worthless idol, I forfeit the grace that

could be mine. Will you forgive me? So the man who repents of

that sees the city of his enemies and he hates that they're repenting, and

he hates even more that God is relent. He resents that God is moving,

that revival is breaking out. Church. I'm telling you, old habits

die hard. There's a reason that we have a program like Celebrate Recovery.

So if you're someone that's ever struggled with a hurt habit or hang up and

you've been a part of a recovery program, you've been a part of those

and you say things like I am one day sober, I'm one week sober,

And then you have some people that will say things like I am ten

years sober, And there's oftentimes you're witnessing someone say I'm ten years sober,

and you're saying, why are you still going to the meetings. It's because

they realize that old habits die hard. It's really easy to fall back into

idle worship again, really quickly if you're not careful. Once the emotion of

the brokenness wore off. For Jonah, bottom line, he still wanted nineva

judged. So he says, Lord, I knew and know this about you

God, that you are slow to anger, that you are gracious and compassionate.

And once again he quotes the words of David in Psalm one forty five,

which says, the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger,

rich in love. Church, does what concerns God concern you? Do you

ever have these moments where you study the Bible or you hear preachers preach,

and you start thinking that God thinks differently than I think. God handles things

differently than I would. God's character is different than ours, did you know?

Bottom line? As human beings, one of the things that is unique

about us is that we love things to be just. We love justice.

When someone does something wrong, they should pay the penalty for their crime,

and if they don't, we think it's unjust what happens. It's not fair

justice. You might have read this in the newspaper. It just came out

yesterday, but it told the story of a motorcyclist who died in Lake Stevens

five years ago. As the story goes, they were driving. He was

driving his motorcycle around the roundabout that we all love in Lake Stevens, and

he was followed by a guy who was drunk driving a truck. And the

guy that was drunk driving a truck was super impatient, sped up right behind

him, and as the motorcyclists slowed down to go around the roundabout, he

rammed the back of him, which threw the motorcycle and the motorcyclist into the

bushes off on the side well. The inebriated truck driver was enraged drove his

truck into those bushes. The motorcyclist is laid out, and he drives this

truck over the top of him and kills him. That was a story in

the newspaper. It took five years for this to finely go to court in

him to be tried and sentenced after all these witnesses, and he was given

six years in jail. We love justice if we think something doesn't fit the

crime doesn't work with us, does it? Justice says nine of us should

be destroyed. That's the only fair, right thing to have happened. Again,

his thoughts are different than my thoughts. God's character is different than my

character. His ways are different than my ways. Church, does what concerns

God concern you? Prophet Isaiah reflected on this and he said, for my

thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways. As the

heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways,

my thoughts higher than your thoughts. This is God reminding us that I

don't think the way that you think. I don't operate the way that you

operate. I view things differently. It's amazing because we start with Jonah wanting

to die to avoid going to Ninevah, and now we end the book of

Jonah with Jonah wanting to die because God spared Ninevah. Find yourself like Jonah?

Do you ever find yourself irritated by the success of others. Do you

ever find yourself secretly giddy when your enemies struggle. There's a proverb that says,

do not gloat when your enemy fails, when they stumble, do not

let your heart rejoice. Do you ever find yourself gloating when your enemy struggles?

Do you ever find your heart rejoicing when your enemy fails? Or the

Lord will see and disapprove, and he'll turn his wrath away from them and

onto you. As Jonah is watching the city in the midst of a revival

service, He's sitting up on this hill in scorching heat, and he is

seethingly angry, And in a weird twist of faith, guess what happens.

God shows his love to Jonah and he allows a vine to grow, and

it miraculously grows instantly. It grows big leaves covered Jonah protect him from the

heat, and the Bible tells us that Jonah loved the vine. He's probably

sitting there thinking, I don't like Nineveh, but I love this plant.

And then, in another twist of faith, within twenty four hours, God

sends a worm to go in and kill the plant, and it withers and

dies, and now the heat is burning on Jonah's head again, and he

is the Bible says, angry about the plant. This is the interaction between

God and Jonah after that plant Verse ten. The Lord said, Jonah,

you've been concerned about this plant, so you didn't tend it, you didn't

make it grow. It sprung up overnight, and it died overnight. But

somehow you became obsessed and you loved this plant and it was yours, and

you were mad about it, sort of like us when it comes to a

baseball team that we don't play on when they swing and myths and don't make

the playoffs. Side that's free. And then God says, should I not

have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than

one hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left,

and there's also many animals there. It's basically God saying to Jonah,

you care more about a plant than you do one hundred and twenty thousand people

that, should they die and not know me, will be separated from me

for an eternity. Does what concerns God concern you? That's really what the

issue is here is God was saying, Jonah, I know that those people

hurt you, and they offended you, and they hurt your family, and

they hurt your brothers and sisters. But I want you to see them for

what they are. There are people that do not know me, and they

desperately need to know me, because if they die and they do not know

me, they spend an eternity separated from me. That is really what this

life is all about. I want you to care about them, not some

object that can sprout and die within twenty four hours. I want you to

love and care about them. Joe, and I always want you to be

willing to go to Ninevah. Does what concerns God concern you? Are worshiped

or a couple of our worship team to come out. They're gonna close by

doing a song, and I want to ask you this, would you be

willing to go to Ninevah its you? Would you be willing to go to

your enemies, to the people that hurt you and share the Gospel with him?

Would you? Would you be willing to do that? Next week we

start Daniel. On Thursday, Tony and I drop our weekly podcast. It's

called Pastors Unfiltered. One of your next steps is to listen to this week's

Pastors Unfiltered, because I'm gonna tell you the story of what happened in between

the time of Jonah and then when Daniel starts. So basically, when the

time of Jonah, the Assyrians are ruling and by the time we get to

Daniel, the Babylonians are ruling. And I want to tell you the story

of what happened in between because it is the story of what ended up happening

to Ninevah. So there is a conclusion, and just like there is to

Jonah, there's a conclusion to what happens to Ninevu. You gotta listen to

my podcast to do that, but I don't. I don't want to focus

on that right now. What I want to focus is on is are you

willing to go to Ninevah? Are you willing to have what concerns God concern

you? So as you listen to this song, ask yourself, is this

something that I would do? Would I be willing to respond? And then

die is gonna come up and She's going to give you an opportunity to respond.

A lost my way and your agencies, breakings crush, to clean,

to hope seems by dream as wildtherseas to night. And I will go,

will go, go to Linni Fir and where you lead, where you leave,

how go and through the fears and the storms had in front of me,

and I will dive and the deep, my love, I've been picked

up and thrown into grief, but still your loves him. To cling to

hope seems but a dream, and not the shore my skin blades clean.

And I will go. I will go go to Niver and where you lead,

where you lead, how go and through the fears and the storms had

in front of me, and I will die and the deep deep, my

lord, and I will go. I will go go to Nnava and where

you lead, where you lead, I go through the fears and the storms

out in front of me, and I will die in the deep, my lord,