More Than a Message

Good morning.

It is awesome to see you guys.

If I hadn't met you personally, my name's Russ, and I want to say welcome to all of you that are here.

Special welcome if you're here for the first time.

And welcome as we as we enter into Holy Week in preparation to celebrate the resurrection.

Ultimately the close of next weekend.

But let me tell you about a couple things going on this week that I don't want you to miss out on.

And today is today is our Easter egg hunt.

So at 5 o'clock, you can see some of the exciting things that we've got planned for our kids and their and families out front.

So that's that's today as we as we enter into the week.

And then Good Friday, we're having a Good Friday prayer experience.

And so make sure you understand this.

It's 5 to 8.

It is not a service or a gathering that has a beginning and an end, other than we'll start at 5, and we're going home at 8.

If you want to stay around, you can.

But in between that time, it'll be a prayer personal kind of journey.

And there'll be prayer stations.

And so you can come at 5, anytime between 5 and 8.

For some, it might be a 30-minute process.

It might be an hour for others.

It just depends on how the Lord leads you, but that's meant to be a solemn night that we remember the suffering and the death of our Savior.

And then on Saturday and Sunday, we we have four identical services.

And so you say, why?

Because everybody comes on Easter, everybody's home.

We don't have spring break.

We just know that we're potentially going to have some big crowds.

And so a couple people told me that I told them a couple of weeks ago they weren't welcome on Sunday.

Please just come whenever's best for you.

But I do want you to be mindful that if you come on Saturday, that helps us.

And it will help park cars and it'll help have will help gather people.

And so it's just a suggestion.

I love we've done Saturdays a lot over the years.

I love it because if you're a first responder or if you're a nurse, you're in the medical uh field, if you're I mean there's just a lot of people that that that Sunday, just having services and gatherings on Sunday, it doesn't fit for them.

So that Saturday gives everybody an opportunity one way or the other.

But the main thing is that just some of you might consider, if you don't have guests coming with you on Sunday, if you don't have a special reason, just consider coming at either three or five on Saturday, just simply to make room on Sunday as we celebrate.

And let me just encourage you.

This week is a great week to really focus on the resurrection and to focus on the whole weekend.

The death, the suffering, the beating that Jesus endured, and he's buried for three days, and then we celebrate.

And what we celebrate is the victory that we have in Christ.

And so this is a week to just focus on on the series we're beginning.

We begin a new series next weekend called The Resurrected Life.

And so the whole series is going to be about how we live in this resurrected life that post-resurrected Jesus Holy Spirit is given to us and he walks with us.

And so but anyway, as we begin Holy Week, it's also another time of the uh in the calendar that we celebrate a few things we love.

We love the fact that baseball has started, right?

We love the fact that um what is this week?

What is this week?

Is anything going on today, Jonah?

Is there anything happening today that's special?

Huh?

The Easter egg hunt, right?

That's the most important thing.

There's no is there anything else exciting happening today?

Man, it's called the the masters, right?

Um so so let me let me let me let me talk to you about the masters, because that's that's one of my favorite things to that I've experienced that I've that I like to talk about.

And you know, I'm I and I'm not necessarily a golf, you know, uh I love playing golf.

Uh before I I had some issues with my my shoulder, and and and so I love golf, but I'll I'll there's something about going to the masters that transcends whether you like, love, care about golf or not.

And so the first year I had there's there's a family that I'm connected to that have had master's tickets at the time.

And so I I got to go that first experience.

So see, I grew up, my dad, my dad was a huge golf fan, loved the masters, went, he worked for a company that contracted with CBS, and and so that allowed him for years to go um to the tournament and experience, and he would come back and tell us about it.

Um I'm a little bitter because he never took me to experience it for myself.

But um but but when I did get to go, I came back and and and I couldn't stop talking, and especially just telling my wife how amazing it was.

Now, my wife, my wife does probably doesn't even know who Jack Nicholas is.

If I mentioned that name, she wouldn't know who he was, she wouldn't know who Tiger Woods is.

You know, she walked past him in a lobby somewhere.

Um she she doesn't I don't know if she's ever watched a golf tournament, like all the you know, other other than what I'm watching.

Uh I I don't know if she knows anything, but I come back and I'm I'm raving.

And I and I'll be honest with you, I that I don't remember who won the tournament that year.

But the experience of being there was amazing.

Egg salad sandwiches, cheap.

Pimento cheese sandwiches cheap.

All the people are polite and nice.

Um you you don't see people um you know drunk and and and crazy like you do at some other types of sporting events.

Um but and so there's this unique aspect, and not to mention the beauty of the grounds, the beauty of Augusta National.

And so even when I think, you know, when I when I think about heaven, that that's one of the first pictures in my mind is the beauty of Augusta National on that that first full week in April.

I mean, words can't describe it.

And here's here's my my wife thinks it's all about golf, but I'm like, honey, you you don't understand.

You can't you don't have to care about golf, you don't have to know about golf to appreciate the unique and the distinct culture that that the Augusta National Golf Course has has created, has maintained, and what they fight for.

And it's it's just a unique experience.

And regardless of whether you like golf or not, it's an experience that you would you would remember for the rest of your life.

Now, I just you know I spent probably way too long talking about golf and the masters and Augusta National.

But here's the point you talk about what you love, and you love what you talk about the most.

You talk about what you love, and you love what you talk about the most.

And so here's what does that mean for us?

It's it's our human nature for us to be excited about something that we enjoy or brings us joy.

Maybe, maybe, maybe for you it's a you you stumble across a restaurant that you've never heard about, and and it's a hole in the wall in a town where you go on a vacation and all of a sudden you you hear about it and you go and you experience it, and you you loved it, and so you want to share with other people something that you care about and something that's important to you, something you've experienced personally.

Maybe it's a movie, maybe it's certain it's a certain type of fashion.

Um but but but that's listen, this is how the grace of God works.

It's not just received, it's meant to be shared.

It's not just something that we're given, it's something that we're meant to pass on and we're meant to give away.

And so we often stop at salvation and we love the fact that we have experienced personally the grace of God.

We've put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we know that our eternity is set, but we stop at salvation and we miss out on experiencing the continuing work of God's grace and the journey that He provides for us as a believer and as a follower of Jesus.

It's not just about fire insurance, it's not just about our get out of hell free card.

That's all wonderful, and we do have victory, and we look forward to heaven, we look forward to eternity, we look forward to being reunited.

But but listen, big idea for today is it's just it's reiterating what we've already been talking about.

You're not just saved by grace, you're sent by it.

You're not just saved by grace, you're sent by it.

And so as we wrap up the series on Jonah today, and as we begin this week, I want to ask you the question: what will you do with the grace that you have received?

What will you do with the grace that you have received?

And so let's go back to the story of Jonah and just kind of walk through and recap a little bit about what we've talked about.

God calls Jonah to Nineveh.

And Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and they are wicked and they are evil.

And so he calls Jonah.

Jonah, son of Amitai, get up and go preach to the city of Nineveh, to the Ninevehes, and preach and tell them that the wrath of God, my wrath, is going to be poured out upon them unless they turn and they repent.

And so what does Jonah do?

Yes, God, yes, Lord, I'm going.

I'm going.

I'm headed.

What does he do?

Is that what he does?

No, he runs.

He runs.

He runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction, as far as he can go in the opposite direction.

And so, and so God pursues him.

The grace of God, by the grace of God, God pursues him.

How does God pursue him?

He pursues him by throwing a storm into the sea as he's traveling on this large ship, this large boat.

He disciplines Jonah.

That's how he brings discipline to Jonah.

He is swallowed, he's thrown overboard as a sacrifice.

He's swallowed by a fish, and then suddenly his heart has a little bit of a shift, and he says, I'm willing to go.

I'm willing to go.

And so he's willing to go to this wicked city.

And it's a preacher's dream, right?

This is a preacher's dream.

This is this is like walking into the most unchristian place you could imagine and preaching the gospel.

It'd be the equivalent of walking to to the center of a of a Muslim country, to a to the center of the capital city.

Uh, you know, I I went uh to Africa one year uh to Mali, and Mali is is is 96, 97 percent Muslim.

And so we didn't encounter any any violent uh or radical or people that that wanted to do us harm, but we did, we we we did encounter some resistance to the gospel.

And so so Jonah is called it, and understandably, he he doesn't want to go because this is a wicked people.

Nineveh and and Assyrians had had come in and conquered the northern kingdom, taken people captive, uh, created a whole new people group by moving into the northern kingdom, uh, and and uh what we call now the area of Samaria.

We refer to that historical time.

Uh the the area would be the Samarians and the Samaritans.

Um we know that story.

We talked about that last week, the good Samaritan.

And so so so Jonah's called, he runs the opposite direction.

All of a sudden his heart is changed.

He's willing to go, but he but but he doesn't go willingly.

He doesn't go with a happy, joyful attitude.

He goes, he goes with a kind of a resentful heart.

Let's just go back to Jonah 4, verses 10 and 11.

Jonah 4:10

At the very end, it says, And the Lord said, You cared about the plant which you did not labor over and did not grow.

It appeared in a night and perished in a night.

So may I not care?

So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals.

And so God is saying, listen, you you care about a plant.

Should I not care about a city that has a lot of people?

Should I not care about these people that are created in my image?

And so we see the heart of God, even though these people are wicked and vile and awful people, God still cares about every person on this planet that is created in his image.

And he wants to make his grace available.

So this is not just a theme in the book of Jonah, but it's the story of the whole Bible is that God comes after those who have turned and rebelled against him.

That's the story.

That is the gospel, that is the good news.

God does not give up.

God does not just give us over to our wickedness, to our sin, to our nature.

He promises, he wants to reach us, he wants to pull us out of out of the wrath, out of the way of his wrath, into his grace.

And so the Old Testament and the New Testament, we read a unified story of God's grace, God's grace that comes for all people at all times in history.

And so, fast forward hundreds of years to another city, fast forward to another prophet that will come.

And we go to the Gospel of Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

It says, then they brought brought it to Jesus.

And after throwing their clothes, and what did they bring to Jesus?

They brought, they brought a donkey.

He says, Hey, when they approached the city of Jerusalem, the disciples, he says, Go to this place, talk to this person, and and he there there will be a donkey waiting for me.

And so as he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the road.

Now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen.

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.

Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.

And he answered, I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.

And as he approached, he saw the city.

What does it say?

He says he wept for it.

He wept for it.

Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

I won't turn to that, but it says Jesus looked out over the city of Jerusalem.

The same city that he's entering right now as he's about to go into his final week.

And Jesus looks out over the city and it describes how he feels.

It says he is moved to compassion.

And that word literally means he hurts in his gut because of their spiritual condition.

He's moved with compassion.

He's not critical.

He has not written them off.

He has not given them over to the wrath of God.

He is committed to finishing his mission, which is to come and to die, and then to be bodily resurrected, to preach for 40 days about the kingdom, then to ascend to his right, to his heavenly father, and where he sits at the right hand of the Father praying for me and you.

And then there'll be a day he'll leave that place, he'll leave that throne, and he'll come back and he'll return.

And so Jesus doesn't give us over to the wrath of God.

He doesn't give up on us.

He is willing to come to us.

He's willing to enter into a city and he's moved with compassion.

Back to Matthew 9.

He's moved with compassion.

It says here, he weeps for the city.

He weeps for the city.

He cares about people to the point that he's willing to give his life.

And so with and it says he's moved with compassion.

And he sees people not as they are in their filth, but he sees them as potentially redeemed.

And he describes all of us as sheep scattered without a shepherd.

And so he has come to be our shepherd.

He's come to give his life.

And so as we celebrate Palm Sunday, we are celebrating the day that Jesus entered back into Jerusalem as a willing prophet to come, not just to bring good news, but to be the good news.

And he comes back into Jerusalem, and people are cheering and they're waving palm branches.

They don't even know, they have no really clue what they're cheering about, what's about to happen, what's going to take place, and all the significance.

As you see, prophecy fulfilled right there.

Jesus is not cheering.

He's not smiling as they wave the palm branches.

It says he is weeping.

He is weeping, tears down his face.

Why?

Because he knew that the people still didn't see him as God intended for him to be seen.

And they didn't understand that grace was among them.

Grace was in their presence.

Grace is coming to their city.

Jonah ran from the city.

Jonah ran in the opposite direction.

Jesus rode right into the city where he knew that he would give his life.

Jonah hoped the city would be condemned.

Jesus came to be condemned for the city.

Jonah sat outside the city in anger.

Jesus died outside the city because of his great love for us.

And so Palm City, Palm Sunday is a reminder that Jesus is willing to go where Jonah wasn't.

Jesus is willing to take the steps.

Jesus is willing to complete the journey.

Jesus is willing to go where some other prophets were not willing to go.

Jesus didn't go to the city unaware of what awaited him.

It says in Hebrews 12 that he faced the death that he would face with joy.

With joy.

Jesus was on the ultimate rescue mission.

Pastor, theologian, teacher, the late Tim Keller says this.

That same crowd that shouts, Hosanna, Hosanna, come save us, come be our salvation, as Calin uh shared with us the meaning of that word.

That same crowd that's going to shout, Hosanna, just a few days later, they'll shout what?

Crucify him, crucify him.

But he goes into the city anyway.

See, Jesus loves the city not just when it praises him, but his love continues even when the city rejects him.

He wasn't just fulfilling some prophecy found in the Old Testament.

He's fulfilling the mission of his heavenly Father.

Right before you get to Palm Sunday in the passage where it talks about Jesus entering the city, we read these words, Luke 19, 10.

What does it say?

It says, For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.

And so Jonah, where Jonah ran away, Jesus runs into the city because he's wanting to seek and to save.

He knows that he's got to give his life.

And he doesn't just love those of us who love him in return.

He loves all people.

And he continues to tarry.

Listen to me.

I can't wait till Jesus comes back.

But he continues to tarry.

He continues, which means he still has more for the church.

He has more for you.

He has more for me.

He has more for us collectively together.

Listen, why would we, why would we uh put inflatables in a field?

Why would we go to the extent that we do to minister to children and their families?

Why do we go to the extent that we do to minister to young people, to middle school students and high school students?

Why do we invest in couples and marriages?

And why do we care about those that are single, married, divorced, separated, those that are that have all types of circumstances?

Because we are completing a mission that he is still waiting for us to complete.

We join him in his mission.

And so as we kind of come to this conclusion, God leaves him with a question.

So let me go back to verses 10 and 11.

And the Lord said, You cared about the plant which you did not labor over and did not grow.

It appeared in a night and perished in a night.

So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left as well as many animals?

The story ends right there.

Is that not an unusual ending?

Where God just ends the story with a question?

So may I not care about the city?

Which has more than 120,000 people created my image?

These are people that don't know their right hand from their left.

Should I not care about them?

Should we not care about the people that have yet hear about the gospel of Jesus?

So we we don't we don't see we don't see the conclusion.

Because Jonah preaches, he is surprised, they respond and they repent, and then he he goes back and he sulks.

And then God asks him this question Should I not care about these people that are created in my image?

End of story.

Strange ending.

Does Jonah, does his heart change?

Does he eventually come around?

I mean, that's that's how we want a happy ending.

We want it to be happy for everybody.

Let me take you back to one of the earlier weeks where I talked about how one of the commentators, one of the theologians, connects this story in Jonah's life to the story of the two prodigal sons.

You've got the younger son that runs away in rebellion, and then we see at the end of the story where the younger son returns, dad runs out to greet him, hugs him, says, Let's throw a party, and then you see dad having a conversation with the older son on the front porch.

The older son stands out, he's not rebellious, he's followed all the rules, he's obeyed and done everything the right way, but the one thing that you can't force anybody to do is change their heart.

And so while his actions have all been correct, his heart has still remained far from being right, from thinking rightly, justly, prayerfully.

And so the younger brother leaves in rebellion, parties hard, the older brother stays and obeys, but rather than rebellion, he struggles with resentment.

And so the question that I have are we, are we going to be a rebel or are we going to be resentful?

Are we a rebel with a cause?

Are we a rebel that's been redeemed?

Are we a rebel that's willing to share, willing to cross lines, willing to go into tough areas, willing to go into the dark areas?

Are we going to be a rebel that eventually joins God in his mission?

Or are we going to stand back like the older brother?

And like Jonah, the Jonah that we see in the third and the fourth chapters of his story.

Where he stands back and he looks and he says, I can't believe you would give your grace to those people.

And I want to tell you something.

The Easter, Easter is about God entering into darkness and fulfilling his mission all the way to the end, giving his life because God knows it's possible to go from the younger brother to the older brother.

It's possible to change from being a rebel to walking in righteous living.

It's possible to go from being someone who runs away from the will of God to being the younger brother who is redeemed by the work of Jesus.

And if we're not careful, listen, listen.

If we're not careful, we'll do like many in the church have done is we hoard grace to ourselves.

Do you want to be a hoarder or do you want to be generous?

Jesus sends us on a mission of grace.

That mission of grace is spelled out in Matthew 28, where he says, Go make disciples of all nations.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded it.

And remember, I am with you until the end of the age.

See, you talk about what you love.

And you love what you talk about the most.

So let's stop for a moment and let's just, can we spend a moment just in prayer and and examine our hearts?

And let's consider and ask the question, what do we really love?

What do we really care about?

What is this week going to mean to us?

What is this, what is it?

Is it an opportunity just to take pictures?

And let me say that there's nothing wrong with dressing up and all of us dressing up our families up.

And for you to enjoy that and for you to enjoy all the festive things, nothing wrong with that.

But I do think there's a danger of us celebrating all the festive activities and missing out on the core of what this week is really about.

And it's about a bunch of rebels who've been chased down by the grace of God.

And we are so fanatical and we're so crazy about Jesus, and we're so redeemed, and we're so we've we're we're so full of the Spirit.

Our lives have been changed.

We can't help but be excited to celebrate what we celebrate this week.

That Jesus has come.

He has walked among us in the darkness.

He surrendered his life and he suffered and died.

But he didn't remain in the tomb on the third day.

He was bodily resurrected to prove that he had power over death and the grave and the enemy and spiritual forces.

And then he calls us to join him in his mission.

And what's the mission?

The mission is to engage.

It's not to run away, it's to run into, run into where the needs for grace are.

And so let's just slow down.

What is this week about for you?

How will you spend your week and your thoughts?

How will you spend how you manage, how you steward this week?

And maybe, listen, maybe, maybe it's not about inviting somebody, maybe it's about your heart.

Maybe it's about returning back to your first love.

Maybe it's about remembering how lost we all are without Jesus.

And you can be a morally good person and still be lost.

Listen, that's what the story of Jonah is.

That's what the story of the prodigal sons are about.

Is you can you can you can be a rebel, and and everybody knows you're a rebel, or you can decide I'm gonna be part of the redeemed.

And I'm gonna join in what God's mission is.

So can we just let's spend a few moments with our heads bowed?

You just bow your heads with me.

And let's just for a moment, I want you to think about what it would have been like to be standing along that pathway as he approached the gates of the city, as people shouted Hosanna, as they waved palm branches, did they really know who was among them?

Did they really know what that week was going to be about?

Did they really know their creator?

And so that's the question I have for you.

Do you know the Jesus that we're celebrating?

Do you have a relationship with him?

Is it personal?

Not just a historical recognition, but but has he personally changed your life?

Have you encountered Jesus?

And is it possible that he wants to use you this week to make his name known among your circles of friendships, relationships, co-workers, classmates, neighbors.

Last week or two I talked about those that are the least likely, those that we think are so far gone that they're they're never going to accept an invitation to attend church with me.

And I'm telling you, most of us were probably the least likely at one time.

I know I was.