Rescue: Cliffhanger with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, welcome to Baptism Sunday.

It's so good to be here with you guys at the 115.

I want to welcome anyone who's watching online.

And if you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

Today we are wrapping up our rescue series where we have gone all the way through the Old Testament book of Jonah.

And today we are celebrating the end of this gospel series with baptisms.

It is the best thing that we do here at MetaCurch.

We're so excited about it.

One of the things baptism represents is a tangible, measurable uh result of what God is doing among us here as a church.

And we don't always get to see those kind of things.

A lot of things are happening constantly in the spiritual realm, but we can see the people who get up here and get in the water.

Let me give you some context.

God's been so good to us.

In 2022, we baptized 69 people here at MetaCurch.

That's something we're celebrating.

In the spring, we baptized 41 people, and over the course of our three services today, we have over 50 people signed up just today.

God is continuing to move and grow and change lives here, and we're so excited about it.

We're gonna close out the book of Jonah.

We're gonna look at the entirety of chapter four today.

It will move quickly, and just so you know, chapter four ends very abruptly.

Let's look at it.

Jonah 4, 1.

Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious.

He prayed to the Lord, please, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country?

That's why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place.

I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.

And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

And the Lord asked, Is it right for you to be angry?

And Jonah left the city and found a place east of it, and he made himself a shelter there, and he sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city.

And then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head and to rescue him from trouble.

Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant.

But when dawn came, the next day God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered, and as the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted, and he wanted to die, and he said, It's better for me to die than to live.

And God asked Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?

Yes, it is right, he replied, I'm angry enough to die.

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 hand and their left, as well as many animals.

And that's it.

That's the end of the story.

It just stops with an open-ended question between God and Jonah that never gets resolved.

My message today is cliffhanger.

Cliffhanger.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you and we thank you for your great love for us.

And we thank you that everything you do, including everything in your word, it is intentional and it's on purpose and it's for our benefit.

We come to you today and acknowledge that we are looking at a story of your people who you called out, starting all the way back at Abraham, a nation that you used to bring forth our Savior.

And God, our hearts are heavy seeing what's happening in Israel.

And so we ask for peace and we ask for resolution and we ask for justice.

We love you.

And uh, Holy Spirit, our hearts and our minds are open, and we're just asking you to speak to us today in a powerful way.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, and if you're ready for the cliffhanger, say amen.

Amen.

I love a great cliffhanger.

One of my favorite experiences ever in a movie theater was the end of Avengers Infinity War.

That's the one where at the end, Thanos snaps and everyone turns into like dust, you know, and then just credits roll, you know?

And you're shocked because you don't know what's coming next.

This year, some big movies, two of the biggest movies ended in cliffhangers.

Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, Big Cliffhanger, Fast and the Furious, what is it now?

Like Fast and the Furious 27 or something like that.

That ended on a cliffhanger, you know, and there's a purpose for this.

It draws you and it intrigues the audience.

You know, it makes us wonder like what comes next?

And how does this resolve?

And does the good guy win?

And does the main character learn their lesson?

This is the benefit of a cliffhanger.

Jonah leaves us with a massive cliffhanger.

However, there is no Jonah part two.

Like if you were just reading scripture, like I hope you guys are consistently reading scripture, if you got to the end of Jonah, you'd be like, Did a page fall out of my Bible?

Like, where's the rest of this story?

There's no sequel, okay?

There's no Jonah too electric boogaloo, all right?

Too fish, too furious, right?

Nineveh strikes back.

I could go on all day, okay?

There's no sequel, it just ends.

And so why would the inspired word of God leave a story like this?

I think the reason is monumental, and I think understanding the reason really sets us up well for what we're doing here today with baptisms.

But first, I want us to dig through at a deeper level of what's going on in Jonah chapter four.

In verse one, it says, Jonah was greatly displeased, and he became furious.

Jonah is enraged.

Later today, I'm gonna show you just how mad he actually was.

And if you weren't here in the series and you're unfamiliar with the story of Jonah, Jonah was a prophet, and God had told him to go to the evil city of Nineveh and to confront them and to preach against them.

And Jonah disobeyed God, which is not what a prophet is supposed to do.

He runs the complete opposite direction.

He does whatever it takes to go the opposite direction of God's plan.

And eventually, God does not allow him to run.

He sends a storm and he sends a big fish and he puts him back in the right direction.

And now we find out exactly why he didn't want to go.

He didn't want to go because he did not want Nineveh to be saved.

He hated Nineveh.

And so was he just that mad and that bigoted against the people of Nineveh?

Maybe Jonah was a little embarrassed.

He's been preaching in Israel for decades, and no one has responded as quickly as the pagans did in Nineveh.

And maybe he is just kind of embarrassed because he showed up with some big threats all throughout Nineveh.

Now none of those are gonna come to pass.

We don't know all of the factors that go into why Jonah is so enraged, but we do know he did not get his way.

Jonah 4, verse 2 has to go down as one of the craziest complaints anyone has ever filed against God.

Jonah 4:2

I want you to hear how Jonah attacks God.

Here's what he says: Jonah prayed to the Lord, please, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country?

That's why I fled to Tarshish in the first place.

Don't you love it when someone's wrong and they blame you for why they did something bad?

He's like, God, this is why I had to disobey you in the first place.

I knew your plan wasn't any good, so that's why I had to run.

Now listen to his actual complaint.

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, a God who relents from sending disaster.

I have never in my life heard someone use such an astounding array of compliments to try and bring a complaint against somebody.

Can you imagine being in a fight with your wife where you're like, I'm just so furious, you have my dinner cooked on time perfectly every single night, and you're so nice to me and the kids, and you leave me alone when college football's on.

How dare you?

It's like, what are we arguing about here?

Jonah's like, God, you're just so gracious and perfect and loving and merciful, and this gets to the heart of it.

Jonah is mad at God for being God.

Jonah likes his plans better than he likes God's character.

And so he's angry, almost beyond angry.

And if he's not being dramatic enough, in verse 3 he says, and now, Lord, you know what?

Take my life from me.

It's better for me to die than to live.

I'd rather die than have things go your way, God.

Jonah goes full toddler, you know, when they don't eat the vegetables, and so they don't get dessert, and they're like, you know what?

I guess just take my life then.

You know what?

I'm just gonna find a new family then.

Like, just didn't get his way on this one thing.

God's been good to him his whole life, provided for him his whole life.

He is so bent on getting his way, his desires, his plan, that over and over throughout chapter four, he says, if it's your way, God, then just kill me.

At this point, if you're me, you're losing patience with Jonah.

You're like, I don't want God to kill him, but maybe like the smallest lightning bolt, you know?

Just a taze, right?

Just get his attention a little bit.

And God is so patient.

And I love, I love how he approaches Jonah.

Number one, because he asks a question.

And in my leadership of our staff here at MetaCurch, I've been telling them for about the last couple of years, I've really tried to emulate one of the ways that Jesus leads, and I'm doing it very slowly and very imperfectly.

It's a hard shift for me.

But I want to be a leader who leads through questions.

And I think the power in that, you see Jesus do it all the time, is instead of sitting with authority over someone, you engage in conversation with someone.

And the other thing that's so powerful about leading through questions is that revelation that is developed from within somebody takes roots much faster and much deeper than authority placed down over top of them.

And so God's gonna ask a question, and I think every part of this question matters, and we're gonna break it down.

The Lord asks Jonah, is it right for you to be angry?

Is it right?

And I like that he asked that question.

Is this the right thing?

Like, are you actually thinking about this, Jonah?

Because sometimes what happens when we get dead set on a plan or a dream or a strategy or a set of desires or proving someone wrong, when we have something we're trying to accomplish, we can get so enamored with the plan that along the way we stop evaluating whether or not the path we're on is even the right path to begin with.

You see this in almost every argument you're in.

At some point in the argument, you don't care who's right, you want to win the argument, you know?

It's like, what's right?

What's the actual goal here?

What are you living your life for, Jonah?

What do you believe about God?

What do you think your role is as a prophet?

Have you stopped to consider if your course of actions, your reactions, your decisions are even right in the first place?

He says, Is it right for you to be angry?

And I love this because that takes it out of the mind.

Is it right?

Let me think about this.

To the emotions.

Are you experiencing the correct emotion right now?

This isn't actually my sermon, but this is an idea that if you could add to your life, could change your life and make you infinitely more successful.

Just this one idea.

Not every emotion you experience is telling you the truth.

Some of the angriest points in my life were not righteous anger.

They were the kind of anger that comes from someone confronting me and me knowing that they're right and me not wanting to change.

Your envy probably isn't sourced in the fact that you don't have what you need.

It's because you're not leaning on contentment from the Lord.

Instead, you're playing the comparison game with the culture.

See, not every emotion is telling you the truth, and not every emotion you experience deserves the right to be set at the steering wheel of your life and determine your decisions, actions, and reactions.

Is it right?

Like, is this the course of action you should be on?

Is it right to be angry?

Are your emotions playing tricks on you right now?

And here's the most devastating part of this question Is it right for you to be angry?

God's like, Jonah, my man, out of all people, is it right for you to be angry about this?

Why is Jonah angry?

He's angry because the people of Nineveh have been in rebellion against God and God isn't going to punish them.

Is it right, Jonah?

For you specifically, a prophet who knew better, whose only job is to follow my word to the team.

Do you not remember, Jonah, that you ran in rebellion?

Do you not remember I had to send a category five storm?

You don't remember I had to wake up the sleepiest, biggest fish, to gobble you up for a second, just to get you back on the right path.

Do you not remember that you were the one running in rebellion and I just showed mercy to you?

Are you sure, Jonah, that you are the right guy to be angry about this right now?

It's very, very easy to look outside of ourselves and be very frustrated with the sins of other people.

It's a lot more difficult to look internally and see the areas where we are, in fact, not in alignment with God.

The way Jesus said this is you should be really careful at pointing out the speck in your brother's eye before realizing that you have a plank in your own.

In week one, we said there are these two broad issues keeping us from God.

We call them rebellion and religion.

And here is another way to think about that.

Rebellion is trying to run from God.

This is what Jonah does.

God says, Jonah, get up, go to Nineveh, the evil city, the people you hate, and preach to them.

Jonah doesn't like that plan.

He tries to run from God.

He tries and he fails.

He's not gonna get away from this.

He's not gonna get away from God.

Rebellion is trying to run from God, religion is trying to run God.

Now he can't get away from God.

He certainly can't run, so he's just gonna try to call the shots.

He's gonna try to set the agenda, he's gonna try to line God out, he's gonna give God the silent treatment, he's gonna do everything he can to get God on his timeline and his schedule.

Rebellion's trying to run from God.

Religion is just trying to run God.

God says, Jonah, are you sure you are right to be angry?

And Jonah won't answer.

Jonah gives God the cold shoulder.

In verse 5, Jonah left the city and found a place east of it.

He made himself a shelter there and he sat in the shade to see what would happen to the city.

And it kind of feels like Jonah is holding out hope that maybe God will change his mind and like hellfire brimstone the whole place anyway.

I don't think that's actually what's happening.

My guess is that sometimes the very things that make us mad, we like to sit and stare at so we can feel even better about being mad about it.

The Instagram post that offended you so badly, you've looked at it ten more times since the first time you saw it, even though you know what it says.

You've reread all of the comments on it.

You've put yourself in proximity to the person who's the meanest to you, just to be around them so you can feel justified in your anger.

I think Jonah was gonna sit and he was gonna stew.

And just see whether or not God was really going to relent from the evil people of Nineveh.

What God's actually gonna do, he's already decided the fate of the city.

He's relented, he's given mercy to Nineveh.

Now he's gonna focus on Jonah and he's gonna use an object lesson.

And you know, I I like object lessons.

They help me learn.

This is what he's gonna do.

He's gonna use a plant and a worm and some wind.

A plant and a worm and some wind, and teach Jonah just a devastating lesson, and then leave us on a cliffhanger.

It goes like this.

Then the Lord God appointed, appointed, remember that word, a plant, and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head and to rescue him from his trouble.

And Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant.

Let me tell you something.

Jonah loved this plant.

And it's wild because we're four chapters in, and this is the first time Jonah's been happy in the entire book.

This is the first time that Jonah's like, things are looking up for me, bro.

Something finally went according to my plan, and he loves it.

I mean, he loves it.

You remember um in the 90s, you had to be careful to say you love something in front of your friends, because if you said, Oh man, I love this lucky charms, what would they say?

Well, then why don't you marry it?

Yeah, why don't you marry it?

Jonah might have married this plant, y'all.

Like he loved this plant.

It's so insane, and it contrasts intentionally, the author of Jonah contrasts it with how much he hates the people of Nineveh.

See, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and it's not translated word for word, because Hebrew is a very different language than English, it wouldn't be readable.

But I want to show you this.

If you translate how Jonah felt about the people of Nineveh being spared, here's what the Hebrew says, literally, word for word.

It says, and Jonah raged with a great rage.

If there's a way to say that you're madder than that, I don't know how to say it, alright?

He raged with a great rage against the people of Nineveh.

This is what he said about the plant, word for word.

And Jonah rejoiced with a great rejoicing.

They're contrasts, walking right by each other in complete opposite directions.

And this is the heart of the problem.

Jonah is trying to run from God, he isn't getting his way, and so now he's trying to run God.

He doesn't like God's plan, he likes his plan better.

And the first thing that goes according to Jonah's plan, he worships it.

The first thing that shows up on Jonah's agenda, he embraces it.

And he literally chooses a plant over God's plans.

And God's gonna show them.

In verse 7, when dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant and it withered.

And as the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so much that he almost fainted.

He wanted to die, and he said, It's better for me to die than it is for me to live.

And it's interesting, it says God appointed, he appointed the plant, he appointed the worm, and he appointed the wind.

And there's one other place that God appointed something in the story.

It's all the way back in chapter 1, verse 17.

It says, The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah.

You see that word appointed, this is like the supernatural working of God behind the scenes to try and do something with Jonah's life, to try and get him in the right position.

And now in chapter four, all of this work with the plant and the worm and the wind, it's all to try and engage Jonah in a conversation.

Remember, he asked him, Jonah, do you think it's right for you to be angry?

He's talking broad level about the whole situation.

Angry that God was willing to spare a city of a hundred thousand plus people.

Radio silence, Jonah won't say a word.

So he gives him a plant and he loves the plant and he takes away the plant.

And now he's gonna ask a very specific question.

Then he asks Jonah, is it right for you to be angry?

That's the same question, but specific.

Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?

And now Jonah's ready to talk.

He explodes on God.

Yeah, I do think it's right.

I absolutely think it's right.

As a matter of fact, I am mad enough to die.

Jonah snaps.

He loses it on God.

He's so blinded by his own plan, his own desire, his own intentions, his own dreams, he is missing entirely what God is trying to do with his story.

And now we get to the cliffhanger.

And so the Lord said, You cared about the plant.

But you didn't labor over.

You didn't go procure the seeds, you didn't dig a hole and plant it, you didn't water it, you didn't nurture it, you didn't do anything, you didn't make it grow.

It appeared in a night and it perished in a night.

So let me ask you a question, Jonah.

May I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who don't even know their right from their left, not to mention all the animals.

And it's over.

The story ends.

Jonah rejoiced with great rejoicing over a plant that he did nothing to deserve, never once even showed his gratitude towards God, and yet you can't see how God is rejoicing over the salvation of over a hundred thousand real human lives.

Jonah worshipped the plant.

His heart grew attached to it.

It was the first good thing that had happened to him in months.

And that's where the story ends.

And here's why.

We don't get to see Jonah's response.

We don't see if he redeems his story.

For us, his story ends in a tragedy.

And we don't see what comes next because I think principally the author of Jonah isn't writing it about Jonah.

And we don't even see what happens with Nineveh.

Jonah's got, you know, front row seat to see whether or not God's gonna send hellfire or brimstone.

We can find out in some of the other historical books in the Old Testament, but the book of Jonah doesn't tell us what happens with Nineveh, and that's because the author isn't principally interested in Nineveh.

Yes, the story of Jonah is about running from God and rebellion and the corruption of religion and making our own plans.

It's about all of that.

But at the end of the story, it does not conclude looking inward at the story itself.

The story ends facing outward.

Which means, in a real sense, the story is about you.

And the story is about me.

Your life is going to be the sequel to Jonah's story because Jonah's story is our story.

And it seems to me it'd be very difficult to approach the scriptures and the story of Jonah, really asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you and not find a little bit of ourselves in the life of the pouting prophet.

We all run from God.

We all come to points and places.

The more we get close to God and read his word and understand his revelation, the more we realize that there are plans and desires and attractions and dreams for our lives that are simply in opposition to God's plans, dreams, and desires for our life.

We're all Jonah.

We've all tried to run God.

We've all tried to call the shots.

We've all tried to get God on our agenda.

We've been Jonah.

And reading this story, the way it ends in this cliffhanger, it should force us to ask some questions like what is the thing in my life I'm most concerned about?

What's my dream for my life, really?

What plans do I have for my future?

Another question is, what is God most concerned about in your life?

What is his purpose for your life?

What is his revealed desires for how you are to live and navigate this world?

And the most important question is where do my plans and God's plans head in different directions?

The story of Jonah says you will have those moments.

You probably have them right now, most of us do.

And as life goes on, you're a broken person in a broken and sinful world, and they will pop up along the way.

Your plans and God's plans in opposition.

And the story of Jonah asks the question: what are you going to do when that happens?

I felt really led to preach on Jonah.

I've never preached through the book before.

And I also really felt like it was time for Metachurch to have baptism again.

And the only question I had is, how does the book of Jonah lead us to baptisms?

And so here's me on day one of trying to figure that out.

This is me on day one.

You know, Jonah does fall in the water at one point.

You know, that's like a stress, right?

Like that's all I could come up with.

And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna be faithful.

I feel like I'm supposed to study this.

So I start studying it, you know?

And I get to this cliffhanger, and I realize the story of Jonah is the perfect contrast to the picture of baptism.

Jonah represents a believer who so badly wants to live for himself, who so badly wants to see his own plan enacted that he would rather die than obey.

And baptism is a picture of someone who so desperately wants to obey that they're willing to die to themselves.

You see, what baptism symbolizes is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as applied into your life.

At that moment when you put your faith in Jesus and you believed in him for your eternal hope, you died to your old life and you were given new spiritual eternal life.

And so when we put you in the water because you've believed in Jesus, what we say is buried with Christ.

And we put you under the water, a water grave, just like Jesus went into a tomb, you go into the water, but Jesus didn't stay in the tomb, amen.

And so we pull you back up, and when we pull you up, we say, and you're raised to walk a new life.

You see, the call of the cross is come and live.

You're you're not in your real life.

You're the walking dead, you're spiritually dead, you're separated from God, death is imminent.

Death has no power over a child of God.

So come and live.

And you come to Jesus and you're given all of the rights of the children of God.

That's belief.

And then he says, Don't just believe and wait to go to heaven.

Follow.

Die to your own plans, die to your own dreams, die to your own desires.

Anything that doesn't line up to God's.

And it's the kind of death where you were raised.

To walk in a level of life that you didn't know was possible.

Jonah ends his story in rebellion, caught in the trappings of religion, wanting to die rather than obey.

Baptism is an opportunity for you to say publicly, I'm ready to die to myself, to die to whatever it takes to obey and follow after Jesus.

And so I'm so excited for those of you who came here to get baptized today.

I want to reiterate that if you didn't come today, you didn't come ready, but you've believed in Jesus and the Holy Spirit is pressing on your heart, today can still be your day.

We have everything that you need.

We have shorts and a shirt and a towel.

We would love for today to be the day that you take this next step of faith.

I'm gonna invite the band to come back up because we celebrate during our baptisms here at MetaCurch.

And here's what I want to have happen.

Everyone who is ready to get baptized today, whether you came registered and ready, or God is just moving on your heart, on the count of three, I'm gonna ask you to stand right where you are and to stay standing so I can pray over you.

So on the count of three, one, two, three, if you came ready to get baptized today, go ahead and stand to your feet and stay standing.

Amen.

Now, before I pray for you, let me just say to the rest of the room: if the Holy Spirit moves on your heart, I want you to know that until the very last words of the very last song, today can be your day.

And if you're ready, you head out to the lobby at any time and we'll get you what you need to be baptized.

For those of you who are standing, I'm gonna pray for you and release you.

Andre is in the back, and we've got someone else coming around the corner to lodge you.

Will you stand there and hold a hand up?

That will take you back there into the lobby and get you organized.

First, let me pray over you and celebrate what God's doing in your life.

Jesus, we love you.

And we join with heaven, celebrating lives who are already made new.

They already have eternal life, but they're not content to just believe and just wait for heaven.

They want to follow you, Jesus.

They want to make a statement.

I'm willing to die to myself if it means I get to fully follow after you, Jesus.

We love you and we're ready to celebrate what you're doing here.

We're humbled by it, God.

We're amazed by it.

Thankful for your love.

We give you all the praise and all the glory, Jesus, in your name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

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If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.