Rescue: Who Knows? with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

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.

All right, well, welcome to week four of our rescue series.

This has been a gospel series.

I've been so encouraged as many, many people across the last three weeks and many more, even in our first service this morning, decided to put their faith in Jesus for the first time.

If you've done that, your next right step is baptism.

Not only is that a way to go public with your faith, it's an important uh step in your walk of faith.

It's also a way for your church family to celebrate what God is doing in your life and to come alongside you.

And so you can get signed up for baptisms, which happen in all three of our services next Sunday.

You can sign up online at metachurch.tv slash baptisms, but to make it really easy, we also have a baptism table set up, and our connect team can help you do that.

So far in this series, we've seen Jonah running from God, suffering through self-made storms.

Last week we saw him calling out to God all the way from rock bottom.

We're gonna continue the story this week.

Where we left things last week, he was in the belly of the fish, and then the fish, you know, dropped him off on the shore, to put it lightly.

We're gonna pick up the story right there in Jonah chapter three.

It says, The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach the message that I tell you.

And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord's command.

Now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk.

Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, In forty days, Nineveh will be demolished.

And then the people of Nineveh believed God, and they proclaimed a fast, and dressed in sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least.

And when word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne and took off his royal robe and covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes and issued a decree in Nineveh by order of the king and his nobles.

No person or animal, herd or flock is to taste anything at all.

They must not eat or drink water.

Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God.

Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing.

And who knows, God may turn and relent.

Who knows?

He may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.

The king asked a shockingly insightful question.

And it's actually the title of my sermon today.

My message today is Who Knows?

Who knows?

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you, and we've come here with open hearts and open minds.

Holy Spirit, we believe you're here, and we trust that your deepest desire is to speak to us and that we would be changed.

And so we're very open to that.

And we're asking you to do that very thing.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to get going, say, Amen.

Amen.

Once Jonah is vomited back onto dry ground, in essence, the story starts over.

I actually want to show you this in the text because it just resets like back to zero.

We're in Jonah chapter three, verse one says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah.

Verse two says, Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach the message that I tell you.

This is literally how the whole story began.

And it's indicative of God's desire when consequence comes for us to come back to him so that he can wipe the slate clean and set us back on the path towards our purpose.

I want to show you just how shockingly similar this is.

If we go back to chapter one, here's the first two verses.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah and said, Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because their evil has come up before me.

It's the same call, almost identical.

What changes is Jonah's response.

In chapter one, it says that he got up to flee from the Lord's presence.

But now we're in chapter three.

Now he's been through the storm.

Now he's been to rock bottom.

And now he's ready to obey.

Back in Jonah 3, verse 3, Jonah got up and he went to Nineveh according to the Lord's command.

Jonah 3:3

Now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk.

When it says a great city, it's not talking about its moral character.

We know it's actually a very evil city.

It's talking about its size and its scope.

And when it says it's a three-day walk, Jonah has just been thrown up on the shore of Joppa.

That's about a month walk to get to Nineveh.

That's not what it's talking about.

A three-day walk is an ancient measurement.

It's saying that if you started with your back up against one of the walls of Nineveh and you walked in a straight line to the other side of the city, that walk would take you three whole days to complete.

And that's what Jonah has been called to do, to literally walk from one end of the city to the other, proclaiming the warning that God gave him.

And that's what he did.

In verse 4, Jonah set out on the first day of his walk, and he proclaimed, in 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished.

40 days, Nineveh will be demolished.

A stern warning with no hint of mercy.

You guys have 40 days, and then God is going to do business with you people.

Buckle up, 40 days, God's coming.

This passage is so rich in application.

And I want to get to my main point, but I feel like I would be cheating us if I didn't share a couple of the other things that God really showed me while I was studying this text.

And the first thing is just looking at what God's plan was for Nineveh, how he was going to rescue this city and bring them back to repentance.

Like, first, look at Jonah, the prophet who is too scared to go to Nineveh, too prideful to preach to the pagans.

He shows up in force, one man, versus one of the largest cities in the world.

If you weren't here in week one, we talked about Nineveh, a massive, fortified city, giant walls wrapping around the circumference of their city.

And we talked about how evil Nineveh was.

It's actually known to historians as a terrorist state.

One of the most evil groups of people in one of the world's most evil empires.

Their walls, the exterior of their walls, were wallpapered with the human flesh of their enemies that they had conquered.

The road into Nineveh had mountains of decapitated heads, legs and arms, limbs ripped from people during torture.

I mean, these were wild boys in Nineveh, okay?

Jonah doesn't even want to go.

They were cruel and evil and malicious.

They were idolaters, they were blasphemers.

How could you possibly convert an evil empire?

I want to kind of step outside of the Jonah narrative for a minute and talk about our movement here at MetaCurch.

Our last series was MetaVision.

And we talked about this big, audacious belief that we have that this movement of us, like it's us, right?

Just normal, ordinary, jacked-up people who have discovered Jesus and are learning our purpose and believe that with the Holy Spirit inside of us, we can actually change our city and even beyond our city.

Amen?

I was thinking about if a 21st century ministry looked at a city like Nineveh, what our plan would be.

I think we would imagine to convert Nineveh, we probably need 40 years, maybe.

Give us like 40 to 50 years.

It's gonna cost a lot.

Probably need a budget of 100 million, you know.

Really top-tier social media strategy, okay?

We're gonna need a bunch of people.

I mean, like thousands of people, okay?

And we're gonna need a world-class band, you know?

Like we would massively overestimate what we need, at the same time, massively underestimating the power of God inside of us.

What was God's plan to change Nineveh?

One guy.

God is like, I'm gonna get one guy.

He calls Jonah, and Jonah doesn't even want to go.

He's gotta send a storm and a fish and everything else just to get his guy there.

His whole plan is one guy walks from end to end yelling about how judgment is coming.

That's the whole plan.

And it should really inform us.

You have no idea the impact that your life could have if you were willing to obey God no matter what, and speak the truth no matter what.

And we have no idea what God can do with a movement filled with people who were all willing to obey God no matter what, and to speak the truth no matter what.

We learn a lot from looking at Jonah.

There's also a deep truth to be found by looking at Nineveh.

Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh.

These people were literally the worst.

They were the wrong people to reach out to.

Over the last three weeks, we've talked about running from God.

We've talked about living with the consequences of our own sin.

We've made a compelling case for how God will pursue you, even all the way down to rock bottom.

And yet, I have no doubt that there are still many people who will say, Yeah, that's true for most people, but not me.

Like I know God loves all people, but there's gotta be some kind of asterisk on that statement.

Like most decent people or good people or church people or kind people, but not people like me.

You don't know how many people I've hurt, you don't know my criminal record, you don't know what I've said about God in my past, you don't know what I did in my last marriage, you don't know how my kids feel about me.

You'll never see the lives that I have affected.

You can't hear the twisted thoughts in my mind.

I'm sure God loves most people, but maybe you feel like you're not most people.

Last night I got to go out to one of our state prisons and spend some time with a group of inmates there.

Some of them have been there for a little while, some of them have been there for decades.

And I had a lot I wanted to share with them, and I concluded by talking a little bit about what God's been showing me in Jonah's story.

And the thing that I felt like the Holy Spirit impressed on me stronger than anything else was how clearly I needed to communicate how God viewed these men.

They're at rock bottom.

And I told him how, you know, every week at Meta I say that God created us on purpose and with purpose.

And God creating you on purpose means that you're not here by accident.

It's no accident that you are here on planet Earth.

God put you here.

Those men needed to hear that.

They're not an accident.

That they have a purpose.

That God's highest goal is to redeem their story, and they don't have to wait until the day they walk out of the prison to start living a redeemed life.

And so I don't know each and every one of your stories, or your pasts, or how many skeletons you have in the closet, or who you've hurt, or what you've done.

But here's something I do know for a fact.

I know you are not from Nineveh.

Because Nineveh doesn't exist anymore.

I know that.

I put all my money on that one.

You are not from Nineveh.

And why do I say that?

If there were ever a group of people who didn't deserve God's mercy, if there was ever a group of people who didn't deserve God's love, they are known as some of the most evil people.

The heinous acts that they did on a regular basis are more atrocious than anything we've seen in our lifetimes.

I'm sure you've been bad, but you're not a Ninevite.

And look at the lengths in Jonah's story that God went to to get to Nineveh.

He sent a prophet, and the prophet said no.

So we chased that prophet down onto a boat and into the sea and into a storm and swallowed him up with a fish and took him to the bottom of the ocean until he was ready to go to the people that no one else would be willing to go to.

Part of what you see in the story of Jonah is that if God is willing to pursue Nineveh, you can be confident he will pursue your life.

If God can forgive the people of Nineveh, God can forgive you as well.

Amen.

There's more that we see in the story because the people react to Jonah's proclamation in dramatic fashion.

Let me remind you what Jonah said.

Jonah set out on the first day of his walk and proclaimed, in 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished.

And look at the response from the people.

The people of Nineveh believed God, and they proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of the people.

There's historical evidence that the surrounding nations had heard of some of the power of the one true God, the God of Israel.

Like they maybe had heard about how he could split the Red Sea and His people walk through on dry ground.

And then the Egyptian army was swallowed up by that same sea.

Maybe they've heard of when they were fighting the Canaanites, and God forced the sun to stand still until Israel gained the victory.

Just a threat from the one true God, the God of Israel, brought the most powerful city of that time to its knees, trembling in fear.

And the common people were not the only ones who were afraid.

Jonah's prophecy made its way to the king.

In verse 6, when word reached the king, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and then he issued a decree by order of the king and of the nobles: no person or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all.

They must not eat or drink water.

Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God.

Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing.

The entire city jumps into action.

These are like desperate people.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

They were doing things.

The first time I read it, I missed it.

The second time I caught it and I went, these are desperate people.

The king's like, we're all fasting.

Nobody's eating, nobody's drinking.

We're gonna see if we can turn this thing around.

And he's like, you know what?

The animals, they're fasting too.

Like, the goats can't drink anything?

That's right.

Everybody, we're all fasting.

This is a desperate situation.

We're all putting on sackcloth.

Even the animals.

You want me to put a shirt on my donkey?

Is that what we're doing?

Desperate.

Do anything to get away from it.

And I want to remind you here's what Jonah said.

In 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished.

Period.

End of story.

Nineveh's done.

And Jonah hates Nineveh.

Y'all remember?

Like, he's kind of he's kind of excited about this.

40 days.

39 days, 23 hours, 50 cents.

Like, he's coming.

Y'all better get ready.

No hope.

No equation, you know, like Nineveh.

If you do X, then God will do Y.

Nineveh, if you quit worshiping idols and quit filleting people and using them for wallpaper, you know, like if you cut it all out, then God will relent.

There was no promise like that.

And the last thing the king says, he acknowledges that.

No mercy was given.

No promises were made.

He acknowledges it with two words.

Who knows?

We're gonna give this everything we got.

Who knows?

Maybe God will turn and relent.

Who knows?

Maybe he will turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.

Who knows?

I like the king, you know.

He's an optimist.

I can imagine the message of Jonah, this strange Hebrew, you know.

He dressed funny, he looked funny, he smelled funny.

His God was a very different God than the God of the Ninevites.

His message reaches the king, and the king calls his nobles, his round table, you know.

What are we gonna do?

And the king says, We're gonna try everything.

Change the way we're living.

We're gonna believe this God is real, and we're gonna hope that he's merciful.

And I'm sure someone in his court said they didn't say anything about mercy, you know.

It just said we're gonna get demolished.

There was no there was no hint of salvation here.

And the king's an optimist.

Who knows?

Maybe this God is real.

And if he's real, maybe this God is merciful.

The king had a sense of urgency because the proclamation was 40 days.

It's not a lot of time.

A little over a month to get a whole nation in order.

I wondered as I read this, how the response would have been from the king and from Nineveh if the timeline would have been different.

You know, if Jonah had said, in 80 years, God will demolish Nineveh.

Eighty years! Everybody get ready.

My guess is not much would have changed.

Eighty years is a long time.

Like, okay, well, we'll we'll make some changes eventually, you know.

The next king can worry about this.

We'll get some things right.

Like down the road, you know.

Eighty years, we'll be fine.

It struck me that it moved so quickly because judgment was coming.

It was coming quickly.

And the reality is for those who do believe in God and take the scriptures for what they say, we also know judgment's coming.

I mean, in a real sense, we're Nineveh, you know?

Like justice and judgment are coming.

But on average, we get like eighty years.

About eighty years here on earth.

And I think that even believers, we live with a real lack of urgency.

We don't think much of eternal matters because eternity feels so far away.

And I think this is why Jesus constantly talked about things like how it's just not promised tomorrow.

Let tomorrow's problems be for tomorrow.

You focus on today, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

You see Jesus' earliest followers, the men and women who changed the world.

Every one of them lived with a sense of urgency, like that day might just be their very, very last day.

40 days.

If you knew for a fact in 40 days Jesus was going to return, what would change?

What would you stop doing?

What would you start doing?

What would you give up?

How would you live?

The king said, Who knows?

He was willing to bet his life and the lives of his people that God was real.

And that maybe God was merciful.

I learned a lot about betting, gambling.

I studied the life of a guy named Blaise Pascal.

He lived in the 1600s.

He was a brilliant mathematician.

He actually shaped a lot of how we understand math today.

And what he wanted to know was all the odds and statistics, and he kind of became obsessed with gambling.

In the mid-1600s, he experienced God.

It changed his life forever.

And he realized there was one bet, the biggest of them all, that he had never considered.

That every person, whether they know it or not, are betting their eternal lives on whether or not they believe that God is real.

Here's what he wrote: God is or he is not.

But to which side shall we incline?

Reason can decide nothing here.

Here's where he landed.

If God is real and I believe in him, I gain everything.

And it has eternal consequence.

If God is real and I do not believe in him, I lose everything.

And it has eternal consequence.

If God is not real, whichever way I decide, I lose very little.

And it only has temporary consequence.

The great mathematician realized that putting your faith in God, that he is real, and that he is merciful, is the safest bed of all.

In verse 10, it says God saw the actions of the people of Nineveh.

They had turned from their evil ways.

So God relented from the disaster.

God spared Nineveh as many in the city turned towards belief in God.

And so what about us?

Are we willing to bet our lives on God?

Are you convinced that you're too far gone?

You've done too much.

Too much of a past.

Nineveh repented because one man came.

One man who hated Nineveh.

He wanted God to condemn it.

But he did his job.

He showed up and he warned them.

And many believed in God.

Jesus said that he came as the better Jonah.

Jonah came to Nineveh hoping for the destruction of the people.

Jesus came to earth, allowed himself to be destroyed so that we could be saved.

If we look at John 3, 16, one of the most famous verses of all, it says, God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes will not perish but have eternal life.

But do you know the next verse?

The next verse says, God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Jonah came to condemn.

Jesus came to save.

The king said, Who knows?

Let's roll the dice.

It's worth a shot.

He took a blind bet that God is real and God is merciful, and it paid off.

We're not taking a blind bet.

In Jesus, the fullness of our Heavenly Father was revealed to us.

Jesus really came to this earth and he really gave his life for yours.

He eliminated ever having to question how much God loves you.

He showed it when he died for you on a cross.

And all that he asks is for you to believe.

Would you pray with me?

Right where you are, close your eyes.

Nothing magic about that, just create some space.

I want you to consider where you're at in your own faith journey.

Do you believe that God is real?

And if He's real, that God is merciful.

Have you counted yourself out because of your past?

Because of the things that you've done, or maybe the things you're still doing.

I sat in a room of incarcerated men, many of whom have decided to bet their lives that God is real, that he came to earth in the person of Jesus, that he loved them so much, that he gave his life as a substitute for their own.

Incarcerated men who believe that even though they have lost their freedom, they can be spiritually free today.

If you've never had a moment where you put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you an opportunity to do that today.

To move from what scripture calls spiritual death into spiritual life.

To come back into relationship with your heavenly Father who loves you.

And to be given the promise of an eternal life with him.

If you've never believed in Jesus, and today you want to make that decision.

With everyone's eyes closed, I want to ask you, right where you're sitting, to just lift your hand up into the air where I can see it.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

For those of you who lifted your hands, acknowledging your belief in Jesus, your belief has given you eternal life.

And what I want to do is I want to help you affirm that belief through a very simple prayer.

I'm going to ask you to voice this prayer with me.

And I'm going to ask all the believers in the room to pray this with us.

So right now you can repeat this prayer with me.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God.

I believe you died for my sins.

I believe you rose again.

And that you're coming back someday.

Jesus, today I thank you for a new eternal life.

Let me pray over you, Jesus.

We love you and I rejoice alongside all of heaven for children coming home, for lives made new, for the beginning of the adventure of a lifetime, following after you and living out our God-given purpose.

We love you and we worship you in your name, Jesus.

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.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

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.

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