Don’t Waste Your Life

And fellow musicians, if you're a student, you're dismissed.

If you're an adult, I greet you to our service today.

Christ Community Church, welcome.

Those of you that come regularly, you know that my bride is not up here with me today.

She's in somewhere in Colorado, I think it's Evergreen, Colorado.

Her niece got married last night.

And so she was out there for the ceremony.

And anyway, she'll be, I'm going to go pick her up tonight.

Just real quickly, uh, tonight at 5 o'clock at Kim and Jerry's house, we're going to be having our small groups.

And what that means is everybody will meet there at 5.

We're going to have pizza.

There's child care for anybody that has little ones.

And I think Weldon will be there to work to be with the teenagers, and Hannah and Morgan will be there for the little ones.

And anyway, we're just going to have some pizza and get to know each other, and then we'll break up into several small groups.

And tonight, the topic that we'll be discussing is Jonah.

We're going to end our study of Jonah today, and we're just going to spend some time tonight sort of talking about it.

So if you've been wondering, maybe I didn't address some things or I've created some questions that you'd like to talk about tonight, please come and join our conversation.

It'll be very discussion-oriented, and I think you'll enjoy it.

And so it'll be a chance for you to share maybe some things that God's been teaching you through the book of Jonah or things that you want to learn from others.

But I'd love for you to come and join us 5 o'clock tonight at Kim and Jerry's house.

Anything I, Tommy, that I didn't.

Oh, he's not here.

Okay.

I do.

Let me let me pray for us.

Lord, we are going to finish this study dealing with the little book of Jonah and the life of this prophet.

And I uh I have to confess that it's been a long time since you've held up a mirror to me and my personal life in quite in in such a dramatic way.

And I have recognized Jonah in my life in numerous ways.

And I uh I thank you that you love me enough to confront me with things that you're concerned about and that you want me to be concerned about.

And I thank you that your grace is greater than my sin, that your power to transform me is greater than my apathy and resistance to change.

I thank you that you are not finished doing a work in my life, and um all of those things are not just true for me, they're true for everyone in this room.

So once again I ask you to speak to us uh from the life of this prophet and your relationship with him.

I pray that your word would go forth, that it would go deep down in our hearts, that we would understand it and believe it, and humble ourselves before it and embrace it, and that it would change us and make us more like you.

And I ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh my wife normally reads from this little book that I got her about just some poetry from the book of Jonah, and so I thought I would read from it.

You, you, I won't do it as well as she does, but I'll do my best.

Uh this one's called Renegade.

Jonah waged a cold war against all the enemies that he could muster.

It didn't matter that his commander-in-chief had issued orders for fraternizing.

Better dead than reconciled, was his battle cry, and he never did come to terms with his own hostilities or surrender to his sovereign.

This one's called At Work.

God was busy, although Jonah did not notice the way that he worked, prompting the cast in every act of the play, or how the wind and the fish and the worm and even the plant were spurned on the stage at the split second of inexpectancy.

Jonah was too busy being Jonah.

A bitter job at best.

This one's called As Far as He Was Concerned.

Long before the worm sunk his mandibles into the tender tree, which tinted the tight-lipped proclaimer of the irreversible verdict of infernity, something had withered in one who would not volunteer to carry griefs or transgressions for those outside the camp.

As far as he was concerned, it was their scourge and their burden, and he couldn't bear to think of their not bearing it.

And then I can't remember if my bride read this one last week, but I'm gonna um I'm gonna read it if I'm gonna read it if it's uh if it's redundant, sorry.

It's called Coming Around.

And Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking.

And God is still waiting for a host of Jonah's in their comfortable houses to come around to his way of loving.

Sort of like a sharp stick in the eye, isn't it?

Let me read Jonah chapter 4.

Jonah 4 · chapter mention

Just you've got a copy of the scriptures.

I think Colin's gonna put it up on the screen so you can follow along.

I'm reading out of the NIV, but whatever your translation is, I'm sure it's wonderful too.

Jonah 4.

This change of plans, that which when God saw the repentance and the remorse and the sincerity of the people of Nineveh to humble themselves before God, ask for forgiveness, and hope that God would relent in his destruction that he had told Jonah to proclaim.

When God saw that, he did relent.

He changed his plans, if you will.

This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry.

Literally, in the Hebrew language, it's he was furious.

And he complained to the Lord.

Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord?

That's why I ran away to Tarshish.

I knew you are merciful and compassionate and slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

You are eager to relent from destroying people.

Just kill me, for I'd rather die than live if what I predicted, the destruction of the Ninevites, if what I predicted won't happen.

The Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry about this?

Notice Jonah just ignored God.

He wouldn't even dignify God or God's question with an answer.

He just ignored him.

Then Jonah went out to the east side of the city and made a shelter to sit under as he waited to see what would happen to the city.

And the Lord God provided a leafy plant to grow there, and soon it spread its broad leaves over Jonah's head, shading him from the sun.

This eased his discomfort, and Jonah was very grateful for the plant.

I know the NIV says he was grateful.

It can be translated that way, but really what the word is happy.

He, for the first time in the story, Jonah's happy.

He didn't get happy when he was rescued from the uh the sea.

He wasn't happy with this with the deliverance and salvation of the Nineveh.

He's not happy until this plant made him happy.

He was very happy for the plant.

But God provided a worm, and the next morning at dawn, the worm ate through the stem of the plant so that it withered away.

And as the sun grew hot, God provided a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah.

The sun beat down on his head till he grew faint and he wished to die.

Death is certainly better than living like this, he declared.

Then God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?

Yes, angry enough to die, he replied.

Notice three times.

He talked about, I wished I was dead.

And then he'd already said it once earlier in the book.

Then the Lord said, You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there.

You came, it came quickly and died quickly.

But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals.

Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city?

I just wanted to conclude this study.

I guess we've been in this book now six weeks, give or take.

And I just wanted to end our study in Jonah.

Oh, sucker Bill.

I need to something else I need to remember that I need to remind you all of.

Next Sunday, we will not be, Tommy, dude, you should have reminded me.

Um next Sunday, uh, we will not be meeting here.

We're gonna meet at Kim and Jerry's house.

Isn't that right, Kim?

Next Sunday?

Okay.

It's next Sunday, Kim and Jerry's house tonight at 5 o'clock, next Sunday at 10 15, give or take, uh, we're gonna have our service out at their house, and then we're gonna have a cookout and just enjoy each other again.

So if you'd like to come and join us next Sunday, we would love for you to do so.

Uh but if if you come here, you won't be meeting with us, okay?

Uh that might be the most intellectual group you can find.

But anyway, um uh we're gonna be at Kim and Jerry's next Sunday, around 10.15.

Please come and join us if you can, okay?

Uh woo, I'm glad I remind remember that.

All right.

I wanted to just end today by sharing with you, I'm gonna say six.

Uh I don't know that I'll get to all six, but there's six things that God really spoke to me about during the last six weeks related to this study of Jonah.

For me, it's been about ten weeks, because I I'd been spending some serious time in this little book about a month before we got to it, and um there were six things that just jumped out at me and impacted me very profoundly.

Um, and I wanted to just share them with you, and most of them relate to chapter four, but I'll go back a little further.

And um the first one that I wanted to mention was just there, there are actually six things that I think you and I are very easily deceived by.

We, because of our the nation we live in, the part of the nation we live in, the culture that we live in, both the secular culture, but even more specific, the spiritual culture that we live in, there are some things that I believe God would like to warn us about and encourage us to be aware of and to try to not embrace, to reject.

Okay, not to be mean, but to protect us from the blessings and the plans of God for our lives.

And the first one is simply this I think it is very dangerous, but very popular for us to come to the conclusion that God's will can be discovered by what is pleasant and what we are comfortable with.

Tiffany, would you like to come up and sing a solo for us right now?

Um, would you like to do that?

I don't know.

I I don't think the Lord wants me to do that.

Well, why would you say that?

Because I'm not comfortable doing that.

Now, I'm not saying the Lord wants you to come up here and sing a solo or not.

In fact, I don't want you to right now.

But but uh, but how often um, Bobby, do you want to go on a mission trip with me down to Juarez or down to Honduras?

No, I'm not comfortable, and I'm just making this stuff up, but I'm not comfortable with that.

I don't think that anyone that read the book of Jonah could miss that what God asked Jonah to do.

Jonah, I want you to go to a to the capital of the most powerful nation in the world and speak my message to them.

And not only is it the most powerful nation in the world, it is a nation that has done you and your people for hundreds of years indescribable wrong.

That was a hard thing.

And yet it was what God told Jonah to do.

And I just want to suggest to me and to you that the Bible is filled with examples of God telling his favorites.

I'm talking about Bible believing, water walking, miracle working, faith declaring, prayer answering.

These are the good guys.

The Bible is filled with examples of God telling his favorites to go and do things that are very hard, very difficult, very scary, and very uncomfortable.

And to use the as a litmus test or an indicator of what is God's will or not God's will, to use to discover that, is this comfortable or not?

Do I feel good about it or not?

I'm not telling you how you and I should discover God's will on things.

I'm telling you how we shouldn't.

Most of the time when I study the scripture, I see God telling people to do things that were incredibly scary, incredibly uncomfortable, incredibly difficult.

Job, I would like for you to be the tool in my hand that for literally the history of mankind, you're going to be the tool that I use to show people that loving me and trusting me is what is ultimately important even when you lose everything that you love.

Oh God, I feel good about that.

Ooh, pick me, pick me.

I I like that.

I I feel I feel led to do that.

Is that right, Job?

I think of Moses going to Egypt.

If you're reading through the Bible with me, like I hope you are, Chuck, we've been reading in Jeremiah.

Who would like the life of Jeremiah if you've been reading with us?

What a fun calling that God placed upon Jeremiah's life.

He had one of the most sad, tragic, hurtful, loss-filled, pain-filled lives of anybody that's ever followed God.

The calling of God for his life could not be discovered through the matrix of what is easy and fun.

I think of Esther.

I think of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

These are people that they understood what God was telling them to do, and it was hard.

It was scary.

It was uncomfortable.

It is bad theology for us to think that we can discover God's will by whether or not we feel comfortable or good about it.

What we can know is that when God asks us to do things, he would only ask us, because our going, our following, our yielding is gonna ultimately lead to us experiencing life or to other people experiencing life.

That's why Jesus says in John 12, 24, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it will produce a great harvest.

It's when we're willing to be like that grain of wheat and die to what we feel comfortable with, what we want to do, and we willingly do that which we would equate more with death than life, that's when God ultimately turns that which we equate with death into life for ourselves or for others.

Alright, I don't want to I want to do this second one, and I want to, I'm, I realize I'm treading on thin w thin ice on this one, so if you get mad at me, you just have to get mad at me.

But I don't see how you can read the book of Jonah without seeing this.

One time earlier in the book of Jonah, and then three times in chapter four, Jonah talks about wishing he was dead.

I just want to declare to you, and this will mean more to some of you than it will to others, there is an idea out there that people of great faith don't struggle with emotional problems.

That if you struggle with depression or anxiety or addiction or hopelessness or in this situation, suicide, that somehow that is the result of you not having great faith.

And I just would like to declare in front of you as somebody that has prayed for you by name and loves you with all of my heart, if you believe that you're stupid.

Let me just say one more time.

If you believe that there is a connection between people's faith in God and loving God and their struggle with emotional problems, and that might not even be the word that I'm supposed to use nowadays, and if it isn't, I'm sorry.

If my wife was here, she'd tell me the right word to use.

But whatever, whatever that is, if you believe that there is some kind of a connection between that, you're stupid.

And you need to repent.

Because that's not true.

I just randomly, just quickly, Job struggled with suicidal thoughts.

Moses struggled with suicidal thoughts.

Elijah struggled with suicidal thoughts.

David struggled with suicidal thoughts.

Jeremiah struggled with suicidal thoughts.

And the apostle Paul struggled with suicidal thoughts.

Oh, but those people didn't have any faith.

They were, you know, they were B-teen people.

They didn't know and love God.

They didn't walk with God.

They didn't trust God.

And yet the Bible indicates that every one of those people struggled greatly at times in their life with suicide.

Being one example.

Psalm 77 says, the psalmist says, I am so depressed that I cannot sleep or pray.

And the psalmist says in Psalm 40, God lifted me from the pit of despair and hopelessness.

Yes, God lifted this person from the pit of hopelessness and despair.

But how long before?

A day, a month, a year, ten years?

We don't know.

We don't know.

I just want you to leave here today with grace that just like I might have a limp or high blood pressure or a headache or a dead gum cold or whatever, people struggle with all kinds of things.

And for us to equate strong faith with never feeling hopeless or fear or depression or darkness or doubt or despair, that's not true.

There's no truth in that.

There's no compassion in that.

There's no grace in that.

And we need to turn away from that kind of baloney.

Yes, the Bible declares that the joy of the Lord is my strength.

But the Bible also says that that joy comes in the morning.

And sometimes that's after a very, very, very long night.

And we need to give ourselves and we need to give other people some grace when it comes to these kinds of things.

Thirdly, another warning that God gives us from the book of Jonah is just the danger of misplaced priorities and misplaced values.

Did you hear what I read in chapter four?

Jonah's been a horse's rear end.

He's been muled up and grumpy and mad and irritated and depressed and every negative thing on the planet.

And then all of a sudden, a vine pops up one day and creates some shade over his head.

And he becomes happy.

And God's point to Jonah is Jonah.

You're happy over this plant, but you're not happy over the salvation of an entire city of people, an entire society.

Do you not see the imbalance there?

Do you not see how different you are from me, Jonah?

That you would be happy and then sad over a plant living and dying, but you don't see any value, any significance, any there, you don't see anything related to an entire society of people.

And the thing that I just was reminded of is just how foolish, how stupid, how dumb it is for me to waste my life consistently overvaluing B-team things, low-road things, short-lived things, minor things.

What I began studying this, and all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks.

How many times Jesus addresses this very issue of how easy it is for us to overemphasize and value things that don't matter and undervalue things that do matter.

Jesus said in Matthew 23, you religious people, you Bible thumping rule following synagogue and temple attending spiritual people.

You strain out the gnats.

I'm not drinking anything with a gnat floating in it, but you swallow camels.

You're emphasizing that which doesn't matter.

That won't hurt you.

You swallow a gnat or two, it won't kill you.

Get over it.

You swallow a camel, you got a problem.

You're emphasizing what doesn't matter, you're not emphasizing what does.

Luke 14.

Jesus tells one of his most famous parables.

This wonderful king throws this huge party.

It's going to be the party of the year.

And he sends his servants out to invite people that he wants to come.

And consistently, everybody on the invitation list says no thanks.

Oh, I've got some property that I've bought and I need to go look at it.

Oh, I've got some livestock that I've got to take care of.

Oh, I've got family issues that I've got to focus on.

And Jesus' point is this don't tell God no thanks.

Don't miss out on the things that He's focused on, that He's passionate about, that He's doing.

Don't let secondary, none of those things, nobody said no thanks to God's invitation to come to the feast because I'm gonna stay in my hotel room and snort crack or cocaine or whatever it is you do with it.

No thanks, I'm gonna go to a brothel.

No thanks, I'm gonna go burn down an orphanage.

Nobody's turning down God for evil things.

Those were all good things.

They just weren't the most important thing.

Best example I could find was in John, where Jesus was invited to another party.

A party that was given by a man, one of his best friends, Lazarus, and Lazarus' two sisters.

Jesus is sitting in the living room, probably on the floor, and there's people around him, and he's teaching.

Now you think for just a second.

Can you imagine going to a Bible study that Jesus taught?

I don't know what he was teaching on.

Who cares?

Whatever it was, what could you come up with that would be worth missing that Bible study for?

And yet Martha, one of Lazarus' sisters, she was so busy with refilling the Diet Coke and the lemonade cups and cutting the cake that she missed what Jesus was talking about.

And Jesus said, Martha, Martha.

Again, it's one of those double names.

The Bible says a double name, that means listen up.

Martha, Martha.

You're so focused, you're so upset, you're so worried about so many things.

And really, there's only a few things that are important.

Actually, there's really only one.

That's what Jesus is saying.

Don't focus on B-team, low road, short-term things.

Focus on what matters.

I struggle with this.

This is a punch in the eye for me.

Because it is very easy for me to get consumed with B-Ten things and forget and be distracted from what really matters.

I tell you somebody that does this better than anybody I know.

It's my bride.

She has this unbelievable ability to go through her day and to not let B-Ten things distract her or pull her attention away.

She has a unique ability to keep her eye on the ball.

What's important?

She's driving along and somebody cuts in front of her or somebody does something that would that would they do it to me, it ruins my day.

And what I'd like to do is drive up beside them and blow out their tires with a pistol.

That's what I'd like to do.

My wife, she just goes right along her way.

These mamas come up to her school, and if you're one of them, Lord help you, but they come up there, my daughter made a 98.5, and the world is ending.

The world is ending, and Sherry goes, Well, let's talk about this.

And by the, she is, she's got this unique ability to not let secondary B-team low-road things, whether it's the holidays, how many people ruin the holidays for their family?

Because the most unimportant things don't go perfectly.

And it makes the whole deal a misery for all that are involved.

Travel.

People are getting on airplanes, and they're literally diverting the flight because they got mad over something that who cares?

Who cares?

We get so consumed with things, school issues, schedules, relational offenses.

We have people in this very church.

I know if they're coming to church.

And I love these people, but they won't come to church if one of you's here.

They only come if you're out of town.

And I'm like, what the Sam Hill?

What a, what a I'm not coming to the house of God to worship my Savior because so-and-so's here.

Now you think through that.

These are not made-up things.

This is real life.

How pity, how pitiful that we get so consumed with things that don't matter to the neglect of that which does matter.

Number four.

I don't know whether you picked up on it or not, but when we were studying Jonah chapter 2, Jonah's inside this fish.

Jonah 2 · chapter mention

And you know what the ultimate summary of Jonah's reaction to being thrown in the sea and swallowed by this fish is?

He repents.

God, you're right.

I'm sorry.

I've messed up.

God, I'm going to do better.

And guess what?

Jonah does for a day.

He gets out of the fish, trudges into town, spends a day telling everybody the little message, and then he gets mad because God doesn't destroy everybody, and he pouts and goes outside the city.

He repents of his repentance.

You might not know this unless you're a Bible nerd, but the people of Nineveh were exactly the same.

Jonah goes into Nineveh, preaches this five-word sermon in Hebrew, eight words in English.

The Bible says that the Ninevites all repented, but they only repented for a hundred years.

At the end of a hundred years, they're right back being as mean and vicious and wicked and evil as they were before Jonah came.

And is there anything that better describes the Israelites than this very issue of repenting of our repentance?

They were continually getting their fannies in a crack.

Oh God, we're sorry.

Help us, we'll do anything.

God rescues them.

Okay, we're clean slate.

We're gonna start over, we're gonna do good, we're not gonna worship idols, we're gonna start obeying you and serving you.

And they do for a little while.

And then the story of Israel is the people of God repented of their repentance.

You battle with that?

Buddy, I do.

How many times have I known that God was dealing with me, God was speaking to me, God spoke to me, and I knew what God wanted me to start or stop or change or add.

And I was sincere for the moment.

For the moment.

Oh God, I'll start praying every day.

Oh God, I'll read my Bible every day.

Oh God, I'll start being faithful in church.

Oh God, I'll forgive that person.

Oh God, I'll start giving money financially to support your kingdom.

Whatever it is.

Oh God, I'll stop doing whatever that bad thing is.

And I mean that for a little while.

And then over time, I begin to repent of repenting.

That's exactly what Jonah did.

Number five, and I want you to hear me on this one.

The last two are the ones that I think are the most prominent and powerful.

The first of the number five is.

I want to get this right.

You've got David and Jonathan, and then you've got David and the mighty men.

You've got Moses and Aaron.

You've got Jesus and the twelve.

You've got James and John.

You've got Peter and Andrew.

You've got Paul and Barnabas, and then Paul and Silas, and then Paul and Timothy and Luke.

You've got Job and I mean, sorry.

You've got Jonah and wait a minute.

I can't get it.

Jonah and nobody.

Nobody.

Just like you've got Samson and just like you've got King Saul and the biggest failures in the Bible are people that lived their lives in isolation.

Jonah lived his life seemingly under the premise that I don't need other people.

Oh, he might have had his drinking buddies, his football watching buddies, his golf buddies, his hunting buddies.

I don't know about all those shenanigans.

But spiritual community.

No.

No.

And I just would appeal to you.

The Bible, a blind man cannot read the Bible and walk away without knowing that God designed a walk with him to be done in community.

I've seen stickers and plaques and bumper stickers and refrigerator magnets that say, me and Jesus are enough.

You know that's a lie.

That's not biblical.

There's nothing in the Bible that would indicate that you and Jesus are not enough.

God created a journey with him to be lived in community with others.

That's why Paul says in Hebrews 10, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is.

And so much the more as you see the day approaching.

The closer we get to the day when Jesus will return, the more the need is, the greater the need is for us to go through life in community.

Listen to what I just looked up a few verses.

Ephesians 1, Paul says, I pray that you will know the riches of God's glorious inheritance in his holy people.

Now it begs the question, what's Paul saying?

Is he saying that I'm going to discover God's glorious inheritance for me through y'all?

Or is he saying that I'm going to discover that God's glorious inheritance is y'all?

Now I didn't say that right grammatically, but you see what I'm saying.

Are y'all the glorious inheritance?

Or by being by traveling through life with you, am I going to discover God's glorious inheritance?

I'm good either way.

But it takes a community for us to discover the truths that God wants us to know.

Ephesians 3, two chapters later, Paul says, I pray that together with God's holy people, you will experience the power to grasp and experience the width and length and height and depth of God's unexplainable love and be filled with his fullness.

Do you know what that tells me?

Without your help, I will never understand the love of God.

I might benefit from it, but I'll never understand it.

I'll never understand the fullness of God without your help.

And then in Colossians 2, Paul says, be united with one another in love, so that you will know the mystery of God, namely Christ and his wisdom and knowledge.

I was reading the other day in The Great Divorce, that was written by C.S.

Lewis, who was arguably the greatest Christian mind of the 20th century.

And he was describing his understanding of what hell will be like.

Actually, he was describing his understanding of what heaven will be like and hell.

And what he says is this he says, when you die, if you go to heaven, you get a mansion.

If you go to hell, you get a mansion.

But that the difference is not the mansion that God gives you, but the direction that the mansion goes.

That in heaven, our mansions are getting closer and closer together.

And in hell, our mansions are getting further and further apart.

Until ultimately, hell is nothing more than a place where I spend forever by myself.

We need each other.

Now we pretend we don't, or we can get it off the internet, or you know, whatever other shenanigans you want to use, but at the end of the day, God wants us to recognize I need your faith when I don't have any.

I need your courage when I'm afraid.

I need your faithfulness when I'm not faithful.

I need your love when I'm acting like a selfish jerk.

It's my spiritual community that will help me see things that I can't see, know things that I cannot understand, receive wisdom when I'm foolish.

We need each other.

Jonah never understood that.

And finally, and I'll make this one brief, I think the greatest message in the book of Jonah, and this is bold for me to say this is the most important one, but this is my conclusion.

The last thing we see about the life of this prophet of God is a man that ended his life by himself, alone, angry, and miserable.

And the reason was simple.

Jonah would not forgive people.

He had reasons for hating the Ninevites, justifiable reasons, but at the end of the day, God said, Jonah, is it okay that I love your enemies?

And is it okay that I'm asking you to love your enemies like I love you?

That's the question that Jonah presents to us.

Is it okay that I love people that you hate?

And is it okay that I gave my son on a cross so that you could experience grace?

Is it okay that I expect you to love your enemies like I do?

In love, God asks us to forgive and to lay down our offenses and our wounds and to not hold grudges and to give grace.

And he promises to give us the power.

People tell me all the time, I can't forgive.

That's not true.

That is not true.

That is a lie.

I don't want to forgive.

That's the only reason I don't forgive people is that I want to.

And there are people that I struggle with just personally, but at the end of the day, my struggle is not that I can't forgive them.

My struggle is that I don't want to forgive them.

But because God loves me, God begs us to forgive so that we don't miss the party.

There was a party going on in Nineveh.

People were laughing and dancing and celebrating and enjoying because they had been delivered from destruction.

And the only person that missed the party was the man who could not forgive.

Gosh, that reminds me of another story.

A story that Jesus told in the New Testament about a brother who missed the party that his dad was throwing because he held grudges and wouldn't forgive.

And God's saying, Larry, I don't want you to miss the party.

I want you to be right in the middle of the party.

I'm throwing these parties for you now, and you have no idea what I've got in store in the future.

I want you to be right in the middle of it.

But to experience the celebration and the joy that I have for you, you cannot bring bitterness and anger and unforgiveness and grudges.

That's the only thing that you can't bring inside.

You've got to lay that outside.

And God says, Joan, is it okay that I love the people you hate?

And is it okay that I'm asking you to follow suit and to love them as well?

I think that's a real danger.

We try to come up with these reasons, these excuses, these this we try to vindicate our anger and our unforgiveness.

You might say, well, Larry, you don't understand how it feels to be wronged like I have.

And you're exactly right.

But God understands.

God understands, and He still loves your enemies.

And He still wants you and me to love our enemies too.

Those of the sick, I finished them.

Dead coming.

That's good.

I get a gold star.

Y'all listen quicker today than normal.

We're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

And Fatty, would you and Rita come help me, please?

I'm going to read one more little poem out of this deal as we prepare to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

Listen to what the poet says.

This is really a prayer.

O God, have mercy.

O Christ, have mercy on the pitiable and on the pitiless and on the pitifully petty like Jonah and like me.

Let me read one more time.

Oh God, have mercy.

Oh Christ, have mercy on the pitiful and on the pitiless and on the pitifully petty like Jonah and like me.

If you claim Jesus Christ as your sacrifice for your sin, as the source through which you've received God's forgiveness, your redemption, and your adoption into God's family.

Then I invite you to come over to Miss Rita or to Mr.

Fatty and take some wine and bread and just eat and drink.

And if nothing else today, think about where in your life you can relate more than you'd like to admit with the life of Jonah.

And ask God to help you.

He will.

So when you are ready, you come to my right or my left, and you eat and drink and remember and give thanks.