God's Most Shocking Behavior

Well, guys, good morning.

Uh, if you're new for the first time, welcome to His Hands.

My name's Justin.

I'm super excited about what we're gonna talk about today, and really what we're talking about for the next few weeks, but I do want to say a big welcome to all of you who are who are first timers.

Thank you for being here this morning.

Um, we've been in a series all year long called Getting to Know God.

Because there is nothing more important that you could accomplish in your life, in your year, in whatever season of life you happen to be in, than to simply know God better, to be closer to God.

We can always get closer to God, even if you've been following Jesus for years and years.

I mean, Herb right here clearly just moved its tears.

He loves the Lord very much.

I have known Herb for over a decade, and Herb has been following Jesus for longer than he will ever tell you.

He won't tell you.

You can try to ask Herb how old he is, he will not tell you.

He won't do it.

But he's been following Jesus for a long time.

And he's still moved.

It's not like an old hat.

You know, he's still moved.

There's still wonder, there's still something new to discover, to feel.

That's how God is.

You there'll never be a day where you're you're there.

And you're like, yeah, I know him as well as I care to or want to.

The closer you get to him, in fact, the more you want to know him better.

And you can daily, in every season of life, know God better than you did before.

And so that's kind of the pursuit of our year, just to get to know God better.

And the way we're doing that is we're studying the life of a man named Abraham.

We've been going through his story, just every single scripture, bit by bit, straight through a huge chunk of the book of Genesis that we've been studying.

Because Abraham is this man who believes in God at the outset of his journey, but he doesn't know him.

He knows of him and he believes in him, but he doesn't know him.

And over the course of decades in Abraham's life, he develops this very intimate relationship with God where he sees God's nature and God's character.

In fact, what we're gonna see today, what we're gonna explore today, it's it's a moment where Abraham even questions God.

Like, God, surely, surely, you're you're not like this, right?

Correct?

We sort of discussed this last week, but today we get to really get into it.

But Abraham gets to know God better.

Now, today and for the next few weeks, this is something we started last week.

We're actually in a series within a series.

This is like a Russian doll situation, right?

Series within a series.

It's a little mini-series we're doing called Love and Judgment.

Love and Judgment.

Because we happen to be at a place in the story of Abraham, very famous story about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

They are these two cities that are joined together.

It's like a city-state.

They have a king, they have an army.

This is a powerful, powerful uh entity in the world of Abraham, and God is going to destroy the city.

It's a very famous story, even if you didn't grow up in church, you're probably familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And this is one of those stories that often makes us wrestle with God.

There are certain stories where many of us who follow Jesus, we'd be like, man, I kind of wish that story wasn't in there.

Because I don't know what to do with this.

I don't know how to reconcile this with an idea of a loving and merciful God.

And when we get to those moments in Scripture, what I like to do is to stop and take our time with it.

Not to skip it, like I said last week, not try to reframe it and make it.

It's really fun if you think about it this way.

But to really wrestle with it because it's in the wrestling that we grow.

And what we're doing is we're spending the next few weeks really studying this.

We're gonna take our time.

And if you've ever thought to yourself, man, I would love to spend a month studying Sodom and Gomorrah.

Um, liar.

No one's ever thought that.

But we're gonna do that.

Because as we wrestle with these concepts, we get to know God better and more deeply.

And I'm very excited about what I what I hope the results of that will be.

What we said last week to kind of pick up from there is that for us as people, the ideas of love and judgment seem like opposites.

And there's a few reasons for that.

One is that we live in a society that has a sort of reductionist view of love.

And here's what I mean by that.

We live in a society that's sort of boiled love down to its most basic ideas.

For example, compassion.

Compassion is an aspect of love.

If you love people, you will have compassion on them.

But it is not the totality of love.

This is something that I heard a gentleman speak about years ago, and it's played in my mind so many times.

Compassion is an element of love, but it's not the totality of love.

Look at Hebrews chapter 12, verse 6.

Hebrews 12:6

It says, the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as a child.

He holds accountable.

Those of you who have raised children, or maybe you have authority of someone in the business world or someone that you're a coach of or a teacher, maybe.

When you hold someone accountable, that is not the opposite of love.

In fact, very often, that is an incredible demonstration of love because you love that person enough to help them become who they are not yet.

You look at that person and go, hey, you can be better than this.

Now, the world in our current society might look at that and go, that's not loving.

That's not true.

Discipline, accountability, those are actually aspects of love.

But we live in a society that's just sort of decided to boil love down into this idea, well, if you love someone, you just let them do whatever they want to do, and if it makes them happy and all that.

And that's that's not love.

So our understanding of love and judgment is opposite.

Some of it comes from that.

And I think a lot of it comes from a recognition that we have that a lot of the times, we talked about this last week, we don't know where the line is.

We don't know where like mercy and maybe accountability should actually be.

So we're always on the wrong side of that.

There's been so many times in my life where I was way harder on someone than I should have been.

And I look back and go, man, I really messed that up.

There have been other times where I wasn't hard enough.

And so we struggle knowing that line.

And that's one of the reasons that Jesus tells us not to judge, not to set ourselves up as the judge over other people.

That doesn't mean you don't practice wisdom and make wise decisions and have judgment calls, but it means that we don't set ourselves up as the judge of anyone.

Because we'll get it wrong.

We'll get it wrong.

But God doesn't get it wrong.

And so last week we had a conversation about the idea that God is sovereign and he is good.

And when God makes a judgment call, it is always the right call.

And that can seem like a blind faith thing if you're new to following God, but as you follow him longer and you go deeper with him, you recognize, yeah, he's right.

He's always right.

But that's something we have to wrestle with.

Now, today we're gonna go a little further and we're going to we're gonna explore an aspect of the story.

We actually looked at it last week, but I want to take some time and really dive into it this week a conversation between God and Abraham about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I think it exposes for us what I consider to be the most shocking behavior that God demonstrates in all of Scripture, especially in the Old Testament.

This is what I really do believe is the most shocking behavior that we see God demonstrate.

And we all know what shocking behavior feels like.

I'm sure all of us have seen someone do something before that shocks you.

I'm sure we've all done things that would shock other people if they saw us doing it.

And there's like humorous, light-hearted versions of that.

Kids are an easy one for this.

I have four kids and they give me lots of material, right?

Just so you know, I pay them when I tell stories about them.

Uh, it's an agreement that we have as a family, and I'm gonna have to pony up this morning.

So my my youngest Eli, who's now eight years old, when he was, I don't even know how old, one and a half, two, he was wearing pull-ups, so it all kind of, man, I I changed a lot of diapers with four kids for for a long time, so it all sort of runs together.

But he was still in the pull-up phase, however old he was.

One day I changed his pull-up, and a bunch of cookies fell out.

Like a strange amount of cookies.

Not a cookie, not two cookies.

I'm saying like I seven, eight cookies out of a pull-up.

And I just remember like looking at him, and I asked him, like, what's this?

And he just denied it.

Because that's this thing that kids do when they're really young.

He's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't see any cookies.

You know what I mean?

And you'll just be like, I no, come on.

And I'm just sitting there thinking, and all that I all that I could think of is that at some point in the day he had stumbled onto some cookies that were not put where they were supposed to be, like out of the reach of the small children.

And his mind, in his two-year-old mind, where cookies are the most valuable resource on the planet, okay?

He's like, I need all the cookies, but I can't eat all the cookies right now.

Where can I put the cookies?

So that I will have access to them, but they will not be seen.

I know.

Down my pants.

And that shocked me.

I was I was shocked.

Kind of impressed, but mostly shocked, right?

I mean, it would have been a really good plan if we didn't change his pull-up every two hours, but whatever.

That shocked me.

My daughter Lily, when she was about four or five years old, we were gonna have a movie night as a family.

I'll never forget this because we watched the movie Pete's Dragon.

I remember what movie it was.

Deep cut movie, Pete's Dragon.

And we had to have dinner beforehand, and she refused to eat her vegetables.

And I'm just gonna be honest with you, as a family, we've kind of given up on that.

Um, but this was back in the days where we were really hardcore, like you're gonna eat your vegetables, and after four kids, we're just like, look, it's your life.

You know, I'm just joking.

We're not quite we're not quite there, but I'm I will be honest, we're not as hardcore about that as we once were.

But in this point in time, we were like, no, you're eating your vegetables.

And we had we'd love is discipline, right?

So we told her, you cannot watch the movie unless you eat your vegetables.

And that night it happened to be zucchini.

And she only had two little pieces of zucchini.

And she refused.

And so we kind of did the whole, all right, well, we're gonna go downstairs and watch the movie, and you're not gonna get to watch it with us.

She comes downstairs ten minutes later.

And she looks at us and we go, Did you eat your zucchini?

She went, and Megan didn't believe her.

So she sent me upstairs to investigate, and I looked at her plate, no zucchini.

I went to the trash can, no zucchini.

I went to the sink.

I'm thinking, where else could she be?

I should have checked her her, I guess, pants, but I didn't I didn't do that.

Uh huh.

She learned from Eli.

But no zucchini anywhere.

And so we're like, all right, cool.

So she watches the movie with us.

And then after the movie, two hours later, we ask her a question and she answers.

And when she answered, I saw something in her mouth.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, open your mouth.

And she kind of, her eyes got big.

She realized she'd been caught.

She opens her mouth, two pieces of zucchini on her tongue.

They've been sitting there for two hours, which has to be so much worse than eating two pieces of zucchini.

You know what I mean?

Like, that's that's gotta be ten times more terrible.

Like, if you don't like the taste of zucchini, would you rather eat it or hold it on your tongue during an entire movie?

It shocked me.

I was shocked.

Shocked.

Now that she's a well, she's 12, she's a preteen.

So I'm kind of like glad she's that stubborn.

But in some ways, right?

Because I'm like, she can, she can hold her own, but man, it shocked me.

Have you ever been shocked by your own behavior?

You look, maybe you look back at life and you did something years ago and you're like, I can't believe I did that.

And you're not you're not like proud of it, it's not just a funny thing.

I'll tell you one for me.

This is gonna make you guys have a lower view of me.

You're gonna be tempted to laugh, but if you laugh, it's just gonna be because you're shocked.

You don't know what else to do.

It's not funny.

When I I'm just gonna ask this, maybe if you guys can relate with me.

Anyone go through like a vandalism phase when you were a teenager?

Like it was fun to break things, and any other guys that not that many of us, any other delinquents in the room?

Anyone else?

Yeah.

I went through this phase in my ninth grade year where me and a buddy of mine, we'd I'd spend the night at his house, and we would just go around neighborhoods and just break people's stuff.

We thought it was funny.

We went to my high school this one night, I'll never forget this one night.

It's like a low point when I look back at my life.

Uh we went to our high school, and this is in Memphis, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and our high school had like an agriculture class, and so there was this big giant flower bed outside.

And the people who took that class, their whole semester project was to grow a plant.

And so me and my friend just uprooted all the plants.

I know.

We just uprooted all of them and threw them, and then like the that weekend at school, people were like, Did you guys hear what happened to agriculture?

Yeah, someone just uprooted all the plants.

I did that.

I'm a pastor.

That night, I'll never forget this.

That night as we were coming home from uprooting the plants, there was this there was this house in his neighborhood.

And this is before ring doorbells existed.

You could get away with stuff.

Um, there was this house, and this guy, we don't even know this person.

This guy had cut his grass, and some people, when they cut their grass, they bag it up into trash bags, and we just took the trash bags and just poured it all over his porch for no reason.

That guy woke up the next day and opened his door to have bags of grass just all over his porch.

I don't know why we did that.

I thought it was hysterical.

You're shocked.

I can tell.

I am too.

One day I part of me wants someone to be like, that was me.

I want someone to see this so I can apologize and mow his grass for the rest of life.

Like whatever I need to do to make.

But like, I I look back at that and I'm going, that was me.

I don't even recognize that.

Sometimes we can do things that shock us.

I promise I don't do that anymore.

Okay, I just want you to know I'm not like secretly going out on weekends and uprooting things.

And a lot of it had to do with grass and plants.

I don't know what, why.

So I'll pray about it.

But the point is, we we do things that shock us.

Our kids do things that shock us, our friends do things that shock us.

We do things that shock ourselves and shock other people if they knew.

God does things that can shock you.

And I think what we're gonna explore today, for me, is the most shocking behavior he displays.

And I think for all of us, really should be if you'll think about it this way.

Let's go to the story of Abraham.

I feel like you guys lost a lot of respect for me in the last few minutes, but I just want to say I didn't have to tell you that.

I was not compelled to tell that, but it's true.

So careful with your bags of grass.

Okay, here we go.

Genesis 18.

God speaks, Should I hide my plan from Abraham?

And this plan is to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

For Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him.

I have singled him out so that he will direct his sons and their families to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.

Then I will do for Abraham all that I've promised.

So the Lord told Abraham, I've heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah because their sin is so flagrant.

This is an interesting concept that injustice and sin actually cries out to God.

We see this earlier in Genesis when Cain kills his brother Abel.

And scriptures say that the blood cried out.

God says, The blood of your brother cries out to me.

Injustice and evil is like an outcry to God, and he responds.

He said, I'm gonna go down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard.

If not, I want to know.

The other men turned and headed towards Sodom, but the Lord remained with Abraham.

Abraham approached him and said, Will you sweep away both the righteous and the wicked?

Suppose you find fifty righteous people living there in the city, will you sweep it away and not spare it for their sakes?

Surely you wouldn't do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with the wicked?

Why?

You'd be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same.

Surely you wouldn't do that.

Should not the judge of all the earth do what is right?

And the Lord replied, If I find fifty righteous people in Sodom, I will spare the entire city for their sake.

Then Abraham spoke again, Since I've begun, let me speak further to my Lord, even though I am but dust and ashes.

Suppose there are only forty-five righteous people rather than fifty.

Will you destroy the whole city for the lack of five?

And the Lord said, I will not destroy it if I find forty-five righteous people there.

Then Abraham pressed his request further.

Suppose there are only forty, and the Lord replied, I will not destroy it for the sake of the forty.

Please don't be angry, my Lord.

Abraham pleaded, Let me speak.

Suppose only thirty people are found.

And the Lord replied, I will not destroy it if I find thirty.

Then Abraham said, Since I have dared to speak to the Lord, let me continue.

Suppose there's only twenty.

And the Lord replied, Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the twenty.

Finally, Abraham said, Lord, please don't be angry with me if I speak one more time.

Suppose only ten are found there.

And the Lord replied, Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten.

And when the Lord had finished his conversation with Abraham, he went on his way, and Abraham returned to his tent.

I don't know why Abraham stopped there.

I really don't.

But ten.

God says, I will not destroy the city for the sake of ten.

And I believe that this conversation demonstrates the most consistent, shocking behavior of God, even in the Old Testament.

And it is an unrealistic from a human point of view, if you really think about it, an unrealistic dedication to mercy.

Very often, God in the Old Testament is portrayed, to be honest, mainly by people who haven't really read the Bible.

He's often portrayed as this angry God who flies off the handle and he's just looking to punish people.

You know, he's a smiter and he is smiting, like smite, smite, smite.

And that couldn't be further from the truth.

The God of the Old Testament is God.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It's the same God that we see in Jesus.

And he is shockingly dedicated to mercy.

So much so that he will not destroy this unbelievably wicked city, which next week we're gonna get into.

We're gonna get a nice tour of Sodom and Gomorrah, and we're gonna see how wicked it has become, but he will not even destroy it for the sake of ten righteous people.

That's that's crazy.

Like no modern military would ever have that standard.

If there's an enemy and the enemy needs to be destroyed, it's like, yeah, but what if there's ten decent people?

Oh well then yeah, we'd call off the strike.

That would never happen.

But God says, no, for the sake of ten, I wouldn't destroy it.

This is shocking.

It should be shocking.

The amount of mercy and grace and love that God has should be shocking.

And we see it all throughout the scriptures.

And I specifically want to focus on the Old Testament.

I want to look at another story.

This also involves uh Abraham.

Genesis 15.

This takes place a long time before.

It says, As the sun was going down, Abram, his name hasn't been changed to Abraham yet, fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him.

Then the Lord said to Abram, You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, or they will be oppressed as slaves for four hundred years.

He's talking about their time in Egypt.

But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth.

As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.

After four generations, your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.

Okay, so this is God, this is a crazy thing.

And can we actually take like a quick aside?

Can we nerd out for just a second?

You guys okay if we nerd out?

So just we'll come back to the Amorites.

Put a pin in that, Amorites, okay?

This is God signaling to Abram the story of the people of Israel that we really see throughout Genesis and the book of Exodus, all the way uh into the books of Judges and Joshua and whatnot.

This is the story of the people of Israel becoming slaves in Egypt, and then eventually escaping Egypt, being a nomadic tribe of people, eventually conquering very established, powerful nations around them.

We say nations, we think of like big countries, these are more like city-states, but they conquer them and they become an established nation themselves.

This takes place over the course of hundreds of years.

And what's amazing about this is that forever, and this is the aside, forever, skeptics of the Bible have often tried to disprove this.

One of the things you have to understand about your faith if you're a Christian, is that your faith has been so scrutinized and attacked for centuries in so many different ways.

I mean, just talking about outright oppression and persecution all the way down to skepticism and trying to discredit the story of the scripture is credible.

But it's amazing how archaeology, like every time a big archaeological discovery happens, it's never like the Christians going, oh man, this is a problem.

It's the opposite.

So for years, the validity of this story was often challenged by skeptics, especially skeptics in the academic world.

Like one of the big ones was that there's no proof that the Israelites were ever slaves in Egypt.

And that was something that for a long time, skeptics of scripture would be, we that's just a made-up story.

They were never even slaves in Egypt.

But there were these major discoveries in the 1800s and early 1900s that proved that to be completely true.

For example, uh there is a a tomb that was discovered.

And this tomb happened to be the tomb of an official that was an Egyptian, and the tomb it displayed a group of slaves.

And by the coloring of the slaves, by some of the details in the in the s in the whole depiction of it, it was clear that these were not Egyptians, that these were Semitic people.

And and there were even inscriptions with how the slave masters treated them that lined up perfectly with the story of Scripture.

And so when this really came to be public knowledge in the eight mid-1800s, all of a sudden you have all these people in the archaeological world who will go, and this seems to line up with the story of the Bible, but even then the skeptics were like, yeah, but these are just pictures, right?

Like, how do we know that these were actually uh Semitic or Hebrew slaves and not some other other nation?

We know that the Egyptians had slaves, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

And then there was this really amazing discovery.

This gentleman bought a bunch of relics, bought an ancient papyrus, and then in about 1930, when he passed away, it was donated to the the museum, a museum in Brooklyn, and this is now known as the Brooklyn Papyrus.

You can look this up.

And the Brooklyn papyrus has this ancient, it's an ancient document that dates back to the time that the Israelites would have been enslaved in Egypt.

And it's a list of runaway slaves.

It's a list of slaves that are missing.

Because ancient cultures had documentation for all kinds of things, just like we would.

And over half the names are Jewish names.

Over half the names are the names.

People in different cultures had very different names, and the Jewish people, they they named their children names that the Egyptians didn't have and that the other nations around them didn't have, which is why when you read the Bible, like we become used to the Jewish names like Benjamin, Joseph, and then when you see the other nations, it's like Og.

And you're like, oh, there's no Og was not a Jewish name.

The names that were found in this papyrus, which was a list of slaves that had gone missing in Egypt, were Jewish names, the majority of them.

And it's just like discovery after discovery happens that proves the validity of the story of Israel.

And it's amazing because then all the all the skeptics could do is like, yeah, well, I mean, sure, archaeological evidence backs up all the major details that the Bible creates.

We just don't believe the miraculous parts.

But here's what we do know.

We know that the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, the most powerful nation in the world at that time.

Somehow they escaped.

How do you escape the most powerful nation in the world?

And then they become nomads in a desert, and we have evidence of that.

Then they somehow were able to militarily overthrow very large, powerful nations and be established.

And it's like, look, you can not believe that God did that for them, I guess, if you want.

But that happened.

And archaeology backs that up.

And I know that's an aside.

I just want us to understand that when we read scripture, we are reading something that has been deeply researched, deeply scrutinized, and discovery after discovery backs it up.

And I think it's just awesome.

I love that stuff.

So the Amorites.

Um, God looks at the Amorites.

I still feel like I'm being judged for the grass thing.

I need you guys to forgive me.

I mean, I was I was 15 years old.

Okay, I was 15.

We gotta move on.

All right.

So the Amorites.

They did a lot worse than that.

When God says that the Amorites, their sin has not yet risen to the level of their destruction.

If you understand Amorit culture, it blows you away that God would give them a chance.

That God would give them time to repent and to change.

It's shocking.

The Amorites became worshipers of a pagan deity known as Molech.

And the primary way that you worship Molech was you put newborn children on an altar, and that altar had fire.

Molech is depicted here, it was always like an animal head, and the altars of Molech had outstretched hands, and those outstretched hands were over fire.

And newborn children were sacrificed at the altar of Molech.

And that was the primary way to worship that false God.

That was their worship.

What we just did, where we sang together, we sang together about the goodness of God and how much he loves us and how good he is and how darkness flees from him.

That's our worship.

Their worship was the murder of innocent children.

And that's just one aspect of a culture that was so completely and totally depraved that it would disgust us, and rightfully so.

And God looks at them and he says, I'm giving them time to change.

That is shocking.

That's shocking.

I don't have that kind of mercy in me.

Jonah's story often gets depicted as a children's story, you know, because it's it's got cool parts, like he gets swallowed by a big fish and he's there for a while.

That's cool.

But Jonah's story is amazing.

You should, if you haven't read Jonah as an adult, go read Jonah.

It's a very short read and it's awesome.

Jonah's a prophet, God calls him to go to a place called Nineveh.

Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire.

And this is an empire that is extremely powerful at the time.

Eventually, it's going to conquer Jonah's people.

And this empire is unbelievably evil.

Just absolutely evil.

In fact, it's the Assyrian Empire that's really credited with inventing very persuasive and horrible forms of cruelty and torture and execution.

They were like creative in how they executed people.

Things like flaying, impalement, that was like Assyrians had that idea.

They're like, hey, you know what?

I got a great idea.

This will really strike fear into the hearts of our opponents.

If you read what Assyrians did to the people that they conquered, it's, I mean, it's I'm not even going to talk about it.

It's just, it's the most horrific things you can imagine.

And so God sends Jonah, a prophet, to Nineveh to tell the Ninevehes that if they don't repent, they're going to get destroyed.

Sodom and Gomorrah style.

And so Jonah fights with God.

He doesn't want to go to Nineveh because he hates those people.

And so he tries to flee, and then the whole fish thing happens, and Jonah's like, fine, I'll do it.

So he goes to Nineveh and he preaches this message of destruction.

And then you get to Jonah chapter 3, verses 6 and 10.

Jonah 3:6

When the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne and took off his royal robes.

He dressed himself in burlap and sat on a heap of ashes.

Then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city.

No one, not even the animals from your herds and flocks, may eat or drink anything at all.

People and animals alike must wear garments of mourning, and everyone must pray earnestly to God.

They must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence.

Who can tell?

Perhaps even yet God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.

And when God saw what they had done and how they put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction that he had threatened.

And this infuriates Jonah.

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

So he complained to the Lord about it.

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

That's why I ran away to Tarshus.

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

You are eager to turn back from destroying people.

Think about that.

Think about how God is often portrayed in the Old Testament as this angry God.

And here's Jonah, Old Testament prophet, being like, I knew you were gonna do this.

You love to forgive people.

You're always looking for ways to show mercy and kindness.

I hate that.

Jonah's in the mood for some smiting.

You are eager.

Look at that line again.

You are eager to turn back from destroying people.

The Assyrians were brutal, evil people.

And God showed them mercy.

Shocking.

It's shocking.

You can look at Ahab in the Old Testament.

Ahab was a king in Israel, and he married a woman named Jezebel, and they became worshipers of a false god called Baal.

You see a lot of this in the story of the Old Testament.

Baal and Asherah were these false pagan idols, and they got to worship them.

Ahab really allowed Jezebel to run the show, and Ahab and Jezebel end up having almost all of God's prophets killed.

They basically make it illegal to worship the real God.

They do unspeakable things.

But there's one prophet, Elijah, who really becomes a mouthpiece against Ahab, and Elijah comes and he preaches, kind of like Jonah did, to Ahab.

Here's what God is gonna do.

And then we have this in 1 Kings 21.

When Ahab heard this message, he tore his clothing, he dressed in burlap, he fasted, he even slept in burlap and went about in deep mourning.

Then another message from the Lord came to Elijah.

Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before me?

Because he's done this, I will not do what I promised during his lifetime.

It'll happen to his sons.

I'll destroy his dynasty.

I mean, the Ahab stuff continues to be pretty bad and it has to go.

But God shows mercy to Ahab in this moment.

And Elijah had to feel exactly like Jonah did.

Like, are you kidding me?

All this this man has done, like, all the evil that he's done, all the evil that he's perpetuated, and you're impressed by his repentance?

You're impressed that he tore his clothes and he's wearing burlath.

They used to do these outward displays of repentance.

Now we just like change our status on social media, you know.

I don't know what a repentance emoji would look like, but they didn't have those yet.

So and it like it impresses God, and God says, you know what?

Wow, I'm gonna I'm gonna hold back my anger.

Guys, I'm telling you time and time again, it is shocking how much mercy God has.

It's shocking.

Even look at the flood, like classic story of like, whoa, God, that's that's a little bit much.

God gave them over a century to repent.

It's like if you see a parent counting to 10 as a warning to their child, like one, don't make me get to 10.

Two, like then that story it would be like 4,789,000.

I'll do it.

Don't make me 7,550,000?

Guys, like that would be ridiculous.

If you heard a parent doing that, you're like, just punish them.

I'll punish them for you.

Right?

I'm telling you guys, the the love and the mercy of God is the shocking thing.

When people say that they're shocked by the behavior of God in the Old Testament, they're always talking about these, these, usually they're cherry-picking certain moments where God decides, yeah, enough is enough.

And there's there's judgment and there's justice.

And people like to take that one from this one and expand it and act like the story of God in the Bible is the story of a really angry God who's just you know destroying people here, destroying people there, and then Jesus comes along, he's like, all right, I'll chill.

That is not the story of the Bible.

It is a God who keeps showing mercy to people who do not deserve it.

So much so, and if you know the context and the history and the details, that I think honestly, if we were truly honest with ourselves, we would not show an iota of that amount of mercy if we were in God's shoes.

Like, let's just let's have a mental exercise for a second.

Suppose for a moment you're God and you have that power.

You have the power to smite.

Are you smiting anyone?

Yes.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm smiting a whole lot of people.

All right?

Like, let's let's be honest with ourselves and just tell yourself the truth.

Clearly, there's certain group, like the most evil people in the world, we don't even need to name the categories, like, whatever we would be like, well, clearly they're gonna get smited, because that's really bad.

But then after it's that clear level of like, yeah, well, clearly smite those.

Who else are you smiting?

Be honest.

I'll tell you this: there's some there's some uh basketball parents I would have smited yesterday.

Just being honest.

One time I was coaching a fourth grade basketball team, and we were playing this, my team was playing obviously another fourth grade team, and the boys on this fourth grade team were like, they were really good, but they were fourth graders, children, small children, barely above cookies in their diapers, right?

Barely above that.

And they were like scoring and like flexing muscles they don't have and cussing out our players, calling them like really derogatory words, and their parents were laughing and like cheering it on.

And if I was God, I would have smited all of them, every one of them, even the fourth graders.

I'm just telling you, that day, in that moment, not saying I'm proud of it now, but in that moment, smited.

Like, what about stupid 15-year-olds who vandalize people's property?

Smited, done.

Pouring grass out on someone's porch, gone.

Gone.

Like, like, if we're really honest with ourselves, if we were God, would we be more merciful?

Because that's really where those critiques of God, that's really where it comes to, right?

That's where the rubber meets the road.

It all boils down to when people critique God, what they're saying is I would do better.

God, if I were you, I'm just saying, if I had your job, I'd do it better.

I would know the line better than you.

I would practice mercy when you are too harsh.

And I'm telling you, if you read the story of the Bible and you know the details, no, you wouldn't.

None of us would.

I'm telling you, we would all smite so many people.

And yet, God practices shocking levels of mercy.

Because that is who he is.

And it really should shock us.

And I think there's a difference between being shocked and surprised.

Like Jonah was not surprised by God's mercy because he's like, I knew it.

You're, I knew, I know you.

Jonah's a prophet, he knew God.

He's like, I know you.

He wants him to repent, and he's gonna love them, he's gonna forgive them, he's gonna welcome them into the fold, and I hate them.

That's what Jonah felt.

He was shocked by God's mercy, but he wasn't surprised.

And at this point in time, as believers, if you've been following Jesus for long and if you're new to Jesus, to the whole Jesus thing, like, spoiler alert, you've been forgiven and you're loved, and if you accept Jesus into your life, he will forgive you for everything you've ever done, even the stuff that you look back at in your past and you're shocked by, he forgave that person.

He died for that person on the cross.

It's shocking.

It should shock you, shouldn't surprise you.

But even if you've been following Jesus for years and you've you've understood his mercy, it should still shock you that he has forgiven you.

Listen to what the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy.

He says, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who's given me the strength to do his work.

He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him, even though I used to blaspheme the name of Christ.

In my insolence, I persecuted his people.

Paul had people executed for following Jesus.

But God had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance and unbelief.

Oh, how generous and gracious our Lord was.

And this is a trustworthy saying, everyone should accept it.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them all.

Paul could say that.

Well, actually read in a book written by a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, incredible story if you want to go research his story, Germany in World War II.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in prison wrote about this quote, and he said that if we can't, if we can't, and I'm paraphrasing greatly, but he said if we can't look in the mirror and consider ourselves the worst of all sinners, we haven't fully grasped the grace of God.

Because if we can see ourselves and go, like, well, I mean, I'm I'm not that bad.

Like he's forgiven me, but I mean, I'm I mean, I'm pretty good.

Like you have minimized the grace that God has showed you so much.

Paul had the ability to say, I'm the worst.

And I'm telling you, I feel like that a lot myself.

That he's forgiven me?

Like it shocks Paul.

He's forgiven me, he's appointed me.

Guys, I'm being honest with you, I'm not just saying this to say it.

The fact that I'm a pastor is a little bit messed up.

Okay?

I'm just saying, there's friends of mine from high school that'd be like, he what, his he does what?

I used to blow up mailboxes with him in ninth grade.

Like, and I and honestly, I I wish, I w honestly, I wish pouring grass on someone's porch was the worst thing that I did.

But it's not.

Like he forgave me.

He handed me a microphone?

Like he wants me to talk about him.

Okay, like it's shocking.

And if we could all be like Paul and recognize the totality of our sin, not in some self-hating way where we're just like exaggerating things and it's hyper-emotional, but just know like the reality of sin and the seriousness of sin and what it actually means to hate somebody.

Like we've all hated someone, to hate some, to hate something that God created.

Like what it what it means to have flagrant sin and to be forgiven by God.

It's shocking.

We're gonna wrap this up.

We're gonna take Lord's Supper.

I actually want to give a visual aid.

I don't do this very often, but I I'm asking Madison to help me out.

Uh, Madison, you want to bring this thing out real quick?

Here comes Madison.

Everybody, you can't see him, but let's cheer for Madison as he walks out behind this painting.

Yeah.

So this is kind of cool.

Can you hold this for a second?

I'll hold it.

Yeah.

Alright, cool.

Um, way to hustle, man.

I like it.

So this is really cool.

We as a church, just so you guys know, in the fall, we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary as a church.

Isn't that cool?

20 years.

Yeah.

I was I was young.

Oh, we got an easel and everything.

Thank you, Dennis.

Um, so I'll let you turn that around.

Good stuff.

Let's just lean it on.

I don't want to lift it up.

Let's just lean it.

Boom.

There we go.

All right.

Thank you, Dennis.

Let's hear it for Dennis too.

Madison and Dennis working as a team.

All right.

This painting was actually painted on stage during a worship song about in our first sometime in our first year, around that time.

So 2006, and uh first year here in the building.

And it's a painting of Jesus.

And here's what's really cool about it.

I was here when this got painted.

Anybody, by the way, was anyone in the room?

Hey! We're still here.

All four of us.

What happened to all those other people?

All right.

Um, okay.

You might be able to see it.

I think, yeah, you can on the screens really well.

You see that phrase that's written there?

It says, All my sin.

Can you guys see that on the screens?

So that's how this painting actually started.

It was a blank canvas, and the painter came up and he wrote, you know, all my sin.

And then he began to just throw paint, and it looked chaotic, and it looked like it had no purpose.

And then it slowly becomes the face of Jesus.

And the very last thing that happened, after all of this got created, that all my sin was still there, I'll never forget.

And he took this black and he went all the way across it and he splattered that red on top of that.

And I'm telling you, it was it was powerful.

It was it was powerful.

And we have this hanging up in the back, and uh I was just looking at it this morning, and uh this is shocking.

And like Father God, I just I um I'm sorry for how often I take this for granted.

The mercy that God has shown me, and the mercy that He has shown to all of us, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah, it's a story of destruction.

And we'll get there next week.

And look, guys, I'm some things become so evil they have to be dealt with.

And they can be given the opportunity to repent, and they can be given time and time and time again, and they choose not to, and they double down on evil, and when that happens, God is good enough to deal with evil.

But this is how he dealt with evil ultimately himself.

And it was violent, and it was intense, but it was him.

This is how he dealt with your sin and my sin.

And what I want us to understand at the outset of this deep dive into Sodom and Gomorrah is that it is God's love and mercy that should shock us most.

And all jokes aside, if we were God, I think far more would be destroyed.

If the average person had the power of God, whole groups of people that just think differently than them would be gone.

But God is patient and he is kind and he is merciful.

In fact, in the New Testament, I don't have this on the screens, but I believe it's 2 Peter.

Peter basically says, Hey, if it seems like God is taking a long time to return.

Like he's not.

He's just being really patient because he wants all people to have the opportunity to know him.

Because he doesn't want a single person to perish.

The love and the mercy and the kindness of God is shocking.

He would have spared Sodom for the sake of the ten.

And this is what he's done to deal with our sin.

It's a beautiful thing.

But it is, it is shocking.

With that in mind, let's take Lord's Supper together.

We have cups with bread and juice on the back four columns if you missed them on your way in in the lobby.

We do this every week.

This is uh this is something that we I love that we do this every week.

It's something Jesus followers have been doing for thousands of years, in part because Jesus set this tradition for us.

We're gonna have this little piece of bread and this little tiny cup of juice, and this is uh representative of his sacrifice.

It is this moment.

It's a tangible way for us to remember how he dealt with our sin in a shocking display of love and mercy.

And so, with this in mind, let's take the bread and let's pray.

Father God, we thank you.

Lord, we thank you for this.

This bread is your body, Jesus.

And you know, we see this depicted in artwork like what's on stage, or maybe a crucifix, and sometimes we see it so many times that it loses its power in our minds.

But you were not a painting, you were not a statue, you were not a sculpture, you were a living, breathing man full of love and mercy and goodness and power.

You did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, you did what was right and good, and you were killed for it, for our sake, in our place.

Jesus, we thank you for this.

And I pray, Father, as we take this, that we would be able to be shocked by it.

Not surprised, because it's familiar.

But Lord, let this still shock us, like it did the Apostle Paul.

Let it still shock us like it did to those prophets in the Old Testament, that you show mercy to me, that you forgive all my sin, not some of my sin, all of it, forgiven and covered by your sacrifice.

Thank you, Jesus.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

Lord, this represents your blood.

This was poured out on our behalf, cleanses us, covers us, purchases freedom and forgiveness for us.

Thank you, Jesus.

Your love is truly amazing.

It is shocking, it is good.

And we love you, Jesus.

Let's take the juice.