Mercy Doesn't Quit | Jonah 3

Good morning, church.

Hope everybody's having a good morning.

Will you join me in join uh Jonah 3?

Prepare your hearts.

Receive the word of the Lord.

Jonah 3.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth.

Jonah began to go into the city.

Excuse me.

Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh believed God.

They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.

The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with a sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

And he issued a proclamation and published through through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything.

Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God.

Let every one turn from his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hands.

Who knows?

God may turn and relent, and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Bow your heads and join me in prayer, please.

Come, Holy Spirit, Spirit of truth, as we have heard your word read, open our eyes to behold its wonders.

Open our minds to understand its truth.

Open our hearts to receive it with faith and obedience.

Through Christ our Lord, we pray.

Amen.

COVID created all kinds of stresses in the workplace, didn't it?

And suddenly, overnight, essentially, every company was trying to figure out how they were going to stay afloat, navigate the economic stress, the political turmoil, and become an expert in infectious diseases.

And that was Monday, right?

That was Monday.

I know we felt that certainly in the church that I was pastoring, I imagine that you felt it here, that it just felt like everything might collapse that you'd spent a lifetime building in a single moment.

And so it was really an all-hands-on-deck kind of moment where everybody was carrying an extra load with extra stress.

And then you have to factor in the fact that we had record-breaking inflation, wages and compensation were not keeping up, and you had a work shortage and supply shortage chain shortages.

It was just a lot, wasn't it?

It was just a lot.

And so you had a lot of people that basically just said, I'm out.

Like, I can't deal with this anymore.

I'm not gonna deal with this anymore.

Like, I'm out.

Well, you also had a group of people who recognized, like, I can't just leave my job.

Like, as nice as it would be to resign, as nice as it would be to quit, I can't leave my job.

And so you had a second trend that emerged during the midst of the great resignation called quiet quitting.

And quiet quitting is really the refusal to do anything outside of what's really just the bare minimum that it takes for you to actually keep your job.

It's I'm still gonna show up, but I'm not staying late.

I'm not going the extra mile.

I'm not sacrificing anything for the team.

You need to know I'm gonna be here every day, but emotionally I'm just kind of checked out.

I'm kind of done with where I am.

The internal drive is gone, the passion that maybe used to be there is gone, the ambition has subsided.

You're no longer concerned about the well-being of the organization or the company that you're working for, you're just kind of going through the motions.

Well, I want to start this morning by asking what I think is a pretty interesting question.

What if God did that?

What if God did that?

What if God quietly quit?

What if the Lord decided that what he was going to do is he was just going to do the bare minimum to kind of keep the universe in motion, allow the molecules to keep spinning, but really nothing else?

That as far as everything else goes, he was just gonna let justice do what justice does, let wrath do what wrath does, let everything operate as it deserves to operate.

Like, what if the Lord, what if his internal drive, his internal passion, his internal affections, what if all of that just turned off?

I think he would certainly give up on people like Jonah.

He probably wouldn't go in pursuit of people like the Ninevites.

And I'm fairly confident I'm not making the list either.

So with that in mind, like if I were to summarize what I understand Jonah chapter 3 to be teaching us, it'd be this simple.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

Chapter 3 of Jonah's teaching us, God doesn't quit.

God doesn't quit.

If we say that positively, I think what Jonah 3 is saying is that God is determined to carry out his will and his creation through and for the good of his people.

So what I want us to see this morning is what happens when God refuses to quit?

What happens when God refuses to quit?

First, I want you to see that God keeps sending.

God keeps sending.

The mantra of the quiet quitters is why keep trying?

Why keep trying?

It seems like all their effort actually does is bring about more responsibility and more work with no more compensation and no more recognition.

And really, the more that you read the Bible, the more you begin to realize that that ought to be the mantra of God Himself.

That he keeps loving his people and he keeps pursuing his people, but they keep running from him.

We keep running from him.

And so Jonah is really just the latest in a string of runners.

We've talked some about that already.

But we see in Jonah what we see time and again as we make our way through the scriptures, that God is more determined to love his people than we are determined to live for him.

It's interesting, isn't it?

That God keeps sending this reluctant prophet.

Perhaps there's probably no words of greater grace in the whole book of Jonah than what we see in verse 1 or verse 2, oh yeah, verse 1 of Jonah chapter 3.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

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

The second time.

Now, God doesn't owe us a second chance.

You understand that, right?

And there are plenty of instances throughout the scripture in which someone was not given a second chance.

But what we find is that it's the more common reality that God doesn't quit on you just because you've quit on him.

This is certainly true here of Jonah, isn't it?

God is determined to use Jonah.

He's determined to reach Nineveh.

If you think about it, if you haven't paid attention closely enough, this is only the second time in the entire book that we've heard God say a word.

Like we've we're kind of waiting for what God he sent a fish.

We've seen all kinds of drama, all kinds of trauma happening in the life of Jonah, but we haven't heard anything from God since God sent Jonah to Nineveh originally, and Jonah disobeyed.

And so the chapter three is the second time that we hear God speak.

And do you know what God says?

The exact same thing, word for word, syllable for syllable, the exact same sentence.

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.

That a lot has happened in Jonah's life as a result of his reluctance between these two words from the Lord.

That he was thrashed by the waves, he nearly drowned in the sea, he was swallowed and spat out by a fish.

But what we see is in the midst of all that's changed and all that's gone on and all that's happened, all the drama, all the trauma, God's word has not changed one syllable.

God's word is not changed in the least, that God is still just as determined as he's ever been to make sure that he goes and he sends out this reluctant prophet that we have that he has.

That what Jonah is showing us is that we must never presume upon a second chance with the Lord.

But when a second chance comes, we best make sure that we don't waste it.

Because you see, he's going to keep sending the reluctant because he's gonna keep going to the wretched, to the wretched.

That chapter three, verse three starts exactly the same words as chapter one, verse three, but it has a different ending.

Chapter three, verse three, so Jonah arose, chapter one, and went to Tarshish.

Chapter three and went to Nineveh.

Now, it's really strange that God would actually be as determined as he is to save Nineveh.

We don't have a lot of context, but the Ninevites were truly awful people, truly awful people.

Even the king himself in verse 8 calls the Assyrians and the Ninevites evil.

Their own king, including himself, calls them evil.

The Assyrians were known for when they would go in and they would conquer a village, they would actually go through the village and rape the children.

They would take the men and they would slice the noses from their faces so that everywhere the man would go for the rest of his life, he would be marked as a loser, marked as a conquered man, marked as a man who could not defend his people, marked as a man who himself had been completely abandoned by the gods.

It was a mark of shame and humiliation.

These are wretched people, truly wretched people.

But God is determined to reach them with mercy.

There are incredible glimpses of mercy that we see in these final two verses, verses three and four, that I have there on the screen.

First, you'll notice that there is a man of mercy that we're meant to notice, that God actually sends his prophet to dwell with them and to minister to them face to face.

I told you uh in the first week, this is a unique feature to the book of Jonah.

This happens nowhere else, anywhere in the Old Testament.

And so what we see here is that Jonah is quite literally the incarnation of the Word of God.

That Jonah is God's word standing in front of them so that they can actually hear it with their physical ears, that here in their presence is the messenger of the Almighty having to say to them exactly, exactly what he has to say.

So it's a picture that God himself has come to them.

But we don't just see the man of mercy.

We see that the man of mercy has a message of mercy.

You'll notice that it says that they're gonna have 40 days.

Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called it, yet 40 days, and Nineveh should be overthrown.

If God was intent to destroy Nineveh, he wouldn't have given them 40 days.

He doesn't do this with Sodom, he doesn't do this with Gomorrah.

We've seen other testaments in the scripture where this doesn't happen.

And so one of the ways that we know that the ministry of Jonah is a ministry of mercy and a message of mercy is because there's this pause.

What's the intent of that 40 days?

It's the intent to express contrition, express grief, to be convicted of their sins, and then to demonstrate with actionable lifestyle changes real repentance.

That the 40 days are an offering of mercy to them to turn back from their evil and turn back from their wretchedness and to turn toward the Lord.

This becomes even clearer when you realize you know Jonah's sermon is five words.

Five words.

But it becomes even more clear or even clearer that this is a message of mercy when you realize that the five words of Jonah's sermon are laced with double meaning.

Let me, one word for example, is this word at the end, uh overthrown.

So overthrown is used in Genesis chapter 19, talking about Sodom.

Genesis 19 · chapter mention

It's the exact word that is a description of God's wrath, of God's judgment that's gonna come against Sodom and completely overthrow it, crush it, literally wipe it from the annals of history.

But it's the same exact word that shows up in Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 5, when God is writing to his own people.

Deuteronomy 23:5

And what he says, when he writes and uses the same word with his own people, what he's writing about is that God is going to overthrow the wrath that they are owed, so that they might know his mercy, so that they might know his forgiveness, so that they might go into the land that flows with milk and honey and dwell in the covenant of the Lord.

So by using this word overthrown with the Ninevehites, it's both a warning and an invitation.

It's a warning that if they do not turn back, what happened to Sodom can happen to them.

But it's an invitation that if they will turn back, that the Lord will overthrow his own wrath by his mercy, by his grace, that they might actually be able to enjoy what it is to be one of the people of God.

That Jonah's ministry reminds us of Jesus when we see the determination of God even clearer.

That Jesus Himself is the word incarnate, he is the word that becomes flesh and dwells among us.

He is the Almighty in our midst, who is preaching to us a mission of mercy, and it is him, him, like those wretched Ninevehes that are hated by those he has come to reach.

They were wretched.

The people of Jesus' generation.

You and me.

But Jesus came and he dwelled among us anyway.

See, if we're gonna reach the secular culture of today, I think this is what has to be the posture of the church.

That we have to go to people who might not like us very much, people who might even hate us, people who might even believe that we are the ones that are holding society back.

We have to go to them, and we have to go to them not with a message of venom and vitriol.

We have to go to them with a message of mercy as men and women of mercy.

The ministry of Jesus, it's a difficult one for us to take up, isn't it?

It's a difficult one for us to take up.

Quiet quitting, you know, just going to church, going to lunch, going home, it's a lot easier.

It's a lot less taxing, it's a lot less threatening.

I wonder this morning, have you quietly quit the mission and ministry that God has called you to?

If you quietly quit the mission and ministry that God has called you to, like you still show up, you still do the thing that you're know you're supposed to do.

Like you're an honorable person, so like you're not gonna let there be a hole where you're supposed to like you're you're not gonna do that.

But you're just going through the motions.

If you were honest, like like your affections have cooled off.

Your passion is not what it once was.

Your burden is not what it once was, your heart is not in it like it once was.

You're kind of just doing the bare minimum, you're kind of just going through the motions, you're kind of just there because you're supposed to be there.

Your enthusiasm went away a long time ago.

Jonah teaches us that the urgency of God's call is not dependent upon the intensity of our enthusiasm.

God is far more determined to accomplish his purposes than we are to living out our calling.

See, Jonah realized two things in the belly of that fish that ultimately caused him to reverse course.

He realized two things in the belly of that fish that compelled him ultimately to go to Nineveh where he didn't want to go.

He realized that God's patience should not be tested, and he realized that God's mercy should not be wasted.

What about you?

This morning, are you testing the Lord's patience?

Like, like, what will it take for you to overcome the reluctance to obey the Lord?

What fish will have to swallow you so that you'll tune in and honor and obey what God has called for you to do?

What will it take ultimately for him to get your attention?

Because God is more determined to accomplish his purposes through you than you are to get out of it.

Jonas teaches us that.

And do you realize?

Do you realize the mercy that you've received?

Do you realize the mercy that you've received?

There is no ministry more wretched than the one that delivered you.

And the one that delivered me.

When was the last time?

Brother, sister, when was the last time that you visited the cross and allowed the mercy of your Savior to inflame your passion?

When was the last time that you visited the cross and allowed the grace of our Savior to set your heart on fire again?

When was the last time that you made it your objective to be so moved by God sending his son to his cross for you that you are burdened to go on his behalf?

Oh, God's patience shouldn't be tested.

And God's mercy must not be wasted.

No, God keeps sending, and God keeps sending because God keeps stirring.

God keeps stirring.

Quiet quitting can only set in when there's an absence of passion.

Wherever you find sincere passion, you find with sincere passion great resolve.

Great resolve.

So it's interesting, isn't it, that we often quiet quit on God.

Really, that's what Jonah did.

Jonah doesn't have a bunch of fanfare, he doesn't, you know, have a public forum or a town hall meeting, he doesn't make a Facebook post or, you know, do an ex-vangelical TikTok.

No, he just goes to Tarshish.

No fanfare, doesn't talk about it, doesn't deliberate, he just gets up and disobeys the Lord, goes in the opposite direction.

Like us, what seems to have happened is that his passion has wilted under the difficulty of God's call on his life.

But the deal is that God's passion for his own glory never fades.

His burden for the nations and his love for his people, it never diminishes.

That's why he doesn't quit.

And ironically, that's the same reason that he keeps on sending prophets and preachers and moms and dads who do want to quit.

Because he is determined through us, through the reluctant prophets and the reluctant preachers and the reluctant teachers and the reluctant disciple makers, he is determined through us to stir up another generation for his glory.

Surprisingly, perhaps the Nineveh, the Nineveh of all people, those wretched Ninevehites, they're the ones that actually teach us how we should respond.

Nineveh really responds to Jonah in the way that every preacher and every prophet would dream that the congregation would respond.

It's a vivid picture.

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah, but Jonah's heart is hardened.

And then he arose.

You'll notice it said it once in chapter one, it says it again in chapter three.

He arose and goes to Tarsus.

Then he arose and goes to Nineveh.

So what is gonna happen when the word of the Lord comes to the Ninevehes?

Well, verse 6 tells us the word reached the king, and what did he do?

He arose, just like Jonah did from his throne.

He removed his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

He arose and then fell on his face.

He arose and then was overcome by the grief of his own sin.

He arose and his heart was torn to shreds by the offense that he realized that he had brought to the great God of Israel.

Think of that.

That here is the wretched king of the wretched Ninevehites and he has a softer heart toward God than his own prophet does.

As you see in him and the people of Nineveh, what you see is what it looks like for someone to really be stirred up by the Lord.

You'll notice I read right through it on verse 6 the word reached.

The word reached.

Again, this is another the book of Jonah.

The more you get into it, the more beautifully written you realize that it is.

The word reached also has a double meaning.

Reached, it means quite literally that the word of the Lord, geographically.

Personally reached Nineveh.

They were able to hear the word of the Lord with their own physical ears, but it means that not only did it geographically reach them in person, but then it reached inside of them.

It got to them and then it got within them.

That it gets to him, stirs in him, and then passes through as he calls on all of Nineveh to begin to repent, all of Nineveh to fast, all of Nineveh to turn away from their wretchedness and turn away from their sinfulness and turn to the Lord.

They heard the word, and it says that all of Nineveh believed in God.

They believed what he had said.

They were professing faith verbally, and then they were expressing it outwardly because it was stirring inwardly.

That's the picture.

And this is the difference between what Paul calls worldly sorrow and godly repentance.

See, worldly sorrow is, I'm sorry I got caught.

Worldly sorrow is, man, like I feel really bad, I'm kind of embarrassed.

I'm gonna make the changes that are necessary until the embarrassment goes away.

Then I'm probably gonna revert back.

I think this is part of the reason he gives 40 days.

But but godly repentance is different than that.

Godly repentance is when God's word reaches your heart and begins to transform your mind, that you don't just change because you feel bad that what you did, you change because now you want to be someone new.

You want to be transformed.

That it's the difference between guilt and conviction, shame and sorrow.

It's not, I want you to think about me differently.

It's now I really am different.

I'm a new person, I'm a new creation, I have a new affection, I have a new heart, I have new desires, I have new hunger, I have new appetites.

I am different.

I want to live this out.

See, in Jonah, the man closest to God is the man who turns out to be hardest to reach.

Isn't that interesting?

The man closest to God is the one who turns out to be hardest to reach.

That the word goes to the prophet and his heart is hard, the word goes to the wretched Nineveh, and they weep and wail over their sin.

I wonder, I wonder if that could be the case for us.

I wonder if that could be the case for us.

Could it be that God does a great work, before God does a great work in our community, that He has to do a great work in me?

Could it be that before there is great repentance out there, that first there has to be great repentance in here and in here?

Let me ask you.

When was the last time God's word reached you?

When was the last time God's word reached you?

When was the last time that it stirred you up in such a way that you knew going forward you were different?

You knew going forward you were somebody different than you were before you heard it?

When was the last time that you heard the word of God and you couldn't just move on with lunch?

When's the last time that God's word stopped you in your tracks and called you forward to greater faithfulness to the Lord?

When's the last time that it reached you and got your undivided attention?

And when was, this is the message of Jonah, the last time that the word of the Lord reached you and then reached somebody through you.

Nineveh responds to Jonah the way that every preacher and prophet dreams.

And so it's pretty ironic, isn't it?

That Jonah didn't want to go there to begin with.

He didn't want to go there to begin with.

The result is that Jonah shows us why we should go.

See, it's in the belly of the fish, we sang about this this morning, actually, it's in the belly of the fish that Jonah realizes and remembers that salvation belongs to the Lord.

You remember we talked about how salvation, that word Yeshua, is the root word of the name Jesus.

It's in the belly of the fish that Jonah realizes it.

Nineveh, Nineveh realizes it on the first day.

The first day.

They recognize that.

And so what they do is they respond in repentance by saying, it's not what we deserve.

We're not going to try to save ourselves.

Instead, what we're going to do is just throw ourselves onto the mercy and grace of God and trust that he's going to revive.

So we're going to throw ourselves, we're going to recognize we can't fix it.

We're going to recognize we can't overcome it.

And we're going to say, Lord, here, see the brokenness of our hearts.

And who knows, who knows?

Maybe this God is so good.

Maybe this God is so merciful that he would forgive even us.

That he would pardon us of our sin.

And Nineveh's response to Jonah presents us, I think, with a question that convicted me to tears as I studied this.

What if God is more willing to save than we are willing to go?

Or getting even more personal, even more specific.

What if our neighbors are more willing to respond to the gospel than we are willing to share the gospel?

What if they are more willing to hear it than we are willing to share it and say it?

It's an inescapable question.

See, in the book of Jonah, the sea responds to God.

The mariners respond to God.

The fish respond to God.

The Ninevites respond to God.

The prophet of God's own choosing runs and goes the opposite direction.

What if that's us?

What if we're not the Ninevites in the story, but Jonah in the story?

See, it's possible that we can so resent the lostness of our society that we can actually resent the very call of God to go to them and to overcome it.

This is the message of Jonah, that we can allow our prejudices to justify our disobedience.

I wonder this morning, I wonder if we were to decide who is Nineveh, who is it that we resist going to, who is it that we resist sharing with?

Who is the Nineveh of the Orchard Church?

I wonder who that is.

I mean, do we love homosexuals?

Or do we resent them?

Are we going to those who are pro-choice or are we hating them?

Are we mentoring the next generation or are we bemoaning them?

Are we loving our Muslim neighbors or are we fearing them?

What prejudice in our hearts has yet to be touched by the grace and mercy of Jesus that would send the prophet to the Ninevites?

Jesus says the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Man, brothers and sisters, let's meditate on that for a minute.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

There are more that God is willing to save than we are that are willing to tell them.

There are more who are willing to respond than we are who are willing to speak.

I pray that God would stir us.

I pray that God would grieve us.

I pray that God would break our hearts.

I pray that He would send us up.

Like we ought to go to cities like Nineveh that are that are strategic, great cities, cultural centers, so that there we can share the gospel.

The gospel can proliferate over the globe.

And we ought to go across the street.

We ought to go across the street, and we ought to go to the nations, and we ought to go across the street.

Why?

Because God's not quitting.

Because God isn't quitting.

No, God keeps sending because God keeps serving because God keeps saving.

That's the point.

God keeps saving, it's a guarantee.

The spreading of the kingdom of God is not a hope-so movement.

The spreading of the kingdom of God is a guarantee substantiated in the resurrection of Jesus, who said himself, it is finished, and commanded after this declaration to go and make disciples of all nations in all places.

See, quiet quitting is the result of a lost ambition.

There was a time when you thought about upward movement and promotion and the building of the company or the building of the nonprofit, or maybe even better yet, you thought about the accomplishment of the vision or the accomplishment of the mission, and you thought about it bigger than you thought about your paycheck, but you're kind of over that now.

You're kind of past that.

You've grown up a little bit, right?

You've seen the ways of the world.

Perhaps we've quietly quit on the advancement of Jesus' kingdom in a similar way.

We used to think about our neighbors and our classmates and reaching the Mid-South and seeing it transformed.

We used to think about the nations.

But over time, our ambition settles in a little bit.

Over time, we outgrow that a little bit.

And ambition for the nations, we have to recognize, as we see in Jonah, our ambition for the nations and our ambition for the neighbor, our neighbors, and our ambition for the kingdom, it can only wane when our passion for God's glory wanes.

Let's look at Nineveh.

And let's see how passionate God is for his own.

Better yet, let's not look at Nineveh, let's look at God.

I actually think he's the main character of the story here.

He's the one that we're supposed to notice.

That what we see is that God's mercy is willing.

God's mercy is willing.

Perhaps we'd wonder why the Ninevites were so quick to repent.

Ever think about that?

Why was it?

Why was it so easy for them to be cut to the heart?

Historians tell us that there was actually, verifiably true by both secular and biblical history, there were a series of natural phenomena that took place that would have already aroused the concerns of the Assyrians.

And then, in the midst of all of this tumult, in the midst of all of this chaos, imagine the scraggly, scruffy, worn, spit-out prophet comes rolling into town saying that he suddenly has a message from the most high God and the most sovereign God, the God of gods and the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.

You're looking for a messenger like that.

Won't he do it?

Won't the Lord work this way?

Can you imagine what it would look like to see a man who's been digested by a fish come and talk to you?

Here he is, his voice is hoarse and scruffy.

He comes in, his skin is white and lesioned from the acid of the stomach of the fish's stomach.

No hair is left on his body.

And he rolls into town.

He can't even speak your language.

He's just best he can making his way through it.

Think about the picture.

Jonah bore in his body, in his body, both the wounds of wrath and the evidence of mercy.

The lesions on his skin were the evidence of wrath.

The fact that he stood on dry crown, the evidence of mercy.

So God relented.

God relented.

It's not what they deserve.

It's why God went to them.

And the mercy that they find transports them in an instant to the cross.

It brings all of us to the cross.

That it is at the cross, the cross, that we see that Jesus bears our wrath in his body as he receives the wounds of the nails and the stripes from the wind.

But then when he is raised three days from the ground, just like Jonah, he stands there as the evidence and the proof of mercy, doesn't he?

The evidence and proof of mercy.

In fact, the invitation and the offering of mercy.

He stands there to declare to us that God's mercy is more determined than God's wrath.

That God always prefers grace to judgment.

His mercy is always willing to save.

And this church, this is the foundation of kingdom ambition.

William Carey, who would go on to father the modern missions movement, he made his mantra to expect great things from God and to attempt great things for God.

Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.

And God's mercy to you, and God's mercy to you, and uh mercy to Nineveh, and God's mercy to you and me, is meant to set on fire our hearts and our minds with a desire for gospel ambition.

You know, I was thinking about this.

Since I've moved to Shelby County, I've met some of the most capable men and women that I've ever met in my life.

Man, y'all are so bright, so much ingenuity, so much God-given ability, so much God-given grace.

Like all of you have made me better.

Like, I can say that definitively.

I wish I had time to name all of the ways that you've helped me grow as a man and as a leader.

Here's the question I want us to reflect on, Orchard.

What is the gospel purpose for what God has given you?

What is the gospel purpose?

Man, like I want us to dream about what God has given to us.

And I want us to spark in us some gospel ambition and some gospel passion and some kingdom zeal.

I was telling the men of the orchard on Monday, and I told, uh, taught with this more with our preaching team on Thursday that I feel like for generations, what we've been telling people in the church is like, you've been handcrafted by God with remarkable gifts.

Like from the omniscient mind of a sovereign God, you've been given spiritual gifts, and you've been given natural gifts, and you've been given life experiences, and all of these things are meant to be used for the building up of the church.

So do you want to pass baskets or stack chairs?

And look, man, like not one of us beneath that.

We know that we follow a savior who tied a towel around his waist and washed feet.

Not one of us beneath there.

That's the minimum.

But brothers and sisters, ought we not do more than that?

Ought we not do more than that?

Ought we not take those skills that are used for the building up of our company, and they ought to be used for the building up of your company that is holy and righteous.

But ought we not take those same skills that are effective in the marketplace, admired by colleagues and family, and leverage them for the good of the kingdom?

Ought we not be sparked and set on fire for the ambition to say, let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven?

Think about the early church.

The early church received the great commandment and the great commission.

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your strength.

Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them all that I have commanded you.

And you know what they did?

Pre-early church, there is no social safety net.

Pre-early church, there is no scientific discovery.

Pre-early church, there is no there are no social protocols or human rights.

So they take these great commands and they come together as the people of God.

And they don't just sing.

Man, they do sing, but they don't just sing.

They don't just take up an offering, though they do take up an offering.

What they do is they come together and they found hospitals and they build orphanages and they come together and they decide how is it that we can transform the country that we're in so that people aren't falling through the cracks?

How do we make sure that there's food for people to eat?

How do we make sure that as many people as possible engage and encounter the mercy of Jesus?

There was ambition sparked in their hearts.

And all of a sudden, things that we take for granted today start coming onto the scene.

It wasn't the scientists, and it wasn't the atheists, and it wasn't the Greeks, and it wasn't the Romans, it was the Christians.

Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters.

Like, this is us.

This is us.

Like, build your company, amen.

Build your family, amen.

But let's build the kingdom at the Orchard Church.

Let's build the kingdom.

Let's take every gift and every resource and every ounce of creativity and ingenuity and energy that we have and bring it together as the collective people of God that we could push back the darkness and push back the frustration and push back the loneliness of Shelby County.

Like, what's the gospel purpose for what God has given us?

What's the gospel purpose?

Why has God given us so much?

Surely, surely it's for more than polished services and good real estate.

Like, surely it's for more than that.

Like, church family, let's expect great things from God.

And let's attempt great things for God.

Let me tell you, like, the dream that I have.

Like the dream that I have was that we would come together and we would take the brightest minds that God has saved and redeemed and placed together in this church to become a think tank of entrepreneurship that we would think new ways, creative ways, innovative ways that we could go about reaching the business community of Shelby County and the medical community of Shelby County and the production industrial community of Shelby County, the underserved areas of Shelby County, the affluent areas of Shelby County.

Like, how do we come together with all of our varied experiences and apply the same ingenuity that makes us effective in the marketplace to make us effective in the kingdom?

And man, that like that gets me excited.

Can you even imagine?

Can you even imagine if we started thinking about church differently?

Not just something that we kind of go through the motions, but something where we come together and contribute the passion, enthusiasm, and equipment that God has given to us.

Man, we need some ingenuity and some entrepreneurship for the kingdom.

We need a generation of enterprising, industrious Christians whose hearts have been set on fire for the glory of God.

Like, what if God used us to foster a church planning movement that proliferated the gospel over the Mid South and enabled us to meet more needs as a network of churches than we could ever meet as a single church?

Like, what if God allowed us to go to unreached and unengaged people groups that have never heard the gospel to see the first convert there, to see the first baptism there, to plant the first church there?

What if God would work among us to push back fatherlessness in Shelby County, Tennessee?

If God can reach Nineveh through a reluctant prophet, what can he not do?

If God is willing to use Jonah, who is he not willing to use?

He's willing to use all of us.

See, through Abraham's descendants, he would bless the nations.

What we're seeing here in Jonah is the fulfillment of the promise that he had made generations earlier to Abraham.

That is, through Israel and now the church, that God is going to fill the earth with his glory the way that he always intended for it to be filled.

So don't you see it?

God's mercy is willing, and so his glory is spreading.

The book of Jonah traditionally is read by Jewish families on the Day of Atonement.

Did you know that?

The Day of Atonement is the day that's set aside every year for Israel to sit and contemplate the seriousness and the severity of their sins, and at the same time to remember that in the presence of a God so holy and a God so mighty that there has been a provision of mercy and a provision of grace.

And so it's the perfect time to read Jonah.

That Jonah reminds us that no sinner can outrun God, and yet at the same time, no sin can overcome the mercy of God.

It reminds us of how quick we are to run from God, and at the same time, how determined it is on God's behalf to come and chase us down by his own grace.

And it's a reminder that our God is the God of every person, every man, every woman, every boy, every girl, in every place.

His mercy has found his people.

And his people have been sent as messengers of mercy to go and spread the news, even to Nineveh.

So Jonah teaches us exactly what the cross does.

God's mercy is willing, God's glory is spreading.

That is, it teaches us that God doesn't quit until it is finished.

Heavenly Father, we come this morning and we just offer to you, Lord, our repentance with Nineveh.

That too often we quiet quit.

Too often we go through the motions.

We come to you, Lord, at the same time, Lord, arising from our seat to respond, not in worldly sorrow, but in godly repentance to say, Lord, here I am, send me.

We are a generation of unclean lips, but Lord, we are here covered by your mercy and covered by your grace, saying, Lord, take all the ingenuity, all the creation, all the things that you and your sovereignty have given to us and arranged us together with to use them for your glory.

God, we pray.

We pray that your peculiar favor might rest upon us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.