Relentless | Part 1: Running From Mercy | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart

RELENTLESS
Part 1 | Running From Mercy
Senior Pastor Keith Stewart 
July 19, 2026

If you look around our culture today, everything seems to be divided into "us" and "them." Every day we're told who to fear, who to blame, who to despise, and who deserves our outrage. The anger comes from the right and from the left, and before long it begins to shape our own hearts. What's surprising is that God's remedy for this isn't found in a New Testament command or a self-help book. It's found in one of the shortest books of the Old Testament—the book of Jonah. Because Jonah isn't really written for irreligious people. It's written for people like us. People who know God, worship God, and yet can still find themselves resisting the very things God loves. Jonah has a great deal to teach us about who God is, how God works, and how He wants to transform our hearts.

Discussion Questions 

1. Before hearing this message, what did you think the book of Jonah was primarily about? Did anything in this week's teaching challenge or expand your understanding of the story? 

2. Pastor Keith said, "The book of Jonah is a mirror." In what ways do you see yourself in Jonah's attitudes or actions? 

3. Why do you think Jonah resisted God's call to Nineveh? Was it fear, prejudice, nationalism, hatred, or something else? What does his motivation reveal about the human heart?

4. Read Jonah 1:1–3. Jonah ran in the opposite direction of God's command. What are some ways people today can run from God without ever leaving home?
 
5. The sermon emphasized that all people matter to God. Why is that truth sometimes easy to affirm in theory but difficult to practice with certain people?

 6. Pastor Keith asked several searching questions:
  Who scares you?
  Who offends you?
  Who can you not stand?
  Who would you rather see judged than forgiven?

Without naming individuals if it would be inappropriate, why do you think those questions are so difficult to answer honestly?

7. Throughout Jonah 1, the pagan sailors often behaved more compassionately than God's prophet. What do you think God is trying to teach us through that surprising reversal?

8. The message suggested that Jonah's deepest problem wasn't simply disobedience but misdirected love—he loved his nation more than God's heart for the nations. What are some good things that can become disordered loves in our own lives?

9. Read John 3:16–17 together. How does verse 17 deepen or reshape your understanding of verse 16? 

10. Pastor Keith closed by praying, "God, make me into a grace giver, not just a grace receiver." What would that look like in one specific relationship or situation this week?

Closing Prayer
Ask God to reveal any "Jonah heart" within us—a place where resentment, prejudice, fear, or self-righteousness has replaced compassion. Pray that God would help us see people the way He sees them and become willing participants in His relentless pursuit of those He loves.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Amen. Please have a seat. It's good to be back with you. I had a couple weeks off. I mean, I take that back. I've been here working most of the time, but we took off last weekend uh to go see Brenda's dad. He's getting older. He's 90 years old now, and we don't have how many visits we have left with him, so we wanted to get by and see him. He's up in Northeast Arkansas. So I appreciate the church giving me a little time away. I've got some really good news for you, okay? We started talking about this need a little over a month ago that we have a the old building, which was the food line. We'd put a new roof on it when we started in this place, but that's 25 years ago and it needs a new roof. We have raised over $400,000. I mean, thank thank you to all of you. You know, people have sacrificed, you know, single moms, people on assistance, people have been given deeply. And um, whether that gift was four dollars, we got one gift for $150,000. I mean, it's just been incredible what God has done. Now, we've I was going off of some old numbers that uh I'd been given about what it costs to replace that roof, but we've had like eight roofing companies that have come and given us estimates. Uh we've got four of the proposals back. They range from about $313,000 to over half a million. We have two in that $350,000 range, and and that's probably the range we're going to shoot for because it'll do the most extensive replace of everything that's there. We probably won't have the resources, at least apart from another miracle, uh to do the HVAC work, which means we'll just have to hold the contractors liable. If they go up there and they do damage to a brand new roof, they'll have to pay to repair whatever damage they do. Uh if there is money resources left over, it will go into replacing those air conditioner units that we know need to be replaced. We've had three bids on that, two of them around $300,000, one of them at over $400,000 to do the HVAC. Uh but if all else holds well, we can keep that stuff together. And hopefully in January, if and when we can close on this property, we'll have the resources to address the HVAC. But the roof is definitely the pressing need. And as we get started, a part of my prayer this morning, I just want to give praise to God for how He's shown up and shown off and brought these resources that we needed into the church to be able to address this huge concern. I'm also beginning a brand new series today that I'm calling Relentless. It's a story, it's a look at the book of Jonah. I'm really excited about this series. I think that you'll get a lot out of it. Let's start with prayer. Father, you are so good. And I'm just amazed at the journey we've been on for the last uh four to six weeks as we become aware of the need and we've made the church aware of the need. Your people, God, have really been listening to you. And they've been motivated and they've given. They've given deeply from their best resources to help make this happen. And I just thank you, God. I give you all the credit for how you've moved in hearts and minds, and you've brought the resources we need to be able to address this critical issue. Now, God, we're going to begin this new series looking at Jonah, and I pray that you're going to open our hearts and minds to hear from you the things we need to hear. I pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I don't know if I have any fellow Lord of the Rings fans in this room or not. Uh thank you to you half a dozen people. But uh you might remember the scene if you've watched the movie where Frodo and Sam they're talking together about everything they've seen and experienced on this journey, more than they could possibly imagine, like the battle at Weathertop, uh being able to see the beauty of Rivendale, going through the dark mines of Moria, where they lost Gandalf. And it's at this point in the film that I'm talking about that the fellowship is already broken. So the fellowship is no longer totally there. It's just uh Sam and Frodo together, and they're having this discussion. They've entered into the shadow of Mordor, and these are two little hobbits intent on saving the world. And it's at that point in the story that Sam asks a question. It's a great question. He asks, I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into. Now I can't think of a better question to ask than that because he assumes that there's a story, that somehow there's something bigger going on than just them, and he assumes that somehow they've been swept up into that story, but what sort of tale it is, they're not quite sure. It's a brilliant question we ought to ask ourselves from time to time. The truth is this life doesn't come to you like a math problem, it comes to you like a story. It comes to us like a story, scene by scene, just like a drama, it unfolds. Every day has a new beginning and an ending. Every day we meet main characters and minor characters that are part of that story. Every year feels like a different chapter in a novel. Sometimes our story feels like a tragedy, other times like a comedy, and let's face it, most times like a soap opera. I mean, that's just the way it feels. But regardless of what happens, it's a story through and through. So if you want to figure out life, you got to figure out your story. Story's always been the way we figure stuff out. Look at our fixation with the evening news. Whether you watch it or whether you're reading it, you always want to know there's more to this story. What's the story behind this? What's the truth behind this? We're kind of addicted to story. In fact, we're so addicted to story that when we go to sleep at night, we tell ourselves stories all night long in the form of dreams. Crazy ones, but we dream. We're telling ourselves a story. So think about this. Think about like your favorite way of spending a Friday night. For many of us, we curl up with a story, whether that's in a book or our favorite movie or going to the movies or checking out some new Netflix series. I mean, whatever it may be, the desire for story goes beyond just entertainment or distraction. Stories nourish us, they provide a kind of food for our souls. Uh we find and we locate ourselves in one another's stories. There's a great Hollywood screenwriter. His name is Robert McKee. Uh, he teaches screenwriting in Hollywood. He believes that the reason we go to movies is to find a little bit of ourselves in someone else's story, to kind of locate ourselves. This is what he said. We go to live in fictional reality that helps illuminate daily reality. And that's really a good way of looking. Believe it or not, that's the purpose behind biblical stories. We learn some of the most important lessons about life and about ourselves through the stories of the Bible. I remember hearing someone say, stories inform us, others reform us, and a few have the power to transform us. So why all this talk about story? I'll tell you why. The Old Testament book of Jonah is a story, and it contains a vitally important message. Instead of giving us a message through a sermon or through preaching, which is what happens through a lot of the major and minor prophets, people like Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, it's mainly a message, a verbal message, a teaching that God wants to get out to his people. Jonah puts his message in story form. When we listen to the story of Jonah, we get caught up in it. And if we pay attention to it, this story is never going to leave you the same way it found you. So I want to begin by just looking at the importance of biblical narrative. Did you know that approximately 43% of your Bible is story? It's a narrative. That's by far the largest type of literature in the Bible. Second is poetry, third is teaching. So the most dominant type of literature in the Bible comes in story form. Narrative literature is governed by a different set of interpretive rules than other parts of the Bible. Like, for example, Old Testament stories do not ordinarily explain. They show us what happened without explaining why it happened or even what should have happened. This is why it's been said, and I was taught this way back at Dallas Seminary, narrative literature is descriptive but not necessarily prescriptive. So it tells you what happened, but it's not necessarily necessarily saying this is what should have happened, or this is a pattern that you're supposed to emulate. It is descriptive, but not necessarily prescriptive. So what that means is it takes a great deal of discernment to understand narrative. I say all that to say because of all stories in the Bible, the story of Jonah is largely misunderstood because of the failure to follow these principles. Preachers flatten the story of Jonah. They turn the story of Jonah into just a disobedient prophet or a guy that gets swallowed by a whale. They do that because they don't understand the valuable lessons in stories, don't lie on the surface. They lie beneath the surface. They're discerned through a process of immersing yourself into the story itself. Which means in story and narrative literature, you have to sit with it a little longer. You have to reflect on what's actually happening in the story. You have to look at the characters, what they do, and what they fail to do. You have to see God at work, even through characters who are not aligned with Him. And once you've done all of that, you have to be courageous enough then to let that story get inside of you. Now, one unshakable truth about Jonah is this the book of Jonah is a mirror. You may not like what you see, but you better pay attention to it. Because there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us, and a whole lot of Jonah in most of us. So I want to turn our attention to the one truth that undergirds this book, and it's simply this: all people matter to God. Can I hear an amen? Amen. The Bible says the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Now this book begins, like most Old Testament prophecy books, a call by God to one of his prophets to go and proclaim his message. What makes this message unusual, and I mean without precedent, is this is a message given to a prophet, not for the Jewish people at all. It's a prophetic message for Israel's enemy. It's for Assyria. Assyria hated Israel. Israel hated Assyria. And there's good reason for that. A Jewish writer by the name of Chaim Lewis said this about Nineveh, which is the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians were the Nazi stormtroopers of the ancient day. They were the pitiless, power-crazed foe. They showed no quarter in battle, uprooting entire peoples in their fury for conquest. For Jonah, Nineveh then was no ordinary city. It carried doom-laden, tragic memories, as stood as a symbol of evil incarnate. Now listen to this. It's another little nuance made by Bill Cooper about the Assyrians. He said the Nazis at Nuremberg sought every means to deny or minimize their guilt. The Assyrians openly boasted of it, even recording for posterity their delight in inflicting unspeakable sufferings and genocide upon the surrounding nations. This is what's really frightening about the Assyrians. You know, at Nuremberg, where the Nazis are being tried for all these war crimes, they were trying to justify, they were trying to hide all those crimes. The Assyrians, they put it in writing, they carved it in stone. They talked about all these horrible atrocities. The reason we know that is because history has recorded it. They recorded it. And so it's a testimony against them. So Jonah, what he does is he's living in the northern kingdom of Israel. And during that time, the Assyrians would often make these pre-invasion kind of raids into Israel to test their strengths and test their weaknesses. Because Jonah lived in one of these northern towns, it's likely that his own family and friends had been victims from these skirmishes. This is in part why Jonah doesn't want any part in any plan that involves going to preach to his enemy. Because he knew that if he preached, there's a chance his enemy might repent. And if they repented, Jonah knew God would forgive them. But he doesn't want forgiveness for his enemy. He wants his enemy judged. He wants God to destroy him. This is how deep his hatred runs. He would rather see people suffer than be saved. He'd rather see them judged than be forgiven. Now let me remind you again the central truth of the book of Jonah: all people matter to God. Not just some people, but everybody, regardless of their moral condition, attitude, lifestyle, race, gender, religious label, political views, education, or circumstance, they all matter to God. Which means when God looked at Nineveh, he didn't see immoral, irreligious, ruthless enemies he couldn't wait to judge. Instead, he saw people who were spiritually and morally confused, and each of them mattered incredibly to him. Though they had rejected God, ignored his loss, worshipped other gods, and even attacked his own people, he still longed to have a relationship with them. If you ever want to understand God, you need to understand this about him. You and I have never looked into the eyes of someone who did not matter to God. Amen? You've never looked into the eyes of someone who didn't matter to God. And God will stop at nothing to see his lost sheep found. So this is a part of the reason you're here today. To be reminded that you matter to God. You may feel insignificant, you may feel unloved or unlovable, but you need to understand God doesn't just love the world, he loves you. He's been looking for you long before you ever look for him. But there's something else. Because all people matter to God, they really should matter to us too. The book of Jonah is God's heart for all people. It's about his passionate desire to see his servant Jonah see the people the way God saw them so that he would love them the way God loved them. You see, if lost people matter this much to God, then they ought to matter to us. Shouldn't our first craving always be that others come to know the love of God like we have. But you see, this is the crux of the problem. The Assyrians didn't matter to Jonah. Like you and me, when we've been wrong, we don't want to forgive. Instead, we want our enemy to suffer, or at the very least, be hurt as much as they hurt us. We all have Jonah hearts. And let's face it, we live in an increasingly polarized world. That's not new news to anyone in this room. Politicians, social media influencers, the media, they constantly stoke the fire. It's good versus evil, Republican versus Democrat, us versus them, right versus wrong. Every day there's someone in your news feed stoking the sense of moral outrage. So the question is: who today scares you? Who offends you? Who's different from you? Who can you not stand? Who do you look down upon? Who would you rather see judged than forgiven? Now imagine just for a minute that God gives you an assignment to go to that person or that group of people and be the conduit of his message to them. That's the prophet Jonah's mission. Now many of us know, and we can quote the famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. We love that verse because we see ourselves in that verse. God loves the world, which means God loves me, and that's absolutely positively true. You are loved by God. But just so we don't miss the point, the next verse says, For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. God didn't send Jesus on a mission of condemnation. He sent him on a rescue mission. He sent him to save the world. Do our hearts look like his? Or is there a portion of our heart that's still like speaking words of condemnation toward people we despise? God really does love everyone, even the people you hate. You see, God saves people I would never save if I were God. God gives grace to people I would never give grace to if I were God. God blesses people that I would never bless if I were God. God uses people I would never use if I were God. I, for one, am glad I'm not God. And if my heart is anything like his, it's becoming more like his heart every day. So at this point in the story, we're introduced to the prodigal prophet. The first thing we know about Jonah is this he disobeyed his call. The Bible says the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it. For their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppah, found a ship that was going to Tarshus, paid a pharaoh, and then went down into it. By the way, that phrase, go down into it, repeated four times in this chapter. If you're moving away from God, you're always going down. So he's going down into the ship to go to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord. Now I want to read Jonah 1.1 again from a literal translation because there's something left out in most translations. And there is a word of Jehovah from the son uh Jehovah unto uh Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, Do you know in the original Hebrew the word the book of Jonah begins with the word and? If you were a kid in my generation, you grew up, you on Saturday morning cartoons they had this cartoon, conjunction, junction, and what's your function? Remember that? About conjunctions. And one of those conjunctions is and. And what does and do? An connects two ideas together. The book starts with and. What's it connecting to? Well, you see, a lot of scholars thought, well, somebody rubbed off and we lost the first part of the book of Jonah. Then other people said, Well, no, there must have been another book, and this was a continuation because it starts with and. And I think you need to ask yourself the question: what else do we know about Jonah in the Bible? This is a continuation of his story, but what do we know first? Well, if you go back to earlier in his life, we know this from 2 Kings. This is the only other place his name occurs. God restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which had spoken through his servant Jonah, the son of Amitai, the prophet who was from Gath Hefer. So earlier in life, Jonah had prophesied that God would expand Israel's borders. Maybe now God was going to bless Israel and they would become a prominent nation after all. On top of this, Israel was in the beginnings of an economic boom. They'd not seen anything like this since the days of Solomon. Money's pouring in from all sides. People are getting rich. These were the good days in the minds of the people, and they associated all of that with the prophecies of Jonah. So Jonah's kind of a celebrity. He's patriotic. He has the privilege of seeing his country flourish and grow stronger. He likely loved being a messenger of good news for his people. There weren't a lot of prophets that got that one. You know, most of the prophets didn't have good news for the people, but Jonah had good news, and he's sharing good news. But now, now your God, who's the only true God, wants you to pronounce judgment upon a people in Assyria's greatest city. Now the work is scary. You're going to be going up against some of the most fearsome people on earth with a message of God's judgment. But wouldn't you at least be partially happy? I mean, wouldn't you be thinking at least maybe the world will be a better place without the Assyrians in it? So the edict is good news, right? But Jonah, he starts thinking about his assignment and he said, Well, but what if I go and the Assyrians repent? I know God will forgive him because that's just the way he is. He'll let him off the hook. He won't follow through on this judgment that he threatens, and all that will do is put the Assyrians back in God's good graces. So we expect to read, and Jonah went to Nineveh and preached as the Lord commanded. Instead, we read, but Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to Tarshus. Jonah's the only prophet who runs away from God in the Bible. But not just that. He goes, he was told to go 500 miles east to Nineveh. We have a map of this. And he goes in the complete opposite direction to Tarshus. This would be like God saying, I want you to go to DC with a message and you get on a plane to San Diego. Okay, it's that kind of opposite kind of movement. Now, throughout the Old Testament, God had his prophets do some crazy things. Ezekiel is told to eat bread that was cooked over dung to prophesy about the desolation of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians. God had Hosea marry a prostitute who would cheat on him constantly so that God could show Israel what his relationship with them was like. Yet all the prophets have one thing in common. They did what God asked of them. No matter how scary, humiliating, difficult, the prophets obeyed God, but Jonah. But Jonah did not. So Jonah's on board a ship, going the opposite direction where God wants him to go, and that leads to this next reality. He suffered the consequences. Look at this verse. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea. Now, this is no typical storm. It's a bad storm. In fact, it's so bad that these sailors think the ship is about to break apart. These sailors were likely Phoenician sailors, who history records as some of the most skilled sailors we've ever known. They're well acquainted with storms at sea, but even they knew this was no natural storm. Was something supernatural about it. They'd never seen anything like it before, so they cry out to their gods for help as they threw as much cargo overboard to lighten the load. And while they're all crying out, the one person on board who knows the true God of heaven isn't anywhere in sight. Now, let me ask you this one question, because we're not very far into the story. Was Jonah the only one affected by his disobedience? No. I hear this all the time from people. I'm not hurting anybody with my choices but myself. Hey, friends, nobody sins in a vacuum. Your choices have relational impact. It goes beyond you. Just like Jonah. Jonah's not the only one affected by his bad decision. He's now put in peril the life of all these people aboard that ship. This is where we encounter something else. He was despairing in his situation. So the next part it says the captain approached him and said, How is it that you're sleeping? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. Now, the word that's used in the original Hebrew here is a word that's used to describe a deep sleep or a drugged sleep. It's a sleep of exhaustion that's often the result of depression or depletion. So he's in such a depressed state, he can't even get up out of bed. I mean, think about it. The ship is spiraling out of control. Imagine the storm throwing that ship back and forth. Have you ever been on a ship just in high seas where the waves are just throwing you back and forth? If you have any motion sickness at all, you're just deathly ill. Well, Jonah is in the belly of that ship and he's feeling all this, but he's not, is he? He's zonked out. He's completely passed out. He's totally asleep. The sailors have ejected the cargo. That didn't help. They pray to their gods. That doesn't help either. Then the captain remembers there's one more passenger who got on at Joppa. He goes down into the hold of the ship. He finds Jonah fast asleep. He says, How can you sleep in a storm like this? Get up quickly. If you have a God, pray to him. Now it's really interesting. In the original, when the captain says, Arise, call on your God, those are exactly the same words that God used with Jonah, arise, go cry against Assyria. Wow. Even the captain's words are a reminder of what Jonah is trying to get away from. When he finally comes up top, Jonah doesn't say a word. He doesn't pray. I think this is further evidence of his state of mind. All he can see is the panic around him, but his mind is wrapped up in seaweed and it's going down into the depths. Running away from his tough assignment triggered something deep in Jonah that depleted him to his core. Now, whether you call that depression or emotional exhaustion, all I know is this. His inner reality started to affect his outer reality. And when you find yourself in a similar state, it's important to ask yourself: is there some situation in my life right now I'm refusing to face? So finally, Jonah was shamed in his admission. Listen to this. I'm a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land. Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, How could you do this? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he told them. Now, why did Jonah tell them what he was doing? Is he just flaunting his disobedience? Or is he doing something else I've seen happen a million times? Is he inadvertently giving away his story because of his shame? You see, I've had a lot of experience with shame, and I've known a lot of people who live with great shame, and here's what I discovered in some way or another, shame is always hard to hide. All of us experience from shame from time to time, from the things we do, from the things we fail to do. And that feeling of shame makes us want to cower, push down, not tell anybody about it. But shame has a way of leaking out. We give ourselves away. We end up inadvertently confessing to what's going on. I'll never forget in Bible college, uh, one of the campus pastors came to me and said, Hey, listen, there's a pastor outside of Nashville. I went to school in Nashville, so there's a pastor outside of Nashville who needs a break for a few weeks from the ministry, wondering if you could go and preach for him. He'll be there, he'll be in the audience, and after the service, he'll take you to his home for lunch. I said, Okay, that was all the reason I was given. So I go and I preach at his church, they liked it fine. The pastor comes up and said, Listen, we've got lunch prepared for you. Why don't you come to the house? And we did. And after lunch, he said, Hey, I've written some poetry. Would you like to hear a poem I wrote? Sure, love to hear your poetry. And he starts reading this poem, an intimate description of another woman who was obviously not his wife. And I'm just sitting there stunned. He's like, Why are you telling us this? My wife is not just stunned, she's gonna say something. And Brenda looks the guy in the eyes and just says, Does your wife know you wrote that kind of poem? And man, he's blood red all of a sudden. You see, that pastor was telling me what he was going through without telling me what he was going through. And I had to go back to college and say, hey, listen, this guy doesn't need a break. This guy needs some help, big time, because he's making clear he is right on the edge of doing something he's gonna regret. I think something similar happened here with Jonah. Jonah is deeply ashamed of his disobedience, and so it's corkscrewing back to the surface of his life and coming out in unpredictable ways. Jonah is revealing his disobedience, whether he meant to or not. At this point in the story, the story actually shifts gears and shows us something entirely new and unexpected. There was more of God in the pagans than the prophet. Now, this is part of the story that nobody ever tells about Jonah, but it's because they don't know how to understand story. They don't read narrative, they don't understand that with narrative, it's all in the details of the story. You've got to pay attention to that. You're not just flattening stories to find a lesson. You're asking yourself, what's going on in this story? So the first thing we find is God's words in the pagan's mouth. The captain went to him and said, How can you sleep? Get up, call on your God, maybe he'll take notice of us and he'll not perish. I told you how when the captain goes in there and says, Rise awake, it's the same literal phrase that God uses with uh Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevehes. But then, notice this: then the sailors said to each other, Come, let us cast lots to find who is responsible for this calamity. They cast lots, and the lots fell on Jonah. So they asked him, Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? Now, here the sailors are casting lots. Casting lots is an ancient form of divination, trying to figure out what God is saying. It's kind of like modern-day dice. So they cast the lots, the lots fall on Jonah. But notice, even though the lots fall on Jonah, that's the source of the problems, the sailors still give him the benefit of the doubt. They question him, wanting to make sure they, it's almost like, hey, maybe these lots are wrong. Tell us who you are, tell us where you're from, tell us what's really going on. They're asking all these questions because they don't want to make a snap judgment just based on the roll of the dice. At this point in the story, it's becoming obvious that the sailors care more for Jonah than he does for them. They're concerned about doing the right thing. Jonah is not. Now let that sink in. Because this is Jonah's problem in a nutshell. Jonah cares about Jonah and his own sense of moral outrage over the Assyrians, his own sense of right and wrong, his own sense of who is in and who is out rather than anything God has to say. It reminds me of something Anne Lamont once wrote. You can practice being kind, or you can practice being bright. And I found that life pretty much divides people into those two categories. There are people who got to be right about everything, and there are people who choose to be kind. Jonah's the latter. He never questioned whether the way he thought was anything other than completely right. And his total lack of concern for other people imperiled the lives of those sailors, and that didn't even register with him. The irony in the story is this: the Phoenicians, these Gentile sailors, the ones for whom Jonah has no regard, showed more genuine compassion for Jonah, more Christ-like love for the prophet than the prophet has for them. But it's not just giving him the benefit of the doubt. Notice this next thing Grace to Jonah through the pagan's actions. The next part of the story says this. So they said to him, What should we do so that the sea may become calm for us? For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. He said to them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you. However, the men rowed desperately to return to land, but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them. The response of the sailors to Jonah's instruction, when he says, Just throw me overboard, they don't. Instead, they make a last-ditch attempt to save his life. They try to row the boat to shore, to a place where they could get him off the ship safely. Now, this is an extremely risky move for these sailors. Because in those days, you don't have these ports where there's wide areas where you can just get through. When you're in a storm at sea and you get closer to land, guess what else is under the water close to land? There's reefs, there's rocks, there's all kinds of things that can tear apart a ship at sea. So these sailors are endangering their lives even farther by trying to move in closer to shore to let Jonah off the ship. Everything about this story is backwards. It's the opposite of the way we think it should be. These pagan goddess sailors, they're kind, they're compassionate, they're merciful. God's prophet is full of anger, judgment, and disobedience. If we don't pay attention to what's actually happening in the story, we miss that. And if this is the first time you're ever hearing this about the book of Jonah, you have to ask yourself, who have I been listening to? Because this is just in the Bible. This is the way the Bible tells a story. And Jonah wants us to hear these details because these get really next to his heart. And then notice this: Jonah's self-absorption. He would rather die than preach. He says, pick me up and throw me into the sea. Now, a lot of preachers I've heard try to make Jonah a hero of this. You know, I'll save the day. Just throw me overboard. That's not courage. If Jonah knows the storm is the result of the judgment of God on him, the proper response is to get right with God. Amen? And if he's not going to make it right with God, at the very least take responsibility for himself and get himself off that ship. Instead, he made the sailors responsible for his actions. Friends, hear me saying this. You and I are responsible for our own choices. When we don't take responsibility for ourselves, what we're doing is we're constantly trying to give our problems to other people. So we say things like, Well, I'm not irresponsible with money, it's just that people are stingy with me. I don't have a problem with anger, it's other people that make me mad. It's not that I failed to show up on time. No one gave me a ride. Like Jonah, we're always trying to offload our issues onto other people so that they have to take responsibility for our problems. And this is a problem in the text. And that leads us to this the sea is silenced, but not the sailors. This verse gets to me. Listen. So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, the sea stopped its raging. Then the men feared the Lord greatly. Notice that's all in capital letters. In the Old Testament, when you see Lord in all capital letters, that's a placeholder for the personal name of God, his covenant name, Yahweh. So they feared the Lord greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. As Jonah sinks beneath the waves, the waves calm, the seas calm, the sailors truly understand what's happening. Jonah's God is the one true God. He's the one true God. Which leads me to this the pagans become saints while the prophet remains a prodigal. They recognize, acknowledge, and worship and commit to the God of Scripture. This story is meant to mess with our categories. It reverses who we think is going to be the hero and the villain. We start this chapter thinking that Jonah's going to be the hero and the heathen sailors, they're going to be the villains. And that's Jonah's problem in a nutshell. It's about the way he sees himself and the way he sees others. The Jewish people, we're the good guys. The pagans, they're the bad guys. And you know why he thinks that? Because he cannot see the receptivity of people who are far from God. He can't imagine that this God who created each and every one of us and has a love for us and longs to redeem us can work in the worst of cases. And he's proving that by the pagans right now. The very people that he doesn't, he doesn't want to go to the Assyrians, these people are far from God. And yet he's on this ship, and these pagans are turning to the God of heaven. That's a message of chapter one. So he has a strong case of nationalism. Just wipe out my enemy, bomb them off the face of the earth. But he doesn't want God to save those who are ready to be saved. He doesn't want God to get rid of his enemies by turning them into brothers and sisters. So in this story, let me recap. It's the sailors who pray, not Jonah. It's the sailors who sought to deal with sin on the ship, not Jonah. The sailors end up worshiping the true God of heaven, not Jonah. The sailors have compassion on Jonah, and Jonah hasn't the slightest concern for the danger he's placed everyone in. Now my emotional response to this chapter is similar to the feeling I feel when I read the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, there's a story of Jacob and his brother Esau. Esau may be a godless man, but I like him. I like him a lot. I like him better than I do Jacob. Because Jacob's a liar, a cheat, and a con man. If I had to choose a next door neighbor, I'd choose Esau over Jacob any day of the week. Same thing here. Between the sailors and Jonah, I'd much rather live next door to those sailors than live next door to a self-righteous, judgmental Jonah. Jonah's a hardliner who felt that certain people were more deserving of God's judgment than others. Like there are certain people who shouldn't be given the message of God's grace, that they just deserve to die. Once we become Christians, we must never look at people through our own broken lenses. We have to see people, all people, the way God sees them, from a heart of love. And we must trust that God can see what we can't. Since our God specializes in saving the worst of sinners, get this God's greatest obstacle has never been the sinner out there. His greatest obstacle is the saint in here. The problem lies in the reluctance of the missionary, the unwillingness of people to take God's message of unfailing love to the Nineveh of our generation. The gospel of salvation is power for all who believe. Friends, when you don't want people to repent, there's a special kind of hatred in that that has no righteousness at all to it. Jonah didn't want to take a message of hope to his enemy. He didn't want to preach forgiveness. He wanted God to judge him. He wanted God to destroy him. The great poet Maya Angelo once said, hate, it's caused a lot of problems in the world, has not solved one yet. It's so true. Jonah was a symbol, a symbol of national disgrace. The Jews, the people of God, do you realize they were placed on this earth as a witness nation? They were declared the message of the one true living God. They were to take the message of the one true living God to the polytheistic, polydemonistic world. They were to be a light to the Gentiles. This is a part of the Abrahamic covenant. They were chosen people, not as an end in themselves, but as a means to an end, a nation of missionaries. They were to be zealous to love other nations and lead them into the worship of the one true God. So Jonah becomes a symbol of this anti-missionary mentality. He's supposed to be one of God's prophets, a mouthpiece for the very message that God once known, to see people through God's eyes, to call on people to do the same thing, and he refuses to do it. This is part of the story that seldom gets told about this book. But it's a story that's all there in black and white. Most people assume that Jonah is about disobedience. Not really, not at its core. His core message is about misdirected love. A prophet who loves his nation more than he loves God's heart for the nations. Now, this story hits close to home. It holds up a mirror to our lives, especially when we get up on our high horse and talk down about other nations, religions, ethnic groups, immigrants, or lifestyle choices. We so easily proclaim certain people as deserving of the judgment of God. But it never seems to cross our mind that we're all deserving of judgment. What we got instead of judgment was grace. Grace is for the undeserving. Grace is the only powerable power capable of setting a captive heart free. What radically changes the world, what radically changed my life, is an encounter with God's amazing grace, getting not what I deserved, but what I needed. So why wouldn't we want everybody to come into the same experience that we had that transformed our life? If we drank deeply from the fountain of grace and knew that we were loved in our undeservedness, why wouldn't we pour that out onto a world that's desperate to experience it? So, what I want to do today, I don't want to pray in a typical way. I want us to sing our prayer today. I want us to sing together just the first verse of amazing grace. I want you to join me in this. I want you to make this your prayer. I want you to ask God that as He's poured this amazing grace into a wretch like me, that it would pour out of my life in the same way. To people who don't deserve it, just like I didn't deserve it. And to whatever degree there's a Jonah heart living in me, that God would purge that so it would be more like his heart. And I would love who he loves and the way he loves them. So this is not gonna be a fun experience if I'm the only one singing. So I hope you'll join with me. But when you sing it, sing this as your prayer, okay? Let's pray, let's sing together. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that save arretch like me I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind, but now I see go give it ways, amazing grace.