SPEAKER_00: If I have never met you, my name is Arlen.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Lawrence Campus Master, as I said in the video.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm honored to get to be with you here downtown as we kind of finish up our small series within Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be walking through Jonah chapter four.
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of want to give us a little bit of a recap of what we've gone through in the book of Jonah, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it starts out with Jonah, and he gets told by God that he has to go and preach to this wicked city in Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: And God's response is basically, or and Jonah's response is basically like, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: Don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And so he goes in the other direction and he boards his boat.
SPEAKER_00: And on the boat, this huge storm comes.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jonah's like, Yeah, it's actually my fault that this storm is here.
SPEAKER_00: Just toss me overboard.
SPEAKER_00: And so they do.
SPEAKER_00: They throw him overboard and then he gets swallowed by this big fish.
SPEAKER_00: And then we get his like this prayer in the belly of the big fish.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh as that comes to a close, he gets spit out on the shore of Nineveh, and he goes in and he preaches uh and he shares, Hey, judgment is coming.
SPEAKER_00: And then the entire city, even from like the lowest to the highest, the king is like, Hey, we got to do something about this.
SPEAKER_00: And the entire uh people group they repent and they say, Hey, we don't want this to come upon us.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where we're picking up.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the story of Jonah in a nutshell.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and as as we jump into Jonah 4, we titled it Jonah and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Mercy of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we did this because we're gonna notice something in the character of Jonah today.
SPEAKER_00: He's kind of upset.
SPEAKER_00: He is pretty angry with God because of what has happened.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh I was reminded of a movie I love movies, always have.
SPEAKER_00: Um I watch them all the time, and there's a movie um from 1994, and it's called The War.
SPEAKER_00: It has Kevin Costner and Elijah Wood, and there's this scene in this movie, and in Kevin Costner, he's the dad, Elijah Wood, he's the son, they go to this like carnival.
SPEAKER_00: And at this carnival, the dad is saying, Hey, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna buy some cotton candy for uh your mom and your sister.
SPEAKER_00: And so when he walks off, Elijah Wood is just kind of left alone at this carnival, and these kids come and they beat him up, and they start like jumping him and they start hurting him, and then the dad notices this and he runs out and he stops what's going on, and these kids go away, and the dad's like, Hey, let's just go home.
SPEAKER_00: And so they go to the car to head home.
SPEAKER_00: And when on the way back to the car, the dad sees these kids again, and he starts walking up to these kids, and they're sitting there, and when you're watching it, you're like, Yeah, dad, go get them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Go get these kids in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes up and he doesn't say anything to them, and he hands them these two pieces of cotton candy.
SPEAKER_00: And then Elijah Woods' character, he says, Dad, you do know that those are the kids who beat me up, right?
SPEAKER_00: And his dad looks at him and he says, Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Why would you give them mom and Lydia's cotton candy?
SPEAKER_00: And his answer is super simple, and it has stuck with me for a long time, and it was this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Because it just looks like they haven't been given anything in a really long time.
SPEAKER_00: And the son is so angry with his dad, but I understood in that moment what the dad was trying to do, and I think that this captures the heart of Jonah for.
SPEAKER_00: God has given something to a group of people that Jonah really did not think that they deserved.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah then gets really mad and he says, Why would you do this thing?
SPEAKER_00: And we see the anger in Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And I think some of us have been there in some form.
SPEAKER_00: You know what somebody has done, or you've watched them receive something that you don't think that they deserve, and maybe you watch someone get something that you wanted or something that you thought belonged to you, and then that thought creeps in, but you don't know them like I do.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't deserve that, uh, and that is exactly where Jonah's sitting.
SPEAKER_00: He preached to this group of people who did horrible things, and his God saved them, and he relented, and he showed them mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna read through this, and there's a healthy tension to hold within this passage.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna be honest with us.
SPEAKER_00: There's a healthy tension because uh, yes, we are studying the character of Jonah, and we're going through Jonah, and we're seeing uh who he is, but I'm gonna give us kind of the end.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture is a mirror.
SPEAKER_00: And as we read it, we can start to recognize some stuff about us.
SPEAKER_00: And as we start reading through this, we recognize we're all Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: We all have something, and as we read this, scripture should expose our deepest needs and shine a light on our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Not so that we feel condemned, but that way so we can better align our hearts with God's.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're gonna read through and jump in.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you so much that we have this opportunity to be here together.
SPEAKER_00: As a group of believers, as followers of you, Lord, I pray that you give us a heart for those who don't know you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you uh just break our hearts for those who don't know you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you give us a passion to love people well and to love them with the best parts of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you, and we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So here's how we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna read the whole thing up front.
SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna kind of read it uh uh a few verses at a time and we're gonna walk through it together because I think it helps to kind of paint the picture.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna start off um in verse one, but we're actually gonna go back to the last verse of chapter three because it's important.
SPEAKER_00: So it says, When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction that he had threatened.
SPEAKER_00: But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And he became angry, and he prayed to the Lord, Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?
SPEAKER_00: That this is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish?
SPEAKER_00: I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: Stop.
SPEAKER_00: Pause.
SPEAKER_00: Let's understand what's going on, right?
SPEAKER_00: So Jonah is incredibly hurt.
SPEAKER_00: He's angry, and he is he basically says, Hey, I think what you did is wrong, and in fact, this is why I ran away in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: Because I knew that you were gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that you would be compassionate, and I knew that you were gonna be slow to anger, and I knew that you were the God that you said you were.
SPEAKER_00: And it's actually uh interesting because Jonah is quoting Exodus 34 back to God, and he's saying, I knew that you were a compassionate God.
SPEAKER_00: I knew it.
SPEAKER_00: Now imagine saying something that like that to God.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that you were gonna be filled with grace.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that you were merciful.
SPEAKER_00: That's the heart of Jonah in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I've got two kids and I love uh when they get surprised, when something I tell them is gonna happen immediately happens after they do the thing that I tell them not to do, right?
SPEAKER_00: So they're tipping back in a chair.
SPEAKER_00: Don't tip back in your chair, the chair will break.
SPEAKER_00: And then they tip back and the chair breaks, and they're like, Dad, why didn't you tell me?
SPEAKER_00: And then they get surprised and they're angry, but that's that's in the life of Jonah, he's like, Oh, I knew.
SPEAKER_00: I knew this was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that the Lord was gonna be kind and gracious, and he became infuriated.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I would rather die.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that Jonah responds as anger, and I don't want us to focus on how Jonah responds in anger because uh none of us often correctly respond in anger, but I want us to look more at God's response to Jonah's response, right?
SPEAKER_00: He poses a question.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: Is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: And that's a harder question to ask ourselves if we're honest.
SPEAKER_00: That's a hard question because anger is a part of life.
SPEAKER_00: I am angry all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Turn on the news for 10 minutes and you're gonna find yourself angry at something.
SPEAKER_00: But God poses the question, is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: And here's what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jonah didn't want to declare the Lord to this group of people.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want them because he was angry at them for what they had done.
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't think that they deserved it.
SPEAKER_00: And lack of a better term, he just despised this group of people so much and he wanted them to face justice, not forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And so when they do receive forgiveness, Jonah gets so angry that he says that he he just is like, God, I want nothing to do with you right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so mad at this.
SPEAKER_00: And God's response is so incredibly telling because notice he doesn't say, Stop feeling angry.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say, How dare you question me?
SPEAKER_00: He asks a question, is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: And he is inviting Jonah to now examine his own heart because Jonah's anger is not from love for a love for righteousness, it's coming from a desire to see these people hurt.
SPEAKER_00: God shows mercy to these people.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the tension.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah wanted justice for Nineveh, but he still wants mercy for himself, and yet the same God who showed Jonah mercy and the belly of the fish is now showing mercy to the Ninevehes, and God is exposing something in Jonah's heart.
SPEAKER_00: His love for God's grace had limits because he loved grace for himself, but he struggled when it came to giving it to other people.
SPEAKER_00: And before we are too hard on Jonah, sometimes people like to read Jonah and just beat up on him a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of easy too, right?
SPEAKER_00: You read Jonah and you're like, what are you thinking, man?
SPEAKER_00: Just do what God wants you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Before we're too hard on him, I think we should ask ourselves the same question.
SPEAKER_00: Let's ask ourselves that question.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna pose a question to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Are there people that you struggle to see God forgive?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so many answer, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Are there people that we secretly believe are beyond redemption?
SPEAKER_00: Are there people we want God to judge rather than rescue?
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes righteousness offends us when it doesn't produce the outcome that we wanted.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes God's grace confronts our own preference and sometimes it exposes places in our hearts where we are out of alignment with Him.
SPEAKER_00: And in those moments, God is asking the same question that He asked to Jonah Is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: Now let's keep reading.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city.
SPEAKER_00: There he made himself a shelter, sat in the shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow over Jonah to give shade for uh his head, to ease his discomfort.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah was very happy about the plant.
SPEAKER_00: But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed the plant, so it was withered.
SPEAKER_00: When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to die, and said it would be better for me to die than live.
SPEAKER_00: But God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
SPEAKER_00: It is, he said, and I'm so angry, I wish I were dead.
SPEAKER_00: And so, let's pause again.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're anything like me, you're reading through this and you you probably expected more of like a response from Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: And you expect him to be like, You're right, God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, you have infinite wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: You are the creator and sustainer of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe repentance, you're right.
SPEAKER_00: I have been self-centered, I'm sorry for my transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah didn't answer.
SPEAKER_00: What does he do?
SPEAKER_00: He just walks out of the city, sits down, and he waits.
SPEAKER_00: He throws a tantrum.
SPEAKER_00: Almost like he's just hoping for God to change his mind.
SPEAKER_00: Almost like he's hoping that judgment will still come.
SPEAKER_00: And we see next that this move from God is again inviting Jonah to just evaluate his own heart.
SPEAKER_00: He's illustrating just the selfishness of Jonah's heart.
SPEAKER_00: I've got uh a young two-year-old at my house, and she loves one thing more than anything else, and that is a bubble bath.
SPEAKER_00: She thinks bubble baths are the coolest thing on planet Earth, so much so that she asks all the time.
SPEAKER_00: She always comes up and she's she says, bath with bubbles, peace.
SPEAKER_00: And then she smiles at us.
SPEAKER_00: She does it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really cute until she asks you 37 times in a day, and you're like, There's only so many bubble baths I can give you before it just starts wasting water and all the bubbles, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes we say yes, you can go have a bubble bath, sometimes we say no.
SPEAKER_00: And her reaction every time we say no is this, uh.
SPEAKER_00: And she just walks off and she stands in the corner and she doesn't talk to us for a few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: It's cute until you have to discipline it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just telling you that now.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what Jonah did.
SPEAKER_00: God, will you bring judgment to the Ninevites, please?
SPEAKER_00: No?
SPEAKER_00: Aww.
SPEAKER_00: And he walks out and he throws this tantrum, and then he sits down in this city or outside the city, and he's sitting under the sun, and God provides this plant, and we see that it says Jonah was very happy about this plant.
SPEAKER_00: He spent like the entire book just being angry, and now he is very happy because Jonah loved it when Grace benefited Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah loved it when when Grace helped him, but he hated it when it was for somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been driving a little too fast and you see a cop behind you?
SPEAKER_00: And you think like, oh, they're gonna pass me, and then they pull you over?
SPEAKER_00: And then you immediately become like an expert in grace.
SPEAKER_00: You immediately like, well, officer, I didn't mean to do it, I didn't mean for this to happen, I was running late, and you start trying to explain your way out of it, and he gives you a warning.
SPEAKER_00: And then you spend the next week telling everybody about how great that cop is.
SPEAKER_00: Only for the next day somebody to fly past you at 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, and you think to yourself, Oh, there's a cop up there.
SPEAKER_00: We're really good at wanting grace for ourselves and really bad at wanting it for other people.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is a natural human thing.
SPEAKER_00: Or you when you've got kids in the home and you're disciplining one of them and the other one's in the corner and they're laughing.
SPEAKER_00: But then when it's time for them to get in trouble, it's not so funny.
SPEAKER_00: When their siblings laughing back.
SPEAKER_00: Grace for me and not for thee is so incredibly common.
SPEAKER_00: It's so innate to our human condition to only want grace for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen somebody walk through the doors of a church and you think to yourself, what are they doing here?
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing here?
SPEAKER_00: You don't belong in this church.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And God's demonstrating the heart of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a bitter one.
SPEAKER_00: He did not want salvation for these people, but boy did he rejoice when he got shade when he was in the sun.
SPEAKER_00: He was very happy.
SPEAKER_00: But then God sends this worm to eat the plant, and suddenly the mercy that God gave Jonah isn't there anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah gets angry again.
SPEAKER_00: This intense heat hits Jonah and he gets angry and he starts, he starts getting frustrated with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of asking the Lord for mercy again, instead of repenting for his heart, he just gets even angrier with God.
SPEAKER_00: And God again challenges Jonah's anger and he doubles down on it.
SPEAKER_00: He believes that his anger is righteous, he believes that his anger is justified.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the truth: most of us don't have a problem with grace.
SPEAKER_00: We just have a problem when it is given to people we don't like.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the heart of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted grace for himself.
SPEAKER_00: And especially when he got something, and then when it was taken away, his reaction was basically, How dare you take that from me?
SPEAKER_00: I deserved it, I earned it, I wanted it for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah got really angry with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I heard this quote when I was like 18.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was it was from a pastor at my last church, and he said, He said, If you would rather see your enemy die than repent, then somewhere along the way you have forgotten the grace that has rescued you.
SPEAKER_00: That is a hard one.
SPEAKER_00: Next week we start a series called Uncomfortable, but we're gonna get uncomfortable for a minute in here still in Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Because if if someone was convicted of seriously heinous crimes, and I mean abysmal crimes, and genuinely repented and surrendered their life to Christ and was saved, would that make you happy?
SPEAKER_00: Would you rejoice over that or would you be angry?
SPEAKER_00: And that's a question that we have to ask.
SPEAKER_00: I remember uh in my last town when I lived there, this is uh a quick story.
SPEAKER_00: I was part of a prison ministry.
SPEAKER_00: There's something that I was invited to do, and it was one of the greatest things I was able to do um in my time in Kansas was be a part of this prison ministry, and I would I would go into the prison.
SPEAKER_00: So I would go into the prison, and then I got to do this once a quarter, and I would get to go preach and meet with these guys and lead Bible studies and just spend time with them.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna lie, it was really hard for me at the at the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one, I just I never done anything like this, and and I didn't really know what to expect.
SPEAKER_00: And so I go in and I meet all these guys, and they seem like just genuine, genuine people who love the Lord, and and you're meeting a lot of these people, and then they start telling you what they did.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have to start wrestling with your own mind and your own sense of justice.
SPEAKER_00: And you have to start asking your question, oh, do I do I want grace for these people?
SPEAKER_00: And when you can get to a place in your heart where you want grace for people despite what they've done, it's like a wildfire.
SPEAKER_00: And then you start seeing everybody differently.
SPEAKER_00: And I loved getting to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: I loved getting to see that.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that's that's the the heart for God's church, for God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jonah was wrestling with that very question.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want bad people to become good people.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah wanted bad people to get what bad people deserved, and Jonah failed to understand that he deserved the same punishment.
SPEAKER_00: And what he never seemed to grasp was that he and Nineveh were in the exact same problem.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah thinks he's standing in judgment over them, but in reality he is standing beside them.
SPEAKER_00: They both were given God's mercy, and they both deserved God's justice.
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah looks at Nineveh and he says, They deserved judgment, and God looks at Jonah and says, So did you.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I were dead.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord said, You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow, it sprang up overnight and died overnight.
SPEAKER_00: And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals.
SPEAKER_00: And as we finish this passage, we see the this question pops up once again.
SPEAKER_00: Is it right for you to be angry?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and then God reframes the story.
SPEAKER_00: You have been concerned about a plant.
SPEAKER_00: You're more angry about a plant than the lives of a hundred and twenty thousand people.
SPEAKER_00: You are more frustrated that a plant that you did not plant, a plant that you did not uh water, a plant that you did not grow, that you had no skin in the game whatsoever, you are more angry that that plant died than you are concerned about the life of a hundred and twenty thousand people.
SPEAKER_00: People, men, women, children, families, people that were made in God's image, who were formed, who knew that He knew, and that He wanted mercy for.
SPEAKER_00: Did they do bad stuff?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: But they were still people.
SPEAKER_00: They were still human beings.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying to Jonah, You have compassion for this temporary comfort that has benefited you.
SPEAKER_00: But you have zero compassion for people who their entire eternity is hanging in the balance.
SPEAKER_00: And you are more concerned about a plant.
SPEAKER_00: And this is when it stops becoming just about Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And it starts becoming about more than Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes about you and I because let's be honest, we all have our plants.
SPEAKER_00: We do.
SPEAKER_00: We all have things that demand our attention, that dominate our emotion, the things that if they would just disappear, would be the end of the world for us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's politics, maybe it's our money, maybe it's our stuff, our home, whatever it is, this temporary comfort that we have.
SPEAKER_00: And if it were to go away, we would be more upset about that going away than we would be about somebody living and dying without ever knowing Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that is Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we just care more about the plant.
SPEAKER_00: We just really liked the plant.
SPEAKER_00: Look, Jonah believed Nineveh deserved judgment, and honestly, they did.
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah did too! And you might think that someone deserves judgment, but we do too.
SPEAKER_00: And this entire book is just one long story of God showing his mercy to people.
SPEAKER_00: It's mercy to the sailors, it's mercy to Nineveh, it's mercy to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And it ends this book with this question, and we don't fully see Jonah's answer.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's because uh I don't think it's because Jonah didn't answer.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he did answer the Lord, but I think it's so that scriptures poses a question for you.
SPEAKER_00: What do you care about?
SPEAKER_00: What breaks your heart?
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, and probably the hardest question do you love the things that I love?
SPEAKER_00: Do you love the people that I love?
SPEAKER_00: Because throughout this entire book, we're just seeing something.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's heart isn't matching God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna look at when our hearts don't match God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: Because we've got this entire book, it's a character study of Jonah, but it's also a mirror and a giant red flag for when our hearts don't match God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing is we start to resent mercy for others.
SPEAKER_00: We start to resent mercy for others, and we become so inexplicably angry at those who are in the exact same boat as us.
SPEAKER_00: We say things like, you don't know the person that I know, or I know that they're faking it, or I want to remind you of all the things that they did in the past.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to I just want to bring up that old elementary uh school thing that they would tell us when one finger is pointed, there are three pointing back at you.
SPEAKER_00: When our heart is not aligned with God's, we resent mercy for others and we're angry at it.
SPEAKER_00: Or two, we prioritize ourselves over others.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest, we do this all the time.
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time we really seriously considered somebody other than ourselves?
SPEAKER_00: Am I talking about like the Midwest Christian, like, I'll pray for you?
SPEAKER_00: And then you never do.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll pray about that.
SPEAKER_00: And then we don't.
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time we hit our knees in prayer on someone else's behalf?
SPEAKER_00: We just prayed for them.
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time that we stepped out of our comfort zone to share the gospel with a stranger?
SPEAKER_00: We just told you we're doing a whole week about this very thing.
SPEAKER_00: Love your neighbor week, fill out the card, be a part of it.
SPEAKER_00: Love people well.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this isn't to like condemn us or to shame us.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is.
SPEAKER_00: This is to get us to open our eyes and see there are people outside of just myself.
SPEAKER_00: And they're in the exact same boat as me.
SPEAKER_00: Without God, they're lost.
SPEAKER_00: With God, they have life.
SPEAKER_00: And we should want that for other people.
SPEAKER_00: And then the last one, we lose compassion for others.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to stop here because uh I I think that compassion is sometimes a Christian's greatest strength.
SPEAKER_00: Next to the name of Jesus, I think being a compassionate person is one of the best ways for us to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I had a mentor tell me, Arlen, compassion is never your weakness.
SPEAKER_00: And so lean into it.
SPEAKER_00: I think about this often, and if I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna I'm just gonna kind of bare my heart for a second.
SPEAKER_00: I was not a compassionate person for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: I was actually a really bitter person for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: I was pretty jaded.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's a lot of reasons for that, and uh, and and I'll share all that at another time.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately I got to a place in my own heart when I was about 17 where I was just really, really angry at the world, and I was really, really angry at God.
SPEAKER_00: And I was really, really angry at a lot of things, and that jaded my heart, and it hardened my heart in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh when I was 18, I kind of went through this uh I want to follow Jesus moment in my life, and my eyes were open, and I really want to follow Jesus, but I still struggled with this jaded heart.
SPEAKER_00: I still struggled with a heart that uh was not as compassionate.
SPEAKER_00: And when I was uh when I was studying God's word and I was talking to other people, they're like, hey, compassion is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember uh I started praying.
SPEAKER_00: That's all Christians should do.
SPEAKER_00: I started praying, and this is one of the first times in my life I learned be careful what you pray for because you might get it.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so I started praying, and here's I remember exactly what I started praying.
SPEAKER_00: I started praying, God, give me your eyes so I can see people like you do.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I just kept praying over and over.
SPEAKER_00: God, give me your eyes so I can see people like you do, your eyes so I can see people like you do.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember probably I was like, uh it is later in the year, and I was at Walmart, and there was this mom, and she was had two kids around her, and this kid comes sprinting up to his mom, and he's like, I found it! I found it! And he holds up this teenage mutant ninja turtle toy, and he holds it up to his mom, and he's like, I found it, I finally found it, can we get it?
SPEAKER_00: And then this mom just starts kind of like getting a little teary eye, and she's and she said, No, honey, uh, we just don't have it today.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm standing in the aisle, I remember seeing this, and something weird started happening.
SPEAKER_00: I started crying.
SPEAKER_00: Like I started being a weepy mess just in this aisle at Walmart, and I thought to myself, oh goodness, he's answering this prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And so I did something I never thought I would do.
SPEAKER_00: And I walked over to this family, and I was a college kid.
SPEAKER_00: I was working intern, an internship at the church and part-time in radio, and I made all of like$2 an hour, you know?
SPEAKER_00: So I just didn't have a lot of money to my name.
SPEAKER_00: And I walk over and I just said, Hey, I know you don't know me, um, and I don't even know why I'm doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Can I buy that toy for him?
SPEAKER_00: And the kid was like, Yeah, yeah, you can.
SPEAKER_00: And the mom was like, Oh, yeah, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: And so he hands it to me, and I turned it over, and it was$25, and I was like, Oh, this is an expensive toy.
SPEAKER_00: And so I pulled up my online banking.
SPEAKER_00: I had$27 of them, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: And so the whole time I'm walking up and I'm like, Lord, I prayed for this, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna be responsible, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00: And I bought that toy and I gave it to him, and my heart was so just overwhelmed with this kid and with this family.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember I got in my car and I just sat there and I just continued to pray.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, Lord, can you give me more opportunities like that?
SPEAKER_00: I didn't really care that I was down to my last two dollars.
SPEAKER_00: I had hot pockets at home, I was okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's the college way, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I just remember I want more of that.
SPEAKER_00: I want more opportunities to be compassionate for people, and that drove me.
SPEAKER_00: It really did.
SPEAKER_00: It drove me into ministry and it drove me into wanting to care for people, and it helped me develop my life and ministry's motto.
SPEAKER_00: Every life matters.
SPEAKER_00: And I truly believe that.
SPEAKER_00: And I am a uh I'm just tenacious, and I want to share the name of Jesus with anybody and everybody that I can.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not me telling you this because I want you to think, oh, Arlen's great.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you this because I was a jaded person who did not care about people, and I went from that to crying over a kid, not getting a teenage mutant ninja turtle in Walmart.
SPEAKER_00: If he can change my life, he can change yours.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: If he can change anybody's life, it nobody is so far away that God can't do something.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do with this?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to remind us scripture is a mirror and it it exposes our deepest parts of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're honest, Jonah has probably shown us some things that we didn't really want to see about ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we're nasty people, but because sin is corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: And it does corrupt us in church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh think about this.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we read Jonah and we read it as two different groups of people, Jonah and the Ninevites.
SPEAKER_00: But it's just people who aren't aligned with God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a book about the religious and bad people or insiders and outsiders or church people and broken people, but it's just a story about people.
SPEAKER_00: It's a story about God showing mercy to people.
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm honest, I know what it's like to want grace for myself and not for others.
SPEAKER_00: And I know what it's like to want God to be patient with my shortcomings, but immediate with immediate with somebody else's.
SPEAKER_00: And I know what it's like to care more about my own comfort than somebody else's eternity.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's you too, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this entire time we're going through this and you're thinking to yourself, that person hurt me, or that person betrayed me, or that person ruined my life, or that person doesn't deserve my forgiveness, or they don't deserve God's forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: But what if the story of Jonah is not about them?
SPEAKER_00: What if it's about us?
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is, we're not standing over Nineveh either.
SPEAKER_00: We're standing in it.
SPEAKER_00: We are people who were once far from God, who are now close to him, because the Bible has said that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Not some, all.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us has wandered, every one of us has rebelled, and every one of us has looked at God who is offering us life and said, I would rather do it my way.
SPEAKER_00: And if God gave us exactly what we wanted and deserved, none of us would be able to stand.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the beauty of the gospel because it is such unbelievably good news.
SPEAKER_00: Because when humanity ran from God, when they said, I want what I want, and they ran, God ran after them.
SPEAKER_00: He came after them, and he didn't send like a new philosophy and he didn't send better rules, he sent his son, he himself came and he stepped into our mess and he stepped into our brokenness and he walked through our pain and he stood in the place of sinners, even though he himself did not deserve to be there.
SPEAKER_00: And unlike Jonah, who sat on a hillside hoping that judgment would eventually come, Jesus looked at the very people who were driving nails into his hands and he said, Father, forgive them.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is not just where he dealt with sin, but it's where he also revealed himself to us.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us that he is perfectly just and that sin does have consequence, but it also tells us that God is unimaginably merciful because he chose to bear that punishment for himself.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus took the place of the liar and the adulterer and the addicts and the proud and the violent and the religious hypocrite and the rebel and the outcast and the self-righteous, and he took the place of Jonah, and he took the place of Nineveh, and he took my place, and he took your place, and when he cried out, it is finished, to telesti, he he announced his victory.
SPEAKER_00: And his victory became our victory.
SPEAKER_00: That we were no longer slaves to sin, we are no longer kept in that that bondage, that there's nothing to earn or prove or to carry.
SPEAKER_00: Sin had lost, death had been defeated, and mercy had won.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the invitation that I want to extend to people in this room.
SPEAKER_00: Compassion from the Lord is available, and salvation is at your fingertips.
SPEAKER_00: And it just comes when you say, God, I don't want what I want anymore, and I want what you want.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to be the Lord over my life.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're in this room and in you've not made that decision, let me give you an opportunity to make that decision today.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an opportunity to bend the knee at the feet of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This last week I listened to a song, um, and it kind of wrecked me.
SPEAKER_00: It had this line that says, If the highest place I reach is at your feet, then I've done it all.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you this today, church.
SPEAKER_00: If the highest place that you reach is Jesus' feet, you've done it all.
SPEAKER_00: Let's make Jesus the King of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: That we have this opportunity to be before you in this way.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you that you have given us such a wonderful, wonderful gift in the cross in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we pray that you give us compassion.
SPEAKER_00: That you give us a heart for you, that you give us a just eyes to see people as you see them.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are overwhelmed by you and the good grace that you give us daily.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.