Sunday Sermon | Jonah: Do Not Dare, Not to Dare!

What do you do when God asks something you don’t want to do? The story of Jonah begins not with obedience, but with rebellion—and reveals a God who relentlessly pursues both His servants and those far from Him.

In this opening sermon of the Jonah series, we explore Jonah 1 and the tension of drawing near to a holy, powerful God who refuses to be reduced to our comfort.

Key Takeaways:

• God’s calling often confronts our comfort
• You cannot outrun the God who made the sea and the land
• God pursues the lost even through the disobedience of His people
• Drawing near to a holy God is fearful—but always good

Scripture: Jonah 1; 2 Kings 14:24–25; Luke 11:29–32; 2 Corinthians 5:18–20

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Transcript

Welcome, Setup, And New Series

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Well, good morning to you all. Hope that you've had uh a good February, beginning of February. Today's Super Bowl Sunday. Are you guys excited? I see a Seahawks jersey over here. I'm excited to see the Seahawks. Anyway, okay. We don't have any AM uh longhorn rivalry today, so we'll just keep going. My name is Chad Mason, the missions pastor here at First Baptist. I'm so excited to get to be with you. I get to teach today and next Sunday as well, uh, while uh Jason and Daniel are in Israel. And uh they have had they've all gotten there well, they're doing doing great, they're having a good time, they're texting me over the last few minutes just saying, Hey, hope it goes well. So, guys, we're prayed for, we should be alright. There's uh a lot going on in our world, and a lot going on in our church, and uh I hope that you're praying for our church and praying for even our leaders as they're scattered around the world. Um, but so this morning we've got a fun sermon. We're starting a new sermon series on the book of Jonah. And uh, so I get to introduce this, and I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be a lot of fun, and uh, we're gonna be in it over the next four weeks as we lead up to getting ready for Easter. So um we'll we'll do this over the throughout the next, like I said, four weeks. And so uh this morning I want to start with a story. Maybe you're familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia. It's one of my favorite stories ever. Uh C.S. Lewis wrote those uh way back in the 40s and 50s, and uh they have been books that I have loved since I was a child. I I try to read them every year, uh, all seven books. And uh what I find is that most people are very familiar with the first book, uh, The Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe. Um so I'm gonna tell a story, a little story from the sixth book, and I say sixth book if you go by the original chronology, not the new one where they messed it all up. Um but let the sixth book was called The Horse and His Boy, and it told the story about uh a guy who was escaping from a southern country towards Narnia, and uh and and you find the story start uh where I'm gonna share with it is in this place where the talking horse named Breed, you're like, what kind of craziness are we into? Um this talking horse has the whole time, he's a war horse, he's very accomplished, and he's throughout the story very arrogant. He's he's he's done a lot, but he always talks about how he did a lot while he was among the dumb horses, the ones that couldn't talk in this other country. And as you get towards the end of the story, there's this moment where the horse's name is Bree. He's talking about there's no way that Laslan, the lion, is a real lion. They just kind of talk about him like he's a lion, but he can't possibly be a dumb beast like the rest of us. He's very, very arrogant and and and uh kind of pontificating him just about how silly it would be for the lion to be a real lion. And while he's speaking, the lion jumps across the fence behind him, and Bree can't see him, and he walks up behind him, and right in the moment where Bree says he's not a real lion, the lion's whiskers touch the back of the horse and it startles him, and he takes off, and he turns around a few feet away, and he's terrified, he's trembling because he's terrified of lions. You find that out throughout the entire story. And at the end, he's terrified of lions, and Aslan, the lion, says, Bree, you silly horse. He says, Come over here close to me, and Bree doesn't move. And Aslan says, Do not dare not to dare. Draw near. And the horse gets closer and he says, No, draw nearer still. I want you to feel my whiskers and touch my paws and see that I'm real. And in this little tiny part of the story, the horse is terrified, but he finally obeys. And it reminds you of these places, like where Thomas, remember when Thomas was at the after the crucifixion, and and Jesus appears to them, and Thomas is like, There's no way. Until I touch his hands, until I see him, I won't believe it. And then Jesus appears among them, and what does Jesus do? Come here, Thomas, touch this and touch this. I want you to see. This is an interesting thing to me. And I want to hold on to that idea of this concept of do not dare, not to dare. Because if you're thinking about the horse's perspective, how silly is it for a horse to get near to a to a lion? Right? But in this case, it would be far sillier if the horse didn't obey. And guys, as we get into this wild story of Jonah, I want to tell you, we're gonna see that there's a lot at play in the way that Jonah interacts with God and the way that other people in the story interact with God. And ultimately, what I want you to draw as we get we get into chapter one today is I want you to think about what it means to interact with a holy God that has limitless power. Because throughout history, it's been a challenge for people to understand how do you draw near to a God like that, and it's terrifying. Uh, there's these other lines in the Narnia stories where they ask if the Aslan, the lion, is he safe? And if you know the story, he always the answer is no. Is he tame? No, he's not a tame lion. But they always followed up with, but he's good. And I want to tell you, as we start to interact with this most high God, I want to tell you it's gonna pull lots of these questions into mind. One of my favorite uh missionaries in history is a guy named Jim Elliott. And I wanted to give you this quote. He said, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. And in this world, we work so hard to keep what we think we can hold on to. And we hold on so hard that we lot we we lose out on what God's called us to do. And so I want to set the stage. That's where we're gonna go today. We're gonna talk about how God moves in the hearts of his people. I want to challenge you to dare to draw near to God. Let's pray. Father, we come before you. As we open your word, we pray that you will speak to our hearts. That God, you will draw us near. And that, Father, we wouldn't be overwhelmed by your power, your strength, that we wouldn't be overwhelmed by the awesomeness that is your existence, even. But God, that we would be honored, that you call us to be near you and close to you. That God, you call us your children, even your friends. God, we pray that you would speak to our hearts today in Jesus' name. Amen. So, first off, as we talk about Jonah, uh, we gotta set where this is in the Old Testament scriptures. First off, you may not know this, but Jonah was a contemporary of two other uh minor prophets, Amos and Hosea. So if you've read those other books, they all lived at the same time. And it's the time of the king Jeroboam II. And Jeroboam II, the scriptures say that he was a king that did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did bad things, but he reigned in Jerusalem for 41 years, making him one of the longest tenured kings in the Old Testament. Um, during his reign, God had given the country a simple, a little season of prosperity, and Jonah was the one that told Jeroboam that God was going to extend the kingdom's uh borders, and so Jonah was a very liked guy. He made a prophecy in the Lord's name that they would, that their that this the country would prosper and do well. And so Jonah sits as a as a unique person here in this space. If you look in 2 Kings 14, 24, it tells us that that, like I said, Jeroboam did evil in the eyes of the Lord. And in 25, it says that he, this is Jeroboam, was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel, from Lebohamath all the way to the Dead Sea. In accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel had spoken through his servant Jonah, the son of Amitai, the prophet from Gath. And I bring this up not because I want to try to define all these weird words, but I want you to know that historically this puts Jonah about the 8th century BC, about 400 years after the life of David. And what that does is it grounds him in history, which is another crazy thing. If you've heard this story, which many of you probably have, about Jonah and the fish, this is grounded historically in this other place in scripture. So it's an interesting thing that uh that that the Old Testament tells us this story actually happened. If you wonder, is this real? According to the Old Testament, it is. But the story doesn't really take place at all within the scriptures, it happens outside of Israel. And so we're gonna get to that story in a minute. But I want to show you there's three other references to Jonah in the scriptures, and they're all in the New Testament, and they're all by the words of Jesus. There's two places in Matthew where Jesus talks about uh the sign of Jonah, and he's referring to the three days that Jonah spends in the belly of the fish, and he says it's basically likened to the days that Jesus spends in the grave. And he likens the fish vomiting Jonah out to being like his own resurrection, as he was pre-pr as he was predicting it and talking about it. But there's another place in Luke chapter 11, I'll read this to you, uh 29 through 32, where it says, the men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation. It asks for a sign. This is the generation that Jesus was talking to. It says, they ask for a sign. Um, but what they're gonna get, it says, uh, the men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here, and the people don't repent. So this is an interesting thing. He he takes the people, the repentance of the Ninevites will stand in judgment against the people who heard Jesus' message and did not repent. So it's an interesting way to use the story, right? So I thought it's a good way to introduce this because you get this idea of Jonah really existed, and Jesus quoted and talked about Jonah in a few different ways. One was predicting the resurrection, and the other was a condemnation to people who hear the story from Jesus' lips and don't come to follow Jesus. So, what's overwhelmingly surprising as we start to go through this book is it's full of these stories of rebellion and repentance all throughout the book of Jonah. But you find out that the people that repent are not the ones you expect to, and the ones who are rebelling are also not the ones you expect to. And so when you think about this person of Jonah, we have to kind of put him in this place where he is a spiritual leader in Israel. Okay, he's he's a prophet, which means he speaks on behalf of God to the people. And so he sits in a kind of a special, a special place in the nation. And he has this ability to do good things and speak the heart of God, and people revere him because of that. Let's talk just a little bit about what what those prophets do. They're kind of like supplements to the priests. Uh, and so the priests would have this responsibility to represent the people to God and God to the people, and oftentimes the prophets did similar things. They would represent God to the people, he would share God's word and tell them what God's saying, but then also there's many conversations with the prophets where you see them talking to God about the wickedness of the people themselves. And so you've got Jonah in this place where he's in a respected spiritual leadership role as we find him at the beginning of this story. But before we get into the story, one more thing I want to say. The ideal was that God wanted to be God to his people and not have a mediator. God says over and over and over again in the Old Testament that he would be their God and they would be his people. And it wasn't until the people started begging God to give them a king that God began to shift and allow that. In fact, if you remember the exact story when Samuel is complaining to God that the people want a king and I just don't know what to do, they're gonna be frustrated because God wants to be their God and they want a king. And God said to them, Don't worry about it, Samuel. He said, It's not you they've rejected, it's me they rejected. And this is where we get to this tension that I want you to hold closely as we walk through the whole story. What does it mean to draw near to a holy God? Because if you remember the Old Testament stories, there were these places where the people were in love with God and things were so, so good. Do you remember these people, these moments? You might think of the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day, and he's providing food for them every single day in the wilderness. You know, you might think about when he took them through the Red Sea, and there's these moments where God is so incredibly present and close and powerful, and they're so happy about it. But that's not the only stories in there, is there? There's a responsibility that comes with drawing close to a holy God. What happens when they were wicked? When they did things that were outside of God's commands and laws? Then it kind of gets dangerous. Right now, the blessings of being friends with an all-powerful God become a curse because this all-powerful God may be angry with the way that you're acting, or the way that you're living, or the way that you're at the way that you're talking to others. Do you see those stories in the Old Testament as well? So, what happens is people say, it's too close. He's too powerful. We can't have this responsibility on our shoulders. Give us someone else that can mediate. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's safer for us if someone else stands in that gap. And so you find there are many places in the Old Testament where you find people who stand in the gap. Moses, probably the best picture. He argues with God. God's like, get out of the way, I'm gonna restart Israel through you, Moses. He's like, No, God, if you do that, all the nations will think that you did this to just bring them out of the wilderness and destroy them. And even he even calls on God's name. He says, It's for your name's sake, Lord, that you should redeem them. And you see this happening all throughout the scriptures, where God, for his name's sake, maintains and loves and cares and even forgives the people when they do these terrible things. And it's this moment where you see in Jonah the cycle of the kings, from David all the way to the Babylonian captivity, you have this cycle where the kings go from okay to bad to worse, then there's a bright light for a moment, and then it's bad, worse, worse, worse, worse, and it's just this cycle that's getting ever darker, leading up to the time where they're kept taken captive by the Babylonians. And it's in these places that you see the people are afraid of God, but they're not so afraid of him that they obey him. Do you see the two sides of this thing? Can you imagine if God is actually as powerful as we say he is, disobeying him? Does this sound okay in your heart and mind if you really believe that God made all of this, that he created you, and he gives you the very breath in your lungs? Is it okay to not do what he says? This is a do not dare, not to dare kind of thing. Why in the world would we disobey? And yet we do. And we find ourselves in this wild position. And guys, that's where we start this story. That's how this story starts. Turn with me to Jonah chapter 1. And here's the first three verses. It says, The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Ametai, and he said, Go to the great city of Nineveh, preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. First three verses, and already we've got major problems. Okay? The spiritual leader of the nation of Israel, the prophet of the Most High God, has in verse 3 rebelled against God's command and did the very opposite thing of what God was telling him to do. It should stand out to you that the writer doesn't really mess around. He doesn't give us this context of what Jonah was doing and how his life had been in the years leading up to this. It just jumps right in. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, he understood it clearly, and he goes the other way. The good news is we're probably hearing this from Jonah's own words. So apparently Jonah likes to get to straight to the important stuff. When you try to figure out who wrote the book of Jonah, the only one that really could write it was Jonah. And uh and so we end up with this idea of Jonah, he doesn't uh make himself look like the hero in the story. In fact, if you're familiar with it, he's the villain almost throughout. He's the one that's supposed to have the right heart, and he's the one that is constantly on the wrong side of the page here. Um so we get back to the story. Jonah ends up on this ship, headed away from Nineveh and away from the calling that God put on his life. And I was gonna ask you, what was Jonah thinking? What in the world? If this guy is the spiritual leader of Israel, he knows who God is, he understands it fully, how can he possibly do the opposite of what God told him to do? What has to be going through his mind for him to think, you know what, maybe God's asleep. I'm just gonna sneak out the back door, I'm gonna head this other way. Maybe he won't notice. Alright, this is the God. Well, maybe he didn't realize how strong or powerful God was. Maybe God at that point to him was just a uh a nice thing that really had Israel's best interest, and maybe Jonah had reduced God to just being the tribal deity of the Israelites. Right? Just like the other nations have other gods, maybe God is just the God of Israel. At this point, it's really hard to understand how Jonah can make this decision, and yet he does. Can you outrun God? Have you tried? Should you try? Yeah. It doesn't really ever go well. And this story is one that makes it most evident. So we keep going. Verse 4 says, Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own God, and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. So now we get new characters. We have these sailors. Who are these sailors? We never get a name. We don't necessarily know a lot about them, but we do know that they're pagan. How do we know that? Because they called out to their own little g gods, right? It's clear there that they're worshippers of something other than the God of Jonah. And it says that these sailors, uh, I when I hear the Jonah story, the sailors often get overlooked, but it's really a highlight of this first chapter. And I actually want to tell you that this first chapter I think exists because God wants us to show how much he cares about even the sailors in the world. Even the small groups, the unknown, the unnamed, the ones that don't really have a role to play, are very much the point of this first chapter. It also reminds me in this Joseph's of the Joseph story. You might think of Genesis 50, verse 20, when Joseph was talking to his brothers after his father passed away, and they were really afraid because they had done Jonah harm, and now they thought maybe since dad's gone, Jonah's uh Joseph's not going to be nice to them. And Joseph said to them, What you intended harm to me, God intended for good to accomplish what is now being done for the saving of many lives. You think about how God uses difficult circumstances in the lives of some people to impact and change and even bless the lives of others. And so sometimes the same action has both blessing and tragedy in the same way. And so you get this picture that God, uh Jonah might consider this a negative experience at this point. Right? God told him to go, he's fleeing from God, and now there's a storm threatening the lives of the sailors. So Jonah intended to run from God and his mission to the Ninevites, but by running the other direction, he ran into these sailors. Another wild element of the story is the redemption and faith of these sailors. They act in ways that Jonah should have acted. But let's keep going. So Jonah had gone down below the deck. This is verse five. He laid down and fell into a deep sleep. And the captain went to him and said, How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Notice God is a small g again. Call on your God. Maybe he'll take notice of us and we will not perish. I love this. Look at the faith of the captain. They have their faith in these little g gods, right? And they're expecting and hoping, against all hope, that maybe their gods can act on their behalf and calm this storm down. And so they wake up Jonah and they think he's gonna take care of this. What does Jonah know at this point that they don't know? Yeah, he may know that he's the reason. He may think, uh, this might be my fault. Uh this is not great. And if you're in that spot for Jonah, how do you think he's thinking this is gonna end? The storm is after me. Because I so we we we find out now, the sailors learn how to do this. So, verse 7, it continues. The sailors say to each other, Come let us cast lots to find out who's responsible for this calamity. So we've gone from call out to your gods, maybe it's gonna get better, to somebody, somebody's a fault here. We're gonna figure out who. So they cast lots. You know what that is? They basically assigned everyone a number, they threw some dice down, and whoever's number it landed on, that's the person whose fault it is. You guys ever uh played games with dice? Yeah, well, this game worked perfectly because the number came up to Jonah's number. Alright, this is another funny thing. Um the lot fell on Jonah. So verse 8. So they asked him, tell us who's responsible for making all this trouble for us. What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? And Jonah's like, all right, the game's up, right? I've been busted. He knows what they don't know. And honestly, he probably is stuck in it. He doesn't know what to have what's gonna happen next. So in verse 9, he answers, I'm a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Now, given their circumstance, he might have left out the part that had made the sea, right? Have you ever left out pertinent information because it makes you feel better? Well, Jonah just throws it all out here. I'm the I I worship the Lord God of heaven. Heaven who made the land and the sea. And uh and it makes me really again funny because it terrifies them. Look at verse 10. This terrified them, and they said, What have you done? And in parentheses, you can they tell you that he gave them a little more information earlier. They knew he was running from the Lord because he had already told them so. So here's this again. Jonah in this desperate act confesses that he's running from the God who made everything, and that he's the one that has brought this storm upon them. If you're the sailors, how are you feeling? Your life is at risk? They've already thrown the cargo over, whatever money they might make from this voyage is gone. Right? They're just holding on for dear life, hoping that they can see another day. They've already cried out to the gods that they worship, the ones that they devoted their life to, the ones that they think that they can appease in some way, and those gods have shown themselves uh impotent against the storm. And so uh it keeps getting worse. Verse 11, it says, the sea was getting rougher and rougher, so they asked him, What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us? And Jonah, he says this in verse 12 pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm. I know that it's my fault that this great storm has come upon you. Jonah at this point realizes that there's no escaping his fate. Running from God, the God that made the land and the sea, has been a very bad plan. Jonah realizes he's doomed. This is the end. Consider with me that there's really no way to survive this. If they throw him overboard, what's the clear end? He dies, he drowns, he gets the justified result of his rebellion, as far as he's concerned, right? At this point, he's doomed. And then and all he's thinking about is I guess I shouldn't take them all down with me, right? And so things have gotten really bad. There's no way this is end well. But now the sailors have a problem they didn't expect. If we are gonna throw the servant of the Most High God overboard, then what if God holds us responsible for his death? And so they said, this answer is not gonna work for us. And then look at verse 13. It said, instead the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man. Lord, you have done as you pleased. Again, look at their faith. Look at this prayer. Look at what it says about what they now believe about the God that made the land and the sea. These sailors exhibit far greater faith in this prayer than Jonah has at any point in this story up to this time. This is a God that they've just recently become aware of, and they're terrified of him. And even with that, there's respect and joy and there's faithfulness. And think about what God has done to find these guys. He called his servant to go to Nineveh, and Jonah went the other way. Was that an accident? Did that happen outside of what God knew was gonna happen? No. So what Jonah intended to be an escape was another mission plan of God. If God had told Jonah, go get on a ship, go to the other direction, and then I'm gonna send you to Nineveh, we don't know how that would have gone, but probably not well. But here in this instance, we see that Jonah, in the middle of this rebellious act, ends up showing the love of God to people who were far from God. They started by worshiping their own gods. But Jonah's God, a foreign, unknown God, had come powerfully into view. So verse 15 continues, they took Jonah and they threw him overboard. And look at this line: the raging sea grew calm. Are there other places in scripture where raging seas grow calm? There's only a couple, right? Jesus at the storm. There's this uh time with Elijah where there's loud noise and God says, I'm I'm not in that storm, I'm I'm just still small voice. Like there's these places where we see throughout the scriptures that God has power over um natural disasters, the natural world that we we interact with. And this is one of those unique places, and it was so overwhelming that look what happened to these to these uh to these sailors. I've I skipped it here in my notes. I think it's on the screen. It says they greatly feared the Lord and they offered a sacrifice to him and made vows to him. What does the vows to him mean? This is an Old Testament version of a of a conversion story, right? They they become followers of God most high because of this wild interaction with the storm and the sea and with Jonah and with the God of Jonah. It's remarkable that these sailors were forced to obey Jonah's advice, and it's amazing that as a result, the sea grew calm in front of their eyes. They feared the Lord and they offered a sacrifice to God, and they made vows to him. There's so much about this. I cannot overstate how much God wants to be known by people who are far from him. There are verses throughout the scriptures that God wants to use his people to make his name known among those who are far from him. In fact, some might say it's his primary purpose when you get to verses like Genesis chapter 12, 1 through 4, where God is calling out this man Abram. And he says to him, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. And he says, All of the families, all of the nations of the earth will be blessed through you, Abraham. Later it says that the blessing of Abraham would be as fruitful as the stars in the sky, the sand on the seashore. The scope of God's people is that they would make him known throughout the entire world. And this is one of those little evidences where God is very willing to make his follower, Jonah, experience what we might think as very difficult things in order to take the heart and love of God to the lost. Is it okay that God would wreck Jonah's perfect world to take the gospel to some sailors? Jonah didn't think it was okay. In fact, the calling wasn't just to these sailors, it was to a whole city, to the Ninevites. And he went the opposite direction. Are there moments in your life where you know God's saying something to you and you just don't want to do it? How do you walk that path? How is it that we can throw off so easily that this powerful God loves us and has made a way for us to be in close relationship with Him, and yet, in the middle of all of that knowledge, we can discard it so quickly when we don't want to do the things that He's called us to do. Church, this whole book, all four chapters over the next four weeks, focuses on that question. What do you do when you know the voice of the Lord? And it doesn't tell you what you want to hear. You see, in Jerusalem and Israel in that day, they had they had a they had a relationship with God that they were extremely comfortable with. He would give them some uh blessings in this particular time, they would extend their barrier, their boundaries, they would make them wealthy, it was a prosperous time, they were happy with God. But when things weren't happy, they had guilt and they were trying to figure out how to make things work. Well, guys, how often are we in the same spot where we have a very comfortable relationship with God? He is perfect for us. We come and sit in the sanctuary, we hear the sermons, we feel happy, we feel good about it, and as long as things are going really good in our lives, we feel that God is for us. But if it shifts, something tragic happens, and we go through difficult times, then we wonder if God even cares about us. There are many times in human history, and even some happening right now. You know that there is a, we've been praying for the country of Iran for a few weeks. And as we've been praying for that country, we know that the fastest growing church in the world has been in that country underneath an extremely oppressive regime. So the churches are in secret, they're hidden. But in the last few weeks, they've been targeted, and many are dying. In the midst of that experience, how do they think and feel and understand God's love when there's when people are literally dying for their faith around them? How do they handle faithfulness in a moment like that? Guys, my goal here is not to make you feel guilty. My goal here is to make you feel loved. He loves us. He calls us, he's drawing near to us so that we can draw near to him. And even in the midst of this, we see the sailors come to faith and we see their faithfulness celebrated. They make sacrifices to God, they make vows. But what's happening to Jonah, God's followers, while these vows are happening, Jonah is saying his last prayers as he sinks below the waves. As far as he knows, he's a dead man. Before we get to that last part, I want to read to you this verse from 2 Corinthians 5. It highlights how God has commissioned his people to be sent on his behalf. This is Paul writing. He says, All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Do you guys know what that word means? Reconciliation is making what's been broken whole, making it right, right? It's fixing it so that it's now repaired. So God has given us this ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. Think about those sailors. And then think about Jonah. And he's committed to us this message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Paul understood that the God that loves his people, that Jesus himself has written a letter on each of our hearts. And as people get to know each one of us, they get to know Jesus. That's the way it's designed, that you are his ambassador. Jonah didn't get that. And even as we go through the whole story, it's really hard to figure out if he ever really does. But here today, you have an opportunity not only to draw near to God, but to be his ambassador, to work on his behalf in a world that desperately needs him. As we come down to the end here, I want you to know that our church desires to give every single believer that calls this their church home the tools to make disciples among the nations. We want every single one of you to know how to be equipped to love God and love others. We want you to see that your mission goes beyond church attendance. It goes all the way to ambassadorship where you walk out these doors on a mission. And that mission is to make him known to the people who you see every day. That's the task of every believer. And I want to tell you, like, we we cannot dare not to dare to be close to who God is. If we do, we actually end up in this room, this transactional relationship that if I do this, he'll do this. And that's just not a relationship. God has called us to love him with all of our heart. Uh in a few weeks, we're gonna be uh we're gonna be launching our witness campaign. We do this every year. We try to get you to think through who are the people in your life who are close to you but far from God. And this year we're gonna go as simple as we can. We're gonna ask you to think of one person, who's one person that God has put in your life that you can pray for between now and Easter. In a few weeks, we're gonna give you a little handout and you can put your name on it, and we'd love to pray with you, all those things. But as you think about how God has called you to engage the world around you, start asking the Lord, who's the one person that He's put close to you that you can pray for and in the next couple months share the gospel with? Alright, we don't want Jonah to drown, so uh let's go back to Jonah. The Lord provided, this is verse 17, a huge fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Now, I don't know about you, but if you were drowning in the ocean and a fish swallowed you, has your lot gone up or down? You think, whew, thank you, God. It's all better now. Listen, I don't think that Jonah thought he was gonna survive the fish. He didn't think he was gonna survive the sea, and he certainly didn't think that getting swallowed by a fish was gonna be a win. And so think about it. For three days, three nights, Jonah is wondering when is the end gonna come? And that's where the story stops for this week. And I want you to know this we serve an Almighty God. And it's easy to roll off the tongue, but it's a terrifying thing to think about. If he made the sea and the dry land and everything in it, then he's not one to be trifled with. On the one hand, it's overwhelming to realize and fathom the strength of an Almighty God, creator God. But on the other hand, how precious that he calls you his own. How precious that he draws near to men and women who are far from him, and he bridges the gap to build a relationship with them and calls them his own children, heirs according to the promise. He calls us his friends. And so today, as we come to the end of our message and we think about how we're gonna serve him and worship him, do not dare, not to dare, to draw near to this God who draws near to you. If you've never followed Jesus, today is the day to ask him to be king and Lord of your life, to put him in the place where he actually always has deserved to sit, as the one who sits at the top of your life, the one who can command how you live and where you go. That's the Jesus that we seek and follow. If you're a believer and you've you realize that you have a very comfortable relationship with God and that you kind of have taken him for granted, that would tell you that's something to repent of. Let him sit in that same throne, let him be the king of your life. The things that he's given you, your time, your resources, your funds, the time you have remaining, which we just don't know how much time we really have. Use it for his purposes, for his kingdom, for his glory. Hold nothing back. The risk is that if you don't, you might find yourself fighting against the very God that's called you. And it doesn't go well for those that run. Maybe you've been down that road for a little while. Maybe you've tried that out before. We're gonna sing a few more songs as we worship. But as we as we prepare for that, as we get ready, guys, take this moment and ask God to convict your heart. Ask him, ask him to show you what it means to dare to follow him with all that you are. Church, one of the most amazing things about this place is that God has given us so many men and women who love Jesus with all their heart. We have so many great examples within our congregation of people who are chasing after him with all that they are. And I tell you, it's not something that's impossible. We know that we're gonna be broken and flawed and messed up on this side, and maybe at times we're gonna feel like Jonah going against the very call that God gives us. But in this story, what's incredible is that there's redemption at every level. There's redemption for the pagan sailors, and there's redemption for the wayward follower of God that is doing the exact opposite of what he's called. There is hope. So today, as we worship, as we take this few minutes, ask God to lead you. Draw near to him and do not dare to turn away from him. There's going to be prayer warriors here at the front that will just be willing to pray for you if you want to come and talk. I'll stand here at the front if you'd like to pray as well. But take this time today to make things right between the God that made us and the God that calls you to be his own. Stand with us as we pray. Father, we ask that you would speak to us what only your words can speak. We pray, Father, that we would be like the sailors in the story. And that God, we abandon all things for you, for your salvation. We pray that we would not be overcome by comfort or by pride or by arrogance. But God, that we would dare to live out your calling in our lives. Father, be glorified to us in Jesus' name.