Sunday Sermon | Jonah: It Might Behoove Me to Be Heaved

What happens when you run from God—and finally run out of options?

In Jonah 2, we find the prophet at rock bottom—literally. Swallowed by a great fish and sinking in the depths, Jonah prays for the first time in the story. But this isn’t just a survival story. It’s a story about mercy, repentance, and the idols that quietly turn our hearts away from God.

In this message from Missions Pastor Chad Mason, we explore:

Why Jonah’s descent mirrors so many epic stories—and why his story is different

How the fish is not punishment, but mercy

What it means to cling to “worthless idols”

The difference between feeling sorry and true repentance

Why community is essential for lasting spiritual change

Jonah’s words remind us: “Salvation comes from the Lord.” Even in rebellion. Even in darkness. Even when we don’t expect to survive.

Scripture: Jonah 2

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Transcript

Welcome And Last Week’s Recap

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning. So good to see you all this morning. My name is Chad Mason, the missions pastor here at First Baptist, and I'm so excited to get to be with you guys again. This is two weeks in a row, and uh it's exciting. Exciting for me. Almost a clap. Thank you very much, right there. It really is fun for me to get to share God's word with you again. Uh and last week we talked about the first chapter of Jonah, and I entitled the sermon, Do Not Dare Not to Dare. And uh it was such an exciting time to walk through how God was moving uh in Jonah's life and how Jonah really didn't want it. If you remember the first chapter, it was is it's very much the whole thing is about Jonah's almost rebellion from God and uh and what he's trying to do to escape from God's will. And uh it didn't go well for Jonah. And uh we left on a cliffhanger, and uh today we're gonna live on a leave on another cliffhanger, but not quite as as dangerous as the last. Um thinking through this week, I really was trying hard. How do you how do you start with this idea that Jonah finds himself in the middle of this beast as we start today? And I started thinking about how many ways this this concept has been replayed and referred to and alluded to throughout history. And uh so just a couple of things came to my mind, and I wanted to thinking through the title of the sermon, I took it from a newsboy song, and uh it's like totally the opposite of C.S. Lewis, right? Um, and and so if you watch the Jonah Veggie Tales movie, like uh I don't even know, early 2000s, uh they had this really, really uh I found it extremely hilarious song that they wrote. Uh uh Newsboys wrote to accompany this, and I wanted to just give you this verse from it. It says this it says, I woke up this morning kind of blue, thinking through the age-old question, how to exit a whale's digestion. It might behoove me to be heaved to head out like a human comet, and then that someone speaks out. We don't want to say what rhymes with comet, right? And so our title this morning is It Might Behoove Me to Be Heaved. And uh I want you to know if you're stuck in a whale, this is a really important thing to think about. What's gonna happen and how are you gonna get out of it? Uh, as I mentioned already, this story has inspired thousands and thousands and thousands of connections and and uh and references throughout history. And I just want to mention a couple that you'll probably know from contemporary examples. One is is Pinocchio. Have you guys seen, remember this picture when Geppetto is in the middle of this beast that has swallowed him? You know, where do you think this imagery comes from? Uh here's another one, even more recent, the finding Nemo. You guys remember? They're just about to get swallowed by a whale. And this is actually the only example I can find where the whale was also benevolent and kind. Uh most of the other stories, the whales are vicious beasts that are trying to destroy. There's one more here. Even Star Wars couldn't get away from it. You remember when the Millennium Falcon is eaten by this space worm? Yeah, they have to fight their way to get out of it. Uh, this, you can find these types of uh references all throughout history, and I'll end with one more. Uh, the famous uh book, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, starts with this sermon from a pastor in the book telling the story of Jonah. And it's the it's the foreshadowing of this mighty beast that's gonna come up later in the story. And uh as you look through it, if you study a little bit, you find out that there's an archetype, there's a there's a there's a process, uh, a way that this story goes that is matched by almost all of these epic stories in history. And it starts kind of like this: it starts with a hero who finds some sort of refusal or rejection and ends up descending. And by the way, you find a lot of language that says he went down or he descends, and on the second part of the story, he arises and goes up. And you see that the way that these two things kind of work their way through this archetypal type stories. And so it starts with there's a refusal, and then he descends into a storm, into some level of crisis, and that that storm drives him into some sort of descent. Typically, it ends in confinement or darkness. And that's where the hero finds themselves in this uh, there's this word they call liminality. It's this transitional place where he goes from one perspective to another in this time of reflection, and then it moves on to this release. He gets out of the confined area and he begins to move with a new direction, and he's transformed. And typically in this type of story, the transformation results in a hero that does something significant, something substantial, something meaningful. Do you guys have you seen this track? You can kind of follow this track in every movie, right? In every single meaningful story, you have some sort of crisis that leads your hero into some sort of difficult place, and then they emerge victorious. Well, as much as that story has been replayed over and over and over, and and I'm not just talking about modern movies, we're talking about 2,000 years. The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest written pieces of literature in history, follows a very similar story where the hero is in the storm and uh and in the end he he conquers and ends up uh having some level of um success. But what I want you to see here is that the story of Jonah has had an impact. If this happened in 800 BC, just think about how many different ways the story has impacted culture every single generation, interacting with the story in some way. It's been replayed over and over and over again. But what's really interesting is that Jonah has some unique pieces that are just not found anywhere else. And a couple of things I just want to draw your attention to is one is Jonah's flight was not caused by some outside force. It's caused by his rebellion against God. That's a unique thing. Normally you have a hero who's doing everything fine, and then they end up falling into some level of calamity that causes this. But he causes the calamity on himself. He's the one that rejects and refuses God. So most stories end up with a hero in some sort of battle with this terrible beast being captured or some sort of unjust imprisonment. And that's just not the case here for Jonah. A second thing is the Jonah story, you have the fish acting in a charitable fashion. He's not the beast of all the stories that Jonah has to conquer. Uh, and many similar stories, the beast the the hero has to cut their way out or fight their way out of the of the beast, and that's just not the case in this one. This one, that the beast itself, is an act of mercy by a holy God. Jonah portrays the fish as mercy as God's mercy on Jonah. Uh, finding Nemo is the only one that copies this kind of uh benevolent beast. Uh the third thing here is that Jonah is not the hero of the story. He's a wayward prophet, rebelling against God's will himself. And so it puts him in a really unique place. So for all of the those references, all those allusions to the story, it's very unique. They don't copy all the pieces. And uh and so it ends up being uh very, very, uh, very special all in of itself. Um, before we get into the prayer, one more thing I want to talk about is is the historicity of this story. This is another thing. Modern day uh theologians typically think of it like it's a parable, right? Like it's a legend, almost like it's a fable. But that's fairly modern concepts. Uh, all throughout history, really, this is a wild thing, you should look it up. You don't find anybody talking about whether Jonah actually happened until after the 11th century. So think about that. You have all of Jewish history, all of the rabbis, all of the people like Gamaliel who would have taught Paul. You have Paul the Apostle, a Pharisee among Pharisees, you have these well-taught theologians early in uh in antiquity, and none of them question the history of this telling. They all just took it like it was just a just a story to be told. It's very different than Homer's Iliad or the Odyssey, where they're telling these big epic stories. They were written about the same time. I mean, think about that. Nobody looks at the Odyssey and says, this is a retelling of a journey that actually happened. Right? No one looks at Jason and the Argonauts and says, this thing where they're going against, they're looking for the golden fleece, this probably really happened. You know what I'm saying? There's these legends, but this fits completely different. The reading of it and the telling of it throughout history has been as if it was historical fact. I find that really interesting. They just accepted the idea that this guy rebelled against God, ran away, got caught in a storm, thrown overboard, swallowed by a fish, and ended up being placed back on dry land and went on his mission. There was no question of that until really modern day. And then the other thing I find really compelling is that Jesus himself quotes this story, mentions it several times in his ministry. I talked about this last week. Two times he references it as an example of Jonah's time in the fish as being a prediction of Jesus' time in the grave. And then the other time he says that the people of Nineveh will stand in judgment of the people of Jesus' day because they responded to Jonah's message, and the people in Jesus' life didn't respond to Jesus' message. And so it's an interesting thing. Jesus never questioned, did he really get swallowed by a fish? It wasn't even a question. It was just, we're going to use this story as an example, and he left the history to stand on its own. I'm not going to say that these points will convince you, but I want to tell you that these concepts of whether the science is plausible or whether the likelihood that this actually happened really weren't questions that were common until recently. It seems that throughout history people are able to accept that Jonah ran from God, he encountered a powerful storm, was swallowed by a fish, and was heaved back onto dry land to finish the mission at which he'd been called. There's a lot more we can say here, and and uh it's actually funny if you were to Google, has anyone recently been swallowed by a fish? You'll find there's a few examples. There was a guy that was swallowed uh while he was diving for albacore. You're gonna know that is like a some sort of clam shellfish. And he got swallowed, and his dad watched it happen, and for 40 seconds the guy was in this whale and got spit out later. And he uh he did he tells the story, it's a pretty wild story. And uh and you'd think this this maybe just is another fishing tale, right? Maybe it didn't actually happen. But a guy got wounded and beat up and spent a couple days in the hospital recovering from it. So, you know, you can figure out what you believe. And then there was another one that's all over the news. If you uh if you put it on YouTube, you'll see a guy got got taken in with his whole kayak and everything. And uh that one's on on TV. I'm saying that's it's on um on film, so you can see it. And uh he was only underwater for like 10 seconds, but uh he also has quite the harrowing uh experience. Uh they call modern-day Jonah's. If you get swallowed by a fish, you're gonna be automatically linked to Jonah. So here's where the story just takes such an interesting turn. We talked about it last week. It says that the very last verse of chapter one, that Jonah was thrown into the sea, and the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So chapter two opens up with this line: From the inside of the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. Let's pray. Father, as we open your word, as we look to see how you've moved throughout history, as we think about how you've engaged your people, in specific today, this one person, we pray, God, that you would speak to our hearts. That God that draws near to his people, God, draw near to us today. God, we pray that you would help us to hear your voice, no one else's, as we consider these words. In Jesus' name, we pray. I find it super interesting that throughout the calamity of chapter one, this is the very first time in the story that we hear Jonah talking to God. In chapter one, we heard God speak to Jonah, and we heard the sailors crying out to God. We even heard the sailor instructing Jonah to call out to God, but this is the first time we see Jonah himself speaking on his own behalf to the Lord. And so when we do this, we get to hear a little bit of Jonah's heart. So here we go. Uh it says, verse two starts with, He said, In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled around me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. You know, when you look at all those ancient tales of history, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, uh, they present the sea as this place of chaos, uh, this place of unbridled power. They they always talk about the sea like it's a divine encounter. Do you guys remember who uh who was the god of the sea in the Mediterranean area back in this time? Do you do you remember the name? I heard it. Somebody's been watching Percy Jackson. Uh it's Poseidon was the god of the sea. And and uh and so there was this legend that he was the protector of the sailors, so to speak. So when you talk about in chapter one, the little gee, they were calling out to the gods, it's very likely that Poseidon was among those gods that the sailors were crying out to on the first in the first chapter. But you think about this this chaos, this unbridled power. The sea was this place where you just the boats go out, and maybe they'll come back sometime. Right? You just don't know. It's it's uh it's this hidden and dark place, and uh, and there may be storms, there may be sea serpents, there may be these beasts, and so it's this big, unknown, legendary space. And so here when you see him saying, In the depth of the realm of the dead, I call for help. And you listen to me. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents they swirled around me, and all your waves and breakers swept over me. You get this picture that that that this the that Jonah is in the middle of what would be considered man's powerlessness, right? The the the world around him, nature is overwhelming, death is imminent, and the divine is the only hope you have. And that's this place where he finds himself. And I love this that Jonah seems to know right here from this point when he's praying, that his hope, the only hope remaining is in salvation. And I want to tell you, I don't think that he thought that he was physically gonna live through this. We talked about this a little bit last week. When he got thrown overboard, what was his expectation? He's probably gonna die. And when he got swallowed by a fish, then you go, whoo! Thank God, things are so much better now. Right? The only way you survive that is through miraculous intervention. Do you understand that? What's lacking in the belly of the fish that we need? Oxygen, air? I mean, you think through food? Yeah. I don't know how you might feel if you were the guy, the guy that got swallowed said it was like being crushed from all sides. You know, the guy just in the in the beginning of the esophagus of a fish, it wouldn't be a very happy place. And I know you get the picture again, in like Geppetto in the middle with the little campfire sitting on the edge of the boat. That's probably not the way this looked, right? And it's not like the blowhole is above the stomach, right? It's like there's this hole that's letting in oxygen constantly. If he was in the lungs, maybe, but that's not where you go when you enter the mouth. Right? So though, so there's an interesting thing. He finds himself in the worst possible scenario, and I want to make the case that I don't think Jonah expected to live through it. As you read through this prayer, you keep that in mind. He also places the blame for his predicament on the one that made the fish and the sea in the dry land. Look at that again. He says, he says, You hurled me into the depths. All your waves and breakers swept over me. Notice who he's speaking to about the controlling of the sea and the controlling of the fish. He realizes, remember, he said this to the to the sailors last week, that he worships the God that made the sea and the dry land. He realizes that God is the one that made all of this. And so what he has, his life and everything remaining, is all in God's hands. He sees the entire circumstance as relating to God's handiwork, from the storm to the drowning to the fish itself. It's all the Lord's. It's God's hands, it's God's will, it's God's power, it's God's waves, and it's even God's fish. It's all his. So you continue in verse 4. It says, I have been banished from your sight, yet I will look again toward your holy temple. This is you have banished me, but I'm gonna look towards you, right? You get this picture. The engulfing waters threatened me, and the sea, the deep surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down, and the earth bowed barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. Again, do you see the counter words? Down, down, down. He's at the descent now, he's at the bottom, at the very base of the mountains. And then he says, The Lord brought me up, right? You start to see the up, the ascent, the hero's ascent to some degree. Notice in verse 6 that Jonah's hope of deliverance is gone. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth barred me in. Look at that last word. Forever. Forever. He does not expect to survive this. But the Lord is able to save even from within the fish. Look at verse 7. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer. Here we go. Rose, there's another up, rose to you, to your holy temple. In the midst of this terrible end, he says that God hears his prayer. In the midst of his desperation, he turned his heart and his prayers to God. And the source of his current circumstance is also the only one that can save Jonah. But I want to note again that his prayer is hopeful that he can be saved, but he's not asking for physical deliverance. Do you notice there's no point in here where he says, Deliver me from the fish's belly? There's no point in here where he is asking. He doesn't expect to survive this, but he is hoping that he can be with the Lord when he dies. Do you get what I'm saying? He's hoping that in the midst of his rebellion he can be forgiven from his rebellion and that when he dies, whatever moment that comes, that he'll be able to be safe with God in the future. Do you see that with me? His hope is in his salvation, but not necessarily in his physical deliverance. And I want you to I want to highlight this. This is verse 8, and I think this is the key verse in this whole section. It says that those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them. And here as we see this, this heart of Jonah's prayer, I want to take a minute and walk through this. And I find it very interesting. It almost feels like a complete pivot, a complete change of pace. He's talking about the sea, he's talking about being down, he's talking about turning his eyes towards the Lord. And then he says that those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love. So let's take a second. Who is he referring to? Is he talking about people who literally have idols in their home? Is he talking about, let's just say, the sailors? They mentioned lower G gods. They worshiped other gods. Is he talking about the sailors, that those who cling to worthless idols forfeit God's love for them? Is it the sailors he's talking about? Or maybe maybe you might think it's the Ninevites. The Nineveh, we know that they're terrible, terrible heathens. They're pagans who are far from the God of Israel. I don't think either one of those people are who Jonah's talking about, because the example of the sailors is they turned to God. Jonah turned away from God, but the sailors turned towards God. So they'd already turned away from their idols. And so the question here is: what idol is Jonah speaking about in reference to himself? And what does it mean to turn away from God's love? This is a deep theological statement. Basically, Jonah's making the statement that idolatry is a form of exclusion, self-exclusion, from God's relationship, from God's forgiveness and his mercy. That if you turn away from God and you turn towards something else, that you automatically remove yourself from the love that God has given you, the hope that he has for you. If you take yourself out of God's will, then you forfeit God's direction in your life. Do you see that? This is a big deal. Now, somebody might say, well, does that mean you can lose your salvation? That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about how we turn towards God or away from God and how it impacts everything from our affections to our behaviors. So when you get these contrasts of down, down, down, and up, up, up, you're seeing the contrast is constantly being played out throughout this whole book. And so here, I want to pose to you what is the idol that Jonah is struggling with? And I want to tell you, it's not a physical one. Jonah's not one of those guys. Like if you travel with me in different parts of the world on a mission trip, we go to some places where idolatry is very common. You get in a taxicab and they have the little idol on the front, and it's the guardian idol for taxicab drivers, you know, or or uh you go to some places in Latin America and you'll find there's uh saints. You pray to this saint for certain things. And it just feels very, very much like you might think of when you think of an idol. You know, some handmade little thing that represents a God. But that's not what we know Jonah doesn't have idols. Why do we know that? Because the Old Testament prohibited Jews who followed God to have any kind of idols in their homes at all. So if he Was a spiritual leader for Israel, he for certain did not have handmade idols. So I want to pose to you that this is an idol that's not visible. This is an idol in the heart. This is an idol of the heart. I want to tell you that Jonah is admitting that his rejection for God's love in order to follow what he thought was a better value has become such a thing in his life that he says it was an idol that removed him from the love of God. I think that we probably, like Jonah, don't have idols in our homes. I think if I was to visit your living room, I probably wouldn't find shrines on your mantle towards God's, or, you know, if you go to Thailand, you go in the back, there's a whole little shrine in the backyard to kind of protect the ancestral gods. I don't think we're going to find that in many or any of your homes. But I do wonder what idols we have in our heart that prevent us from doing the very things that God is calling us to do. Issues in our life that tempt us or cause us to disobey what we know God has clearly said to us. And so this gets us to an uncomfortable question that we have to face. If we're looking at this story, looking at this book, and it has to be what are the idols that you face? What are the things that daily tempt you to disobey the clear leading of God in your heart and life? For Jonah, and we'll find out later in the story, it's his hatred of the Ninevites. We'll let Jason speak to that in the next few weeks. And it's such an incredible part of the story is that Jonah was so frustrated with what God was planning to do for them, he didn't want to obey God. And I would tell you that I expect we all have something very similar to deal with. Whatever it is, when we choose to love, covet, worship, or idolize anything other than God's desire, we turn away from God's love. This is the madness of the story. The prophet who represents God to the Israelites is the very one rebelling against God and putting his own needs in front of God's needs. And I wonder how often do we do the same? Let me give you an example. There's a verse that we've read, and I'm the mission's pastor, so I've read to you so many times. You probably, when I step up here, expect that you're going to hear this verse from me. And if I asked you, someone would tell me. But here's how it starts it's in Matthew 28, starting in verse 18, it says, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. This is Jesus speaking. It says, Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey all that I've commanded you. He says, For I am with you always to the very end of the age. What do we call that? Yes, the Great Commission. We believe it's for all believers, for all of time, and that we all have a role to play in it. And yet, if I ask you, how many of you feel and believe that you've made disciples? People get real nervous real fast. And I want you to be clear that this command is not just about making disciples, it's about making disciples who do what? Make disciples. So it's not just helping someone become a believer, it's helping them become a believer who can make new believers. Right? Go and make disciples is a command that we would spread the gospel throughout the world that we have access to and beyond. Right? Because the people who we share it with would then share it and it would continue out, generational growth going out until all of the nations here, until all the peoples of the world have access. And even today, we're far from meeting that simple command that Jesus gave us 2,000 years ago. So I don't want to be too focused, but that's just one example of a place where we know God's clear command, and yet I bet we all have reasons why we're not pursuing it with all of our heart. Right? That's just one example. I'm sure that there are others, and maybe God is speaking to you about other things that God's commanded you that you maybe don't want to do. But what we find in Jonah is that, praise God, even in this state of rebellion, Jonah realizes that God will still forgive him if he repents. And I want to take a minute and talk about that word repent. What does repent mean? Does it mean to say you're sorry? I mean, that's probably an interesting and good part of it. To be, to, to feel bad about what we've done, to say that we're sorry is a meaningful thing. But there's an action that's connected to repentance. And what's the action? The action is to turn away from your sin and pursue the things that are right. It doesn't mean just stop doing bad, it's to start doing the good thing. Right? You turn away from the bad thing and you start doing the good thing. And so I find this particular part in our story funny. Because Jonah is extremely, extremely, uh, what's the word? Penitent. He's I'm so sorry, God. I I have done wrong and I'm gonna make it right. Look at the rest of it. He says, but I was verse 9, but I with shouts of grateful praise, I love it, from the belly of the fish, will sacrifice to you, God, what I have vowed I will make good, I will say, salvation comes from the Lord. He is so bold about his newfound faithfulness. He's not gonna be stuck in that same rebellious place anymore. He's so until the moment that I die, Lord, I'm all yours. Do you guys see the strength of his words here? And then God, being the God that is so amazing, surprises Jonah in the most amazing way. And in verse 10 it says, The Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. And I have to just, I cannot imagine what was going through Jonah's heart and mind. Right? For a couple days now he's been stuck in this fish. It's uncomfortable, it's horrible, it's the worst of the worst. There are a number of pastors who've talked about what he might have looked like when he exited three days of the belly of the fish. You know, like the acid might have bleached his skin white and taken all the hair off of his body, and maybe his clothes would have been tattered or if there at all, you know. And he gets spit out onto the beach, and there's two things that happen. One is he's alive. You can't skip that. But two is that he did not expect to be alive. So what happens next? Like, oh, I still have to go to Nineveh. Like, this moment when he realizes I'm not dead. The mission continues because you find out in chapter three and four that he's miserable, he still hates the Ninevehes. All of his incredible vow, God, I will be yours until the moment that I die. You will find it's all it's all words. And you find his heart is so messed up in the next two chapters that you just wonder, did he really learn anything from chapter one? I don't want to give you the end of the story. It's a fantastic end. And it leaves a hanging question that we all have to answer, but we're gonna stick with the question we have in front of us today. God sustained Jonah and he lived to tell this amazing tale that has been, again, capturing hearts and imaginations throughout history. But he also lived to do something else, to complete the very mission that God originally gave him. And Jonah still struggles with it. So I want to ask you: when you come to a church and we we hear the Lord speak to our hearts, and maybe even He convicts us of some area of sin, and we say, Lord, we're gonna lay it down. It's yours from this point on, and I'm not gonna do it again, and we walk out these doors. Guess what? Then your repentance becomes real. Have you actually turned away from it? Or is it something that you just meant? Was it a happy thing you said, but you don't have the ability to follow through with it? Because I think that's where we find ourselves, I think in American Christianity, extremely often. We find ourselves with all the right heart, but none of the right ability to do the very things that God has called us to do. And it paralyzes us, it puts us in a place where we're not sure what to do next. Where do I go? Because here I am in the same place, struggling with the same sin, and I don't know what God's gonna do about it. Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them. I believe there are many idols of the heart. Many things that that the enemy uses to capture us and turn us away from the very things that God has for us. And I think it's a very interesting place that we find ourselves. We we're not in the same dramatic position as Jonah being stuck in a in a whale where they're behooved to be heaved. And yet in so many moments, we're in that position where we desperately need real change. We desperately need God to help us get out of a situation that we've put ourselves in. And it puts us in a hard place. How do we turn away from our sin and receive God's limitless forgiveness? How do we do as Jesus called the crowds, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand? How do we draw near to the God that is drawn near to us? Over and over and over, we find these commands where Jesus calls his people to specific obedience, specific actions, specific ways in which we can make God known in us and through us. We talked about it last week, right? Actually, it was Wednesday night where I said that the command of Jesus to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself. Those two things are super connected. And you realize if you study them well that you can't have one without the other. You can't love God and not love people, or you're not really God loving. And you can't love people if you don't know God because you have your motives all mixed up. We've got this position where God has made really clear to what he expects of his people, and yet so often we justify ourselves in not obeying. And I wonder how. And I wonder why. So, what do we do? We pray that God would heave us out of the situation that we're in. Maybe. I'm sure some of us have prayed those prayers before. Lord, just help me escape from this mess. Maybe you're in that position today. But I think far more likely is we we we heard the story if you put a frog in hot water, it jumps out. But if you put it in cold water and heat the water up, it'll stay there until it dies. Right? You've heard that before. I feel like that's more like the way we do this. We're not swallowed by a fish, but we sit in our sin and we struggle in it, we marinate in it, and it just kind of becomes more than we want it to be. And it's hard to escape it. So, guys, I would tell you, there's a couple things that God puts around us that gives us opportunity to escape. One is the community that we live in. God puts us in a relationship with others so that others can help us. They can lean on people when you're weak, right? They can hold you up when you're struggling, and that's why we have communities of faith that we can spur one another on to love and good deeds. Part of what we do as a community is we care for each other and we can help each other through hardship. But you can only do that if we're authentic with each other. We can only do that if you have people close enough to you that you can tell them where you're struggling. You can ask them to pray for you. You can have a relationship with somebody around you that you say, I just need someone to ask me about this specific issue from time to time so it can help me not struggle with it so much. There are lots of those kind of issues, and to list them would just be irritating for all of you. But I want you to know that God doesn't want us to stay stuck in the rebellion that He's called us out of. Right, we go back to this. Those that cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love. Would anybody in their right mind think that rejecting God's love is a good thing? Nobody would say yes to that. And yet we daily make decisions that turn away from God's will for us. And so I'm gonna invite the worship team to come back up. And as we start thinking through how we finish this sermon, how we finish this message, and we we think about how God has been calling his people to respond throughout the ages in so many different ways, I want to ask you, just take a minute and ask the Lord to reveal what idols have you placed in your heart? The things that stand between you and the Lord, the things that tempt you and and and and work to turn you away from his will. If you can identify what they are, and maybe it's just one today, just think, ask the Lord to give you one thing that you struggle with. Maybe it's the security that you have, maybe it's maybe it's pornography and dealing with with a sin that's habitual like that, or maybe it's something else, maybe it's money and power, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's some sort of addiction, whatever it might be, God says he wants to deliver us from it. He wants to be the object of all of our affection, our heart, soul, mind, and strength devoted to him. So, how do we do that? Ask the Lord, what is that, and then ask the Lord something else. Do you have relationships around you that can help you defeat the sin or defeat those challenges, those idols that you face in your life? The next few minutes as we sing, we're gonna have some prayer partners that are gonna come up here to the front. I'm gonna be right here in the middle. If there's something that you're struggling with and you want prayer for, we'll pray for you. The repentance piece in this room is easy as it can be. You can tell God before you walk out, I'm so sorry, Lord, I want to do things better. You can do that really, really fast and really, really sincerely. You can do that right here today, and I tell you, God will hear you. Even from the middle of the fish, he heard Jonah. But when you walk out of here, can you walk in that faith and not go right back to it? If you know that's a struggle, then you need to find people around you that can help you, that can care for you, that can pray for you and give you some strength, someone to hold on to. And if you don't have that, get connected to a growth group or a connection with friends. Be a part of this faith community more than just showing up on a weekend. Build relationships with the people around us and start to hold each other in this place where we can help and grow each other. So, two things for you to deal with as we go to prayer and as we go to worship. One is ask God, what is the idol that you're struggling with? And two, who are the people that can support you? And if you're not sure about either one of those questions, please come and pray. Let someone know. We'd love to help you get connected to community. And two, we'd like for you to know that God forgives you. Repent and draw near to the God that draw near has drawn near to you. Let's pray, Father. We pray, God, that in our rebellion, that our hearts don't grow calloused. That God, our hearts don't grow cold to your spirit, that Father, we hear your voice and we respond. Lord, we know that there are times when you ask us to do things that we do not feel capable of, that it feels impossible, maybe even feels ridiculous. Why would you call us to serve our very enemies? It does not make sense to Jonah, and it doesn't make sense to us today, Father. But give us the strength to hear your word, to hear your voice, and to respond with courage. God, help us to know the areas that that defeat us constantly, those idols that we carry that turn us away from your very love. God, help us to get rid of them. God, help us to know your voice, respond to you. God, help us to find community, friends, family. God, other believers that will help us stand strong and firm against the enemy's work in our lives. God, we pray that you would help us to know your love fully. That there be nothing that divides us from it. God, we pray that you'd be glorified. Be with us in these next few minutes, God, we pray that you would give people the courage to speak and respond to your spirit in Jesus' name.