SPEAKER_02: Oh, thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just scan the room to see if I have any students in this place here.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: I always have to do that because every time I've come, I've always won, I've already ran into someone earlier that I've been a substitute teacher for.
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I just I'm so uh delighted to be here this morning.
SPEAKER_02: It's always an honor to come and to share with you.
SPEAKER_02: Um, yes, my husband and I have been pastoring, restoring lives for about 10 years, and uh we've seen God do some wonderful things, but it's always an honor to come, even though our faith traditions are different.
SPEAKER_02: I am Pentecostal, needless to say, that the love of God is the same, and the love for God is the same.
SPEAKER_02: And so I just want to um normally I know I try to do a little um intro beyond that, but just for the sake of time.
SPEAKER_02: And earlier I referenced this song, um, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, because it is a song that's been on my heart.
SPEAKER_02: And um, all this week it just reminds me of how great God's faithfulness is.
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm going to just sing the chorus of it, and if you know it, um you can join it, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness morning by morning I seek all I have needed thy hands have provided great is thy faithfulness Lord to me.
SPEAKER_02: There is no greater testimony that I can share than the testimony of how great God's faithfulness is to me.
SPEAKER_02: I once was lost, but now I'm found.
SPEAKER_02: I was blind, but now I see.
SPEAKER_02: So that's what you get to know about me.
SPEAKER_02: God is faithful.
SPEAKER_02: And so this morning I'm gonna, the title is I knew it.
SPEAKER_02: Let me make sure I got this on.
SPEAKER_02: And it is a phrase I believe many of us have used before, usually after the fact.
SPEAKER_02: Someone makes a predictable decision, a spouse or family member responds the way they always respond a hundred times before.
SPEAKER_02: And what do we say?
SPEAKER_02: I knew it.
SPEAKER_02: These words are rooted in experience.
SPEAKER_02: They are a pattern of things that we've seen before.
SPEAKER_02: We've lived through a similar situation, and that's why we say, I knew it.
SPEAKER_02: Hindsight connects the dots and confirms what we have suspected all along.
SPEAKER_02: And so I had an I knew it moment.
SPEAKER_02: Um, over the past couple weeks.
SPEAKER_02: I decided I could stain my own deck.
SPEAKER_02: And so I've painted rooms and areas before.
SPEAKER_02: So I did the little bit of research of how to prep the deck.
SPEAKER_02: So I got the deck all prepped, and I went out and I bought all the stain, you know, gallons of stain.
SPEAKER_02: And was staining, and after it was done, I looked at it.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, okay, it looks okay, but why does it look like it's too shiny?
SPEAKER_02: And why does it always people are asking?
SPEAKER_02: My families asked, why is it still wet?
SPEAKER_02: Come to realize that you're supposed to dry up the extra stain as you go along, right?
SPEAKER_02: And so I did not do that.
SPEAKER_02: So I have a shiny deck.
SPEAKER_02: I know there's ways to fix it.
SPEAKER_02: I ain't got the time for it.
SPEAKER_02: The deck just looks shiny right now.
SPEAKER_02: But here's the I knew it part, right?
SPEAKER_02: Is that I knew that I should have done the research.
SPEAKER_02: I went into it thinking I knew how to do it.
SPEAKER_02: And just based on my limited experience, it didn't work out that way.
SPEAKER_02: But I wasn't surprised when I saw it because guess what?
SPEAKER_02: If you had just taken the time to understand the application process, you would have been okay.
SPEAKER_02: And so, if anyone's looking for some semi-transparent chestnut stain, you can hit me up later on.
SPEAKER_02: I've got a few gallons.
SPEAKER_02: And so the prayer this morning is Lord to help us to just open up our hearts and our ears to what you are saying, what you want us to hear in your word, and not to dismiss what you are sharing and what you want us to receive in the listening this morning.
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm gonna be talking about Jonah, and before you I say another word, I should say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say I knew it, and this is why I know, because even though I may not go through the whole story, one thing is true.
SPEAKER_02: When you hear a certain name, a familiar story, you're gonna say, Oh, yes, you're gonna have your checklist.
SPEAKER_02: It's your Jonah was sent on a mission.
SPEAKER_02: Check, okay.
SPEAKER_02: He was out in a storm, check, okay.
SPEAKER_02: He was swallowed up by a whale or a big fish, yep.
SPEAKER_02: And he spent three days there, and then he, so we know the story, right?
SPEAKER_02: You already have that kind of checked off in your mind.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to draw our attention because the predominant theme in this account is not just about Jonah, it is about the great city of Nineveh and God's love for that great city.
SPEAKER_02: And so we know, we'll fast forward, that Nineveh is a great political city, it's culturally sophisticated, it's religious, it's got many gods, but yet the wickedness in that city got God's attention.
SPEAKER_02: And so in Jonah chapter three, we read that Jonah goes to the city and after God tells him, You still need to go, you're not you're not off the hook, and he goes and he covers the city.
SPEAKER_02: Took takes him three days to accomplish covering the city and sharing one message.
SPEAKER_02: One message.
SPEAKER_02: And the message is 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
SPEAKER_02: 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
SPEAKER_02: That's all he was saying.
SPEAKER_02: 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing, nothing spectacular about it.
SPEAKER_02: There's no PowerPoint, there's no definition of each word.
SPEAKER_02: It is just 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
SPEAKER_02: In our Pentecostal culture, we call that a fire and brimstone message.
SPEAKER_02: Because what we would say is if you don't repent, you're going to hell.
SPEAKER_02: And so here is the message that Jonah is sharing throughout this period of time.
SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
SPEAKER_02: The people believed God.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't a message to make them feel good.
SPEAKER_02: It was a message to make them repent and to see God.
SPEAKER_02: And they believed him.
SPEAKER_02: They recognized God's power.
SPEAKER_02: They recognize that God, what Jonas said, that God would do.
SPEAKER_02: And so they turned their backs on their national gods and their personal gods, and they demonstrated their turning away from their gods and turning to God by putting on sackcloths, sackcloths.
SPEAKER_02: They covered themselves in ashes from the king all the way down to the animals.
SPEAKER_02: King said, We need to you need to repent.
SPEAKER_02: We need to call out to God so that He may, maybe He will show us some compassion.
SPEAKER_02: And so they cried out to God, they clothed themselves, they were demonstrating what they wanted to do in turning away from their sinful ways.
SPEAKER_02: You see, one of the things we need to understand is that God's word is always on a mission.
SPEAKER_02: His word is a message on mission.
SPEAKER_02: And when God accomplishes the mission mission, so that people respond to him in a way that God desires, then God does not consider himself bound to punish.
SPEAKER_02: When God said, Let there be, and there was.
SPEAKER_02: But John 1 reminds us that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.
SPEAKER_02: And the word was God, and that the word became flesh, and it dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_02: His word is a mission.
SPEAKER_02: This morning, this word is a mission direct to your soul, to your heart, to cause us to reflect, to cause us to look, to cause us to think, to cause us to repent.
SPEAKER_02: And God will accomplish his word in our lives when we receive it in repentance, because it's easy for us to check out and say, I knew.
SPEAKER_02: I don't need to know.
SPEAKER_02: We all need to know.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, y'all gave me a lot of time.
SPEAKER_02: But here's what gets me in this story.
SPEAKER_02: This is what the story is for me.
SPEAKER_02: I forgot to change my slide.
SPEAKER_02: This is a slide on what they believed.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah.
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah said, basically, I knew it.
SPEAKER_02: I told you, God, that this was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02: What did he say?
SPEAKER_02: Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was sitting at home?
SPEAKER_02: This is what I tried to prevent by going to Tarshish.
SPEAKER_02: I knew that when that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, a God who relents from sending calamity.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah is saying, I knew it, God.
SPEAKER_02: I knew it.
SPEAKER_02: I knew that you were gonna be the person you said you are.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: I knew it, God.
SPEAKER_02: You don't show up any way different.
SPEAKER_02: I knew it, God, that you are consistent to who you say you are.
SPEAKER_00: I wish we would know it.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's frustrated that God is who he said he is.
SPEAKER_02: So much so he says, I wish I could die.
SPEAKER_02: Just in my life right now, God, because you're doing you're being too much like yourself.
SPEAKER_02: But what Jonah was confessing is what's been said about God.
SPEAKER_02: Years and time in the past consistently here in Exodus 34, when God was speaking to Moses, God told Moses to stay there because I'm gonna pass by you.
SPEAKER_02: And when I pass by you, I'm going to reveal to you who I am.
SPEAKER_02: If there's anything you want to know about who God says about himself, this is what you need to know.
SPEAKER_02: What does God say about himself?
SPEAKER_02: He said, The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.
SPEAKER_02: And you can read the rest of that.
SPEAKER_02: Nehemiah references the same thing as he's recounting the people of God, Israelites, and how they have rebelled against God, how they have turned their hearts against God in wickedness.
SPEAKER_02: But God is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02: Even though those things are happening, even though those are the way that God, God, they are treating you.
SPEAKER_02: They are not honoring your word, they're not honoring your righteousness, but you, God, are forgiving.
SPEAKER_02: You, God, are gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and abounding in love.
SPEAKER_02: The psalmist David said the same thing when he was referring to his own situations.
SPEAKER_02: How many of us have gone through so much in our lives?
SPEAKER_02: How many of us have encountered problems and situations and obstacles that you don't know how you're gonna get through it?
SPEAKER_02: But yet, what is so consistent about who God is is that he is compassionate, he is gracious, he is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_02: David said it when he recounts the trouble and the nature of the things that surrounded him.
SPEAKER_02: He reminded himself about the very nature of God.
SPEAKER_02: God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_02: This is true of God.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't change.
SPEAKER_02: But that would have been another sermon in of itself.
SPEAKER_02: But the best way I can define those words and that character of God is from John 3:16 and 17, where it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_02: God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
SPEAKER_02: You want to sum it up?
SPEAKER_02: Sum it up in that verse.
SPEAKER_02: So they believed God.
SPEAKER_02: And Jonah is mad, he is angry, and so he leaves, right?
SPEAKER_02: And he goes and he finds a plant that just so happened to be there, and he goes and he places himself underneath the plant.
SPEAKER_02: The scripture said that's the only time he was happy.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because the plant gave him some shade, he was feeling good, and guess what?
SPEAKER_02: He was just waiting to see what God was going to do, right?
SPEAKER_02: And so he's under that shade.
SPEAKER_02: And isn't it amazing, though, right?
SPEAKER_02: When we are in our moment, in our feelings.
SPEAKER_02: Come on now.
SPEAKER_02: We know when you're in your feelings and when you feel a little angry against God, that God still provides for you.
SPEAKER_02: Hello?
SPEAKER_02: We say amen.
SPEAKER_02: This is the only time you hear me say that.
SPEAKER_02: God still provides for you, He still answers, He still makes a way for you, even though you may have your heart turned against Him in a way, He's still there.
SPEAKER_02: Here is Jonah, and God is still providing shelter for him.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah gets up the next day, and the wonderful plant is gone.
SPEAKER_02: And he becomes angry over that plant that he did not tend, that he did not water, he didn't do a thing for the plant.
SPEAKER_02: And God notices his anger.
SPEAKER_02: You did not labor, toil, sacrifice, you didn't care, you didn't water this plant, but yet you are more angry and want to die because this plant is gone.
SPEAKER_02: Shouldn't I be compassionate towards the 120,000 in the city of Nineveh?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe Jonah had some insight that Nineveh was going to turn back from the turn back to their evil ways, which they did.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe he had that insight, right?
SPEAKER_02: Maybe because that's what the children of Israel, there's a pattern there.
SPEAKER_02: But don't you think God knew that as well?
SPEAKER_02: Don't you think God knew that as well?
SPEAKER_02: Don't you think when you come to God and you ask God to forgive you, or you ask God to help you, and you are sincere in reaching out to God and God ministers to you in that moment, knowing that a week later, a month later, a year later, you're gonna turn your back on him.
SPEAKER_02: Or you're gonna go in the opposite direction, or you're gonna revert back to the thing that you said you wanted to get out of.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, there's no one here like that.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, maybe I'm just talking to myself.
SPEAKER_02: We know God knows because he sees the past, the present, and the future in one glance.
SPEAKER_02: So he already knows, but yet his nature says that what?
SPEAKER_02: He is compassionate, he is gracious, he's slow to anger, he is forgiving.
SPEAKER_02: I love this quote by TJ Carlisle, and it says that Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking, and God is still waiting for a host of Jonah's to come around to his way of loving.
SPEAKER_02: Jonah's attitude reveals the depths of our depraved hearts at times.
SPEAKER_02: Deep down, we cannot bear the grace of God being extended to others.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna say it because I know it's true.
SPEAKER_02: Peter knew it was true because Peter said, Lord, how many times I need to forgive this person?
SPEAKER_02: How many times so I can have that number kind of etched in my mind, so when I reach that number, I'm done?
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Peter asked the question.
SPEAKER_02: And it's hard when someone's hurt you.
SPEAKER_02: It's hard when someone has taken advantage of you.
SPEAKER_02: It's hard when you've been emotionally or physically abused, whatever the situation may be.
SPEAKER_02: It is hard to forgive.
SPEAKER_02: When we can be here this morning, and I know many of you will not disagree that this country feels like Nineveh.
SPEAKER_02: Our state or even some of our communities feel a lot like Nineveh because of the immorality, the violence, the brokenness.
SPEAKER_02: People's hearts are so turned away from God.
SPEAKER_02: And we're raising our hands to God to say, do something, come quickly, God take out that person.
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, sorry, wrong group.
SPEAKER_02: But what I've noticed is that there's a sense of urgency in my spirit, and I've been feeling this since last year, and it continues to be this way, even more so as the year started.
SPEAKER_02: There's a sense of urgency.
SPEAKER_02: Concerning the last days.
SPEAKER_02: Don't you feel time accelerating?
SPEAKER_02: Where?
SPEAKER_02: It's July next week.
SPEAKER_02: Don't you feel time accelerating?
SPEAKER_02: It's going fast.
SPEAKER_02: Things are happening faster.
SPEAKER_02: And it reminds me of the last days.
SPEAKER_02: They are signs and wonders.
SPEAKER_02: There's things that remind us that Jesus is coming back.
SPEAKER_02: Saints of God, Jesus is coming back.
SPEAKER_02: But as we think about our country, our state, our communities, what about our homes?
SPEAKER_02: What about our families?
SPEAKER_02: What about the rebellion in your own heart?
SPEAKER_02: In 2 Peter, and I appreciate you reading.
SPEAKER_02: I know it was a long reading.
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate your patience through that.
SPEAKER_02: Peter was encouraging the saints not to forget what they had been taught, not to forget the teachings, not to forget what the prophets had said, not to forget what the apostles had said, because there were false teachers coming in and saying things that were contrary to what was shared, what was preached, what was taught.
SPEAKER_02: And he's saying, don't forget.
SPEAKER_02: But he also says that we need to remember that God's timing is not our timing.
SPEAKER_02: It isn't.
SPEAKER_02: We may feel like we have all the time.
SPEAKER_02: We don't.
SPEAKER_02: And Peter's response is the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understanding slowness.
SPEAKER_02: Instead, he is patient with you.
SPEAKER_02: Everyone say, God is patient with me.
SPEAKER_02: He's not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
SPEAKER_02: We often get caught up in our own concerns.
SPEAKER_02: It's so easy, right?
SPEAKER_02: We get in our little shaded areas.
SPEAKER_02: We have our little plants that we're under, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Sitting back, chilling, right?
SPEAKER_02: Everything's happening around us, and we just chilling.
SPEAKER_02: Yet we forget that everything is happening around us is calling us.
SPEAKER_02: We let those things overshadow what God has called us to do.
SPEAKER_02: What really matters to God is what we just see here.
SPEAKER_02: He wants everyone to come to repentance.
SPEAKER_02: He does not want anyone to be lost.
SPEAKER_02: And so that's why you'll hear a lot of us are preachers and a lot of, like I said earlier in Pentecostals, where you say you need to repent because you don't want to go to hell, where we're so direct.
SPEAKER_02: You say, Well, that may scare.
SPEAKER_02: Oh man, that makes me uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_02: It should.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you're being too direct.
SPEAKER_02: It should make you feel away.
SPEAKER_02: God's word is on a mission.
SPEAKER_02: And I know we can pretty it up and we can make it soft and we can make it feel like so it just lands so nicely in your frame of thinking and in your mind and the way that you've considered yourself.
SPEAKER_02: But God is calling us to pay attention to the things that are around us.
SPEAKER_02: I took my eye off of the clock.
SPEAKER_02: I should not have.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: I'm winding up.
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
SPEAKER_02: So this morning, maybe you don't know, or maybe you don't have a relationship with God, confessing him as your Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_02: And I know we did the prayer this morning.
SPEAKER_02: And this word is our mission to reach your heart because maybe you think you've messed up so much.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you think that God doesn't hear you anymore.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you think there's not a chance.
SPEAKER_02: I'm telling you, there is.
SPEAKER_02: There is hope in God.
SPEAKER_02: There is hope in him.
SPEAKER_02: He is gracious, he's compassionate, he's forgiving, he's abounding in love.
SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe this is the question I'm gonna end with this morning.
SPEAKER_02: See, God had a drop the mic moment when he said to Jonah, don't you think I need to be concerned about the 120,000 that are in Nineveh?
SPEAKER_02: And that was the end of the chapter, and we went into the next chapter.
SPEAKER_02: So here's my drop the mic moment.
SPEAKER_02: What if you knew it?
SPEAKER_02: And what is the it?
SPEAKER_02: You knew that the only way to each to Jesus is eternal life, who is the way, truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_02: That God is returning one day, and his reward is with him to give to each person according to what they have done.
SPEAKER_02: That's in Revelation 22.
SPEAKER_02: That heaven and earth will pass away, and only God's word will stand, that every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess, that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: What if you knew it and you did not say anything to someone?
SPEAKER_02: That's my message this morning.