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So welcome back to the 60 plus lunch. Last week we had a little bit of a different flow of things. We combined with the men's lunch. How many of you were here with the other 86 people that were in the room when we combined the two classes? That was a great, great time coming together. We heard from uh the CEO and president of Mentoring Men for the Master, uh, Mr. Brad Talk, who Thad Talk, excuse me, I got it backwards. And um Mr. Brad shared with us all of the work that that ministry is doing in Africa. Fantastic work. I believe we recorded that, and it should be available on the chapter and first part of our website if you weren't here to hear all about that fantastic work. So now we're back on Thursday, and if you've been participating in the uh the Bible recap chronological Bible study, you know that earlier this week we passed one of the, I guess it's fair to say, one of the most fun books of the Old Testament, uh, the book of Jonah. How many of you read through Jonah? And if you didn't read through it, how many of you are at least basically familiar with the book of Jonah? Okay. I was hoping I'd see every hand go up, but some of you never read the Bible, and I guess that's on you. All right. So today we're gonna do a little bit of, we're gonna do a little bit of concentration in Jonah chapter one here in a little bit, because Jonah chapter one is everything that happens pretty much before the big fish shows up on the scene. And you know, when we're reading Jonah, there is a tendency to speed through a lot of that because we all want to get to the part with the big fish. So, what we're gonna do a little bit later this morning is get into that, do some reading there, do some focused uh study on that. There are powerful messages just from that first chapter for us to pull out and apply to our lives. First off, let's go over what's going on here at the church. Last night we started our Wednesday night evangelism training uh in the sanctuary. Pastor Greg, Pastor Matt, and I ended up being pulled into it as well. We were all there in the sanctuary. We had, I want to say, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 people in there by the time it was all said and done, which is great for a kickoff. The good news is that Pastor Greg sort of gave a 3,000-foot view of what's going on. And if you weren't there last night, you should be able to come next Wednesday and plug right in without missing much of a beat. So that's Wednesdays at 6 o'clock meeting in the sanctuary. Something else that's going on with our team right now. Right now we have staff, volunteers, children, and students over in Siloem Springs, Arkansas, going to camp. And we got a report early this morning that there's already been one profession of faith in Jesus Christ as a result of that camp. So, you know, makes it all worth it. Continue praying for the kids, pray for the students. And you know, the longer I live, the more I think you need to pray for the staff and volunteers, maybe more than the kids and the students. Um, but just be in prayer for everybody who's participating there in camp over at Camp Siloem. Though they'll be coming back sometime tomorrow. It is nice that after all of the schedule changes and hiccups, and we're doing this and we're not doing that, and we're doing this other thing. Finally, we are back to our regular schedule for the men's lunch on Tuesday, the family meal on Wednesday, and the 60 plus lunch on Thursday. Everything's back to normal for now, we hope. Okay, you never know. God has a lot of things going on here at First Baptist, but everything should be right back on track. Hard to even think about this, but school is getting ready to start up again. And we are collecting school supplies for our outreach ministry, primarily on the buses that we run that bring kids here to the church on Sunday, but also to help out. There are toy wagons located by uh the elevator over here and our welcome area back over there. Yes, I am pointing in the right directions for a change. And they have cards there that show the type of school supplies that are needed. If you're out and about, you know what the best place in town is to get school supplies? Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree. You can get like lots of school supplies really cheap, and they're decent quality supplies over there. So if you want to participate in this, I'd recommend checking out Dollar Tree or some of the other stores around town. See what you can do to help a kid get the supplies they need so that they can better succeed in school this year. And you know, something we've been doing for the past three or four weeks now, uh it's at 10 o'clock on Wednesday mornings. We have a handful of moms that are volunteering to read to groups of kids. And we've had as many as almost 20 kids out there listening to a story being read by a mom. There is something special about hearing a live story as opposed to seeing it on a screen. You know? There's just something about that. And we have families that aren't even connected to this church who have been bringing some of their kids to story time on Wednesday. So if you've got grandkids, great-grandkids, and you think they need to hear a story, and mom wants to get out of the house for a few minutes or something, here at the church in the welcome area every Wednesday morning, 10 a.m. That's going to be going through all of July. And I think it may go for a week or two in August before school starts up again. Impact Weekend is coming up. Impact Weekend is for our first through fifth graders. Uh it's kind of like a day camp experience. They come here to the church, they hear about Jesus, they hear about church, they hear about growing uh closer to God, and then they go out and do something fun like jump on trampolines somewhere or uh or go check out the Nature Center. It's a really, really good time. And that's going to be on July 24th through 26th. There is a $45 cover on that because of all the places that they go to and the meals that are provided. That's actually a decrease in price from last year. And given that inflation has been going up since last year, we're pretty pleased to be able to have a discounted price for that. Okay, almost out of breath, and we haven't even started Bible study yet. What is going on? Alright, so talking about the book of Jonah, the title of our message today is The Man Who Tried to Escape God but only embarrassed himself. All right. Man who tried to escape God but only embarrassed himself. We're going to be in Jonah chapter one. The passage that I'm going to be reading is out of the New King James Version. Not a lot of differences in translation in the various translations out there on Jonah chapter one. If you have your Bible, invite you to open that. If not, don't worry. We will have the words on the screen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for this time of fellowship that we've had with one another. Thank you, Lord, that our friendships are anchored in our joint belief in you, Jesus, as our Lord and Savior. Lord, thank you for this meal. Thank you for the people who prepared it. Thank you for those who have given to our church so that we have that provision available to us. But Lord, we thank you because we know that every good thing comes from you, and that we wouldn't even be here together as a group if it were not for the work that you've done in our lives. As we turn now to your word, we turn now to this very famous story. Prepare our minds, our hearts, our spirits to hear from you. We remind ourselves that this word has been inspired by you, that you have protected this word from people that would want to remove it from the earth down through the generations. May the same Holy Spirit that resides in us take these words inspired by the Holy Spirit and do a work of supernatural nature in our lives. If our behavior needs to be corrected, may we receive that word. If we need to do something that we've neglected, may we receive that word. However you wish to use your word, Lord, we pray that we would be receptive to that message. And we pray this in the mighty name of our matchless Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. And God's people said, Amen. Amen. Alright, before we get into reading the actual scripture, let me give you a little bit of background on the man Jonah and the book that bears his name. First off, the name Jonah, translated out of the Hebrew, means dove. And when we think of doves in the Bible, we think that the dove is many times a symbol of peace or a symbol of the Holy Spirit. But you know, elsewhere in the Bible, we see that dove is used to describe something that is wandering around being silly. In the Old Testament prophet Hosea, chapter 7 and verse 11, God says through Hosea, Ephraim is also like a silly dove without sense. Okay? Now I don't haven't spent much time around doves, but I have spent some time around one of the doves' bird cousins. The pigeon. The pigeon. I grew up in Memphis. I saw pigeons all the time. I worked in downtown Memphis. They almost took over there. And you know the thing about pigeons or doves, birds that fall into this particular classification, is that they are totally oblivious to things that are going on around them. Many times they're kind of like sheep in a lot of ways. And so, you know, we know what the Bible has to say about sheep. It's both complimentary and insulting at the same time. We are all glad to be sheep under the great shepherd, but we also have sat through enough Bible studies to know that sheep are not exactly very intelligent animals. They have to have a shepherd or they will fall off a cliff, or what have you. And so it is when we see that Jonah's name means dove to the ancient Israelite who associated the dove with a silly, clumsy animal, it very well may be that Jonah's name isn't exactly a great compliment. Now, if there's anyone in here named Jonah, or you have Jonah as your middle name, that's not my fault that this is the way history breaks down. Okay? Another thing, the uh when we look at the book of Jonah, Jonah is mentioned in the Old Testament in the book that bears his name. He's also mentioned briefly in 2 Kings chapter 14. Jonah was a prophet during the reign of a king of northern Israel, a man by the name of Jeroboam II, who kind of fell in line with his namesake Jeroboam I, in that he wasn't really a great king. But the one good thing about Jeroboam II was that he listened to the prophecies of Jonah, and God provided mercy to Israel at that time by allowing Jeroboam II to expand the size of the footprint of the nation. And so we see in Jonah's ministry as a prophet, we have that which takes place in the book that bears his name, but we also see that he prophesied in a way that was beneficial to the kingdom of Israel. So let's get into Jonah chapter 1, verse 1. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare, went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Pause right here. From the very beginnings, the very first few verses of this book, we are introduced to the problem. Jonah is a book of a prophecy that hits the ground running. And so Jonah receives a word from the Lord. The Lord says, Go to Nineveh, speak to the people of Nineveh, because their evil has come up before me. And Jonah doesn't say, Yes, Lord. Jonah doesn't say no, Lord, but in Jonah's actions we see that he's saying, No way, Lord. And Jonah not only says no, but he hops on a boat at Joppa to go to Tarshish. Now, if we lived in Jonah's day and we were to receive from the map maker of Jonah's day a map of the world as understood by the people of Israel, the furthest point on the map away from Nineveh is Tarshish. And as a matter of fact, there's nothing further beyond that direction on the map than Tarshish. It's almost like saying, you know, if God were to say to us, uh, go to the state of Maine and speak to the people of Maine, and we were to say, No, Lord, I've got another idea, and we were to hop on a plane going to LA. Okay, it's just the complete opposite end of the country. Uh Jonah is getting not only away from his assignment, he's getting as far away as the knowledge of the world of his day will take them from the assignment. Let's keep reading. Verse 4. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. Then the mariners were afraid. Every man cried out to his God, and they threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. Pause here for a minute. I've lived in Fort Smith for three years now. I have gone through a few small storms with you. All right. There has never been a time when I thought that the house was going to come apart, but I imagine that some of you have been through some storms where you thought, well, this may be it. Strangely enough, uh, 15 years ago, my wife and I were in Arkansas. We had just adopted our daughter, and we were staying in a home in Forest City. Everybody know where Forest City is? Forest City is so small, it's easy to miss. All right. But we were staying in this house in Forest City, and a giant storm came up, and we uh and it was so bad that even though the Grizzlies were playing in the NBA semifinals, we gathered the whole family together to get into the bathroom in the middle of the house because the storm was really, really bad. I did keep the door open just a little bit so I could stare at the TV and keep track of the score. My wife hasn't forgiven me for that for all these years. Lightning struck the house while we were in there. Now, thankfully, it didn't strike the house in a way that did any damage to the interior of the house. But when the lightning struck the house, I did have that moment where I thought, well, here it is. You know, we we just adopted this little girl in time to be killed by a tornado, you know. And it was that type of a storm. You know the one thing that I wasn't doing in the middle of all that? I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't sleeping. As a matter of fact, it would have been pretty much impossible for me to sleep through that kind of a racket. And that was a natural storm, if you will. This is a great wind that has been sent by the Lord for the purpose of dealing with the disobedient prophet Jonah. When the Bible tells us that the mariners thought the boat was going to break up, I think that they, that's not hyperbole. I think they seriously thought we're going to die here at sea. How do I know they thought that? Because they started taking the cargo out of the boat and throwing it into the sea. You don't do that unless you think your life is pretty much over. Because when you pull in to the port without the cargo there, pretty much everyone there is going to be in danger of possibly losing their job. So they're throwing everything out. So not only do we have the storm, not only do we have the creaking of the boat, but we have all the noise of the men gathering the cargo, bumping boxes, what have you, and throwing it into the sea. Meanwhile, Jonah is just asleep. Asleep. God didn't put him to sleep. There was nothing in the description of Jonah's sleep to think that God was increasing his rest. Instead, this was a man sleeping. We don't know if he snored real loud. We don't know. But he's not hearing, he's not bothered by all the distress that is coming upon the boat. Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship. Those of you that know the story know that he's going to go even lower in the next chapter. Goes down into the lowest parts of the ship, lays down, he's fast asleep. Verse 6. The captain came to him and said, What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish. They said to one another, Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us. And so they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Pause here for a minute. That I rather enjoy the way that the King James and the New King James translates this. The captain comes and says, What's up with you, sleeper? You don't see that in many of the other translations. It's basically why are you sound asleep? My mom and my dad, when I was a teenager, used to say things like this captain is saying, What's up with you, sleeper? Saturday, time to cut the yard. What are you doing still asleep? The captain can't believe that Jonah is sleeping through all of this. You'll notice the captain says, Arise, in other words, get up out of that bed, call on your God, perhaps your God will consider us that we may not perish. You see, what the captain was doing, what every member of the crew was doing, because they thought they were going to die at any moment, was they were calling out to their various pagan gods, trying to find mercy, trying to find some way to escape with their lives. And the one man who actually has a relationship with the one God that actually does exist, the one man who has a calling to follow the God of the universe, the God who made the heavens, the God who made the earth, the God who commands the winds and the seas, that man is asleep in the bottom of the boat. Meanwhile, all these lost pagans are calling on their gods, trying to find some sort of relief from all of this suffering. You'll notice that Jonah at this point has not spoken up and said, Oh, oh, my God's the real God. He can do something about this. No, Jonah is so silent, in fact, that the The crew decides to go through drawing lots. Now, drawing lots can be done any number of different ways, but basically it's a process of elimination, right? You know, probably first you start off by dividing the crew in half, and you draw the lot, and half the crew, it's like, well, okay, the lot didn't choose you, so it's not you. And we got this group here, let's divide you guys in half, and so on and so on. And finally it comes to Jonah and one other man, and the lot falls to Jonah. Verse 8, they said to Jonah, please tell us, for whose cause is this trouble upon us? Now imagine as this is being said, the wind is still blowing. The boat still sounds like it's coming apart. Everything is not calm, and this is a hectic situation. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? What people are you? These questions are rapid fire coming at Jonah from different members of the crew, I think. Everyone, he is now the center of attention. Everyone wants to know what's going on here? What's happening? Who are you? Where are you from? Who do you worship? What's going on here? What people are you? Verse 9, Jonah said to them, I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. You'll notice here in verse 9 that the word Lord is written with that large L and then the capital letters O R D. When you see that in your Bibles, that is always a translation of the name Yahweh. And so Jonah says, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord Yahweh, who is the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to Jonah, Why have you done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Pause here for a minute. See, when they were back in Joppa and they were loading that boat up with all of that freight, and they were taking those passengers on, and Jonah paid the fare. One of the rare places in all of Scripture where there is a journey, and the phrase, he paid his fare, is included in describing the journey. We're going to come back to that in a few minutes. But apparently Jonah had talked up some of the crew, or the crew had talked to him, and he had shared with them something along the lines of, well, I'm a prophet from the people of Israel, and God has told me to do something, and I don't want to do it, so I'm going to the end of the earth to get away from it. Some conversation that carried the gist of that had already taken place with Jonah and some of the crew. Verse 11, they said to Jonah, What shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us? For the sea was growing more tempestuous. You see, now that Jonah is on the deck or wherever it is that they decided to cast the lots, now that Jonah is talking to the crew of the ship, the weather is ramping up a couple of more notches. The drama is not decreasing, it's increasing. It's becoming even more likely that they're not going to survive this trip. And so they say to Jonah, What should we do? Verse 12, Jonah said to them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that this great tempest is because of me. Nevertheless, verse 13, nevertheless, the men rode hard to return to the land, but they could not, for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them. Therefore, verse 14, therefore they cried out to the Lord, notice that spelling of Lord again, they cry out to Yahweh. This is the pagan crew is now crying out to the Lord Yahweh, and said, We pray, O Lord, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood, for you, O Lord, again, Yahweh, you, Yahweh, have done as it pleased you. And so they picked up Jonah and they threw him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord Yahweh exceedingly. They offered a sacrifice to the Lord Yahweh and took vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. We're not going to talk about the fish much today. Next week, be with us. We'll talk more about the fish. Let's go forward a little bit here. That's where we're going to stop our reading, right there at the end of chapter one. I want you to notice that when God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach to the lost people of Nineveh, the lost people of the Assyrian Empire, the lost people who were considered enemies of the people of Israel, when Jonah received that difficult command from God, Jonah simply reacted. You'll notice that Jonah did not stop and pray about what God wanted him to do. He did not study his scrolls to find out why God would want him to do this. Instead, he simply reacted. He didn't submit to the will of God. Instead, he simply reacted and left. Jonah abandoned everyone and everything to avoid God's command. And yet, this man was a prophet. Yet this man had a special relationship in hearing the word of the Lord. But what did he do when he was confronted with something that he didn't completely understand? Turntail and ran to the end of the earth away from where God had sent him. You know, sometimes when a person receives a direction from God or they look in God's word and they find something in God's word that they have a disagreement with, that they can't quite bring themselves to agree with, sometimes they'll get themselves busy with other things. They will run in another direction in order to get away from what it is that God has said or what it is that God wants them to do. Sometimes people will avoid God's truth on a subject so much that not only will they simply say, Well, I find this thing in God's word to be puzzling, or I'm having trouble aligning my thoughts with God's thoughts, and they'll reach a point where instead of being content to be puzzled, they will choose to think and act in the opposite direction of what it is the Lord has said, or what it is the Lord is calling them to do. Rarely do they run in the opposite direction after lots of prayer and lots of study. Instead, they are reacting, much like Jonah did. Book me on the first ship to Tarshish, rather than have to deal with what it is that God is calling you to do. When I was still working in the secular world before accepting the call to ministry, I received a call to ministry a long time before I accepted a call to ministry. You know, I really envy Pastor Greg because Pastor Greg has this moment when he talks about his call to ministry where he he has the call to ministry and the way that he tells the story, he reacts pretty quick. You know, he goes and meets with his family, meets with his mother and father. Me, no, with me it was years of going, oh, that can't be right. No, no, that that certainly, certainly, that's that's me putting on airs or something. I I haven't been called into ministry. I I'm I'm just can I'm doing good right here as a layman and I'm doing fine as a Sunday school teacher. Uh this call to ministry stuff, uh, I don't know. Matter of fact, when I got engaged, when Nicole and I got engaged, I had warned her a few months before that, saying, There may be this call of ministry thing going on in my life. I don't know. It's, you know, that's probably nothing that we need to worry about. Uh years passed between the call to ministry and answering the call to ministry. Now, to my credit, I did not book a boat to Tarshish. Okay? I did not run away from the will of God. But that could have been one of my responses. That was a choice I could have made. And a lot of people do make that call, not even necessarily a call to ministry, but maybe it's a call to teach a Sunday school class or to take a role of leadership as a deacon, or maybe it's a case of taking on a program or even something as important as joining the choir or working with the preschool kids or something. You know, the person receives that call from God to do a thing, and they're like, oh, go work with the preschool kids. I'll go see if Pastor Dave can find me to do something with the 60 plus. You know, it's people go the opposite direction in some way, shape, or form. Jonah is a cautionary tale in many ways about following that type of behavior rather than being obedient to what it is that God has called you to do. I mentioned earlier that Jonah paid the fare, that that's mentioned in the story, and it's it's rather, you don't see that in the missionary journeys of Paul. You don't hear a lot about, well, Paul paid the fare. Why is paying the fare such an important thing? Well, because what we see by including that is that not only was Jonah running away, but Jonah was spending his time, talents, and treasure in order to run away. Jonah was making an investment of money in getting somewhere else. I don't know what the fare was, but you know, go over to the airport and book a ticket for the other side of the world. It's going to cost you a little bit of money, right? And don't bother me with your frequent flyer miles. They didn't have that back then. Frequent boat miles. No, no, no. I mean, it costs money to book a passage to the furthest point away in the world. Jonah paid the fare. And it's there in the scripture. He paid the fare. There's more than just an attitude here. He is now making decisions about how to manage the things under his shepherding control in opposition to what it is that God has called him to do. Let's continue reading. So Jonah, he books the passage on the boat, and then to get, in some ways, I can't help but think that he was getting further away from God by going into the lowest part of the boat to find a place to sleep. He goes way down in that boat and he goes to sleep, and you know what? He doesn't have any trouble getting to sleep. Even though he's in opposition to what it is that God's called him to do, he is still able to get down into that boat and find a way to go into sleep, not just sleep, but a deep sleep, a contented sleep, an unbothered sleep. And he sleeps so soundly, in fact, that when God sends that storm, he sends that great wind upon that boat, that when the captain goes to wake him up, the captain is amazed that he's asleep in the midst of all that racket. Even in the midst of the creaking of the boat sounding like it's coming apart, even in the midst of all the noise that's being made by the crew as they're gathering up the cargo to throw it overboard. You know, one thing about sailors, they tend to not be polite when they're put to really, really hard work. We have an expression for that. It's called cuss like a sailor. All right? And don't, Navy guys don't come to me afterwards, all right? It's an old expression, all right? And those something, some things have not changed in thousands of years. And one of the things that has not changed in thousands of years is that when men are scared for their lives and they're called to do heavy physical labor, they tend to moan and groan and complain about it a lot. In the midst of all that, what's Jonah doing? Catching some Z's at the bottom of the boat. He is not bothered by what is going on. You know, a person who's running away from the will of God, a person who's running away from what God's word says about a subject. Sometimes they can deceive themselves in life to thinking that everything's okay. They can be so content with themselves, in fact, that they have no trouble at all resting, sleeping, relaxing, doing things that normally we would think God won't let them do that. How many times have people come to you and they're in violation of something connected with God's word, and they say, Well, I've got a peace about it. You ever hear that? Well, I've got a peace about it. They don't have a peace from God about it. They've just got the ability to go to sleep at night without being bothered. So could Jonah, in the midst of everything that was going on with him, even though he was living in violation and in opposition to what God had called him to do. Don't ever let someone saying, I've got a peace about it, even though you know that what they're doing is in violation of Scripture, cause you to second guess whether or not God's word is true. All right, let's keep going. The ship captain, the crew, they're scared. They pray to their pagan gods as the ship is coming apart in all of that wind. Meanwhile, Jonah is sleeping. They have to wake Jonah up and say, hey, Jonah, hey you, come and join us in praying. You pray to your God. Maybe your God will listen and spare us from what's going on. And then they cast the lots and they find out that Jonah's the reason that all of this is happening. You know, that pagan crew was acting more devout than Jonah was. They saw the wind tearing through things. They took what limited knowledge they had about spiritual things and they were practicing that. You know, it never says that Jonah prayed with them. You know? What we see instead is that Jonah, in a lot of ways, is being put to shame by the actions of this pagan crew. This pagan crew is acting more like it has a relationship with God than Jonah is. Sometimes God will shame a man or a woman who is one of his servants by showing them that even lost people are doing actions more in line with his will than they are. You know, if you ever get shamed by an unbeliever about something that you should be doing, but you're not doing as a Christian, that kind of shame stings a little bit more than when a brother or sister in Christ comes and points out a shortcoming in your life. Never think that God can't use an unbeliever to point something out to you about your own life. God can use whoever he wishes. God used a talking donkey to shame Balaam way back in the book of Exodus. God's used a few talking donkeys to shame me in life, and I'm joking on that. It's not a Mr. Ed situation or anything. But God's used some people that I thought had no business at all talking to me about spiritual things. Nonetheless, God used them to bring something up that I needed to pay attention to. We don't dismiss the speaker. We listen to what is being said and make the determination, is that true or is that false? All right? So Jonah had been silent about God up to this point, but after they drew lots, he is forced to speak. And he shares with them who he is, who he worships, and they connect with what he told them earlier about running away. And the crew realizes this is the person, this is the God that is causing the storm, what needs to be done. You know, the crew actually understood that things had to be set right with Yahweh God before peace would be established. Jonah hasn't made that realization in his own brain yet. Because if he had, he would have dropped to his knees and said, Lord, I will go to Nineveh. He would have dropped to his knees and said, Lord, I'm sorry, I tried to go the other direction. He would have dropped to his knees and said, Lord, forgive me. I have been rebelling against your command. Instead, what does Jonah say? You know, pick me up and throw me into the sea. Pick me up and throw me into the sea. It's not explicitly stated here, but it's very easy to see what Jonah is thinking. Jonah is thinking, I'd rather be thrown into the sea. I'd rather die than do what God wants me to do and go to Nineveh and preach. That is a strong level of disobedience. That is a strong level of resisting the commands of God. And this comes from a man who's not ignorant of the Lord. He's already been serving as a prophet of the Lord. This man makes a decision, I'd rather die than do what God wants me to do. Do we know people like this who would rather die than confess what God's word has to say about any number of subjects? Are we perhaps that person who's been resisting what God says, or we've been resisting what God has been calling us to do, to the point where we're almost there like Jonah, saying, I'd rather die than do that? Things to think about. The crew, to their credit, the crew tried to avoid throwing Jonah into the sea. It says they rode all the harder, but the storm got worse. And finally, they reached that place where they threw Jonah in. But you notice before they throw Jonah in, before they throw him into the sea, they all come together and they beg the Lord Yahweh to forgive them for what it is they're about to do. They are asking for forgiveness for what they're about to do. Jonah has yet to ask forgiveness for what it is that he's been doing up to this point. Again, the crew is acting more like believers in Yahweh than Jonah is. They throw Jonah into the sea. The Bible tells us the sea calmed. In my own mind, I can't help but think that it's like so many miracles of God that almost as soon as Jonah's head went under the water, the sea was immediately calm. I don't know, maybe not, but that's just the way that I imagined it in my mind. I want to give God all the honor, glory, and credit that I can. As the sea calmed, that same crew that cried out to God, please don't hold this against us, they began a process of growing closer to the Lord. We are told they offered sacrifices and took vows. What does that mean? Well, we know what offering sacrifices means. It means they took something that cost them something and burned it there as a sacrifice to God. But the part about taking vows is a little bit different. When a person took vows in the ancient world, it was more than just what we call making a promise. The idea was when you took a vow, you were putting yourself under something else. And so in many ways, they are putting themselves under the authority of Yahweh from that moment on. In our parlance today, we would say they got right with God. They got right with God. And when I say they got right with God, they got right with the God Yahweh of the Old Testament, the God of Israel. Alright? And so we see these men, these crew members, they take the action that Jonah is yet to take. They get themselves right with God. Jonah, meanwhile, is sinking into the sea, and that fish is there, getting ready to swallow. You know, the interesting thing we get out of Jonah chapter 1 is that Jonah's disobedience didn't stop God. Didn't stop him at all. As a matter of fact, the only thing that Jonah succeeded in doing was making himself look foolish, even to the eyes of unbelievers, that lost crew. And so to wrap things up today, I've got some questions for you. Is there any area in your life where you are disagreeing with God? Maybe you're disagreeing with something that's in God's word. God's word has a lot of difficult truths in it. Are you disagreeing with God about anything? Or perhaps you're not disagreeing with God about anything, but you know that God has called you to do something, and you are running away from the will of God. You're going in a different direction than the direction that God has called you to go. Is that going on in your life? Well, some of you have very interesting looks on your faces right now. I will not call out names. All right. Here's the third point. Are you spending time, talent, and treasure in things that you know are opposed to Almighty God? And then finally, how do the unbelievers in your life look at you and your relationship with God? Hopefully they look at you, hopefully they look at me, and they see us as credits to the kingdom that we have been called into. Or do they look at you and say, well, that person is actually one of the reasons why I refuse to become a Christian. That person is an embarrassment to the things that they claim to hold dear. That person is a hypocrite. That person says one thing and then they do something else. That person has never shown me anything but anger and violence and meanness in all the time that I've known them. They've never shown me a lick of mercy or a lick of grace. They never once came to talk to me about what they know of Jesus and how I can be saved and prevented from going to hell. I'm going to take the leisure of, I'm going to take two or three more minutes of your time to share with you a story that happened just this week on Monday morning here at the church. Monday morning here at the church, Miss Melissa, who works with us back there in the office, came to me and she said, Pastor Dave, there's a man who just walked up here and he said that he knows that God has sent him to our church to talk to somebody, but he doesn't know who it is that he needs to talk to, and he doesn't, and he hasn't said anything about what he wants to talk about. And I answered, unfortunately, with the first thing that popped in my mind, I said, Does he look sober? Why do I say that? Because we've had from time to time some people come in from off the street, all right. And and she says, Well, I don't know. And I said, Well, I'll I'll talk to him. And the whole time I'm walking up there, I'm just going, Lord, give me the words that need to be said and let me say them the right way. All right, because I don't know who this person is. I walk up and there's a man there. Never seen the man before, never met the man before. And I said, Hi, I'm Pastor Dave. How can I help you today? What can I talk to you about today? And he says, Well, I just know that I'm supposed to be here. I know that God sent me here, and that's all I know. I said, Okay, well, let's go. We found a place where we could talk confidentially. And he shared with me, he shared with me that for the past several nights he had not slept well because he had this impending sense that he was going to die and go to hell. Talk about a way to start a conversation. And so I said, well, um, all right. First off, I will tell you that if you do not have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you're right. Wasn't what he wanted to hear. And I said, You're right. If you do not have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then someday you will die, and someday you will go to hell. So let's talk about how we can keep that from happening. And I spoke with him. I had no trouble at all getting him to confess that he was a sinner. Had no trouble at all convincing him that there was nothing that he could do to get his way into heaven. And once we reached that place, I said, So since you can't do anything about it, and I can't do anything about it, and there's nobody that I can call on the phone who can do anything about it, we both agree that God has to do something about it, right? And he said, Well, yeah, I guess that's I guess that's right. I said, Well, God did do something about it 2,000 years ago. And I shared with him about Jesus. I shared with him that God loves us so much that even though we don't deserve to go to his heaven, he loves us so much that he sent Jesus to take care of this matter of sin once and for all. I shared with him that he had to, however, that he had to believe in Jesus Christ as a Son of God. He had to believe that Jesus lived a sinless life. He had to believe that Jesus died on the cross to take the place of him to pay the penalty for his sins. And he was nodding in agreement, smiling in agreement. Finally, we got to the place where I led him in what we call in the church traditionally a sinner's prayer type of exercise, where he confessed that he was a sinner. He received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. And he received the uh idea that Jesus had saved him and that moving forward in this life he had to follow Jesus as Lord rather than running his own life himself. And so we covered those ABCs of faith. You know, the accept, the believe, the confess. We covered that. And afterwards, you know, I shared with him, I said, look, you know, from this point moving forward, God is going to be changing you. He's going to be making you less like you were, he's going to be making you more like himself. That change doesn't happen easily. You get a lot of battles along the way, you're going to get a lot of temptations along the way. Devil was fine to leave you where you were, but now that you've been saved, he's going to get into your business and try to make life difficult. He said, Can I call you tomorrow and see how things are going? He goes, Yes, please. Now the man lived out of town. Doesn't live here in the River Valley area. He lives in another part of the state. So I wrote some things down for him to, when he got back home, to call churches in his town and tell the person who answers the phone, you know, that you did these things and all of that. Called him up yesterday, said, How are you doing? He goes, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I said, Have you made a connection with the church yet? Well, no, no, I haven't gotten on that. I said, get on that, you know, get on that. You're gonna face some opposition here. And when I finish this lunch today, later this afternoon, I'm gonna start calling churches in the town that he lives and sick them on him. Okay? Now I tell you all this, I tell you all this, all right, to tell you that there are people out there who are without hope. They are like those sailors on that ship that Jonah was on. They look around them, they see disaster, they know that things are not going to end well for them unless something changes. And it may be that God has put you in their lives to be the person who speaks truth into what's going on. But if you're someone who's running away from the will of God in that area, if you're resisting God's call for you to talk to that person and to introduce Jesus to them, the storm doesn't start to calm down, it just gets worse. All right? I don't know about you, but I don't want to be thrown into the sea and swallowed by a big fish. Alright? I would much rather drop to my knees and say, Lord, forgive me. Let me get on the right path that you've called me to serve or to do or to act or to not act, whatever it may be. Lord, let me align myself with you and do what it is that you've called me to do. Because, Lord, I can't change the situation, but I know that you can. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, if there's any area in my life, in our lives, where we are disagreeing with you, Lord, we pray a prayer of repentance and we pray that we would accept your will as wiser than our will. Lord, if we've been running away from you in some area, Lord, if we've been resisting some calling that we know is of you, Lord, we pray that you would break down that resistance and that you would find within us a spark that can be fanned into a flame to follow what it is that you're calling us to do, that we would trust you, that we would put our faith in you rather than in our own understanding. Lord, if we are spending our time, our talent, or our treasure in ways that are opposed to you, Lord, give us the steadfastness to call a stop to that and let us realign the things that are under our care, that you've put under our care, that they would be aligned with you. And finally, Lord, if there is someone in our life who is not a believer, and Lord, if you've called us to be an influence for you, an influence for good, we pray that we would correct our behavior and not be an embarrassment. And Lord, if you're calling us to speak to that person and to share the good news, we would pray that you'd give us the time to do it and the words to speak. And in all of this, Lord, we would pray that we would not try to claim credit for ourselves, but instead we would give you the honor, the praise, and the glory. Thank you, Lord, for this time. Thank you, Lord, for this group and for each of the individuals in it. Every single one, I pray that you would bless them in a mighty way today and in the days to come. We pray this in the name of Jesus our Lord, and God's people said, Amen. We are dismissed.