God’s Ceaseless Priority for the Gospel - Pastor Greg Addison - July 12, 2026

Sermon from Pastor Greg Addison on Sunday morning, July 12, 2026.

Ministering to the heart of the Western Arkansas River Valley for over 165 years. Welcome to Chapter and First- the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church, you'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg Addison, our ministry staff, and guest speakers. Thank you for listening!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church. You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers. Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Turn with me in your Bibles, the book of Jonah. And as you know, this month we are really focusing, as Matt said, on uh our evangelism and our individual personal evangelism. So you have there on your announcement sheets the links to the uh Loveworth Finding EE training deal that we're doing. I want to invite you on Wednesday night. We had a great crowd Wednesday night uh where we were talking about um how to do evangelism. We'll be studying that on Wednesday nights. Pastor Matt and I are co-teaching that. Uh Bobby Dyer has also put that on our chapter and first podcast so you can follow along on those lessons. Even if you can't be there on Wednesday night, you can follow along on the podcast and so uh what those lessons are. So we'd love for you to uh join in and be a part of that with us. And really, why do we do that? Because God's ceaseless priority is always for the advance of the gospel to reach people with salvation. That's who God is, and that's what he does. That's his whole purpose, that's his whole heart. And you see this reflected all throughout scripture, but as we ran through the book of Jonah in our chronological reading, it's just an incredibly fascinating book that um that illustrates that point. First of all, it's it's a fascinating book. It it is it grabs our attention as children, because you know, you got like the whole whale swallowing the guy and living there for three days and all that. It's just way cool, right? Uh I mean, it's just fascinating to you. And then you learn that that's actually happened at times in history. Not that it needed to, because the Bible says God prepared the fish and he could prepare it however he wants to, right? So he did. But it's just kind of a thing. It grabs the attention of kids and all that. And then as you get to be an adult, you begin to look at things like, man, why is Jonah running from God? And uh, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so it's just a fascinating deal. It's also fascinating as a literary book. If you look at the literature of it, how it's structured, how it's written, it's a unique uh story, and it's a you it's written in a very unique way. Um some liberal scholars and others will try to argue that the book of Jonah is not true. It's an allegory or it's some kind of a story or something. It's like an Old Testament parable or whatever. Listen, I don't believe that's true. I believe it's a literal book of the Bible. Jonah was a man, he's referred to a couple of different times in Scripture. Uh Jesus actually refers to the three days that he's in the belly of the whale, describing that of his uh separation from God between the cross and the resurrection, and how that's a picture of his death paying the price for our sins. He didn't refer to allegories for things like that. Um he referred to factual things like that. Um part of the it's factually set well, it has all kinds of details, it makes perfect sense where it is, and so I'm gonna take it as a literal story. It is interesting how it is written, though, because it begins with a call, it tells a narrative of Jonah's journey, but then it doesn't end. There's no resolution, instead, it ends with a question. And the and that structure of a book is a fascinating structure and applies to us in a lot of ways, I believe, because the question is a question that challenges all of us, and the question draws us to this idea of is my heart like God's heart? How does that fit with my narrative in life? The issues that are raised for Jonah in his journey. And the idea that it ends with this question is pretty incredible and powerful in the book. Now, the setting of Jonah happens in the time after the Civil War in Israel. We've been reading that chronologically, and there's the two kingdoms. There's the northern kingdom, which is the ten tribes, and there's a southern kingdom, which is the two tribes, and that's how the twelve tribes were split. As you know, that split after uh Solomon's reign, and then just chaos breaks out. There's all kinds of sin, there's all kinds of struggles, you got all these evil kings, you got all this mess going on. And it's interesting that in the middle of this mess, Jonah is a prophet during the reign of the second Jeroboam. Jeroboam II. And so here you have, in the middle of this chaos, with God's people coming apart, and you got all this sin and you got all this struggle and all this going on, we have a story of God sending a prophet of Israel to an enemy of Israel in Assyria. So Nineveh is a major city or capital city in Assyria. Assyria is a large worldwide power at that point. They are enemies of Israel. There's all kinds of struggles with them over the years. A few generations after this, Assyria will actually conquer the ten tribes of the northern kingdom, and they will be basically destroyed. They will take many of the Jews out, they will bring other people in, and there will be intermarrying, and they are removing them from Israel, and there will not be an exodus back like there is in Ezra and Nehemiah into the southern kingdom. So Assyria is a terrible place. It is a rotten, evil empire. We ask the question sometimes: why does Jonah hate Assyrians so bad? He doesn't want to take the gospel. Well, I kind of have two theories in that. The first one, I figure he probably married a girl from Nineveh and his in-laws live in Nineveh. That's one theory. The other theory is, you know, it's just this rotten place that needs to be saved. And if you need a modern-day picture, like the middle of an evil empire, if you'll picture Oxford, Mississippi, that's always kind of what I get in my mind as this terrible place of Nineveh, right? And who wouldn't hate that? So it makes kind of sense, I guess, if you contextualize it. So here's the story of Jonah. And you know the story, it's pretty easy to tell. Here's what happens. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. That's what the Bible says. And he commands him to go to Nineveh and to preach the message he gives him. And so it's very clear from the beginning, right? Very clear from the beginning, you preach against that evil and you preach the message that I have. And Jonah says, no, I'm not going to do that. Buys a ticket, gets on a boat, goes to Tarsus, which is going the other way, kind of. You're sort of cutting across to get to a spot where you can go away from where Nineveh is on a map. And God is not satisfied with that. And so He judges, He brings, you know, correction onto Jonah. He's on his boat, he brings a storm. You know, the boat is on the verge of sinking. And Jonah's actually asleep in the bottom of the ship. Like he's really running in every way that you can possibly run. He's not even paying attention to God's correction in his life. The sailors of the ship wake him up and they're pagans and they're whatever, and he says, you know, listen, I am a follower of the creator God of the universe. And he controls the seas and he controls the land. And then here's the testimony that he gives. I'm running from him. He's mad at me. If you throw me in the ocean, I'll die and you guys will be safe. Man, that's really sharing Jesus with folks, isn't it? I mean, that's a great testimony. And evidently that's what happened. So they believe him, they throw him in. The Bible says God prepared a great fish. The fish swallows Jonah. And then the Bible says this. On the third day, on the third day, you're in the enzymes and stomach and intestines of a whale. What are you doing on day two? Like, really? Day two? It's gonna take that long? Like you're gonna, like, what are you wasting this time? I mean, like, day three, in fact, the Bible says three days and three nights. Like, he, I mean, really? I don't understand why it takes so long. But how many of us take long to repent at times in our journey, right? And so he finally repents, and here's how his repent goes. Chapter two, uh chapter uh two, you hear his prayer. He says, Okay, Lord, like you did all these terrible things to me. You're this massive creator God, and you threw me in this whale, and we're down in the bottom of the ocean, and you do all this kind of stuff, and this is all terrible. Okay, I'm gonna pray, and I'm gonna ask you to save me, and I'm gonna ask you to fix this, and I will do what I vowed. That's his repentance. Now that kind of leaves you flat, doesn't it? Like that really blesses the heart of God for me to say, okay, God, back off the discipline. I'll do what I promised. That's his prayer of repentance. And so God says, Okay, I can work with that. So the whale spits him up on the beach. Jonah goes in to pray in the Nineveh, I mean, to preach in the Nineveh. And again, the Bible says, Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you. Right? So he goes and he begins to preach. And with all of that, here's what he actually preaches. Now you think when we preach the gospel, we're saying, man, Jesus loves you. For God so loved the Lord, he gave his only son that he died for you on the cross. Man, we're talking about the mercy of God and God loves you, and we are pleading with you to come to Jesus. And here's what Jonah says. He says, in 40 days, Nineveh's gonna be destroyed. That's his prayer. I mean, that's his sermon. Like, y'all are gonna die. Y'all are evil, God's gonna kill you. I'm done. That's his sermon. And so you think, that's awful. But even with that bad message, revival breaks out in Nineveh. People begin to repent, and they repent on mass and all of that. And it just reminds me as a preacher, I am so grateful that God does not need or depend on my messages to move. It is all what Jesus is doing, right? And he works beyond our failings, our struggles, and what we're trying to learn. And he does that here. And now Jonah's response. People are getting saved everywhere. Men are repenting for the Lord. This enemy of Israel is now turning to the God of Israel. And so what is his response? He goes up to a hillside looking down on the city. He sits down and he gets mad at God because people got saved. Let me just tell you, I love you this morning. And if you need Jesus, come get saved and we're gonna celebrate. Nobody's gonna be mad. Right? But he's mad and he argues with God. God makes a plant raise up, gives him some shade. He's in the heat, mad, he's in the heat, sweating, all this. God makes a plant, shade plant come up, covers him for a little while, makes a worm go in, kill the plant, plant dies, now he's in the heat again, now he's even more mad, and that's where the book ends. Like, wow, that's fascinating. But it ends with a rhetorical question. It's a question to Jonah in specifics, but it is a rhetorical question to us. And here's what the lesson is he's trying to get to in all of that: that God's heart is always to his purpose of redeeming sinners who need to be saved. Everything fish, storms, Jonah, struggles, chaos in Israel, all of that, all of it is nothing but context for God's purpose in continuing to bring the message of forgiveness and salvation to a lost world. This is how the book ends. All of that brings us to a point. It brings us to a story, it shares with us this narrative to draw us to a moment where God and Jonah are having a serious, heart-to-heart conversation where God asks this question in verse 10. Jonah, you cared about the plant which you did not labor over and you did not grow. You had nothing to do with that plant, Jonah. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. It's a 24-hour plant, Jonah. That's what you care about. But may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left? All of this is bringing the gospel to Nineveh and bringing Jonah to the question: when is your heart going to change and be aligned to my heart? See, from the very Garden of Eden, God has promised redemption. He's had his eye on redemption. From the moment that sin began, the promise of redemption began. And the work of God began to bring the Redeemer to the world. All of the things we've been reading, this whole chronological thing we've been reading, that all of that stuff, all throughout human history, is all God at work because He wants to save lost people who don't know Jesus. He is creating a means of salvation, the process of salvation, identifying Jesus as the Savior. We've seen all throughout this that salvation goes far beyond the children of Israel. We've seen people who are not Israelites get saved. He's extended it to the woman of Zarephath. He's extended it to Rahab. On and on and on. Ruth, all these people that we have seen and will see who are outside the family of the children of Israel. God did not establish them to be his only people. He established them to be the process that he could reach every people. And God's heart is to bring the gospel to people who need it. And this entire story, stuck right here in the middle of this chaos in the 12, in the 10 tribes of Israel, God is reminding everyone that this is all about the need that people have to be saved. You see the juxtaposition of Jonah, who sees Ninevites, and he hates them and he can't stand all that. And God's heart is they don't know their right from their left. But I do. And I want them to know me. Go tell them. And you see this struggle between the journey of God to bring the gospel and the journey of bringing Jonah to the point where he has a heart for the gospel. In fact, Jonah really does understand what's happening. Look at what the Bible says here in the first part of the book. This discourse on the hill with the plant and all that begins this way. Jonah goes up on that hill and he's mad and he's watching these people saved and he's hacked off about it. And here's what happens. Verse 1, Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious because people are getting saved. Why is he so mad? And then that shows us in verse 2. He prayed to the Lord, please, Lord. And you just hear it. Isn't that stuff going on? Isn't that down there what's happening? That's exactly what I thought when I was in my own country. This is why I fled towards Tarsus in the first place. I knew that you were gracious. I knew that you are a compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faith, and one who relents from sinning disaster. He knew from chapter one when the call came that God's heart was to save people who need to be saved. That no one, it does not matter how much against the person of God they were, God loved them and wanted them to have the opportunity to be saved. To hear the plan of redemption. And that's the heart of God. That is what the whole story of Scripture is about. It is all about God working to bring salvation to a lost world that needs him. And so he is trying to get Jonah to understand this is my heart, Jonah. This is what we're doing, this is what we're about. And it is the message of Scripture all throughout. The Bible says in the book of Romans, chapter 5, verse 8, God demonstrates love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. We quote that part, but we don't go on after that. For God so loved the world, he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him will not perish for everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world because the world was condemned already, but that the world might be saved through him. The heart of God is to reach people who don't know him so that they can make him as their savior. Paul only used this phrase a couple of times. And here's what he wrote to Timothy. This is a trustworthy saying, worthy of all acceptance. In other words, y'all pay attention to what I'm about to tell you. Jesus came to save sinners. That's why Jesus came. The heart of God is to love you so much that he orchestrates all of the things that happen around us to bring you to an opportunity to hear his message of good news. That we have sinned, we have fallen short of God's glory, but Jesus loved us so much, he went to the cross and he died there in our place to pay the price for our sins and he rose again. And if we will trust him, if we will repent of our sin and come to him and make him our Lord and Savior, we will be saved and we'll have a relationship established with him and we'll have the promise and hope of heaven. It is the heart of God to reach lost people. It is the ceaseless priority of his heart and his work in all things at all times. God loves you. He loves you. It does not matter what you've done, you cannot sin so greatly that you can outrun God's forgiveness. I mean, these are Assyrians. And God is sending a messenger to them because he has a heart for them. And he knows they need to know the message of salvation. And listen, when we are sent, that is the only message that we have. When we are sent, we are sent with the message that God has given us. Hi, my name is Greg. Man, I was born a sinner. I chose to sin. I was raised by sinners, and I raised sinners. And I want you to know there's nothing I can do about it. And if you could see my heart and you knew it was in there and you knew what I struggle with, you wouldn't like me. But you know what? My parents introduced me to Jesus, who loved us so much that he died on the cross to pay the price for my sins. No one's ever loved me as much as Jesus. When I was a nine and a half-year-old boy, I recognized I couldn't fix my heart, I couldn't fix my problem, and I gave my life to Jesus and He saved me. And you know what? Jesus loves you that much too. Whatever's in your life, whatever issue is there, Jesus loves you and he'll save you. Just like he saved me, just like he saved these other people in this room, he will save you if you'll give your life to him. How do I know that? Because it is literally the ceaseless priority of his heart to save. And that's why this story leads to a point and ends with a question Do you not know my? Heart. For people who don't know me and don't know how to find me, I want them to know forgiveness is my promise. Truth number two, that leads us to this point. God is continually advancing the gospel. He is working circumstances. Nothing will get in his way. Even the church cannot get in his way. Don't you think about this a minute? How many times did Jonah get in away? How many times did Jonah run away? How many times did Jonah create problems? Right? And yet God never stopped, and the gospel got to Nineveh and even got there through Jonah. Right? God never stops, and he is always working to advance the gospel. And so what happens is he is pursuing Nineveh. He is going to take the gospel to them. And then here's what happens: Jonah says no, and God works and gets him back on track. And Jonah says no and God works in him and gets him back on track. And then Jonah gets there and he sort of half-heartedly messes it up and does it wrong anyway, and God still works on Nineveh. And then even as Jonah keeps messing up, God never gives up on Jonah. He continues to work in Jonah's life to change him and to align his heart with God's heart. I mean, that's the thing. Here's what I love about this. Listen, you and I are trying to figure out how to do this. This is one of the greatest books of grace for us as believers, as the children of God, you'll ever get. I mean, Jonah messes up everything and God never quits. I mean, he even thumbs his nose at God. How in the world do you have the audacity to tell God, listen, I knew you'd save those rotten Assyrians if I went, so that's why I didn't go? I mean, that's horrible, right? I mean, you think about it, he's on the boat with these guys, and here's a perfect opportunity for him to repent in front of them and teach him repentance. And what does he say? Y'all murder me. Just throw me overboard and I'll die over there, and y'all can be safe going about your journey, and then you can die and go to hell later on rather than just today. I mean, literally, that's his testimony. Are you kidding me? It's awful. He gets in everybody's way. And yet God continues to work with him, he continues to change him, he never stops trying to align his heart with him. Why do we go to church? Why do we do these training things? Why do we keep doing all this stuff? Why do we keep working together? Why do we want you in Sunday school? Why do we send kids to camp? Why do we do all this? Because for us as Christians, God is continually trying to work to change our heart to align it to be like his. Because ultimately he wants us to see what Jesus sees, and that's people who don't know they're right from their left and who need to be saved. The Bible tells an almost parallel story in Matthew chapter 9. There's revival going on around here in Nineveh, and Jonah steps back to process this and to get mad and argue with God about it. In Matthew chapter 9, Jesus and his followers are out and they're ministering and they're preaching and people are getting saved and repenting and people are getting healed, and all this is going on. And in the middle of all that, excuse me, Jesus steps back to contemplate as well. Just like Jonah did. The Bible says that Jesus saw the crowd as being like sheep without a shepherd. You know, he thinks in his mind and his heart the prophecies in the Old Testament where he said, Oh, we're all like sheep, and we've all gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way. You think about how God saw Nineveh and he said, They don't know their right from their left. They don't know how to do this. And Jesus is looking at this crowd and he's thinking, they don't know how to do this. That's why we've come to bring them the good news of the gospel. And as Jesus contemplates that in his heart, the Bible says it's filled with compassion. Jonah's mad, but Jesus' heart is filled with compassion. He doesn't see the lostness as an enemy, as a problem, as judgment. He sees it as his purpose in being there, and his heart breaks for them, and he's motivated to give them the gospel. And then he turns to his disciples and he goes, Listen, you guys, you need to look at this right here. You need to pay attention. He says, the fields are white for harvest. He doesn't see people who are mean, who are ugly, or sinners, or whatever. He sees people who need to be forgiven. And he says, Look, the fields are white for harvest. When I give them the message of forgiveness that they want and that they need, people will be saved. The fields are whitened to harvest. I need you guys to pray for workers. The harvest is abundant and the workers are few. You see, Jesus is trying to teach the same lesson that God was trying to teach to Jonah. It's the same lesson throughout Scripture. The first message is you need to be saved. God loves you and He sent Jesus to save you. And the second message is once you're saved, you need to start seeing what I'm seeing. And you need to do what I'm doing. And truth number three. In this transformation process, our hearts have to go beyond just what we need and walking with Jesus and, you know, however we say that, just my what I'm doing, and just checking the box obedience. That's not the ultimate goal of transformation. That's only a step in the journey. Transformation brings us to the point that God is trying to get us to, which is we have his heart and his desire for seeing those who don't know how to be saved be saved. That our heart literally sees the way God's does. Not like Jonah's does. I knew we were going to save them, and I don't like them, and this is not going the way I want it to, and all of that. Jonah, why do you care about temporary things you have no control over and nothing to do when there are people who need the message of hope and salvation, and that you can do. Look at this prayer of repentance. This is a whole Bible study in and of itself, and I'll try not to get bogged down in it, but listen to this prayer. Jonah chapter 2. This is his prayer of repentance in the belly of the whale. He has been, this is multiple times now, he's been in the doghouse being disciplined by his heavenly father for running away from what he knows he's supposed to do. And here's what he says. Now listen to all this. I cried out for help from deep inside Sheol. You threw me into the depths in the heart of the sea. The current overcame me. Your breakers and your billows swept over me. He comes down in verse 5. The water engulfed me to the neck. The watery depths overcame me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. Well, if seaweed was wrapped around your head, why'd you do that for three days? Doofus? I mean, really. Now listen to all this. This is what he's doing. This is I, I, me, I, my condition, my whatever. I got all this, my thing, whatever, I got all this. Then he says in verse 7, as my life was fading away. Oh, that sound like a dramatic testimony. I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came. You didn't remember nothing. You were running from God, and he is shaking you, trying to get your attention. He says, As for me, listen to what he compares himself to those. Those who cherish worthless idols and abandon their faithful love. But as for me, like what do you think you did abandoning your faithful love when you ran away from the message that God wanted you to give? But he says, As for me, I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving. I will fulfill what I have vowed. Boy, doesn't that warm the heart of God? You told me I was supposed to go to church, so I'll go. You won't leave me alone about teaching in the student ministry, and damn that's okay, fine, I guess I'll do that. It gets in the way of some other stuff I wanted to do, but I guess I'll do that. I guess I have to, you know, because I'm a member of the church. Is that not how that reads to you? And look at the effect of it. Is it so deep it changes his heart? No. Because he gets there and he blows his message and he preaches it with some angry, y'all are all gonna die thing, and then when they do get saved, he gets mad again. So this is not a prayer of repentance that is adequate to change his heart. This is something where he is in his journey. I know I've sinned, and this is awfully rotten, and I don't like this, so God forgive me for this, so I can get out of here. And if I have to go do that, I'll go do that to get out of this. But it doesn't change his heart fully. Now it's enough for God to say, okay, he's moving in the right direction. We're working through this. He acknowledged that was wrong, and so let's go back here and get on the path, which is back to that previous point. God doesn't give up. And so sometimes, even when we repent, sometimes even when we're trying to work through it, we're not there yet. It's not good enough yet, but we are turning to the Lord and we're giving him enough of our hearts to work with, and God keeps working because he never gives up on you. He keeps working. But this is not a prayer of transformation. Now you think about exactly what Jonah knows. We know from that last discourse, I did not want to go there because I knew you were gonna save those rotten rebels, I mean Assyrians. I knew you were gonna do that. And then he keeps running and he keeps fighting it. Fine, I'll do it. I vow, I mean, he doesn't have the heart, but he knows exactly what this is about. This is about his heart not wanting those people to receive the grace of God. His repentance prayer should have been, God, please forgive me for not having your heart. You want to save the people in Assyria that I don't like because I don't view them the way you do. God, I am sorry I put my desires and agenda over yours. And God, I don't deserve to get out of the belly of this fish. But if you will get me out of here, I will go and spend as much energy and breath as exists in my body to share with them how merciful you are. And that you love them. That's what the prayer should have been, right? And you think about in our lives how many times our prayers look like that. I want you to do this with me real quick. Let's go real fast through this, and I want you to see how many times he says, I and me. Verse 2, I called to the Lord. He answered me. I cried out for help. You heard my voice. You threw me into the depths. Current overcame me. Your billow swept over me. But I said, I've been banished from your sight, yet I will look once more towards your temple. The water engulfed me up to the neck. Watery depths overcame me. See, we were wrapped around my head. I sank the foundations of the mountain. The earth's gate shut behind me forever. Then you raised my life from the pit. My life was fading away. I remember the Lord, my prayer came to you, to your holy temple. As for me, I will sacrifice to you, I will fulfill what I vowed. Doesn't that sound like a modern-day Christian prayer? Life's about us. I'm in the doghouse for sin, and yet I'm gonna relish how bad the judgment is on my way out. I'm grateful that this happened to me, and I this happened to me. Oh, y'all was so bad. Oh, this sin was so bad in my life. Oh, this was so bad in my life, oh, it was so bad. But you know what? God forgave me. That's what that looks like. How many times have our prayers look like that? Man, we got this thing going on in our life, and we can't beat this sin, and we play around with this sin and this lack of commitment, and we do this and this bad, and then we ask, we're convicted, Lord, and I'm sorry, I did that again. Will you forgive me? And then we go do it again, and oh Lord, I'm sorry I did it again, will you forgive me? And our life is wrapped up in all this stuff we're supposed to be doing, and we're so self-centered about our own life and journey and all that that people are dying and going to hell around us because we've never truly repented of that in a way that allowed God to line up his heart with ours. That's what's happening. That picture of Jonah is a mirror. That's why this book is written this way, and it ends with an open question where God is looking past Jonah into all of our hearts. Do we have that heart? Is our Christian life all wrapped up in what we're doing? Just what does your prayer list look like? What does your prayer list look like? Give me this, give me direction for that. Fix my lost boss, mean and ugly to me. Make this thing work. God, I'm sorry about this. I know this is the 47th time we've done this, but I'm sorry about this. Forgive me, I won't do it anymore. That's what our prayers look like. How many of you have a prayer journal where you can mark the prayers of your love list? How many of us have a time when we've come to that list and they say, I've been talking to us about love list four years? I've been here four years, we've been talking about loveless four years. God, I still ain't gotten a love list. Lord, please, I know that that is something in me where I am not connecting to your heart for lost people and the desire to bring the message to them. God, will you change that in my heart? Will you change that in my heart? See, God is trying to transform us beyond just this obedience. I'll fulfill what I vowed. Fine. I mean, you know, there are times in our lives where our Christian life is struggling, and it is better to do your obligation to the Lord to stay connected. There are times that that commitment level carries us through struggles, but that is not the design that God has for us. There's a difference between I will pay what I have vowed and he it is who loves me, who keeps my commandments, as Jesus said. There's a difference between those two things. And what he's calling us to is beyond what we vowed or beyond what the obligations to, and he's calling us into a relationship with him. And once you get saved, he is calling you into a place where you recognize, man, the same gospel that saved me will save those Assyrians. I need to pay forward what people paid into my life. People brought the gospel into my life. I wouldn't know that Jesus died for me if it wasn't for the work of God and the family that he put me in, or the friends that he brought in my path, or the church where I am, or that third-grade Sunday school teacher, or that 11th grade, that mentor when I was in the 11th grade, or that coach who spoke life into my life, or that young Mary teacher when we were young Marys that taught us about Jesus and taught us how it fixed our marriage. And God, you've brought these things into my life, and now it is my passion to bring those into other people's lives so they can have the same thing that I've had. They can have the same experience of forgiveness. They can have the same experience of walking from the darkness of not knowing your right from your left into following the word of God. I can know I am no longer a sheep walking around without a shepherd, but I know your compassion and I know you're here to give me an abundant life and to walk me through this. That's where God's trying to change our heart. And it is deeply reflected in our prayer life, which is why God puts this as part of the mirror. How many prayers are I and me prayers? And how many prayers are for the salvation of someone that God has put in our path? And so I just want to invite you this week, if you if you already know Jesus as your Savior, and we're gonna give you a chance to be saved in just a moment, but if you already know Jesus as your savior, I'm gonna ask you to just take the journey this week. Look in the mirror and ask the question Am I closer to Jonah or am I closer to Jesus? Does my prayer life look like Jonah's? Or does it look like the one Jesus commanded? And if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, man, I want to invite you to give your life to Jesus. The God who loves you, the same God who would send Jonah to Nineveh, sent people in your life to share Jesus with you. And I want you to see the heart of God. How he looks beyond the temporary things. And he says, I see people who need my forgiveness. And he calls into your life to be saved. No one will ever love you as much as Jesus loved you. When he stepped out of heaven and he gave his life for you on the cross. In just a moment, I'm gonna pray, and our people are gonna stand and sing a testimony. We have a lot of people in our church that reflect what we've talked about today. Man, they care about you. That's why they serve, that's why they put things on screens and keep babies and teach Sunday school and do all the things that they do. And in a minute, they're gonna stand and they're gonna sing a testimony showing you their affirmation that they know the loving, merciful heart of God. And we're gonna invite you to come and to give your life to Jesus. We'll have pastors ahead of our aisles. We have people waiting to pray with you, and in a moment I'm gonna pray. And as they come and sing that testimony, I want you to hear their heart that they are singing, they know the merciful heart of God. And they've been saved because of that, and they want you to know that. And if you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, I want to invite you to come. We're not gonna keep you on town, nobody's gonna arm twist you, we're not gonna, we're not gonna talk you into anything. It's not that kind of a deal. We just want to be here to serve, to answer questions, to pray with you, to encourage you, to celebrate with you when you trust Jesus as your Savior. You come. And as we sing, church family, I just I want to ask you, consider doing this evangelism training with us. If you haven't been in a while engaged in that, use this as a step of faith to take the journey to ask God to align your heart with His. Lord, we love you and we thank you that you are a merciful God and you never, never cease bringing the message of hope, forgiveness, and salvation to people that need you. I thank you for this picture that you have a heart for Nineveh, enough to send someone to tell them about forgiveness and your love. That you sent Jesus to die for us, to be raised again, to conquer death and sin just for us, so we could make him our Savior and be saved. I thank you for all of those of us who have this testimony in our lives today. And Lord, I pray that you'll use all of that if there's someone here today who does not know Jesus as their Savior. Maybe they're working through stuff after camp or whatever. Lord, draw them to you today. Help them to see you as, just as Jonah said, a merciful, compassionate God, slow to anger and ready to forgive.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

It is in Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people sin. We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus. Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you. Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can. Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith at the First Baptist Church.