Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, this morning, as Amy also mentioned, we're beginning a six-week series on the book of Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Our focus is going to be the question: what does Jonah teach us about God's heart for the nations?
Pastor Bob Erbig: I also want to point out, I did put together a study guide that's in the back where the outlines and the small group questions are.
Pastor Bob Erbig: If you'd like to pick that up, if you'd like to go deeper in your study on Jonah, there's resources.
Pastor Bob Erbig: There's also a reading plan for the uh the series.
Pastor Bob Erbig: If you want to uh use that for your devotional time, that is part of this packet in the back.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Also, I will say Jonah has has a little bit of a special place in my heart.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We uh we preached Jonah about 10 years ago in the fall of uh 2016.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was during the time that uh my wife was pregnant with our first daughter, and uh I was gonna preach on Jonah 2 uh on one October morning when uh Amanda went into labor and I had to call Ed Williams out of the bullpen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Is Ed here?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Ed's not here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Ed stepped in and preached uh Jonah 2 back the first the first time we went through it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Uh but Jonah is just a wonderful book, and the challenge with preaching Jonah is that everybody knows the story.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Everybody knows about Jonah, what it's about.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They've seen the Veggie Tales movie, they've watched the flannel graphs.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want to challenge you this morning.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Maybe you think you know about Jonah, or do you?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: See, when I say Jonah, most people think about what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: They think about the big fish, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's what Jonah is about.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But what is it about, really?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, throughout this series, we're gonna see Jonah is not primarily about a big fish, but about a big God with a heart to reach those furthest from him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He is a God who sends his followers all over the globe to reach the least, the last, and the lost.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that is what compelled Peter and Rebecca Stafford to move their four children to Africa in the fall of 2019.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Uh, Peter is a doctor, Rebecca is a doctor, they're serving as missionaries with the group Surge in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now you may know their names because Peter is one of the first Americans to test positive for the Ebola virus in the latest epidemic that's happening over there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: While he was operating on a patient, he unknowingly contracted the virus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Once he developed symptoms, he quarantined himself.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They evacuated him to Germany for specialized treatment.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And as he was getting on the plane, barely able to stand, his wife and his children watched him as he left them behind.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, I want you to imagine this morning that you're Peter's wife and children.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You watch your husband, you watch your father board a plane with a deadly virus, uncertain if you'll see him alive again.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's the risk of Ebola in this part of Africa.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that current outbreak is growing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, why would a family, you might ask, why would a family take this risk?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And the answer is for the sake of the gospel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For the sake of the gospel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Would you be willing to risk your life for the sake of the gospel?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, by God's grace, on June 6th, Peter was released from the hospital in Berlin after recovering from the virus, but he could have easily died.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Ebola is no joke.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, as I share this story, I imagine some of the room are divided.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Some of you right here might be thinking, well, that man has had and his family, they have incredible faith.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They have incredible faith to do that, trust in God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But then others might be skeptical and you say, well, that's reckless.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You know, why would he risk his life, let alone his wife and children, for missions?
Pastor Bob Erbig: I mean, isn't that a bit extreme?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He could make a lot of money being a surgeon here in the U.S.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, as a missionary, he probably had to raise his own support, and he almost died.
Pastor Bob Erbig: See, many of us think that when it comes to missions, I could never do that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And underneath that skepticism is sometimes a darker thought, a quiet feeling that those people over there, that that place isn't worth an American surgeon's life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that's not caution, that's rather an offense at that which God has aimed his mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so, church, I would argue today that we live in a missions skeptical world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what do I mean by that?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, the second half of the 20th century saw a surge in U.S.
Pastor Bob Erbig: based mission agency.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, uh, once our services are done today, I'll be hopping on a plane to Colorado to attend a board of directors meeting for our primary mission agency, World Venture.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, World Venture, originally Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society, was uh founded in 1943, later changing their name to World Venture, and they send missionaries all around the globe to share the life-changing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, I've only been on the board for a year, but one message has been clear.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Missions is changing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Younger generations see global missions differently, and organizations like World Venture are trying to discern and adapt and recruit new missionaries.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what is the attitude shift that's going on?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, research shows that many millennials in Gen Z increasingly view global missions negatively and would argue that missions causes cultural harm to the people we're trying to reach.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the research group, Barna, discovered that one-third of younger Christians are uncomfortable with words like convert and winning souls.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The demographic is open, yes, to traveling on short-term trips, but for long-term efforts, they question whether missions are ethical or necessary.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I'll say that again.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They question whether missions is ethical.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, here's the tension with all this.
Pastor Bob Erbig: If you talk to missiologists, they would estimate that roughly 40% of the world's population still has little or no access to the gospel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that is billions with a B of men and women and children who don't have access to churches or online sermons or Bibles in their language.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so I want to be clear, we live in a cultural moment when an American doctor is willing to risk Ebola in the Congo, while at the same time many Christians wonder if his choice was ethical or necessary.
Pastor Bob Erbig: There's a disconnect there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And almost half the world's population doesn't know Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what do we do with this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, in the World Venture headquarters, there is a statement on the wall, and it's this billions of people don't know Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We're not okay with that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, church, my question for you this morning and throughout this series is are you okay with that?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, now you might say, and you might disagree, that you think this is a problematic statement, but what does your life show?
Pastor Bob Erbig: You see, if God called you to a dangerous mission field, would you go?
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's into this tension that I just described that the magnificent story of Jonah speaks.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Yes, the great fish is an integral part, but don't miss the bigger picture.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That Jonah is a story about God doing something bigger in the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: A story of God telling the nations, the central message of Jonah, chapter 2, verse 9, salvation belongs to the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it's that message that's not just for us, but for the nations.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Would you risk your life for the sake of the gospel?
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's the topic of Jonah 1, 1 through 4A.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I invite you to join me there this morning.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We're going to look at just those first three and a half verses.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want to challenge you as we go through this book to read this book as if you've never read it before.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: These four opening verses, if you knew nothing about Jonah's story, would both shock and challenge you at the same time with God's, what I'll call offensive mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the opening section unfolds in three scenes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Number one, we're going to see the word that sends.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Number two, we're going to see the prophet who runs, and then finally, the God who pursues.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let's pray and then we'll look at each of those today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace, for your mercy, Lord, which many times doesn't make sense.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It doesn't make sense that you would show mercy to somebody like me, a sinner.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It doesn't make sense that you would show mercy to a people who can be so evil that they've turned away from you and done atrocities, and yet your mercy can still come to a people like that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It doesn't make sense that your mercy might come to somebody in this room who's been running from you for their entire lives.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And yet, Lord, I pray that you would help us today to lean into your offensive mercy, that you would show us through the story of Jonah, that you are a sovereign God who reaches all people to the ends of the earth.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Help us to answer that call today, and may you get the glory for it in Jesus' name.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jonah opens with a statement.
Pastor Bob Erbig: A statement about God's sending word.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now let's pretend again that you've never read this book and you don't know the ending.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You know nothing about Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You're picking this up for the first time, you start to read this book, like a really good short story.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What are the questions that would arise in your mind?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah 1.1 says this.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It says, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, naturally, if you've never read this before, you're going to probably ask yourself, well, who's Jonah?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And what is this word from the Lord?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And why is it coming to Jonah specifically?
Pastor Bob Erbig: His dad is mentioned.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Is his lineage important?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, we'll get a quick answer to the word from God in verse 2, but let's answer the first question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Who exactly is Jonah and why does this book bear his name?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, Jonah, son of Amitai, is a real historical figure mentioned in 2 Kings chapter 14, verse 25, during the reign of King Jeroboam, the second in the northern kingdom of Israel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah's name means dove, and Amitai means faithfulness.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So he's the dove of faithfulness, I guess if you put them together.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You may remember from our study of Isaiah last fall that the northern kingdom of Israel was wiped out by the powerful Assyrian Empire.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Remember that because it will be very important in Jonah's story.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, most conservative scholars believe the book was written by Jonah in the mid-eighth century BC.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what was the context of his ministry?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, it's worth exploring 2 Kings chapter 14 for just a moment to give you some background on Jonah 1 and the whole book.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So we read this in 2 Kings chapter 14, starting at verse 23.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In the 15th year of Amaziah, king of Judah, that's the southern kingdom, Jeroboam, king of Israel, the northern kingdom, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned 41 years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now again, at this point, Israel's been divided into that northern kingdom of Israel, that southern kingdom of Judah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And while Judah, if you remember, produced some good kings, every king in the north was really, really bad.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They all did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, including Jeroboam II.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now his reign was marked by simultaneous military expansion and spiritual decline.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was a favorable time, economically and culturally speaking for the northern kingdom because surrounding nations like Egypt were very weak, and Assyria, the main, the big guy on the block, they were very distracted during this 40-year period.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because these stronger nations left Israel alone, Jeroboam was able to expand, to restore Israel's borders, to fulfill a prophecy that we read about in verse 25.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He, Jeroboam II, restored the border of Israel to Lebohameth as far as the Sea of Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant, Jonah, the son of Amitai, the prophet, who was from Gath Hefer.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now the inclusion of Jonah's name confirms that he was the same prophet during Jeroboam's reign, and God spoke through him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we don't get much information about his family, but we do find out that he's from this area, Kathhefer, which is located in the region of Galilee.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, interesting fact that God might be foreshadowing something later in redemptive history.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jeroboam's reign was a time of wealth and prosperity for Israel, a type of golden age, if you will, but it's masked by deep corruption.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because it's only the privileged people who benefited, and the poor people were denied justice.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And the worship, the worship was corrupt.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was syncretized with worshiping Baal, the false gods in the time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So you might ask, why does Yahweh God allow this prosperity in the northern kingdom if everything is so corrupt and wicked?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look at verse 26 and 27.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So it says the Lord saw their affliction.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now what affliction?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, prior to this time, God had allowed punishment to come to the northern kingdom for their disobedience through foreign invaders like the Assyrian Empire.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, they were almost annihilated.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But Yahweh God graciously intervened.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so this was not a reward for Jeroboam's faithfulness to God, but it was God's mercy delivering them from oppression for a period of time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And if you notice, Jonah later on, or even here, never filed a complaint about this mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God, how dare you show us mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This undeserved grace for his own people, his own king, his nation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No objection from Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want you to remember that because later on it's going to be pretty important.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let's recap.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah chapter 1, verse 1.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God's word comes to Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We know from the history that Jonah was a prophet who spoke to the northern kingdom of Israel during a time of gracious prosperity.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God showed mercy to his people during their time of need.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what is this word of the Lord that comes to Jonah?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look at verse 2.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We read, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Saying, Arise, go, get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Alright, so God has given Jonah a mission.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You can cue that mission impossible theme song right now.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now again, pretend, again, you've never read this book before.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What are the questions you start to ask?
Pastor Bob Erbig: You say, Well, okay, now I get who Jonah is.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, what is Nineveh?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Where is it?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why is it evil?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And why is Jonah the one going to it?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Great questions.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You all are Bible scholars.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's the way you should be asking the question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, Nineveh, of course, was a very influential city in the Assyrian Empire.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Later during the reign of King Sennacherib, the king from Isaiah's time, if you remember, the one who surrounded the city.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Nineveh became the capital of Assyria.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And while it was not the capital during Jonah's time, the book uses it to represent the growing Assyrian Empire.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Nineveh frequently represented Assyria's imperial expansion, its national pride, its indiscriminate use of power.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's what Nineveh just, people thought of Nineveh, that's what they thought of.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now the reason I gave you the background on 2 Kings 14 was to make clear that Assyria was the sworn enemy of Israel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, they had done horrific things to Israel as they were trying to conquer the nation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so to understand Jonah's reaction to this call, you have to understand how horrific the reputation of the Assyrians was.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Once they captured their enemies of any nation, and I'm going to be deliberately graphic, what they would do is they would take their enemies and they would cut off one arm and both legs, and they would leave one arm left so they could shake the hand of their enemy as they mocked them during their death.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They would force friends and family members to parade around with the decapitated heads of their loved ones on poles.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They would flay open the bodies of their enemies and they would drape them over city walls.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They would burn adolescents alive.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So even the front row, you're going to be burned alive.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Horrible.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Horrific stuff.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They were brutal.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They were considered the terrorist state of the ancient world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so it's not shocking that Nineveh was located near the current city of Mosul in northern Iraq, where recently ISIS terrorized infidels.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Nineveh was a great city, an important city, and it was indeed the epitome of evil in the ancient world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Those two words are going to be repeated throughout the narrative of Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So I'll ask you again: would you be willing to risk your life for the sake of the gospel?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you were Jonah and this word of God came to you, would you start packing your bags, buying the first ticket to go to Nineveh?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And by the way, Yahweh God is not asking Jonah to go to Nineveh discreetly, under cover, putting something else on his visa.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No, he is saying, he's not saying, go and wear a cloak and disguise yourself.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He is saying, go to that great city, stand in the equivalent of their time square, cry out against it with a bullhorn, and tell them to repent because they're evil.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's what he's saying.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That phrase, call out against it, means to condemn.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, commentator Kevin Youngblood puts Jonah's commission this way.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, the trip to Nineveh is merely prerequisite to the main task of publicly and unequivocally expressing Yahweh's holy wrath against the ancient city.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the Assyrians would know he's there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They would know who this guy is.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But this city is so evil, it's so wicked, it's so breathtakingly bad that God has taken notice and divine intervention is now required.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The evil it says has risen up to him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we'll see what happens with that in Jonah chapter 3, but for now, just ask yourself, what would you do?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Would you go if you were Jonah?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now it's worth noting that Jonah's call is rather remarkable.
Pastor Bob Erbig: From a New Testament perspective, we're used to assuming that missionaries go to dangerous areas.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But in Hebrew prophecy, commissioning a prophet to visit and preach to a foreign nation, let alone an adversarial one, was really unprecedented.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that's why I think Jonah is so fascinating.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's a fascinating book.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Not because of this big fish, I mean that's kind of cool too, but God calls him to do something so dangerous it had never been attempted before.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And just imagine how earth-shattering it would have been if Nineveh repented of their ways.
Pastor Bob Erbig: How would that have changed the ancient world, this evil city, if all of them had turned their hearts to Yahweh God, the true God?
Pastor Bob Erbig: That would be something.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so Jonah's teaching us here that missions, global missions, even missions local, can can transform societies.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That when people give their lives to Jesus, they they go back to their families, they go back to their jobs, they go back to their communities with a transformed mind, with a heart aligned with Jesus Christ.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And notice how God commissions Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, Arise, go.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In other words, lift up your eyes to me, trust me, obey me.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, Jesus himself offers us the same command in what we call the Great Commission in Matthew 28.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What do we read?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus says, Go, therefore, arise, go, Christian, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I'm gonna be with you always to the ends of the earth and to the end of the age until I come back.
Pastor Bob Erbig: See, Jonah was really before his time, but his reaction, as we're about to see, often mirrors our reaction.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I don't want to go to those people.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Conversion?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Winning souls?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Oh, that's unethical.
Pastor Bob Erbig: See, maybe you're a parent right here, and the thought of your child going to serve Jesus overseas is terrifying.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then Jesus tells us, go.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Make disciples of who?
Pastor Bob Erbig: All nations.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Not just the people we like, but the people God loves.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Friends, God has offered the same word to us as He did to Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Arise and go.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But our reaction is the same as.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We run and not in the right direction.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, second, we see now the prophet who runs.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The word that sends, the prophet who runs.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, after all that background, perhaps you could understand why Jonah is not chomping at the bit to get to Nineveh.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, verse three is an extremely interesting verse.
Pastor Bob Erbig: A lot in it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I'm gonna read it in chunks and break it down for you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jonah, the first part of Jonah 3, we read, but Jonah rose, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So God says, Arise, go, Jonah rises up.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it says, he arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah rose.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's almost intended as a bait and switch right here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, you're reading this for the first time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: When God gives a command, especially to a prophet, you expect him to get up and what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And obey, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Instead, Jonah flees to Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, to make it clear how intentional this statement is, let me just show you a map right here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jonah is most likely in Jerusalem.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's about to go down to Jappa.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Nineveh is 500 miles to the east.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, current day Mosul, Iraq.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Tarshish is most likely the area of Tartesos in southern Spain, and that's about 2,500 miles to the west, the complete opposite direction of where God is calling him to go.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now let me show you another map to bring it to the U.S.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let me just put it in our terms.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The distances I'm going to show you are accurate are pretty accurate here from where we're sitting.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's about 500 miles west to go to Detroit, Michigan.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So imagine God says to you, get up, go to Detroit, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Metro Detroit, where an area called Dearborn, Michigan is, and it's the home of the uh one of the largest Muslim populations in the U in the north in North America.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Hundreds of thousands of men and women and children, our neighbors 500 miles down the road, most of whom have never heard the gospel, who are probably resistant to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They're our mission field, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Image bearers.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God loves them, near enough to drive to.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Maybe what, eight hours?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Ten hours?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So imagine God says to you right now, it says, Arise, so-and-so, and and go to Detroit.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I got people there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And you prayerfully consider it, you say, okay, all right.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I heard that call from God, and then you go and buy a one-way ticket to the southern tip of Greenland.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Which is, and I checked, about 2,500 miles the other way.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Population, about 56,000.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Polar bears outnumbering gospel conversions.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And when the airline agent asks you, Are you going for business or pleasure?
Pastor Bob Erbig: you say, I'm going for theological exploration.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Friends, this is exactly what Jonah did.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: God said, Go 500 miles to the east to people who need to hear my word.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Jonah, and we're gonna see, he spent some serious money going 2,500 miles the opposite way to the edge of the map, where nobody knew God and nobody would ask questions.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So that's Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was at the time the edge of the known world, a place where Yahweh had not revealed his glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We read that in Isaiah 66, it's named.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah isn't just fleeing the assignment, he's fleeing the assigner.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's going to a place nobody would ever ask him, hey, aren't you supposed to be in Nineveh?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Nobody's going to ask him that there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, church, if if God gave you a command that you did not want to obey, where is the most logical place you would want to go?
Pastor Bob Erbig: I would submit that it's a place where people don't know God and nobody knows anything about his commands, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Or put it another way, you would want to go to a place where nobody is going to challenge you or question your actions.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that's exactly what Jonah does.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's not just getting away from the call that God has on his life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He wants to escape God Himself.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He wants to get away from his presence.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's going to be repeated for emphasis.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah forgot what David wrote in Psalm 139.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What does David write?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Where shall I flee from your presence?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, haha, even there your hand shall lead me.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That might have something to do with the fish, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Friends, you can run, but you cannot hide.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Even the uttermost parts of the sea belong to God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Jonah's about to find that out.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jonah runs from God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He runs from the mercy he offers, not just to Nineveh, but to get away from God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let's keep reading.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look, verse 3.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah rose, he fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Where did he go?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He went down to Joppah and he found a ship going to Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Okay, now there's an interesting word play in this chapter between up and down, up and down, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So when God calls Jonah, what does he say?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, get up, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Get up, Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then Jonah rose, he responded, he got up, but then he went where?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He went down.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He went down and down and down and down until he was almost at the bottom of the sea in this narrative.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So again, Jonah does the opposite of what God wants.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, we don't fully know Jonah's motivation from these verses.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You know, we're speculating right here that after I told you all that stuff about Assyria, he's probably afraid.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I'm sure he's got to have some fear to some extent.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But he's also offended at God's mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And we pick up on this at the end of the narrative in chapter four.
Pastor Bob Erbig: After Jonah goes to Nineveh, after the people repent, we read this in chapter four, verse two.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah's praying to the Lord, and he says, Oh Lord, is not this what I said?
Pastor Bob Erbig: I told you, God, when I was in my country.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I knew better than you, God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That is why, that is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's why I went.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's why I went and got on the boat.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in hexed, it's steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I didn't want any of that stuff, and so I ran, Jonah says.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I was offended at the fact that you wanted to show mercy to these evil Assyrians.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what's fascinating about this line of thinking is that when you read, again, when you read 2 Kings chapter 14, 23 to 27, God showed mercy to the people of Israel when they didn't deserve mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They disobeyed God, they forgot about him, they did evil in his sight.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, Jonah was there for that, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And he had no problem accepting the mercy that God gave to him, but then he was offended at the mercy when it was given to his enemies.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So he doesn't want to go to Nineveh because he knows.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He knows God's merciful character.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He knows who he is.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Instead, where does he go?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He goes down to Joppa.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, another city.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, Joppa is a very important port on the Mediterranean coast at the time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In modern day, it's part of Tel Aviv, so if you sign up for that learn the land tour, you're gonna fly into Tel Aviv, right where Joppa was.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Joppa has great biblical significance in the story of redemption and missiology.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So God gives Jonah this missional call to the nation of Assyria, and he runs to Joppa.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He runs from God's mercy and the mercy that God wants to show his enemies.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Can you relate to Jonah as I'm describing this story?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Even in these first couple verses.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Maybe right now you got an enemy that needs forgiveness and you're withholding it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They don't deserve it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Or maybe God wants you to share the message of salvation through Jesus Christ with an enemy or a person or a people group, and instead of lovingly presenting Jesus, you say, ah, they can go to hell.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: They don't deserve salvation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What Jonah shows us though, and what is happening in the story of redemption in the Bible, is that nobody, nobody, nobody is beyond God's mercy and forgiveness.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That like Jonah, we don't follow God's mission because we, at some level, find God's mercy offensive for some people.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we too run to Joppa in our hearts, ready to board the ship to go to Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, in the New Testament, there's somebody else with that same attitude.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You probably know who he is.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The Apostle Peter.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Peter thought the gospel message was only for the Jewish people.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Everybody else, those Gentiles, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He looked down upon them.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They're not worthy of the gospel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But then if you go and you read the book of Acts and you come to chapter 10, where do you find Peter?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Where do you find Peter?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Joppa, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He had a house there right on the sea.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it's in Acts chapter 10 that Peter receives this vision that challenged all his assumptions about what God was doing in the story of redemption.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God makes it clear in that vision that the message about salvation through Jesus Christ is not just for the Jews, but for who?
Pastor Bob Erbig: For the nations, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: For the Gentiles too.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Peter with conviction says what at the end of chapter 10.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: In every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In every nation, anyone who fears God is acceptable.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Like that's as mind-blowing in Peter's day as it was in Jonah's day.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then you read through Acts chapter 11.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And what Peter does is he goes to the rest of the church in Jerusalem and he gives this report about this vision he got.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He tells them that now God wants to save the Gentiles too.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, if God gave them the same gift in Jesus Christ, what does Peter say?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, Who is I?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Who am I that I would stand in God's way?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And look at how the church responds.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It says when they heard these things, they fell silent.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Wow.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And all the Gentiles out there said, What?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's right.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God has granted repentance that leads to life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: To the Assyrians, God has granted repentance that leads to life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: To the Iranians, God has granted repentance that leads to life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: To the Russians and to the Chinese and to the Africans and to the Brazilians and to the Irish and to the Germans and yes, even to the Italians.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Let's say it out loud.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God has granted repentance that leads to life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God's heart is for the nations, church.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah tells us what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Salvation belongs to the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now at Joppa, Jonah missed the message.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And he had to learn the hard way at sea, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it cost him, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look at how the verse finishes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So he he flees the Lord, he goes down to Joppa, he finds a ship, and then we read, so he what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He paid the fare and went down again, down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says it twice in this verse.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He paid the fare and he descended.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He went down.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, do you see the repetition?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Down, down, down, down, down.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He goes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Away, down and away from the presence of the Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: If this was a movie, you just want to scream, Jonah! Jonah, don't do it! There's a big fish coming and it's gonna stink.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jonah is so set.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Don't miss the Jonah is so set on this disobedience that he is willing to pay to be disobedient.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, Jewish tradition would suggest that for a trip like this, Jonah's not just kind of paying a one-way ticket to go to Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No, if you want to get on a boat like this in this time, you had to rent the entire boat.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And what I mean by that is it's not cheap.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I just picture, you want to go, you want to rent a big yacht on the Mediterranean to sail from Jerusalem over to Rome, something like that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: How much would that cost you?
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's not cheap.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This disobedience was costly and it was leading to spiritual death.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Down is the direction of death, and to accomplish the mission, Jonah is gonna have to die and come back to life and be spit out and recommissioned.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, what do we do with the opening of this story here?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So we got this clear call from God, we have this disobedient prophet, and the rest of the story, of course, is gonna answer some of our questions, but Jonah itself, the whole book, leaves us on a cliffhanger.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And this section, I think, offers an application we can't ignore.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Where are you running from God right now?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want you to ask that to yourself in your heart.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because all of us hit periods of our lives where we run and God has to pull us back, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the truth is, you can't outrun God's mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I want you to hear that today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You cannot outrun God's mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's gonna catch you, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He has things he wants to accomplish in your life, and he wants you to be obedient, not disobedient.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So we got these two cities in our story that are a way of assessing this calling.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Think about right now, what is your Nineveh?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Is there a person or a people that God is calling you to share his message of mercy and forgiveness with that's actually pretty close to you?
Pastor Bob Erbig: What's your Nineveh, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And when we don't obey God, where do we run?
Pastor Bob Erbig: We run to Tarshish.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What's your Tarshish?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, it's usually that place where people don't know God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They're not going to challenge you, or there's the situation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You got to get away as far away as you can.
Pastor Bob Erbig: My encouragement to you today is to stop running from God and start running toward Him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, would you be willing to risk your life for the sake of the gospel?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, first we saw the word that sends, second, we saw the prophet that runs.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, finally, we encounter the God who pursues.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The God who pursues.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, at the beginning of this story, God chose to intervene in the lives of the Assyrians by calling Jonah to go to them because they're evil.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And now, as Jonah runs, God intervenes in his life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, you cannot run the call that God has on your life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And we read this in just the beginning of verse 4, just a teaser for next week or for two weeks from now.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the Lord, but God, but the Lord, hurled a great wind upon the sea.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Jonah pays the fare, he gets in the boat, he thinks he's home free.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And God says, Not so fast, Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Uh-uh.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I love you too much to let you run.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And here's the irony that the mercy that offended Jonah when it's aimed at Nineveh is now the one thing that's being aimed at him is going to save him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Don't run past the verb hurled.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In Hebrew, it's a very violent word.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God doesn't, he doesn't send a gentle breeze on the sea.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's not just kind of, ooh, that feels this feels good.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No, he doesn't allow a weather pattern or some climate change.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No, he it says he hurls.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He hurls this great wind.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's like a man throwing a spear with incredible accuracy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And if you keep your eye on that word, because it's going to be echoed throughout chapter one, you'll see that the sailors hurl the cargo overboard, and eventually they hurl Jonah into the sea.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Everything in this storm is going to get thrown, and the first thrower is God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now let me show you what kind of throw this is.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This right here is a Mariana Rivera cut fastball.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Okay?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Those of you that remember Mariana Rivera, the great one, the sandman, the closer, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Mariana Rivera was famous for his accuracy and bringing home the win.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, I heard him say one time that God showed him how to throw that cut fastball.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you picture Rivera on the mound, bottom of the ninth, except in 2001, two outs, full count.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He winds up, he delivers a fastball, 95 miles an hour.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's a pretty violent act.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: The ball could break a bone if it hit the right bone.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And yet it catches the outside of the corner of the plate by half an inch.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Thrown with maximum force, perfect aim, in the same throw.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And church, that is Jonah 1-4.
Pastor Bob Erbig: When God hurls this storm, he's not having a tantrum in the sky.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's not unleashing chaos, wondering where it's gonna go, hoping it's gonna find the right boat.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The storm is a direct strike.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's thrown with all the violence of heaven and all the precision of a sovereign God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That storm is gonna sink no other boat on the Mediterranean that day.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's got a bullseye.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now the text describes the wind as great.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's a great wind upon the sea.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This adjective is used 12 times in this little book.
Pastor Bob Erbig: There's a lot of things that are great.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And every time that adjective is used, it always modifies an obstacle Jonah has to overcome.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And each obstacle challenges Jonah's assumption about calling and mission.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Everything in Jonah's story is great except his view of God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He misses God's sovereign work in the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let me put the tension of this whole story in one sentence.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That if God is sovereign over all things, how can we be complacent?
Pastor Bob Erbig: God intervenes in Jonah's life, he chases him down.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Think about all the things that we've seen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We have a sovereign God who's speaking, we have a complacent prophet who's booking a ticket.
Pastor Bob Erbig: If you go and you look at verse 3 again, we have Jonah rising.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We have Jonah fleeing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We have Jonah going down.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Skip ahead, two slides.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah found a ship.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah paid the fare.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah boarded.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So we had six verbs of Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah in chapter three, he's really busy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Complacency is not laziness, church.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Complacency is being very busy with everything except what God said.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Are we too busy to serve God?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then we get to verse 4, and we see that the Lord hurled this storm.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And in one throw, all six of Jonah's verbs are canceled.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And here's what that means for you and me.
Pastor Bob Erbig: God's mission to the nation is not in question in Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The prophet Habakkuk tells us that the earth will be filled with the knowledge and the glory of the Lord, not that it might be, but that it will be.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The only question this storm asks is the question I'm asking you right now.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's will God's mission happen through you gladly or despite you painfully?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because it is gonna happen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And our complacency cannot stop his sovereignty.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It can only cost us the joy of being part of it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Do you remember that wall at World Venture that I mentioned at the beginning?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Billions of people don't know Jesus, we're not okay with it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Church, that's the God, the God of Jonah 1.4 is not okay with that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The storm proves it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the question we have to ask ourselves through the series is, are we?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now some of you are thinking, well, Pastor Bob, I can't move to Senegal.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Okay, maybe not, but but complacency doesn't take one giant leap.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It dies with an act of obedience.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So here's what I want to suggest for you this week as we're getting into Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This week, ask yourself, how do we reach the nations?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I'm gonna give you three things to think about.
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, if you want to reach the nations, number one, you've got to open your eyes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So this week, go to our website, visit our missions section of the website.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Go this afternoon and look at the faces of all of our missionaries.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They're not statistics, they are faces.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This church has hurled lovingly missionaries to the nations.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then second, I want you to go and pick one missionary.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Pick one missionary and their family and pray for them every day this week by name.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's the assignment.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You know, you may not cross the ocean, but you can be on your knees, and by doing that, you can stand on the front lines.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then third, for some of you, praying might not be enough.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, if you're a student here today, if you're a couple, if you're somebody Staring at retirement, even, there might be an assignment for you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's not just praying for a missionary, but it's to start a conversation about becoming one.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Yeah, our missions team just started supporting Steve and Shannon Durand, a missionary couple to Brazil, both in their 50s.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Steve's a former pastor, he now trains leaders.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Shannon works with students with disabilities and is helping their organization in Brazil develop a special needs ministry.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And they told us they were praying about going on the field for years and years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then God finally gave them the call to go.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But it began with a prayer.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I'll warn you, that is how it starts.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Nobody boards a plane to the Congo who didn't first learn for how to pray to somebody for how to pray first.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, mark your calendar for October 2nd to the 4th.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Come to the missions conference with the question, Lord, what is my part?
Pastor Bob Erbig: What are you calling me?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because a sovereign God is still choosing instruments, and He's not okay with complacent ones.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now on the screen, you can see the schedule for our series.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Again, in the back, pick up one of the overviews and the study guides.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Next week, we're gonna hear from Eric Yi, who is one of our world partner missionaries to Indonesia.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And we'll have other interviews throughout the summer of missionaries along the way.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The first week in August, we're gonna hear from Jason Casper, our world partner in Lebanon, which is a God's doing amazing things there right now.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Pray for our missionaries.
Pastor Bob Erbig: As the worship team returns for one final song, let me just close where I started.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I opened by asking you to imagine Michelle Stafford watching her husband board that plane, willing to die so that people in the Congo could hear about Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And maybe you thought, well, I could never do that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And you're right, you can't.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Not by willpower, not by guilt.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The only thing that produces that kind of person is standing at the foot of the cross long enough to realize that all of us in this room were once Ninevites.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You were once the enemy city.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Your evil had come up to God, and instead of hurling his judgment at you, he hurled it at his son.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus Christ was pierced with a spear.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Do you realize that, church?
Pastor Bob Erbig: That Jesus Christ is the true and the better Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jonah may have sat in the belly of the fish for three days, but Jesus sat in the tomb for three days.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He went down so we could go up.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And the only reason we're here today, the only reason we have hope for the future is because God showed mercy to you and me.
Pastor Bob Erbig: How can we not show it to others?
Pastor Bob Erbig: People who know they've been rescued from the fire don't debate whether it's ethical to ride into one.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Would you be willing to risk your life for the gospel?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because the gospel is this.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He already gave his life for you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now arise and go.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Let's pray.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your mercy, for your grace.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We thank you for your word revealed in Jonah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Man, thank you for this wonderful story about how you reach people far from you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so, Lord, I pray for those that are here today, Father, maybe there's somebody whose heart is stirring for missions, Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Maybe you've been working on their heart for a long time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Maybe you're calling them to go overseas.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Father, for all of us, may you stir our heart to those that are far from you next door to us, to our neighbors, to those who are local in our nation, Lord God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: May you give us a heart to reach those with your generous, gracious mercy, Lord God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Lord, send us, help us to arise and go for your glory and the sake of your gospel in Jesus' name.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen.