04/21/26

Jonah week 6

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Jonah chapter 4. I said I was done with three, but I got to go back. Y'all know how I am. I thought I was going to finish this week. The Lord done told me no, we ain't even going to finish. So we got one more week of Jonah after this. Excited to be here. Excited about this word tonight. God's really, man, I could just feel him when I was studying that just again today. I could just I could feel the Spirit all over this text. And man, I walked around this place just praying for each and every man that's here tonight, praying that, man, that you'll leave, you'll leave closer than what you came in. That you'll you'll leave wanting to serve God more than what you what you came here. Hey, some people might come for the fellowship and the food. Man, I pray you leave with more faith. I pray you leave with more forgiveness. And that's one of the things God's going to work on us tonight. And I just pray that we'll be obedient and listen to the Lord. I'm going to read the first five verses in Jonah 4. I'll pray, and then we're going to dig in where the Lord shows us to dig in. It said, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry, and he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshus, for I knew that thou art gracious and merciful, slow to anger and great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. Dear God, I pray I love you. I thank you, God, that you saved my soul. Lord, as we prayed already, and we pray again, God be with the ones in the midst of this storm and the midst of this fire right now, dear God, I just pray that your hand will be over them. Lord God, we don't understand things, but we trust you in all things, God. And I pray, Lord God, right now that I decrease and you increase, and the words out of my mouth will be of you, not of me. God, speak to us. God, let it let us not just hear, but let us listen. God, let us not just just just be here. God, let us be about you, Lord, I pray right now. And it's in your name we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. It's all right if them things go off, y'all. We'll be fine. We'll roll on. I can try to stay focused. The Lord took me back as I was studying today. Didn't even plan to go back into chapter three, but man, God showed me something today in verse number eight. I'm gonna say in verse number six of chapter three, he said, For the word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him and covered him with sackcloth and ashes. And he's I'm gonna skip down it. He published a and told it told in verse number seven, and he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, Let there neither man nor beast, herd nor flock take anything, lest they them not feed nor drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth mightily unto God. I want to show you something about the king. See, the king, the king knew how to be clean. And I want you to think about this as we dig in tonight. This king, it's kind of like if let's just say that you were doing something, let's say you was running the chainsaw, Tristan, and you cut your arm off. You you don't you ain't got an instruction manual how to tell you, hey, you got to stop the bleeding or you're gonna die. Let's just say that that you was mowing grass and stuck your foot under mower. I pray none of this happens to anybody, but you don't need an instruction manual set on the lawnmower to tell you what to do with the foot that just kind of got cut off. See, this king didn't need an instruction manual to tell him how to get clean. And the same thing with us right here, what is God is saying, listen, you don't need an instruction manual to know how to get clean, man. And what he's saying right here, and what he's teaching us tonight is, man, you've got to understand it. Dude, you know how to get clean. You you know that you're dirty and you know that you need to be clean. I ain't got to stand up here and tell you if you're sinning or not. I ain't got to stand up here and tell you if your life is undone without Jesus Christ. Now I can tell you and I can remind you, but man, I ain't got to. You know how to be clean is what God's saying. You know how. But the problem is a lot of us just want to be dirty. The problem is you're okay with being dirty. And as long as you're okay with being dirty, you'll never get clean. Man, that just needs that that sunk into me today. Too many times we're okay with being dirty. Too many times we're okay with the dirt of our life and living in sin and living in things, we're okay with it. And until you can face it and say, you know what? I'm tired of being dirty. You'll always be dirty. But there's one that can clean you up, man. He said in 1 John 1.9, if you'll confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. This king knew how to get cleaned up, but he just didn't want to till the rubber met the road. It's the same thing at each and every one of our lives. We're okay with being dirty till something tragic happens, till our fire, till the fire is about to come over our house, man, till something tragic happens, and then we want to pray like we want the roof to come off, man. That's when we want to pray. That's when we want to get excited about God. That's when we want to cry out to Him. God said, I'm sick of you coming to me with these vain oblations. I want you to come to me because you want to have clean hands. And that's what he's saying to us right now. Quit being okay with being dirty. Look what he said in verse number 10. Then we're gonna dig into where we're supposed to be. It's kind of like an appetizer. You know, you get a good appetizer and you you enjoy it, and then you gotta sit a minute, and then your food will get there. The steak's cooking. We'll get there in a minute. Here we go. Verse number 10, it said, And God saw their works. Man, I got to thinking about because I heard a man preach a message a couple weeks ago about that word, Saul. God saw Nineveh's works. If you're not, if if you don't know where I'm at, right here, is is Jonah went and he preached the he preached the message to them, and he told the Ninevites, man, you're gonna get overthrown because of all your sickness and because of all the way you're living your nasty life. And then they repented and they they put sackcloth on them and they declared a fast, and that they said, We're not gonna eat in the town, and all this stuff. And then then it said, because here's what the king said. Who can tell in verse number nine? Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not? And God saw their works. I want you to focus in on this minute this for a minute. This word saw. This word saw means it ain't that he just seen somebody like I like I see you out here. Man, he seen inside of them. He seen they wasn't just trying to get a get out of hell ticket, man. They was trying to get they was trying to get in love with Jesus. They was trying to get where they needed to be. See, we can show up here and we can say we love Jesus, and we can say that we can show up to church every Sunday morning and Sunday night and all these things. Can I tell you God can see who's really inside of you? You can play games all you want to, man, but he ain't in the gameplay business. He sees you. And he said, I come not to not to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved. That's what he said. He sees you. And you you and I need to understand that God sees us who we really are. You know what he's saying? Quit being a fake and a phony, man. He said, be who you really are. Are you the same person today that you was Friday night? Are you the same person? Do you love Jesus as much on Friday night as you do on a Tuesday night? He said, man, I want you to love me all the time. So look what God did. And God repented. He relented. He said, You know what? I love you that much that I really see who you are, that he said he would do unto them, he would not do unto them, and he did it not. Then look, look, look, look at verse number four. But it displeased Jona exceedingly, and he was very angry. I got to wrap my head around that for a moment. Revival just broke out to 120,000 people, and this man that just preached the paint off the walls is upset because God saved their soul. The very moment that a preacher ought to be jacked up and excited, he is displeased exceedingly and very angry. See, Jonah, Jonah was putting his desires in front of God's direction for his life. Jonah was more worried about what Jonah wanted. Because if we're honest, Jonah wanted them to die. Jonah didn't care about these people. The only reason Jonah was there is because God told him, when he told him in verse chapter three, the second time, he said, Jonah, go to Nineveh. And he told him right there in chapter 3, verse number 2, he said, and preach unto thee the preaching that I bid thee. And you know, we talked about it last week, man. He just preached it, man. He preached his testimony. He preached everything that God told him to preach. He didn't want to, he just did what God told him to do. He was just being obedient to God at that very moment. But even though at that very moment he was preaching God's word, he was still dirty. You say, what do you mean, Brother Mac? What I mean is, God can use a man and they can still be dirty. What I mean is, don't hang on to God used you five years ago and think that that's all you got to do and think you're done, man. That's what he means. What he means is, listen, hey, just because you were clean back then don't mean you're clean now. Just because he was okay with you then don't mean that he's okay with you now. Don't think God, God used this man that was dirty to win a bunch of people to him. That's what he did. So what I want what what God is saying right here is listen, I can stand up here and preach God's word and one of you get saved, and I can still be dirty on the inside. I can still be obedient to God, but not obedient fully. Don't think just because God's using you, don't, oh God used me, man. It's okay if I still keep keep dabbling in that sin. No, that ain't what he said. But that's what Jonah was doing. He still had anger build up within himself and he couldn't get rid of it. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. He couldn't get rid of it. I wrote this, Jonah was a dirty man talking to dirty people about a clean savior that could clean him up. So he said in verse number two, and he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was in my own country. He said, God, I knew what you're gonna do. I knew that what you were gonna do before you even did it, God. And and he says that on down in verse number two, because I know who you are. I know when he said that, he said, because you were a gracie, graceful, merciful, slow to anger with all kinds of kindness. God, I knew who you were. I've experienced you. I've experienced you back in my hometown. I knew what you were gonna do because I knew what you've done in my life. That's what he's saying. The same thing that you and I can say right now. I know what you did in my golf, God. God, I know how many times you showed me mercy. I know how many times that you showed me grace when you should have just killed me. I know when you should have given up on me, God. But God, I know you won't, you didn't give up on me, and you're not gonna give up on me. That's why I don't want to go to Nineveh God. That's what he's saying. That's what he was saying to us right there. I want to ask you this question. How many of you are like Jonah? You knew the moment you chose to run, you already knew what God's actions and his outcome was going to be in your life. As a child of the king, you knew he was gonna chase you down. I wrote some things down right here. You knew better to look at that, but you didn't. You knew not to date date her, but she was hot. Anybody been there? But God, she she she's smoking hot. She's beautiful. Yeah. There's gonna be something hot if you don't get away from there. Amen. You knew not to be alone with her at work, but you did it anyhow. You said, Brother Mike, you plowing close to the corn. God ain't headed for the corn, he's headed for your roots. He's headed for your roots. You knew it was a bad business deal, but you did it anyhow. You knew you should have stayed, but you left. See, he said in verse number two, he said, and he prayed unto the Lord, and and he said, I pray thee O Lord, was not this my saying when I was in my hometown, when I was in my own country? See, the problem, the problem right here is Jonah had a root problem. Jonah had a problem of what happened way back when, and he can't let go of it. Because he still got that root that he should have chopped off of that, that that's still connected to him. Hey, he's no different than you. He's no different than you. He's no different than me, man. When you you you you've got that root still hung on there, and and and man, something comes up and you're just you're flaming mad, or you're ticked off, or or or you're headed in the wrong direction. He he's no different than you and I. But he had a root of bitterness. Some people might be sitting here tonight, you've got a root of bitterness with an ex-wife or an ex-employee. And I mentioned it last week. If you're gonna be what God called you to be, you got to get clean. You said, Brother Mac, I didn't I didn't understand that made me dirty. Come on, man. Sin, sin, don't start categorizing it. That's what he's saying. You got to deal with it. We've got to deal with it. See, Jonah did the will of God. God told him the second time, the second time he did. The second time. How many of us need to be told the third time and the fourth time? Any of y'all still got to be told over and over? Kind of like your daddy used to tell you. But but it said, I wrote this down, Jonah did God's will by do it by going to Nineveh, but he he did it still in the wrong heart. Ephesians 6, 6 says, not with thy servants as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. How many times you just do what daddy wants you to do just to please daddy, but you really don't want to do it? How many times you go to church just because that's just what you're supposed to do, but you you your heart ain't there. You you you feel in the pew, but you're you're 47,000 miles away. And say me in a row, me, man. I'll be honest with you. I've been there. I was at church and I didn't give a rip, man. I'd rather been sitting on the bank catching trout and or making the watching the plug go down and catch a big red. It didn't matter to me. I'm just being honest. Listen, and I say it all the time now. If you're gonna be free, you gotta be honest. You gotta be honest with yourself and quit lying to yourself and be honest with God. If you're gonna be that example and that disciple that God's called you to be, you gotta be free. But you gotta be honest. You know it's neat right here. It's not neat, but it is. Jonah prayed his best prayer in his most desperate time, and his worst prayer in the best time. He prayed his best prayer in his most desperate desperate time, and his worst prayer in the best time. Isn't that way we are? And when we hear tragedy, man, we we just we just poured out. I I confess last week I told y'all about that story. Man, where's our heart? When's the last time you just got on your knees and for 30 minutes just cried out to God for somebody's sorrow? You said, Brother Mac, I can't pray 30 minutes of my life. He's speaking, man. Are you listening to him? Look, look, look on what it says right here. Verse number three. Therefore, now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me. He said it's better for me to live. I mean, better for me to die than to live. Jonah was now worried about his reputation because if he went back to his hometown and they found out that, man, he prophesied to something and it didn't come to pass, man, he's a fake and a phony. Now he's so much worried about his reputation and what everybody thought, thinks about him. And as he does this, he he just headed in the wrong direction over and over and over. That's just what he's doing. He's sitting there whining and complaining, and I wrote this down. He should have been worried about this before he left home. He was sitting there whining to God in verse number two, telling God, man, I told you this was gonna happen. And and and God's telling me, man, I'm trying to work in your life, but you're just not listening. Better for me to like live. I meant to die than to live. So the question is, is your reputation more important than your responsibility to Christ? Is your reputation more important to you than your responsibility to Christ? Because, man, I'll be honest with you. I don't give a rip if you like what I say when I come up here or not. All I care about is Jesus Christ is honored and glorified when I stand up here and preach his word. If you don't like it, take it up with God. If he gives it to me, man, you gotta take that up with him. I'm just delivering the words that he's giving. And he says in verse number four, then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? So understand now, Jonah goes from let's look at let's look at uh New Testament Luke 15. So, so Luke 15, the pro Jonah's been the prodigal son. He's been running, he's been now all of a sudden he goes from the prodigal son to the preferred son. All of a sudden he goes from from the one son that was running to the other son that that that you remember he got he got ticked off because the Lord, I mean, because his daddy threw him a supper and he did all this stuff. He thought that he was entitled. And the question is that I want you to ask yourself tonight that all of a sudden Joni's upset and angry because he ain't getting what he wants. Because the Lord ain't just ain't just patty cake baker's man, man. He ain't just sitting there giving him all his everything he wants in life. Anyone ever been there? You know what? Well, you've been spoiled like like my kids that they they think, oh, we ain't got nothing. They're spoiled. A lot of y'all in here, you were spoiled. So I'm gonna ask you this question are you are you entitled or are you grateful? Are you entitled or are you grateful? Are you entitled to get what God's called you to get in life, or are you grateful that God's blessed you with what he's given you? That's What he's saying right here. What are you? So what the Lord is really saying in verse number 4 then he said then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? What the Lord's really saying is, Where's the problem, Jonah? Where's the problem, Jonah? He said, Are you what what what's what's what's what's helping you? What's making you feel so good to get angry, Jonah? What's there to be angry about? He said, let's get to the root of the problem, Jonah. It's your heart. Your heart's the problem, Jonah. If you're going to be what God called you to be, man, you've got to clean up your heart. You're still holding on to the past. You're still holding on to what happened 20 years ago, Jonah. And God might be saying to somebody tonight, you're still holding on to what happened 10 years ago. You're still holding on to what happened 10 months ago or 10 days ago. You're still holding on to this. Some of you's marriage ain't where it ought to be because you're still holding on to something that happened a long time ago, man. And it's time that you let go and let God. You say, well, Brother Mac, it's easier for you to stand up there and say that. Because you never sit in my seat, Brother Mac. You never experienced what I happened. Maybe I haven't experienced what you have. And I don't want to go through what you went through and thank God for the blessings of my life. And I'm grateful and thankful that I haven't had to go through what some of you went through in your life. I'm thankful for those things. I am. I was sitting there thinking about it today. I bet there's some people that can stop me right now and say, Brother Mike, you just don't know what I've been through. I don't. But I know what a man went through, so you can sit here tonight and know that one day you can go to heaven one day. I know what he went through. I can read what he went through. And man, that gets me excited. That makes me to know, you know what? Hey, I don't know what what holds tomorrow, what what's coming on tomorrow, but I know who holds it. And man, I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful. I'm gonna end in verse five tonight. But Jonah. Jonah went out to city and sat on these side. Jonah left the place that God didn't tell him to go. Jonah, I'm gonna be honest with you now. This is amen a row, me. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you know. Jonah's like a lot of pastors and preachers today, man. They'll want to win them, man, but they don't want to tender. And it's the same thing because each and every one of us are called to be in a stoppers. We want to win them and we want to dunk them, but after that, just get out the way. Let me go do something else. Oh, praise Lord. I just pray you come in and get a hold of some pastors' hearts. Get a hold of our heart and make us, make us men disopels. Want to want to pull somebody up beside us and say, Man, let me just let me just help you through this process. Let me show you how God got me to read his word and taught me these things. Man, that's what God's saying. I'm not trying to beat nobody down tonight. I'm not trying to be the a specific pastor or preacher or anybody down. I'm just saying, man, it's real. So many times we see it, and sometimes we just need to be reminded, church. That's what he's saying. I ain't mad at nobody. I'm just excited about Jesus. Amen. He had work to do in the city and he left it. Think about this for a minute now. Look what it says right here in verse number five. So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth. Wait a minute now. It said, and there he made him a booth. So Jonah had work to do in the city, but he chose to leave the city where the work was, where God was working, where people were getting saved, where he could encourage people and teach them about what who God was and what he did in their life. He could sit right there and be a mentor to these people, but instead he went and had to go work and put shade over his own head. Do you not know that there was shade in the city? Do you not know there was buildings where he didn't have to be in the heat man? He chose to get out there and face the vermin heat and face these things. He chose to leave the place where God was working in his life and go out there and have to go to work and do something else. How many times have you had to work harder to get out of work than if you just stayed there and went and stuck to the stuff? Man, I've seen it in people in our business before. I'll be like, dude, if you just do your job, you won't be twice, you won't be half as tired as what you are. Just do your job. And it's the same thing in life. People run around chasing, oh, I just ain't got time. Dude, come on, man. God's sick of excuses. That's just what he is. Let's finish up in verse number five, and we'll be done tonight. So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there he made him a booth. And he sat sat under in it in the shadow until he might see what would become of the city. I can refer to baseball. That was me back in the day. I love baseball. It's like this right here. Coach told Jonah, he said, here's the ball. You're throwing the first pitch today. You're my starting pitcher. And everything was going good. He was winning the ballgame until he got in the eighth inning and he got tired. And he got tired in the eighth inning and they started hitting that ball. They started driving it. They started scoring on him. And all of a sudden, when things didn't go right in his life, when things didn't go exactly like he wanted it, when they hit a three-run homer and they took the lead, man, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, Jonah decided right there. He said, you know what? I'm going to pack up my toys and I'm going to leave. I'm going to go home. I'm going out of the city. I'm going to go sit over there and I'm going to watch and see. Because I hope you die. I hope what I what I what I said is going to happen. I hope, but I know it's not going to happen. But I'm going to go out and sit on the city. See, Jonah already had the winning game, dude. Jonah had everything he needed to win the ballgame. He's had everything he needed. But just because the rubber got, because because the road got rough, Jonah called for the coach and he said, Coach, I won't play anymore. I'm going to go sit back on the bench. I'm going to go sit back on the bench. God, I can't handle this anymore. And that's what he did. He chose to go back and to sit on the bench and to leave what God had called him to do. When the ball was in his hand, man. He he had everything he needed, but he quit. He'd give up. See, I'm gonna try to think about something tonight. There's some people. I'm not saying there's people in this room, but I'm gonna bet there is. There's some people sitting in this room. When I sit there talking about that person that you know that person that gets you upset and angry and mad and man, Jonah hated them. And I want you to think about the one person that's did you uh I I mentioned those, I mentioned those five, five things back there, five or six things, those pissing person that made a bad business deal, or somebody cheated on you, or somebody did something wrong, or somebody did this. I want you to think about that person right now. And I want you to I want you to I want you to right now imagine that person standing in right in front of your face right now. It's gonna get rid. That person standing in front of your face right now. What you gonna do? What would you do? Anybody got an answer? What would you do if that person that that God just put in your mind, what would you do if that person come in front of you right now, nose to nose in front of you, if they were looking you in the eye, what would you do? No, what would you do? Be fake. What would you do? Somebody come on. Would anybody punch him in the nose? Let's be honest, dude. If you're gonna be real, you're gonna be honest. Would anybody? Man, they did me wrong, brother Mac. You don't understand. They cost me a bunch of money. They cost me my life. They cost me my marriage. They cost me this or they cost me that. If that person, hey, and it might be your ex-wife or your ex-employee or your ex-something. If that person's standing in front of you right now, what you gonna do? Because they did you wrong. I know what I want to do. God, I believe you, but help my unbelief, God. I know what I want to do. I wanna what I want to do what Jesus did. Because man, he stood in front of you. When you cheated on him, you lied to him, you turned your back on him, you said I didn't want him. You did all those things. And he stood right there face to face with you. And he said, I forgive you. He said, I forgive you. And I'm gonna tell you what God told me today. Hey, somebody sitting in this room, as I was praying today, hey, somebody sitting in this room. Man, I don't know who it is, but you need to come face to face with your person. And as much as it as much as pride you gotta lay aside, you stand right in front of them, right face to face to them, and say, as best you know how I forgive you. You say, Brother Mac, I don't know if I can do that. If you want to be free in Jesus Christ, you need to do it. You said, Brother Mac, I just don't know. I know I know how big my God is. My prayer is that I can do what I just preached. That I can stand face to face and say, you know what? I forget. That's what God's saying to some men tonight. You say, I don't know if I can do it. You remember I told you about that 30-minute prayer? You might need an hour. Some of y'all might need two hours, because some of y'all need a y'all got a lot of hatred inside of you. Some of you like Jonah, you'd be willing to go to hell. You will be willing to go to the depths of hell before you face that person and say, I I forgive you. You never know what God could do if He might light a revival because you were obedient to Jesus Christ. Tonight. Let me pray for you. Father God. I just thank you that you're in this place. Lord God, I thank you for these men tonight. Lord, I want to pray for that one, that two, that ten, whoever it is, God, that needs to do what you preach tonight, God. Is it look somebody in the eye. Just like God looked at Jonah in the eye, as bad as he was, he said, I forgive you. God, we need it, we need to get clean. We need to get that dirt off of us, God. We need to cut that root, God so we can be what you've called us to be and act the way you've called us to act. Lord, drive us to be more like you. Drive us to say, I forgive you when we don't know how we can do it, God, but it's just as you say, book God. Lord, go with us now, lead us, guide us, and direct us. God, thank you for this place that we get to come and we get to just praise you and serve you and fellowship in your name, God. Thank you. God, I pray you'll protect this place right now. As it seems like the fires are coming everywhere, dear God, I pray I pray a hedge of protection over this place right now. Lord, I pray for every man in every their homes right now that sit in this place. God, I put a pray you put a hedge over them. Keep them safe, dear God. Not just not just safe from fire, dear God. I pray you keep them safe from the devil and demons of hell because they're not welcome. I pray you work. We'll be careful to listen, God. I love you, Lord. It's in your name we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.