SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, my name's Harley Rafel. I'm I'm one of the pastors on staff here at Point Community and just feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to be here with you guys this morning and to uh wrap up our series, as Nick said, on Jonah. So let's jump into talking about this. Have you guys ever cared about the wrong thing? Now that's a loaded question, I know, but let me explain it a little bit. Have you ever put value or ascribed value to something that you probably shouldn't have at the cost of not valuing something that you probably should have? Does that make a little more sense? Let me give you a couple of examples that may or may not come from personal experience. Uh video games. Have you guys ever played a video game at the cost of sleep, not really getting sleep? You know, you valued the video game more than you valued your sleep. Totally guilty of that one. Yes. Gran Turismo 5. That was my like guilty, you know, that was the thing that I got really into way too much. And I remember every morning morning, that makes it even sound bad, but it was morning. I'd uh I'd roll into bed in the morning and be like, why did I stay up so late? I gotta go to work tomorrow, you know, all those thoughts. Uh another example, what about binge watching on Netflix? You guys know what I'm talking about? Yeah, there's a few heads nodding, that's good. So, you know, watching again at the cost of not getting sleep or not getting the stuff done around the home that you had planned on doing because you're like, ah, just one more show. I just gotta see what happens next, you know. Uh maybe another example, this one maybe hurt a little bit more. Uh Facebook or social media or your phone at the cost of, you know, the person that you should probably should be interacting with that's right next to you. You guys know what I'm talking about? You see the couple at the at the restaurant out on a date, and they're both like this, you know, on their phones, doing their thing, not valuing what they should be valuing, but rather valuing social media in that moment. A couple more serious examples. Maybe the person who's struggling with valuing work at the cost of their family. They're putting all their time, energy, and effort into work and not really getting the opportunity to love their family as they're called to. Or another example, maybe somebody's just caught up in a hobby or uh an interest that they have at the expense of their spouse. This is all examples of things where we get values upside down. We get things back to front, and and today we're gonna get to look at Jonah and see that he gets his values upside down and backwards. And it's a little bit uh discouraging and a little bit sad because this central character, I'm not gonna call him a hero because I don't think Jonah's much of a hero, uh, we're gonna see here with this central character that he gets things backwards, he gets things the way that he shouldn't. And as we look at the at this story today, what we get to see is really examining this backward slide, this regression of this guy that we're talking about. And the reason that I use those personal examples of values upside down is because I think that we can read Jonah, I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, we can read Jonah in particular, maybe chapter four of Jonah, and read it and be like, oh, he's so silly. Why did he do that? Why did he get his values upside down? But the reality is we do the exact same thing. And so I want to encourage you, want to encourage me today to not keep Jonah at arm's distance, but rather allow God to speak to you, allow God to speak to me today through the craziness and through the regression of Jonah. Jonah 4 is probably the most frustrating book out of the four books in Jonah, and so that's where we get to spend our time today. I know you guys are excited about that. So we're going to be talking about this. Let's do a quick recap though. If we go back and look at Jonah's attitude, specifically his attitude for these last four chapters, let's kind of go through that and make sure we're all on the same page here this morning. First chapter, we start out with what could be described as Jonah's disobedience. That's your first fill-in-the-blank there this morning if you're taking notes. Disobedience. God comes to Jonah and says, Hey Jonah, I want you to go to the people of Nineveh and tell them the message I have for you. Now, Jonah should have jumped up and done that because he understood that this was God, and his job was to hear from God and convey God's message, but rather he decides to run away. And so he jumps on a boat, heads away from Nineveh, and God sends a storm to stop him. Long story short, you guys know what happens. He gets thrown overboard when he tells the sailors, you need to do this, otherwise we're all going to drown. His drowning, the sailors come to worship God in this moment because the sea becomes flat and a fish comes along and swallows Jonah. And there he is alive but trapped in the belly of this giant fish. And so the first chapter really gives us this picture of disobedience. Interestingly, the second chapter is one that we could describe as thanksgiving, because what happens is Jonah moves from running away from God to running towards God. It's not an instantaneous thing, but we see this progress in Jonah's heart as he moves towards thanksgiving and praise towards God. He's there in the belly of the fish, praying to God. Jonah 2 is pr just predominantly a prayer. That's all it is. And then Jonah 3, we move to something actually quite nice, which is obedience. So we've made a good progression here, right? You've gone from disobedience to thanksgiving to obedience. And what we see is Jonah is asked by God again as he's spat out onto dry land by this fish. He's asked by God, hey, go to Nineveh and tell the message I will, I tell you to. And so he goes into Nineveh and he declares this message, and the whole city, from the greatest to the least, repent and turn towards God. It's an awesome and encouraging chapter of Jonah. And I wish that I could tell you that that's where the story ends. I wish that I could say, yep, and and they all lived happily ever after and move on from there. But what happens is we see chapter four, a regression in Jonah, and what we essentially see is displeasure. His attitude is one of displeasure. We see Jonah upset and frustrated at God and who God is and God's character. If I was to try and describe the chapter itself in a couple of words, I would say that it's sad, it's encouraging, and it's humorous. Now, those aren't three words that we typically put together in the English language, right? Sad, encouraging, and humorous. But as we look at this, what you'll see is it's sad. It's sad to see that Jonah's taken a few steps forward and now he's sliding back. It's encouraging to see how God continues to love him in spite of that. And it's humorous just because uh Jonah is very dramatic here in this story, and we can laugh at the story because we have the gift of perspective, we have the gift of time. But as we read it, you'll see it's kind of humorous their interaction with each other. So let's jump in and look at this story today. Jonah chapter 4, we'd encourage you to read along with in a Bible if you have one there. If you don't have one, there should be one in the seats in front of you. So feel free to grab one of those and use it if you'd like to. Jonah chapter four, and it's a little hard to find. Back up the back of the Old Testament is where you'll find it, between Obadiah and Micah. So Jonah chapter 4 is where we find ourselves. We're going to start in verse 1 and just read through to verse 4. But Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He prayed to the Lord, please, Lord, isn't this what I said while I was still in my own country? That's why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you were merciful and compassionate God, slow to become angry, rich in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster. And now, Lord, please take my life from me. For it is better for me to die than to live. The Lord asked, Is it right for you to be angry? So the drama begins. We start out here, and we start with a very interesting little word. We have this word in the English language. It's only three letters long, but it's very significant. The word but is an interesting word because what it does is it says, basically, everything we said earlier, we're going to change, right? What we said previously is different from what's about to come. There's a great example of the word but that's used in scripture in uh Ephesians chapter 2. If you go there, it's actually one of my favorite passages of scripture because what it does is in Ephesians 2, it starts talking about how we as humans are really messed up, how we really are just broken and desperate people, where without God we're really hopeless. And then in verse 4 it comes in and says, but God. And then it goes on to talk about God's goodness, his grace, and his mercy. And it's one of those ones where you're like, yeah, you know, like, because it's all like kind of despairing, and then all of a sudden it says, but God, and it's like encouraging again. Well, I'd love to tell you that that's what this but is here, but we've got the opposite thing going on. Because a good thing was happening in chapter three, and then we have but Jonah here, and we see that his attitude and his heart is in stark contrast to that of God. Let's go back and look at chapter 3, verse 10, the last verse of that chapter before. It says, Then God saw their actions, the Ninevites, that they had turned from their evil ways, so God relented from the disaster he had threatened to do to them, and he did not do it. And we should be celebrating. That's a good thing, that's exciting. But chapter 4 starts with, but Jonah. And it says, But Jonah was greatly displeased. Now, this word greatly displeased can actually be translated literally to mean he became hot. Okay? So if you're thinking about that, this is like saying very it's this is basically saying, hey, Jonah's not just a little perturbed, he's not a little frustrated, you know, he's not just pouting a little bit. No, he's angry, like he's hot under the colour, he's red in the face, his blood is boiled, he's furious in this moment, and what he does is in his anger he comes towards God. Now let's talk about this anger. Why was Jonah so angry? Well, there's probably a whole bunch of different reasons. There's probably a storm of things that was making him angry, but two things specifically I'd point out to you. Firstly, is this I believe he was worried about his reputation. Jonah had walked into Nineveh and declared this message. I'll read it to you from chapter 3, verse 4. In 40 days, this is what he said to the people Nineveh will be demolished. He didn't say, hey, in 40 days, Nineveh will be demolished unless God changes his mind. He just said, in 40 days, Nineveh's gonna be demolished. And so he's gone around the city saying this, and now God's relented from his anger, and God isn't gonna do what he, Jonah, had said he was gonna do. And so he's getting frustrated that what he prophesied, I mean, his job was he was a prophet. What he prophesied isn't gonna become true, which means he's a false prophet. He's worried about his reputation, he's worried about what people are gonna think about him. Secondly, he was also worried about the future of Israel. Jonah was patriotic, he understood and had a love for his people of Israel, I believe, and he knew that these Ninevehes had done horrible things to them as Israelites. And he knew that even though they'd repented, that they would probably turn again towards their evil ways and do horrible things to Israel again. I think he was frustrated and upset that God had shown mercy to these people in the first place, because in his mind they didn't deserve it at all. And so we hear all of this frustration in Jonah's prayer, and as you read it, it can't help but make you at least smile a little bit because it's kind of funny. As you're reading into his prayer, he's angry, and you see him trying to kind of express some of his frustration. Do you guys know what a backhanded compliment is? You guys understand what a backhand the concept of that? It's typically a uh I would describe it as an insult wrapped in a compliment, right? It's the type of thing that you say that kind of sounds nice, but when you think about it, you're like, oh, that wasn't nice at all. Uh I'll give you a couple examples. Don't be offended by these. These are just examples, okay? So uh let me give you this example. I could say to somebody, not you, uh, to somebody, your new haircut really slims your face. And what I could be saying by that is, you have a fat face. That's not very nice, right? That's a backhanded compliment. Uh another example would be I could say to somebody, you're so lucky you don't have to worry about real responsibilities, like a mortgage or kids or a career. And that would be a backhanded way of saying you really need to grow up. Okay? So that's a backhanded compliment. What Jonah's trying to do here almost seems to be the opposite of that. Because what he's doing is he's trying to bring this charge, he's trying to bring this insult towards God, and it actually turns out to be a compliment. It turns out to be praise, it turns out to be worship. Read it with me. He's like angry at God, and what he says here in verse uh three, I knew that you were a merciful, compassionate God, slow to become angry, rich in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster. Like we could have just taken that out of the book of Psalms, right? It's worship, it's praise towards God. And so it's a little humorous to us reading it with the gift of perspective, because we can see and be like, yeah, that's kind of funny. He's like trying to be mad at God, and yet he's worshiping God by his angry words. And so we see that here, but it's actually, as we think about it, it's kind of a little bit sobering too. Because the Nineveh, what we see here is the Ninevites were more ready to accept God's grace than Jonah was. And that's not the way that it should have been. As I was studying this week, this phrase was actually one that was in the some of the notes I was reading, written by a theologian. I just thought it was so on point. The Nineveh were more ready to accept God's grace than Jonah was. As I've been thinking about this story, I've been thinking about a parable that Jesus told in Matthew chapter 18. It's found in verse 21. I'm gonna paraphrase it for you today. It basically goes something like this there's a king, he pulls a servant in who owes him a lot of money, and he says to him, Hey, you owe me a million dollars. The servant says, I don't have it, and I can't pay it right now, but I will get it to you. King says, That's not good enough. I'm gonna have to put you and your family into forced labor until you can pay it back. And the servant says, Please have mercy on me. Please be gracious to me. Give me more time. And the king says, You know what? I can even do better than that. I'm gonna get rid of your debt altogether. I'm gonna eradicate it. You don't owe me a cent. Your million dollars is not owed to me anymore. And that man, that slave, walks out of there as a freed man. But a minute later, he's walking down the street and he sees across the street a guy who owes him a thousand dollars. He goes over, runs over, grabs him by the scruff of the neck, and says, Hey, you owe me a thousand dollars. I want my money now. And the guy says, I don't have it, I'll get it to you as soon as possible. He says, That's not good enough. He takes the man and throws him in prison. And word of this gets back to the king. The king pulls this ungrateful servant in front of him and says, What on earth are you thinking? I forgave you a million dollars. Couldn't you forgive this guy a thousand dollars? And much in the same way, as I look at Jonah, I see the unforgiving servant. Because if anybody should have understood the grace and forgiveness of God, it should have been Jonah. Jonah was one of the Israelites, he was one of God's chosen people who understood or should have understood grace. Jonah was a prophet, he heard from God regularly, he heard the audible voice of God, and yet he didn't understand that God was a God of grace and forgiveness, or he wasn't ready to accept that God was a God of grace and forgiveness. And this is really a sobering thing. Jonah is upset, he's so upset that he says to God, I I wish that I could die. Uh if you go to the message and look at the paraphrase of the message, it actually, Jonah's words are translated to say, If you're not gonna kill them, I wish that you would kill me. That's how mad he is about this. I mean, he's really upset. He's basically saying, I don't want to live in a world where you're gracious and forgive forgiving of these people of Nineveh. That's not the type of world in which I want to live. That's how mad he is. And so God comes to him, God responds and says, Is it right for you to be angry? To which Jonah doesn't respond. Let's see what he does in verse 5. Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. He made himself a shelter there and sat in shade to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up to provide shade over Jonah's head to ease his discomfort. Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered. As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down so much on Jonah, Jonah's head, that he almost fainted and he wanted to die. He said, It's better for me to die than to live. Again, the drama is coming out in Jonah as we look at this passage. But it's interesting to note, God comes to Jonah in verse 4 and says, Is it right for you to be angry? And Jonah doesn't even respond. He's so angry, he's just like, he's like, whatever. And he walks out to the side of the city in hope that God will maybe change his mind. I don't really know what he was thinking, but I guess he was thinking, maybe if I go out to the edge of the city, you know, destruction will eventually come. He goes out there and he has what I would define as a pity party. You guys know what I'm talking about? A pity party where nobody else is invited, just him and his sorrow and his shame and his anger and his frustration, all that stuff. He's out there stewing, having a pity party with himself. And what God does here is quite incredible because what we see is God sends this plant to teach Jonah. Now it's interesting to note that he sends a plant, he sends a worm, and he sends a wind, just as God had also sent a storm in chapter 1 and a fish. And as we read this, this is kind of a side note to the story of Jonah and the heart of Jonah and all that's going on, but I think it's worth noting is that Jonah 4 reminds us very clearly that God is in control of all things. Whether it's a plant, whether it's on the you know, whether it's in the heavens, the storm, whether it's beneath in the ocean, it's this great fish, whether it's, you know, an animal like a worm or a a bug like a worm or a plant, God is in control, absolute control of all things. God is powerful, and I think that oftentimes we don't give him credit for his power, for the power in which he has. Uh a couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to uh look after our kids alone. It was uh an interesting experience. I have uh three children who are all under the age of four. So uh our house is b busy and full all of the time, and uh I was at home alone with my kids, and it was kind of an interesting experience for several days because what I learned a lot in that time was that I love Liz, my wife. I really do, and I respect her a lot, and she is an amazing woman, does a lot each and every day. But what was going on was just interesting because each day as I got up and was going through the day, I felt like I was on the absolute knife point, the edge of losing control. Because between like all that was going on, you know, the schedule of you know the kids and their naps and all of that, and then also, you know, feeding them, changing their diapers, you know, all the stuff Liz normally does. Like, all of that stuff, I like was on the edge of not getting it together or having it right. And I I felt like I was scrambling. It was okay, but just. You know, guys know what I'm talking about? Like, it was just okay. And I think oftentimes when we think about God, that's the picture that we have of God. That He's kind of just scrambling and just keeping all the plates spinning in our lives, just on the edge of control, having things together. But as we look at the Jonah, as we look at the other scriptures, we're very reminded of the fact that that's not at all who God is or how he operates. God is easily in control of all things, he's in control of everything down to a little worm, a bug, and a plant, and a wind, and a storm. And I'm and I just make this point today because I really want for you to know, I know that some of you in the midst of hard stuff, and you need to know today that God is in absolute control. He's not freaked out, he's not worried, he's not scrambling, he is good, and he is in control. And maybe that's all that you need to hear today because we see this over and again in the book of Jonah. God is in complete control of all things. Unfortunately, Jonah doesn't see it. Jonah just sees himself and he sees his frustration, and his pity party continues. He says, It's better for me to die than to live. And again, God comes to Jonah and responds. By the way, if it was me, if I were God in this position, I would have given up on Jonah probably long ago, long before this. But thankfully, God is gracious and comes to Jonah again in verse 9. Let's read what happens. So Jonah's just said, It's better for me to die than to live. Then God asked Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? Yes, he replied, It is right. I'm angry enough to die. So the Lord said, You cared about the plant which did not lay you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and it perished in a night. Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as the many animals? That's the end. It's a hanging ending. We'll talk about that here in a sec. But let's talk about God's interaction with Jonah here. God comes again and asks the same question as he did in verse 4. Is it right for you to be angry? But he tags on a little phrase. He says, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And what he's doing here is he's pressing his finger in on the issue. He's highlighting for Jonah and saying, Hey, Jonah, this is the issue right here. You have, Jonah, a double standard. You care about a plant, and you don't even care about the people. And we look at this story and we can kind of laugh a little bit and think that it's kind of funny, but the reality is each and every one of us has plants in our lives that we care about at times more than we care about what we should. Loving God and loving people. And like Jonah, we struggle to put Put value on the right things. I talked about this at the start, right? Those examples that I used. I talked about, you know, video games or TV or you know social media, working too much, uh obsessing over a hobby. All of those examples I gave you, I'll be honest, personal examples, all of those. They're all things that I've struggled with at times. They're all things that I've put value on at times and had things backwards. And I say that because I really think we all struggle with this. And this is the key issue here in Jonah chapter 4. We struggle with misplaced values. We've been talking this semester about being missionaries, living and loving the people that God's placed around us, whether that's family, friends, co-workers, or especially neighbors. We did that whole series on the art of neighboring, if you guys remember us doing that. And the reason we talked about that is because we believe that as people who have been radically loved by God, we're called to share that love. And as we're called to share that love and to be missionaries, what we have here with Jonah is a terrible example of what it looks like to be a missionary. Think about it with me. God calls Jonah to go on mission, and his first reaction is he doesn't want to go. He runs away. The second thing that happens is he finally goes after God does some pretty crazy stuff, including a giant fish ride, right? He finally goes, and when he does, he doesn't really do a good job. I don't know if you kind of picked up on that, but if you read back to the message that he gave the Ninevehites, he walks into the city. I picture him walking into the city and being like, in 40 days your city's gonna be demolished. Walks over to another part of town. 40 days your city's gonna be demolished. I mean, I picture him being that, like, you know, negative about what's going on. And yet, in spite of that, God does an amazing work. Good reminder, right? It's God who saves people, not us. God's amazing. He does an amazing work, even in spite of the fact that Jonah's not a good missionary and not very articulate. And so uh God works, but Jonah doesn't do a very good job, and then he gets angry and values the wrong thing. He doesn't value the mission and the people, rather, he values his comfort and his reputation. And we do the same thing. We can laugh at Jonah, but the reality is we value our comfort more than we value the people and the God who has given us the people to live around. We get things upside down. We value our reputation like Jonah did, and we struggle with this. And then Jonah goes on, and the book of Jonah goes on and ends with God asking this question. We've got this like question mark at the end of the book, and it's kind of weird. It's kind of like uh the ha a hanging ending on a movie or in a song. You guys know what I'm talking about? The type of movie where the credits start rolling, and you're like, Whoa, what just happened there? Like, what happened to the characters? I never got to resolve any of that stuff. Like, I don't like those sort of movies, by the way. Uh so you've got these hanging ending or in a song. You guys know what I'm talking about? The the song that you're like, just please hit that that that main chord back one more time. But they leave it on this like hanging chord, and you're like, just one more chord. The reason it's there is to create anticipation, and and I believe it's the same here in the scripture because what what it creates for us is this question of what happened to Jonah. He was left with a decision. He was left with two options. Was he going to stay there with his values upside down, worrying about himself, worrying about his own reputation, or was he going to allow God to correct his heart in this moment and realize that people, that God was more important than his own little pity party that he had going on. So let's zoom back out and look at this story one more time. This story of Jonah, as we look at it, what do we learn from it? I'll be honest with you. As I look at this story, I really do wish that we got to chapter three and then it ended a little bit differently. I wrote out an alternate ending. You guys want to hear it? Here it is. Um thankfully God didn't let me write the Bible. Here we go. Uh God, so imagine we ended at chapter three, and then it said this God relented from his anger. Jonas celebrated with the people of Nineveh and taught them all about God before returning home, and they lived happily ever after the end. That would be a nice ending, right? You guys wish I I mean, honestly, that's how I wish the story ended because it'd be like, you know, everybody's happy and good. But this chapter four is there for a reason. And the reason that it's there is because it shows us a picture of ourselves. Like Jonah, we regress. We struggle with this. It's in our fallen nature to regress. What Jonah does for us, what Jonah 4 specifically does for us, is holds up a mirror for us to see ourselves. And if we're willing and able today to honestly look at ourselves, we can see moments in our lives in which we've struggled with this. Putting values upside down, not caring about God, not caring about the mission, the people that He's put around us. And that's really sad to stop and to think about. What we see here is that we are faithless. We struggle a bit with being faithless. It's a continual struggle in our lives. But I want to tell you a really good scripture that I like. 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 13. There's a beautiful little verse, and it says this if we are faithless, he remains faithful. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. Isn't that encouraging? Because as I think about Jonah, as I think about my own life and my own struggles with being, you know, faithful, we're reminded that God is faithful even when we're faithless. That's so encouraging for me to think about and to hear. And again, God is the hero in this story, not Jonah. Jonah 4 is about God. Jonah 1, 2, 3, and 4 is all about God. It's not about Jonah. It reminds us of God's goodness, God's grace, and his faithfulness to us. And we see that specifically in and through the work of Jesus. Let's talk about Jesus here for a second. Jesus had every right to look at us like Jonah looked at the people of Nineveh, right? Jonah looked, went out to the edge of the city, and he looked at the people of the city and he saw that they were sinful. Jesus had a right to look at us and see us as just sinful. Jonah looked at the people of the city and saw that they were unworthy of grace and forgiveness. Jesus had a right to look at us and see that we were unworthy of grace and forgiveness. Jonah saw that the people of the city were confused. Even God articulated that in verse 11. He said they don't know their right from their left. He's like, these people are confused about spiritual things. They don't understand. And Jesus, in the same way, could have looked at us and said, Those people are just confused. They just do not get it. And he could have sat out there, Jesus could have looked at us and just remained looking at us with condemnation and saying, Yeah, they don't get it, they don't understand, they're sinful. And yet Jesus doesn't do that. He doesn't look at us with anger and contempt. He looks at us rather with mercy and grace. Mercy so strong that it drove him to the cross. I want to read a beautiful little verse for you. John chapter 3, not 16, but the verse after that, verse 17. Listen to what it says. For God did not send his Son, Jesus, into the world that he might condemn the world, but the world might be saved through him. Amen. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned. Because God sorry, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. What we see here is that Jesus is the greater Jonah. Jesus is the hero. Look at let's contrast the two of them just one more time. If you look at Jonah, Jonah goes out to the edge of the city, and he sits there on the edge of the city to condemn the city. And as we look at Jesus, we see Jesus going to the edge of the city of Jerusalem, to Calvary, to Golgotha, to not sit in condemnation, but to offer up forgiveness as he hangs on a cross. Isn't that beautiful to think about that picture? That rather than sitting in condemnation of us, he sits in a place of forgiveness and grace as he hangs on that cross to pay for our sins. Praise God for his mercy. As I look at Jonah 4, I am reminded of God's grace. More than anything, I am reminded of God's grace. And I'm reminded that God's grace is greater than we probably oftentimes give him credit for. Praise God that he in his mercy has planned two trips to earth. Think about it with me. The first trip was 2,000 years ago, roughly 2,000 years ago, to offer Jesus to be a sacrifice for our sins, to give us a means of rescue, like we just talked about in John chapter 3. Now the second time he's coming is to eradicate sin and to bring judgment on sin. Thankfully, we have a window of time in which we have an opportunity to turn towards God. Like the city of Nineveh, they had 40 days. We have a window too. And so it's important for us to realize that this message of grace and forgiveness is one that, yeah, we need to personally wrestle with and come to a realization of where we stand with Jesus. But this is something that's important not just for us but for all the people that God's placed us around. Whether that's our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, God has put us in their lives to be light and love and to point them towards Jesus. So what do we take from this book? What do we take home and think about as we're leaving here today? Two things that I want to kind of bring you back to. And both of them, by the way, focus about on God, not on us, not on Jonah. Firstly, this God is good, we are not. That sounds really simple, but if we can get that, if we can really understand that in our hearts and our heads, like that will radically change the way we live. God is good, we are not. We need to see this, we need to accept this. The scriptures tell us very clearly that no one is good. Not even one. That's what it says. No one is good. You hear people sometimes say, you know, I believe I'm a good person, or hopefully God thinks that I'm a good person. That's not how it works. We're not good. We need Jesus. We often say here at Point Community Church that we are broken people. And Nick even said it this morning. You know, if you stay around, you're gonna see that we we're not perfect people. But we always try to say that with the gospel as well, to remind you that yeah, we're broken, we're sinful, we we're not great people, but God is great and gracious, and because of him we have hope, we have life, we have meaning. Isn't that good news? So let's reflect on that today, especially if you don't know where you stand with God today. We've been given a window, like I said, to make a decision about what we believe about God. If you can come to a realization that you are not good, you're on the door of making a decision to know that you need Jesus. And I would encourage you to investigate that fully today. Know that God loves you and that Jesus is for you. And as that scripture says in John 3 that I just read earlier, know that you can you can not have condemnation when you when you come into a relationship with Jesus. The second thing that I point out to you as we kind of put an end to this book of Jonah for our series, is that God's mercy is deeper than we often give him credit for. I've kind of hinted at that and mentioned that earlier. We owe him, we owe God more of our worship. I really do believe this. As we look at the book of Jonah and we see God just continuing to love Jonah, right? He doesn't deserve the love that he gets. As he continues to love the sinful pagan people of the city of Nineveh, we see a story of God's grace that is deeper than we give him credit for. God's grace is scandalous. We say that sometimes. There's a song that we sometimes sing called The Scandal of Grace. Grace is scandalous. We don't deserve it. And yet God offers it up to us. And the scriptures tell us he who is forgiven much forgives much. And that means we who are Christians here in the room today, we should not be the most loving and amazing people on our street or in our neighborhood because we're trying to appease God, to stop him from hating us or hating at how sinful we are, or to earn our way to approval with God. Rather, we should be the most amazing people in our neighborhoods, in our street, in our circles of friends, because we have experienced an amazing love ourselves. Does that make sense? And so I really want to encourage you guys to just worship God today. We don't need to walk out of here, you know, uh, with our heads low because our values are upside down. We can walk out of here with our heads high, knowing that God's grace and forgiveness is there whenever we need it. To Jonah, to the Ninevehites, God has shown Himself to be gracious and faithful. And we too can cry out to that gracious and faithful God. And that's something that we can celebrate now. And so we're gonna do that here in a second as we close out. I'm gonna pray for us and then give you guys some direction.