Dr. Elliott Greene Sermon 10/14/18

like apps absolute delight to be here once again Darrell have to correct you on one thing I'm not a Cowboys fan I'm a Cowboys critic that's different right right yeah so yeah III followed the Cowboys for a long time but Jerry Jones is the owner so that keeps me in prayer for them quite a bit so when I go places sometimes people say well you're from Texas actually we live in Houston so we pull for the Texans as well but I remember what's somewhere and there was a big blue star on my computer and it projected and everyone immediately was several years ago everyone looked at start saying boo boo boo I said I'll be quiet I said the way the Cowboys have been playing this past couple of years every time I look at that blue star it reminds me of the song the old rugged cross and they said well what do you mean I said it is an emblem of suffering and shame so it is wonderful to be back here with you and the Antelope Valley we thoroughly enjoy coming here each year for ministry I love Darrell Leslie and the church and you just have a special place in my heart so it is always a pleasure when the Lord grants me the pleasure of coming to be wet my whistle second here before I open up with a song I'm joking okay let's punctuate our time with a word of Prayer Heavenly Father thank you so much for this morning for the various blessings and gifts that you gave each one of us as we rose as we moved about and maybe to this point many of us have not yet said thank you for all of those things that we took for granted well thank you we love you you are so marvelous in running ahead of us with so many blessings that the truth is we run into them thank you for your kindness toward us open our ears and our hearts this morning that we may embrace the word of God for all that it is and that you may incarnate in us what was in your son love and obedience for you in Jesus name we pray amen okay you don't mind I'm going to kind of tilt this that way it doesn't feel like I'm you know yeah at the concert you buy the tickets behind the stage you know the star never sings to you so we want to make sure we do this I would like for everyone to please turn in the Old Testament to the Book of Jonah Book of Jonah now in the day when people use iPads and things you don't hear pages turning like he used to but that's okay so I just want you parked here so we'll be will be ready there's an episode in the New Testament that flashes back to the story of Jonah it's in Matthew chapter 8 and Jesus is out on the sea with its disciples and a storm brews and it's a pretty violent storm and Jesus has fallen asleep in the boat storms bothering everyone on the boat but Jesus and they go to I mean they wake him up and essentially say well don't don't you care that we perish and the Lord stands in the boat and commands the wind and the sea to stop and it doesn't grind to a halt it stops immediately man if we could raise children like that okay I have a four year old and I got halt and it just doesn't work so I'm like Jesus of all the spiritual gifts that you've given me I need that one okay I need that one but it comes to a complete stop so you can imagine everyone screaming and running in panic and all of a sudden complete silence and they look at each other and say what kind of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him and for that gospel that's a prevailing question that's a strong what kind of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey em and if Jesus would have respond to that commentary he will said you think this is impressive wait until you see what I do with death if you're impressed with wind in the sea we're gonna talk about the Jonas story a little bit in how Jonah sets up what we're going to learn about Christ and the New Testament the Old Testament in the New Testament or constantly having dialogue with one another in fact the correct way to say it is not referred to it as the Old Testament but as the first Testament that leads into the death and resurrection center of Jesus Christ and then what falls after it's one story that is connected by the Ministry of Jesus so here we have Jonah Jonah in the world of Old Testament prophets when we look at the literature it's an oddball it's weird now when we teach prophets Old Testament prophets particularly that a lot of prophets Isaiah Jeremiah and the twelve we use we usually have to teach the prophets after we've taught poets because the Hebrew of the of the prophets is often kind of told and kind of a singing manner okay it's kind of a as a hymn or sonic flow to it of all of the prophets Jonah has some of that in it but he's different Jonah is the only prophetic book that we have that is a narrative that is a story and you have to read the story with a certain mindset and the mindset that you read it with is it's a tall texas tale okay I guess if once I went to seminary and I studied in I read Jonah it's just so much humor in it it's just so much humor around this prophet that the Lord gives a mission and the Prophet rebelled against the mission now there's a couple of ways you can think of Jonah as a story it we could we could speak of it as what happens when God interrupts our plans but that's not what Jonah is about Jonah the story of Jonah is about Jonah interrupting God's plans with Jonah's sin that's the real issue interrupting God's plans God wants to grow us God was the fetus's word fetus is truth but often we want to interrupt God's plan with our sin and sometimes that sin is kind of informing God what he should be doing for us and how he should be doing what he's doing for us as though we made the universe and we're allowing God to tag along for the ride Jonah is that a type of book interrupting God's plans with your sin Jesus is the opposite for for Jesus where there's God's will on one side and then Christ obedience where these two meet Jesus calls that reality and usually for us it's God's will and then our disobedience and that meets and creates a totally different reality and actually it's false because it's false living we weren't designed for disobedience but here we have a prophet who's doing it in a grand fashion the story of Jonah starts off the the Hebrew waha devar adonai Eliana and it says the word of the lord came to jonah son of amitai saying the the the the way that the hebrew is phrase there's telling you here comes a story okay so it's not a prophetic Oracle we know we're not hearing hearing that it's telling us here comes a story so the the word of Yahweh what the word of the Lord has come to him the Prophet and he sells the Prophet rise and go to Nineveh that great city and cry out against it because their evil has come to my presence this is a normal way that a prophet might be give his assignment rise and go and and usually you will get and Jonah rose okay as the Lord instructed him to and went to Nineveh but here's what the Hebrew does for us it says and Jonah rose and you're expecting are the prophet of the Lord is rising and went to Tarshish though it's like the Lord says I need you to go east Genesis now I'm going as far west as possible you know it would be like if Jonah gets the word of the Lord in Oklahoma okay and there are God says rise and go to New York Jonah says excuse me Southwest Airlines Oh what do you have going to Singapore okay all right and how quickly is OE is going in the opposite direction and the word they're in instead of Laveau which means to go it is live rock which means to flee so he rises to flee from the Lord's instruction let me start you off for something if the Prophet is like this what must the people be like we catch Jonah in a particular setting in in Israelite history the Assyrians are pressing in on the Northern Kingdom in fact in the year 720 to 721 after Israel had split into two parts Israel to the north Judah to the South the Assyrians are going to come and wipe out the Northern Kingdom well part of Jonah's prophecy had been telling how prosperous they were going to be yeah but but now the Lord wants Jonah to go in preacher let's fast forward a little bit Jonah is about to go preach to the city of Nineveh and and he says cry out against it in other words this is a prophetic threat in other words God is about to do a divine drive-by and leave everything dead so when Jonah hears this he goes wait a minute Lord you mean the Aesir he goes yes I want you to go and preach to the assyrians people have notified because you do know what the Ninevites do for a living they'll give you an idea the the Nunavut army or the Assyrian army would go in besiege a city and of course you'd close the gates because you didn't want to be conquered so anyone that was a part of that city that they caught outside they would decapitate them and pile the skulls up next to the city wall and say if you don't open up soon this is what's going to happen to you we're thinking dude if you did that as a threat we don't want to open the door so cities would hold out then they would lose and they would go in and do all types of or they they had a name for being a ruthless people now the other thing is God hates ruthless people but he's sending Jonah to preach to who ruthless people and Jonases won't wait a minute let's think forward here okay thinking forward that that incredible thing and so many of us have hard time doing I really love that car I really want that car so what if he cost me 70 percent of my income every month okay all right and then after three or four months you know like hmm when you give a lot of money to the upkeep of your car people start wanting to take away where you live and the food you ate okay the the sign that you're a maturing in life is the ability to think forward but that doesn't always wait for work well so Jonah thinks forward and says wait a minute if I go and preach to them and they hear and they believe and they obey then that means they're going to hang around and Israel who's having a hard time following Yahweh right now that the Lord might use Nineveh against Israel might use the Assyrians to wipe out Israel so Jonah says I'm just going to mess up God's plans okay so say Lord you're not going to help me preach to our enemies so they can stay around and judges and Guardians is exactly what I want you to do because you're people my friend have become my enemies I've given them a covenant I've promised to protect them all the way back to that remember that Red Sea thing you know where Moses is standing there and the Egyptian army is behind and there's water in the front and I pot the water you walk through not on muddy ground but on dry land and I made you a nation I took you out I gave you a covenant I bless you as my people and I gave you in the in the process of that covenant I gave you Covenant blessings if you keep it in covenant cursings well guess which side of the covenant you keeps choosing the curses and it's time to pay up but well why well remember that small little thing thou will have no other gods before me the hebrew literally says you will not have any other gods in my face now this is like gentlemen how many of guys are married okay you come home from work there's some other man at your kitchen table eating your Fried Chicken and calling your wife baby okay I can hear the gangsta ruse gangster rap music playing in my mind already I said well well Elliot you want to make sure son that you're having a biblical thought I said I am having biblical thoughts and they all come from the book of Revelation right now I'll come in from the book of Revelation right now and so she's coming over and said would you like a wing would you like some more wings and I'm thinking oh Lord that did it this man has because you can't give anybody else my wing you can have the breast you can have the thigh okay you can have the gizzard you can have all of those inner parts but you gave up my wing its execution time now so Yahweh says I gave you that table I gave you that kitchen I gave you this home but but more that's everything that's in the house I gave you my love and you cheated other gods and I've warned you and you kept the cheating and I've warned you and you kept the cheating now it's time to bring the Ninevites so Jonah is thinking well why don't we just forestall God's plan see this is where he's going if I don't do what he tells me the Ninevites can stay around okay just for a moment because he's gonna make them go boom and and that will spare our people and God says okay let's do it your way so the text says that their evil has come up before me so Jonah rose to to flee to Tarshish now if you've ever seen a map of the Middle East okay and just think of the Mediterranean Sea on the one side here you'd have Israel and then all the way at the end you'd have Spain and Morocco and the gates of Gibraltar Jonah's trying to go there okay and if you can imagine if it's an East oriented map where East is up he's going to go from Jerusalem which is likely where he gets the the Oracle he goes from Jerusalem he goes down to Joppa to the Seaport and he goes down in the boat to go with them to Toshi's and then it says Melissa hadn't died from the presence of the Lord yeah good luck you know what when Jonah gets there who's waiting for him now that the the way the text bends this it says Jonah rose it's part of the narrative and then we get to chapter chapter 1 verse 4 it says but the Lord but the Lord hurled a great wind against the sea and and there was a great tempest in the sea and the boat thought it was going to break up now last I checked boats don't think ok so this is clearly part of that tall Texas tale the boat the thinking oh my god I'm sinking all right so what happens is panic ensues and it says that the the sailors on the boat that they feared and they're crying out each one to his god so you have pagans on the boat and the one guy on the boat who's not the pagan is the preacher okay so Jonah's in the boat he's resting everyone else is going around trying to find which God they could appease to turn off his storm and they're throwing cargo overboard now you have to understand that cargo included animals so you can imagine their vessels going over and chickens flying everywhere and people screaming and the boats filling up with water each time and and and everyone's running around going God God please did your God work no he didn't work what try some of the other ones stupid we're gonna sink so they're having a religious moment right now okay in the midst of all of this chaos but Jonah had gone down into the boat and lie down it's a duel double-decker boat he'd lie down and he's fallen asleep is it an amazing how comfortable we can get with disobedience so everyone always tells me I asked him well how do you you know you know what's your thought about your plan here and they'll tell me what the plan is sometimes when I'm counseling people and I'm thinking that's not a very good plan and here's the way they think they're going to make me stop talking about it well I prayed about it and I have peace with it okay and I'm thinking about don't try that on me I've been that idiot before okay in fact many times how did you think I become a counselor you know I didn't fall out of heaven you know I I tried this like the eight times said well okay Lord this time let's do something different you speak I listen and then I obey you know what sometimes the trouble still comes but we think the issue is getting life to work out right and God says no getting you to follow me is right so we have this thing in our mind if God's in it it's going to be good I'm gonna tell that to Jesus hanging on the cross God was all the way in that and Jesus for him he knew this is an unavoidable reality often God is in it and the stress comes because what he's doing is training us to love and submit to him when loving and submitting to him are not easy propositions so that the training is how to stick and focus on God's will and God's Word when everything else is distracted you or distracting you you get it distracting you or distracting you there could be a good distraction or a bad distraction but it's still doing what leading us away growing in Christ doesn't mean that over time you just automatically get better there's no fool like an old fool why because he's had so many years to practice time doesn't necessarily make you grow as a Christian of beedi installs because the idea is to grow closer to God not just for him to fix your circumstances so Jonah what's his circumstances fixed and he realizes here that doing what the Lord says to do is not going to work so he runs so he's on the boat and everyone else is is panicking so Jonah is sleeping and he's the only one that's not praying so he the captain of the ship comes to him this is in verse 6 the captain of the sickness ship comes to him and says you know what's this you know sleeping so is it common in were you from that when you're about to lose your life you just go to sleep you're falling out of the sky you pull your parachute the ripcord does nothing you say well I think it's time for a nap so the the captain tells him to rise and cry out isn't that funny those are the same words that God told Jonah rise and cry out not someone else is saying rise and cry out often God's voice will echo through other people okay rise and and and and cry out to your God and perhaps he will think kindly of us and we will not perish so everyone is still in the panic on the boat so they said let's try something else let's cast lots okay we're going to go through this process of elimination to try to figure out whose fault is this okay what this is I mean this is Gilligan's Island with a really bad twist to it right you don't run ashore live in you just sink in the middle of the sea okay so they cast lots and the lot falls on the sleeping guy now here's something interesting about the story of Jonah there's a lot of discourse that's going on here in chapter 1 that we don't find out about until chapter 3 okay Jonah opens up and he tells them but he actually has done that here but we don't know that why because the story is being rushed forward so the the the lots fall on Jonah and Jonah acknowledges that it is our economy that this evil this evil has come against you now we've heard this word evil first in on the on the mouth of the Lord rise cry out against Nineveh because okay there evil has come against me so evil can mean calamity doesn't just certainly moral evil and then also the idea is this evil in terms of this this awful thing is about to happen to us that's it that's an evil so we have well first of all moral evil now calamity evil but that the author keeps using the same word okay so this is a common theme a common tactic that many writers will use they'll use the same word over and over to try to get an idea across to you okay to cry to get an idea across to you so evil is being used in several words God says miniver's doing evil the sailors are saying are this evil is happening to us and then Jonah says I know why this evil is happening to you okay it's on account of me so they asked Jonah what should we do with you to make all of the stop Jonah says pick me up and throw me overboard okay so you're God's madding mad at you right and he's doing all of this right to get you right and you want us to pick you up and throw you overboard so he can be now mad at us to the people that say all together fail together so I mean someone said are you out of your bloody mind throw you overboard no way my friend now in the course of this they asked Jonah who are you who are your people what do you do and he gives them the these famous words are no key every I am a Hebrew and I fear using the word Yara is actually the word fear implies worship I fear Yahweh the God who made the sea and the dry land and that's how they were able to say it is you because we were appealing to our gods are see gods our fish gods are our sky gods you know our gods over the small fish the gods over the big fish the gods for the small birds and the big bird seems like a dr. Seuss thing going on we were trying all kinds of gods and none of none of them worked Sam I am now we know it's your God who created all of this so our gods can't counter him your God created the sea in the dry land no wonder what should we do throw you overboard no no what we're going to do is row you back to shore all right so that the scene pictures the sailors put Jonah in the boat and they're going up wave and down a wave and up a wave are down away and the words they use for what they were doing with the water they were digging into the water trying to make the boat go but the Lord had him running up a wave and down a wave up where they trying as hard as possible to get him back to shore and they're rolling and stay in the same spot so finally they say what's that she said we need to do and he said pick me up and throw me overboard so they picked him up and they hurled him into the sea and immediately to see stopped they're looking around and and III have a play I'm gonna write someday about this scene bringing out all the comedy comedy and there's a goat on the boat named Willy and Willy the goat Willy coat was next to be thrown overboard so Willy goes because he was some of the cargo because they're trying to get the ship to be lighter so Jonah goes over and we'll it goes finally they take the human for what he does rather than killing the animal so then after this right there on the boat the pagan sailors have a worship service they've vowed vows to the Lord to Yahweh in other words they have been converted okay Jonah's whole experience there has been one gospel tract to get them to worship the one God who controls everything and then it says they vowed vows and they offered sacrifices you know what you do when you offer sacrifices you take an animal and you kill it and you burn it so Willy is not out of the woods yet it should you imagine that the goat saying I see how this is working that's that's how it is with the man you see okay because the goat I'm just catching a ride dude I'm just catching a ride and then you got a sinful man that they throw overboard I'm thinking finally humans should get what they have coming but no no now they're thankful instead of just offering something else you've got some fruit left over in the boat or something why do you have to kill Willy well when you think about that in the ex in the Old Testament killing a human in sacrifice was always an abomination to the Lord he says I don't want you to do that because if you take a human and sacrifice them that's not a sacrifice if you take a human insect that's called justifiable homicide because in judgment that's what I will give you so instead I want you to take an animal and we're going to lay charge on the animal we're going to take your sins and place them on the animal and burn him so I won't have to burn you nowhere in the bible does Yahweh ever ask for a human sacrifice but he offers his own son because with all of the rest of us execution is what we have coming in the divine picture but God in His mercy and his compassion offers he son in our place and when he does the sins are to our town for permanently see that right there is the center of the Bible story you said you mean the sacrifice we know know if you just focus on the sacrifice you're missing the main point the compassion that the kindness of God who gives us second in third and fourth and fifth in six chances God is not the god of a second chance he's the god of many chances but he only gives you one life many chances but one life be careful with what you do with that one life because those chances he's using him sometimes even when he he calls we would call what God puts us through as a as a setback God says note that is they set up to get you looking at me it's not a setback if I let you go forward and you're successful you think you don't need me when you're using my oxygen my chemicals my water my everything my gravity everything that you used to get ahead to boast and say look what I've done with my life God says I gave it to you it's more like look what you've done with the life that I gave you so sometimes God sets us back to set us up for something more wonderful and that's hard because in the mean time we're so looking at Lord I didn't get my way since thank God you didn't get my way thank God that you didn't get the my way as you call it because that was leading you further and further away from me you were playing Jonah with me thinking that you were going to outrun me and when you get to the sea I'm already there and the irony is everything in Jonah's story obeys God except for Jonah even the wind in the sea it's it's amazing no we would say well Jonah didn't go to church now Jonah was a preacher I mean because going the church doesn't fix it what we try to offer God is religion when he wants relationship when he wants us to know him we're content with what anyone in the military in here ever been in the military okay your dog tags what do they say okay they give your whole life they tell where you want to high school no it's just enough to identify you okay and particularly if something negative happens we want dog tag theology just enough about God just to know where he lives we don't want living life changing theology we don't want a heart change what we want is a God who will help us master our conveniences that we pursue and it's not that all of those are bad but the issue is those things become the guard and the guard upstairs just becomes the helper and I don't speak to to pagans who are out in the world that's what sinners do for a living they they do what they do that's on the Job Description but being near and hearing is not good enough James says people who hear and don't do are fooling themselves it says they're fools so Jonah is thrown about overboard now I'm going to speed the message up here a little bit tell us how this works out Jonah's thrown over in to the sea and then chapter 2 is a series of but well it's one big Psalm well Jonah prays and amazingly it's a Thanksgiving song now you would think that once you get thrown into the sea but it would be a lament but it's actually a Thanksgiving song so as he describes what's happening and you could read this later he's going down there's seaweed wrapping around his neck the currents in the rindy in the sea are pushing him pushing him around and then he says he intercedes for himself is that interesting right in the middle of chaos it's prayer time oh not when things were going well Lord should I even get on this boat I have a horrible attitude maybe I need to just sit down right here in Java and pray before I get on this boat nope get on the boat storm starts time to pray ah why I'm still in the boat but the boat might sink but the boat hasn't sunk is it time to reach out to the Lord ah I'm still dry okay now the captain is pleading there's some well no no no everything's I just need to calm the brothers down y'all need to chill alright this is gonna be alright after a while we'll sail out from under there that doesn't happen when he gets into the water he goes now it's prayer time okay when the chaos calms now it's prayer now he prays and what he's going to do is to refer to a big fish at the end is going to come and swallow Jonah and Jonah refers to that fish as the grave it's like all now in Jewish thought there's nothing good about a grave okay you can't touch a gray then then go to Passover okay even with Jesus they had to take him down from the cross because they thought was a dead corpse would defiled the land and if someone walked through they would be unfit they would not be able to take in the feast but this is a grave when Jesus really wanted to insult a pharaoh soon's Thirsty's they called him whitewashed tombs juu you're pretty on the outside but inside you're full of dead bones okay so Jonah calls the fish the grave but it becomes apparent that the grave that fish is his salvation so the fish now what is the grave ever been good for someone hmm hmm what is the grave you see what the Bible is doing a story of Jesus and the story of Jonah are talking to each other and Jonah is going to be in the belly of the fish three days and three nights just as Jesus said the Son of Man will be so that will be a sign three days and three nights we'll come back to that in just one second you know what the fish does he swims Jonah right back to the shore right where he started and spat him up on the beach now I've been around fish before fish don't smell good when they're fresh even when you fry fish and the fish is good what does it do to the house he has been floating in the gastric juices of a fish for three days and three nights okay what do you want to bet that Calvin Klein is like coming saying you know I love that new fragrance that you have yeah it's really it's really adorable okay it's the scent of death you know you see it you know all right we will call it notes okay after the Hebrew word for death you know so the fish spit Jonah up now you understand Nineveh is about a seven hundred mile trip so the story is collapsing so the Lord spits him back up on the shore because he commanded the fish and the fish did what the Lord said to do puts him back up on the shore now Jonah has to walk now when he gets to Nineveh he has to preach to them it's supposed to be a three days walk through to hit all of the central business district and whatever Jonah preaches one day he's supposed to cry out but I get the sense that he's doing it like this forty days and Nineveh is going to be destroyed forty days ninive is going to be destroyed and someone here heard it said what did you say in 40 days he said forty days and Nineveh is going to be destroyed unless we repent and it said that the the news reached the king and the King says okay everyone in repentance suits sackcloth and ashes even the animals and on the cow is telling a field what did I do look you're gonna have to repent just because if if the Lord blows us up you and the chicken and the goat all you'll go to the cow says praise the Lord okay alright so they're all dressed up in repentance why do they buy this you know why they buy it Nineveh is named after a fish God so you've got a prophet with a big fish tail ta le with a big fish tail coming and telling this and the people buy it this pagan country just like the pagans they buy it and the whole city go into sackcloth and ashes and Jonah looks at this and says yeah this is just what I thought that's you yeah god that's you mr. oh let me be compassionate and merciful isn't this what I said when I was back in my own line that this is how you are compassion full of mercy and grow and grace and truth in order isn't this what I said god help us all well no because you're helping the enemies somebody help us please so Jonah goes out and he gets him a tent and he he get Easter sits there and it's hot and he's just sitting there waiting please don't let all of them repent it's like five repent and let them go to Babylon just I'll get him a ride I'll call over you know I'll cold lift I'll call him a cab I'll call him anything but just let them leave so we can blow this place off he's depressed and he's angry at God because God had compassion on someone else what do we call that human nature okay even in our own homes when we're having a disagreement we want God to come down on our side well and hard on the other side compassion so Jonah sits there and then the Lord appoints a juniper tree to grow up over him to cover him in the shade Jonah's happy about the tree but he's not thankful over it then the Lord appointed a worm to come and eat that tree and it disappeared so everything is obeying God except for Jonah the preacher and God comes to Jonah says Jonah are you mad but the Hebrew idiom is are you HOT Jonah yeah Lord I'm hot I'm so hot I'm so hot that if I was standing next to hell right now here would say I'm a cool place compared to you Jonah your heart I'm mad look at what you've done with these people I can't believe you and God said excuse me I'm not free to show mercy and compassion on whom I want to oh by the way have you noticed this morning that you're still on the planet and Jonah is still angry and God says that's interesting I don't have the right to show compassion just as I would show for you and your people but your allit attitude illustrates the problem even when I do right you tell me that I'm wrong because it doesn't fit your will you're upset with me because there are a hundred and twenty thousand people in this telling he's probably talking about children who don't know the left hand from their right along with animals as well and you don't want me to show them compassion I'll deal with Nineveh in their own time but for right now you illustrate the problem that I'm having with my people church-going type a people who disobey what Jesus Christ comes to give us is something much more than religion you notice Jesus never sets a upper 5:01 you noticed that it's a grassroots movement and it doesn't necessarily try to go in and get in with all the bigwigs well who's the head Pharisee around here that guy he embarrasses in a discourse because the Pharisee Nicodemus didn't know what Jesus was talking about is it amazing how God wants to give us a relationship with him life changing life edifying life giving but we only want to give him back enough religion to make us feel good the picture on the cross of Jesus is giving at all and he's designing when he's up on the cross he's designing of people the gods on possession who are supposed to have a heart for God like Christ does so that's really what's supposed to happen in salvation so we want to stop it at the cross everyone says well Jesus went to the cross for my sins alone yes but why was he raised from the dead not just to give him give you give you that the death pays for your sins but to give you the life that changes your ways that affects your choices that truly leads you in the serious worship of God that sees your values change how you you think about others and and how your value of love is an exchange of value if people don't feel appreciated and valued by you you're probably not loving them a man who beats his wife and then tells her I love you is a liar he Anna's is an abuser and he's trying to use the psychology here to redefine what love actually means it's sin and we try to dress sin who is an ugly cockroach and put a tuxedo on him and bring him to dinner but sin always takes its germs with it God wants to give us something different our religion is the relationship and from that to relate to one another well in beautifully in a way that God goes a thumbs-up I get you see that becomes the real challenge how many of us are playing Jonah right now we know where the Lord is we know what the Lord wants and we're trying to run from a god who's omnipresent only president doesn't mean that God is everywhere it means that everything is in God's presence everything is within God's presence how many of us have choices in life right now that we need to make and we we kind of know in our heart what the godly choice will be but we're trying to choose the one that's going to give us the biggest advantage not realizing that God is always our biggest advantage he was raised for our righteousness for our for our wisdom for our continued schooling on how to navigate through this life with his guidance not making it up as we go not guessing not not failing because he's nurturing us but failing because we have the wrong general plan let alone the wrong tactics and then in the end you know what happens we get mad at God because he won't help us run away from him we get mad at God and you know what he does like a good father he just waits us out thank God not for the patience of Job but for the patience of God Christ is risen Christ reigns he didn't just die for our sins remember Jonah had to be thrown over in the boat Jesus jumps over at the proper time wouldn't that have been an interesting sing with Jesus on that boat rather than Jonah and Jesus says I know what the problem was glad you woke me up yes I did care for you so what are you going to do well in addition to the turbulent water if there's a big sea monster in the boat and in the water because yes as well what are you going to do says well I'm gonna tie this rope to myself and then throw myself into the sea be swallowed by the sea monster and then I'm going to rip the sea monster from the inside out and then jump back in the boat excuse me mate but I just know a little thing about like sharks and killer whales and sea monsters but won't that hurt and Jesus ghost yes but when I get back in the boat swimming will be safe for everyone when I'm back in the boat swimming will be safe the god of the sea the God who made the trial and the God who is my father wants me to make life safe for you and the biggest thing I can do is to protect you from his wrath with his compassion and he throws himself over let's join him his story comes out well rises from the dead walks the earth goes into heaven sends his Holy Spirit with his father forever reigns forever sounds like a good job description for me best job I ever had didn't have those type of benefits you don't need medical Wow all that coming and we have it present now but the calling is no more running if you're in Christ no more running if you're not in Christ run to him [Applause]

Channel: Foundation Christian Ministries

Views: 185

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: eIidgSZT1To

Length: 56min 48sec (3408 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018