Foretold / Part 9

Now all the 49ers fans and yeah. Just met a new family that had 49ers gear, so you're probably not coming back now that I said that, but oh, well.

But no. No. It's good to be here. But hey. Know, we're in this series. We're almost near the end. Next week's the last week of the called foretold where we've been looking at some of the prophets in the Old Testament and their stories. And what we've seen in these stories is that, you know, it shows that you can run from God, but you can't outrun God. And a lot of the tough truth that these prophets had to bring is because God's discipline is thorough.

But the reason it's thorough is it's supposed to point us back to his grace. His grace is never ending.

And so that's kind of what we've been looking at. But there is a lot of tough truths in these. There's been a lot of of throat punches as I like to say. And and these guys have had to carry some heavy messages to be a prophet, to be a representative of God. They have to bring truth, and sometimes the truth is hard to hear. And I realized now that we're, you know, eight, nine weeks into this, that I felt convicted

about some truth that I kinda backed off sharing. If you're new here, I've probably never shared it before. And I felt convicted from all these prophets to say, hey, but you just gotta be honest with your with your people.

You gotta be straight up and tell them the truth whether you're afraid of telling them this or not. And so before I can even go into this, I just gotta get this off my chest. And it's simply this. Cats are evil.

I I hadn't bashed on them in a long time, And I felt like I've really done a lot of you newer people a disservice by not getting you the proper theology of life. And I can prove it. I mean, there's some actual scientific proof on it. Here's one. There's been some studies done. This is an actual article. Study says your cat probably wants to kill you. And then if you go into the article, what they did is they studied the nature of cats and what are they most related to in the cat family.

Domesticated house cats are most genetically and most related to the lion. And and the thing about the lion is they can be very friendly. They're the only they're the only kind of like cat that's relational. Domesticated house cats are, but not as much as as lions.

But they know that so they can be gregurais. So if if it's your cat, your cat can be nice. Because I know some of you cat people are like, I hate this guy. That's not true. My cat, Fluffy, is so nice. And it is. Lions act nice too.

But then they also have they're called one of the more neurotic of the cats. They have these neurotic behaviors. They act they retreat sometimes.

They act very shy. They don't wanna see you. They'll lash out. You know your cat when it just pounces out of nowhere on you and it looks so cute? Those are the behaviors a lion does when it's gonna kill you. And they say the cat is doing the same behavior. It's just not big enough to actually kill you.

But it would. So when they lash out, if it was big enough, it would kill you. They they don't really care about you. And and the truth is, well, my cat's smarter than a dog. Not true. Because a cat wants to kill you and can't figure out how. Dogs can kill you and they choose not to.

And and and and to prove the scientific research behind this, the with dogs, this other science says, yes, your dog really does love you.

And and they have science. There's a couple studies they did. One, they found out at the genetic level, a dog has a gene in it that its cousins, the the wolf, does not have. And it's this this this gene that when you have the same pattern in a human, it causes that that that that kind of that you're

overly nice to every you've never met someone that's not a friend. Everyone's your friend. Actually, it could be dangerous as a human to have that. You have no stranger danger at all. All dogs have that gene.

So they literally are a man's best friend. They're they're best friends with anybody, basically. You have to teach a dog to hate and be mean and to wanna destroy you. Cats, they're already plotting it.

And the other thing they did with dogs when they studied them is they did a study that they they actually scanned their brains and they could see the the pleasure centers, the areas that light up. And when they gave them a snack,

they saw how much it lit up. Well, then they did the who's a good boy test. And they started doing just giving it verbal affirmation. No Pavlovian, no snack, just came in and the pleasure center lit up just as much. And in one out of five dogs,

it lit up more and more frequently with just the words of encouragement than it did with the food. Meaning, they really do care about that connection and that affirmation. They did it with a cat, and the cat just walked away wanting to kill you. But but here here's my point. If you love your cat,

it's okay. I get it because they don't need to be they don't need much of your time because they don't really care. So they're an easy pet to take care of. But I'm just gonna end with this. If you're a cat person, you know what that means. If you are a cat person, that means you're actually more like a dog.

Because only a dog would care and love something that wants to kill it.

That is flawless logic, people. Alright.

Now that really doesn't have anything to do with my message, but I just thought I was thinking about it a lot. No. Today, the the prophet we're looking at, in all these prophet stories, it's usually the prophet has to carry tough message for the people. And in this one, he does have a tough message. But the problem in this story is the prophet himself.

And and what we're gonna see is he had the heart of a cat.

He he he he went, like, you know, cats sometimes, what I'm saying by studies, say they tolerate you because they kinda need you. So so he got sent on a mission from God, which he avoids at first, but then he goes and does it. But we're gonna see in the end, he did not have a heart for the people at all. He he didn't care. He he actually was like, again, he would prefer for them to die. He he really did. And and that's the prophet Jonah that we're gonna look at here in a minute. And here's kind of the big idea I wanna take apart out of this story that we hope we we grab by the time we end is, I can't have a heart for God without a heart for people.

Meaning if

I don't end up if if my relationship with God does not take me to a place that I have a heart to see people come to know God, to a heart for people and especially people that I might not even like. But but but people out there, if I don't have a heart for people, then I really can't say I have a heart for God. Whatever

my relationship with God I think it is, it's not what God intends it to be.

Because God's heart is for people. God is his heart for the people out there. We're gonna see it clearly in his story, but all through scripture. In other words, it it to say if you've been a Christian for a while, it's this idea that that that sometimes we get stuck at the point of we think our relationship with God is celebrating his grace coming to me,

but I refuse to let it go through me.

The goal has always been for God's grace and blessing to not just flow to me, but to flow through me. And we get caught up in the cycle of it's just all about the grace to me, the grace to me, the grace to me. And we never get to the other point. We care about our personal relationship with God. We care about a person, us, and knowing God in our family.

But God has a mission in this world. And we were always intended to be a part of it.

And that's what we're gonna see in the story of Jonah. So what's happening in the story of Jonah is how many have heard the story of Jonah? You know the story of Jonah? Alright. How many of you know anything more than he was the guy swallowed by the big fish? Alright. Some of you do. Good. But,

so Jonah was this prophet from Israel,

and God called him to go to give a message to the Assyrians to go to their capital of Nineveh. Well, if you know anything about the Old Testament in this time, the Assyrians were their brutal enemies, and they were literally brutal. They were pagans. They were their their worship of their gods involved child sacrifice

and horrible things. And they actually would torture and kill their enemies in very interesting and cruel ways. They were not good people at all. And the Israelites did not like them. And so God calls this guy Jonah to go give them a message.

And he says, go tell them that they're so cruel. They've ran for me. I've given them so much time. They're they're not turning to me, so I'm gonna wipe you out. That's the message he has to go. Tough truth. Go go go go go tell them they're in trouble. And so Jonah immediately gets on a boat that's sailing the exact opposite way.

He runs away. He doesn't wanna do it. But like I said, these prophets, we know that you can run from God, you can't run from God. So God sends his discipline, is thorough, thorough to try to turn you back to his plan. He's always gonna do that. So he caused this massive storm that's so freaky that even the sailors know this isn't normal. So they're like all they're they're like these, like, pagan. They have they believe in all these different gods. They go, someone's offended their god or something. So they don't know what to do. And so Jonah finally admits, you know what, it's probably me. Just throw me overboard and you'll be fine. And they're cool enough that they're like, no, we're not just gonna kill you. They're they're nicer about people than Jonah is in this story.

But then when it doesn't work, they finally feel bad, but they go, alright, sorry, boom. And the storm goes away. And what's so interesting, side note about this in chapter one, is that group of sailors on that boat all turns to God. So God used Jonah's disobedience in this moment to reach a boat full of people.

Well, then he gets swallowed by this giant fish. God arranged for it. And that's where some of you get stuck.

Especially some of you, you're newer to church or some even come to church and go, this is the problem I can't go on. I'm like, I think there's a God, but I don't know about this Bible thing. This makes me doubt. Because how on earth the laws of science, how could someone live in the belly of a big fish for a few days? I mean, how how does that even work? You're you're kinda like the the guy, the Christian guy who had a friend who was an atheist, who actually asked him the same question. He got stuck on this. Hey, you know what? This God thing, maybe, I don't know, but the you know the story of Jonah. You really think that this guy could live in the belly of a fish for a few? Do you think that's really how that happened? And his Christian friend says, well, yeah, but but you know what? When I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah and I'll know for sure. And then his atheist friend goes, but what if Jonah's not in heaven? He goes, well, then when you die, you can ask him.

You know what concerns me is I tend to think I I can use humor pretty well at times. And by far, that dumb joke has gotten me the most laughs in a long time. So there's either something flawed in my in my humor ability to give it or there's something really twisted and warped about you guys.

I'm leaning it towards you guys to be honest. But but the truth there is what I'm trying to say is some of you get hung up on this in the belly of a fish. But think about it. You're acting like God has to obey the laws of science. How big is God? He created the laws of science.

If you can wrap your arms around the idea that God took on the nature of a man, walked down here, carried our sin at the cross, died for it, then three days later by his own power got back up, walked out, and defeated death. And and he's the God that called time into existence,

spoke creation existence. If you can wrap your arms around that, isn't it possible he can help a guy survive in the belly of a fish for three days? He could have put a a futon and cable in there for all we know. So

he does it. So he ends up in this belly of this fish. Chapter two is a prayer. He does this amazing prayer where he cries out to God. He goes, says you're the one that salvation comes from. I know it's all about you. And basically, if you let me get out of this, I will come I will fulfill my vow.

It's interesting how he says that. It's a vow. I'll I'll I'll do what I said I would do. And so then he spits them up on the dry ground. Chapter three is he goes into Nineveh and starts, you know, preaching this message after three days.

Then all of a sudden, something incredibly crazy happened. Something that wasn't happening in Israel. The entire city of over a 120,000 people repents and turns to God.

One of the greatest revivals you could ever see. This totally pagan capital of a pagan nation that's enemies of the nation of the guy that came to talk to him, repents and turns to God. Now, if Jonah ended after chapter three,

Jonah would be remembered as this great prophet who had a moment of a hiccup, but then ended up being so faithful and got to be celebrated as a part of something big. But it doesn't end there. It goes into chapter four. And what we're gonna see right away is you think Jonah ran away from going to Nineveh because he's afraid.

That he was afraid of what the Ninevites would do to him, but that's not the truth. Jonah was not afraid of what the Ninevites would do to him. He was actually more afraid of what God would do for them. And here we go. Let's let's see this. It starts in chapter four, verse one.

On verse 10 of chapter three, God saw that they had changed, and so he decided so he didn't destroy them, like Jonah's message was. So they didn't get wiped out. So it says, this change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry.

So he's mad that God didn't wipe him out. So he says, so he complained to the Lord about it. So if you go back and read Jonah two, read his prayer. He prays again, but this is a very different even says, this is a complaint prayer. He's whining to God. And he says,

didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? Wait. He didn't leave because he's afraid he would die or anything. He was afraid. He goes, I knew this would happen. I'd go preach they're gonna get destroyed

and and and this was gonna happen. You weren't gonna destroy him. It says, that is why I ran away to Tarshish. I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry, and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.

And that ticks me off. That's basically what he's saying.

He goes, just kill me now. Lord, I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen. So when he was in the belly of a fish facing death, he cried out to God because he wanted to live. When God didn't do what he wanted him to do and wipe these people out, now he wants to die. Why would he do that?

When he said, you didn't do what I predicted? Basically, knew God is so merciful and graceful. I know what he's gonna do with this message. I'm gonna go give them this warning and they might turn to God and then God's not gonna wipe them out.

And then that's gonna make me look stupid back home because the Israelites hate. And they're gonna find out that I gave a message that saved all the Assyrians.

And and then they're gonna think, great. You just helped the enemy. And so basically, the Israelites are more about their political sphere. They're more about country than king, than the Lord. They're they're they're they're not worried about their God. They're worried about their own little political dynamic.

And so they wanted their enemies to be destroyed. In the end, he didn't care about the people. And God's heart is for people. In chapter two, he was so happy God's grace came to him. In chapter four, he's mad that God wanted to send his grace through him. How about you? Because you know what happens if I try to do this?

If I try to live a faith that just makes it about me, it stops at me. All the goodness and all that, my coming to learn more about God, and what is just to have this personal walk with God, to have my own spiritual walk, and have it make me a better me,

and live my best life now, and all these things that I just think I'm gonna do, and it's all about me, and I don't let it go through me. I don't engage in God's purpose in the world to reach others and to love others. Then we're gonna end up in the same place that Jonah ended up in. He was angry because you know why?

He became judgmental and joyless. That's what happens.

If I try to make my faith stop at me and not flow through me, I become judgmental and joyless. And then I resent anyone telling me to do this. Because some of you already put two together. Well, this guy's going to tell me this is why I should serve. This is why I should be in community. This is why I should give. This is why my finances and my time should center on God's purpose to reach people. Yes. And the reason you're getting mad is because you're getting judgmental

and joyless in it. That and and then what some of you are gonna do, I'll force myself to do it like, I just don't wanna die. I don't wanna be punished by God. So I guess I'll do it. And you do it like what Jonah did in chapter two, but there's still no joy. And you get frustrated. And once you get frustrated enough, you retreat again. Because the problem is your your head is turned to God, but not your heart.

And that's what happened. The discipline that God gave Jonah turned his head back to the right way. Like the threat of dying. Alright. I'll do it. But he so he did what he was told to do. But he never had the heart of God. He just didn't have his heart. And here here's the problem.

It's so easy for the longer that we come to church to get blind to this.

And we start making our faith about, like, I go to church. I did this. I did that. Oh, that was a good message. The bad message. It was this. It was that. I was nice to my neighbor. I did this. But we don't really intentionally think about how am I supposed to engage with all of my life and the mission that God has in this world.

And and we just we wrap our faith up into something else, and we stop seeing it.

It it it's kinda like this. It's my my my daughter last night, my oldest daughter, made fun of me, and and it hurt my feelings. But then I had to laugh because what she made fun of me, she was so right. Matter of fact, she did an impersonation of me that was creepy.

It was like dead on. And and what it was about was what I call, it's a thing that that I have guys tend to have. It tends to be genetically more prone to men than than women. And and it's called refrigerator blindness. Do

you know do you know what I'm talking about? Ladies, you're laughing more because you get it. How many of your husbands can't find something in the refrigerator and you walk up and go, it's right there. They were staring at it the whole time. Can I get an amen? Amen. Now now ladies, you do have a a condition

that's similar. It's a key blindness and being ready on time blindness. But but guys tend to have the worst version of it, and the worst most deadly version of is kid blindness. Like you're sitting there and your wife comes mom comes in and goes, you're

sitting right there. Why are you doing you don't see this? They're playing with matches. And you're like, I wasn't doing nothing. I was watching the game. The house isn't on fire yet.

You know? And so this refrigerator, like, I was looking for cookie dough. I looked at it because I know they'd been we've been eating. Like, in our house, the cookie dough rarely ends up cookies. Everyone

goes in and cuts off slices and we eat it. And so then I wanted some because I was like, can I go in there? I'm like,

did you guys eat all the cookie dough? Where's the cookie dough? You know, I wanted some. I can't believe you guys plowed through that huge thing of cookie dough already. I mean, just just this morning, there was this much. I saw it in there when I was tempted. May or may not have had some for breakfast, but still,

where's the cookie dough? And my daughter goes looks right around me, it's right there. I was literally looking right at it. And she goes, dad, that's so you. You're always like, where did that? You know, somebody took it. You guys ate it all. There's no possible explanation other than that. Oh, there it is. Like

and that I think that's we get into a faith version of that. They even say that that that most people that actually go and do what Jesus said, go make another disciple. Do you realize Christians that become a Christian,

the number one time that you end up actually reaching someone for Jesus is in the first three years that you know the Lord. They say it drastically drops and by the time on average, in America, most people that have known Jesus more than five years never reach anyone for Jesus anymore.

Now some of that is because the way we've built our faith and we built our families and we we we think we're supposed to circle the wagons. I I get my kid in the Christian school. I get my kid in here. I isolate. I don't want any of these all influences.

And I get so insular that you don't know anybody that doesn't know the Lord. And the ones you do know, they scare you. And then we so we get used to that. So we come blind to that. So when you hear a message like, you know what? If I'm gonna have a heart for God, I have to have the heart of God.

I have to have a heart for people. My life needs to be centered around reaching other people. Because think about it. Christians, I'm talking to Christians, if you don't know the Lord, you need to know his grace. But I'm just gonna tell you, as you come to experience his grace,

you're gonna know that you wanted his grace to flow through you. What's funny is that's not a hard sell for someone that just comes to know the grace of Jesus. Becomes harder sell as we get distracted. You see, we we we have to be willing to let it go through us,

not just to us. And we get stuck. We we hold on. We won't look. That's what Jonah, he was mad. He had his his idea of what should have happened. It didn't happen. He was blind to it. He didn't see it. How about you?

Have you kinda circled the wagons and formed a different view of what it means to really have the heart of God? Because you do realize as Christians, everything we do in church, we'll continue to do in eternity. We're not infinite in our understanding like God, so we will never fully learn all of God.

We will always be worshiping God. We'll always be serving. We'll have community. We'll do everything we do except one. Did you realize there's one thing God has a heart for that he's called us to do that has a shelf life? It's reach people for Jesus. That's the only thing we have that has a shelf life.

Do I care? Does my heart ache for that? Because that tells me if it doesn't, then I I I'm not really connected to the heart of God. Jonah did what God wanted, but he wasn't connected to his heart. See, here here's something you can write down. Happiness happens when I have the heart of God. Happiness happens

when I have the heart of God. You're joyless and judgmental, which is what the church has pretty much become in The United States. We argue politically. We argue the world thinks that we're just one wing of a of a of political party.

And that's all we are. And all we care about is rules and regulations and all this stuff. We seem angry, mad, and joyless. And we seem like we act cooler than thou and judge. Because we don't really embrace the heart of God. And the heart of God is I love people.

I want to reach people and I want to use you and me to reach them. But if I get tied up on the other stuff, get angry all the time. And and what we run after now, even as Christians, is we run after the world's version of happiness.

The world's version of happiness isn't controlled by our circumstance. As long as my circumstances are to my liking, I'm happy. When they're not to my liking, I'm unhappy. The Bible uses a word for happiness that indicates joy, and it indicates this type of joy that God says that it'll happen despite your circumstances

because I have the heart of God. Paul said it best, I've learned to be content in all scenarios, whether I a lot or I have little, whether I'm prison, I'm having great stuff. And I basically, what he said is I've learned to to like what I have. Meaning as long as I know I'm in God's will. If I have the heart of God, I'm getting my way. If you want God's will, you'll always get your way.

It's that simple. And a lot of us have turned our Christianity into what good? How much do I need to pray? How long do I need to argue with God, what do I need to do to just get my circumstances back to what I want.

And if you don't believe me, is what happens with Jonah. Watch. So he gets all mad, and then the Lord asked him a good question. Is it right for you to be angry about this?

Is it right for us to be angry that God wants us to align our life around people and reaching them?

Is it right for you as a believer that's a part of this church to get angry if I say, listen, if you really have the heart of God and wanna do what God wants to do, you need to give financially. You need to share your faith. You need to serve. You need to not make excuses.

We're building this building over here because we want to reach people. And I've challenged everyone in the church to say, give to it. God has asked us to. And some of you get angry every time I say it. And God just asked a good question. Is that right? Is that right?

Because if you get angry, then something in your heart is not connected to the heart of God at all. And what you call faith, it's it's it's that word doesn't mean what you think it means.

And and you can see it in Jonah. Look what happens. Then Jonah went out to the east side of the city and made a shelter to sit under as he waited to see what what happened in the city. So he has this opportunity. They celebrate. They're saved. He could have celebrated with them and probably been told, wow, and

got the blessing of seeing the result of what he was willing to do and be involved in that blessing. Instead, he gets mad and pulls away and goes on the hillside because he's angry that God saved them. Do you realize, like, for some you that heard this story a million times, you're like, oh, great. I've been in church forever. Give me some meat and potatoes. Here you go. Here's something you probably haven't thought

This story is actually retold by Jesus in a parable format. Did you know that?

It's the parable of the prodigal son. Only here, Jonah's both both sons.

In the parable of a prodigal son, there's a father who's represented God in the parable in the story, and he has these two sons. The younger one who would have gotten a smaller inheritance anyways goes to his dad and says, don't wanna live under your rules. I wanna do my own thing. I wanna go have fun. Can I have my inheritance now? And that culture is saying, I I wanna live like your dad.

And the dad says, okay. He he could have said no. He could have basically, he could have said for such disrespect, take him in the center of town, told the town what they did, and they would have thrown rocks at his head.

But instead he goes, okay. And he gives it to him. He runs off, squanders it, ends up eating pig slop, which for a Jew is a bad thing, And and for any of us, it's a ugh thing. But he,

he decides to go home and says, I'm just gonna apologize and be one of my dad's servants. He doesn't even get all the way home. His dad runs to him. He represents God. He's so glad that his son came home. He runs to him, celebrates, throws a big party. The older brother who never left,

who did what his father wanted him to do, gets mad and leaves and goes out into this hillside

and won't partake in the party. And the dad goes out to talk to him and says, what's your problem? He goes, well, this son of yours who basically was far from you and doing this comes back and you throw a party. You never did anything for me. He's like, I've always been there for you.

Basically, he lets his older brother go, what have you missed about my heart as your dad? I always want my children to come home.

Why don't you as a brother have that same desire? And you know what that parable ends?

It ends with, you don't know what the older brother did. Do you realize what that just described is Jonah's life? In chapter two, where he cries out, I realized I've gotten far from God. I ran away. I did this. He's the younger brother. And cries out to go home and God takes him back.

By chapter four, he's the older brother. And the older brother in that parable represents the religious people that have forgotten the heart of God. They've forgotten the mission that he sent them on, and it's to to love people.

So he says, is it right to be angry? He went out and sat under this tree, and it says, and the Lord God arranged

for a leafy plant to grow there. So even though he's sitting out there waiting, going, maybe they'll screw up and he'll still wipe them out, he's just mad. He says, the Lord arranged for this this this this plant to grow and it spread his broad leaves over Jonah's head, shading him from the sun. This eased his discomfort and Jonah was very grateful for the plant.

So now he's super happy that God gave him this plant. He's comfortable again.

Well then it says, but God also arranged for a worm. The next morning at dawn, the worm ate through the stem of the plant so that it withered away. And as the sun grew hot, God arranged for a scorching east wind to blow to Jonah. So basically, he put Jonah in Arizona in July. That's what he did.

And he said, you're gonna sit and watch your child's soccer game at 11:00.

If you've done that, now you can feel Jonah's frustration. He says, the sun beat down on his head until he grew faint and wished to die. Death is certainly better than living like this, he exclaimed.

So so he goes out. He won't celebrate. He goes and whines because he's not getting what he wanted from God. When God said, I wanted you to be a part of the blessing to reach people and love them. And now you're winding up on the hillside. I gave you a plan. I still blessed you. Then when I took it away, you're getting mad.

So he said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry because the plant died? Is it right for you to be angry that I gave you this blessing of comfort? And then when I took it away, now you're you're mad. Which is, by the way, he's angry over death of a plant.

But he's also angry that God didn't wipe out over a 120,000 people. He cares about a plant more than people. Because Jonah retorted, yes. Even angry enough to die. Some of you, that's what happens as a Christian when you get challenged by God's word to invest your life in the gospel, to really engage to be part of a church,

to sacrifice for the next generation, to reach the people out there. We're more concerned with our plant than we are with people. The things I've planted in my life to bring me comfort. I'm more concerned with the shade of my house, the shade of my lifestyle, the shade of my interests, the shade of my hobbies,

the shade of this. And then when God actually goes, alright, well, I'm gonna rock your road a little bit and and and and you go backwards, you freak out and run to God and plead like you're in the belly of the fish. And what you really want is not to be on mission with God, is you just want the shade back.

You just want the plant back. Does that make sense? And God says that doesn't work that way. Because look what he says when he says, yes, he's angry to die. Verse ten eleven. Then the Lord said,

you feel sorry about the plant though you did nothing to put it there. Which by the way, the things that you refuse to to to share with God's kingdom isn't yours, by the way. It's what he's saying. Everything you have, I gave you. And everything you have, I can take away.

We act like little children. Mine. You know, you get mad if it's yours? Really? Mine. I paid for it. I gave it to you and I could take it away. Don't you get so mad when your kids do that? Why are so many of us doing this to God every day?

He says it came quickly and it died quickly. But Nineveh has more than a 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention the animals. The original Hebrew says, cats don't apply. But it says, shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city? He goes, you care about a plant more than people.

You and really the plant represented his comfort. You care about your life being lived your way. You care about your comfort. You don't care about these people. And what he's trying to say is my heart is for the people. Is it right for you to not care about what I care about? In others, what he's saying is think about it.

Everyone in this room is probably grateful to someone else that sacrificed and surrendered their life to the mission of God so that you came to know the grace of Jesus. It might have been a family member. It it might have been a friend.

It it might be in this church. If it happened in this church, there's lots of people that you probably have to people sacrificed for this place could exist. I had people that actually can't took retirement money or canceled vacations or committed to we're not gonna go get coffee every day or not eat out,

you know, once a week to support us to move out here to start the search. And they've never been here. Some of them have since died and gone to be with Jesus. And they gave thousands and thousands of dollars to something they never saw because they loved you even though they've never even seen you. And now you're here.

Who's gonna miss out on being grateful for you? Because you want it to stop with you and not flow through you. Is that right? That's what God would say. God would say, is that right that you should live this way? That you should be angry?

Some of you are really frustrated because you can't figure out anything. You're just mad that I'm saying this. Is that right? You're fighting God because you don't understand his heart. You want his hand to help, but you don't want to embrace his heart.

That's what he's asking. That's what he's saying. And the story just ends there. It just ends. And it's like, if if if if I am grateful for someone else, but it stops with me, then my faith is really mostly about me.

And I'm missing the point. Because God will say, is it right for me to be apathetic and too busy to get involved in what God's doing? Is it right for me to say I don't have the money or I don't have the time? Is it right for me to continually talk my way around opportunities that come my way?

Is it right that my goals rarely intersect with God's purpose in this world? God will say, is it right that what concerns me? Is it right that the passion of my heart doesn't concern you? It's not right is what he's saying. And what he means by that is, there's something not right in your relationship with God.

Because we don't have his heart. And I think that's the the nature. I've I've talked all about this of what he says we should do. And I get some of you like, I get it. I know. But why do I keep struggling with this? Why do I let fear? Why do I get and I think there's a simple answer.

I think the best way to actually embrace and understand and own the heart of God is through the act of worship. Is when we call out and declare the truth of who God is, it actually kind of drowns out the plant voices. You know, all of the comfort. All of the other noises

kind of get drowned out. That's why God wants worship is about God, not about us. But worship is for us. It's about God, but it's for us. Especially musical worship, because God created us where we have our we have feelings. Feelings aren't bad. God created them, but we have to process them correctly. And one of the things to do to really embrace the heart of God is sometimes when we sing out to God in in a melody, there's something about declaring the truth of God actually helps us embrace the heart of God. It comes back and helps. And that's why the enemy tries to talk you into never actually singing

and never engaging. And it's funny that the Bible says men are leaders. That doesn't mean bosses. Leader means go first. In the Bible, it describes leadership as go first. Jesus is the greatest leader of all. He got on the cross for you and me. He calls God husbands

to be the leader, and then he defines that. He says to love your wife like Christ loved the church. What did Christ do? He died for the church. He had no purpose other than them. He never tells the wife to love your husband like Christ loved the church. It says, go first.

Why do you think you as men don't like to read your bibles? You don't like to sing because there is an enemy. There is a voice out there singing a song to you that makes you stop and you're like, it's just weird to you. You don't wanna do it. But then I watch you paint yourself in all sorts of weird colors and and go and scream for your team. Even the Seahawks, you will scream for a team like that, but you will not praise God of heaven.

Why do you think you're being stopped by that? You guys are being so duped, so tricked by a lie. And that's why you get judgmental and joyless. And then we get when someone pushes you, you wanna fight back. And the problem with me is I like to rattle cages. I like to poke bears with sticks because you're me.

I have the exact same struggle. The other the the because you know what? The song of comfort is a nice song, isn't it? It feels so good. So good. And it'll drown out. So the way we have to do is sing the song of who God is. And I wanna show you. In the Old Testament

in the Old Testament, when when the Israel had to go into battle, the band went first. That sounds like they had a short lifespan. Send in the trombones, but they have tanks. But the reason was they were representing God. And you know how many times when they end the battle and they led with worship,

God confounded the enemy and they didn't even have to fight.

There there's a power in the worship. You want the heart of God, embrace worshiping God. And I'll show you a point. I wanna show you an example of that. We're building this building. If this is your church,

I implore you, don't miss out. Don't sit out on the sidelines like Jonah did and miss an opportunity to be totally blessed by what's gonna happen in there.

Lives are gonna change. We went over there Friday night. We had a worship team meeting, and and pastor Sean and the team surprised them by we went over into the building and we worshiped. So it's been worshiped in for the first time ever by your worship leaders.

And and and they went in there, and and what he Sean said was we sat on the stage looking out at the thing. He says, we're only building this as a tool. This isn't the church.

This is a tool for us to to reach people and and declare the name of Christ together. And there's gonna be thousands of people coming in. There's gonna be people that we have never even met yet, that their lives are gonna change for all of eternity. Their whole family history is gonna change because of this this place. And now, this place has foundations

exposed and things exposed that'll eventually be covered up, but we know the foundation is here. And that's why we're gonna worship in here right now because the foundation of this place needs to be the declaring the truth of who the greatness of our God is. And his incredible love and his power and his grace, and as Jonah got mad at, his I know that you are a compassionate and graceful God, that you are not quick to get angry, and you don't want people to die. You want them to experience it. He said that, and he said everything he declared was true, only he was mad about it.

So we decided that we're gonna, you know, bless the anoint the place with worship. And it echoed in there, and I just wanna show you a little 45 clip of us doing that.

Pretty powerful. A

simple old school song called the Doxology. Sung acapella. That's what we're giving for. Did you see the age spread in there? See a little kid in the front, that 12 year old kid, Draven? He's one of our drummers. He's awesome. You know, he's here because we have a great children's and youth ministry.

One of the reason we need to get out of here and build this building is they need us to get out of here. We're reaching the next generation. Don't you wanna be a part of that?

God invited Jonah to be part of this incredible revival of reaching over a 120,000 And even though he what I'm trying to say is you need the heart of God. I'm not just trying to force people to begrudgingly give and serve. I want you to embrace the heart of God so you can enjoy the blessing. So

you can see that how powerful that is. How beautiful that is. And here's the here's the point that makes it so crazy. When we are right over there, Castile High School right here was playing its playoff game.

And so when we walked over there, it's like, how is this gonna work? Where Sean was trying to talk and all you could hear was That's all you heard was us shouting and and that, you know, like, it's so loud. All these voices and these noises. And then we started up acapella,

30 people, and it echoed through the building and you couldn't hear the football game. It it drowned it out. It became absolutely crystal clear. That is how you get the heart of God. That's why God invites us to worship because that's how he transfers

his heart to us. And if I refuse to do that, I'm just gonna play this church Christian game where I'm gonna act like Jonah. I'll begrudgingly do what God wants and just hope he keeps giving me the plant with the shade.

And I'll go from one plant to the next. When it dies, I'll complain and hang in there and act like life is over and be filled with anxiety till I fortunately find another one. Do you wanna live life that way? Do you wanna be a part of the blessing? God's grace is most fully experienced is when you let it flow through you,

not just to you. And that's what he was trying to tell Jonah. Don't miss out on it. Don't miss out on it.

Let me sum it up this way to just encourage you guys with my heart. When I when I I tell a of sermon illustrations and I kind of have thematic things. Have almost create characters that are reoccurring characters. And the most reoccurring character I have that's my hero type is my father.

And and the reason is they're true. The stories I tell, he was a hero to mine and actually in three words, was a hero for you guys too. But still, he he he he really I knew his heart, and I loved his heart, and his heart loved me.

And so all these lessons I learned from him. Now I probably reworded him because I'm more of a wordsmith, and I probably couldn't say some of the lessons the way he said them in church. I had to church him up a bit. But he had this heart, and it was so powerful to me. And I tell you all these stories.

But the part I never told you or you never thought about or put two together is that's all frozen in time because he died sixteen years ago. I have no more new stories about the heart of my dad. I can't even find out anything new. My mom died ten weeks later. He was the youngest in his family. There's no one left

that I can even ask. So everything I know from my father about my father and embrace from him is frozen, And I will not have a new one till I embrace him again in eternity.

Sadly, that describes many of us in this room where your faith is with God. It's frozen somewhere in time.

You're here because you were brought as a kid. It's just something you do. Or you had that experience at camp when you were in in in in high school or middle school, or you went to a retreat as an adult, or you walked into one of these services a while back and something happened in that moment that was powerful. Or that friend that you knew, or that group you had, or that neighbor you had. There's something in your life where you had these moments that you did get a glimpse of God's heart and you embraced it, but now it's dead. It's frozen. It's just your entire walk with God right now is nostalgia.

If I could talk to my dad, I would. And the only reason I have these beautiful stories that are making me cry, which by extension makes you cry because that's my rule. If I cry, everyone cries. It's because of my mom. You see, when I was 14, a freshman in high school, my dad retired.

And we always had a close relationship. I love being around him. But now he had all the time in the world on his hand. And I don't know about you, but when you're about 13, 14, you may think your parents are cool, but you still want them to drop you off a block away from every place you're going. I didn't want to be around him. I thought, you know, it's kind of weird. Go, oh, if he's around, my friends are gonna think it's weird. Which was kind of a lie and stupid because my dad was the dad that took us to all the cool movies and stuff. And when we were able to drive, my friends were still going, hey, your dad's gonna come with us. Right? You invited him. And I realized the way they're saying is like, think they would rather my dad go than me.

So it was an absolute lie that I was embarrassed by my dad. My friends, I I was riding on his coattails of coolness to be honest with you. And so I I

pulled away. I didn't want to. It felt weird. I wanted to do other things. And some of you, that's what you've done with your father in heaven. You pulled away. It's like, it's too much. I can't handle it. I'm afraid. I want the plant. I want this. And we're bothered. And we don't have a heart for people. We don't have the heart of our father. And we wanna pull away. Even though we love him, and we're glad he loves us, we still wanna pull away. And my mom pulled me in and gave me the epic level guilt trip of all guilt trips because she was pro level. And told me, but she was truthful. She said, you can't do this for your dad's sake and for yours.

You are his life.

And he's older and I guarantee he's not gonna be around as long as your friend's father's. And there's gonna come a day that you're gonna regret not spending more time with them because there's gonna be things you won't know. And there are things. There are things I the other day I I wonder if my dad I can't ask him.

So she pushed me and I said, okay. And I have all these great stories and a wonderful relationship with my dad because I listened to my mom. This sermon is the preaching version of my mom to you. Don't let the relationship with your father in heaven who loves you and has given you all the grace and his life was for you.

Don't let it freeze in time. Embrace the heart of God

And wrap your life around it. Because happiness happens in the heart of God. So here's what I wanna do. Instead of praying, I want us to do something simple. When I said, just simply declaring the truth of God is, pastor Sean's gonna come out and we're gonna sing that doxology just two times through. Kinda acapella together.

And maybe this is that moment where it unfreezes for you. Or this is that moment that you never accepted the grace of God. Just embrace. Just say, God, don't even know what this means.

But thank you for dying for me and I want your love Jesus. And maybe you'll come up here after and say, you explain to me how to accept the grace of Jesus and someone will tell you how. But let's stand together and let's just simply do this as our prayer. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. And praise him all creatures here

below. And praise him above ye heavenly host. And praise father, son, and holy ghost. We're gonna sing that again. Sing to your father. Sing to god. Give him glory and let this drown out all the noise as we lift it up to him. And praise god from whom all blessings flow

Feel that? That's the presence of God. That's the heart of God. That's the greatness of God. It's the grace of God.

Let's listen to that more than all the plant songs out there. Amen?