I apologize, I tried to turn my microphone on. I think I was too close to the piano and the Lord was saying, do not play that piano. Got an announcement to make here. Youth is having a movie night, Friday, March 12th, 6.30 to 9. There'll be snacks, popcorn and candy, no cost. Donations are welcome. And there'll be a sign-up sheet out in the foyer. Be sure to take advantage of that if you have teenagers. This thing has, there we go, back on. All right, we are on Lesson Six, Plan of Jehovah. And just a moment, that thing has been on too long. Mm-hmm. You can raise your hand if you need an outline. Okay, the plan of Jehovah We've gotten this just briefly last week Our text is just one verse this week now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights and Now we covered one thing about this verse when we first started teaching on Jonah, and that is the fish was a whale. And I only take one man's word for that, and that was Jesus. So he said it was a whale, so it was a whale. How thankful we should be for divine intervention. None of us would be saved if God had not stepped into our lives and brought us under conviction and then to himself. That should be ever present when we think about what God has done for us. We should have a thankful attitude. But what happens when we stop being thankful? You immediately start going the other way and start becoming prideful. Being thankful is an outward expression of how we feel. Now, if you're thankful, there will be outward expressions of it. You don't hold everything in. You show forth that thankfulness. When we stop being thankful, we pull all that expression back inside ourselves. All the attention that we were giving to God, we give it to ourselves. The doorway to pride is always open. Once you walk through it, it closes. The only thing that will reopen it is the key of thankfulness. Proverbs 16, 18, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. And Proverbs 13, 10, only by pride cometh contention, but with the well-advised is wisdom. We know that Jonah's problem was pride because there is contention between him and God. And we just read the verse that only by pride cometh contention. The pride is not on Jonah's part. The pride is on Jonah's part, not God's. Omnipotence cannot be prideful. God, He has nothing to be prideful of because He is everything. And you can't be prideful if you're God because you have everything, you have all power. There's not another omnipotent God. That's impossible. You can't have two omnipotent forces. One has to be omnipotent. Satan has a lot of power, but he's nowhere near omnipotent. Jeremiah 31.3 states, the Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying, yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. Jesus emphasized this point in John 6.44 when he said, no man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. The same God that sent Jesus is the same God that, through the Holy Spirit, drew us to Jesus. When we stop being thankful and start being prideful, we first lose sight of the extent of God's love. I mean, when you have the extent of God's love on your mind, you have to be thankful. You can't do it. When you realize how much God loves you, you're thankful. In the book of Proverbs, the simple man is described as one who is often caught in the middle, reacting to what is going on around him without any direction for his life. Have you ever seen one of those battery-driven cars? I mean, I know they got remotes and all that stuff now, so you don't see many of them, but when I was a little boy, well, if you could get one of those cars that when it run into something, when it hit something, it turned right 90 degrees. Hit something else, turned right 90 degrees. Hit something else, turned right 90 degrees. And it would just keep going until it got in a corner where it couldn't turn or something like that. That's the way we are without God's direction. We're easy prey for Satan when we have no direction from God. So we always react to the same things the same ways when we don't follow God's direction. And so Satan throws something out in front of us and he just waits for us to turn 90 degrees. He's just waiting on us. Even if we straighten ourselves out and get back on the right path for God, Satan just throws a little obstacle in our path and we head in another direction. Again, the Bible refers to this as being a simple man. God still loves this simple man and has a plan for his life. Psalms 116, six through nine. The Lord preserveth the simple. I was brought low. and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living." Jonah was a simple man who was in desperate need of a second chance, and our great God gave him one. God is a God of second chances. A divine preparation. The Bible says, now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. That's a divine preparation. God put the fish exactly where it needed to be. It's a good thing that God is always one step ahead of us. Psalm 40 and 17. But I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. Thou art my help and my deliverer. Make no tearing, O my God, I love the sovereignty of God that is seen in Isaiah 65, 24. And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer. And while they are yet speaking, I will hear. God knows our needs. God knows the situation we're in. He knows the temptations the devil has put out there. He knows the temptation of our flesh. He knows the temptation of other people that puts forth. He knows before it happened, He already knew about it. God's plan is predetermined. God knew who we were, what we were going to look like, and what he wanted from our lives before we were born. And he had it all written down. Psalm 139, 13. For thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously raw in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect. And in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of them. I was talking a while ago, when we realize how much God loves us, we really don't realize how much God loves us. To our fullest of our ability, we realize that, but we won't really realize how much he loves us until we get to heaven. We talked last week about a coach's view. When a basketball coach draws up an offensive play, It always ends on his sketchboard exactly the same way, with the ball going through the net, because he wants his team to be winners. And when God lays out his plan, his play for us today, tomorrow, and the next day, we all end up winners when we follow his plan. We may not always see God's work or sense his presence in our lives, but that does not mean he has abandoned us. Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him. On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him. He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him. But he knoweth the way that I take. When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand But I know who holds tomorrow And I know who holds my hand You didn't know I could sing like that, did you? I tried and I said, no, I ain't putting that in there. God's plan is predominant. Why is it that we think our plans are better than God's? Has He ever been unfaithful? Has He ever failed to come through on His promises? Has He ever forsaken us? Psalm 37, 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. So what are the steps of a good man? Paul calls this the whole armor of God. We're doing discipleship and we talked about this in discipleship. Ephesians 6 and 13 Wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that you be may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand Stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth. That's believing God's Word and Having on the breastplate of righteousness and that's doing right doing God's Word Verse 15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel peace, watching our testimony and witnessing. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. That's trusting God. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Remember the grace that saved you and gave you assurance. praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, as praying for others. Do you have the whole armor of God? Do I have the whole armor of God? If you talk to somebody that was backslid out of God's will, If they talk with you truthfully, and you know this from yourself, if you be honest with yourself, if you ever get out of God's will, you didn't have on the whole armor of God. If you honestly look back at these verses, you'll see that when you got out of God's will, something in these verses you were not doing. God's desire is that in all things, He might have preeminence. And when God is first, we have nothing to worry about. Matthew 6, 33. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. You know, ladies, if you was folding clothes, and you got clothes out of the dryer, if we could apply Matthew 6 and 33 to it, there'd be a shirt that you got out of there, and you'd fold it, get it all right, and then everything else would fall in line. That's what God is saying. He said, if you do this first, you put me first, and I'll see that everything else falls in line. A dutiful pliability. One of the greatest abilities God is looking for is pliability. Now, so far, we haven't seen too much pliability in the character of Jonah. But we're about to see great pliability in a fish. I don't suppose the fish wanted to be swimming up toward all that lightning and stuff that was probably going on during this storm. He probably wouldn't be going down deep and feeding or whatever he would do, but he would be getting away from all that. If the waves were going the way that they had to be going to about to be sinking this ship, then that's not where the whale is. He's not supposed to be there. We must remember that all are thy servants, Luke's Psalms. You know, there's animals in the Bible that are pliable. You have Balaam's donkey, Daniel's lions, Peter's fish with a coin in his mouth, and I think Noah had a few that were pliable. They changed their routine, their behavior, they got out of their comfort zone. If we are going to carry out God's plan, we have to be pliable. If we're going to share God's promise, we have to share the pain. If we are going to be God's people, we have to be peculiar. An ominous coincidence, an omnipotent coincidence. To man, it might appear that it's merely a coincidence that a fish just so happened to be there to swallow Jonah. Well, to man, mostly, they don't believe it, period, anyway. Job 1416 says, for now thou number'st my steps, dost thou not watch over my sin? Doth not he see my ways and count all my steps? Whether it was a boy with a sling or a boy with a lunch, there are no coincidences with God. They are all part of God's perfect and wonderful plan. The sling that killed the giant and the lunch that fed a giant crowd had something in common. The owners allowed God to use what they had. What do you have that God can use? But that's not really the right question. because God can use anything and everything you have. A better question is, what do you have that you are willing to let God use? But the best question is, do you have something that you are not willing to let God use? And we could go on and on and on and on as to all the things that we're allowing God to use, but do we have something over here? No, I gotta keep that to myself. and obedient creation. We can learn a lot from God's creation, Job 12 and seven. But ask now the beast and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee, or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee, and the fish of the sea shall declare unto thee, who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? and whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind." You know, they say it's evolution. But even if they were and they're not right about where the life came from, the odds of all these animals having all these different features And they're cutting time back now to the millions of years instead of the billions and trillions. When I was in school, it was billions and trillions of years. Now they're just saying it's millions of years, unless they've gone back in the other direction. I don't care if it was a trillion years. All these things could not line up. God marvels that so much of his creation is obedient to his will, while man struggles with his will. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming. But my people know not the judgment of the Lord. You know, most people probably don't know where that comes from. They don't do it anymore because people are so wicked in the world. You used to put the stork out in your front yard, right, when you had a baby. Everybody knows you're having a baby. Now you don't want to know you have a baby because you're afraid somebody's going to come and steal it. But that's from the Bible. As Christians, we love God's promises, right? In our house, we keep promises. Therefore, we're very deliberate before you make a promise. You don't make a promise on a whim. if you count promises for what they truly are. So we're very careful when we make a promise, but when we say, I promise at our house, it means we will do everything possible to make sure that promise is fulfilled. And then the other person knows if it's not fulfilled, it was impossible. Our children were taught this at a very young age. One thing that helped them learn this is that we seldom broke a promise. And when we did break a promise, we explained why, that we were not able to do it. It was impossible. They liked being promised they were going to get something most of the time. They didn't like the policy when they were promised they were going to get a weapon. They knew, as sure as they got the clothes or the toy they were promised, if they were promised a whipping, they were going to get a whipping. Now, I don't believe you ought to pull a kid up in public and give him a full-out whipping in public. I would look at my kids and say, all right, you get a whipping when you get home. And they dreaded it. And I didn't know until recently, they didn't really dread the whipping, they dread to talk after the whipping. But why can't Christians get that? God promised to take care of us. We believe every bit of it. God says, but if we do this or don't do that, and we continue in that, and we don't ask Him for forgiveness, there's judgment coming. But that part we don't want to believe. God keeps all His promises because nothing is impossible for Him. So you can look at the promises in the Bible. They're all going to come to pass if they haven't already. And they are continually coming to pass because nothing is impossible for Him. Whether the promise is a blessing or a judgment, it will be kept. God doesn't ask us to promise to be obedient. He asks us to be. You see, when we promise to be obedient, the rest of our lives, that's a goal, but we can't be obedient next year now. God wants us to be obedient right now. It's easy to talk about obedience, but God is looking for more than words. Mark Twain encountered a ruthless businessman from Boston. The interest in this story was in this lesson. We're getting ready to go to Boston. Hopefully, Lord willing. Met a man in Boston during his travels who boasted that nobody ever got in his way once he determined to do something. He said, before I die, I mean to take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I'm going to climb Mount Sinai. And when I'm up there, I'm going to read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top of my voice." Unimpressed, Twain responded, I got a better idea. Stay in Boston and keep them. A distinct prophecy. Let's see. Yeah, we'll read this first part here. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. By now, I hope you realize that nothing happens or is recorded in God's Word by accident. The fact that Jonah was swallowed by a whale is indeed fascinating. But there is more to the story than that. You've heard it said that no man is an island. Well, any verse in the Bible that's this fascinating, exciting, and extraordinary, there's more to it. Now, God didn't put any verse in there by accident. He didn't put any verse in there because he needed something to fill up between verse 10 and 12. He didn't put 11 there just to fill it in. It's in there for a reason. There's much more to tell about the story. We're going to pick up right there with an ironic topology. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for today. We thank you for each one that's here. Lord, I pray, Lord, that you would help us today to live to our full capability, Lord, for you and glorify your name. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.