If you would, take your Bibles and turn to the book of Jonah. I'll give you a minute to turn there because it's kind of a tough one to find. Small book, the book of Jonah. I appreciate the music today. I appreciate the patriotic emphasis. We're going to look at a man in Scripture that was very patriotic towards his nation, so we're going to learn a few things. from this book, but the book of Jonah. Jonah chapter number one. I'll give you a quick update from our family vacation. I was able to drive back and meet the rest of our family in Colorado this past week. I'll show you a few pictures. We were able to spend some time with my grandmother, my great-grandmother. She's a hundred years old and she's ready to see Jesus. She really is ready to see Jesus. She just wants to go. And we're like, no, God has a plan, a purpose for you. Don't know what it is at 100 years old, but she's still witnessing to nurses, and she's being faithful, and she's definitely a blessing. Her mind is so sharp. It's amazing. And so we got to spend some time with her. And then afterwards, we went to Moab. And in Moab, I'll show you a few pictures here. There's a church here that my great-grandfather started and is still going. And this is my first time to ever see Moab. You can see on the sign behind, there's an arch there. That's because Moab is right outside the Arches National And so we went there as a family for the first time. We drive into the park and there's the one arch. Now what we didn't realize was that you have to hike to every arch. We're like driving around looking for the arches. We don't see them. You have to hike to them. So our family, we got all together and this is the arch that Peter picked out. It was also like the furthest one from the road. It was 105 degrees and that's the arch. As we were leaving to go back to Cortez, here's a picture that my dad showed. My dad took out the window. This is out the window of the car, outside of the park. It was better than any arch we saw inside the park. The next picture is my favorite arch that we saw in the center of Moab, the golden arches. So if you get a chance to go to Moab, this is a great place. And that's where we were with my grandmother. Had a good time. Hopefully, you found your spot in Jonah chapter 1. Let's stand together. We're going to read a couple of verses together. Jonah chapter number one. And I've entitled this message this morning, The Rogue Prophet. We're going to look at the rogue prophet. And it is July 4th weekend, which means you can expect to hear fireworks that night in Lancaster like we do every other night of the year. So it's going to be a good week. The rogue prophet, here we go. Jonah chapter 1 says this, Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. That word great is found throughout the book. Fifteen different times we find this word great. That great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah, say those two words with me this morning. But Jonah, one more time. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went down to Joppa. He found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish. from the presence of the Lord. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for our country. We thank you for the opportunity that we have to meet in a place like this and study your word, God. We thank you for the freedom that we have to do that. Help us to not take that for granted. And we do thank you for your word and the fact that we can know your heart through your word. Help us to learn something about you this morning, God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. Before we begin this morning, we're going to have to focus our minds and allow God to refresh our understanding of the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah. From an early age, we grew up in church having been told about the story of Jonah and the what? and the whale, Jonah and the whale. And so we're kind of familiar with this. I took some screenshots of some different children's books here. Jonah and the whale, Jonah and the big fish. Here in this passage it's called a fish and Jesus refers to it as a whale. I'm not sure exactly what type of sea creature this was but it certainly is in scripture and it's a true story that we're going to study this morning. But we see here's just a sampling of children's books and we read about Jonah and the whale. Jonah and the big fish and this is what we're familiar with and it's understandable because it's such an outrageous story. It's such an incredible story that this is the part of the story that we're drawn to. But really in the four chapters of the book of Jonah the fish only occupies two verses. So it's really not a story of Jonah and the fish. It's really about a story of Jonah and God. That's really what the book of Jonah is about. Jonah and his dealing with God. And so there's two headlines I want you to remember this morning. The first is that this is the story about a faithful God. This is a story about a faithful God. Yes, there's a fish in it. Yes, there's a whale in it. But this is really the story of a faithful God. In fact, the fish, like I said, is mentioned two times, but God is mentioned 38 times in this short book. And so Jonah, let's get a little bit of background before we get started. Jonah is an eighth century prophet, meaning he spoke on behalf of God. The prophets, they spoke at times prophetically about things that were gonna happen. Sometimes they just preached the word of the Lord that came unto them. And so Jonah is a prophet. He makes a brief appearance in 2 Kings 14, And he's prophesying around the time of Jeroboam II and he says this, So here's Jonah at an earlier time. He makes a brief appearance in 2 Kings and he's prophesying around the time of Jeroboam. And it's interesting that he prophesied at this time because Jeroboam was not a king that loved the Lord, is not a king that did well. And so God in this moment uses Jonah to spare Israel when they really didn't deserve it. He shows pity upon them, he allows their borders to be expanded, and he prophesies favorably for a king that wasn't even living well. And then later on Amos prophesies again and he reverses the prophecy. It's kind of interesting, before we even get to the book of Jonah, Jonah's a suspicious character. A lot of twists and turns in the book of Jonah with the character of Jonah. Jonah is referred to here as the son of Amittai. So Jonah means dove, and sometimes when we think of dove we think of peace, but in scripture there's another verse in Hosea 7.11 that says Ephraim also is like a silly dove. Alright, so sometimes the dove goes this way and that way and then takes off this way, flies this way and flies that way. That's a little bit of who we have here in the character of Jonah. But his last name is given here, his family name, Amittai, and this is two words which means son of faithfulness. Alright, so it's just kind of ironic name here, Jonah, the son of faithfulness. And so Jonah is a book of twists and turns and humor. It's really different than any other book. Even of the minor prophets, it's different. If you, you don't need to do this, but if you do turn over to Micah chapter one, it says the word of the Lord came unto Micah. And then you read the words of the Lord. speaking to his people. Then, if you go to Obadiah, it says, the vision of Obadiah, thus saith the Lord concerning Edom. Again, a prophet, thus saith the Lord. This is generally how these books go, thus saith the Lord, and then God would speak through this prophet, a mouthpiece, his message. But you come to Jonah, and it begins, thus saith the Lord, but then it enters into a story. The story matters to us because it reveals the character of God. My daughter, Leighton, she asked, a couple months ago, she asked if she had a great-grandmother. And I'm not sure if she was talking to her cousins or where she heard that. I'm like, yeah, she has a great-grandmother. You've met her. But it had been so long, she didn't remember if she had a great-grandmother. So I told her, I said, in a couple months, we're going to go see great-grandmother your great-great-grandmother she's a hundred years old and I began to describe my great-grandmother to my daughter Layton and I got a picture of Layton with my great-grandmother and she was she was pretty excited to meet my great-grandmother and the reason she was excited was because leading up to this moment I had been telling her stories I didn't want her in this one, maybe perhaps even her only time to remember meeting my great-grandmother, I didn't want her in the moment to not know who this person was. So I began to tell her stories. The one story I tell of my great-grandmother is that she taught me how to swim. My dad did not. What my dad did was one time, I'll never forget this, he put floaties on my feet and threw me into the pool. I know that sounds like child abuse, but it is, all right? So he threw me into the pool. And I remember that same day my great-grandmother was there, and she was like, Paul, don't do that. And she came over, and she taught me. I had a fear of water, and she taught me how to swim. And I told this story to my daughter late, and I told her all about my great-grandmother, because I wanted to know who she was. I wanted to know what type of person she was so that when she met her, and she did. She loved her great-great-grandmother. But see, those stories I told her revealed the character and nature of who my great-grandmother is. In Jonah, we find the character of God revealed to us in a story. And it's unlike anything else in Scripture. Jonah is divided into four different chapters. You have the first chapter, which is God prompting Jonah to go. Jonah doesn't go. You know the story. He gets swallowed by a fish. In chapter number two, we find this prayer. this prayer that he's making to the Lord. In chapter 3 we find Jonah getting a second chance, God telling him to go, and this time he goes and there's a great revival. That's a lot of times where the children's storybooks end, but in chapter 4 we find Jonah just kind of hating life and having this dialogue with God. There's a few lessons that we can learn from Jonah this morning. We'll stick primarily in chapter number one, but there's a few lessons that we can learn. And the first is this, that God operates according to his divine purpose. God operates according to his divine purpose. So it says, the word of the Lord, this is where the story begins, and this is where all stories begin, with God. So, the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the Santa Amatai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it. for their wickedness has come upon me." So God has a plan going on here, and there's something that He wants to accomplish. Now, a quick refresher on how God's purposes work. There are, in Scripture, we find there are decrees of God. These are things that God's going to do. He doesn't take a poll, doesn't ask for anyone's opinion, He just does these things, right? Creation was a decree of God. He just decided to do it. Didn't ask anyone's opinion about it. The flood was a decree of God. The salvation, praise the Lord, is a decree of God. That God decided to do these things. But then also in Scripture we find desires. We see things, and a lot of times we're cued off to these by Verses that say, for this is the will of God that you abstain fornication or that you're grateful. These are the things that God desires of us. So in this passage we have this intersection because God's going to do something but he wants to do it through a person. He has a desire to accomplish his will and his purpose through Jonah. We find this intersection. What God is going to do here is he's going to extend grace to a Gentile nation. This is just going to happen. God's going to do this. Aren't you thankful that God has done this even for us? And so God's going to do this, but he operates according to his design purpose. We'll get more on the grace of God in just a moment, but he's going to work this plan according to his design, divine purpose. What does that mean? We're speaking of his sovereignty. Norman Geisler said sovereignty is God's control over all his creation, dealing with his governance over it. Sovereignty is God's rule over all reality. So at God's disposal here, even in this short book, even in this very chapter that we're gonna look at this morning, We're going to see God's omniscience. We're going to see that He knows everything. We're going to see God's omnipotent, that He possesses all power, even over the ocean. We're going to see God's omnipresence, that He's everywhere. And this is just in the first passage of Jonah chapter number one. And so we are revealed the character and the nature of God. This book shows us that God operates according to His divine purpose. And so what we see here is that God perceives the wickedness of Nineveh. It says in verse number two, we read a moment ago, for their wickedness is come up before me. Now, our God is continually aware of the current affairs of the world. Have you ever been watching the news and they show a satellite photo and they're like, we think something might be going on underneath this mountain because this dirt pile moved to this dirt pile. And so maybe there's nuclear activity, but we don't really know. Well, I'll tell you who does know. God knows. Because God keeps tabs on everything, and God is aware of everything. And sometimes we think, oh man, this is going on, this is going on. But God knows. And so there's a wicked nation that's living wickedly, and it's on God's radar. Their wickedness has come up before God. God is omniscient. He knows. And so let's talk about Nineveh. Nineveh is one of the largest and oldest cities in the ancient world. Later in the book, it tells us that it would take about three days to walk through the city of Nineveh. I don't know if that's because it's so congested, there were the walls of the city, and then the city spread out after that, and so there was, there was, it was a large, large city, one of the largest cities of that day. A city of over, well over a hundred thousand people lived in Nineveh. That was a huge city at the time, especially considering that maybe Nazareth, the town where Jesus was from, really probably had maybe a hundred or so people around this time. And so this was a large, large city, especially for this time in the world. There was, I think I have a couple pictures of Nineveh. There's a gate here that, I believe ISIS, this is an article that says that ISIS destroys the ancient city of Nineveh near Mosul. So if you've heard Mosul on the news, this is where Nineveh is. And so this was a gate that was destroyed by terrorists, but it was an old gate dating back to about the time of the story that we're reading. We have another A picture here of the library. There was an ancient library in Nineveh. 30,000 volumes. They're all inscribed tablets, okay? So if you're gonna go check out a few volumes, it would get heavy, all right? 30,000 volumes of inscribed tablets there in Nineveh. Some people believe that the Hanging Gardens were actually in Nineveh. And Nineveh was a wicked, wicked city. We could go on and on to talk about how they murdered, how they raped, and how When they took over or conquered a nation or people, they would take those leaders, they would skin them and hang them up. They did some terrible, terrible things. And so God sees that, and he sees the wickedness of this people, and yet he shows compassion to this nation, which really highlights the wideness of God's grace, that God would love these people and show compassion towards them. And so what he does next is that he prompts Jonah to go and preach. He says, arise and go to Nineveh. My daughter, we like to read books at night, and I brought one of these books here. This book says, Who is London's Prettiest Princess? My daughter likes this book, okay. Some of the guys on the front row saw me carrying this book up to the pulpit and got nervous, understandably so. A pink children's book, okay. But there's a point I want to make with this. My daughter loves this book because it goes through and says, Who do you think's the loveliest girl in London? And it starts to go through. all these different princesses. Well, you get to the end of the book and there's a little bit of a surprise ending. I'll spoil it for you. Get to the last page and there's a mirror. That's why my daughter loves this book because it says, who is it? And then these words, it's you. And I remember the first time reading this to my daughter and her eyes lit up. She'd never seen anything like this. Well, there's not a mirror in the fourth chapter of Jonah, but there might as well be. Because here's the second headline. Jonah's a story about God, but Jonah's a story about you. And Jonah's a story about me. And we're revealed the character of God, but this is a story about us. This is a story about how we interact with God and how we respond to God. So God tells Jonah to go and to preach. God operates according to his divine purpose. But the second thing we see is that the tendency of our heart, and this is where we come into play, the tendency of our heart, like Jonah, is to run from God. The tendency of our heart is that when God tells us to do something, see, we find in this first verse that God's got a plan, that he's gonna work, that he's gonna do, that he graciously includes Jonah in on this plan. He prompts Jonah to obey, and yet Jonah rebels. Jonah runs. Jonah's first instinct is to run. So Jonah's a representative character. He, like I just mentioned, he represents us, but at this time he represents the children of Israel because this is where the children of Israel were at spiritually at the time. So what God is going to do here serves dual purposes, all right? He's going to bring salvation to this Gentile nation of Nineveh, but he's also, at the same time, going to bring shame to God's people, Israel, who were continually rebelling against God. Because God was so gracious to them, He was their God, He was their people, they wanted nothing to do with Him, so now God is going to go show grace to their enemies, to the shame of Israel. And the same happens with us. When God prompts us to do something that we don't like, we push back. This is the story about a prophet. This is supposed to be a man of God going to a rogue people. But in reality, when we start to read the story, we find a rogue prophet. That word rogue means unprincipled or untethered. And so Jonah, who had experienced the grace of God, who had this intimate relationship with God where God would speak through him at times, Jonah untethered himself from that grace and that goodness and he ran from God. He went rogue. Our hearts have the same potential to go rogue. Jeremiah chapter 17 tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked who can know it. Sometimes we get this idea that we have a good heart that we're trying to keep from becoming bad. The Bible tells us that we have a bad heart that can only become good because of salvation, because of Jesus Christ. Romans 8 verse 7 says, because the carnal mind is enmity against God. So I want you to understand this. The tendency of our heart, just like Jonah, is to run from God. Because we read a story like this, like Jonah's a bad person, he shouldn't have done that, and then we do it every day. We do the same thing. And the tendency of our heart, the natural inclination, our heart's posture is to rebel. That's what Romans 8, verse 7 says, the carnal mind is enemies against God. The Bible tells us that in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, but the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. So our natural tendency in our flesh is that when we receive a prompting from God, whether it be from the Holy Spirit or from God's word, our natural tendency It's to push back. It's to rebel. So Jonah understood God's request, but he would not accept it. He full well knew what God wanted to do, but he did not want to be a part of it. And so what he did, there's a sailing term that says cut and run. Cut and run is when you want to get out of a, you have a ship and you want to get out of a place quickly. It means you cut the anchor and you go. And that's what Jonah did. He cut the anchor and he ran and he ran. So God prompts him to go. God prompts him to go and be one of the first missionaries, a foreign missionary. He's going to go outside of Israel to a Gentile nation to bring the light of salvation unto them, but he doesn't want anything to do it. He chose to run from God's presence. Verse number three says, but Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went down to Joppa. I think we've got a picture here of where he would have gone. So he's up in his hometown, which was near Nazareth, and rather than go up to Nineveh, he goes all the way over to Tarshish is where he intends to go. So Nineveh would have been a 500, 550 mile trip. All the way over to Tartus, this is a 2,500 mile trip. This is a long journey that would have taken him a long time. And yet he ran, and he ran from the presence of the Lord. You can't run from the presence of the Lord. The Bible tells us that God is everywhere. And it tells us this even in the Psalms, and Jonah knew this, and yet he still decided to run from God. And isn't this the same with us, where we know truths of scriptures, and yet we will defy them, and we'll act in defiance against them? This is what happened with Jonah. Why did Jonah run from God? It wasn't because of fear. He wasn't afraid of the Ninevites, necessarily. That wasn't the primary motivation of why he ran. It wasn't because of finances, because he self-funded his own rebellion when he went and paid the fare to get on a ship to run from God. It wasn't because of distance, because he quadrupled the distance to go in the opposite direction. In fact, he went as far west as he possibly could to the edge of the known world. That's how far he was willing to run. It wasn't because he had lack of faith. He really believed that God would do what he wanted to do and bring a revival. The reason that Jonah ran was because he had a competing vision with what God was going to do. You see, he saw himself as this type of prophet, and he was going to do this, and he was going to do this, and he was going to do this, and built inside of him. And understandably so, the Ninevites were terrible people. He had this hatred towards them, like anything but that. I would rather run from God than obey him. and go to those people there was a competing vision for what God wanted him to do and Jonah had an idea of what he wanted to accomplish and he saw God's idea and the fact is you read ahead in Jonah chapter number four verse one and two says but it displeased Jonah exceedingly what made him so displeased and even uses the word angry and he prays to God and even quotes exodus chapter 34 and he says Oh my Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before Tarshish, for I knew, this is Jonah's charge against God, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness, and repentant of evil. Jonah says this, God, I knew this would turn out this way. We fast forward to the end of the book, Jonah eventually goes, he very reluctantly preaches a sermon we'll talk about in a minute, but God brings revival and Jonah gets angry because he had a competing vision with what he wanted to see in his life. He wanted things to work out this way. He really wanted Nineveh to burn and to die. And he knew that God could do that because God had done it. And that's the vision that he wanted to see. He was all on board. Sign me up. I'll get up early. I'll go wherever if that's the message I get to preach. If I get to see the destruction of Nineveh. But he said, God, I knew you were like this. I knew you would show them grace. Just like the time God showed them grace, expanded their borders when they didn't deserve it. That's how we operate, too. Grace for me, law for you. Right? Hard on someone else, we grade ourselves on a curve. And that's what Jonah's doing. Like, no, no, no, no. Destroy these people. They deserve it. And God comically stands back and says, you deserve it, too. It's only by God's grace that anyone's involved in this story So Jonah had this competing vision. He knew the outcome and he hated it. And we run for the same reasons. We have a picture of what our life should look like. And when what God calls us to do doesn't align with what our life looks like, we don't want anything to do with it. And so it goes down to Joppa. Here's a picture of Joppa I forgot to show. This is modern-day Tel Aviv is where Joppa is. And can you imagine Jonah going and hopping on a ship to go on a months-long journey to run from God? So God operates according to his divine purpose. The tendency of our hearts is to run from God. But thirdly, when you object to God's leading, He may disrupt your agenda. When you object to God's leading, He may choose to disrupt your agenda. The Bible says in Psalms 33 verse 10, See, God knows all. He's everywhere. And He reserves the right to reject, to disrupt your agenda when you choose to rebel against Him. And that's exactly what God does here. Jonah says, I want nothing to do with you. I'm going to run. And God says, let's see how this works. So he gets on a boat, he pays the fare, and he starts his journey. In verse number four, it says this. We see that God sends a storm. It says, There's the power of God to, over nature, to send out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. This is a violent storm. Verse number five says, then the mariners were afraid and cried, every man unto his God. Cast forth wares. that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it, but cast forth the wares." So they're dumping all the contents of their ship. But here's those words again that we read aloud. But Jonah. But Jonah. See, there's this back and forth here in this book that we see. And God does something, but Jonah doesn't like it. So God does something else, but Jonah doesn't like it. And God's teaching us a lesson through Jonah that ultimately he'll do what he's going to do, and he graciously includes us in on his plan. And when we rebel against it, when we object to it, he reserves the right to disrupt our plans and our agenda. Jonah, he's down in the bottom of the ship and it says that he lay and was fast asleep. You see, your rogue tendencies, when your heart becomes untethered from God's grace, from the truth of God's word, our rogue tendencies of our heart put others in danger too. It's not just you, it's your family. It's not just you, it's your employer who suffers. When our hearts go rogue, it affects those around us. And here, Jonah puts the men of this ship in danger because he is running from God. I think of another man in the New Testament, Paul, who's also in a very, very difficult storm on a ship. And because he was on the ship, the entire ship was saved. Jonah, on reverse, is in a ship and everyone's in danger because he's running from God. The rogue tendencies of his heart. So the ship master came in verse number six and said unto him, what meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God. If so be that God will think upon us that we perish not. So Jonah's sleeping. They have to wake him up. They have to get him up. I don't know why he's sleeping. Maybe his conscience is seared. Maybe running from God for him has been such an exhausting experience. But for whatever reason, Everyone's in danger, and he's oblivious to it, and that's how it works usually. When we run from God, we're oblivious to the danger we're putting ourselves in and others in, and we're just content to just mindlessly go through our actions. And this is what Jonah's doing. He's sleeping. So God sends a storm, and then he singles out Jonah. Verse number seven says this, And they said, everyone to his fellow, come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lots fell upon who? Jonah. Jonah gets the short end of the deal. I'm like, whoa, man, what a coincidence. It wasn't a coincidence. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 16, verse 33, the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. So nothing is left to chance in this story. Even the casting of the lot is like, oh, what a coincidence. No, it was actually God singling out Jonah. Might have looked like a coincidence, but it says when we cast lots, the disposing of, the deciding of, ultimately still comes to God. Verse number eight says this. And they said unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is thine occupation? So they get a lot of questions for Jonah in the lot. Like, what did you do? And whence comest thou? What is thy country? And of what people art thou? And he answered them and proclaims his nationality. He says, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven, which made the sea and the dry land. OK, there's a disconnect here. Because is he really fearing God, the one who made the seas and made the earth? Is he really living in fear and obedience to God? No, he's not. But here's what we see in Jonah. It's possible to have good theology and a bad heart. You go to chapter number two, you read this prayer. God is our salvation. There's some awesome truths that are theologically 100% correct. Jonah knew this. He was a preacher, but he had a bad heart. It is possible for us as Bible-believing Christians to come here to open God's word, to see things right, but then go and live wrong. That's the story of Jonah's. Jonah, he was religious. He did everything right. He was a preacher. He was the good guy going to the bad people, so he thought. And really, in reality, he was the one who had gone bad and who was running from God. But what does God do? So God sends a storm, he singles out Jonah, but then he shows grace throughout. God's grace is all over this story. The Bible says this, For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourges every son whom he receiveth. So God often disrupts us. And when He disrupts us, we need to see that disruption against our agenda as God's grace in our life and not a punishment. So what God's gonna say is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not gonna work. You're not gonna run from me and this is not gonna work. And so here comes a storm and God graciously disrupts Jonah's agenda. He messes with it. He sends a storm to the point where they're gonna cast slots and they're gonna throw Jonah overboard. And there's this divine disruption that God caused, but it wasn't punishment, it was grace. Punishment would have been for God to do nothing. Or God to step out of the story and let Jonah drown and let Jonah die. But even the fish that God prepares in verse number 17 was of grace. To swallow up Jonah so that Jonah wouldn't drown. it was all of God's grace. Now, not every disruption we face is because God caused that disruption, okay? You get a flat tire on the way home, it's not that you were doing anything bad and God caused that disruption. God could do that, but it's most likely that that's not what's happening. So not every, we can't attribute every disruption that we face in life to God. Okay, sometimes it's just our own stupidity. Have you ever been there before? Locked your keys in the car? Know what I'm talking about? So not every disruption that we face is because of that. Even Jesus' disciples, they asked Jesus, like, who sinned? The blind man. Whose sin? Was it him or was it parents? And Jesus says, neither. Okay, so he had an obstacle, but it wasn't because of sin in his life. So we can't blame every disruption, but God does reserve the right to disrupt a people that rebel against him. In Romans chapter 1, we read the reverse, where God in His wrath, He turns them over to a reprobate mind. Here's the point with all of this. When God disrupts your agenda, be grateful. Be thankful for His grace. Be thankful that He didn't allow you to succeed in your own power. Be thankful for His grace in your life. And so, God is gracious. He's loving. He disrupts. When you object to God's leading, He may disrupt your agenda. The last thing we see here is this, that the appropriate response to God's grace is repentance. The appropriate response to God's grace in our life is repentance. Jonah was, he was a patriot. If he was an American, he would have loved the music this morning. He would have been waving the flag and everything. He loved his country, but he loved it above even what God had called him to do. And God then comes and disrupts this. But we think of these words to the song, God shed his grace on thee. Speaking of our country, okay, just like God has shed his grace on Israel, God shed his grace on thee. Well, what's the response of the grace that God has given to us? And God has shown us as a nation grace. What's the appropriate response? It's repentance. And when we, like Jonah or like Israel, as individuals or as a nation rebel against God, God may disrupt our agenda as a people. We will not prosper apart from God. And that's what's happening here is that God is disrupting it. But the only response, the only appropriate response to God's grace is then repentance. See, God's grace invites us to participate in something greater than ourselves. Jonah, I encourage you this week to read the rest of the book because Jonah goes on, he has this prayer in chapter 2 and how I would describe him going forward is reluctant. He's going to go forward and he's going to preach and he goes into Nineveh, a town that he hates. He wants to see these people die. But God's already made it very difficult for him to rebel, so he goes there and he preaches. And he preaches in the original language of five-word sermon. And we can read this sermon in chapter 3, verse 4. It says, It doesn't say anything about repentance. It doesn't say anything about how to get back. This is maybe not the best sermon that you've ever heard, but it was according to God's plan. God said this is going to happen. Jonah's there. He's preaching. He's doing what God wanted him to do. And then we can read the response. In verse number five it says, So the people of Nineveh believed God, and they proclaimed fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them." And so Jonah goes in very reluctantly, he preaches this sermon because he has to, and God does this mighty work. You see, the appropriate response to God's grace is repentance. God's grace invites us, like Jonah, to participate in something greater than ourselves. Listen, this is one of the biggest revivals in the history of the world, and Jonah gets to preach it, and he's got a bad attitude about it. He goes into the city, he preaches the destruction, and then in chapter number four, he climbs up to the top of a hill and he waits for the destruction because he's like, this isn't going to last. This is not real. And he's there. He that badly wants to see Nineveh be destroyed. And so he preaches this message. And in spite of all that, God works through him. And listen, in spite of us, in spite of our shortcoming, God invites us to participate in something bigger than ourselves. And Jonah missed out on it. Jonah bucked against it. Jonah rebelled against it. He preaches this five-word sermon, and yet God did a great work. It's ironic, isn't it, that Jonah's called the faithful son? Well, we look ahead and there's a much better Jonah in scripture, and that's Jesus. The Bible says this in Revelations chapter number 1, "...and from Jesus Christ, who is called the faithful witness." Because Jesus didn't go and look upon a city like Jonah did and wish for their destruction. He went to a city and was moved with compassion. And God sent His Son to die on the cross for us, and Jesus said, In Luke 11, the men of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah's. And behold, the greater than Jonah is here. The person greater than Jonah is the person of Jesus Christ. And where Jonah faltered and where Jonah failed, Jesus succeeded and defeated death and hell. Matthew chapter 12, again, Jesus preaches it. For Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And so Jonah looked hoping for the destruction of the people, God sends Jesus for the salvation of his people. Jesus is greater, and he invites us into something greater than ourselves. Just like God's grace appeared to Jonah to include Jonah on something that he didn't... God could have snapped his fingers and revival would have happened in Innova, but what he was doing was so graciously allowing Jonah to be a part of it, and in the same way, Jesus invites us to follow him so that we can accomplish through him something that we cannot accomplish on our own. God's grace enables us to live in joyful obedience to the Word of God. Titus says, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, and then it goes on to say, teaching us the denying ungodliness and worldliness, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. So the grace that we've experienced should produce holiness in our lives, should produce repentance in our life. This past week, we did a lot of driving. And so we rented a car. We ended up renting this car. We picked it up a week ago on Sunday afternoon from Enterprise and picked up this car. And it was fun. It had more space. And the girls were excited to have a new and different car. So we take the car home. And I'm sitting in the driveway. And I go to turn up the radio, because it's pretty low. And it says, my key limit, the radio limit. I'm like, what? Well, just that time, the guy from Enterprise calls me. He says, hey, Mr. Chappell, we just want to make sure your car is working out OK. I'm like, actually, it's not. I can't turn up the radio, and we get a long trip. I don't know, or the volume on anything, like I can't hardly listen to anything, like I don't know what's going on. He's like, Oh, that's called my key access. And what we have is you have a key that has some limitations. So this car thinks I'm a teenager. Okay, maybe it knows I work with teenagers, smelled them on me. And It starts to treat me like a teenager. I can't turn up the volume. I'm like, OK, all right. I see how this is, all right. So then we started driving. And let me show you a couple screenshots. I took these with my phone. First of all, it says, it would beep at me every time I got the near top speed of the vehicle, which was 80, OK? Some of the states we were driving in, including our own, the speed limit's 80. How are you supposed to pass someone who's going the speed limit if you can't go over the speed limit, right? So it's 80 miles an hour, and it would beep. It would beep when you hit. The speed limit, it would beep at you when you got close to the vehicle's top limit. So this thing was always beeping at me. It's supposed to be safe, but it's the most distracting and frustrating thing. But this is where I know the truck really plays dirty. Here's what it does. Look at this next one. Buckle up to unmute the audio. Like, really? Now, we wear our seatbelts. Our family, we wear our seatbelts. Our girls wear our seatbelts. I wear a seatbelt. But listen, I'm at the gas station. And I have to buckle up to finish the sports radio, all right? I can't hear where LeBron's going until I buckle up first. Like, this car plays dirty. You know what? I was so frustrated. But by the end of the trip, I was kind of used to it, you know? And what happened was this truck got my compliance. Eventually, I'm buckling up. I have no choice but to comply with this truck. Now, listen, and we're done. God wants more than just our compliance. He can get our compliance. He surely can get our compliance. He does that with Jonah. But he wants something better, and that's obedience. Obedience has a little bit of a negative context in our culture, and we're done. Because when we think of obedience, we think of all the stuff that we can't do. For my kids, you know, I'll show you one last picture. This is my daughter, Leighton, and I. We're on the family farm, and there's these cliffs that go down about 20 feet. My daughter, Blair, too, they like to run around. So I'm like, no, no, no. You have to hold my hand. You can't run around. I'm asking them to obey and to them it's restrictive but for me as a parent it's about life and death. And here's the ironic thing is that Jonah thought he was running for his life, he was actually running from his life. Jesus promises us abundant life. And sometimes we want to take control of that. We think we're running for life, but we're actually running from something better. And that's what we see here in the story of Jonah. God doesn't want your compliance. He wants your heartfelt obedience. And because of God's grace in our life, the response, the only appropriate response is repentance and obedience. running from his life when he thought he was running for his life. We do the same thing. We compartmentalize sometimes. We think, OK, God, I'm going to give you all this. I'm a good citizen. I'm a good patriot. I'm going to do all these things. But this area, let me retain control of that. God doesn't want our compliance. He'll get it if He wants to. What He wants is something much better and much richer, and that is our obedience. Because then, and only then, do we get invited to be a part of something much greater than ourselves. Let's bow our heads and close our eyes and have a word of prayer.