[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Good morning.
Go ahead and turn your Bibles to Jonah, chapter two. We'll begin there. Here in just a few moments. I want to share with you something. I'm not a fisherman. Don't enjoy it, don't like it.
I have a rod and reel. I actually have a couple of them. We go out and sling them out for no reason at all just to pull it back in. And maybe the reason I don't like fishing is because I stink at it. That's probably the biggest reason. I don't catch enough. And so, you know, I have been before where one time the elder of a church that I worked at, or not worked at, but that I worshiped with, he had a stocked pond and he would take us out there and we'd have our bait on our rod and he would go out there and say, okay, now throw it out there. And we'd cast it out there and then he'd chunk a lot of feed out there. And then the biting all over the place. Woo. And I would just catch one right after the other. That was fun, but not catching them, no fun. I don't like it. I'm not a big fisherman, but I do enjoy a good fish story. Okay. And I enjoy some shows on television. Like I love Deadliest Catch. I like that show. Mike Rogue does a great job of kind of narrating that. I also like the guy who does River Monsters, if you know what I'm talking about. That show that God's got a very deep voice, very gentle as he goes down the river and finds these maltsters, you know, and it's awesome. Those are great and I appreciate them. And I get into the story of it and I love it. We watch it and it's all great. But there's one thing that I've noticed about every story ever that had to do with fish. And it's one of those Things where, you know, they can bring out the. We used to watch wicked tuna. They would go out into the ocean and come back and they'd measure it. And what I noticed is that the fish was never as big as they thought it was, and it never weighed what they wanted to. But if you ever asked them about it, they would have told you, like, some kind of exaggerated version of it, right? It's like every single story that you ever hear about fish, there's one thing, it starts out with this outlandish idea, right? And then what happens is we get hooked into it by all the other details of it, but we're brought into it. We're lured into it by this. This outlandishness of it. I remember years ago, probably 45 years ago, my great grandparents who lived in Lawrence County, Alabama, had a place on Lake Okeechobee in Florida, had a little property, one bedroom cabin that they had built, and that they would go there and they would spend, like a couple of weeks every year and just fish and just have a good time. And that was just part of their thing. And so sometimes they would come back and tell some of the stories. And one of the most fascinating ones I ever heard was my great grandmother told me, she said, you're not going to believe this. I caught a fish with bubble gum, and I never even put it on the hook.
I was like, whoa, how in the world is that possible? She says, well, here's the story. And so we're all listening in, right? And she said, you know, I was here fishing on one side of the boat. Your papaw was on the other side. And I had some gum in my mouth, and it just. I had chewed all the taste out of it, so I was going to get rid of it. And I looked at him and I threw it right over the top of his head. And sure enough, right after that, he caught a fish. And when we caught that fish and opened it up, guess what was inside the mouth of that fish? My bubble gum.
Now, she probably.
She's a good woman, but she probably lied about that, like most of you do when you tell your fish stories, right? But that was a story that I'll never forget. And most stories start with us doing something crazy and we bag the big fish, right? But the story that we're reading is so twisted and turned around that instead of us catching the fish, the fish caught Jonah. And that's amazing. But as I look at this story, there's so much to set this up so we kind of grasp what's Going on. And if you'll remember, Jonah is a prophet of God sent to Israel. And so going to them and sharing with them the things that they needed to know, whether it be warnings or whether it be instructions, those things would make a lot of sense, right? Go to the people that you love, the people of your homeland, and talk to them about what God wants them to do, right? But this order from God was not about going to Israel. It was about turning around and going to their enemy, the Assyrians, Nineveh. And Andrew explained so beautifully how awful these people were. They were brutal. They were. They were awful and vile and abusive and barbarians of some sort. And so going to tell them about God's saving message, turning back to God, repentance doesn't seem to be one of those things that they were really necessary or that he was necessarily into. So what we see is this elevated guy, this prophet of God, this man that we hold in high regard, he descended, did he not? He did a lot of things. He made some decisions that took him down further and further and further away from God. First of all, instead of going to Tarshish, where. I mean, instead of going to Nineveh, where he was supposed to, he set out for Tarshish, 2,500 miles away. So he went down into Joppa, then he went and bought the fare and went down into the boat, and then he went into the deeper recesses of the boat, as the Bible tells us. The idea is that he's getting further and further and further away from God's recognition, as far as he could tell, right?
And then ultimately, those three decisions that he made ultimately ended up in God sending a big storm. And that big storm, in the fear of all that, all the mariners on the deck said, we've got to offload. Why is this happening? Everyone pray. Ultimately, Jonah kind of fesses up and says, hey, this is because of my rebellion. I'm running away from God. And he asked them to throw him overboard. So I guess technically it was his decision at the same time, maybe not. Maybe it was their way of getting him off board as well, to calm the seas. And of course, that that's the situation there. But notice that he's going down deeper and deeper and deeper into this situation. So it's in this moment, as Jonah has been cast into this tempestuous sea. And if you've ever been in choppy waters, that's hard on the boat. But if you can imagine being in those waters, how you would have felt. And so we find this to be the Starting point of this story, as it says now, the Lord arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah.
And the word could be arranged, it could be prepared, it could be provided. There's different ways that it's translated, but the understanding is that God had this fashion in such a way that he's in control of what's taking place. And he sends this to swallow up Jonah. And it says that Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights. So my problem with this story, and maybe you have felt this too, is we've sort of bedtime storied this, have we not? We've sort of taken this story and imagined it in our minds, and we have these cutesy little cartoon figures, and we mark out the whale because we don't know for sure it was a male. He's a great fish. And we do that. And that's our way of making sure that we keep things, you know, settled and, you know, based on truth. Exactly what the Bible says and all that. We worry about those kinds of things. But I wonder if we're really capturing what this message is all about. I mean, I even think, like, even. Even other images that have made, you know, that make it so. So, you know, fun. And I don't know that, you know, I can almost imagine this, well going, hi, buddy. Let's go find your dad. You know, like, I just imagine that it's a little bit kind of cartoony, right? This is not all that scary. Okay, but what if you really went through what Jonah went through? Now, there's a man in 2021. His name is Michael Packard.
He is a fisherman off the coast of Cape Cod. And he, by all accounts, is one of the best, most experienced fishermen in that area. A lot of guys model him. They watch what he does. They learn from his techniques. He's not like anybody you've ever seen. He's unconventional in his way. He tuna fishes way out in the ocean. He usually goes out by himself or maybe with one other crew member. He'll come back and bring these big tuna and everybody. He doesn't have all that overhead that other people do. He doesn't have those big, you know, pods for, you know, getting snow crab on the bottom of the ocean or any of those kinds of things, or getting a lobster that way and with baits and those kinds of things. This man literally scuba dives, dives down to the bottom of the ocean floor and spots the lobsters, picks out the ones he wants and captures them by hand and brings them back up. And he's the best around. Everybody acknowledges he's the best. Most experienced guy. If you ask him, he'll say, I've been doing this since I was 12 years old. So at the age of 57 when this happened to him, he had been doing this for a long, long time. 45 years or so. Expert in this area. Well, the way he would go, he would. He would go in three different dives, go out to the spot where he fished, and then he would dive down to the bottom of the floor, you know, the sea floor, do his fishing and keep going. Well, he had done two dives on this particular day, and he went down for the third dive. And so he gets everything ready, gets on the tanks, and he scuba dives down to the bottom of the ocean. As he's getting almost there, all of a sudden everything went black. He felt like he had been hit by a freight train. And as he describes it, literally, it's just like his whole body jarred and he was spun all in different directions, and it was completely dark. He had no idea what had happened. He wondered if he had gotten hit by a shark or whatever. So he's checking to see if he's got any pain. Lacerations, he said. And what happens is, all of a sudden, things start moving around him. And then what he describes as the hard muscles began to compress him and push down. And suddenly he realizes, I'm in the mouth of a whale.
And so that whale is keeping on going, man, just diving through. And he thinks to himself, oh, no, this is the end. And so he's trying to grasp his regulator. Got knocked out as he got hit by the.
By the well. And he feels everything compressing around him. And all of a sudden, his regulator hits his cheek. And so he grabs it and puts it on. And he says, okay, I can breathe now. Got about 50 minutes left in this tank. And so he's got his oxygen and he's going, okay, see if I can get out of here. And so he's kicking in and everything is compressed. And all of a sudden, he feels the crushing feeling of his legs being pushed together and swallowed down the throat of this whale. And he realizes no matter how much he kicks and fights, he's not going anywhere. The only way he survives this is if this whale lets him go. And he begins thinking to himself, I know these big, huge whales can dive up to. You know, they go all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. They can stay there for a long time. And like some say 90 minutes between those breaths that they take when they come up. So 90 minutes, that's more. He's beginning to think all these things, and he becomes frantic. So he's wiggling and he's shaking and he's grabbing his tank and hitting up against the side of things, and it's all just right on top of him, and he's pressing. And all of a sudden, the whale flails around a little bit and then dives a little bit more, and he sees a little glimpse of light as if the whale is about to surface. And so he fights even more. And what happens is the whale literally starts thrashing. In fact, the guy who was on his boat with him had no idea any of this was going on. He looks up about 150 yards away, and he sees whitewater slashing. That whale surfaced and flung and flung and flung, almost like you get a chicken bone stuck in your throat and hurled him out of the whale's mouth. And his friend said he looked out and he saw, and it looked like a frog, like he was upside down. His legs were straight up in the air, and those flippers made it look like frog legs. And he ended up landing on his back. Well, everyone around, all the other fishing boats, they kind of ran to this spot and they went to rescue him. And when they found him, he was laying on his back, and he was like, ah, screaming. And part of it was screaming out of the intense pain because he had some ligament damage and some other things that were wrong with his legs. But the biggest part of it was the tears and the joy. And he said, I was just in a whale's mouth, you know, and he was just blown away that he had survived that. And so as he's retelling this story, and by the way, this is all. You can look at it on Australia's 60 Minutes, this movie, you can see the whole thing. And he describes the whole thing, just the tears.
What was going through his mind is, how will I make this? This is how my life ends. I was thinking about my boys. I was thinking about my life. I was thinking, this is how it all ends. Well, that's a very different thing than maybe how we have visualized this story about Jonah, right?
And so I loved one of the things in the interviewer as he was talking to him, he said, man, how long do you think you were in that whale's mouth? He says, like, 30 seconds. And then I thought, okay, 30 seconds of absolute misery and terror. And how about Jonah is in the belly of this fish for three days and three nights? In that kind of intensity.
Now, we don't know the whole situation, but can you just imagine as we read this text, if you look in Jonah, chapter two, listen to the words that Jonah is sharing with you, because it's not one of I'm at calm and I'm at peace and all those kinds of things. He begins to see that he has a job that he's not done and God is working on him inside of it. Let's talk about this great fish. Why do we call it a great fish? Why do we call it a whale? Why do we not call it a whale? Well, I don't know. There's lots of ways to look at it. The word that's used in the Hebrew language just means great fish. That's all it means. You can look at it in a hundred different ways. That's what it means. But you get over into the New Testament, Jesus is retelling this story. And in Matthew 12, he uses the term katos, and it's for sea monster or a huge sea fish or a whale. So maybe that's where the disclarity comes from. We don't know exactly what this fish was. But that's really not the point of the message, is it? The real point of all of this is, and it may have been something like this, but the real point of all of this is simply this, that it's not about the vessel, it's not about that fish. It's about the sovereign God who controls that fish or that vessel and everything else around him.
That's what the story is about. It's about God and his power and his ability to work his will in ways that we never imagined or couldn't imagine. So there's several applications that we can look at this story, and I'm gonna dig into the one that we're talking about today. But there's other things that we could develop later. And I think Andrew will probably get that second one. But the first one is just this. It's a story about a man of God who refuses to do what he was told to do. And it's God's way of bringing him back to obedience and to do the thing that he asked him to do to the very beginning. The second one is this. It's a prophetic typological sign of Jesus coming. Death, burial, and resurrection. Now we'll get into more of that. I think Andrew, in his fifth lesson of this series, is going to address that specifically and really dig into the heart of that. And then finally there's a prophetic warning about Israel's coming punishment for their idolatry. You may say, well, how is that so? Well, listen to this. In Amos, chapter nine, verse three, Amos and Jonah were kind of contemporaries. And so they were prophesying about the same time and they were getting messages from God. And Amos says this about Israel's coming exile from Assyria. So he's talking about the people that, you know, Jonah was supposed to go and teach. And he's projecting the idea that they're coming to take captive the Israelites. And he describes it as a descent to the bottom of the sea where a giant sea serpent would devour her.
Second Chronicles, as you listen to the history, you're going to see that the Assyrian king comes in and he drags the king of Israel, Manasseh, off the throne by hooks like you would a fish out of the sea. And then finally in Jeremiah, he's looking back on the whole thing and he describes it, he describes it as being swallowed by a monster of the deep. Do you catch this? That God is so sovereign that he is working his will in all of these different ways. And in reality, Jonah, though he is experiencing this, you know, firsthand, may have also been an object lesson for his people to recognize they too needed to turn back to him as well. So now let's look at Jonah's dissension, how it keeps going into Joppa, into the ship, into the inter recesses, into the sea, into the belly of the great fish, and ultimately the desperation of the pit of Sheol. And that's a term that's used a lot of times and it's translated to be hell in different places. But in reality it's the place of the dead. So the idea that he found himself on the brink of death, and that's where Jonah's decisions have led him. His rebellion has taken him from in good standing with God to this situation where he is fighting for his life. So the battle that he's facing is not just the one that comes from him being inside that fish, but it's the battle that he's got in his own heart in dealing with his rebellion to God. So it says Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.
And I don't know how you see that. I look at some of these images and it looks like the cave of wonders, one of them. Like there's a bonfire back in the back. I mean, he's sitting there, he has the time to get into the prayer posture and those kinds of things. One of them Looks like, you know, and I get it, it's a cutout. You're supposed to be able to see into the fish. But it looks like he's on an airplane, like in the upright ready position with, you know, all this stuff strapped in with his hands, like, oh, you know, he's praying very calm. And then you got this other one that's kind of like the Cavern of Wonders with the Little Mermaid, right? You got the little fairy lights all around it and everything. It's crazy to me how we imagine this in our heads, that Jonah's in the whale. But these are the images that we've been fed our whole life. But what was it like? Let's hear his words.
I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble.
He answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead. That's that word Sheol. And Lord, you heard me. There is some serious desperation when he says out of my affliction. The idea is that he is battling for life in the middle of this. Desperation has a way of opening our heart, does it not? To turn back to faith. And I think we find ourselves sometimes where we spiral out. Our decisions lead us down paths we never imagined we would go.
And we get to this point where we don't know what else to do. We have tried to fix things ourselves, and we just keep getting deeper and deeper in trouble. And all of those things that we labor over and that we're intense about, we find ourselves just spent. And in that desperation sometimes. And by the way, sometimes that desperation is meant for us to turn back to God, we find a little bit of an opening to return to faith. Jonah says this for you. Cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. And the flood surrounded me. I hope we'll all listen to the words here.
Your flood surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me. You ever been at the ocean where, you know, the riptide gets you underneath, and you may be a good swimmer, but you're still getting pulled out, and you're trying to work against the current, and it's pulling you down, and then waves are just crashing on top of you, and you're thinking to yourself, man, I better get a breath pretty soon. And about the time you think you're about to get it, another one, and it keeps pouring over you and over you and over you, and you're fighting to stay alive. That's kind of the imagery here that he is doing as God is pushing him deeper and deeper into the water. And as he's considering this. It's kind of like a metaphor for our lives, isn't it? Because our rebellion often brings these waves of guilt, doesn't it?
We consider the consequences that we're going through, the choices that we made, what route it took us on. And it just feels like even when I recognize it and I'm trying in my mind to sort things out and maybe come back, but it feels like those waves just keep piling on over and over and over. That is what he is describing in this.
But notice the change in tone.
He says. Then I said, o Lord, you have driven me from your presence, and I will look once more toward your holy temple.
It's almost like Jonah, in this moment, has a moment of recognition, right? It's almost like as he's experiencing all these things, all of a sudden there is a calmness that comes over him. And he says, oh, Lord, you have driven me from your presence. In other words, Lord, you, my decisions have brought me to this point, but you have taken me away from your presence so that I might have more clarity of mind, because I might be able to look back and see what it is I've been missing all along. Our repentance begins with a look back at what we had before rebellion. Isn't that the truth? Like, when we're going through tough times, isn't it, like we try to find that better time in life? We try to find that moment where things were at peace and we were happy and things were going great and my life seemed to be in order. And we look back to those times. That's exactly what happened in Luke 15. That prodigal son, right? He went out, spent all the money that he had, all of his inheritance, it's all gone. He has no friends. He has no food. He is literally looking at the pigs and seeing the food that they have thrown out on the ground. And they're over there just slopping that stuff up.
And he's so hungry inside that he looks down, and for a second, that looks pretty good.
And then it says he comes to his senses because he says, I have my parents. My dad has servants at home that get better treatment than this. I'll arise and I'll go back to him and I'll beg him to say, I'm not worthy to be your son. Let me be one of your hired servants. Remember that story? That's kind of where we can find ourselves. Our repentance causes us to look back when times were better. But what I want you to understand is it's not enough for us to just look back and say, oh, that was better back then, man, if I could just find a way to get back there to those times. But not want to make a different change in your life, not choose to do something different with your behavior.
That look doesn't do anything for you.
It's not enough. So what does he say?
The waters closed in over me to take my life.
The deep surrounded me.
Weeds wrapped around my head.
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.
What's he saying?
I'm ready to die, and I'm looking around and I have no recourse. I'm finding myself going deeper and deeper and deeper and further and further away from God. I'm reminded of this statement. You've probably heard this a million times, but I felt like it applied particularly well with this sin and in this case, to define what sin is. In this case, it's not that Jonah himself is an immoral person.
Sin in this case is knowing what God wanted me to do, refusing to do it. That's sin. That's intentional. As Ronnie said in his prayer, intentionally moving away from God, that's rebellion.
Sin takes us further than we ever wanted to go.
Deeper than we'd ever imagined we'd descend and costs us more than we ever want to pay.
And can't you see that in your life, in moments maybe, where you made some decisions that took you down a path? And in the midst of that, you have to hide things. And so you tell another lie and problems keep compounding. And you think you can cover that up and conceal it. And you can keep, you know, these two different worlds. You can have your church, family, you can have everything here and your relationships, but then you can have this other thing over here. That's. That's a problem for you. And you know that it's affecting each other, but you can't find a way to get out of those things. That's what happens is we spiral out and we find ourselves in this pit.
But then there's the mercy of God.
And I want you to catch this, because I believe Jonah suddenly has a change of perspective. He has one of those moments where he realizes what God is actually doing.
He says, yet you brought up my life from the pit. Oh, Lord, my God. When life was fading away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. He's. He's saying, I remembered you. And the word, therefore remembered is the idea of a moment of clarity where all of a sudden we realize what we've got to do, that we have to fully surrender and that we're ready to make that change, and we are able to see things the way they really are. In this particular case, I believe that as Jonah is in the belly of that fish, there's a struggle going on that he is fighting. There's a battle that he's facing. But I think there's a moment of calmness that comes over him in the midst of all of this. Because sometimes the terrifying prison you are in is actually a place of safekeeping until you're ready to change.
What do I mean by that?
We're talking about this great fish, and I told you, it's not the point of the story.
But at some point, it seems to me that Jonah recognizes this fish is actually my salvation.
I should have been dead a long time ago. Three days, three nights.
At some point, you have to stop and go, okay. God is preserving me. And this boat that I am in is a lifeboat of sorts. And even though it's terrible, it's awful, it's a battle that I'm going through. It's more than challenging. In this moment, what I am suddenly recognizing is that God is keeping me safe for something else. So it's in this moment that he begins to be ready to make that change in his life. And he says, as those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. What he's saying is, I could be one of these people, just like those Ninevites who are idolatrous. I could be just like them and think too highly of myself and think that I have a better way or reject what God has told me altogether. All of those things are vanity. The word that needs to be emphasized here is vanity. Anything outside of our obedience to God is chasing the wind.
And he says, those who do that, guess what they get as a result.
They lose that blessing of God's steadfast love, his perpetual mercy. And so merciful God steps in here, and in this moment, he comes to clarity about that. And the thing is, pride is the thing. And Andrew talked about this last week.
That's the thing that has to be destroyed in order for us to find that restoration. How many of us in our pride will refuse to do what we know is the right thing to do?
God gave Jonah a mission, and that mission was to teach people who were dying without God.
And I think in this moment, all of a sudden, this starts to come to fruition in his mind. And where he begins to think about this because he says this. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed. I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. I want you to understand as he's coming to this reality and he says things like, salvation belongs to the Lord. What I believe he is saying is not so much, although it's the case that he was going to be saved by God, that this vessel was a way to. To save him from himself and to hold him until he was ready to make a change in his life. I think even more so as I look at this story, what I'm seeing is when he says salvation belongs to the Lord, he's not talking about himself necessarily. He's talking about Nineveh.
Because God wants those people to repent.
He loves them. And so what Jonah is saying is he got his attitude adjustment right there in that fish. Not only is God going to save me, and not only am I thankful for what he's provided for me, I've got clarity about where that salvation comes from and who am I to keep that message from those people who are over in Nineveh. So gratitude and perspective have a way of revitalizing two things. Did you catch them?
Commitment.
I will take care of the vows that I vowed before. I'll honor that obligation.
And then the second thing was what confidence.
Salvation belongs to the Lord. Wow. What a moment of clarity that he had while in that fish. How does it come, man? I don't have time to get into all this.
But as you look in chapter two, and as Jonah is retelling this story and as he's sharing with us his thoughts and prayer, one of the things that he does is he goes back to all the things that God had taught him before. It's almost like he had the psaltery memorized because he quotes from it nonstop. Every one of these verses has a connection to a psalm that he would have known. Isn't that something that in the middle of this kind of crisis, what actually comes up to the surface is the reality that he knows God and that God has said some things to him. And because he understands God's Word, it helps him in the midst of this crisis. God's Word embedded in our hearts has a way of surfacing even in the deepest of pits. That's why we talk about it so often. That's why we say, study God's Word, because that's the thing that's going to empower you to get past some things. His Word is powerful and active and helps us in those moments where we need him the most. God's word embedded in our hearts has a way of helping us through those deep pits. So what takes place next is in that moment, in that clarity, ready to change.
The Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited him on the land. Now, my child Kinsey, she's not here, she can't say anything, so she's gotta get over it. But when she was a little child, she would projectile vomit.
And I mean a good six or eight feet across the room, like she would just look at you and they just shoot a stream out across the room.
But folks, when it says that it spit him out on dry ground, in my mind growing up, I always thought, what, it dropped him off in Nineveh, it spit him out to Nineveh. Well, folks, there's no shoreline there. There's a river that runs through there. We're talking about a 375 to 400 mile projectile. If he were to land over there in Nineveh, I think there's something to be said for this. Notice that Jonah's amphibious landing didn't equate obedience.
No.
Had he obeyed yet?
Not yet.
It didn't equate obedience, but rather a second chance to do what he knew he was supposed to do already.
Isn't that amazing?
Most scholars say he ended up right back there at Joppa. So he still got to go that 500 miles to get back over to Nineveh.
God didn't lighten the load, didn't lessen the responsibility, didn't take away his obligation, but said, now you've got a chance to do this again.
See these action steps because I think what we have to be reminded of is that we all do things that take us away from God, right? So I want us to think about, see the consequences of the rebellion. Things that you know are self inflicted wounds. Things that you know, you made the decision and it took you down this path. And because it took you down this path, you're experiencing some frustrations and aggravations. See those things as an open invitation to change course.
And then let your faith rise to the surface, right? Let what you know God is calling you to do to be the thing that comes to your mind and says, hey, it can't just be a change in my mind. I can't just look back at when things were great. I've actually got to take myself and get to that next step. And the next step is obey what you already knew you needed to do. Could there be some in our audience this morning?
I'm sure there are get in line we could all respond but it may be that you've known what you needed to do for a long long time and you've just refused to do it man what a merciful God to still have you here in this life with a new opportunity to turn back to him.
That's the God of mercy, the God of second chances and the God of opportunity. When you have an opportunity today to make those things right, it may be that there's someone here who have known they always needed to become a Christian and for whatever reason they've put it off. They've shirked that responsibility They've said hey maybe later one day and we're not promised another day.
Will you heed the words of this story?
Will you recognize the change of heart that has to happen inside of you? And will you have the courage today as you get another opportunity to make things right with the Lord? If you need to do so, please come while we stand and sing.
