If you could keep the Jonah passage open in front of you, that would be fantastic.
Let me add my Happy New Year to those who I haven't had the chance to see in the last
five or six days or whatever it's been.
Hopefully you have started well and hopefully this year will be a year in which you grow
in your love of God and your knowledge of Him.
And we're going to try and do that together tonight by beginning a series in Jonah.
And I did challenge you last week, I understand if you forgot, but I did challenge you that
we're actually going to look at Jonah, kind of all of it, every week.
So even though we read Jonah 1 just then and we're going to read Jonah 3 next week and Jonah
4 the week after, we're going to look at all of it.
So it would be a good idea to at some point in the next three weeks sit down and have a
crack at reading all of Jonah.
It's not a big ask and it will bless you as we work our way through the passage.
I'm going to pray and then we will start having a look at what it is God wants to teach us
from this.
Father God, we thank you for the chance to gather this evening.
We thank you for your word and the power that it has to shape us and to change us.
And we ask that tonight as we sit and as we reflect on the story of Jonah, that you would
give us a bigger vision of you, that the result of tonight would not be that we know more things,
but that we are different people.
We ask that your spirit would make us more and more like Jesus so that you get the glory.
Amen.
When you truly believe something, it has to actually affect the way that you live or your
actions.
It's not enough to just say, I believe something.
You can always tell when the rubber hits the road whether or not this is something you have
a genuine conviction about.
I remember it's nearly 10 years ago now, for my 21st birthday, I was given a round the world
ticket.
And I was sitting on the plane struggling to sleep.
And one of the movies that I decided to watch in that plane was a movie called Super Size
Me.
I don't know if you remember this movie, but the basic premise is a guy called Morgan Spurlock,
cracker of a name, decided that it would be a good idea for a month to eat only McDonald's,
breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And the rules were, whenever a McDonald's employee suggested that he upsize his meal or would he
like fries or he had to say yes.
And he had to eat all of whatever came to him over the course of the month.
And so, you know, obviously there were people around him, his girlfriend, his friends that
were concerned about what might happen over the course of this experiment.
And the experiment went roughly like you would expect.
There's lots of him vomiting in it.
By the end of the month, he's fatter.
He's got a worse heart.
Everything's going bad for him.
And you can watch a movie like that.
And even I can watch a movie like that and say, McDonald's is bad for you.
McDonald's is going to do you damage.
But for some reason, the first thing I did when I got off that plane was go get a Big Mac.
I'd spent 45 minutes watching him eat and throw up and eat and throw up.
But all it did was make me want to eat McDonald's.
And so I could articulate that I believe McDonald's was bad.
But what I was doing actually betrayed that I believed something different.
I believed that this guy was an idiot and it wouldn't happen to me.
When you truly believe something, it changes your actions.
It changes what you do as well.
And so what about some of the things that we believe as Christians, as followers of God?
We believe that God is sovereign.
We believe that God is in control.
The Bible says it.
We claim it.
We encourage one another with it.
But do we live like God is in control?
Would people look at our lifestyle and the decisions we make and the priorities we have
and would they conclude from us that we believe God is in control?
When you hear about things like the earthquake in Haiti or the various tsunamis that have happened,
the global financial crisis, children dying of starvation,
can you still, when you hear that, say with confidence, God is in control?
Or do you feel a little bit embarrassed when your neighbours ask you, where's your God in that?
When your school friends or maybe even your family ask you, where's your God with all this stuff going on,
can you still confidently say he's in control?
Or do you start to feel a bit apologetic?
What about in your own life?
When difficult times come, do you feel like God is losing his grip?
As you wrestle with the stress of paying bills,
as you deal with the death of someone close to you,
as you wrestle with the loneliness of being the only single person
when all your friends have husbands or wives or boyfriends or girlfriends,
in those moments, do you still act like God is in control?
Or do you start to wonder whether or not he's actually powerful enough
to be in control of everything that's happening in the world?
Or what about in the good times?
You get a promotion, you get a pay rise,
you celebrate the birth of a child, an anniversary,
you're feeling healthy, you're secure financially.
At that point, do you stop and thank God for what he's given you?
Or do you reflect on how hard you've worked
and how wise you've been with your finances
and how much exercise you've done
and how you've looked after yourself health-wise?
Yeah, we believe God is in control, we say it,
but what about our actions?
Do our lives actually speak that we believe that truth?
Or is it just a trite theory that we throw out there occasionally
because that's what we're supposed to believe as Christians?
If there is a difference between what we say we believe
and how we're living,
then we need to ask God to show us what is really true.
And we need to ask him to show it to us in such a way
that our life matches up with what we claim to believe
so that our words and our actions become one.
And so tonight, maybe for you,
you need to humbly come before God
and ask him to shape how you live
in light of the truth that he wants to show you tonight.
I want to ask two questions as we wrestle with Jonah.
Basically, can God and will God?
Open up to Jonah chapter 1.
Is God really in control?
Jonah is a man in a privileged position when it comes to God.
So, bit of background, Jonah's a prophet,
which means God speaks to Jonah
and then, like, personally speaks to Jonah
and then Jonah goes and passes that message on to other people.
So, out of all the people,
you would expect Jonah to have a level of confidence
in God's sovereignty and power more than anyone else.
He's got the direct line to God who created everything.
He knows stuff.
Jonah would speak to God's people.
He knows that God is in control and he believes it.
It's part of being a Hebrew.
He would have memorized the Scriptures.
He would have learned big chunks of the Old Testament
so that he could have confidently quoted Scripture to you.
But does his life actually match his so-called belief
in God's control and God's sovereignty?
Look at verse 1 with me.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai.
Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it
because its wickedness has come up before me.
But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.
He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port.
After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish
to flee from the Lord.
Jonah knows that God is in control.
That would have been one of the messages
that he was told to keep proclaiming to the people
and yet, given a specific instruction from God,
he thinks he can run away.
God sends him on a very specific mission.
There's no possibility that he just got the city wrong
and accidentally went in the wrong direction.
God says, go to this city with this message
and Jonah says, actually, no, I don't want to do that
and I'm going to run away.
It's kind of ridiculous.
God, who created the whole earth,
has given Jonah a job
and he thinks by going to a city
other than the one that God sent him to
that he'll be able to get away from the God
who created the whole earth,
including the city that he's trying to run away to.
It's kind of like when little kids play hide and seek
and the way they hide is they cover their eyes
and say, you can't see me.
It doesn't actually work like that.
I can still see you.
I don't have the same limitation that you have.
And Jonah is basically doing that to God.
It's like covering his eyes and going,
you can't find me.
I've gone somewhere else.
God knows exactly where he is.
God is not limited like us.
He is everywhere all the time.
He is all-knowing.
He knows Jonah's plans
before he even decides to run away.
And it is ridiculous
that Jonah thinks he can run away
from the God who has been speaking to him
and giving him messages his life.
But as ridiculous as it sounds,
you and I do the same sort of thing.
We get to the point in our life
where we think we're more powerful than God.
When we face struggles,
when we face decisions,
it is amazing how self-absorbed we can be
to think that we will be better
looking after ourselves.
I mean, it doesn't take a lot of comparison
to understand that we are fairly unimpressive
when we stand next to God.
Yet somehow we just block that out of our mind
and act like I can handle this better than you, God.
I'm struggling to pay rent,
but I'm pretty sure I can somehow come up with it.
And God is sitting there going,
I made money.
I made everything.
I own everything.
Yet we choose to trust ourselves.
It doesn't take much looking at yourself
to realise you're actually not in control of anything.
One of the things that reminds me of this regularly
is our inability to control the weather.
Not that long ago,
a fair few of us went to an engagement party
for our resident meteorologist.
It rained and we had to move the party to a house.
You are not in control no matter how much you want to be.
You are not in control of how many cars will be on the road
when you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry.
You are not even in control of your own health.
You can try and do things like exercise and eat well
that you think will make all the difference,
but the reality is you're still not in control.
I remember the day quite distinctly,
several years ago,
when after a series of tests and a whole bunch of issues,
I was told that I had a disease
and I would have it for the rest of my life.
Now despite what some people would like to say,
it's not the result of my lifestyle.
It has nothing to do with what I have or haven't eaten.
I just have a disease because that's the way God decided for my life to go.
I am not in control and neither are you.
No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard you try,
no matter how fantastic you think you are,
God alone is in control.
He created heaven.
He created earth.
He did it just by speaking.
God can make people sick.
He sends plagues on Egypt.
He can heal people.
We see it over and over again in the gospel.
He can part the Red Sea and people walk across as if it's dry land
and he defeats even death in his son when he raises him.
God can forgive sin and we are reminded over and over in scripture from Job 42.
I know you can do all things.
No plan of yours can be thwarted.
Psalm 135.
I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods.
The Lord does whatever pleases him.
There is nothing and no one that can stand between the creator God
and his design and his desire.
And yet, when we get faced with situations,
we still think that we are more trustworthy than God
when it comes to handling what is happening in our lives.
Listen to how God achieves his purpose in Jonah.
Look at verse 4.
Jonah is running away and it says, verse 4,
the Lord sent a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose
that the ship threatened to break up.
All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own God
and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
Jonah is running away and God could have sent somebody else to go get Jonah.
He could have forgotten about Jonah and sent somebody else to go to Nineveh.
But God is so in control of every aspect of creation that he can just make a storm happen in such a way
that sailors who spend their lives on the sea are so fearful for their life that they know this is not normal.
They know somebody has made this storm happen.
And straight away they start to ask questions.
God can create a storm.
God can provide a fish to swallow Jonah.
It could have been judgment.
It could have been him saving him.
It's probably a bit of both.
But what really matters is that it's God who provides the fish.
It's there explicitly.
Verse 17.
The Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah
and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
It's God's mighty hand that guides these events.
It's not an accident.
It's not chance.
It's not unlucky.
It's God.
Because God has a plan and that is for Nineveh to hear that they are living in a way that angers God
and he has a plan to use Jonah to tell them
and so he will do whatever he needs to do
to make sure that Jonah gets to where he's supposed to be.
When we grab even the smallest amount of how much greater God is than us,
how much more powerful, how infinitely sovereign he is,
suddenly our attempts to look after our own lives seem kind of stupid.
The Bible describes our life as being like a mist
that appears in the morning for a moment and then is burned up by the sun.
Our God is eternal.
We are less than a drop of water and he is more than an ocean.
There is no comparison between our God and us.
He is indescribably powerful.
Powerful beyond our comprehension.
There is absolutely nothing that is too big for God.
There is no situation you will face that he is not powerful to change.
So why is it that we still presume in our lives
to think we can control things better than he can?
Why is it that we hold on to things till the absolute last minute
until we've been proved powerless before we give them to him?
Why is it that we are so fearful of possibility and circumstance
when God has shown himself time and time again
to be all-powerful, to be in control?
But maybe your issue isn't whether or not God can control things.
Maybe your question, maybe the doubt in your life is,
will God control things in my life?
Will he control things in a way that is good for me?
Maybe you can acknowledge God is powerful
and his big plan of sending Jesus and saving people.
Yep, I get that.
He's in control.
But whether or not I get picked on at school,
whether or not I can afford to pay my rent,
those are just kind of minor details
and God doesn't have time for those.
Maybe you're not confident that God cares enough
to work into your specific day-to-day moments.
I remember just after Sal and I got married,
we moved into a fairly small house in Newtown.
When we got there, there wasn't any furniture
and being an old house, there wasn't any storage either.
So I survived what most young married men fear,
an afternoon trawling the aisles of Ikea.
The only incentive to get me over the line
was the $2 hot dog and Pepsi that was waiting at the end.
And it's been incentive to get me back a few times as well.
But somehow I survived our journey to Ikea
and we managed to buy a cupboard that would house my clothes.
And once we got home,
people who know me know that I'm not particularly handy.
I'm also not a details person.
So I saw the picture on the front cover of the instructions
and put that to the side and set to work
putting together this flat pack cupboard.
Now, I got to the end feeling pretty proud of myself
with a handful of screws and nails left over.
That is never a good sign.
I also decided that putting the back on the cupboard
was going to be a waste of effort
because there was a lot of nails that had to go around that.
And it already had sides in the top and bottom.
So I put it up against the wall
and it was kind of a little bit slanted.
I could push it back straight
and then I tried to hold it, but I gave up.
So I had a slanted cupboard for a few years.
But it held clothes.
So that's what a cupboard's supposed to do.
So I was content.
It didn't look great.
It was kind of broken really,
but it was holding clothes and that was enough.
Is that how you think God looks at you?
Do you think he is only interested in you
so long as you're breathing and a person
and then from his perspective, he's ticked the box?
Do you think that his interest in you finishes
so long as you're alive?
Do you think God doesn't care about the details of your life,
that he's got bigger things to worry about?
You need to understand that God is a master craftsman.
God lovingly and carefully moulded you and shaped you.
Before you were even born, before the earth existed,
he planned every minute of every day that he would give you.
The psalmist reminds us that God knits us together
in our mother's womb.
And as your heavenly father,
God is intimately involved in every second of your life.
God, as your heavenly father,
is heavily invested in every second of your life.
Parents don't give birth to their children
and then shrug their shoulders and say,
good luck, it's up to you now.
Parents feed their children.
They bathe their children.
They clothe their children.
They help them when they fall.
They laugh with them.
They cry with them.
Even when children move out,
parents continue to ride the bumps
that go with kids having their own kids
and all the other joys.
God is our heavenly father
and he cares so much more
than any human parent.
He can't and he won't leave us alone.
Even when it seems like the details of your life
are mundane and unimportant,
God, as your heavenly father,
cares so much for you
that he cares so much about those details.
Look at the way God manipulates
and directs and guides minor details
in Jonah's story
so that he gets where he's supposed to get to.
Verse 7.
Then the sailors said to each other,
come, let us cast lots
to find out who is responsible
for this calamity.
They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
So they asked him,
tell us who is responsible
for making all this trouble for us.
What do you do?
Where do you come from?
What's your country?
From what people are you?
He answered, I am a Hebrew
and I worship the Lord,
the God of heaven
who made the sea and the land.
This terrified them
and they asked,
what have you done?
They knew he was running away from the Lord
because he had already told them so.
The sea was getting rougher and rougher
so they asked him,
what should we do to you
to make the sea calm down for us?
Pick me up
and throw me into the sea,
he replied,
and it will become calm.
I know that it is my fault
this great storm has come upon you.
God makes sure
that the lot falls with Jonah.
It's not chance,
it's not accident,
it's not fluke.
God makes sure
that the lot falls with Jonah.
God even guides Jonah's words
and his conversation
so that while Jonah
is in the middle
of running away
from God's plan for his life,
God can use him
to proclaim to a boat
full of scared sailors
that the God in heaven
is the one
who controls the wind
and the waves.
In chapter 4,
we see God grow a small tree
to give Jonah shade.
In 1 Samuel,
we see God hear
the individual prayers
of a barren woman
and he gives her a son.
God has painstakingly
planned out all of creation
from day dot in the garden
until it comes
to its rightful conclusion
and not one day,
not one minute,
not one second
has been left to chance
in God's plan.
There is no maybe
in God's design.
Such is his infinite wisdom
and power
and such is his love
and care
that he is perfectly
in control.
There is nothing
that can stop God
but he is so loving
that even the unimportant
or mundane details
to us
matter to him.
Now I need to warn you
before we move on
just because God can
and just because God loves you
doesn't mean
he will always do
what you want.
It could be that
you don't think
or you question
God's sovereignty
because you have
prayed for something
and you didn't get it
because you have prayed
to avoid something
and you did get it.
God doesn't always promise
to do it our way.
What he does promise
is that he is
infinitely powerful,
there is nothing
that can stand in his way
and that he loves us.
That's what he promises.
He does promise
that he will always
work for our good
but he never promises
that our good
will always line up
with what we think
it should be.
God is powerful
beyond our comprehension
and he cares more
than we will ever
begin to understand
in this life.
life.
If you question
whether or not God
can work in your situation,
the answer is found
in Jesus.
If you question
whether or not God
wants to work
in your situation,
the answer is found
in Jesus.
When we get to Jesus,
we face
the most formidable foe
that this life knows,
death.
And in Jesus'
death and resurrection,
God proves that there is
nothing more powerful
than him.
He proves to you
that there is nothing
you will face
in your life
that he is not
sovereign over.
And in giving us Jesus,
he proves that there is
nothing that he will
hold back.
Let me read to you
a verse from Romans
chapter 8.
He who did not
spare his own son
but gave him up
for us all,
how will he not
also along with him
graciously give us
all things?
In the moments
where you doubt
God's love for you
and his willingness
to pay whatever it costs
to ensure
that you are cared for,
that your life
is for your good
and his glory,
remember Jesus.
God has already
given you the most
valuable thing
he could give you.
He's already paid
the highest cost
he could pay.
And it is ridiculous
to think that
having sacrificed
his son,
he would then
hold back
on something else,
something small.
The answer
to our doubt
is Jesus.
The answer
to our fear
is Jesus.
But the question
remains,
what will it look like
for us to not
simply believe
that God is sovereign,
what will it look like
for us to live
that conviction?
What will it look like
to show others
that we are confident
in that?
Let me suggest
two things.
Firstly,
if you really believe
that God is in control
of every part
of your life
and all of this creation,
then you will pray more.
Now that sounds
counterintuitive
because we think
if God's sovereign
and he's in control,
then God's going to do
what God's going to do
and there's no point
to pray.
But if you believe
that God is powerful,
if you believe
that God loves you,
then when you are in need,
you will fall on your knees
and cry out
to the one person
who has the power
to redeem you,
to save you,
to provide for you.
The one person
who has the power
to work in every situation.
In good times,
you will stop
thanking yourself
because you will recognize
that it is God
who has given you
the blessings.
You will pray
to thank him
for your life,
for your home,
for oxygen,
for beautiful weather,
for friends,
for family,
for the countless
good things
he has given you.
When you believe
that God is sovereign
and in control,
then like Job,
you will be able
to proclaim,
naked I came
from my mother's womb,
naked I will depart,
the Lord gave
and the Lord has taken away,
may the name
of the Lord be praised.
In darkness
and suffering,
you will still
be confident
because your God
is powerful
and your God
loves you.
Second thing,
knowing that God
is in control
means peace.
Doesn't mean
that your life
will be easy,
doesn't mean
that it will be
event free
or pain free,
but a life
that is confident
in a powerful
loving God,
a life that is confident
in his unbreakable
promise to always,
in all things,
work for the good
of those who love him.
That means,
good or bad,
whether you can see
how God's working
or not,
if you know
your powerful
loving God,
you can be confident
that his plan
is still being
accomplished.
That even as you
suffer and struggle,
that God is loving
you in that moment,
that he is there
with you
and that he is
working for your
good and his glory.
We have the great
promise of scripture,
Jesus' own words
in John chapter 10,
I give them
eternal life
and they shall
never perish,
no one can snatch
them out of my hand.
God's plan
for your life
finishes in heaven
with him.
And Jesus promises
here that nothing
can change that.
Once you have
trusted him,
no circumstance,
no doubt,
no suffering,
no pain,
nothing can snatch
you out of his hand.
And so whatever
you face in your life,
you can rejoice
confidently in your
God who is
infinitely powerful
and infinitely loving.
With your eternity
secure,
it is so much easier
to live in the
temporary difficulties
that we face now
because nothing
can snatch us
out of his hand.
God's sovereignty
will lead us
to prayer
and peace
just like it did
for Jonah.
In chapter 2,
just after what
Gus read,
from the belly
of the fish,
Jonah finally
realizes he
can't run
from God.
God's plan
will not be
stopped.
And so how
does he respond?
He prays.
He prays
because in that
helpless moment
he recognizes
again and afresh
God is powerful
but God is loving.
God sent that fish
to make sure
Jonah couldn't
get away
but also to save
him
and to give him
a second chance
to fulfill the purpose
that God
had given him.
Jonah still
stuffs up,
he still questions
God,
he still makes
mistakes even
through the rest
of this book
but as he is
confronted with
his powerful
loving God
he prays
and he stops
running
and he trusts.
Just as we finish
I want to give you
two challenges.
We're beginning
a new year.
We're a week in
and maybe you
didn't make
a new year's
resolution,
maybe you did,
it doesn't really
matter.
Forget about
new year
and just see
today as an
opportunity to
start.
I want to suggest
two things
that I think
will help you
this year begin
to believe
that God is in
control.
Not to just say
it, not just to
be able to
articulate it
but to truly
believe.
Firstly,
get to know
what God has
promised you.
I think that
one of the basic
things that leads
us to doubt
God's goodness
is that we
actually don't
know what it
is that he's
promised us.
And so in our
moment of suffering
or our moment
of need,
we doubt God
because he's not
giving us what
we want and we
think that he
should.
But it might be
that he hasn't
promised that.
My disease will
continue in my
body for as long
as God leaves it
there or until
Jesus comes back.
I have a deep
desire that he
would take it
away, it would
make my life
easier.
But God has
not promised
anywhere that he
will do that.
When Jesus
comes back, I
know then,
finally, my
body will be
cleansed and
all sickness
and death
will be removed,
but until then
there is no
promise that
that sickness
will get healed.
But God
does promise
me that in
all things he
is working
for my
good.
If we don't
know the
promises of
God in our
dark times and
in our doubt
and in our
good times,
we will be
distracted, we
will doubt, we
will question,
but when we
grab hold of
what God has
guaranteed in
his son Jesus,
we will know
the peace and
the confidence
of dearly loved
children.
Lastly,
sorry, just
before I move
on, let me
re-endorse what
Janet talked about
before, the
Bible reading
plan.
If you're already
reading the Bible
another way, that's
fantastic, but if
you're like me, I've
been a Christian for a
long time and
still every year I
struggle to be
committed in the
way I spend time
in the Word.
This would be a
great thing for us
to do because we
would all be
reading it together
or even a whole
bunch of us reading
it together and
encouraging one
another with what
God is teaching
us and praying for
one another in line
with what God is
teaching us.
If you struggle and
you need structure,
please get that
Bible reading plan.
It's not perfect,
but it's designed to
help you get to know
the promises of God
so that you can
believe that God is
powerful and that
God loves you.
And lastly, pray.
Ask for God to
help you to trust
him.
No amount of
trying really hard
to trust God will
actually achieve it.
No amount of
gritting your teeth
will actually make
the difference.
For us to trust
God, we need to
see him in all his
power and glory.
We need to see his
love in Jesus on
the cross and we
need God's Holy
Spirit to do that
in us.
We need him to
transform our hearts
so that what we can
say and what we
think becomes what we
believe and how we
live.
So pray.
And not just for
yourself.
Pray for your
brothers and sisters
around you.
Pray that we would
be a people marked by
confidence in our
sovereign God.
Pray that people,
when they meet us,
before we even say
the words, God is in
control, they would
see a peace in us
that can't be explained
any other way.
Pray that we would
be a community that
declares the majesty
and glory of our
mighty, sovereign,
powerful and loving
creator for his
sake.
Give you a
â.