WEBVTT

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 Okay. I think first, it'd be good to, before I read chapter two, I'll give a bit of an

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 overview of chapter one, just in case anyone missed last week. So in chapter one, God comes

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 to Jonah and he says, Jonah, I want you to go preach to the people of Nineveh. And Jonah

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 says, nah, and he runs off in the opposite direction. He gets in a boat and he's sleeping

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 in the boat and God sends a storm. And then the people in the boat come to Jonah and they say to

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 him, you know, pray to your God for us. We need all the help we can get to save us. But instead,

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 Jonah says, you know what, throw me overboard. You know, that'll sort things out. Just chuck me in

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 the water. Everything will be fine. And so they throw him in and he gets swallowed up by a huge

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 fish. And that's when we get to chapter two. So I'll read that. It should be on page 928 of the

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 church Bibles. From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God. He said, in my distress,

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 I called to the Lord and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help.

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 And you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas.

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 And the current swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been

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 banished from your sight. Yet I will look again towards your holy temple. The engulfing waters

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 threatened me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the

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 mountain I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up

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 from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord. And my prayer rose to you,

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 to your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols, turn away from God's love for them. But I,

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 with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say,

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 salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

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 Now, if we look at all the chapters in Jonah, chapter 2 stands out for one reason. Every other

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 chapter in Jonah, it's all narrative. It's all action. It's Jonah went here. God did this. But

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 instead, in Jonah chapter 2, almost the entirety of it is made up with a prayer from Jonah to God.

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 And so you might think, well, why is this here? And what can this teach us? And there's two things

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 we can take from Jonah chapter 2. First is, this is a prayer from Jonah to God. This is him pouring

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 out his heart before God. Here, we get real insight into who Jonah is deep down. And the second thing is,

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 this is the biggest section of Jonah continuously talking. Every other prophetic book is mostly made

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 up of prophecies and things the prophets are saying. But this entire section, Jonah's prayer,

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 is probably more than anything else Jonah says combined. And here's the center, this is almost

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 the center, actually, of the book of Jonah. And so we think, well, what's that got to do with us?

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 When we look at who Jonah is, we'll discover something about who we are. And therefore,

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 we see this message of Jonah's isn't a message so much for Nineveh. But this message we've got here

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 in his prayer is also a message for us, for you and for me today. Now, firstly, so that's the things,

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 that's all things we're going to look at. Who Jonah is, what's his message, and how that applies to us.

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 The first thing is who Jonah is. Sometimes it's said that really you never get a true understanding

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 of who someone is until they're right about to die. A good example I like of this is in the Spider-Man films,

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 or some of them. They're in the Spider-Man films, in the comics. There's a character called J. Jonah

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 Jameson. The name's just a coincidence, luckily. J. Jonah Jameson is, in the Spider-Man universe,

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 he runs a newspaper that Peter Parker, who's Spider-Man's real name, works for him. And Peter's

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 job is to bring J. Jonah Jameson pictures of Spider-Man. So, J. Jonah Jameson can write all

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 these sensationalist articles about Spider-Man. And because Peter is Spider-Man, he takes all the

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 best pictures. And so you might think that Mr. Jameson would like Peter, that he'd be a big fan

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 of him. But actually, every interaction, he's rude to Peter, he's a terrible boss, and he also hates

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 Spider-Man. All his articles are talking about how, you know, Spider-Man's a menace, he's a terror to

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 New York City. And it turns out, it just seems like he's writing these articles just because he's

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 after money. So, based on our first impression of this guy, he's awful, he's rubbish, he's just there

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 to make Spider-Man's life worse. But what often happens in the comics, in the films, is the writers

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 give us a deeper insight into this character. From the superficial, right down to his heart.

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 And often, along with that, we get transformation of the character. And this happens in one of the

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 films, when the Green Goblin, who's like the big bad guy of the film, he's on the hunt for Spider-Man.

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 And so he breaks into the newspaper office, and he grabs J. Jonah Jameson by the throat, and he says,

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 you know, tell me who's taking the pictures of Spider-Man. And, you know, at this point, he's

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 being threatened with death. And by our initial understanding of who this guy is, we think,

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 this guy's not a nice guy. He's just after money. The first thing he's going to do is sell

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 out Peter. He doesn't care about him. But then, something really interesting happens.

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 It's that he says, oh, I don't know who the guy is. His pictures come by mail. It's anonymous. I've

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 never met him. He lies in the face of death to save someone else. It's a complete, it's completely,

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 who he is deep inside is completely different from our first impression. And this happens in

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 several of his appearances. There's other points where, after some similar traumatic experience,

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 he becomes more sympathetic to Spider-Man. He's more of a father figure to Peter.

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 And so we see that there's this, from his first appearance, there's a deepening, a change,

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 a transformation he is. But this only comes about because he has this near brush with death.

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 And it's the same thing for our Jonah. If we take the Jonah we see in chapter one,

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 he's a bit cocky. He's a bit laid back. He thinks, oh, you know, I don't really need to bother

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 doing what God asked me to do. Even at the point of being of the storm, of God clearly angry with him,

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 he seems to think, well, I prefer to just die to be thrown into the storm than to even do what God

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 tells me to do. And it almost brings us to think, God, did you make a mistake here? Like,

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 you really chose this guy to be your prophet? Like, was there just no better options going around?

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 But then, in chapter two, the situation changes. So we look here at Jonah's description of when he's

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 first in the water. In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me. From the deep in the realm

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 of the dead, I called for help. And you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the

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 very hearts of the sea. And all your currents swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me.

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 And down in verse five, the engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was

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 wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains, I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever.

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 So this moment, as far as Jonah's aware, he's dying. Jonah doesn't know what's going to happen. He

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 doesn't know there's a big fish waiting for him. In Jonah's mind, this is it. And gone is the Jonah

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 that we saw in chapter one, where he's like, oh, throw me in, guys. It'll be great. At this moment,

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 he's panicking. But what do we see? Like, what does Jonah do in this moment when he's been brought to

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 the point of death? We see that in his distress, he calls for God. If you're looking for seven,

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 when my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to your holy temple.

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 So actually, deep down in Jonah somewhere, there is that trust in God. And this situation is not a

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 coincidence, right? So this was God's plan from the very start. So you can see this in what Jonah

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 says, like in verse three, you hurled me into the depths. All your waves and breakers swept over me.

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 This is something that God's doing to Jonah. It's almost like he's tearing back the layers in Jonah

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 to see. He's kind of saying to Jonah, you know, I know deep down, you can put on a front all you want.

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 I know deep down, you're someone who knows that you need my help. Because at this point, Jonah

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 has come to the realization in the face of death, there's nothing he can do to save himself.

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 He needs to put his trust in God. And even more than that, it's not just

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 that God is revealing something about who Jonah is deep down. He's also using this process to

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 transform Jonah, to change Jonah. Now, it's true, God chose Jonah at the start. But it's not that he

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 chose him because he was already the perfect prophet. But he knew that he needed to transform

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 Jonah into becoming someone who can do his will. If there's one good thing we can say about Jonah,

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 it's that he seems to know his stuff, right? There's actually, if you look at all the things

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 Jonah says about God in the book of Jonah, he never says anything that's factually incorrect.

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 He's got all the right knowledge up here. But it's in here that's the problem. Jonah knows

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 that God's merciful. He knows that he needs to trust in God to save him. But he's not had the

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 experience of God's grace in his life. And so what God is doing here is he's, not only is he bringing

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 Jonah to the point of death, but he's bringing almost his judgment, his wrath upon Jonah, so that

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 Jonah can realize that he too needs to cry out to God for mercy, that he needs God to save him and not

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 himself. And the reason he needs to understand this is because there's no way for Jonah to go and to

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 preach to Nineveh and say, this is God's message that you need to repent, you need to turn back to God.

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 There's no way Jonah can preach that message if he has not first received God's grace.

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 God's message that you need to pray. And so that's who Jonah is. And so let's think about who we are.

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 Because actually, we're actually quite in a similar situation to Jonah. For Jonah in the sea, death was

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 certain. And for us, death is also certain. You will die. Every single person will die. And like Jonah,

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 Jonah, in the face of death, we're completely helpless. There's nothing that you can do, there's

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 nothing that I can do by ourselves to overcome death. Not to mention, as well, God's judgment on us

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 for turning away from him. There's no way we as humans can do anything to escape that.

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 And like Jonah, we often can live in a way that, you know, we know it hypothetically in our heads,

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 but it's in the back of our minds. You know, is it really that urgent to do what God's telling me to

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 do? Does it really matter that much? Death's just somewhere off in the future, maybe. And I think

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 especially in modern society, it's very easy to put these things away. We live in a very secular society.

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 To talk about God's judgment to many people would seem strange. We've got modern medicine now. I mean,

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 it's quite like, it's quite possible there's people here who've grown up their whole lives and they've

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 never seen a dead body. Death just isn't something that's present in a lot of our lives. However, this is

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 quite like an unusual experience. If you went back, for example, to the Middle Ages, if you lived in the

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 Middle Ages, death was just an everyday reality. You could have 10 children and only two of your

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 children might make it to adulthood. And then you have the plagues, a quarter of Europe, a third of

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 Europe dying. Think, if a third of the people we knew had suddenly died, we would have a very different

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 relationship to death. It's not something we can shove in the back of our minds. It's something that

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 is present. And you can see this in how medieval people lived. Imagine, if you will, you're a medieval

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 peasant, and you've come to church today, and you can't read. So you don't have a Bible sitting in

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 front of you. But what you can do is you can look. And you'd probably look up here, and you'd see

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 something called a doom. And a doom is like a giant painting. And in the middle of the painting,

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 you'd see Jesus. And not nice Jesus, not, oh, you know, Jesus meek and mild with some lambs and some

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 children or something. You'd see Jesus coming in wrath and fury and with his angels and judging the

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 world. And he'd probably be throwing some sinners into hell over here, and the demons would be eating

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 them or something. And as far as church decor goes, to us now, that seems a bit strange.

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 It seems a bit over the top. But to people then, that made sense. They wanted to hear

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 about God's judgment. They want to be reminded that there's coming a day when doomsday, when God

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 will come and judge the world. And the same way, they want reminders about death. If you went outside

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 the church, you'd be in a graveyard. And if you read a gravestone, it might not say something very

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 comforting. What it might have instead is a reminder of your mortality. Almost as though the bones

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 themselves are speaking to you. And it might say something like this. As you are now, we once were.

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 And as we are now, you one day shall be. So the bones are saying, you know, we bones used to be humans,

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 like you, running around, eating, drinking. Now we're bones. You might be alive now, running around,

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 eating, drinking, and you might not like it. But one day, you too will be bones. Now, why did people

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 want to be reminded of that? Why is it important for us to be reminded of the reality of death and of God's

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 judgment? And there's two senses. The first is, is if we are not Christians,

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 what death teaches us, what God teaches, what God's judgment teaches us, is that there's nothing we can

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 do to overcome this ourselves. Most things in life, we can at least pretend we've got this on our own.

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 We don't need God. When it comes to death, there's no way out. When it comes to God's judgment,

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 there's no way around it. It teaches us, like Jonah, that we need to forget ourselves and instead

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 trust in someone greater, someone who has the power to save us from death. And if you're a Christian,

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 it also does something. Because in the same way God has chosen, had chosen Jonah, and He had a mission

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 and a purpose for Jonah, God's also chosen you. And He's got purpose for you. He's got plan for you

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 of things He wants to do through you. And like we were with Jonah, where we're like, really, God,

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 you're choosing this guy? He's awful. We might think this about ourselves. We might think, oh,

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 really? God's chosen me? Do I really have the ability, the talent? Am I really faithful enough?

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 Am I good enough to do what God has asked me to do? But thinking that way, actually, is a total

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 misunderstanding of how God chooses. Because God didn't choose Jonah because he was the best prophet

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 around. God chose Jonah so that He could take Jonah and transform him. Because that's how God's love

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 works. God's love is not like human love. So when we love things, we see something or see someone,

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 and it's got attractive qualities. It's beautiful. It's useful. It's good. And we see that,

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 and those things draw, those qualities of it cause us to love it. But God's totally different from that.

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 Because remember, God is goodness Himself. So there's nothing in comparison to God that is good.

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 There's nothing that deserves God's love. There's nothing we can do to kind of make ourselves good

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 enough to be chosen by God. But God chooses to love things that are unlovable. He chooses to love the

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 things that are unlovely. And what happens is His love transforms those things to make them lovely.

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 It's like John says in 1 John, in this is love, not that we love God. So it's not our action that

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 goes first. It's that God loves us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins.

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 And similarly, John also says that because God, brothers, because God has loved us,

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 we also ought to love one another. It's only because Jonah receives the mercy and love of God

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 in this moment, only because he knows that he needs the mercy of God when he's dying,

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 that he realizes his position, that he realizes God's love for him. And that transforms him in

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 order that he can preach the message that God's given him to preach. And it's the same thing for

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 us. It's only when we understand our situation, it's only when we understand who we are, that we are

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 humans, that we'll die, that we're under God's judgment, that we realize our need of God. And when we see that

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 God is loving and He has given us His grace, that's what transforms us to love one another.

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 So that's so much for who Jonah is and so much for who we are. But then we have to get to Jonah's

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 message. Because there's a bit of a problem we've got here, and there's a bit of a problem Jonah's got.

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 Because it's all very well that Jonah's discovered that he's in the sea, he's discovered that,

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 oh, I need God's help. I'll pray to God and ask Him for my help. But if Jonah drowns,

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 if there's no actual salvation, then he's not going to be a very good preacher, is he?

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 And it's the same thing for us. Okay, we've learned that we're going to die. We've learned that God

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 will judge us. But what's the means by which God will save us? We know that God can save us,

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 but how does He save us? What's the mechanism behind it? And this is what Jonah actually reveals to us

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 here. And it's not so much in Jonah's exact words that he shows us this. It's in the pattern of what

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 happens to Jonah. So you think about what Jonah's gone through. So Jonah's on the boat, and God sends

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 down a storm, a storm of His anger and His wrath. And Jonah chooses to be thrown overboard into God's

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 wrath. He takes it upon himself to save the others on the boat. And Jonah essentially, in some sense,

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 dies. He's swallowed up by the fish. And then three days later, he comes back. And the pattern of Jonah,

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 like we saw in the earlier Bible reading, the pattern of Jonah is the pattern of Jesus.

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 Jesus, just as Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights. So the Son of Man will be in the

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 belly of the earth for three days and three nights. So Jonah's almost sermon to us. He's preaching to us

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 that the way we are saved, it's not just that we need to be saved, but the way we are saved is through

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 the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But there's a key difference between Jonah's situation

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 and our situation. Because remember, when Jonah was thrown into the water, when he came in the face

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 of God's judgment and the face of death, he knew that he could cry out to God, but he didn't know

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 how God would save him. He didn't know there was a fish, and he didn't even know if God would save him.

00:23:49.619 --> 00:23:56.859
 He had no guarantee that he, his death was certain, but there was no certainty that God was going to

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 rescue him at all. But that's not the case for us. It's true that we will certainly die, but

00:24:06.139 --> 00:24:17.439
 what's also certain is that because Jesus has died and Jesus has risen again, our death is certain,

00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:24.559
 but also our resurrection is certain. So we, more than Jonah, have a certainty about the future.

00:24:26.360 --> 00:24:36.059
 And this is very important because not only does this transform us, but it transforms how we think

00:24:36.059 --> 00:24:44.120
 about death and how we think about God's judgment. Because remember, if you're not a Christian,

00:24:44.119 --> 00:24:53.719
 if you don't have Jesus Christ, God's death, death is something to be feared. It's something

00:24:53.719 --> 00:25:00.599
 inevitable. It's something you cannot escape. God's judgment is upon you. You've been disobedient.

00:25:00.839 --> 00:25:07.879
 You've done evil things. God is angry at you. It's there, and you can't escape it. Like Jonah in the sea,

00:25:07.880 --> 00:25:15.160
 there's nothing you can't escape it. There's nothing you can do. But because we have an understanding of

00:25:15.160 --> 00:25:21.440
 what Jesus Christ has done for us, this changes our relationship to these reminders.

00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:35.400
 God's judgment isn't something that we have to fear. Because like Jonah taking upon the wrath of the storm,

00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:41.759
 if you will, for the sailors on the boat, Jesus has taken on God's wrath for us. He's brought us

00:25:41.759 --> 00:25:50.480
 forgiveness. In the same way, Jonah died, in a sense, and came back. Jesus died for us, and he conquered death

00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:56.660
 and overcame it. Death is no longer something to be feared. And so when we have these reminders,

00:25:57.519 --> 00:26:05.000
 like you have in the Middle Ages, it's not... These reminders that God gives us about death and about

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:11.960
 judgment for the Christian are not there to make you scared. God's not trying to, you know, make you

00:26:11.960 --> 00:26:17.539
 quiver and shake in your boots. The point is that God's trying to show you through these things, like

00:26:17.539 --> 00:26:25.940
 he showed Jonah, that you don't need to rely on yourself. It's our instinct to always want to think, oh, I can

00:26:25.940 --> 00:26:31.339
 save myself. I can do it myself. God's like, no, you don't need to trust in yourself. You need to trust in me.

00:26:32.139 --> 00:26:40.480
 And he's showing us that in these things, this is him revealing his love to us, his kindness to us, and through

00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:53.319
 what he's done for us in Jesus Christ. And really to sum this all up, it's... This isn't on us at all,

00:26:53.380 --> 00:27:05.920
 right? This wasn't our idea. It's all God's plan from the beginning. So like Jonah. Jonah... When God comes to

00:27:05.920 --> 00:27:10.480
 Jonah, he tells Jonah, you know, I'm going to call you to be a prophet. That was God's plan.

00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:20.140
 When Jonah runs away, that's also God's plan. When Jonah's on the boat and God's storm comes and

00:27:20.140 --> 00:27:25.200
 goes angry with him and he gets thrown in and it's upon him and he realizes he needs

00:27:25.200 --> 00:27:32.340
 the mercy and the salvation of God, that's God's plan. And in the fish and being brought back out,

00:27:32.339 --> 00:27:42.500
 that's God's plan as well. And for us, when we realize... Before we're Christian and we see that

00:27:42.500 --> 00:27:49.539
 we're going to die and God's judgment is upon us, we have that realization that we can't trust in

00:27:49.539 --> 00:27:56.699
 ourselves and we need someone greater, someone better than us. That's God working in our lives.

00:27:56.700 --> 00:28:04.740
 That's also God's plan. And when God sent Jesus to die for us, to give us forgiveness, and when he

00:28:04.740 --> 00:28:10.420
 sent Jesus to... And he brought Jesus back up from the dead. And when Jesus conquered death,

00:28:10.759 --> 00:28:20.380
 that's also God's plan. And in the same way, when God gives us these reminders to transform our hearts,

00:28:20.380 --> 00:28:27.660
 to really press upon us. So not so we have like a knowledge in our heads that, well, you know,

00:28:27.660 --> 00:28:33.660
 Jesus did these things for me and that was nice, but it's a real reality that we really understand deep in our hearts

00:28:33.660 --> 00:28:41.100
 who Jesus is, what he's done for us, and that we need him and that we are thankful to him. And that's what...

00:28:41.100 --> 00:28:48.380
 This transformation of us and this shaping of us, so that God can use us to share his love with other people,

00:28:48.380 --> 00:28:54.300
 that this is all God's plan from the very beginning. This is something God is doing. You know, Jonah is

00:28:54.300 --> 00:29:02.920
 entirely passive in this chapter. He doesn't really do anything. It's all God's plan from the beginning,

00:29:03.040 --> 00:29:09.440
 even the turning away, even the disobedience. And the same for us, as we're brought through our lives,

00:29:10.280 --> 00:29:17.780
 from being under God's judgment into being saved through Jesus, this wasn't anything

00:29:17.779 --> 00:29:25.859
 we did. It's not on us at all, but it's really under God's hand guiding us through the whole way.

00:29:26.899 --> 00:29:36.440
 And this is what brings Jonah in the end, when he's experienced this love of God. He... In verse 9,

00:29:36.519 --> 00:29:40.980
 you can see this, but I with shouts of joy, with shouts of grateful praise will sacrifice to you.

00:29:40.980 --> 00:29:47.059
 What I have vowed, I make good. And he acknowledges the same thing that we've been discussing here, that

00:29:48.339 --> 00:29:52.980
 salvation, it doesn't come from us, but salvation comes from the Lord.

00:29:52.980 --> 00:29:52.980