Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Jonah 2:1-10, focusing on Jonah's prayer of thankfulness while in the belly of the fish. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing our disobedience and valuing salvation, urging believers to share their faith boldly. The sermon highlights that true thankfulness leads to a commitment to fulfill our duties to God, deny ourselves, and seek His direction in our lives. Ultimately, Pastor Safrit reminds the congregation that salvation belongs to the Lord and encourages them to turn to Him for help and renewal.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Amen. Thank you, choir. If you have a child who wants to be dismissed, now is the time to dismiss them to Children's Church. We have that available down the hallway here.
If you have your Bible, we'll be in Jonah again. We're picking up Jonah chapter 2.
Thank you for singing out well today. It has been a blessing to hear you lift your voices and sing right and sing well and honor the Lord. I know I don't do a great job at leading, but we make it happen.
People tell me often I add notes and words where there's not notes and words, but I just see what happens and we just go with it. If you want to do it instead of me, I'm not going to beg you to take it from me or Michaela.
We do be praying for Michaela and Stephen. They are preaching out. He's had several opportunities at different churches over the last couple of weeks and months to preach. When that happens, she goes with him. Then it's stuck with me leading. Yeah, that's where we're at.
Jonah chapter 2 is where we're at. We finished Jonah 1 last week.
We took two weeks to look through Jonah 1 and we looked through Jonah's running from God and then his rebellion and judgment and mercy. Today we're looking at Jonah's prayer and what that looks like today.
If you have your Bibles and you've turned there, we'll stand out of honor of God's word. If you're very willing and able, we'll read all 10 verses and see what the Lord has for us today. The Bible says, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish.
I called to the Lord in my distress and he answered me. I cried out from the help from the deep inside Sheol and you heard my voice. When you threw me out of the depths into the heart of the seas, the current overcame me.
All of your breakers and your billows swept over me. And I said, I have been banished from your sight. Yet I will look once more toward the holy temple. The water engulfed me up to my neck. The watery depths overcame me.
Seaweed was wrapped around my head. I sank in the foundations of the mountains. The earth gates shut behind me forever.
And then you raised me up from life from the pit. Lord, my God, as my life was fading away, I remember the Lord and my prayer came to you in your holy temple. Those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love.
But as for me, I will sacrifice to you with a loud voice of thanksgiving, with a voice of thanksgiving, and will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation belongs to the Lord.
Then the Lord commanded the fish to vomit. The Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. I thank you for your blessings. Pray to help us as we continue to look through Jonah's life. Help us to examine our life through this.
Help us to grow closer to you in everything we do. In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated. Every decision we make in life is a value decision.
Who or what do I value most in this decision? If we decide that we're going to do something with our time, talents, and treasures, it is a value decision.
Valuing Our Salvation
How is this going to benefit me? Or how is this going to benefit someone else?
We ask ourselves in our life, our time is our most valued possession, and we begin to ask ourselves as we go through life. If you're like me, you begin to plan out your schedule.
I try at the beginning of the week to plan my schedule out, what I'm going to be doing, where I'm going to be at, to the best of my ability, because I want to be effective with my time.
And when we begin to ask ourselves the decisions that we make and we begin to value one thing over another, we're ultimately saying that this is more valuable to me.
And that could be family. That's a very reasonable thing. Family is a valuable thing. And so I'm going to put family at the top of my priorities.
And then it may be work or school or whatever it may be. You begin to value these things out. And you begin to ask yourselves, how does this benefit me? As believers, we have to ask ourselves this question, how much do we value salvation?
What is the value that we place on our salvation that the Lord has granted to us if we are believers this morning?
You see, the highest value that we have is that we would go out and proclaim Christ everywhere we go.
That we would have boldness, that we would have zeal, that we would have courage to go out into the world and to share the good news of the gospel with other people. And to say, this is the greatest value that I have.
This is the greatest gift that I've been given, and I want to share this gift with you.
Because I don't want to hold this gift to myself. And I'm really, really firm on this. If we don't value our salvation, if we place it at a low esteem, then we will not share it with other people.
If I value something big in my life, I'm going to share that decision on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, and I'm going to begin to share these things with other people. But how often do we hold the greatest thing that's ever happened to our life, salvation, and we hold it to ourself?
And we don't share it with other people. We don't share what Christ has done for us.
And when we don't share it, we are saying to Christ, the salvation that you've given me is not really that valuable. Other things are more valuable, and so therefore I'm going to share those things instead of what you've given me.
Jonah's Disobedience and Judgment
At this point in Scripture, we're seeing Jonah. He's ran. He's disobeyed.
He's caused pain to those that are around him. And now he is in the moment of judgment from the Lord.
In this moment, we realize that he could not run or get away from the situation that he was in. And the only thing he could do was turn and ask for forgiveness or die in the belly of the well. This is the situation that Jonah's in.
He's ran as far as he can run. He's asked the sailors to throw him overboard so that he might die and they would get forgiveness and that they would have success.
And he thought, you know, if they throw me overboard, I'm going to die and they're going to have a good life now and we're all going to be good. And so Jonah did this and they were throwing Jonah overboard and he's going as far as he could.
In this paragraph here, the first verses, he says that I went to the lowest point of hell.
I went to the lowest point where it says that the gate shut behind me forever and I was basically, he said, I'm dead, but you raised me to life out of the pit.
And so Jonah in this situation, in this moment in his life, he is as far down as he possibly can be.
And he is beginning to value what is right and what is the decisions that I've made.
And now he is turning to the point where he says, is there even forgiveness in this moment in my life? I want us to put ourselves in this picture. Oftentimes we read a story like Jonah,
we read a story like the children of Israel and we read it as, well, that was really cool back in the day, but how can it apply to me today?
And I want us to examine and I want us to try to ask ourselves, what is it that we're doing on our own?
And when it doesn't work out, are we turning to the Lord for his help and favor?
Because oftentimes, as I said, the very first message of this series, we are more like Jonah than we want to admit. We do more for ourselves than we want to admit before we ever turn to the Lord.
And so when we are in this situation, ask yourselves, what are we doing on our own? And at what point are we turning to the Lord for his help? And so Jonah in this moment, there's sort of four basic things that we break down of this moment of thankfulness.
That's what the title of the day is thankfulness. And I want us to use this thankfulness as a way to recognize where we're at.
Recognizing Our Need for God
Because this is where Jonah was at in his situation. The first one is this, his thankfulness helped him to recognize his disobedience or our disobedience.
Look again at verse one, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God in the belly of the fish. He realized that he was in this moment as far away from God as he could get.
And it's a reminder of how totally lost we ourselves are when we run from the Lord and how much we need the Lord every single day of our life. Verses two and three, I called to the Lord in my distress. And it doesn't just say it ends there.
It says, and he answered me. We see this back and forth with the Lord where he answers us. I cried out from help from the deep of hell and he heard my voice.
And when you threw me into the depths of the heart of the sea and the currents overwhelmed me, all the breakers bellowed over me and you rescued me from that.
You see, he understood that he had been swallowed by this monster of a fish. And he was either willing to prepare himself for death in this fish or preparing to turn to the Lord in this situation. You see, prayer in our lives goes a long way.
Oftentimes, we use prayer as a second or third course of action.
Things will happen in our life and we'll go to prayer. But I want you to imagine a moment for here.
You can be like Jonah in the belly of a fish and you can still go to prayer. You can be like Daniel in the lion's den and still have prayer to the Lord in that moment.
You can be like David in the cave and running from your enemy, running from the king of the nation who's coming after you.
And it says that David in the moment of the cave, he went to the Lord in prayer.
You can be like Samson who had disobeyed the Lord, who had had wrong things in his life. And he's standing now in the enemy territory, eyes gouged out, the life that he had once lived was taken from him. And he prayed to the Lord and said, Lord, grant me strength one more time.
And the Lord gave it to him. You can be like Hezekiah who was on his sickbed up until death.
And he prayed to the Lord and said, Lord, will you give me just a moment more of life? I don't want to be done here. I've got more time.
I've got more things that I can do as king. Will you give me more time? And the Lord granted him more time. That may be you here this morning. You could be like Peter who was on a rooftop who is trying to figure out what's going on.
And he prays to the Lord and the Lord forgives him. Or you could be like Paul and Silas who has been jailed and persecuted for their religious living.
And they prayed from their jail and they sang psalms and they sang hymns. And the Lord met them where they were at. And the Lord offered them forgiveness and mercy and grace.
You see, in this moment, Jonah is seeing firsthand the account of his actions of disobedience.
I ran from the Lord. I got as far away from him as I could. And then there was a storm on the sea that came.
And he began to go farther and farther away from the Lord. He uses the term in verse 6. And I want us to really look at this. He says, I was sinking into my punishment. And you reduced me to life. To nothing but life.
He says, I sank to the foundations of the mountains. The world was on top of me. The earth gate shut behind me forever. And then you raised me from my life.
You see, God pursued Jonah all the way to the water. And even made a way of escape for him by a fish. And then he says, Jonah, now it's in your lap. I've came as far as I can. I've prepared this fish from the foundation of the world. I'm pursuing after you.
And now it's your choice. What are you going to do with the actions that you've made? You can turn and you can repent.
Or you can go ahead and live the rest of your life. That's not going to be long here in this belly. And oftentimes in our life, we are at this moment where we begin to ask ourselves, where are we at?
Proverbs 3 says it like this. In Proverbs 3, 11 and 12. I forgot to put this on your screens. But it says, do not despise the Lord's instructions, my son. And do not loathe his discipline. For the Lord disciplines those he loves. Just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.
You see, the Lord looks down on us as he looked down on Jonah. And he said, Jonah, I've got a plan for your life. I've got something great for you. Will you just listen to me? And Jonah says,
I'm going to turn from you, God. I don't want to do what you want me to do. And God said, that's fine. You can do that.
But in doing that, you're going to cause havoc on your life. You're going to cause pain on your life. And oftentimes this is where we're at. Where we turn from the Lord.
And pain and havoc happens in our life. And God says, will you just turn? Will you just come back to me? I'm trying to discipline. I'm trying to bring you back into your life.
As a father, as a father, as I am a father. We begin to discipline our children because we love them.
Brody or Jade or Hudson will do something wrong. And as a dad, I have to discipline them because I love them. Hudson, just the other day, we were, he's not in here. He doesn't get offended when I use him as a story. Monday, I was picking him up from daycare.
And he came out and the, him and another little boy, Cal and his best friend at school, apparently they were disobeying and they had rained that day and there was some mud on the playground and his daycare teacher told him, do not get in the mud.
Both of them don't get in the mud. Well, he had different clothes on that day when I picked him up. And I said, where's his clothes at?
She said, well, he was disobeying and he got in the mud. And he's laughing and his friend's laughing and he says, yeah, I got in the mud, dad. And so he had on this outfit and I said, Hudson, that's, that's wrong. You shouldn't do that.
And he laughed at me again. And I said, you're going to get a spanking for that. And then he even, he was like, ah, no, I'm a daycare. I'm not going to get a spanking. He's laughing and everything.
And so we walk out into the lobby and I popped him. I said, Hudson, I grabbed him. I said, Hudson, this is not the attitude that we have. And so I popped him and, and his whole demeanor was just like,
how dare you? You just did that to me? Like he didn't cry. He didn't, but you could tell visibly he was holding this back. I just gave him one pop. And so he's visibly, he's upset.
And so we get home and, and I told Allie what happened. And he goes up to Allie a little bit, Allison a little bit later and he goes, mom, dad gave me a spanking, but I didn't cry. Put his hands in his body. I didn't cry.
I'm a, I'm a big boy. I got a spanking. I didn't cry. A little later that day, he disobeyed mom again. Why are we getting this disobedience? Right?
And so, so I had to go over to him and I said, you're not going to talk to your mother like that. And I popped him in that time. He cried. He broke down. He realized I've done wrong.
But if I didn't love him, I would have allowed him to continue to disobey. I would have allowed him to continue to live in that lifestyle. And then later on in his life, he will have paid the consequences or he can learn in that moment. And this is Jonah in the situation.
He is disobeying and the Lord is saying, listen, you're in a situation like you've never seen before. And we've never seen since this moment.
I want you to understand Jonah in this situation, no one before Jonah had ever been swallowed by well that we know of and no one after this, that as far as running from God and disobedience and God using an example has never happened since then. But why was this?
Because Jonah's decision was not only affecting himself, but was affecting an entire nation. The entire nation that he was called to go to was fleeing from the Lord.
God's Call and Jonah's Response
And God said, I want you to go to Nineveh.
I want you to go and I want you to preach to this nation. And it was in this moment where Jonah realized that he was in the most dangerous place and he sought God in a serious way.
He understood that God was a faithful covenant keeping God, that God was not going to break his promises.
And then he realized and he remembered, I saw God work in a mighty way in my own country. God used me into a reprobate King and the entire nation was turned around.
And I can almost imagine him in this moment in the belly of the well saying, I wonder if I go to God now, if he'll still forgive me. I know he forgave King when I was, King Abimelech. And I know he forgave him, but am I too far gone?
Am I too far away from God in this moment for him to even hear me or to even forgive me?
I want you to imagine in your life when we're going down to hell and we've been overtaken by our sins and the Lord is there wanting to rescue us from our depths. He's wanting to give us freedom and forgiveness from the gospel.
And Jonah right here in this moment is seeing the same thing. He says, there's no way of escape unless the Lord intervenes.
And the only thing certain that Jonah could say was, Lord, I'm going to die. Look at verse seven. As my life was fading away, it's the only thing he could say for certain. I remembered the Lord.
And this is the thought here. And I believe Jonah is this picture of no one is too far gone. Or as the theological term, no one is too far depraved from God for God to forgive them.
No one is too far a sinner. No one has done too much wrong for God not to hear our prayers and for God to offer salvation for those that turn to him. If only we will turn to him.
You see, all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. And it is by us coming to God and saying, God, I need your forgiveness. I heard this illustration years and years ago.
I had a friend of mine who had sinned drastically. He had got his girlfriend pregnant while they were in high school. And he was at class.
And he began to ask his teacher. He said, how can God forgive me for my sin?
I've done so much wrong. I've done so much bad in my life. And the teacher looked and he said, son, I want you to imagine you take off in an airplane.
Y'all ever been in an airplane in here? A couple of you. Y'all ever seen an airplane in here? A couple of you. I'm trying to make sure you're awake and you're engaged a little bit. And you take off in this airplane.
And as you're taking off everything, you can see the dimensions and how high and how big things are. But as you get to a certain point and you begin to look down, all these massive skyscrapers look the same height. The highest building looks like the same height as that low building.
Because you're looking down and you're seeing that there is no depth perception in that moment because you're so much higher than what's down below you. And he said,
your sin to God is like that. God looks down and he sees the vilest sinner, the rapist, the murderer, the ones that have done the most wicked things you can imagine.
And he sees your sin right beside him. And he says, there's no difference. They're all sin.
And he said, God looks down and he forgives all those sins. He said, now here on earth, we look at him and we see that massive skyscraper. And that's the effect of sin on our life. You do these wrong things. You do these vile, depraved, wicked things.
You're going to have a mountain of sin on your life. And you're going to reap those consequences. He said, but God looks down and he sees sin as sin. It's all vile.
It's all wicked. And he offers forgiveness if we'll only come to him. And this is where Jonah begins to understand this in his life.
But not only do we see his disobedience or our disobedience, we begin to see our duty or Jonah's duty in verse 8. As Jonah is reflecting on what he has done and what the Lord has done,
he begins to now bring himself to the place of knowing what his duty or his job is.
You see, he wouldn't have made it into this place if he had stayed on the ship. If he would have stayed on the ship,
he would have died in the storm and he would have never made it to this place. But it was because he was thrown overboard, because he got to the place away from the ship and even further down that the Lord rescued him through his mercy.
And I want you to look at the statement he says in verse 8. Those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love.
You see, the sailors were on the boat. They were idol-worshiping men as we looked like last week when we showed the video of what idols were, even in today's situation, in today's narrative. And these men were idol-worshipers.
And as Israel left, as you can imagine Israel leaving Egypt,
Jonah would have known the story. Jonah would have known the history of Israel leaving Egypt. And the entire time they were in the wilderness, they struggled with idols.
They went and they overtook Canaan. And God said, destroy all the idols and don't marry anyone that was worshiping with the Canaanites. And the children of Israel said, well, God, they're really pretty women here. I want to marry them. I want to intermingle here.
And God said, don't do it. And they did it. And they began to take on those idols. And they began to take on the things of those people. And they struggled with idol-worship all throughout their history.
And now Jonah was on the boat with a bunch of idol-worshiping people. And God began to work in his life in this moment. And he makes this statement,
those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love. As he's in the belly of the whale here, the belly of the fish, he's thinking, there's no amount of wood that can save me. There's no amount of gold. There's no amount of silver. There's no amount of any type of graven image that can help me or worship my way out of here.
But what he does realize is idols doesn't save. And as he's writing this story, he begins to understand this statement. Keller says like this, Tim Keller, famous writer, he's passed away now.
He says, an idol is whatever you look at and say in your heart of hearts. If I have that, then I'll feel like my wife has meaning. And I'll know that I have value. And I'll have significance and security.
And Jonah is saying this, that if you erect any idols in your life, you are forsaking the hopeless.
You are forsaking, I'm sorry, the faithfulness of the love of Christ in your life. And as we examine our life, as we examine the stories throughout history, the stories of Elijah, where Elijah stood before the prophets of Baal and before the wicked queen Jezebel. And he said,
hey, why don't you erect an altar over here and you worship your idols and I will erect an altar over here for my God. And we begin, we know this story where they came and they did everything they could for their idols and nothing happened.
And Elijah stood up and he prayed and he said,
God, the maker of heaven and earth, bring down fire from heaven and consume this altar.
I've been at the spot where this has happened in Israel. And it's a really cool situation when you know that this is the spot. And Elijah was able to call down fire from heaven because he prayed and God showed mercy on him.
And when we need mercy from God, oftentimes we don't look to the Lord.
Oftentimes we're looking at whatever we have in place of God and we walk away feeling unsatisfied. We walk away feeling more depressed than we were before because we never went to the maker of heaven and earth. And as Jonah says here, those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love.
They abandon what God has given them. That's our duty. But then it leads into our denial.
Our denial of self in verse nine, the very first part of it. But as for me, I will sacrifice to you with a voice of thanksgiving.
Jonah is now affirming, he is now getting to the place where he is denying himself in order to follow the Lord's commands. And he says this, I will make a sacrifice, God, a perfect spotless lamb.
He uses this moment where he says, I'm going to go back to what I vowed for you to do.
Returning to God and Sacrifice
I'm looking back to the temple in verse four. He says, I'm looking toward the holy temple. And he is saying here, I'm going to go back and I'm going to make a sacrifice. You see, we don't make animal sacrifices anymore because Christ has come and he has paid our sin debt.
And he says, there is no more need of sacrifices because I have sacrificed my life for you. I've abolished sacrifices altogether and I became your perfect sacrifice.
You may be asking here, Pastor James, how do I even apply this to my life? I've never made an animal sacrifice before. I'm glad you asked.
Romans 12 lays it out how we can make a sacrifice. Romans 12 says, therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. That is your true worship.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is good, pleasing and perfect will of God.
Romans 12, 1 and 2 lays it out for the Christians, for the believers of how we can make this sacrifice for the Lord. How can we deny ourselves?
The very first one is this. We must present our bodies as service. You must present your bodies as a service to the Lord to say, God, I don't care about my life. I don't care about this earthly temple that you've given me.
I want to serve you. I want to give up everything about me and I want to give my body to your service. I often think of Paul.
Paul, as he gave his life for service, I don't think he fully understood what that meant when he said, God, I'm going to turn my life over to you.
You see, for Paul, it meant being whipped multiple occasions, multiple lashes of 39 times where he was whipped and beat as his savior. Thrown in jail multiple times. Abandoned from his friends. Shipwrecked multiple times. All in the service of the Lord.
And he gave up his body. He presented his body as a sacrifice. That's why he's saying here, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.
But why would he say this? Because he realized in this moment, you'll never please God.
You'll never understand how to deny yourself until you give up your life for Christ. And he's saying here, that's a way where we can understand or deny of ourselves. But then he goes on to say, you must prepare your minds. You must prepare your mind.
He says, do not be conformed to these days, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Your mind here is the control center of your body.
And he's saying, if you're going to deny yourself, you've got to first present your bodies, but then you've got to prepare your mind on a daily basis.
I had a pastor friend of mine. He said back in the day, we've got fancy Apple watches and alarms and everything.
But you may remember back in the day, the old digital watches where you could set an alarm to go off every three or four hours. And he said, I went in on my watch and I set my alarm on my watch to go off every four hours.
And every four hours of every day I got up when it would go off and I would go back and I would say, Lord, these last four hours, I've done some things wrong in my mind. Lord, I want to reconform my mind back to you.
I want to re-prepare my mind back to you because the last four hours I've done wrong. And it was a constant every four hours of every day. He prepared his mind and he renewed his mind so that he could discern what was good and perfect.
And I challenge us, how are we preparing our mind for the service of the Lord? And then ultimately,
he said, if you're going to do this, you need to please the Lord. It says, pleasing and perfect will of God.
When we begin to do this and we deny ourselves and we deny and we present our bodies and we prepare our minds, ultimately it's pleasing to the Lord. That is our denial of ourself.
But then the fourth and last final point here is our direction. Look again with me at the last part of verses 9 and 10 and I'll be done here.
Commitment to Fulfill Vows
It says, I will fulfill what I have vowed. And he makes this statement after Jonah sees his wrongdoings, as he recognized what his duty is, as he's denied everything that he can deny himself of, he makes this bold proclamation. And he says, salvation belongs to the Lord.
Salvation belongs to the Lord. I want us to understand where he's at in this mindset. He gets to the place where there is no other hope in his life than of the Lord's. I can't do anything in of myself.
The only thing I can do is say, God, I need you in my life.
You are the one that has brought salvation. You are the one that has helped me. You are the one that was a judge in my life. I've been running from you. And if I need salvation, the only thing, the only person I can go to is God, the maker of heaven and earth.
And this is his life. This is where he's at. This is where he's realizing this. Jonah gets to this place. It takes him quite a while.
It takes him a while of running from the Lord and seeing the ship getting overtaken by the storm and seeing these men who are crying out to their gods.
We've looked at this story and it takes all these things to happen for him to finally realize that salvation is the Lord's. And church, I hope that it doesn't take us that long to realize.
But one sign, though, as I conclude, I want us to look at the fish for just a moment. The fish here is given two commands.
The fish says to the Lord, the Lord says to the fish, hey, I've prepared you for a specific moment. I need you to go and find this reprobate sinner that's running from me and I want you to go swallow him up.
Nowhere in scripture does it show that the fish looked at God and said, are you sure about that, God? Man, I don't really like humans.
I would rather eat animal or fish and I'd rather eat some seaweed and all this other stuff that's in the sea. I don't really have a taste for humans. God, I don't want to do this.
What we see in scripture is when God told the fish to go and swallow Jonah, he immediately went and swallowed Jonah.
And then we see here as the ending of verse 10, the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah on dry land. When he said,
hey, fish, I need you to spit out Jonah. The fish didn't say, well, I really like what's going on right now. This is really, it's like almost like a chocolate pie from K&W. Like it's really sweet. It's really good.
I want to keep this in my belly. No, he immediately obeys and he does it.
There was no rebellion. There was no running. The fish understood the power of the almighty God, the maker of heaven and earth. And he never went against what the Lord had for him. The Lord is saying here in this comparison, be like the fish. Do the commands that I've commanded you.
Don't rebel. Don't run. Don't do your own thing. It's really simple. But oftentimes as humans, we would rather be like Jonah. And we'd rather run and we'd rather do our own thing. And we'd rather do our own agenda than forsaking our agenda and deny ourselves and turning to the Lord. As Terry comes, I'll wrap this up.
One of the most encouraging things about a new year or a new week or a new day, or as schools are starting back and you've got a new school year, new opportunities are coming.
Webster's Dictionary defines it like this. A refreshing difference from one of the same that has existed previously. Something new. The word new. It means refreshed or starting over.
And oftentimes, best of all, when we begin to think of this, we begin to think of what it means to start over.
And are we truly in a place to start over, to catch a fresh vision, to change our direction, and to begin a new phase of our journey? But understanding this requires us to know the knowledge of where we're at today.
You see, Jonah would have never been able to get to the place of saying, God, I need you to come and help in my life. If he didn't realize that he was dying in the belly of a fish.
If he had just been like, yeah, I'm just in a dream. I'm in la-la land.
This is going to pass eventually. And put his blinders on and never realized where he was at. He would have never got to the place of understanding that he needed to change. That there needed to be something new happen. It requires us to take time to honestly admit our present condition.
It means facing the music. It means standing alone inside the fish and coming to the terms of whatever needs attention in our life.
Beginning to work around the seaweed of our life and beginning to find our way out and understanding that the Lord is there for us. Only once that is accomplished, are you ready to start or restart your journey? Joel writes it like this in Joel chapter 2 verses 25.
He's reflecting on the story of Jonah. And as he's reflecting on the story of Jonah, he writes this. He says, I will make up to you for the years of the swarming locust that is eating and the creeping locust and the stripping locust and the gnawing locust.
He's saying, As he's looking at the Lord and he sees the things that have happened in his life as he's went through the same similar situation as Jonah had went through. He says this statement of, I'm going to make up the years.
I'm going to take care of those things. And if God can take care of a disobedient prophet and turn him around and set him on fire spiritually,
I truly believe church that he can do the same for us. You see, God is a specialist in making something useful and beautiful out of something broken and confused.
He says, I'm the potter that begins to take up the clay that's been broken and beaten up and I'm going to make it something beautiful. If only that clay would work with me. If only that clay is going to understand that I'm there working in their life.
Seeking God's Help
So the question we have to ask ourselves is where are we at church? Are you willing to understand where you're at and start there and open and freely declare that you need the Lord's help today? That you deeply down inside cannot do this in and of yourselves.
You know, it becomes to the point where we must stop hiding things from the Lord. Jonah could have said, Everything's great. We've got a new house here.
It may not smell great, but I'm happy with where I'm at. And if he would have done that, the Lord would have allowed him to stay there. We must come before the Lord open without hiding things.
As Joel says, we must show God the locust bites in our life and say, God, I'm ready for you to come into my life. I'm ready for you to heal me. I'm ready for you to put me on the path as we're looking at Jonah to Nineveh.
And that Nineveh for you may be tomorrow. And put me on the path that I'm going to step out by faith. And I'm going to do what you've called me to do. If only you would turn and say, God, I need you in my life. God, I need you to work in my life as you've never done before.
But it all begins on where you're at. Are you willing to recognize our disobedience, our duty, our denial, our direction of where we're at this morning? Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done for us. Lord, I know I've went a little long today and I apologize for that. I pray, God, that you would, in spite of me speaking a little longer, work in this message.
Lord, help us to turn our lives to you and say, God, I need you to work in my life like you've never done.
Lord, uncover the hidden sins in our life. Uncover the things that are wrong and help put us back on the path that you have declared for us. God, I love you and I thank you for what you've done. I thank you for your mercy, your grace.
I thank you for sometimes your judgment in our life that we need. And I pray that you help us to honor you this week. In your name we pray. Amen.
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