Well it is that time of the year again:
March Madness
A)What is that ? Big
B) Month of the year where everyone gets a little more agitated on the
road ways because of rain
1) NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
C) It is that time that every college hoop fan loves
1) Basketball all day Long! –
D) It Starts with 64 of the best teams in the country in a single game
elimination tournament –
2) Sweet 16/ the elite eight / the final 4 – The championship game – { April 3rd } Glorious
AMEN
There are some
awesome stories in this tournament
But the one that
got my attention had to do with 2nd
chances
A)You see David Pak is the starting point guard for
B) Why so old ? Well David Pak went to
Prison for a crime he committed when he was 17
1) He served an 8 year sentence. He was released Christmas Eve 2001 – a
day before his 25th B-day
C) After prison he was given a 2nd Chance – A Scholarship to
play at
D) He has become
a model citizen and a team leader
And although his
team lost in first round
1)His story is a great story of mercy, and 2nd chances
The
Bible is full of stories of men who were given a 2nd chance by God.
A)Abraham(lied
about his wife); Jacob(lied to his father Isaac); Moses(killed a man & fled
from
B)God gave David a second
Chance. He gave Elijah
a
second chance
1)
Of course there is Peter(denied the Lord 3 times).
C) God
still is doing that today: He is the God of the 2nd Chance.
George
H. Morrison “The Victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings.”
D) New Day in the Lord –
It is seen in the wife that
takes back a wayward husband
Parent a wayward son or
daughter
Friend who forgives when his
trust has been betrayed.
Another opportunity after a
failed ministry.
He is the God
of the 2nd Chance.
Now
when it comes to 2nd chance stories you either love them or hate
them
A)Your response is really
connected to your understanding of & experience w/ the grace of God
B) When I remember that my
walk depends upon and hinges around being a recipient of grace
1) I
love the fact that He is the God of the 2nd chance
C) For example who here can
say that they responded to the message of the gospel the very first time they
heard it?
D) For most of us it was yrs
of hearing and rejecting hearing and rejecting – putting off
1) Finding reasons why we
didn’t need to turn our lives over to Jesus.
E) But where would we be if
God said – I am going to give you ONE CHANCE –
1) Most of us would be lost
Or
how many of us have been used by the Lord even after we have been disobedient –
A)Reality all of us have
been recipients of 2nd and 3rd and 4th and …….
Chances by God
B)And we live on 2nd chances – that is what grace is all
about.
C) I find myself wanting to
be a dispenser of grace
But
if my walk with God is more performance based
If
I somehow think that I earn his blessings
A)That what has come into my
life is the result of my faithfulness and obedience –
B) Then when I see him being
gracious to others giving 2nd chances – I
am not real excited about that!
C) Here
is a test: How do you respond when someone that you know has been flaky
in their walk but gets blessed ?
D) Are
you glad and excited ? Or do you find yourself mumbling to yourself
things like
1) They
don’t deserve that ! / That is not fair / that is not right
E) Hey listen the truth of
the matter is – you don’t deserve what you have been given either
1) All sinners – All that we
have and are is because of Grace.
Well here in
Jonah Ch.3 we see that Jonah is given a 2nd chance. V.1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time,
A)God is about to use Jonah
to spark the greatest revival in Human History.
B) What
is your reaction to that? Great ! Amazing
1) Or you know that just
doesn’t seem right
C) Modern day: How
would you feel if God all of a sudden started using Jim Baker in a mighty way.
1) Would you find yourself
saying – he doesn’t deserve that –
D) That just doesn’t seem
right after everything that he did.
1) But that is exactly what
God does so often – He loves to give grace – give 2nd chances
That is what he does here w/
Preach to it the message that I tell
you:
A)This is such an important
word for any Pastor – home group leader, discipler
B) Preach the
message that God tells you.
1) Milk / the Meat / the Manna {
His word ..today
VARIES PER SERVICE IN EMPHASIS
2) Last week first service –
Prayer
2nd & 3rd
had a different focus
C) This is why it this is so important – There can be a temptation for
any teacher to want to Preach what he thinks the people NEED
TO HEAR.
D) His perception of things: Carnal
Youth group
HOLINESS
1) God said point them to Jesus { I want them to see how much I love them.
The other temptation for a
teacher is to teach what he thinks people WANT TO HEAR.
A)This is actually what the Apostle Paul
warned us about happening in the last days when he said that in
B)This has become the hot new style
of our day.
1)You find out what people want to hear and
then you teach it to them.
C) Easy to draw a crowd this way, but it’s not what God
wants.
What God wants is for His people to hear from Him. And that’s why
Paul told Timothy,
A)
NOT ALWAYS
POSITIVE
B) Advantage we have in
1) It is harder to fall prey to those temptations – and get off on tangents
C) So God told Jonah preach the
message that I give you to Preach.
What was Jonah’s message 40 days and
A)The word overthrown here
literally means to turn something upside down.
B)But to really capture the idea here you have to think of a plate full of food being tossed up in the air and then landing upside
down.
C) That’s what this word meant: In other words,
1)this great city of
D) A good cross reference
here is that this is the same
word that was used when God
said that He was going to overthrow
Now, I’m sure that there were many people that heard this
and thought, IMPOSSIBLE
A)
B)And yet from God’s
perspective,
it was just forty days away from falling apart at the seams.
Jonah told the
people of
A)40 days, is
the number of
testing and judgment
in the Bible.
B) Flood
– 40 days/ Jesus wilderness tested 40 days
Now This isn’t what you would call a seeker sensitive message.
A)Today those who say let’s give the people what they want to hear. Keep it positive
1) No blood
2) No sin
3) Not hell
B) Only going to talk about God’s love –
1) Problem not the whole message.
C)Jonah walked into
1) He would be being disobedient
SIDE NOTE: In
v.3 we are told that Jonah walked around
A)Now the book of Jonah has been heavily attacked by scholars
who try to say
this is a myth.
B) And one
of the things that they point to is this statement where the extent of the city is said
to be a three days walk.
C)Archeologist have actually found the ancient sight of the walled city of
D)And
certainly the
city is not large enough to take three days to walk across.
1) So the critics had
seemingly won
on that point.
That was until they discovered
that the walled section of the city was
only a little part of the actual city of
A)Now archeologist will tell you that the Biblical account is right on,
B) In fact
how do you think that they found the outer rim of the city?
1) By using the three days walk formula.
I love stories
like that.
C) Another
simple explanation is: He was preaching so it took him that long to cover every
section
1)
Now lets consider the reaction to Jonah’s message
RD V. 5-9
A)Now what we have here are
some genuine marks of repentance.
1)They
believed God: – that is the starting
point
B) True preaching and teaching will
always have this result.
1)It will
draw people to God, it will move
them to put their faith in Jesus.
2)
They were broken: Then they changed
A)Seen in the fact that from
the greatest to the Least of them they put on sackcloth.
B) There was a Humility that was apparent in their
repentance.
C) Suddenly things like
positions / power and appearances meant nothing
1) Even
the King – put on sackcloth and ashes
This was a picture of the total abandonment of Self image.
A)That is always a true mark
of repentance: when a person is no longer worried about how they are perceived.
B) No longer worried about
what others are thinking of them –
1) all
that matters is that they are right w/ God
C) Quite frankly
that is the thing that holds some people back from true repentance:
1) They are way to concerned
about what others are thinking about them.
3)
There was a denial of the flesh.
A)They proclaimed a fast!
B)Fasting
is simply not eating or drinking.
1) But what it points to here is this idea of denying self,
or denying the flesh.
C) They
were used to being driven by the flesh
Catering
to their fleshly appetites
But now they were willing to
deny the flesh in order to seek God. Purpose
of FASTING
A)Food
fast – a Day for Prayer: A meal – lunch
B) TV Fast
– No TV for a week –
1) News
paper fast –
2) Gym Fast: Seek God
Do
you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize?
Run in such a way that you may obtain it.
25 And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things.
Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable
crown. 26 Therefore I run thus: not with
uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. 27 But I discipline my
body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I
myself should become disqualified.
C) That is
the purpose of Fasting! –
So they 1)They believed God: 2)They were broken
3) There was a
denial of the flesh
4) There was a sense of urgency. V.8 Cry mightily
A)Cry mightily: intensity, i.e., a high degree of
harshness or severity of an event or action
1) Earnestly= Energy & Passion
2) Vigorously: Violent
5)
There
was a change!
Turn from the evil and violence
A)True repentance turns away from
sin and starts moving towards righteousness.
B)There is
action
in repentance, it is not just words and a prayer.
1)It’s agreeing with God that what
you were doing is wrong and then getting away from it.
C)And the way that you get away from
it is to start doing what is right.
1) Repentance
is a 180 degree turn.
D)True repentance radically changes
our world view,
1) it gets our eyes off of our selves and on to
the needs of those around us.
Too often Repentance in the
Church today is lacking of these traits:
A)There is
a prayer and tears and a promise.
B)But there
is no forsaking of position and power, there is
no
change in priorities,
1)there is no move away from sin, there is no move towards righteousness,
2) and there is no change in where we have our eyes, they are still fixed firmly on ourselves.
C)And then we wonder why
there is so much sin in the Church.
1)We wonder why there is so little victory
over sin in the Church.
D) We
wonder why the Christian divorce rate is almost as high as the worlds.
1) We wonder why our kids are all messed up
and confused.
E)A lot of it comes back to this. We have forgotten what it means to repent.
1)We have forgotten what God really requires of those who
have fallen and want that second chance.
Notice that v.10 Then God saw their works,
that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that
He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
A)God saw their works – he
saw their repentance and forgave them.
B)Wait doesn’t this
contradict what we read in Eph. 2 We are saved by grace thru faith not of works
B) Yes but don’t forget what
James wrote in James
20 But do you
want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by
works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was
working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And
the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was
accounted to him for righteousness." And he was called the friend of God.
24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.
C) How are these verses
reconciled –
Paul in Ephesians is talking about the Way of Salvation –
How a person is saved –
A)Believing Jesus –
exercising faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross for them
B) James is focusing on the
Proof of salvation
Faith without
works is DEAD
C) Blend the two together
and what you have is “We are saved by faith and not
works – but our faith is a faith that works. Our faith is evidenced by our
works.”
So when it says here that God saw their works – it is
referring to the Proof of their repentance
A)It was manifested in their
actions
B) This was a true
repentance.
Well
Jonah must have been ecstatic – so excited
A)God gave him a 2nd
chance and Massive revival breaks out. THINK AGAIN CH.4:1
B) But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he
became angry.
C)The
English words that are used here don’t even come close to conveying what this actually
says in the Hebrew.
1) These are the strongest words that could
have been used.
D The
literal Hebrew here would go something like this, “But
it was evil to Jonah, a great wickedness and he was burning.”
The repentance of these people
& God’s subsequent mercy, was viewed by Jonah as a grave injustice.
A)In his mind, God had actually done evil,
He had violated His own holiness and it was burning Jonah up.
B) What
this tells us is that God’s work with the Ninevites was done,
1)but God’s work in Jonah wasn’t
C)You see
Jonah had repented from his rebellion, but the root of bitterness that caused
the rebellion was still there.
1) And God was not about to let it remain.
What a lesson this is for us in this
A)I believe that like Jonah we are often
times willing to let God deal with our outer problems,
1)
but what
we are reluctant to do is let God get at the source.
B)We won’t
let Him get deep inside of us and get to the root
of the problem.
1) And because we don’t, those problems
just keep coming up over and over again.
C)They
just manifest themselves in other relationships
What we see here in Jonah is a
repeat performance of his initial rebellion.
A)He sees God’s gracious heart & he
rebels against it
B) Because
God is not doing what he thinks God ought to do. Listen to his prayer in verse 2.
2
So he prayed to the LORD, and said, "Ah, LORD, was not this what I said
when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I
know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in
lovingkindness, One who relents from
doing
harm.
3
"Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for
me to die than to live!"
The thing that amazes me about
this prayer is how Jonah can know all of these great things about God and still
be mad at Him.
A)But you
see the problem was that these attributes of God weren’t working in Jonah’s
favor.
B)They
weren’t accomplishing what Jonah wanted.
1)In fact they worked against what Jonah
thought God should do.
C) God’s
grace and mercy and forgiveness and loving kindness was fine when it applied to
1) it was great when it saved Jonah out of the
belly of the great fish.
D)But it was not so fine when it
was applied to pagan Gentiles and it was down right evil when it was applied to
1) Like most Jews Jonah hated the
Ninevites.
E) Brings
us right back to the beginning the person who doesn’t understand grace. –
1) 2nd Chances are good for me – but not for
them.
Here’s the Problem:
What Jonah wanted was for God to stay in the box that Jonah had
designed for Him.
A)And God just wouldn’t do it.
B)Jonah
is saying, Look God, you’re supposed to function this way and I won’t tolerate
you drawing outside of the lines.
C) But you see God is God, and
He can draw outside of the lines anytime that He wants.
1) He is always drawing outside the lines –
2) One of the things we should learn to
love about God is that He is unpredictable.
This is one of the problems w/ systematic theologies. A)What
we want our theology to do is to lock God in to certain parameters so we can
understand Him.
B)God does
this, God doesn’t do that. But in reality, systematic theologies are just man’s
attempt to control God,
C) It’s
man’s attempt to get God to fit inside of a box
so that we can understand Him.
1) But it’s a futile exercise because the
box of our understanding is just to small.
D) So
when God won’t fit into Jonah’s box – Jonah says ok God just kill me then
1) Leave
him here today – Pick up next time.