- Brokenness is coming to the realization that "I Am Wrong"
- Your circumstances are Out of your control (Jonah 2:2-3)
- You got what you wanted, then find out You don't really want it (Jonah 2:4)
- Crying out to God becomes Your only option (Jonah 2:5-7)
- You Learn the lesson God was trying to teach you (Jonah 2:8)
- Your Passion for God returns (Jonah 2:9)
- God pursues His broken children with Restoration (Jonah 2:10-3:3)
You've hit a "Broken Point" when:
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:11
Open up your Bibles to Jonah. Chapter 2, we're continuing our series, "God is out to get you." And last week we saw that God is out to get you even if you rebel.
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Today, God is out to get you even if you are broken.
00:16-00:29
Quick recap from Jonah chapter 1. It's a familiar story to a lot of us, but just to give us an on-ramp for where we're heading today, you remember the story. Jonah is called to preach to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria.
00:31-00:34
Jonah flees on a boat and God hurls a storm in him.
00:36-00:45
Well, the mariners on the boat find out that Jonah is the problem, and he tells them to just throw him overboard and the storm will stop.
00:46-00:50
They do, and it does the end.
00:50-00:51
Well, not hardly.
00:53-00:57
But what we saw was that God is a loving Father who disciplines rebellious children.
00:59-01:14
And that was our lesson last week. When God is clearly calling you to something, and you say no, He loves you enough to pursue you. But the question is, what happens when He catches you?
01:16-01:19
Well, let's pick up in the text. We ended with chapter 1, verse 17.
01:21-01:25
Let's pick up there again. Jonah is thrown overboard, as we said last week.
01:25-01:30
the men on the boat, they went and planted, harvested Bible chapel, Tarshish.
01:31-01:39
And it says, "And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
01:42-01:48
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Now, do you believe that?
01:49-01:52
Do you believe that Jonah was actually in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights?
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Why in the world would you believe that?
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What's that? Say it loud.
01:58-02:01
Because the Bible said so. Great. That works for me.
02:02-02:09
And as we saw last week, Jesus talked about Jonah as being a real person in a real place that these events really happened to.
02:09-02:13
Jesus didn't talk about Jonah as being a parable or an allegory.
02:13-02:15
He talked about him as being real.
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And if Jesus says this is how it happened, then I'll go with that, right?
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So the Lord appointed a great fish.
02:26-02:28
It's funny, the people that struggle with that.
02:29-02:33
We don't have any problem with, God spoke the world into existence.
02:34-02:41
We don't have any problem with raising the dead, but really somebody swallowed by a fish for three days.
02:42-02:45
Come on, it's true.
02:47-03:10
Well, look at chapter 2. It says, "Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish." Interestingly, when the mariners were having the potluck prayer meeting, Jonah wasn't interested. Remember that? Like, "Hey, we're just like all crying out to our gods.
03:10-03:48
You get a god. Who's got a god? Anybody got a god? You get a god. We're all praying to our God. So you want to pray to yours?" And he wasn't interested at the time and swallowed by a fish. It says, "Then Jonah prayed." Jot down in your notes, "God will get your attention. God will get your attention." Okay, if the storm didn't do it, if the panic of the mariners didn't do it, if throwing all the cargo overboard and the casting lots, if that didn't do, God will get your attention." And clearly he had to Jonah.
03:49-03:51
But here's something interesting.
03:54-04:03
For some reason in the back of my mind, most of my life, I had this idea that Jonah was in despair because he was in the belly of a fish.
04:04-04:06
And maybe I thought that because that kind of seems natural, right?
04:07-04:11
I mean, if a fish swallows you, like how many people here would totally panic?
04:12-04:15
Yeah, like, what's next, right?
04:15-04:27
Well, I had this idea that that's why Jonah was kind of freaking out, like, "Holy smokes, I was swallowed by a fish." But actually, what we see in chapter 2, that wasn't what he was concerned over.
04:28-04:30
And I want to show you what I mean by that.
04:30-04:32
Look at verse 6. We're going to go down through and read these.
04:32-04:35
But at verse 6, this is what he's praying inside the fish.
04:36-04:42
He says, "Yet you brought up my life from the pit." You know, it's a prayer of deliverance.
04:42-04:44
He talks about salvation belongs to the Lord.
04:45-04:46
We're going to talk about that in verse 9.
04:47-04:59
But that prayer took place in the belly of the fish, verse 1, and before the fish vomited Jonah out on dry land.
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So understand that Jonah wasn't panicking about the fish.
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Well, what was going on here?
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It was over nearly drowning.
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We're gonna see that very clearly in the text.
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So first of all, in your outline, number one, brokenness, that's what we're gonna see here in this prayer.
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Brokenness is coming to the realization that, and I want you to write down the three hardest words to say.
05:28-05:29
Like I love you, no?
05:31-05:33
There are actually three words that are a lot harder to say than that.
05:34-05:35
Any takers on that?
05:37-05:37
I was wrong.
05:39-05:40
That's hard to say, isn't it?
05:42-05:42
No?
05:43-05:44
Really?
05:47-05:49
No, I mean you saying it, not me saying it.
05:50-05:53
It's hard to get to that point where you say, I was wrong.
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I can tell my wife I love her all the time.
05:56-05:58
I love you, I'll tell you right now, I love you.
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But to go and say, I was wrong, that's a lot harder.
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And that's where brokenness starts.
06:07-06:08
It's in the head and it's in the hearts.
06:09-06:12
Now, last week we saw that rebellion is a choice to disobey.
06:14-06:18
Brokenness is the acknowledgement of what a bad choice that is.
06:18-06:24
And understand that this brokenness is meant to draw you to God, not away from God.
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To get you to the point that you say, I'm done running.
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I'm done.
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I've been thinking that I can flee from God and I've been trying to avoid God and the things of God and I'm done with that.
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I'm done with that.
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I'm running to God.
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So many times people ask me to pray that God would break someone.
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Like, just pray.
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I have a prodigal child right now.
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Just pray that God would break him down.
07:01-07:05
What kind of a prayer is that? We're going to see as we go through this text.
07:05-07:14
Or, you know, my spouse has been so unrepentant over this particular area, and I need you to pray that God would get his attention.
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Just pray that God would break him down.
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I've been asked to pray that so many times.
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But here's the question we're going to answer today.
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How do you know when someone is really broken?
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That's what we're going to see here.
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Those are the ingredients that are in this text.
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But how do you know?
07:35-07:37
How do you know when somebody is really broken?
07:41-07:43
Because it's easy to get jaded, isn't it?
07:44-07:45
Have you ever been jaded with someone?
07:46-07:49
They're sorry, they're sorry, I'm so sorry.
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No change.
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Do it again.
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I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, and they do it again.
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And we become jaded.
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That was an obstacle for me to overcome.
08:05-08:08
I did prison ministry for 10 years, every week.
08:09-08:21
Do you know how many people would come in and, "Yeah, I'm really sorry about what I've done." And I think they eventually, maybe Dale can help us, he's a CEO, but did they put that revolving door in the front because we had a lot of people that were sorry.
08:23-08:29
that no sooner made it to the sidewalk that they were doing the very thing that they were so sorry for.
08:30-08:31
Yeah, please stop saying that.
08:31-08:36
Okay, but you get jaded.
08:37-08:40
So the question is, how do you know when someone is really broken?
08:41-08:42
How do you know?
08:44-08:47
Well, some of you may still be on the run.
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I just want to encourage you, that can stop today.
08:51-08:52
Okay, that can stop today.
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There might be some people sitting here that have been like on the boat to Tarshish and trying to avoid something that God's wanting to work on you.
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That can end right now.
09:03-09:04
Isn't that great news?
09:05-09:06
That can end today.
09:07-09:08
And by God's grace it will.
09:12-09:13
You're heading for your broken point.
09:14-09:16
And things are going to get harder before they get easier.
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Just ask Jonah.
09:18-09:19
So how do we know?
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Well, jot these down. I'm going to go through these five ways that you know you've hit your broken point.
09:28-09:32
First of all, letter A, your circumstances are out of your control.
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Your circumstances are out of your control, and you realize that.
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Okay? Your circumstances are out of your control, and you realize that.
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Let's get to the text here. This is Jonah's prayer.
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"I called out to the Lord out of my distress, "and He answered me.
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"Out of the belly of Sheol, I cried, "and you heard my voice." What is Sheol?
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Well, understand the period of history where we live, we have the completed written revelation of the Word of God.
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And in Old Testament times, there was still a bit of mystery concerning what happened beyond the grave.
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It was thought of as being a dark, gloomy, mysterious place.
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And oftentimes your Bible will just call that Sheol.
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And it's our way of saying at the grave, okay?
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Kind of a gloomy concept.
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The mysterious realm of the dead.
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It's the grave.
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Okay?
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And then verse three, he says, "For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me.
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All your waves and your billows passed over me." We'll pause here.
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You've hit broken point when you realize your circumstances are out of your control.
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It has to get to this.
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It has to get to this.
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I don't have any human way out.
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I have nowhere to run.
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I have nothing to buy.
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There's no way that I can get out of this situation on my own.
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It's like financial collapse and there's no more credit.
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It's like a health crisis, but there's no cure.
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Every bridge is burned.
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Every option is exhausted.
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You don't have to raise your hands, but how many people here this morning would say, I feel like I'm in a hopeless situation." Well, sometimes in God's discipline, that's what He's trying to drive you to, and we're going to see why here in just a second.
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That was certainly Jonah's case.
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He said, "I was knocking on death's door.
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I was in the heart of the sea." And you can imagine, I don't know if anybody here has ever had a near-death experience with flooding, but you can imagine how scary that is to be out in the middle of a hurricane in the middle of the sea, where the waves keep crashing and you don't know which end is up and you can't catch your breath.
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But you've hit broken point when your circumstances are out of your control.
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"Secondly, letter B, you've hit broken point "when you got what you wanted, "then find out you don't really want it." I've thought a lot about this.
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This is a phenomenon that you're like, I'm not too sure about this one.
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Well, walk through this with me.
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You got what you wanted, then find out you don't really want it.
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This plays out in my life quite often, especially in the summer.
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We're playing outside with the kids.
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Just happened the other day, Erin came home.
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She's like, "Hey, you wanna go get ice cream?" I'm like, "Ice cream, ice cream, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go get ice cream." I thought that's what I really wanted.
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But then right after I eat the ice cream, it is throbbing headache.
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My stomach feels like somebody's wringing out a dish rag.
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It is asthma problems, it is allergy problems.
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I'm congested, I'm wheezing.
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And every time I'm just like, "Aaron, don't let me eat any more ice cream." But then it'll happen in a couple of weeks.
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"Oh, ice cream sounds good." You get exactly what you want, and then you realize that's not what I want at all.
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What do I mean by that?
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Well, back in chapter one, three times, we saw twice in verse three, Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord at the end of the verse.
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Away from the presence of the Lord, verse 10, the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord.
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So like, if Jonah was trying to make a point, Jonah was trying to get what?
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Away from the presence of the Lord, right?
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Isn't that clear?
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Well, look at verse four.
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He said, "Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall look upon your holy temple.'" Like, wait a minute, Jonah, isn't that what you wanted?
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Didn't you want to be driven away from the sight of God? Isn't that what you wanted?
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And then he realized as soon as he got it that maybe this isn't what I want.
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And sometimes God in His grace allows us in our rebellion to have the thing that we think we need, so we can experience the truth that it is not going to satisfy us.
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I'm going to say that again. I'm going to try to.
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Bear with me this morning. I was up all night. I got a crazy fever.
15:24-15:30
So I told Lippin if I collapse, I'm like, my sermon's in here, just pick it up where I left off.
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So that's why I'm not being too sociable today. I'm not gonna, you know, give many hugs or anything today.
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Don't take offense. I just don't want you to have the flu for Mother's Day, okay?
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What was I talking about?
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Oh yeah, sometimes when we persist in "I want this, I want this, I want this," So many times God says, "Okay, you can have it. You can have it." And then we realize as soon as we get it, "That's not what I wanted at all." You're like, "Can you back that up biblically?" Actually, I can.
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Numbers chapter 11.
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Remember the story of the whining nomads heading from Egypt to the promised land as Moses was leading the Israelites and the Egyptians who ended up coming with them.
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But in Numbers chapter 11, remember the account?
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"Oh, we wish we were back in Egypt because back in Egypt we had meat.
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And now we don't have anything but manna." "Oh, I just wish we had meat." Man, it was the perfect food that God provided, ultimately picturing Jesus Christ, the bread of life.
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But instead of being thankful for God's provision, they were crying they wanted meat.
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And God said, literally, "You want meat?
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"Consecrate yourselves.
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"I will give you meat until it comes out of your noses." That's what your Bible says.
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And he drove in quail.
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And the Bible says that while the meat was still between their teeth before they consumed it, God struck them dead.
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And the rest of the Israelites said, you know, man is sounding awfully good about now, right?
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Sometimes we get what we want and we find out it isn't really what we want.
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How about 2 Samuel 13?
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Such a sad and sick story, but David's son, Amnon, wanted a sexual relationship with his sister, Tamar.
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And he did this little, you know, I'm so sick, can you bring me food?
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And then he tried to get her to sleep with him.
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And she said, you can't do this.
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Well, she wouldn't do it willingly, so he raped her.
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And interestingly, verse 15, the very next verse, it says, "Then he hated her." He got exactly what he thought he wanted.
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He realized, "That's not what I want." Sad.
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Luke 15, the prodigal son, what did he want?
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"I want independence. Nobody tells me what to do." Okay. Let me know how that works out for you.
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He had his independence, he lived like a pig, and then he ended up rooming with them.
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And while he was with the pigs, he thought, you know, this isn't really what I wanted.
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Didn't turn out exactly how I thought it was going to.
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But just make a mental note.
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Some of you might be sitting here this morning going, yeah, that was me, that's totally me.
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But if it hasn't happened to you yet, or somebody that you know, make a note of that.
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So many times we want something, and then when we get it, we don't want it at all.
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I wanted that divorce, and now that I got it, why am I so miserable?
19:18-19:23
I spend lavishly on something I don't need, and now I hate to even look at it.
19:25-19:26
You know, I wanted that affair.
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I just wanted that sexual relationship with that woman, and now she just drives me insane.
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I can't stand to be around her.
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I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.
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Now I just wanna go back to work and let grandma raise the kids.
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And I wanted that promotion at work.
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And I worked so hard, that's all I thought about was the promotion and more money.
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And now I just wish I had my old job back.
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You'll see that over and over and over.
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The thing that we think we have to have.
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We realize that that does not satisfy.
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Actually, there's a saying that goes right along with this.
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It's something like, "Careful what you..." What?
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"Wish for," right? "Careful what you wish for, because you just might get it." And over and over and over, that's repeated.
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And if Jonah were here today, he would tell you the same thing.
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You know, "All I wanted was to be out of God's presence, and then when I felt like that had happened, panic button.
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Brokenness brings a disgust over the focal point of rebellion.
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How do you know somebody's broken?
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When the thing that they had to have in their rebellion now just completely disgusts them.
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I wanted that?
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I was daydreaming about that.
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I spent so much time and effort and energy thought into that, you'll know someone's broken when that disgusts them. Okay?
20:58-21:26
Letter C. How do you know when someone's broken? Crying out to God becomes your only option. Look at verses 5 through 7. He continues talking about this near-death experience. Some people believe that Jonah actually did die. I'm not there. But I think he's talking about a near-death experience.
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He says, "The waters closed in over me to take my life.
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The deep surrounded me.
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Weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.
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I went down to the land whose bars are closed upon me forever.
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Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
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"When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you in your holy temple." So you know someone's broken, you know maybe you're at the broken point, when not only your circumstance is impossible, but it leads you to your only option, which is crying out to God.
22:11-22:22
Again, he sort of keeps circling back to this feeling of distress, and then it says, "He remembered the Lord." And I don't think that means that Jonah was like, "Is there anybody else that I can call?
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Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Lord, I'll try Him." I think what that saying is, sort of like when that prodigal son remembered some things about his dad.
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I think that's what was going on with Jonah here.
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You know, I remember some things about God's character.
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I remember that God hears prayers.
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I remember that I can cry out to Him and He's going to hear me.
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And you need to get to that place where crying out is your only option.
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You know, I heard a preacher say one time, "Jesus Christ is all you need, but you'll never know it until He's all you got." And then when he's all that you got, you realize he's all that you need.
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By God's grace, he brings us to that place initially.
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By God's grace, he'll bring us back to that place when it's just Jesus.
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I just need Jesus.
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There's no plan B.
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There's no other option here. I'm not going to settle for anything else than the Lord Jesus Christ.
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So that's a clue that somebody's at broken point.
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Two more. Letter D, you learned a lesson that God was trying to teach you.
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You learned a lesson that God was trying to teach you.
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Look at verse 8. This could be the key verse in all of Jonah, where he says, This is what he's talking about.
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I went through this near-death experience, and I cried out to God, and here was his epiphany.
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Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
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Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
24:24-24:26
This is Jonah saying, "I get it now.
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I get it now." God's lessons are never FYI. Did you know that?
24:35-24:37
When God teaches us lessons, it's never...
24:37-24:39
Here's some interesting factoids for you.
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Just file this away. This might come in useful someday.
24:42-24:45
When God's teaching us a lesson, it's meant to change us.
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It's not just if I'm on Jeopardy and New Testament is one of the categories, I'm so going to nail it.
24:52-24:57
It's this is taking root in my life and it's changing me, this lesson that God's teaching me.
24:59-25:03
So what was the lesson? Here's a paraphrase.
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"People who refuse to come to God won't know the love of God." That's what he's saying.
25:08-25:12
If you refuse to come to God, you're not going to know God's love. That's pretty simple, isn't it?
25:14-25:16
People who refuse to come to God won't know the love of God.
25:17-25:22
Well, that's what Jonah learned, and that was the message he was supposed to take to Nineveh.
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And see, in our ministries, our ministries need to be the overflow of what God is doing in us.
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You know, Jonah here was saying, "I was lost, I was hopeless, I was helpless, I was doomed." But crying out to God turned everything around in an instant.
25:48-25:52
And then he thought, "You know what? That's exactly what Nineveh is facing.
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They're lost, they're hopeless, they're doomed.
25:57-26:03
But you know, if they would cry out to God, their situation too could turn around in an instant.
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Jonah had to learn the sermon so he could go preach it.
26:10-26:12
You have to let the lesson sink in.
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Not just head acknowledgement, not just lip service, but you have to let God's lesson sink in when He's trying to teach you something.
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And that's what we see here with Jonah. He's like, "I get it now." Aaron and I were thinking of an example of that in our own lives.
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You know, what was the time where we heard a lesson and we were like, "Yeah, I knew that." See, Jonah knew this lesson before. It wasn't like he learned that in the fish.
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It was in here. It just wasn't in here.
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So Aaron and I were talking, you know, was there a time that the Lord's done that in us?
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And the best example that we could think of, especially in watching our video about Harvest Bible Chapels, you know, when we were in the training center, over and over people would say this, "You know what? God provides what you need. God provides what you need.
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And you start with your core group and you're praying and you're meeting, God's going to provide what you need." We heard that so many times.
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And when we started to build the core group, people said, "Well, where's this stuff going to come from?" intellectually, we could say, "God's gonna provide what we need." There was a sense in which we knew that. But then when we got to launch and God provided every single thing that we needed, most of it in the span of a couple of days, we learned that lesson in a whole nother level. Does that make sense? So now, talking to people that are in the process of planting a Harvest Bible Chapel, I can tell them God's going to provide what you need in a much different way than I could have told them before the Lord took me through the lesson. You know, sometimes He does that with us. I'm gonna teach you something It's going to become embedded into your heart, and your ministry is going to be the overflow of that.
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One more, how do you know you've reached a broken point?
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Your passion for God returns.
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Look at verse 9, Jonah says, "But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay.
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Salvation belongs to the Lord. He like breaks into praise service here.
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Your passion for God returns.
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Remember, this wasn't Joe Schlub that was just sitting on the curb, that God was like, "Eeny, meeny, miny, do you want to go preach?" This was a prophet. This was someone whose life's calling was to proclaim the Word of God.
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Jonah was called, he loved the Lord, his whole life was about the Lord.
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And we get to this point, we see how far he got away from that.
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And now he snapped back to his senses.
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Like, "What am I doing? What am I doing?" What does it look like when someone has snapped back to their senses?
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Well, it's right there in the text.
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He says, first of all, "But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you." It's thankfulness. It's thankfulness.
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Thankfulness should be as natural to a Christian as breathing.
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I should never have to get up and preach a sermon, "Here's why you should be thankful.
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You should try really hard to be thankful. You either get it or you don't.
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You either understand what God's done for you in your life as a testimony of thanksgiving, or you didn't get it and you're not thankful.
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That's a sign when somebody's snapped back to their senses, "You know what, I have so much to be thankful for." Secondly, commitment.
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He says, "What I have vowed, I will pay." What's he talking about there? Is he talking about the ministry?
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I'm not sure, but it was a commitment.
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And then the reminder.
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This was the reminder, "Salvation belongs to the Lord." There are some people here that need that reminder.
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I want you to bow your heads. We're not going to pray yet. We're going to wrap this up.
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But I just want you to bow your heads and close your eyes, because I'm going to read something to you.
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Jonah needed this reminder, and I just really feel that there's some people in here that need this reminder.
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I want to read out of the New Testament a reminder that salvation belongs to the Lord.
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Because there are some people here who have, at least in their minds, maybe gotten away from that.
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And you've forgotten who you are in Jesus Christ.
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I want you to listen to this, Romans chapter 8, five unanswerable questions.
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I just want to read them.
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"What then shall we say to these things?
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If God is for us, who can be against us?" There's no answer to that question.
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This is your reminder.
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You're like, "Well, how do I know God's for me?" Well, verse 32, "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" If you're a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, God is on your side.
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Don't let any stinking thinking influence you into starting to believe that God is opposed to you.
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God is on your side. You need that reminder.
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He says, "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies." Sometimes the person that brings a charge against God's elect, sometimes it's ourselves.
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Self-condemning. Well, you're in that category too. You can't even bring a charge against yourself.
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Why? Because you've been pronounced not guilty.
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You can argue with God on that one.
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Who is to condemn?
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Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
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"Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?" As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long.
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We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." Suffering was nothing new to the people of God.
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He says, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
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For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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You can look up here.
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That's the end of Romans chapter eight.
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That's your reminder.
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That's your salvation belongs to the Lord moment, okay?
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We need to get back to that.
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Who am I in Christ?
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That's what's going to restore our passion for God.
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And as I close, God pursues his broken children with restoration.
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God pursues his broken children with restoration.
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So Jonah gets it.
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He's like, I learned the lesson, Thanksgiving commitment, salvation belongs to the Lord.
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I get it now.
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And the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land, which teaches us, write this down, you can't keep a good man down.
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Actually, we were planning the worship set last Tuesday and we're talking about what songs to sing.
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And Laura said, "We should sing from the inside out." I thought it was a great idea.
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God pursues his broken children with restoration.
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I look at chapter three, verses one and two, and you're going to see it's very familiar sounding.
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Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you." That's almost word for word what was said in chapter one, verses one and two.
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Exact same concepts.
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Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, call out against it for the evil scoundrel before me.
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Slight difference, but overall same message.
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Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.
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Oh, that's different.
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Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth.
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I love this.
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God didn't put Jonah on probation.
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He didn't suspend him.
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He didn't continue to discipline him.
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What did he do?
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He simply gave him a clean, fresh start.
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God's like, "Okay, you know what?
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"We're gonna try this again, all right?
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I want you to go to Nineveh and I want you to preach." Okay, on it, on it.
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He gave them a clean slate and a fresh start.
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And as we bow our heads to pray, again, there are some people here that not only needed that reminder, but there are some people here that needed that fresh start, that restoration.
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There's people in here saying, "You know, I need restoration while I got good news for you." Christ has already provided that. Do you understand that?
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If you've been one who's been rebelling, who's been on the run, and you've come to this point this morning where you're saying, "You know, I need restoration." He already provided that. It's already done.
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You are restored, even if you don't feel like it.
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And you know, you're one prayer away, I would say, from feeling like it.
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It's already done. The work is done. The work was done in Christ.
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Today can be the day that you say, "You know, I'm done running. I get it now.
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I've learned the lessons that He's taught me."
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Jonah 2
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.