Thanks for listening to Foundry Cast. This sermon is from our series, Whopper, living a big life in the book of Jonah. Foundry meets every Sunday at 10 a.m. at Starlington High School.
We would love to see you there. Last month, we have been talking about the book of Jonah. And Jonah has been a lot of fun. I've had a lot of fun with Jonah.
I've had a lot of great conversations with y'all about Jonah. We've laughed about some things. We've realized some places in this story that we're really super familiar with and then some places of the story that we're not been familiar with. We've realized there are parts of Jonah that fit in great with children's books and children's stories.
Last week, we found out that the kids back in Foundry Kids through a cartoon convinced my wife that Jonah didn't get thrown up out of the whale's mouth. He was actually shot out of the spout. And so we had a conversation about the physics of that. I would not be able to fit through a whale's spout.
So, okay. But we've also researched that there's parts of Jonah that are kind of gnarly. And so if Jonah, so four chapters in the book, if Jonah was, if you're gonna run a mile around the track here at the high school, every lap's a quarter of a mile, four laps, if Jonah was a foot race, this is what Jonah would look like. The first lap, Jonah gets confused and goes backwards for a full lap.
And we all see this. Everybody in the stands instantly realizes that this guy's going the wrong direction. When it comes time for the second lap, surprisingly, he managed to get back on track. Like, wow, this guy's actually pulling this off a little bit.
The third lap comes around and we start to think, you know, not only is he not losing terribly, he's gaining ground and we actually think he might win this thing. So here we are today, the last chapter of Jonah. He's hitting that fourth lap. We left him last week where he's out in front winning and by now we're probably standing up really excited, cheering for Jonah, thinking, man, we're about to see the greatest upset in history.
A great story of a do-over of people realizing their mistakes and changing things around. And what we're gonna find out is that Jonah just completely train wrecks the whole thing. Like we thought it was bad when he was going backwards. We would welcome running backwards right now.
And so today we're gonna talk about this, this fourth lap. All of Jonah has been about living a big life. And today's lesson we find in chapter four is about us realizing how big God's world actually is on us learning to not make fourth lap mistakes like Jonah did. So let's open scriptures up.
If you have your Bible, you can read it and your Bible if you don't, you can read it on the screen behind me. If you wanna use your Bible app and you're fun, you're more than welcome to. Just make sure you check on Facebook first. If you're gonna be on Facebook.
But let's jump into this. We're gonna do this in sections today. We don't normally do that. But today we're just gonna do that in sections.
We're gonna look at these mistakes and then we're gonna come back and see what lessons that we can learn from these mistakes. So we don't do the same thing. So start off Jonah, chapter four, verses one through three, we leave Jonah having gone to Nineveh, the great city, the mortal enemies. And he goes in and preaches a message of repentance and the entire city of Nineveh from the king to the lowest person and all the animals puts himself into a posture of repentance before God.
This is where we find Jonah. So this change of playing is greatly upset Jonah. He became very angry. So he complained to the Lord about it.
Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this Lord? This is why I ran away to Tarshish. I know that you are merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You're eager to turn back from destroying people.
So just kill me now. Lord I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen. Okay, so if you're catching a little bit of sarcasm and Jonah's voice right here, that's exactly what's going on. Like Jonah is like falling back into like some of the strongest words that we see all throughout the scripture, all throughout the Old Testament, the Psalms.
You're full of unfailing love and faithful. It's like, these are things that you typically praise God with. Like the last song we sang, sang greater, you go like, those are statements that fit inside of songs like that. And here's Jonah being sarcastic and whining.
We found out his whole issue along, see Jonah was a good prophet, he had a reputation to protect. He was famous for prophesying that the boundaries of God's people would increase. So he runs away, so we find out he ran away, not because he was scared, but he ran away because he's like, I knew you were gonna do this and this is gonna make me look bad. Because nobody expects the prophet to show up and preach a message of repentance that's absolute worst people on the earth and expect them to repent.
And this is gonna make me look bad. Hey, can you imagine that? And they get sarcastic and throwing things back at God. That's what he's doing.
This is scary. This is putting ourselves in places that we really don't want to be and it doesn't turn out right. When it's like this, Jonah's pretty much saying, people are not going to believe this actually happened. What they're gonna believe is that I'm bad at my job.
And you being so good and loving and kind, you're making me look bad at my job. That's scary. What Jonah's pretty much coming out and saying, and I said, all this book's been about this big world, this idea of big, it shows up all throughout the book of Jonah. It's the greatest frequency of this concept of immensity in the entire Old Testament.
And what we find out is that Jonah's vision of the world is about this big, whereas God's vision for the world is about this big. Jonah is tying to get a lot of the idea of how things work. Just does not think that this is right. Does not think this is the way that it should work out.
What we're learning today in this chapter is that God's count is bigger than our count. God's count's bigger than our count. The next part of Jonah, chapter four, is this four through nine. The Lord replied, is it right for you to be angry about this?
Then Jonah went out to the east side of the city. He made a shelter to sit under, he waited to see what would happen to the city. I'm gonna go throw a fit, I'm gonna go sit outside, I'm gonna watch you do this. And the Lord got arranged for a leafy plant to grow there and soon spread its broad leaves over Jonah's head, shading him from the sun.
This eases his comfort and Jonah was very grateful for the plant, but God also arranged for a worm. The next morning at dawn, the worm ate through the stem of the plant so it withered away. And as the sun grew hot, God arranged for scorching east wind to blow on Jonah. And the sun beat down his head until he grew faint and wished to die.
Death is certainly better than living like this he explained. And God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry because the plant died? This is section, God asking Jonah this question, is it right for you to be angry? In the middle we find that Jonah escapes, he still doesn't believe God's gonna do this.
And God takes care of him. And then God doesn't take care of him. And we see Jonah's anger just grow and grow and grow. Three times has got arranged for something.
This is actually the same word we read in chapter one, it's got arranged for the fish. And this isn't God like playing or toying with Jonah. This thing that we find in a handful of places in the Old Testament, in the book of Daniel we also see about this. This is God ordering the world, appointing the world to react to human behavior and human decision making.
This whole plant and worm business is God showing Jonah, same thing as the fish, it's him saying redemption happens by my hand and in my way I control this, I create this, I cause this to happen. That your words do not make this earth turn. This is by my hand and it happens in the way that I think it should happen. Because God's count's bigger than our count.
It works differently and it works out of love, nothing else. A very last bit of Jonah, the very last section of this entire book in this story, verse 10 and 11. And the Lord said, you feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and it died quickly.
But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city? What we find in Jonah, this is the greatest missionary book in the Old Testament. Think about this, the story of God going, not only not to his people, but to the exact opposite of his people and revealing himself to them and having them respond almost instantly in repentance.
We talked about that last week. Jonah, if Jonah was so concerned about his reputation of a good prophet, he should love this. He should be happy about this. He's coming over and I made the Ninevites repent.
It was through my life and my ministry and my prophecy and all the things I'm doing. I made the Ninevites repent. Nobody could have imagined that happening. This is the greatest story ever told.
But instead we see Jonah being tremendously selfish. His pity party, his fit he is throwing started off with the prophecy and these people being forgiven and it ended with him being mad about this plant God gave him. We just see selfishness to the absolute core. What God's telling him here is, man you care more about yourself than all of these people.
Like the animals get mentioned here and in chapters three that's kind of weird. No other place in scripture do we find like missionary activity among animals. The author of this book is trying to show us that this is like wholesale redemption from the greatest to the least in every single shape and form and way in the city. Every single part of none of it, even their livestock is coming to awareness of who God is.
This is big, big stuff. It's God's in Jonah. They know me now and they are under my care. They belong to me now and Jonah just could not seem to understand this.
And this is where the story of Jonah, it ends. Because Jonah's count was significantly smaller than God's count. His world was a lot smaller than God's world. So we see this train wreck of the final lap.
We think what are the lessons that we can learn about this? What are the lessons that we can learn from ourselves and this? Let's be honest to each other. This kind of ends crummy doesn't it?
It's not tied up nice and a bow. How many of y'all get really mad at when the television show you love ends really badly? I've intended to rewatch lost for the last five years. People always talk me out.
You know what's going to happen? Come on, Chad. We don't like it when stories don't end well. And this one does not end well.
If you're a music person, it's still sitting on a minor seventh. It never resolves itself. But what it resolves itself with is we see at the end is God's love. And God's count.
And God's count's bigger than our count. So three lessons we can learn about this fourth lap. That we can bring into our lives as individuals. And then we can bring into our life as a church.
The first lesson from Jonah 4, 1, 2, 3, at the very beginning where we see Jonah's fit he throws. This is about being seriously stretched. It's like stretch Armstrong. Remember that?
It's not about not being the jerk that lets go of that one side and hit your little brother in the faceless. So good. OK. Let me ask you a question.
This is what Jonah's throwing a fit here. And Jonah is just going crazy. We're going to talk more about that in a second. Why is that?
Because Jonah's being unsorted. OK? Jonah's framework for how the world works has been broken apart in front of him. The way that he thinks should happen.
He thinks things should happen or not happen that way. He's being unsorted. We have to ask ourselves that question. Where has God unsorted us?
Because if he's never had to unsort you before, I want to challenge you that you might not be listening to him enough. Because none of us are perfect. None of us are good enough to where God doesn't have to come and unsort us every now and then. We have to be prepared and have the level of faith and we know what unsorting looks like and feels like.
And it's not going to be easy. We're going to be mad at him. It's going to be tough. But it's us being able to say, hey, I'm going to be stretched because I believe that your world's bigger than my world.
That's the first mistake that Jonah just did not understand. Is it he wanted to live in this little world, he wanted God to be with him. And this little world and God's world is not that little. God's world is I'm six foot tall on a good day.
And that's about my wingspan right now. God's world is this big. As far as I can stretch it, as far as I can comprehend it. It's beyond those boundaries.
We live in a little world of our own creation. Unsorting is not going to go very well for us. That our world has to get stretched out. We have to be stretched out.
Because here's the thing. I read this this this week. It makes so much sense. We're often more angry at the sins and other people's lives than we are at the sin in our own life.
It's easy for us to say other people are doing something wrong. It's very, very tough for us to see that we are doing something wrong. It's that whole unsorting business. If we're living in a small world, we're living in a small world of our own creation.
Because we've not opened ourselves up to that stretching yet. Not prepare ourselves to that stretching. Not have asked for that stretching. And Jonah was absolutely unaware of the sin in his own life.
And absolutely unaware of the fact that he had God living in a very small world. Let him be thinking that God has a small count. It's not a big count. The second lesson we can learn, this is possibly the biggest one.
But ask the question, how has God invaded your emotions? We see Jonah's pity party. They just go from selfish to even more selfish. God asking that question, why are you so angry right now?
Let's think about that. Especially in God's, we're going to talk about this. Because this is some place that we're really, really bad at. This level of angry here, this word that's used in scripture, this is actually talking about a physical reaction of angry.
It means for your nostril stuff flare. How many of you have a look at everybody that's close to you knows when you were mad? You get that crazy eye a little bit? Is anybody else in here a thrower?
Meredith, I'm sorry though. The middle in Stan's confession moment. The house by the bed, if you turn mine around, there's a big dent in it from a throwing up about a month and a half ago. Anger is bad.
When God's telling Jonah here, he said, why are you allowing yourself to be so angry? This is a specific kind of anger. This is the anger that we read about in Genesis when Cain and Abel get into their fight. It's an anger that leads to evil, very specific, very deliberate.
Jonah's countenance, his look is changing and God is asking him. He's saying, why are you allowing yourself to get so angry? What he's actually saying is, why are you allowing evilness to come into your life right now? You're being stretched, you're being challenged, you're not happy about this.
So what you're letting happen is you're willfully taking me out of your life and willfully allowing evil to enter in because of how mad you are about this. Paul tells us in your anger, do not sin. Jonah is sinning right now. Bad.
He's saying, I don't want your Holy Spirit in my life or around me right now. I want to let my own emotions control things. We have to ask ourselves that question. How's God invaded your emotions?
This is the anger that this departure leads us away from every single thing that involves a full life. It's harmful to our soul. And we're being stretched. We're being challenged.
And we're frustrated. And we're angry. We're allowing God's emotion of love. And God's count.
And God's big world to rule our life. Are we allowing evil to come into our hearts and for us to act out in an evilness, to act out into things opposite from God in his world? It's a big thing. Something, this hits me to the bone right here.
It's like when I can tell I need to take blood pressure medicine. We're allowing evil to enter into our lives. God arranged for this plant, arrange for this worm, arrange for all throughout Jonah. We see these God arranging for these elements of nature to come in and offer redemption.
We see this whole human choices that's been a recurring theme all throughout Jonah, that our own choices have the ability to keep us into this small world. So our emotions, when we are frustrated or questioned or angry or something like that, are our emotions speaking of God and his big world? Or are our emotions speak of this little world of our own creation, where we're not even big enough for. The last lesson we can learn from Jonah, this fourth lap, is this.
It's where are we willing to say yes in life? Jonah was not willing to say yes to hardly anything. It was about him. It was about what he was doing, about what he thought he should be doing.
And then ultimately with Nineveh, he was so frustrated that he wanted the Ninevites to be outside of the boundaries of God's love. Think about that. He was willing for this entire city to be outside the boundaries of God's love. But that's not that big of a stretch.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Each of us have done that exact same thing. And typically it's highly more personalized than Jonah in this the city of tremendous evil. That we get into places where we want to confine the boundaries of what does it mean to belong to God and say, who can or who can't.
There's a tension to that. Because sometimes what people's reaction to that answer is to say, well, there's nobody outside the boundaries of God's love. Everything's OK. Don't worry about it.
Everyone can come in. There's no big deal here. That's called universalism. 2000 years, the church has not taught universalism.
The tension point is how do you define what does it mean to be a Christian? Even more tough, how do you define what does it mean to not be? A Christian is very tough and washed up here. We're 93% of people self-described themselves as Christian.
How do you define what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and realize that there are a boundary to that. But then the tension point that we hold is how does it mean for us to realize that people need to be inside of this and not outside of this. We cannot weaponize discipleship and use it to hold against, but to realize that there are people who genuinely do not know Jesus and our strongest as our should be for them to know Jesus, to not put a boundary on that. And that's a tough thing.
And Jonah was absolutely unwilling to do that, to an entire region of people. Does our compassion align more with our own individual needs? Or does our compassion align with the long term goals and vision of Jesus Kingdom? Jonah wanted the compassion of Jesus to align with his needs, and his needs first and his need on them.
This is tough stuff, this is big stuff. This is mature stuff in this fourth lap. These lessons that we learned, the lessons of a big world, of God's count being significantly larger than our count. The boundary, our vision is, Jesus is big enough.
We say Jesus is big enough. We put it on every single thing. You can put Jesus is big enough on. I wish we could do some sunglasses.
It doesn't fit on sunglasses very well. But something we said a long time ago that Jesus is big enough and a lot more important than a plastic cup. There's times we say Jesus is big enough. And times are really, really rough.
We say Jesus is big enough. We lean heavy on that statement. And times are good, we say that, hopefully. I'm conscious, when everything's just kind of cruddy, all we say is there's two things we can rely on.
Jesus is big enough and barbecue's good. I'll fall back on that statement all the time. But there's a dark side to Jesus is big enough. Because when we start asking to be stretched, when we start living in faithfulness of Jesus being big enough, what we're going to find out is we'll find ourselves in more situations where we have to lean hard on that statement.
And we've got to be prepared for that. We've got to have a willingness to be taken to new places. Some of you might not have needed that idea yet. Some of us are still in that plastic cup.
But the time's going to come and we're going to need that. And the time's going to come again after that. We're going to need that. When we start looking deep into faithfulness, deep into God's count and God's big world, we're going to find out how our own world is too small.
We either stretch it or we can implode on top of itself. Jonah allowed it to implode. And I don't want that for you. Implosion is never a good thing.
So we pray Jesus to help us turn to people that live into your world and not our world. Help us to see how you count. To see who you count. To see where you are.
To see where you want us to be. Help us to find those places in our hearts that we are holding back. These places in our lives, we still want to believe in a small world because we're just not going to fall enough with you taking us there yet. Help us to see the places where we can stretch really easy.
Help us to see the places that we just want to fight that stretch. Help us know how to trust and help us know how to count. And not to count like ourselves, but to count like you. Help us to have a completely different fourth laugh in our lives than Jonah.
Thank you for your count always beginning and ending with grace. Mission Pray.