We've all been hurt.
We all have scars.
And through our relationship with Jesus Christ, we can all overcome and we can all be healed.
Welcome to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
Hey everybody and welcome back to the Sanctuary.
So just a quick reminder, you can learn more about us and our ministry at BeTheLightSanctuary.org.
And if it's on your heart to give, even if it's just to the podcast, you can do so either
on the website or if you go to BuyMeACoffee.com slash Healing Scars.
Now with that said, we're going to be spending some time in Jonah.
As a matter of fact, we're going to spend at least two weeks going through this book.
It is another one of the short books of the Bible.
However, it's not going to feel that way because it's very rich in what it has for us.
Jonah, the son of Amittai, he wrote this book around 785 to 760 BC.
Now keep in mind, this is BC so those numbers get smaller as we start counting down.
Now this book itself, it was addressed at the time to the people of Israel and it was
written as a message of salvation for all people, everyone, and to show the extent of
God's grace.
This book, however, it is different from other prophetic books because instead of focusing
on the prophet's prophecies, it focuses on the prophet himself.
Now we know sin runs rampant.
It's a part of daily life.
There are definitely times when it seems like it's just getting worse.
The news, social media, it's everywhere.
You don't have to go far.
Even if you don't want to look at your cell phone, just go sit somewhere and watch people
for a little while and you'll see something soon enough.
It won't take long.
It was no different back in Jonah's day.
In fact, one of Israel's greatest enemies was Assyria.
Now Assyria was an empire that was so evil that they actually took pride in flexing their
power to taunt God and the rest of the world.
So as we see, when God told Jonah to go and tell them it was time for a change, that they
needed to repent, Jonah was like, nope, that's my cue to leave.
Exit stays left.
He didn't about face forward march and tried to run as far away from them as he could possibly
get.
But the bottom line at the end of the day is that when God wants to use you for something,
it is going to happen one way or another.
Now for those of you who follow along in your Bibles or those of you taking notes, we're
going to be specifically looking at Jonah chapter one today.
So join me now, Jonah chapter one, and we're going to go to the very beginning and we're
going to start with verses one through three.
So Jonah one, verses one through three, the Bible says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah,
son of Amittai.
Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come
up before me.
But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to Tarshish.
He went down to Joppa where he found his ship bound for that port.
After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
All right.
So he's been told, hey, you're going to go to Nineveh there in Assyria and you're going
to tell them, hey, you guys need to stop.
Enough is enough and it's time for a change.
And Jonah was like, nope, bye bye.
And for those of you who are keeping tab, this is not the first time Jonah has been
mentioned as a prophet.
If you go back to second Kings, you'll find that he prophesied during the renaissance
of Boam the second, who was the king of Israel from about 793 to 753 BC.
He's also mentioned in the books of Matthew and Luke.
So he's not new to the game.
He is a seasoned vet, if you would.
So God told Jonah to go to Nineveh.
Why Nineveh?
Well, because it was the most important city in Assyria at that time.
As a matter of fact, it would later become the capital city.
Now Jonah doesn't say very much about how messed up Assyria was at that time.
And I'd eventually chalk it up to the whole, if you can't say anything nice, then don't
say anything at all.
However, it wasn't a nice place.
If we look at the book of Neum in chapters 1 through 3, we can see that Nineveh was most
definitely spiraling down the drain.
You see, they plotted against God.
They exploited helpless people.
When it came to conflict, they were extremely cruel and they were deeply rooted and involved
in things like idolatry, prostitution, and witchcraft.
Needless to say, they had a lot of strikes going against them.
And Jonah was told to go and warn them that they were going to be judged by God unless
they repented of their evil ways and made a change.
Now, Jonah, he was a lot like all Israelites at that time.
He'd grown up knowing how twisted the Assyrians were and he hated them for it.
He hated them.
His hate was so deep, it ran so deep that he didn't believe for a second that God should
show them mercy at all.
Now, he didn't doubt that God could, nor did he doubt that God would.
He only doubted the simple fact that he should.
And a lot of us are like that today.
We're abused and we're hurt by someone so badly that it shakes us to our very core.
And we allow our hate and our discontent to well up so much that we find ourselves sinning
simply by not forgetting them.
After all, Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32, the Bible tells us, and be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
Now, this doesn't mean that we should stay in toxic or bad situations.
We shouldn't.
However, we need to remember that forgiving people is just as much about you and just
as much about me, all of us, if not more than the offender.
So instead, here we are and we stand ready to pass judgment on others, not stopping to
take the plank from our own eyes as the Bible tells us we should.
Jonah's attitude was exactly the same.
He was afraid that if he did go and do what he was supposed to, that people would repent
and they would receive God's mercy.
And this was an attitude that mirrored that of the Israelites and how they felt, which
in turn created this hesitance, this reluctance in sharing.
Matter of fact, I should just say outright refusal to share God's love with others.
But I'll remind you that sharing God's love has been a part of the mission since the very
beginning.
Matter of fact, the Israelites were even told back in Genesis chapter 12 verse 3, however,
they didn't want to share with any of the Gentiles because they believed they were the
only ones who could receive it.
So they didn't want to waste their time, they didn't want to waste their energy in trying
to explain to the Gentiles something that they felt they wouldn't understand and couldn't
receive in the first place.
Now Jonah knew that God wanted him to do something very specific, but he didn't want to do it.
Instead, knowing what he did of Assyria, he decided to do that about face, forward march
and head in that opposite direction.
And we all do this at various times in our lives.
We know what we should do, but we're stubborn, fearful, prideful, doubtful and just downright
pig headed.
We run instead of doing what we're supposed to.
A reminder, we've all fallen short of the glory of God.
But as we're about to see, when it comes to your obligations to God, you can't run from
them, you can't shrug them off.
And if you try, you're going to have to pay the piper.
And as we'll learn going through this book, it's better to just do what God asks of us
to begin with.
So let's pick the read back up.
Verses 4 through 8, the Bible says,
Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship
threatened to break up.
All the sailors were afraid and cried out to his own God.
And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
The captain went to him and said, How can you sleep?
Get up and call on your God.
Maybe he will take notice of us so we will not perish.
Then the sailors said to each other, Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible
for this calamity.
They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
So they asked him, Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?
What kind of work do you do?
Where do you come from?
What is your country?
From what people are you?
Uh oh.
Jonah done messed up.
Look at this.
This is a violent storm.
Violent storm.
So much so that the sailors were afraid that they were going to go down.
This ship is going to sink like the Titanic.
They were all crying out to their own idols in an effort to try to make the ship wider.
They were throwing stuff overboard, which is probably also a good indicator that they
were taking on water.
And what did Jonah do?
Ah, time for a nap.
Bye bye.
See God was already warning him that he better get his head on straight and get to work.
Again, Jonah shrugged it off, went below and decided to take a nap, even though the ship
was in for some chop.
Now saying that, some people might think that he didn't have a guilty conscience, that he
felt like he was right, he was justified.
Let me tell you something.
Feeling guilty or not is not always the best litmus test in life, because we can deny the
Lord and we can deny the reality that is in front of us at any time.
And we see it all the time.
People do it constantly.
See it doesn't matter what we feel when we aren't comparing what we're doing with what
God's standards are for us.
It's the whole argument.
Oh, I was born this way.
God made me like this.
No.
He did not.
That is the impact of sin in our world and our lives.
We all have things we feel we're predisposed to.
Sure, yet it's on us to recognize the bad for bad, the sin for sin, and not fall into
those traps.
We have to choose God and we have to choose His way.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
You can hurt others not only through action, but your inaction.
And that, that is exactly what Jonah had done to the crew of this ship and to the Ninevites
he refused to go warm as God had told him to.
We need to understand something here.
We need to understand that as Christians, as followers of Jesus, we have a great obligation,
a great responsibility to be obedient to God.
Our actions have consequences and we can put others into jeopardy because of it.
The whole, what is it, Spider-Man, what does it say, with great power comes great responsibility.
Guess what?
That's what this is.
Like I said, this storm, this storm was so intense that this veteran crew knew something
was wrong and they were taking actions to mitigate it.
Now I'd like to point out here, the crew cast lots to figure out who was at fault for
this issue.
They used a pagan superstition, they were gambling, they were throwing the dice.
Let's see what Chance has to say.
Remember we just talked about this.
Remember these were pagans, not Christians.
And the only reason why it worked was because God wanted it to.
God used it to intervene.
God did that.
God was in control.
God's always in control.
But God was using this as another tool to tell Jonah that running away wasn't an option.
When things are good, it is so easy for us to stand tall, you know, sucking that gut,
chest out, chin up.
But remaining there gets a whole lot harder when things get tough.
And people in general tend to turn the other way.
People prefer the path of least resistance.
That's the way of the world.
That's human nature.
How can I do the least amount possible and still get paid that top dollar?
But it isn't the right way and it's not the Lord's way.
When we're called to work, it's time to work.
As my grandpa used to tell us all the time, and this is good advice to write down, there's
nothing so important that you can't take the time to do it right.
I can still hear his voice in the back of my head saying that.
Now let's go back in the scripture.
We're going to be looking here now at verses 9 through 12.
And the Bible says, he answered, I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven.
Who made the sea and the dry land.
This terrified them.
And they asked, what have you done?
They knew he was running away from the Lord because he had already told them so.
The sea was getting rougher and rougher.
So they asked him, what should we do to you to make the sea come down for us?
Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm.
I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.
Jonah knew he was sinning by disobeying God.
He knew he was sinning by trying to run from his obligation.
He knew that the storm was his fault.
No matter how hard we try, we cannot look for God's love and God's mercy and God's
grace and try to run from him at the same time.
It's schoolyard shenanigans.
It's like the little girl who likes the boy, so she runs up and she hits him to get his
attention and then runs the opposite way.
See, you're either following God or you're running from him, but you can't do both.
Jonah, he was finally starting to realize that no matter how hard he tried, he wasn't
going to outrun God.
And neither can we.
God's here with us 24-7.
He's always with us.
If you want his love and you want his mercy and you want his grace, you need to do what
he has told you to do, whether you like it or not.
He's given us all tasks that need to be done.
Now don't twist this up.
Don't get it wrong.
I am not saying that works will get you into heaven.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
We already know Jesus is the gateway that we go through.
Jesus is the only way to get there.
However, each of us has been put here for a reason and we need to do what God tells
us to when he tells us to.
You can't say that you're a follower of Christ when you don't do what he says.
First John, verses 3-6, the Bible says, we know that we have come to know him if we keep
his commands.
Whoever says I know him but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth is not
in that person.
But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them.
This is how we know we are in him.
Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
So Jonah was fully aware, he knew that he was being a practical son at this point and
he needed to return to the Father.
His struggle was with the fact that his mind was poisoned.
It was poisoned by his hate for the Assyrians and it was poisoned by the fact that God still
loved them.
It's like really?
Why?
Look at them, they're jerks.
Look what they do to us, look what they do to everybody.
They're horrible, they even taunt you.
See his view was distorted from what it should be.
And it's so, so easy for all of us to fall into these traps because hate and anger and
sin they're all consuming.
They're a virus in our lives.
And ultimately Jonah finally realized that he had endangered this crew.
He was convicted of his sin and he wanted to save them.
But this is how distorted the lens he was using was.
He felt that it was better to sacrifice himself in order to save this pagan crew of sailors
than it was to lift a finger to help the Ninevites.
It was a lesser evil to him.
So he was starting to come around to the right way and the right thing and the right way
of thinking but he wasn't there just yet.
Have you ever noticed it's the same way for us?
People are more than happy to donate various good to churches and charities for things
like homelessness.
This is a great example.
But if a homeless person approaches them suddenly that person is being treated like they had
the plague.
Like whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
Back up.
Nope.
Go away.
Rolling that window up.
I've even heard another pastor say, and I hate to say this, but I've even heard another
pastor say, why should I give them my hard earned money?
They could get a job like anyone else.
Say, dude, you're missing big parts of the word in your life if that's the way you're
thinking.
Big parts.
That itself is a sermon for another day because that itself is a full sermon.
I'll tell you what.
I could probably make a series out of it.
Rabbit trails.
Okay.
So now let's take a look real quick.
Ephesians chapter 4 verses 17 and 18.
The Bible says, so I tell you this and insist on it in the lore that you must no longer
live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking.
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of
the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
You see, as part of the human condition, we like to think that we always know what's
best, even when it comes to God.
Instead of actually putting Him first and listening to Him.
Things like human pride and excuses, they pull us away from Him.
They really tend to rip us away from His grip.
Those are times we can't blame Satan because we're doing the work for Him.
We are our own worst enemy.
And instead of listening to God, we let that poison sink in, that poison the world, and
we let it corrupt us.
And our understanding starts to darken just as our hearts start to harden.
Make no mistake about it.
There is a war on for our hearts and our minds.
And we need to be vigilant to ensure that they don't fall to the enemy.
Going back into Jonah, again, we're still in chapter one, so now we're at verses 13
through 16.
So Jonah 1, verses 13 through 16, the Bible says, instead, the men did their best to row
back to the land, but they could not.
For the sea grew even wilder than before.
Then they cried out to the Lord, Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man's life.
Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man for you, Lord.
Have done as you pleased.
Then they took Jonah, and they threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.
At this, the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and
made vows to him.
Wow.
So the sailors, even after hearing Jonah's confession and hearing what he had to say,
they still did their very, very best to try to save him.
It's pretty heroic, isn't it?
They showed more love for their fellow man than Jonah did.
Remember, Jonah turned his back on the Ninevites.
And for believers, this is downright embarrassing, and it should be.
Here non-believers, pagans, are showing more care, more love, more generosity for their
fellow man than the believer.
They're loving their neighbor when the believer is not.
We have to remember, God wants us to care for everyone.
It doesn't matter if they're saved.
It doesn't matter if they're lost.
God wants us to care for everyone.
E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E.
Everyone.
Remember, what many people know and see in you is all they may ever know of God.
So you need to ask yourself, are you being a good ambassador?
Be honest with yourself.
Are you being a good ambassador?
See, especially today, being a Christian is an awful lot like being in law enforcement
in the sense that everyone is watching you.
They're paying attention to what you do.
They're paying attention to what you say all the time.
It's like being in a big fish tank.
People love to stop and see what's going on in a fish tank.
And people always want to know what's going on with those Christians.
So here we are.
We're in the middle of the storm, and Jonah's finally getting his head on right.
And things are starting to realign, and they're starting to come into focus for him.
It was time for him to come to a complete halt.
Just stop right where he was and submit to God.
He knew it was time to pay the piper.
The tab was due, and he was ready to finally make payment.
So he told these sailors what needed to happen.
And what happened next is absolutely amazing.
Because it wasn't just a matter of dotting the I's, crossing the T's, hitting the check
marks, going down this to-do list to save themselves.
What we see here is lives were changed.
Lives were changed.
They were saved.
God took something that was really bad, and he used it to reach others.
What we see here is that after talking to Jonah, the crew began to worship God.
And as they followed through on the instructions that Jonah had given them, they saw God's
power.
They saw God's power as the sea suddenly became quiet.
Came to a halt, chilled, right?
Isn't that amazing?
These sailors were doing what Jonah and the entire nation of Israel, for that matter,
refused to do.
They prayed to God.
They vowed to serve him.
This is proof that God can take anything and use it to reach others.
He can use all of us as a tool.
And Jonah had made a mistake, and we all make mistakes.
And admitting it when it happens can be hard.
Sometimes it can be downright painful.
However, admitting our mistakes, admitting our sins, is also a very powerful example
and a testament, for that matter, of our faith for others, especially nonbelievers to see.
Remember, we're all a light on a hill.
At the end of it all, try as we might, none of us can outrun God.
He's always with us.
Throughout the Bible, we've even seen people try.
Even Moses tried.
However, when God wants us to do something, we're going to do it.
We can either submit and do it the easy way, or, much like Jonah, he can do it the hard
way.
See, God will often call on us to get out of our comfort zones to go and do something.
In fact, just like he did, as you recall, with the Jews back in the book of Haggai,
things like letting go of fear, letting go of doubt, letting go of hate, letting go,
just letting go, is the hardest part.
However, you cannot take a leap of faith without trusting in the Lord completely and letting
go.
You need to remember, he loves you entirely too much to let you fall.
He's not just going to catch you, he's going to hold you.
And because he won't let you fall, and because he's going to hold onto you, he is going to
use you to do tremendous things, just like we've started to see him do here with Jonah.
Remember, you matter and you are loved.
Thank you for tuning in to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
If you would like to know more about our ministry or how you can support us, you can find us
on Facebook at Be The Light Sanctuary or you can go to our website at BeTheLightSanctuary.org.
Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you next time.
God bless.