sermon – Page 33 – jeffersonvann

JONAH’S ANGRY PRAYER

JONAH’S ANGRY PRAYER

Jonah 4:1-11 NET

1 This displeased Jonah terribly and he became very angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, “Oh, LORD, this is just what I thought would happen when I was in my own country. This is what I tried to prevent by attempting to escape to Tarshish! — because I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment. 3 So now, LORD, kill me instead, because I would rather die than live!” 4 The LORD said, “Are you really so very angry?” 5 Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. He made a shelter for himself there and sat down under it in the shade to see what would happen to the city. 6 The LORD God appointed a little plant and caused it to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to rescue him from his misery. Now Jonah was very delighted about the little plant. 7 So God sent a worm at dawn the next day, and it attacked the little plant so that it dried up. 8 When the sun began to shine, God sent a hot east wind. So the sun beat down on Jonah’s head, and he grew faint. So he despaired of life, and said, “I would rather die than live!” 9 God said to Jonah, “Are you really so very angry about the little plant?” And he said, “I am as angry as I could possibly be!” 10 The LORD said, “You were upset about this little plant, something for which you have not worked nor did you do anything to make it grow. It grew up overnight and died the next day. 11 Should I not be even more concerned about Nineveh, this enormous city? There are more than one hundred twenty thousand people in it who do not know right from wrong, as well as many animals!”

We have been taking a look at the Old Testament book of Jonah this month. In most of the Old Testament, the Prophets of God are the ones his people should be patterning themselves after. But Jonah is the odd person out in that regard. All through the book, we learn that Jonah is charged to obey God’s plan, but he tries to follow Jonah’s plan. God’s plan was to go to Nineveh and preach. Jonah’s plan was to go as far away from Nineveh as he could possibly go. Thus, the storm, the frightened sailors, the toss overboard, almost dying in the belly of Sheol, and a rescue – and some time to evaluate things in the stomach of a fish.

When Jonah finally agreed to obey God’s plan to go to Nineveh — he adapted his plan. He got burped up on the beach. He went to Nineveh and he preached there. But his purpose was still not God’s purpose. God’s plan was to save the Ninevites. Jonah’s plan was to condemn them, and to have a front-row seat at their execution. Once again, God intervenes. The Ninevites repented. They humble themselves – they fast – they pray. God relents. They did what God wanted them to do, and God responds in his grace. But that was not part of Jonah’s plan, and he was angry about it.

Jonah’s prayer expresses his anger at God’s grace (1-3).

The fact that God relented from destroying the Ninevites “displeased Jonah terribly and he became very angry.” If someone has God’s heart, then seeing someone repent and turn to God should not make him angry. If someone wants to see other people saved, then that someone should not get angry when God steps down and gives them the grace to repent and be saved.

Jonah 2 showed us Jonah’s grateful prayer for God’s grace in rescuing him from the danger of dying in the ocean. But in Jonah 4, this same God manifests his same grace to rescue the Ninevites and this same prophet gets angry. Notice why Jonah is angry. He tells God “this is just what I thought would happen when I was in my own country. This is what I tried to prevent by attempting to escape to Tarshish! – because I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment.

Jonah’s problem was not his theology. He knew that when the LORD was having Moses go back up Mount Sinai for the second copy of the ten commandments, he revealed himself as “the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7 NET). So, Jonah knew that it was God’s nature when he finds iniquity, transgression or sin to come to those people with his grace, to be slow to anger toward them and to treat them mercifully.

But God’s grace was not in Jonah’s plan that day. He did not want God to manifest his grace. Brother John Roller describes God’s grace as his “generosity in giving us good things that we don’t deserve to have.” God was showing his grace to the Ninevites by giving them a word of warning through Jonah. But Jonah did not want to be a representative of God’s grace to the Ninevites. He wanted to be a representative of God’s judgment.

When Jonah discovered that God intended to rescue the Ninevites, he got so angry that he asked God to kill him instead. Now, I have never been that angry, but I can understand that kind of anger. When anger takes hold of a person, it leads him to say things and do things that go overboard. Jonah was experienced with that. But it wasn’t just God’s grace that Jonah was reacting to.

Jonah’s ordeal while waiting reveals his anger at God’s sovereignty (4-9).

Previously, in the book of Jonah we saw God use a ship, a storm and a fish to teach Jonah a lesson. In this chapter, God uses the sun, a plant, and a worm. The section begins and ends with the same question. God asks Jonah if he is really so very angry about his sparing the Ninevites. Then Jonah goes outside the city, and he sits and stews. He is watching the city. He knows God has spared it, and it makes him mad. While Jonah is watching, the sun comes out, and it starts to make him uncomfortable. But God had placed a plant near where Jonah was watching, and God by his sovereign power caused that plant to grow so that it shaded Jonah from the sun. God had appointed that little plant and “caused it to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to rescue him from his misery.” Jonah was very delighted about the little plant.

But the next day, this same sovereign God sent a worm to attack the plant. The plant died that day, and Jonah got so hot that he also wanted to die.

Now, it just so happened that while I was writing this sermon, I got to this point and it became very hard for me to see what I was doing. The sun was coming through the window in the pastor’s study. I did not get angry. All I had to do was stand up, go to the window, and drop the blinds.

That incident reminded me that Jonah was still trying to do his ministry according to Jonah’s plan. God had not told Jonah to leave the city. Jonah just wanted to get away and stew. God did provide the plant for Jonah by his sovereignty, but God also provided the worm.

Jonah had no real reason to be angry at God because of the worm. Jonah did not plant that plant. God did. God did not owe Jonah another comfortable day.

You and I have to come to grips with God’s sovereignty. He does things according to his plan, and he does not have to get our approval to do it.

This applies to our prayer list as well. We have a list of people who we ask God to heal and save every day. But God in his sovereignty does not heal and save these people every day. He has reasons for what he does, and reasons for what he doesn’t do. At the end of the day, we need to evaluate what happened and what did not happen on the basis of God’s sovereignty. We need to be able to say what Job did when he lost everything: “The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. May the name of the LORD be blessed!” (Job 1:21 NET).

Now, if we or someone we love is suffering, we should follow the example of Jesus and pray for our Father to remove that cup. But we should also be willing to say “not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42 NET).

That was Jonah’s problem. He knew God was gracious and merciful, but he wanted God to be gracious and merciful according to Jonah’s plan, not God’s. It doesn’t work that way.

God showed Jonah that he had no right to be angry at him (10-11).

The plant was a real plant, but it was also a parable. God used Jonah’s ordeal of the plant and the worm to show Jonah that every good thing and every bad thing that happened to Jonah was all in God’s plan. Jonah didn’t plant that plant, and Jonah didn’t kill that plant. The LORD gave and the LORD took away. Jonah’s proper response should have been “May the name of the LORD be blessed!”

God told Mary that he had some good news and some bad news. The good news is she is going to give birth to the Son of God, and he is going to save his people from their sins. The bad news is that there was going to be a sword of suffering. She felt that sword as she watched her son crucified. But through it all, she was right there, trusting God to work out his plan.

God told Peter that he had some good news and some bad news. He said to Peter that the good news is he was going to use him as the foundation of his church. The bad news is that when he gets older, they’re going to tie him up and bring him where he doesn’t want to go. Peter would remember that when they were preparing him for his own crucifixion. But through it all, he was right there, trusting God to work out his plan.

God told Paul that he had some good news and some bad news. Paul would become a great missionary, and speak to kings and governors, proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. But he would also suffer much for the sake of Christ’s name.

When we spent some time in Hebrews 11, we saw that pattern in the lives of the heroes of faith. They were great men and women, not because everything went well for them, but because they had learned to trust God as he worked out his plan.

Abraham trusted God that he would make good on his promise of a land. The only land he ever actually owned there was a burial plot.

Joseph trusted God that he would make him a great ruler. He held on to that trust while languishing as Potiphar’s slave and then in prison. He held on to God’s sovereignty.

All these great heroes were tested, and passed the test. Jonah was failing the test. His anger at how things were going was causing him to lose sight of God’s heart for the nations. He should have been cheering when he was grumbling. He needed to get his eyes off the dead plant and focus on an entire city that had been given new life.

LORD God, give us your heart. Help us to see things from your perspective. And when things happen that we did not expect and cannot understand, help us to trust in your sovereignty.

JONAH AND THE PAGAN NINEVITES

JONAH AND THE PAGAN NINEVITES

Jonah 3:1-10 NET

1 The LORD said to Jonah a second time, 2 “Go immediately to Nineveh, that large city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”3 So Jonah went immediately to Nineveh, as the LORD had said. (Now Nineveh was an enormous city – it required three days to walk through it!) 4 When Jonah began to enter the city one day’s walk, he announced, “At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”5 The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat on ashes. 7 He issued a proclamation and said, “In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, cattle or sheep, is to taste anything; they must not eat and they must not drink water. 8 Every person and animal must put on sackcloth and must cry earnestly to God, and everyone must turn from their evil way of living and from the violence that they do. 9 Who knows? Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not die.” 10 When God saw their actions – they turned from their evil way of living! – God relented concerning the judgment he had threatened them with and he did not destroy them.

I am enjoying our look into this ancient book about Jonah and what he experienced. Jonah appeals to me on several levels. As a former missionary, I like the way God seeks out the lost and uses his people to encourage them to repent. I also like the way God uses all the details in Jonah’s life to accomplish his will – often in spite of Jonah’s reluctance. God uses a ship, sailors, a storm – even a fish.

I can relate to this because so much of my life has involved drastic changes of location and even vocation – yet God has used all of those events and circumstances to accomplish His will in my life and the lives of my family members.

Jonah’s details are all over the map. That’s literally true. Geographically, he probably started out in Zebulun territory, which if I am reading my map correctly – means that he would have to travel about 500 miles by land to get there. So, Jonah decided to take a boat. You can’t get there by boat. The Mediterranean Sea is in the other direction.

All we really know about Tarshish is that it is a long way away from where Jonah was told to go. So, even when Jonah got burped up on the beach, he still had a long hike to get to Nineveh. I like to think about things when I’m hiking. Jonah probably thought about his experiences as he hiked to Nineveh.

Jonah had learned some of the lessons that God was teaching him (1-3a).

He probably thought about his initial decision to try to run away from God’s commission and call. Yeah, that was a bad idea. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He did not dawdle. He went immediately to Nineveh, as the LORD had said.

But he couldn’t get in a jet plane, so his going immediately to Nineveh would take him several weeks. So, he had time to think about other lessons the LORD was teaching him. He had probably thought about his arrogance in assuming that God was going to take care of him on that trip to Tarshish. He had fallen asleep in the storm that threatened to wreck the ship he was on. Maybe he thought that because he was an Israelite that he was safe. But he was in blatant disobedience to God’s call. There’s no safety net there.

And what about those pagan sailors. He thought they were just heathens – that they would never amount to anything. But those heathens turned out to be more spiritually sensitive than he was. In fact, when they were confronted with God’s power, they turned to God. Jonah knew all about God’s power and was trying to turn away from him.

So, Jonah winds up in the sea, sinking down to the belly of Sheol, and he cries out to God. Just when he is about to breathe in a lung full of seawater, God rescues him – with a fish. You can’t make this stuff up. God shows Jonah that he will go to extravagant ends to rescue those who cry out to him.

When Jonah finally gets to the end of the trail, he is ready to preach.

Jonah warned the Ninevites of God’s coming judgment (3b-4).

He had one message. He told them that at the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown. He didn’t beg them to repent. He didn’t lay out a master plan for their renewal. He didn’t tell them that God loved them and had a wonderful plan for their lives. No, he just told them that the end was coming.

I wonder sometimes if our gospel preaching sounds like that. We try to talk about God’s love and God’s grace, but I think all the lost people around us hear is “y’all are sinners and you’re gonna burn.”

Oh, Jonah knew all about the Ninevites. He knew that the city was the capital city of the great Assyrian empire – and these people do not play nice. The prophet Nahum said this about Nineveh:

“Woe to the city guilty of bloodshed! She is full of lies; she is filled with plunder; she has hoarded her spoil! (Nahum 3:1 NET).

The whole superpower of Assyria was known for its brutality, violence and terror. Nineveh deserved to be destroyed.

In football, we have a two-minute warning. It means the game is essentially over because there is very little chance of any team doing anything to change the score in those last two minutes. Mostly it is just to make sure both teams know that the game is ending.

Jonah probably thought of his own ministry like that. we know from his angry prayer in the next chapter that Jonah wanted to be the last prophet to speak to Nineveh. He wanted to be the one to say “last two minutes” to the losers at Nineveh.

He wasn’t prepared for what actually happened.

Jonah was not prepared for his warning to actually be effective (5-9).

From the lowest to the highest, the people believed in God this time. They declared a fast and put on sackcloth. My uncle once asked me if sackcloth was like burlap. It wasn’t. Sackcloth was worse than burlap. It’s made of hair. It’s uncomfortable and itchy. Add to that the bizarre act of sitting in a dirty pile of ashes. That’s not a fashion statement, but it is a statement. It says we’re all in trouble and we need to get someone’s attention.

That grass-roots social demonstration got the attention of the king and his nobles. The king took off his royal robe and put on his hair coat as well. He found an ash pile to sit in. He made it official by issuing a proclamation. In addition to a forced fast, the king commanded that everyone “must put on sackcloth and must cry earnestly to God, and everyone must turn from their evil way of living and from the violence that they do.” “Who knows?” He said. “Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not die.” There was no guarantee, but Jonah’s preaching had gotten their attention.

Jonah was not prepared for his warning to actually work. I wonder sometimes, what would we do if all those people we keep inviting to church actually showed up one day.

Jonah needed to learn that God does not want to punish sinners – he wants them to repent (10).

“When God saw their actions – they turned from their evil way of living! — God relented concerning the judgment he had threatened them with and he did not destroy them.”

God did not want to destroy Nineveh. He wanted to rescue them. He wanted to avoid the punishment Jonah warned them about.

God does not want to destroy Delco either. We owe it to our neighbors to let them know that God will punish those who rebel against him. But we also need to tell them that it doesn’t have to be that way.

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him” (John 3:17 NET).

The purpose of God is not revenge, it’s rescue. If people refuse to repent, they will be destroyed. Make no mistake about that. But for thousands of years, our commission has been to declare the good news to the nations. The good news is that we can avoid Gehenna.

There is a lake of fire in the future of this universe. But the lake of fire is a destiny that can be avoided. God does not want to send anybody to hell.

“The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 NET).

God was patient with the Ninevites, and he sent his prophet when their time had almost run out. His patience paid off because they repented.

Jonah learned that God does not want to punish sinners — he wants them to repent. We need to keep that in mind as we go about our daily work of telling people about God. We have to tell them about God’s coming wrath, but we should never forget to tell them that God’s wrath is not inevitable.

It is not necessary. Jesus has already taken God’s wrath upon himself at his crucifixion. Nobody needs to die for their personal sins because Jesus has already taken that punishment upon himself and nailed it to the cross. We have to die the first death because of Adam’s sin. But God has made a way for us to escape the second death that we have earned with our own sins. Jesus is that Way.

Repentance and faith changed the fate of the Ninevites. Repentance and faith can change anyone’s fate. We all begin as sinners — lost and condemned. But the gospel tells us that we can rewrite our destiny. By repenting of our sins and putting our faith in God’s rescue through Christ, we can change not only our relationship with God now but our permanent destiny in the future.

The prophet Jonah was surprised when his preaching worked. He shouldn’t have been. God sends us to the nations not because he wants to condemn them, but because he has a way to save them. His heart is not to destroy the lost, but to save the lost.

JONAH AND THE PAGAN SAILORS

JONAH AND THE PAGAN SAILORS

Jonah 1:1-16 NET

1 The LORD said to Jonah son of Amittai,

2 “Go immediately to Nineveh, that large capital city, and announce judgment against its people because their wickedness has come to my attention.”

3 Instead, Jonah immediately headed off to Tarshish to escape from the commission of the LORD. He traveled to Joppa and found a merchant ship heading to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard it to go with them to Tarshish far away from the LORD.

4 But the LORD hurled a powerful wind on the sea. Such a violent tempest arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break up!

5 The sailors were so afraid that each cried out to his own god and they flung the ship’s cargo overboard to make the ship lighter. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold below deck, had lain down, and was sound asleep.

6 The ship’s captain approached him and said, “What are you doing asleep? Get up! Cry out to your god! Perhaps your god might take notice of us so that we might not die!”

7 The sailors said to one another, “Come on, let’s cast lots to find out whose fault it is that this disaster has overtaken us.” So they cast lots, and Jonah was singled out.

8 They said to him, “Tell us, whose fault is it that this disaster has overtaken us? What’s your occupation? Where do you come from? What’s your country? And who are your people?”

9 He said to them, “I am a Hebrew! And I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

10 Hearing this, the men became even more afraid and said to him, “What have you done?” (The men said this because they knew that he was trying to escape from the LORD, because he had previously told them.)

11 Because the storm was growing worse and worse, they said to him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

12 He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea to make the sea quiet down, because I know it’s my fault you are in this severe storm.”

13 Instead, they tried to row back to land, but they were not able to do so because the storm kept growing worse and worse.

14 So they cried out to the LORD, “Oh, please, LORD, don’t let us die on account of this man! Don’t hold us guilty of shedding innocent blood. After all, you, LORD, have done just as you pleased.”

15 So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped raging.

16 The men feared the LORD greatly, and earnestly vowed to offer lavish sacrifices to the Lord.

The story of Jonah is amazing. But it is one of those stories that is very easy for us to look at just as a story, and fail to see its relevance for our individual lives. One of the things I want to do in this series on Jonah is to show how Jonah’s story demonstrates what God wants to do in our lives – even if we never get swallowed by a fish.

The beginning of the story is a good place to start in discovering this.

God has a plan to save sinners, and he has commissioned us to be a part of that plan (1-2).

The LORD told Jonah to go immediately to Nineveh because that city was the capital city in an empire known for its wickedness. He had a plan to save the sinners in that great city, and Jonah was part of his plan. He commissioned Jonah to go and preach. He has commissioned us to go and preach to all the nations.

Penny and I have had the privilege to share the gospel in several nations. None of those opportunities happened by accident. There were some specific nations in Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania that God wanted us to preach and teach his word in. He made it happen. I didn’t want to go to Germany with the Army, but God wanted me there. Once I got there, I discovered that I liked it, and that God could use me to share the gospel there just like he did when I was pastoring in Tennessee.

When the LORD made a way for me to go to seminary, he had already shown us the next nation which would be our target: The Philippines. God had a plan to reach a large number of Filipinos through our ministry there – mostly by training pastors and church workers. Even today, there are hundreds of amazing Christian workers in that nation who Penny and I helped to disciple. It wasn’t an accident. God loves that nation, and he had a plan to reach them, and commissioned us to be part of that plan.

I could go on and talk about all the other nations, but my biography is not the point. My point is that God has a plan to save sinners, and he has included us in that plan. He doesn’t need us to share his word. Somebody other than Jonah could have gone to Nineveh. But God commissioned Jonah to do it.

Sometimes, we ridiculously think that we can ignore God’s commission (3).

Jonah thought he could escape from the commission of the LORD. He traveled to Joppa and found a merchant ship heading to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard it to go with them to Tarshish because he thought that distance would be far enough away from the LORD for him to ignore his commission. It wasn’t. No place is.

Our God is omnipresent. We could get in a spaceship and go to the far reaches of the Galaxy, and we will not have traveled one inch away from God. He is everywhere. If he gives us a commission, there is no place we can go to escape from it. Guess what? He has given us a commission. He told us to go to every place on the planet and share his good news.

We cannot escape his commission by going somewhere, neither can we escape it by ignoring it. Jonah thought that if he just focused on going away, that he could ignore God’s command for him to go to the particular place of Nineveh.

God always has a way of bringing the commission to us (4-10).

His way in this situation was to make a storm. The storm got everyone’s attention. In fact, everyone was able to realize how crucial it was to act to save their lives – except Jonah. He was the last one to wake up. When the people learned that the storm was Jonah’s fault, it provided Jonah a perfect opportunity to testify. He told them that he was a Hebrew, and that he was trying to escape the LORD. Jonah wound up doing preaching about God and his coming wrath – only the wrath was now targeting Jonah himself. God had used the storm to get Jonah to do for these sailors what he was reluctant to do for the Ninevites.

He always has a way of bringing the commission to us. If we wont obey him out of a heart of compassion for sinners, He will make circumstances warrant that we obey for some other reason. When Peter was reluctant to reach out to the Gentiles, the Lord sent him a vision. Then Cornelius – who had also seen a vision – sent some servants to Peter. So, even Peter – who would continue to have problems recognizing that Gentiles are equal with Jews in God’s sight – was convinced that God does not show favoritism.

This was one of Jonah’s problems too. He did not like the Ninevites. He was convinced that they were not worth saving. But our God has compassion on us all in spite of the fact that none of us is worth saving. He sent the storm that day because he had a plan to save some pagan Ninevites. He also sent the storm because there were some pagan sailors who also needed to be saved.

God will reach sinners, but we need to learn to stop resisting his call (11-16).

Jonah had to learn to stop resisting his call, and his having to be thrown into the sea did the trick. God wanted to reach the pagan Ninevites, so Jonah had to get off that ship because God had another means of transportation for him.

Meanwhile, notice what is happening among those pagan sailors. They are crying out to the LORD not to let them die on account of Jonah. Now, notice what happens next. They pick Jonah up and throw him into the sea. The sea stops raging. Did those pagan sailors go back to business as usual? No, the text says that the men feared the LORD greatly, and earnestly vowed to offer lavish sacrifices to the Lord. God had a plan to reach sinners, and he did. He reached these pagan sailors in spite of the fact that Jonah was not among them because he wanted them saved. God reached them anyway because that is the kind of God he is.

Now, if God can reach these sailors through the witness of a reluctant prophet, imagine what he could do through the witness of a community of believers who actually want to reach the lost for him. We discover later on in this book that even though Jonah gets the message and goes and preaches to the Ninevites and the whole city repents – Jonah still didn’t want to do it. One of the major messages of the book of Jonah is that God wants his people to have his heart for the lost.

God told Ezekiel “I will seek the lost and bring back the strays” (Ezekiel 34:16).

“Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. Now a man named Zacchaeus was there; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to get a look at Jesus, but being a short man he could not see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, because Jesus was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, because I must stay at your house today.” So he came down quickly and welcomed Jesus joyfully. And when the people saw it, they all complained, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I now give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I am paying back four times as much!”Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”” (Luke 19:1-10 NET).

Now, this week, you and I might encounter a Zacchaeus. Everybody around us thinks that he is unredeemable. Everybody else wants to overlook him. Don’t do it. Don’t be like Jonah. He didn’t want to go to preach to those pagan Ninevites. He never imagined preaching to those pagan sailors. He was God’s prophet, but he didn’t have God’s heart.

God has commissioned us to go to the nations with the gospel. There are some of those nations that we wouldn’t want to go to even on vacation. But God’s heart is to reach the lost there.

WORSHIP CULMINATED

Revelation 7:1-4, 9-17 NET

1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so no wind could blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, who had the seal of the living God. He shouted out with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given permission to damage the earth and the sea: 3 “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees until we have put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” 4 Now I heard the number of those who were marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed from all the tribes of the people of Israel: 9 After these things I looked, and here was an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands.

10 They were shouting out in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God, to the one seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels stood there in a circle around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they threw themselves down with their faces to the ground before the throne and worshiped God,

12 saying, “Amen! Praise and glory, and wisdom and thanksgiving, and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” 13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These dressed in long white robes — who are they and where have they come from?” 14 So I said to him, “My lord, you know the answer.” Then he said to me, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb! 15 For this reason they are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple, and the one seated on the throne will shelter them. 16 They will never go hungry or be thirsty again, and the sun will not beat down on them, nor any burning heat,

17 because the Lamb in the middle of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

We have been studying what the Bible says about worship this month. We first looked at two Old Testament passages and found that worship is something that we all ought to do, but it also something that can be corrupted. It can be done wrong.

Then we looked at Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well in the Samaritan village of Sychar. In that conversation, Jesus revealed the fact that God is looking for sincere worshipers. We can worship in truth if we follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and don’t just rely on our traditions.

For our next look at worship, I want us to look at this vision that John received, as recorded in Revelation 7. Now, I realize that there are a lot of different ways of understanding the Book of Revelation. If we were studying the book as a whole, I would stop and explain these different approaches, and give you my evaluation of them. But my concern today is more specific. I want us to see what this chapter in Revelation tells us about worship.

So, let me just summarize what we would have to agree on to look at this chapter in that context.

First, Revelation is Scripture. The visions John received on Patmos were given to him by Jesus so that he could understand some things about the future. They also served to equip him and believers after him (including us) to endure the things we would have to endure until Jesus comes again.

Second, there is a blessing associated with this passage. Revelation 1:3 says “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy aloud, and blessed are those who hear and obey the things written in it, because the time is near!” Of course, the blessing will only come to us if we have ears to hear what God is saying, and if we have the courage to commit ourselves to obeying what the text commands.

That is where we get to our subject. When we look at the 144,000 who are described in verses 1-8 of the chapter, and the enormous crowd that no one could count who are described in verses 9-17, each of them has a reason to worship the LORD. That is what I want us to focus on. Our God wants us to consider our options, and to make the right choices in life. Should we worship, or should we not worship? God never gives us a command without giving us good reasons to obey it.

The picture John saw in this vision is a graphical description of those who will overcome the trials and dangers of this temporary life, and will be there to greet Jesus as their Savior, King, and Shepherd in eternity. It is a picture not just of the kinds of people who gather to worship now, but a picture of those who will be worshiping forever in the new heavens and new earth. The worshipers described here have all the marks we have been told about the previous passages we studied. It is obedient worship. It is pure worship. It is sincere worship.

But today’s text also tells us why these people will be worshiping forever. What will God do for these people that will make them want to serve and worship him throughout eternity? That is the question that this passage answers.

First, we will worship the LORD forever because of God’s faithful remnant (1-4).

The first thing the passage describes is a storm that is about to be let loose on the whole earth. Four angels are placed on each of the four corners of the planet, and are holding back the four winds, so that no destruction can happen. Another angel commands them not to let loose the destruction. They have something else they need to do first, before the storm of judgment. First, they have to “put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”

The Bible describes a number of instances where people were marked to seal them for protection. The mark he gave to Cain was an example of that. No, the mark was not a sign of a curse. The Bible says “the LORD put a special mark on Cain so that no one who found him would strike him down” (Genesis 4:15).

We know three things about these 144,000 men. First, it is clear that they are all Jews, not Jehovah’s Witnesses. In fact, they are numbered by Jewish tribe so that the fact is evident to all (Revelation 7:5-8).

Second, we know that these men are sealed before God unleashes his storm of destruction. They are not protected from the first death. The purpose of their sealing is to protect them from the second death.

Third, I think it is important to realize that John himself would be among them. He was a Jew, and he witnessed a great number of Jews come to faith in Christ, and many of them paid for that faith by being put to death either by their countrymen, or by Rome.

When John saw this large group of Jews, he was reminded that in the Old Testament, God always kept a remnant for himself. These 144,000 are the Jewish remnant.

The second group he sees in the vision are all the people from all the nations who would come to faith in Christ as a result of the ministry of that Jewish remnant. The vision is progressing in time. We know that the original apostles were Jews, but Christ commissioned them to reach the nations. We know that the original worshipers at Pentecost were Jews, but the Holy Spirit empowered them to go back to the various places where they lived and be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Revelation 7 records the result of their obedience.

Those of us who are Gentiles have come to faith in Christ because that Jewish remnant pledged their loyalty and many gave their lives to bring the gospel to us. Because of their obedience to the call, we can know Christ, and will worship him forever.

But that is not the only reason we will worship the LORD forever.

We will also worship the LORD forever because he will give us permanent victory over sin (9b, 13-14).

Look at those white robes we will wear. I know that the color white represents purity in the Bible. The LORD told his rebellious people “Come, let’s consider your options … Though your sins have stained you like the color red, you can become white like snow; though they are as easy to see as the color scarlet, you can become white like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).

White is also the color of victory. The book of Revelation associates a white horse with warfare and conquering (6:2; 19:11, 14). So, the white robes don’t represent those who have merely managed to stay pure. The represent those who have won the victory over sin.

This is made clear in today’s passage by a conversation John has with “one of the elders” in the vision.

“Then one of the elders asked me, “These dressed in long white robes – who are they and where have they come from?” So I said to him, “My lord, you know the answer.” Then he said to me, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb!” (13-14).

Our white robes are not our reward for staying good enough for God to save. Our white robes are the result of our forgiveness. We have been forgiven not because we repented and not because we were less sinful that others. We have been forgiven because of the blood of the Lamb.

John the Baptist described Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

We will struggle in this life to stay true to our Savior. We will fight to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). The world will want to give in to the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions. We will have to fight against its influence. But none of that fighting will cleanse our robes. That kind of cleansing is only available by faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

We will also worship the LORD forever because he will give us a kingdom that will never end (9c, 15c-17).

Don’t forget the palm branches. You know that folks waived palm branches when they welcomed Christ into Jerusalem. The religious leaders objected, because they knew that these palm branches represented the welcoming of a new king. They asked Jesus to silence his pep rally. But Jesus told them “if they keep silent, the very stones will cry out!” (Luke 19:40).

The palm branches are a visible symbol of praise. The fact that the vision depicts them shows that our desire for God and his kingdom to come down and be among us will one day be satisfied. You better believe we will worship.

The high priest asked Jesus “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I am,” said Jesus, “and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). He was referring to Daniel’s prophecy:

“I was watching in the night visions, “And with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man was approaching. He went up to the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him. To him was given ruling authority, honor, and sovereignty. All peoples, nations, and language groups were serving him. His authority is eternal and will not pass away. His kingdom will not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).

Daniel saw a king coming in the clouds. Some day you and I will see that king coming in the clouds. So will that unbelieving high priest. So will all our neighbors. When he comes there will be only two responses. Those of us who know him now will worship him forever. Those who reject him now will call for the mountains to fall on them to hide themselves from his wrath.

He is our coming king – we will worship him forever.

He is our victory over sin – we will worship him forever.

He had saved a remnant who faithfully proclaimed his gospel, so we could hear it and be saved – we will worship him forever.

This is worship culminated. This picture of those involved in perpetual worship for eternity is a picture of us. May we stay true to that beautiful picture as we await his return.

WORSHIP CLARIFIED

WORSHIP CLARIFIED

John 4:20-26 NET

20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But a time is coming – and now is here – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”

During the month of October, we have been looking at the subject of worship. It was important for us to go back to the Old Testament because that is where the Holy Spirit began teaching God’s people about worship.

In our study of 1 Chronicles 16, we found out that worship was God’s idea, and that we can honor and appreciate people, but only God deserves our worship.

In our study of 2 Kings 21, we found that worship can be corrupted by inviting other gods into our worship, and by picking up practices of other religions and world-views and trying to worship our God the way they worship their gods.

There is a lot more that we can learn from the Old Testament about worship, so some day we are going to come back to it. But for now, we are going to focus on some New Testament passages.

You might remember that a few months ago, I asked the LORD to tell me what he wanted me to focus on in my preaching here in Piney Grove. I believe he answered that prayer. He told me to focus on the commands of Christ.

It makes sense to focus on the commands of Christ because when our Lord gave us his Great Commission, he told us to teach the nations to obey everything he has commanded (Matthew 28:20).

I wanted to do that systematically. The Bible says that “every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). I believe that every means every. So I don’t want to just stay in the familiar territory of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, because there is some useful teaching on Christ’s commands in the Old Testament.

So, what I decided to do was reread the Gospels, and every time I encountered something that Jesus commanded, I would write that down on the list. Each of those commands would become a topic, and my plan is to preach a series of sermons on each topic. I would start each series in the Old Testament, and conclude in the New Testament. Doing it that way might take a long time, but that’s alright. I’m not going anywhere.

So, that’s why we have rested today at John chapter 4. It is here that Jesus has his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Here we learn that…

Worship is not the same thing as worship traditions (20).

This woman at the well understood something about worship, and it was something significant. She knew that worship was something that people fight over. She recognized that when you get a Jewish person and a Samaritan person in the same room, you don’t bring up the subject of worship.

She told Jesus that her ancestors have the tradition of viewing Mount Gerazim as a place of deep spiritual significance. She knew from the Old Testament that Mount Gerazim was where the blessings of the covenant were pronounced by the Israelites in Moses’ time. I don’t know how she – herself showed reverence for that mountain, but she probably had some traditional way of doing that.

I remember when I was living in the Philippines, the people there had lots of religious traditions. One of my favorites that I noticed is that some Jeepney drivers had a set of rosary beads hanging from their rear-view mirror. Whenever they passed a cathedral, they would reach out and touch those beads. Now, those drivers may have been alcoholics. They may have cursed like sailors. They almost always drove recklessly like crazy people. But if you wanted to get in a fight, say something about those beads.

In the church today, we have not outgrown the passion for defending our traditions when it comes to worship. Everybody has their own favorite kind of worship music and their favorite style of worship. Some are comfortable with the worship style they grew up with, while others want to do something new.

I’m not here to convince you that your favorite way of worshiping is wrong. I don’t have a style of worship that I recommend for everyone. I would recommend for all of us that we don’t get hung up on a particular style of worship.

My reason for this is how Jesus responded to this woman’s statement about tradition and worship. He told her that the Jews had a very good reason for focusing their worship at Jerusalem. But then he told her something important about the relationship between traditions and worship.

Traditions change, but worship should not (21).

Jesus told her that a time would soon come when it did not matter which mountain you were near. It would not matter which region you were from, or living in. Both the Samaritans and the Jews would be worshiping God based on something else besides tradition.

Both cultures had learned that three keys to proper worship were “location, location, location.” But both cultures would be transformed by something that would put an end to that kind of thinking. That something that both cultures would be exposed to was the gospel.

It took time for that to happen. The disciples were just learning the gospel from Jesus himself. Yet, they could not understand why Jesus had chosen to go through Samaria, instead of avoiding it.

Notice also what happened when the disciples came back from their trip into town to buy supplies. John records that they “were shocked because he was speaking with a woman” (4:27). The Jewish Rabbis had taught that it is better to burn the Law than teach it to a woman. That was tradition. They had taught that even a husband should not talk with his wife about the Bible and that such a practice could wind up sending them both to hell. That was tradition. This was particularly true in public. The Rabbis taught that a man should not greet a woman in a public place, not even his own wife. That was tradition.

Jesus comes along and blows that tradition out of the water. He is God’s Messiah, and our example. The God of the Bible created both Adam and Eve in his own image and blessed them both with minds capable of learning from him and following his commands. His word to children was “Listen, my child, to the instruction from your father, and do not forsake the teaching from your mother” (Proverbs 1:8).

But then Jesus went on to explain another thing about worship that both the Jews and the Samaritans were going to have to learn.

Worship has to be sincere, and traditions can hinder that (23-24).

He said “a time is coming – and now is here – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Jesus said that the Father is looking for a certain kind of worshiper. This kind of worshiper is not going to be so easily identified. You will not just be able to go to Mount Gerazim and find him. You might not even find any in Jerusalem.

No, Jesus says the evidence of a true worshiper is that the worship is “in spirit and truth.” But what does that mean?

The only explanation Jesus gives is that he says that God is spirit. What does that mean in this context? In the previous chapter, John had recorded Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus.

Jesus told Nicodemus that “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). If I were to show you a family photo with myself, Penny, and our three daughters, you would see a physical resemblance. Flesh gives birth to similar flesh.

But Jesus told Nicodemus that a person cannot enter the kingdom unless he is born of the Spirit. He said “The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). One thing you might not know is that in the original of that verse, the word for wind and the word spirit is the same Greek word.

Spirit is like the wind. It is real, but you cannot see it. It is not tangible. You can only see its effect on tangible things. So, someone who is worshiping in Spirit takes on the characteristics of God’s Holy Spirit. Those characteristics cannot be explained by that person’s fleshly heritage. They will have nothing to do with where that person is from in the flesh – Gerazim, Jerusalem – it does not matter. What matters is the Holy Spirit is the source of the worship.

Those worshipers worship in truth. This is the easiest statement in the whole text to explain. It speaks of authenticity. A hypocrite might go to Gerazim, and act like a worshiper. He might go to Jerusalem and act like a worshiper. The traditions can actually hinder true worship.

But here is something else John mentioned in chapter 3:

“Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God” (John 3:19-21).

So, to worship in truth is to allow the light of Jesus’ presence to expose your falsehood, and replace it with his truth. That is authentic worship. It does not pretend to approach God on one’s own merit. It allows the light/truth to change you on the inside. It is giving up my control and allowing God to be sovereign – even over how I worship him.

LORD, we want to worship you – your way. Expose the darkness of our own traditions and fleshly choices. Teach us how to let go and let your Holy Spirit move us where you want us to go.