If you'll take your Bibles this morning and open up to the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah. It's going to be something relatively simple and easy, I think, here this morning. But the book of Jonah. Everybody knows the story, so I'm not gonna go into great lengths reading it, but I would like to read part of it to get started here this morning. So let's start off in Jonah chapter one and just refresh ourselves, remind ourselves. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went down to Joppa and he found a ship. going to Tarshish, and he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. And the mariners were afraid, and cried every man to his God, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down to the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. So you know the story, they were all worried about it. We go down to take a look at verse 12, and they finally figure out that it was Jonah. And he said unto them, verse 12, take me up and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you. For I know, I know that for my sake, this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore, they cried unto the Lord and said, we beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleaseth thee. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, we thank you again for, just the word of God, for a chance to be here on a Sunday morning. Father, we thank you for a nice warm building where we can gather and be out of the cold. Lord, we have got a very comfortable place to meet that you've provided and we are grateful for it. Ask now that you might just set aside the coldness of the world outside. And Father, warm our hearts with the Word of God. Help us to realize that just like you tried to get ahold of Jonah, Father, you are constantly trying to get ahold of us. And I pray that you'd help us here this morning. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So we have obviously a very familiar story here. in the Book of Jonah. Kids know it, you learn it when you're very young in Sunday school, and it's a great story and a lot of lessons. One of the things that was kind of running through my mind over the last week or two, and just kind of bouncing around in the empty spaces up in there, is just the thought of God trying to get a hold of us. God trying to, you know, get our attention. We're seeing that in Jeremiah, we're seeing that in Daniel, we see that in our own lives day after day after day, and that is God is constantly about trying to reach out and get a hold of you and me. And man, we just went over it in Sunday school. We're studying Jeremiah on Wednesday nights. And I filled in for Sunday school this morning. So we were in Jeremiah. And in Jeremiah, Israel is towards the end of their existence as a nation before they go into captivity and before they're finally dispersed for the final time. And they have been for hundreds and hundreds of years rebelling against God. And Israel is at the place where God is pretty much fed up with them. And God's trying to get them to change, even after all of the sin, and all of the wickedness, and all the vileness that the nation of Israel has committed against God. Even though they're worshiping other gods, and God is fed up, he's got it up to about here, and he's ready to come down and send Nebuchadnezzar in, take them captive, and just disperse them out into the wilderness. And that's what Jeremiah's prophesying about. That's what Jeremiah's warning the nation of Israel about. Hey, God is fed up. He's at his wits end, and he's gonna put the hammer down. And in the midst of it, every so often, even in the book of Jeremiah, even after all that, you get to this point where God interjects this little place where he says, hey, would you please turn your hearts back towards me? Amen? I mean, even at the worst of times, even at your worst moments, even in the deepest pits that you've ever been to in your life, and you think, many people think, you know, I'm too wicked and God will never talk to me, God will never use me, God will never ever do anything with me again because of some sin that you've committed or some struggle that you've failed in. And the Lord looks at that, and is the Lord concerned about those things? Absolutely. Does he want you to quit those things? Yes. Does he want you to repent of those things and get that sin taken care of between you and God? Yes. But even in the midst of all that, the Lord is there and he's reaching out and he's trying to get a hold of you and trying to get a hold of your heart. Amen? So I titled this message this morning very simply this. Can God reach me? Amen? Can God, can God reach me? And I just want to look at a few things this morning and tie it in with the book of Jonah. And ask that question and keep that question in the back of your mind. Can God reach you? Amen? Well, the answer to that question is, it depends. All right, what does it depend on? It depends on a couple of things. But to start off with, it depends very simply on how you hear. The Lord spoke to Jonah there in chapter one. He said, hey, get up, arise, and go to Nineveh, that great city, and hey, I've got a message for them, and I want you to prophesy to them and give them this message. And Jonah, Jonah didn't wanna listen. Amen? Jonah instead rose up and fled into Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. It says back in chapter 4, it says, Well, one of the things that you have to ask yourself and one of the things that you have to be aware of when it comes to God trying to reach you is you have to be aware of how are you going to hear. Now that sounds pretty basic and pretty simple, but I made it even simpler. You can do one of two things at God's Word. You can humble yourself or you can crumble yourself. Amen? I mean, you come to church, you sit under preaching, you go to Bible study, you go to Sunday school, and you read your own Bible individually, and the Lord reaches out there every so often and tries to get a hold of you for one thing or another. And listen, he does it with everybody. If you haven't experienced it lately, if you hadn't felt the pressure and that conviction of the Lord trying to deal with you about something in your life, you've been kind of lollygagging along and you've missed something along the way. Because I promise you, the Lord is trying to reach you. The question is, how do you hear? Do you humble or do you grumble? I know Christians, and I've seen people, and it happens, and I've done the same thing, folks. There have been times when the Lord breaches a subject with you or tries to hit you about something, and the truth of the matter is, you don't wanna hear. Right? You've seen that little kid, just like that picture, the little kid when the mom tries to tell him to do something. Why? Because they don't wanna hear. It's a very simple thing. They don't want to hear. It's not just little kids. Old men can do it, too. Right? I didn't want to be unfair. Well, when it comes to that, when it comes to the Lord trying to get a hold of you and trying to, you know, to get that message across, you know, you can either humble yourself and listen or you can grumble. If you decide to grumble, then obviously you need to go to the complaint department. Pick a number. But folks, the truth of the matter is, you know when you grumble? The Lord's trying to reach you, the Lord's trying to deal with you about something, the Lord's trying to show you something, listen, trying to show you something about yourself that needs to be corrected. Or that needs to be started. But you know when you grumble, you grumble when you don't like what you hear. Amen? The reality is you gauge, rather you want to listen to this preaching message or any preaching message by rather it tickles your ears or not. That's a fault that we have in the Laodicean age. That's a fault that's been around in every age. The reality is when it's something that we don't like to hear, it's very easy for us to grumble. Why do you have to go there? Why is God trying to deal with me about that? We get to that place where it's something that we don't want to hear. Jonah fell into that trap. Jonah knew that Nineveh, Assyria, eventually was going to come in, and they wind up taking a bunch of people captive before Nebuchadnezzar does, Babylon. There's two captivities, the Assyrian and the Babylon. So Jonah knew, hey, this is the epicenter. This is the capital of this country that's going to come in and wipe out Jerusalem. I want God to judge them. Right? I don't want them to get right because if they get right, my people are gonna get destroyed. And we come up with justifications in our mind on why this time I don't necessarily need to listen to God. We grumble. And I'm sure in Jonah's mind it was a good excuse. But we grumble. We grumble when we don't like what we hear. We grumble when we would just as soon do something else. Right? When we have our own course, our own path, and what God's asking us to do is inconvenient. We grumble. We're humans. We all do it. I'll tell you another reason why we grumble. We grumble when we think it's too much. God, you've put too much on me. This is more than I can bear. The Lord hasn't put too much on you. I was listening to a preacher, and he was actually hitting the subject. It's kind of interesting, but it's part of what kind of prompted me along this line of thinking, but he made this statement. I thought it was pretty good. He said, listen, the Lord doesn't put too much on you. Take my yoke upon you, right? for my burden is easy, right? The Lord doesn't put too much on you. But Christians, they have this great burden for whatever it is. It's too much, too much pressure. And the preacher said something very profound, which I thought, he said, hey, the Lord didn't put that on you, you put that on you. I thought, oh yeah. Yeah, Bob, you need to rethink that one again. Amen? The Lord doesn't put too much on you. But when we're in that place where we think it's too much, we have a tendency to grumble. And when we grumble, the end result, folks, is we just don't hear. God can't reach us. We have a tendency to grumble when we don't understand. Why is God doing what he's doing? I'm sure Jonah had that problem. Jonah was looking at what was going on. Jonah could not, for the life of him, figure out why God would want to have this nation repent just so they could come and destroy his own people. We grumble when we don't understand why God's doing what he's doing. But nonetheless, One of the things that determines whether God can reach you or not is when he tries, do you humble yourself or do you grumble about it? There's all kinds of reasons. You could go on forever probably on reasons why people grumble. But the bottom line is they really don't want to hear what God is saying. Folks, if you want God to reach you, if you want to be reachable by God, if you want to be in a place where God can talk with you and commune with you and help you, it's better to stay humble than to make God humble you. Right? There was a saying, I thought it was pretty good, it said this, the humble man makes room for progress, the proud man believes he's already there. What are we talking about? We're talking about Jonah going in. We're talking about him being given a message by God. God was trying to reach him. And he was just in a place where he would rather grumble than humble himself and submit. Amen? It is better, folks, to stay humble. And whether you like what he says, or whether you understand what he says, or whether you have a different plan from what he says, let God reach you. Amen? Let God reach you. So, can God reach you? Well, if God's gonna reach you, he's gonna have to, it depends on whether you hear. I'll tell you something else that depends. It depends on how you think. on how you think. Um, in Jonah chapter three, uh, Jonah goes in and, uh, the Lord, you know, we have the issue with the whale and the whale swallows Jonah up. And of course, uh, he sits in the whale's belly for three days and three nights. And of course he dies in the whale's belly and he's, it's a picture of the resurrection. It's a type of the resurrection. Jonah being in the belly of the whale three days, three nights, just like Jesus Christ was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. And so you have that type. You have that picture going on. And the whale realizes, hey, it's about time to resurrect Jonah. And so he swims over to the shore and pukes up Jonah. Emesis. Yes, it's emesis. I think that's the medical term we learn in EMT school. So he pukes, right? And Jonah gets up and, oh, gross. Right? Can you imagine all the slime, slobber? You ever been licked by a St. Bernard? Anybody ever seen a St. Bernard? I mean, they just drool all over the place. And when they lick you, it's like, oh. That had to be what Jonah was like. So, but he gets up, he gets through all that, he gets cleaned off, maybe, I don't know, maybe he didn't, maybe he just was still fed up enough, he just went that way, I don't know. But he went to Nineveh. And he goes to Nineveh and he begins his message, right? Forty days, Nineveh shall be destroyed. And you know what happens, folks? Those people hear that message, obviously they humbled themselves. And when they humbled themselves, that king got to thinking about what was going on. And he goes, hmm. Hmm, what should I do about this? You know, if the Lord's going to reach you, it depends on whether you hear him or not, but it depends also on how you think. And you can think of one or two ways when that message lands in your lap. You're sitting out there in service in the congregation, the preacher lands on something or hits something, and maybe it's some minor, small point, just some off-the-wall comment, or maybe it's a major point, doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter because your job is, once you hear it, you can either humble or grumble, or, oh yeah, Lord, that's me. Well, if you're at that point where, oh yeah, Lord, that's me, the next thing you do is you got two choices on how you handle it. You begin to think about it. And you can do one of two things. You can reflect on it. You know, maybe there's some merit to that. Maybe what I'm hearing has got a little bit of validity. Maybe there's something in it that actually can help me. But you've got to be humble before you get to that stage. Or you can deflect it. Right? Now the ideal thing obviously is that reflection. Oh yeah, it's me. Right? You hear that thing in preaching and you look in that proverbial mirror and you go, oh, it's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord, standing in the knee of prayer, right? Well, that's reflection. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, that's me. Or you can deflect. Oh no, not me. No, I don't know why he even went there. He must have went there for, you know, brother so-and-so over there. That guy really needs it. You've all heard the story of the deacon that came up to the pastor every time after service and said, oh, pastor, you really let him have it this time. Oh, man, that was a good sermon. You really let him have it. You really let him have it today. And this went on for weeks and weeks. And every week, the same deacon would come up and say the same thing. And I'm not talking about you, Josh. Or Sean, it's just a hypothetical thing, right? But the deacon would come up and say the same thing, and finally one day they had a snowstorm, and the deacon just happened to live right next door to the church, so the pastor knew, well, he's gonna be at church. So he went ahead and had service. And sure enough, the deacon was the only one in the service. And that pastor just let it rip and let it roar and just landed right in his lap. And afterwards he went up and the deacon came up and shook his hand and he said, he said, oh man, if they would have been here today, you would have really let them have it. Right? Deflect. We're good at deflecting. I mean, we are good at deflecting. It's never our fault. It's always his fault. It's her fault. It's their fault. But it's not me. I'm not the one that made the problem. Like I said, when you hear something, then you begin to have to think about it. And you're going to either reflect on it, hmm, yeah, maybe there's some merit there that I should think about. Or you're going to begin to deflect. Now, I don't know how many of you are like stealth aircraft. But one of the things they do with stealth aircraft is, stealth is trying to evade from radar. You know, you got this radar station down here in the center. And the radar station sends out this electromagnetic pulse. Boom. Sends it out into the atmosphere. That electromagnetic pulse actually propagates through the air. And it hits a target. And part of that energy that was sent out from the radar actually bounces back to the radar and then the radar site actually listens. It screams or it sends out that pulse and then it listens. And then a little beep, ah, there's something there. Well, in stealth, what they try to do with the aircraft, and there's a lot of math way beyond my comprehension, but what they try to do with stealth is they try to take and shape the plane in such a way that that radar pulse, instead of hitting that aircraft and bouncing back to the radar, hits that aircraft and deflects off somewhere else. So the radar never receives a return. and it involves the angles, every little angle, every little face that is in that aircraft is shaped a certain way and it's all meant to deflect that radar signal, to scatter that signal so that it doesn't come back to the radar site. And then they use special kinds of paint that actually absorb that electromagnetic force and so you got a bunch of the signal that's being deflected, you got some of that signal that's being absorbed. The end result is Very little, if any, gets sent back to the radar site. We had a stealth airplane go through a flyover. of Minneapolis. There were some things going on. And of course, when we were controlling aircraft, we knew a lot about what the military was doing, or were involved a lot of times in what the military was doing. And so we knew we had the stealth airplane coming through. And we watched it on the radar, right? And they actually have to, the stealth aircraft, when they're flying in the United States, they actually have to intentionally put out reflectors so that the radar sites can see them. Otherwise, the air traffic controllers would have no clue where they're at. Right? That's the whole purpose. But you know what people do? You know what we get really good at, folks? We get really good at deflecting. Right? When I think of deflecting, I can't help but think of the Starship Enterprise. Right? See, now I've got to raise attention. I can't help but think of the Starship Enterprise. Why? Because in the Star Trek, right, in the Star Trek, listen, when you were under attack, you know what you did? You raised the deflector shields. Right? Oh, I'm protected. Yes. And what do those deflector shields do? Those deflector shields, hey, when something hits you, it doesn't hit you. We do that as Christians. We get to the place where there are some things that the Lord's been maybe dealing with us about after a while, and the Word of God or the preacher gets on that message, or the Lord just convicts your heart about something, and when that begins to happen, when that message, you know it's going there, all of a sudden it's like, deflector shields up. And that way you can endure the onslaught of attacks that are coming at you. Photon torpedoes, phasers. I always wanted phasers. Because it makes the thing in front of it that it hits disappear. I thought that was cool. I told you we were on a crossroad trip out to Oregon, down to California, back to Colorado, back up to Minnesota. Except we didn't make Minnesota. We got to Colorado and had to take a left to go back to Oregon again. Then we came back to Minnesota. But we were on a crossroad trip. So we were all in the van driving as a family, had a great time. And it's long, and it's driving, and it's hours. But we had a good time. And inevitably, there's always somebody slow in front of you. And in my mind, I'm thinking, I want a phaser so bad. I just want to mount it on the front of the van so that when I get a slow vehicle in front of me, I can hit it and go, zzzz. And the car would just, poof, disappear. That's what I wanted. We stopped to get lunch someplace, and they went and shop in the mall, walk around a little bit, and the kids brought me out one of those little guns. I spent the rest of the time under the dash so the other cars couldn't see it going, I blasted so many cars, I made them disappear. And that's a fun thing when you think about it that way, but the reality is when it comes to God trying to reach you, You put up those deflector shields, and folks, that preaching, that admonition, that rebuke, that whatever, bounces right off you. Has no effect. You got these Star Trek, you got these alien ships with these great, massive, powerful weapons designed to obliterate any other starship in the galaxy. But not when Captain Kirk puts on the deflector shields. Now you can take the onslaught. Wham! And all you saw in there was like. Oh, yeah. Something happened, but just. Not a big deal. And the problem is sometimes we get good at that as Christians. We get good when that subject, that particular subject's coming up. We throw up those deflector shields, because we know it's coming. And then we just wait for the onslaught. Boom. And we know our deflector shields are going to hold us. And we can take the onslaught and get through the engagement unscathed. It's great for Star Trek. It's not good for church. It's not good when it's God trying to get a hold of you. Why? Because, well, I mean, in the Old Testament, the Bible would call it stubborn or hard-hearted or backslidden, right? You can reflect or you can deflect. And unfortunately, a lot of times what we do as Christians is we try to deflect. And you know what the sad part about it is, is when you start doing that, just like in Star Trek, they get used to it. Every time they get ready for a confrontation, all right, Scotty, deflector shields up. Aye, Captain. Right? Was it Scotty that put them on? I forgot who put them on. No, he was the engineer. But what happens is those deflector shields come on, and they're at full strength. And at that point in time, when you're watching that engagement, everything revolves around keeping those deflector shields up. And if those deflector shields get hit, then it maybe reduces their power, their effectiveness just a little bit. And if they get hit again, then maybe it reduces their effectiveness just a little bit. And then they get hit again, or sometimes there's multiple ships, and you're getting hit from a couple different directions. And then the deflector shields kind of, and the power goes down. But inside the ship, Captain Kirk and Scotty and everybody, they're looking at rerouting every bit of power, every ounce of energy they have. Where does it go? It goes to the deflector shields. And that's what we do. Sometimes the Lord tries to get through and that thing hits and we hold firm, but we're a little weaker than we were before. And then we get hit again, and then we're a little weaker than we were before. And we, just like Scotty, and Captain Kirk, and Mr. Spock, and Ohura, and everybody else on the Starship Enterprise, they all come together, and they begin to figure out ways where we can route all the extra energy that we have back to the deflector shield so that I don't get attacked. God can't reach us. if that's how we, if that's how we think. Right? Now, God's more powerful than your deflector shields. And every now and then, you'd see it happen even on Star Trek. Captain, the shields are down. We cannot survive another hit. Star Trek, that's a bad place to be. Here, it's a good place to be. Right? Here, it's a good place to be. And that's where the king of Nineveh was. He's like, oh. This prophet just came through. 40 days, Nineveh shall be destroyed. He's like, I've got no defense against that. So what does he do? Instead of deflecting, he looks at himself in the mirror. He reflects. Hey, what's this guy saying? That's me. You ever stand in front of the mirror? I've said this before, but you ever stand in front of the mirror and go, yeah, the problem's you? I hope so. I hope you don't stand in front of the mirror and adjust it to the side. Yeah, it's her. Listen, God's going to reach you. You've got to hear him. And then you've got to think about what he said. And you can reflect or deflect. The choice is yours. pretty amazing technology in the deflector shields. But a mirror is so much better. I'll tell you another thing, and the last thing when it comes to the question of, you know, can God, can God reach me? And that is, that is simply this. It depends on how you act. Right, you've heard him, you've thought about it for a while. Well now it depends on what you do with it. You go back to Nineveh, the king of Nineveh. Right, he heard, he thought about it, he reflected on it. Oh yeah, it's me. He looked himself in the mirror. Oh man, we better do something. And then you know what he did? He acted upon it. First off, he believed God. That was helpful. But then he went and he proclaimed a fast. Another thing he did, he put on sackcloth. Right? In verse 6, he arose from his throne. Now that's interesting. Here's the king, sitting on the throne. I'm in charge. What I say goes. I'm the one that decides. Jonah comes through, blasts him. 40 days and then it shall be destroyed. And the king begins, he hears, he begins to think, he begins to reflect on it. Now he's got to take action. You know what he does? He gets up off of his throne. In other words, I'm not the one making the decision anymore. He laid his robe from him. He took what he had that was covering that deflector shield, if you will. And he takes it off. You know what? I'm not going to deflect anymore. I'm not on the throne anymore. I'm not going to deflect anymore. He covered himself with sackcloth. And he went and he sat in ashes. You know what he did? Folks, he just took action. He just took action. God was trying to reach him. God was trying to get a hold of him. God had something that he wanted to do with him. And regardless of what Jonah thought about it, God was interested in the king of Nineveh and what Nineveh thought about it. And so God's trying to get a hold of Nineveh. God's trying to reach the king of Nineveh. And when he did, the king of Nineveh did everything right. And the prophet from Israel did everything wrong. Put this into modern vernacular. The lost guy did everything right. The Christian did everything wrong. Now hopefully that doesn't happen too often. But it is certainly a possibility if the Christian is not able to be reached by God. Amen? And we think about that, the prophet did everything wrong. Now, the beautiful part about that is God still used the prophet. And he still tries to get a hold of Jonah, just like God does, and he's gracious that way, and you know, he brings Jonah up out of the whale's belly, and he gives him another chance, and Jonah reluctantly goes and gives the message, and then he goes out of the city, and he sits down, and he grumbles some more, he pouts, and he sits under, right? So the Lord sees Jonah out there pouting, and he's out in the hot sun, and the Lord says, I'll help him out, I'll raise up a gourd. He raises up a gourd, gives Jonah some shade, Jonah still complains. So the Lord took the gourd away. And you leave the story, you leave the book of Jonah with Jonah never did, never did get things completely right with God that we know of, that we have recorded. Now, I hope that, you know, at some point, he'd finally come to his senses. But I don't know. I'll find out, right? Right? We'll find out someday. I mean, if I had to guess because it's what I want to hear, I would think, yeah, I'm sure he did at some point in time. But man, the Lord's interested in... He is interested in how you hear it. Are you just... I don't want to hear it. He's interested in how you think about it. Are you gonna reflect on it? You're gonna reject it. And he's interested in how you act. Right? You can either apply what's been said or you can deny it. Sorry, Lord, not me. Nope, that's Jonah. Meanwhile, the king of Nineveh sitting there going, oh, that message was for me. I'm going to apply it. And he took all those steps. You know, we have the saying, action speaks louder than words, right? And the Lord, the Lord weighs your actions. So when the Lord deals with you, when the Lord's trying to reach you, when the Lord's trying to, you know, communicate with you and nudge you in a certain direction or get your attention, hey listen, regardless of all the things that you could put up to stop that, the Lord's just after, what are you gonna finally do with it? Are you gonna take what I say and just apply it? Like the King of Nineveh. Are you going to deny it? That king of Nineveh, he heard what was going on. And brethren, he didn't waste a moment. I mean, think of Joseph in Egypt. Not Joseph, Moses in Egypt, a little few years before Joseph. Think of Moses in Egypt, right? Him and Aaron go up to Pharaoh. Let my people go. Yeah, get out of here. goes away, right? God says, hey, go try again. Let my people go. Yeah, get out of here. Right? Let my people go. Yeah, get out of here. And back and forth and back and forth and plagues and plagues and plagues. And God continues to try and try and try. King of Nineveh was not like that. Exactly the opposite. King of Nineveh hears this message one time, 40 days, Nineveh shall be destroyed. He goes, I mean, he hears, he thinks about it. He doesn't even have to think about it very long, folks, not according to the text. He just, it's like, this stuff can happen pretty quick. Sometimes you struggle at one of these stages and you stay there for a while, but for the king of Nineveh, it happened pretty quick. He heard, he thought, next thing you do, boom, off the throne, put on the sackcloth, right, take off the robe, and just, it went boom, boom, boom, boom. He did exactly what God wanted him to do. This lost heathen king, he acted when he heard the words. John 14, if you love me, what? Keep my commandments. The Lord's interested in our actions. Amen. He is, he's interested in our actions. And we can come up with all kinds of excuses. You know, we can deflect, right? We can do all kinds of different things to not get to the point, but ultimately what the Lord's after, folks, and when he tries to reach us is he's looking to see, hey, what are your actions going to be? You've heard the saying, you know, your actions speak so loud, I can't hear what you say. And those are pretty good sayings. The Lord asked Solomon, what do you want? Give me anything you want. He says, hey, give me a wise and understanding heart. Wow. That was his action. He could do anything he wanted. And that's what he wanted. And the Lord blessed him because of it. Gave him riches, gave him a long life. Granted, Solomon still made some mistakes along the way. And you'll probably find yourself doing the same thing. But the Lord sat back and looked at what Solomon did. The Lord sat back and watched David and what David did. The Lord sat back and watched Abraham. The Lord sat back and watched Samuel. The Lord sat back and watched all those people and just, just watched what they did. And none of them were perfect. But you know what they wanted? They wanted God to reach them. I'm done. The question is, can God reach me? Well, it depends, folks. It depends on how you hear. It depends on how you think. And it depends on how you act. Amen? I hope God can reach you. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, we thank you again for another day here, another chance to just open the Word of God and look at a very familiar story and just to kind of pick a few things out of it and how people reacted to your calling. And Father, we see completely opposite ends of the spectrum. We see Jonah, who was very resistive and He didn't want to hear He didn't want to think about it that much and he didn't really want to take any actions And then we see a king of Nineveh that all those things father. He did right I Pray that you'd help us to do the things right like the king of Nineveh did them right? Help us father to realize that Lord, you are on a daily basis trying to reach us with something, trying to get a hold of us. Help us to be sensitive to what that is all about, and then, Father, to take the right steps so that we might ultimately wind up with the right actions, and we might please you. Pray you'd help us now in this area. I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.