Father, we are so grateful that you are our salvation. That there's nothing that we have done in our own lives, no work that we could do to save ourselves. It's not Christ plus works, it's Christ alone. And how grateful we are that it is Christ alone because We look at our lives and we see that we have broken your commands, we have broken your law, and you have said that anyone who has broken your law, even at one point, has broken the whole law. We were hopeless by ourselves, yet you rescued us. And so we live our lives in service to you, joyful service. You are our Lord. And so we follow you. and we honor you with our lives. Pray, Lord, this morning as we open your word that you would give us clarity of mind here in the congregation, you would empower my speech as well, that we would leave this place today transformed by the power of your word. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, you may have noticed that both of our full-time pastors are away this morning. Pastor Bobby is visiting his family in Minnesota. They just had a baby. So a new grandchild, and pray for him that he would have a time of refreshment. And Pastor Dave, of course, if you've been getting his emails, is in Israel. And man, he's been sending some amazing pictures, hasn't he? Those pictures have been amazing. Makes me want to go. and just the places he's been. Hopefully he'll come back and tell us all about it. All right. All right. But today, I'd like to start off with a quick show of hands. How many of us here today would say that we want to be more evangelistic? but we find ourselves struggling with evangelism. How many of us? How many of us say we want to be more evangelistic, but we struggle? I think all of us have been there to some extent or another. And I hope that you know that as a Christian, it is your responsibility to share the gospel. After all, Jesus calls us to share the gospel in Matthew 28, 19. Our Lord clearly commands his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. And make no mistake, that's not a command that's aimed only at the super spiritual. It's not a command aimed only at the 12 apostles, but it's a command for all of us. It is our job as Christians, as Paul would say, to be ambassadors for Christ. So if it is the responsibility, as we all would agree, of all Christians to be active in evangelism, then why do we find it such a struggle? Well, you know, one possible answer is you may say, I don't know how to do it. I'm not very good at it. But you know, the honest truth is we can all get better at it. But if you know enough to be saved yourself, then you know enough to give the gospel to somebody else. So for most of us, it's not a knowledge problem. Not really. So what is the problem? Well, instead of hearing it from me, let's see it from God's word, shall we? I'd like you to. Turn now with me in your Bibles to the Old Testament book of Jonah. Now, as we turn to the Old Testament book of Jonah, you might be trying to figure out where it is in the Bible. It's in all of these minor prophets. And if you're using a pew Bible, it's on page 922. Go ahead and turn there, and I would like you to turn there because today we're gonna try to make it through this whole book, all right? I get one week to do this, and we're gonna do the whole thing. And you know, the reason that I wanna take this as a whole book is really because Jonah is the type of story that I think needs to be told in one sitting. It's a type of story where the end is what makes sense of the beginning. And you can't really understand the book unless we get to the end, all right? So let's dive into it. Just a few words as we do that about the book itself. The story of Jonah is one of the most iconic stories in the whole Bible, is it not? Everybody Everybody, even popular culture, knows about the story of the man swallowed by the fish. It's in the culture. And because of some of these cultural depictions, many people view the Book of Jonah as just a fairy tale. It's a fictitious book. After all, how could anybody believe that somebody could be swallowed by a fish? survived three days in the fish's belly where there's no oxygen, stomach acid eating you up, and still survived to tell about it. So, the first question we always have to answer when we come to this book is whether the Book of Jonah is historical fact or fiction. Well, let's see if we can find out from the Bible what it says. So, in Jonah 1.1, if you look at the Bible in front of you, It says that Jonah's father is a man named Amittai. So it seemed right away like Jonah is a person who has a real father. And if we go to 2 Kings chapter 14, which we won't do because of the interest of time, 2 Kings 14, 23, the book of 2 Kings mentions the prophet Jonah, the son of Amittai. And it tells us that Jonah served under a specific king, Jeroboam, the son of Joash. And it even tells us Jonah's hometown. So this is the town of Gathhether, which is really in the region of Galilee, same region that Jesus himself came from. So here it is, the Bible tells us Jonah's name, his father, his hometown, and even the prophecy that Jonah made for Israel, which is separate from the book of Jonah. So it seems like, from there, Jonah's a real person. And what about the city of Nineveh, which he's sent to? Well, that, in fact, is known to be a real city. It has real walls. Let's see if this clicker works here. How do I do this? Are we on the slide? Okay. It's a picture of, of Nineveh if you go there today. It's real walls, visible as ruins today. Famously, the walls are 10 feet high, difficult to penetrate. So we know exactly where Nineveh is. It's actually in modern day Mosul, Iraq. And Nineveh is a real city, historically. And if that's not enough for you, Jesus himself validates the story in Matthew 12, verse 38 to 42. So we will look at that, but Jesus himself tells us that Jonah is real. So with all that said, we have no choice then to treat the book of Jonah as a real historical account, despite what we'll see as the many incredible, miraculous, even surreal things that happen in this book that we'll see. It's an incredible book. And with that out of the way, let's dive into Jonah and read starting from verse 1 of chapter 1. Jonah 1, 1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Stop right there. So God says, here's your orders Jonah. I want you to go to Nineveh. Now this is a highly unusual request from God to a prophet because Nineveh is a pagan city and prophets aren't sent to pagan cities. Prophets are sent to Israel. And Nineveh in fact is not just any Gentile city. It is the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, which is a sworn enemy of Israel. Could go into a lot of biblical prophecy, which is about Assyria, really as an instrument of judgment that God is using against Israel. So Assyria, everybody knows, is the enemy. They're the enemy. Now why would God send Jonah to the enemy? All right, but look, you're the prophet of God, right? The bottom line is, if God of the universe tells you to do something, what do you do? You do it! It's not your job to ask questions. So let's see if that's what Jonah does. And we look in verse three, and the first word we see in verse three is, but. So right off the bat, we're in trouble, aren't we? Now if you haven't guessed already, Jonah is not exactly going to be the sort of shining example of virtue for us. This is not how Jonah is portrayed in this book. And actually, that's the whole point of this book. In fact, I believe that God gave us the book of Jonah as a mirror. It's a mirror by which we can evaluate our own faithfulness. So as we go through this book, I want you to, with me, instead of simply looking down and laughing at Jonah for his many failures, I want you to ask the question, how much of Jonah do we find in our own lives? That's the question for us, okay? So, just to give you a quick outline, you know, what we're gonna see today is three characteristics of Jonah that hindered his evangelistic mission. Three characteristics of Jonah that hindered his evangelistic mission. And they might be the same characteristics that hinder your mission. So, we've already uncovered here, just in verse three, the first characteristic, and that is that Jonah was unafraid to disobey God's direct command. Jonah, the prophet of God, is unafraid to disobey God's correct command. Verse three, but Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So just hold on for one second here, and let's develop a mental map of what's going on. I found this map on the internet. So here is Jonah around Joppa, which is, you would notice, sort of in the middle of that map, around where Israel is. In fact, that's the modern city of Tel Aviv, very close to that. And there's where God wants him to go, over there in Nineveh, Mosul, Iraq, 500 miles away. And instead of doing that, you'll notice that Jonah charters a boat to what country that we would know today? Spain. Decided to take a Mediterranean cruise and go to Spain in the exact opposite direction that God wants him to go. So, you know, not only is he not going to obey God's command to go to Nineveh, Jonah decides to desert his entire nation, desert his station, abandon his people, and go to a faraway foreign land, presumably to live out the rest of his life among heathen. Jonah doesn't do things halfway, does he? And in fact, the Hebrew legend is that Jonah actually sold his house to be able to afford this cruise, the fare. It was a very expensive fare. And, you know, it's multi-month journey. So this was bye-bye to God. This was bye-bye to Israel. He wasn't planning on coming back. Now, at this point, we have to ask ourselves the question is, Does Jonah really think he can run from God? Does Jonah really think that? And, you know, as the prophet of God, or even just as a citizen of Israel, he would have known Psalm 39.9, if I take up the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will take hold of me. Jonah doesn't have an information problem. He knows that he can't run away from God. And sure enough, God is going to come after him. And so we'll see that in verse four. What does God do? Verse four, the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea. And there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid. And every man cried to his God, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the holds of the ship, laying down, and fallen sound asleep. See, what the text says is that God throws, he actively throws, hurls a great storm after Jonah. This is a supernatural storm. This isn't just any storm that would happen. In this time, it's a supernatural storm that's so terrible that the seasoned professional sailors are convinced that it's gonna break up the ship. They've been doing this their whole lives. They've spent their entire lives on the high seas and they are spooked. Never seen a storm like this before. What do they do? They become afraid and that fear causes them to cry out to their gods. These gods are false gods because, of course, these are pagan, heathen sailors. And they're so convinced they're going to die that they're literally throwing all of their cargo overboard. Now, think about that. This cargo, this trade route that they're on, the whole purpose of this route from Tarshish to Joppa is a trade route. And, in fact, the Bible tells us about this trade route in 2 Chronicles 21. It tells us exactly what cargo this trade route is carrying. In 2 Chronicles 9.20, it describes this route as running once every three years. So it's a very seldomly run trade route, so everything is rare. And it's carrying these things. It's carrying gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. So exotic things for rich people, right? This is cargo that if you dump this overboard, this is a catastrophic loss for your shipping company. Millions of dollars in today's terms just dumped into the sea, but that doesn't matter to the sailors because you can't spend money when you're dead. And so they're dumping this stuff overboard, and what do we find our Prophet Jonah doing? napping, taking a nap, unconcerned. So at this point, I think we should ask ourselves, again, and let the mirror of Jonah point to ourselves and ask you, are you, Christian, disobeying any of God's command in your life? Are you, like Jonah, in disobedience and oblivious to the consequences of God. What about God's command to make disciples? Are you obeying that command? Or do you, like Jonah, somehow think that your disobedience as a Christian to that command will escape the notice and discipline of God? See, we don't think about evangelism that way, do we? We tend to view the command to make disciples as something that's an optional thing, that's a bonus that we do in our lives, but not the primary purpose. But you know what? It's a command of God. And if it is not the primary focus of your life to obey these commands, then you may be staring straight down the barrel of the discipline of God. And you might not even know it. Now you say, Greg, you know what? I've been a Christian for many years. And I've gone this far without evangelizing. And I'm doing just fine. God hasn't disciplined me. I'm not sure what you're talking about. And I would turn around and say this. Are you really sure that that's good news, that you haven't experienced the discipline of God? What does it say in Hebrews 12.6? The Lord, what? Disciplines the one he loves. God, it's a promise. God will discipline the children that disobey. And you, as a Christian of many years, if you have disobeyed God in this area and have not experienced his discipline, what might that mean? I think the inescapable conclusion is you need to consider maybe you are not a child of God. And I think that needs to chill you to your bones. Well, let's pick up our story again in verse six of chapter one. See, we're really being a little generous here because it seems like Jonah is actually worse. Oh, so let me go back a little bit. This storm is a supernatural storm, okay? And it's clear to all the sailors that they've never seen anything like this storm. So the captain, in verse six, it says this. The captain approached him and said, how is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. Now I don't want you to miss the irony in this book here, that this heathen captain is the one praying and calling on his false god, the sailors are calling on their false gods, and Jonah, the only person on the boat who actually knows the true God, is not praying to his God. It takes this heathen captain to urge him to pray. And here we make note of the second characteristic of Jonah that is hindering his evangelism, and that's this. Jonah's manner of life is indistinguishable from an unbeliever's. Jonah's manner of life is indistinguishable from an unbeliever's. And in fact, you know, this is an understatement, really. Because it looks like Jonah's actually worse than the unbelievers, if you look further on. At least the heathen captain is praying to something. Jonah's not doing anything. And you'll see, as we go into the next verse, that Jonah knows full well what this storm is all about. But he keeps his mouth shut. So the sailors do something remarkable in this act of desperation to figure out what's going on with the supernatural storm. Verse 7, each man said to his mate, come, let us cast lots so that we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. And they said to him, Tell us now, on whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and dry land. And then the men become extremely frightened. And they said to him, how could you do this? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. You see, Jonah stays silent for as long as he could until God forces him to speak up. And when he finally does, he says this, yeah, I'm running from the Lord. By the way, this is the Lord that actually made the sea that is about to kill us. And the sailors go, you idiot! You don't disobey God and think that you can get away with that. These heathen unbelievers have better spiritual common sense than Jonah. And it gets worse in verse 11. They said to him, what should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us? For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. And he said to them, pick me up and throw me in the sea and the sea will become calm for you. For I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you. Now, that's a bit extreme, isn't it? You've just told me that you're a follower of God and now you want me to chuck the prophet of God into the ocean to drown to death. That seems wrong to do that. To throw anyone in the ocean, much less God's chosen prophet. Now ask yourselves, is this the only thing that Jonah could have done? Is that really his only option? I mean, what did Jonah not try? He did not try praying. He did not try repenting. He did not try, hey, guys, let's just turn back. Let's just turn back. Maybe God will relent. No, Jonah goes for, why don't you just kill me? See, I don't think that any of this is some type of grand act of sacrifice on Jonah's part. Jonah is just saying to God, he's continuing his tantrum. He's saying, fine, God. It seems you're not gonna take no for an answer on this. Nineveh thing, so just kill me instead, okay? If I'm dead, at least I won't be in Nineveh. And then I still win. So Jonah's just acting ridiculous and stubborn, and the sailors say to Jonah, you are a crazy dude. You know, how about we don't murder the prophet of God, and we don't want your blood on our hands. They're trying to do the right thing. So, verse 13, however, the men rode desperately to return to land, but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them. And these heathens, the text says, the next thing they do is they pray to Yahweh. Remember, Jonah has not yet did that, right? So verse 14, and they called on the Lord and said, we earnestly pray, O Lord, do not let us perish on account of this man's life, and do not put innocent blood on us, for you, O Lord, have done as you have pleased. Finally left with no other option, verse 15, and this makes no difference at this point, because they're all gonna die anyways in a few seconds. Jonah might as well go first. They picked up Jonah, threw him in the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. So they threw him overboard and the supernatural storm goes from this to this. Abruptly. It just stops. And that must have been something. You know, one minute there's a raging storm, the next minute the sun is out, sea is calm, and that's not normal. And if there was any doubt before this was a supernatural storm, there is no longer any doubt in their minds. God did this. And these sailors now having witnessed the, in their face, the control, utter control of God on the nature, on the elements of nature, on the sea, verse 16, the men feared the Lord greatly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord. and made vows. See, I think these pagan, unbelieving sailors that day became worshippers of the true God, having encountered the power of God. No thanks, of course, to the testimony of Jonah, who throughout all this acted worse than an unbeliever, never prayed at all, never lifted a hand, except to shake his fist at God. So much for being a living testimony. I think it's going haywire. Can you give me the next one? Go to the next slide for now. Okay. So these pagan sailors really demonstrated in this account more spiritual awareness, more sensitivity than Jonah himself. And question now as we use the mirror of Jonah is to ask yourself, what about you in your life? Do unbelievers around you look more spiritual than you do? And maybe at work or maybe in your friend group, your unbelieving friends are openly disgusting and showing their religion by what they say and what they wear, while you stay silent. And I think we all have to ask ourselves, as Dr. Mayhew asked once, if they one day put you on trial for the crime of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And if not, maybe there's a little bit more Jonah in you than you think. Next slide, please, if you can get there. Oh, I got it, okay. All right, so God is not gonna be thwarted. And Jonah thinks he can maybe escape God in death. But God has other ideas. Verse 17, the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights. And of course, this is, as you see on the slide here, the picture of what it looked like in the fish's belly. But you see, God rescues Jonah with this fish. As Jonah was sinking down in the sea, he starts to think to himself, maybe as you as I would, you know, maybe this whole drowning thing wasn't such a good idea after all. And finally, long last, Jonah begins to pray. And his prayer, which is a magnificent prayer, is recorded in Jonah 2, which we read this morning in our scripture reading. So we won't go through it again, but suffice it to say that this wonderful prayer is extolling God's mercy in Jonah's distress, how God heard him in his time of trouble and showed mercy from him, and salvation is from the Lord, right? And, you know, if you examine this passage closely, you find about 10 quotes from the Psalms of David, Psalm 3, 5, 15, 120, which proves that Jonah knows his Psalms. It's a very theologically rich prayer. And so Jonah says, you know what, I win. You win, Lord. I'll do what you ask. And verse 10 of chapter two, God, I love this. He commands the fish to vomit him up onto dry land. Maybe that's what Jonah deserves. That's just gross. A while ago I had some bad food poisoning and I ended up vomiting in my car. in the hot summer. And there's nothing worse than that, man, I'll tell you. In fact, Kylie was in the car with me and she was grossed out and she almost vomited. And then there will be a chain reaction and, you know, this is bad. But Jonah is just covered head to toe with fish vomit. You know, maybe what he deserves. And most likely the fish dropped him back off right at Joppa. Right back where he started. See, crime doesn't pay, right? And now he's just back at square one, except now covered in fish vomit. So chapter three, moving a little quickly now. So chapter three, verse one. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. I love that, right? The second time. God gives a second chance. Saying, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamations which I am going to tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days walk. And Jonah began to go through the city, one day walk, and he cried out and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. And Jonah gets up and walks the 550 miles, I guess, unless he made some other way of transportation to Nineveh. Probably would have taken a month. You know, this is consistent, you know, the time he takes to walk through is consistent with archaeology. Nineveh's about 60 miles in circumference and about 20 miles through for one day. And God's message that he gives them is a message of what? Judgment. Now remember in chapter 1, God said the wickedness had come up before him. Nineveh's sin was so great that God determined that judgment could no longer wait. So, God gave them a message of judgment, but within that message of judgment is built in a window of what? Mercy. And friends, isn't that the same as our gospel? All of us have broken God's law and are headed imminently to eternal damnation. But look, there is still time to repent. There's a window of mercy. Repent now, trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins, and you will be saved. That is our message. It's a similar message here, but look at how Nineveh responds in verse 5. Then the people of Nineveh believed in God, and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. See, there's a miraculous mass conversion. Everyone from the least to the greatest repented. This is a bigger miracle than the three days in the fish, I'll tell you. Unheard of. Verse 6, when the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat on the ashes. He issued a proclamation, and it said, in Nineveh, by the decree of the king and the nobles, do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste the thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and men call on God earnestly, that each may turn from his wicked way, from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent, withdraw his burning anger, so that we will not perish. There's probably around 600,000 people in the city. That's what people estimate. And not only do all these people repent, Not only do they turn from their wicked ways, which is apparently violence, as we'll see later, they beg God for mercy. And look at this, they fast. Not only do they fast, but they make their animals fast. Do you know of any other time in the Bible where not only humans, but animals fast? That's not a thing. And not only are they not eating, they're not even drinking water. Can you fast without water? This is an extreme, over-the-top fast. Israel didn't fast like this. And Mike is about to tell me that they do sometime, right? But this is a true, desperate repentance. And does God honor this repentance? Let's look at verse 10. When God saw their deeds, they turned from their wicked way then God relented concerning the calamity which he had declared he would bring upon them, and he did not do it. Amazing. Amazing. And I think we'll see many of these Ninevites in heaven. I think God saved their souls as well as their city. And now, you know, if the book of Jonah had just ended there, we would say, wow, this is a wonderful story of redemption. for Jonah who obeyed God and his obedience was honored. What a great story. But of course we know there's a chapter four. And here comes the plot twists. Are you ready? Let's get into it. Chapter four, verse one. But it greatly displeased Jonah, this mass conversion. greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. Wait, what? There's a mass conversion? Your mission was successful, Jonah. There was never before any time in history when an entire city repented like this. From the greatest to the least, and man, you've sent potentially 600,000 souls to heaven. And if anyone is keeping score, That's gotta be vaulting him to the top of the evangelistic leaderboard, right? I don't know how you do better than that. So what's the problem, Jonah? Verse two, he tells you the problem. He prayed to the Lord and said, please, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this, I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness, abundant in loving kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life. Wow, this is the real reason Jonah fled. It wasn't fear that he fled. It was hatred. Why? Because he knew. God describes himself as gracious, merciful, compassionate, and loving. That's supposed to be a blessing to us. But Jonah takes that and throws it into God's face and says, I knew you were this person. I knew it. You always do this, God. And frankly, I would rather die than see any of these people saved, so just kill me now so I don't have to witness your mercy. This is a some prophet. Mercy for me, but not for thee. Remember just two chapters ago, Jonah 2, this wonderful poetic prayer of God's mercy. God, you're so merciful to me. Salvation is from the Lord. What happened to that guy? Same guy. Well, you know what, before we judge Jonah too harshly, I want to tell you a little bit about the Ninevites, all right? Just a few things. We can't go into too much detail. Some of this is not actually something you can put in a sermon. I'll try to put in, like, the stuff that I think is not too bad. But history is full of accounts, of specific accounts of Ninevite violence. and their brutality. And in fact, not only are they famous for their violence, but they boast of it, even in their art. And, you know, if you ever get a chance to go to London and to the British Museum, you should do so. And you can see these art pieces from the horse's mouth. And here are some of the reliefs that they have made, you can see. This is from their own art. So here you see Assyrian soldiers impaling people on stakes. And what they would do, they would puncture the abdomen with stakes, which is a slow and painful death. It's a gut wound. And you would wiggle there for hours or days as you died. And they would watch them and mock them. They were proud of this. Here's another picture of Assyrian soldiers forcing the defeated to grind up the bones of their own family members. That's what they would do. And the next one is truly disturbing. Here, they would skin people alive as they screamed. They would do it one piece at a time, starting from the buttocks, and they would peel off layers of skin, and then they would put it back together like some sort of sick papier-mâché art, and then they would hang that from their walls as a demonstration of their brutality. I'm not going to put that up there much longer. By the way, there are other accounts. They've burned children alive as their parents watched, entombed people in darkness and hollow walls until they starved to death. And oh, by the way, the Assyrians are the people who invented crucifixion. Crucifixion. See, these were the Assyrians. These were the Ninevites. And this is what they are threatening, or maybe even doing to Israel, Jonah's country, his family, and his friends. It's not like Jonah just randomly hates people. These were literally, today we would say these were literally evil people, experts in torture, from the king down to the rank and file soldier, and they were proud of it. You see now maybe why Jonah hated these people so much. And you see now in verse four when the Lord says, do you have good reason to be angry? Jonah's answer would be yes. Yes, of course I have good reason to be angry. Look at what the Assyrians have done. But as the Bible teaches us over and over, there's no such thing as good people and bad people. Right? There's only what? There's only bad people. No one is righteous, no not one. Jonah would have known that, Psalm 14. And it's not that the Ninevites are profoundly sinful, it's that Jonah himself is also profoundly sinful, but he just doesn't know it. He has an extra dash of self-righteousness to go with that. And you know what, if God's mercy is good enough for one of those two groups, then it's also good enough for both. And that's good news to us, right? So God decides to teach Jonah this lesson. Verse five, then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. And there he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. And so Jonah here, we see, sets up camp outside the city. He's not in the city. He's not discipling people, by the way. That's not what he's doing. He's outside the city, and why? Well, because he's thinking maybe God will change his mind again, you know? Maybe God will judge him after all, and he wants a front row seat. Absolutely amazing. So he makes a little shelter for himself, but you know what? It's the desert. This is Mosul, Iraq. It's not really a lot to work with, so his shelter doesn't work. So God helps him out a bit, verse six. So the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew up over him, over Jonah, to be a shade over his head, to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. You see, there's another miracle here. Just as God appointed a whale to swallow Jonah, God appointed a plant to grow at a supernatural speed. Plants don't grow this way, right, Nadia? Especially not in the desert. There's no water there. But God delivers this supernatural giant plant with Jonah. Great big leaf out of place. He's relieved and he's comfortable and now God has Jonah right where he wants him because in verse seven, Jonah appointed, there it is again, He's sovereign over nature. A worm, when dawn came the next day and attacked the plant and it withered. And so, so much for the nice shade. Verse eight, when the sun came up, God appointed, there it is again, a scorching east wind. And the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, death is better to me than life. Jonah really wants to die. It's the third time, actually, he's begged for that in this book. And he says, look, Lord, you've already saved my mortal enemies, and now you've killed my plant, too. It's a really nice plant, God. I love that plant. And now you've turned up the wind and the sun. Like, what is that? I'm just done. Just kill me now. In verse 9, God says to Jonah, do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? And Jonah, man, he has some guts. He says, I have good reason to be angry, even to death. That's a way to talk back to God. So I want you to think with me. Why does Jonah love this plant so much? Is he a horticulturist? Does he just love plants? No, he loves this plant because it benefited him. And so God is, with this account, revealing Jonah's true values. This is Jonah's value system. Jonah loves those who benefit him. And those who don't, he's indifferent to, or he hates. Jonah views the world and people through the lens of his own selfishness. And now the last two verses of Jonah, we're there, we got it, okay? These are the two most important verses, so if you've been zoning out, come back for these two verses, because this is the whole point of the book. It's the whole point of the book, all right? Verse 10. Then the Lord said, you had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between the right hand and left hand, as well as many animals? So, of course, the people who don't know the right and left hand are talking about children. And God says, you have no compassion on any of these people. There's people in this city, Jonah. And not only you don't care about the people, there's children in this city that don't even know the difference between their right and their left. You know, we all know what happened last week. Bunch of innocent children died, and that was outrageous to the world, right? And God is saying, look at all of these children. You really wanted them to die? You're okay with that. And even animals, okay? So you don't care about people. You don't care about children. Maybe you care about the animals because all of these people, all of these three groups, they're all more valuable than what? Plants. They're all more valuable than plants. So where, Jonah, where is your head at? And that's where the book ends. So we're left then at the end of Jonah with this question. What are we to make of this book? And now we are finally able to identify the third characteristic of Jonah that hinders his evangelism. And this is the main one, okay? This is the main one that I think is the big one. And it's this. Jonah had no compassion for the lost. He had no compassion for the lost. Jonah, like many of us, view people around us through the lens of our own selfish gain. Be honest. Is that who you are? He didn't care about the sailors. He didn't care about the Ninevites. He didn't care about the children. What does he care about? Well, his own comfort. His selfishness is off the charts, and that is the point of this book. And the question for us today is, are we like that as well? So I wanna go back to the title of our sermon today, and really the main question we're gonna answer, what is the reason you struggle with evangelism? Why? Why is evangelism such a struggle for us? And the answer is that we don't care enough about people. We don't care enough about the lost. We don't have the compassion of God. And I want to ask you, when you go about your life and you see an unbeliever, and God puts that unbeliever in your path, whether it be a neighbor or a stranger, or somebody, a cashier at the coffee shop. What is your first thought when you look at that person? Is it, oh man, that's just another sinner. So glad I'm not like that guy. Is it, oh, that person's the enemy. They're probably for all the wrong political causes. Or is it, how can I use this person to get me my promotion, to get me what I want? Or do you see with the eyes of God? What does God see? He sees a sinner speeding towards the gates of hell with no brakes. And boy, somebody, please, please somebody give him the gospel. Please. That's the main message of the sermon today. We need to change how we see people in our lives. And if we don't change the eyes with which we see people, then evangelism, no wonder it's a struggle. No wonder it's a struggle. So I'm going to end the sermon with some homework for you, okay? This is homework. We had an evangelism boot camp a while ago, and if you guys missed it, we had homework after every week. So if you weren't there, then here's homework for you, okay? Here we go. In fact, if you have a piece of paper and a pen handy, I'd like you to get a piece of paper and write it down, okay? This is the first thing I would like you to do. C. I want you to think about the people that are unbelievers, and I want you to see their faces in your minds, all right? Look at them. You can see their faces in your minds, and, you know, even the people you don't like. Now try to see them as God sees them, as sinners speeding towards an eternal punishment who desperately need the gospel. And now I want you to realize when you see them with God's mind that those people are your Nineveh. That's your mission field. And you need to remember that the next time you see these people. So God, I want you to, if you see them in your mind, write down their names in front of you. Right there, write down their names. And the second thing is I want you to pray. I want you to begin to pray for these people daily. Pray for them daily, that God would open their eyes. God is the one who opens eyes, right? He opened the eyes of the sailors, no thanks to Jonah. He opened the eyes of the Ninevites, again, no thanks to Jonah. He is the one who opens eyes. And third, I want you to begin to strategize, okay? you have the names in front of you, you need to strategize how you can have a gospel opportunity with them. You know, most of the, some of the time, maybe God will providentially grant you one, but most of the time, you're gonna have to create it. Sorry guys, that's just the way it works. You have to work for this. Find a way to invite them to coffee, to your house, to walk, so that you can give them the gospel. So you need to write down for each person on your list a plan. What is your plan? How are you going to find an opportunity with this person? And finally, the last thing to do, if you could just advance the slide for me, Lee, is number four is to share. That is to share. We want everybody in this church to do this, okay? See, pray, strategize, and the last slide, the last bullet is to share. Can we do that as a church? Can all of us who call ourselves Christian make this a part of our daily lives? We ought to be doing this. We ought to be doing this. Amen. Let's end it with a word of prayer. Thank you for this wonderful but yet tragic book of Jonah. What a book it is. And what a lesson that you've given us when you've given Jonah to us as a mirror by which we can evaluate our own faithfulness to preach your gospel. And we pray that you would use this book to inspire us to greater compassion for the lost and make us effective workers for your kingdom. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.