Preparation for the Siege of Boston

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Today we're thrilled to continue our series in the Book of Jonah. This is week three and next week will be our final week. Today we are continuing in the series, it's called Reluctant Believer. And again, we are engaging the fact that Jonah does present himself in many ways as a reluctant believer throughout the book, but today chapter 3 is where he is walking in tune with the Lord. And there are a lot of lessons for us to glean and take away for how we should be looking to God to prepare us for the missions that he calls us to. This is really just one of the most exciting chapters of Scripture in my mind. The Lord's used it profoundly in my life and today I will pray right now that he does the same. So let me read Jonah 3 and then I'll pray and deliver the word. Jonah chapter 3 and the full chapter, verses 1 through 10.

This is the word of our Lord. "Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.' So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, 'Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!' And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

"The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, 'By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.' When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented on the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it."

This is the word of our Lord. Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you this day for the chance to hear your word almost 3,000 years after the life of Jonah. Lord, your word still stands. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And today we ask that your word would go out in power as it did in the day of Jonah when he went to Nineveh. Lord, we ask that we would get to see your might at hand in the form of changed hearts, in the form of humility and contrition and repentance before you. We pray that all of us here would be inclined to look to you for grace and mercy and receive it with gladness.

Holy Spirit, we pray, remind us of the specific callings that you have put on our hearts, those callings to bring you glory. Remind us of your grace if we catch ourselves and having failed in our callings. Remind us of just the ways that you have prepared us to be your servants. And Lord, I just pray, let us be faithful to your formation today through the delivery of your word. I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

I want to begin with a question. Are you doing anything that requires you to live for a cause greater than the glory or good of yourself? Are you doing anything in life that requires you to live for a cause greater than the glory or good of yourself? I am.

I recently started playing on an organized sports team for the first time in 11 years. I did the whole work too much in my mid-20s, get married, have kids, gain weight, have my first reconstructive joint surgery thing over the past decade, and now I'm back on the soccer field with the co-ed parents team for my child's elementary school. And you know what? It's a blast. It's not been a blast because I'm 35 and the average age of everyone else is 40 to 50. It's not been a blast because I'm able to get a workout in that I've been lacking. In full sincerity, I love playing on this team because in locking arms with my teammates, I'm doing something that is blatantly bigger than myself for a couple of hours in the week. I'm playing for a team and essentially it feels good and right to be forgetting myself as I join my teammates.

After my first game of playing on the team, I honestly had to ask myself while just feeling good to have joined this greater unit, "Have I been doing this anywhere else in my life? Have I been working for the good of something greater than myself for a while?" And you know what? I realize that I have. I realize that actually day to day as a husband, as a dad, as a pastor, a church member, I've actually been seeking to live for many causes greater than myself as I've tried to serve faithful in each of these roles. And you know what? As hard as being a husband, dad, pastor, church member can be with this renewed perspective from playing soccer, I realized that grinding it out each day in all of these callings is the blessed life.

And so why is that? Why do I see it this way? Because I know that to live for myself, for my glory, my desires, my preferences, my plans alone leads to nothing but wasting away and self-deceptions and efforts to try to numb myself to the fact that living in such a way does not satisfy. I tried that approach for five years from the start of college to a year out before I found Mosaic, and I know it doesn't deliver. How many of you have tried that before? To live for yourself for extended periods and it just does not deliver?

The pain of the grind to be faithful, though it's not quite as fun as losing oneself while playing soccer on a team, is so much better than the stagnancy and stoutness that mark a life without ambition beyond one's own desires or life with ambition that is too small. So I again ask, are you doing anything that requires you to live for a cause greater than your glory or good?

You see, I asked this because I'm trying to draw out something that's inherent in human nature. We were made to live for so much more as the Switchfoot early 2000 song says. Man was made to live for so much more than himself and if he doesn't do this, he gets lost and blind and rots away. The Scriptures attest to this. When God creates men and woman, he gives them a commission, Genesis 1:28, "And God blessed them and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"

Furthermore, when someone is saved in Christ, Jesus commands all... In Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission: "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go with therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

As humans and especially as commissioned Christians, we can't get rid of this inner calling to live for something greater than ourselves. The specific calling to live for God, our creator, to live for his purposes, his glory, the spreading of his dominion through the preaching of the gospel on this side of creation is our unique and grand calling in life. And we can't get rid of it, we can't shake it. I say to you, this is the calling that God places on the lives of all people, whether they profess to be Christian or not. And beyond the Scriptures, what's my further evidence for this?

A lot of Scriptures that I can't really spell out today because it'll distract too much from Jonah 3, they tell you to simply look within your heart and you will find this out. It's something about being an image bearer of God that he has imparted part of his attributes to you, that you are going to want to live for his glory. You are going to want to make use of the skills, the gifts, the qualities, the characters, beings, the longings in your heart in this life. And that's a little spiritual, it's a little hard to flesh out with Jonah 3, but I want to just argue with it that we just know this, that we have this part of our human nature just by looking at just literature and media over the years.

Look how big and successful the book and movie industries about heroes and heroines who single-handedly take on the world for a great cause are. Ask why are anti-Nazi World War II movies still being churned out like rapid fire constantly in our day? Why are superhero movies so popular? Why are action movies where The Rock, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone just automatic ways to make a ton of money and draw big crowds? Why are so many stories like The Lord of the Rings where a little or simple man or woman like Frodo takes on a tremendous force of evil against all odds, so popular?

The answer is that as much as modern, post-modern and India authors and artists try to badmouth these stories and write these narratives out of the human story, they can't. There's something in the heart of the narrative of these one-man army stories, of the underdog stories that appeals to our heart. We can't shake the call to do something great in life. We can't prevent our hearts from being stirred and amazed at the stories of one man taking up great tasks because it's written on our hearts that we must do so ourselves.

What does this have to do with our passage today? It has everything to do with it. What takes place in our passage? One guy, one man, a prophet of God, Jonah, with a really shaky track record, in a short moment of wholehearted obedience goes to a great city and God uses his simple message to inspire the most sincere and astonishing revival recorded in all of Scripture. Just think, they didn't even let their... They clothed their animals in sack cloth and ashes. They had their animals fast, not just the people, not just the king and the nobles. There's true humility and contrition with the hope that God would relent of the disaster.

The most unbelievable part about the Book of Jonah is not that Jonah is swallowed by a great fish and then spit up on the shore. It's that the great city of Nineveh turns from its evil ways and true contrition and turns to God for mercy. This city great in every way, in size and riches, in population and architecture and security. It had these great walls. In reputation and culture, in military might and wickedness. The people were known in history for cutting off the noses of their captured enemies, skinning them alive, placing their skins on the walls when they captured their city. This great city and its king, its nobles, its people is brought to its knees in sack cloth and ashes before the Lord by the efforts of one man.

Jonah's seize and conquering of Nineveh is none other than the classic story of good conquering evil, God conquering Satan, a man carrying out the duty that all men were created to do by God. Just like being on a team has reminded me, just like all the classic hero stories and blockbuster movies do, Jonah's conquering of Nineveh should pull out of all of us that which is inherent in our nature. It should pull out the desire to live for the greatest cause in the universe; to live for the spreading of the rule and reign of the kingdom of God.

When we look at this story, it should inspire us. So think about how God can use us in this great city of Boston to think about how we can be more than conquerors for Christ here, to think about how we can take down the giants that are in this land. We should truly believe that through hiding God's training and call in our lives, we can bring this great city perhaps pound for pound, person per person, the most influential city in the world except where it matters most to its knees before God.

Today we study Jonah 3 with the intention to identify how God prepares his servants to accomplish much more than they should, to identify how God is preparing us for the seize and conquering of Boston. So how does God prepare his servants for this great service? That's what I want to talk about today as we look at the text. And I say persistent calling, generous grace, strategic planning, giving of power and suffering. Said differently, how's God trying to fight the cynicism that is built up in your heart as an adult, as you've sought to only build your own kingdom or preserve your small cup of peace? Persistent calling, generous grace, strategic planning, giving of power, suffering.

So persistent calling. How's God prepare his... How does he prepare his servants for great service? Persistent calling. Jonah 3:1 says, "Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time." This is one of the most encouraging pieces of Scripture, encouraging verses in all of Scripture. How many of you need to hear this right now after walking out the door and saying something to your spouse or your child or your roommate that did not honor them as an image bearer of God as you're trying to rush here today? By nature, as I mentioned, God sends and calls. He doesn't claim or save his children and leave them to stay where they are. He tells them to go and claim dominion for him. With Jonah, there's no ounce of pity toward him after he spent his time in the fish. He doesn't give him a week off. God knows that after his experience in the fish, he has Jonah's heart and he calls him to go to Nineveh a second time.

This is encouraging to me. What it tells us is that mission isn't for the elite, it's not for the well-rested, it's not for those who have all authority, have all the resources. It's not for those who are professionally trained, seminary educated, overflowing with resources. It's for anybody who claims that they are the Lord's. God by nature is ascending and calling God. Those who genuinely know God know that he will come to you not just a second time but a third and fourth and beyond to press you into action to get you to stop living for yourself and live for him. Live for the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Live for other people. God constantly pushes and plows us out of our comfort zones in an effort to ask us, "When do you really want to start learning who I am? I live to make things new, to change people, to renew them from the inside out. You can never find out who I am if you're never in action dependent upon me." God never sucks us in, swallows us without spitting us out and telling us to go.

Think of God's calling of Abraham in Genesis 12. "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.'"

He never saves without calling you to save. He never blesses someone without calling them to be a blessing. And the only way you can be a blessing is if you go, you leave, you leave your comfort zone, your safe space and you get out. God calls us to leave that which is familiar in order to engage that which is foreign and scary and requires vulnerability. It takes these things to bless others. You can't be a Christian and not expect to be on mission without engaging the own mess of your heart and engaging the mess of the hearts of the people that you're trying to serve and love and be used by God to convert. If you don't follow God's call, it's not just that you can't be a blessing and be used by God, it's that it prevents you from becoming like God.

Many more years after Abraham, 700-plus years after Jonah, God the Son, Jesus Christ, left the ultimate safety zone, the throne of God's radiant and infinite glory in heaven to take on flesh. And when he was on earth, he faced every tension, every challenge, every hardship that was possible. He spoke, he engaged the world in order to reach out to us and in doing so, he created many followers but many enemies. The same thing we experience in being Christian here in the city. And yet in doing all of this, by humbling himself, Jesus exalted himself. By losing himself, he found himself. The very opposite of what happens when someone lives for themselves.

Just thinking about how God just persistently calls us. Just practical application. Just ask yourself, are you living for something beyond the maintenance of your schedule, your work, your reputation, day in and day out? Are there any places where you are extending yourself, making yourself uncomfortable for God and for others, for the sake of saving others, for the sake of encouraging other Christians? Through your giving, through your service, are you actually sacrificing to God? Can you really convince yourself or others that you're doing this? There's a lot of Christians who are like Monday morning quarterbacks. They go to church on Sunday. They have a little analysis of the word, whether it essentially entertained them or not, and then they live as if they're not Christian throughout the week. They're not on mission. We need to be on mission.

The great hope when we look at Jonah, the reluctant prophet, the reluctant believer is that we don't really need to be talented, we don't need to be that smart. We don't have to have the gifts, the resources, but we need to give God our will, our willingness to submit to his call. And when we do, he will always accomplish his intended purposes and make us new in the process. Until you understand this, you're going to live life in a fake reality. It's going to be the size of your own head and you're going to be out of touch with who he is and who you are and who you are created to be. And so we have to receive God's call like Jonah, even if we reject it like he did the first time.

Next, how do God prepare his servants to do great things? He gives them generous grace. Still talking about verse 1 here, "Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time." Those of you who know the story so far of Jonah, that God's calling of Jonah, again, you know that it doesn't make any sense. Why? Because Jonah didn't obey the first time. God called him, he disobeys, he sins, he goes in the complete opposite direction that God wants him to. Jonah let God down. And I don't know about you. If you think of God's tactic right here, it just doesn't make sense. When you look at...

If you're at war, do you go and find an officer who's just been court marshaled to go and place him at the front and be the commander at the most important battle? That's essentially what God does here in sending Jonah to the great city of Nineveh. Jonah's second call and second commissioning is given purely out of the grace of God. He's recommissioned not because of his own merit, but because of the undeserved favor, merit, the undeserved kindness of God.

You see, the way that God works to accomplish his great works is completely contradictory to the ways of the world. According to the world's practices, who does the most important tasks? We know very clearly here who that is. It's the Harvard grads, the MIT grads, those who are the richest, the strongest, the most beautiful, the most deserving on paper. But God doesn't work like that. Here he chooses to work through the foolishness of men through a guy like Jonah to show the world his power. He works through Jonah's racist and prejudice tendencies. Jonah talks about this. Jonah really does not want Nineveh to be saved because they're the arch rival of his home nation Israel. He does not want God to give them his mercy.

In the New Testament, who does God work through? He works through disciples, fishermen, laborers. And who does he give leadership, a seeming position of leadership among them? Peter the fisherman, the guy who betrayed him three times on the eve of his crucifixion. God gives generous grace over and over again to his servants. He works through people who are saved by grace and powered by grace. People who have no heirs about them because they've already acknowledged to themselves to be complete failures in their own right. People saved by grace who've cried out like Jonah, "Salvation belongs to the Lord," as he did at the end of chapter 2. They're humbled. They don't take up tasks and callings to prove themselves, hide their insecurities or to show themselves to be something that they're not. They take up great responsibilities with a pure desire to honor God out of thanksgiving for his forgiving of them, out of thanksgiving for calling him to his work.

And so this is as a Christian, as a servant of God, we have to receive his generous grace over and over. And do you know it? First of all, do you know that the alternative, what you really deserve on the opposite end of being called by God to do his work is wrath? Have you run to him and received forgiveness by looking to the cross, looking to the blood of Jesus Christ to get peace with him, to avoid eternal condemnation, to avoid judgment? Are you powered by grace or are you powered by self-ambition? And that's something that a lot of Christians here will say, empowered by grace, but you really have to ask this question to yourself multiple times. If you're the kind of person drawn to the top programs, drawn to the schools, drawn to the industries and big companies of Boston, are you driven by grace? Are you driven to act in every area of your life out of thankfulness for what God has done for you?

And the hard part about being Christian is you have to receive it daily. In my marriage, one of the hardest things is... We've been married nine years and now it's just been hundreds of times where I know that the only way forward is to receive grace from my wife. The only way forward is to just accept that she needs to forgive me for my sin. There's nothing I can do to justify what I did, but I've got to stop. I've got to receive it. I've got to praise God that I have a woman that is happy to give me grace, happy to work forward together just simply out of the kindness of her heart in the same way that God forgives me for my sin.

And as Christians, when we're called on task, we're stretched to our limits. We're at the end of our widths. It reveals the inner insecurities that remain in us. It reveals the bad habits and tendencies that are sinful part of the old man that don't honor God. And when we're out on mission, we just need to constantly come back to him and go to the cross of Jesus Christ. So Jonah in this moment, he knows that coming right out at the belly of the fish. Furthermore, how does God prepare his servants for great work? With strategic planning. Verse 2 says, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you." So God gives Jonah strategy. What is that strategy? He sends Jonah into the city, he sends him into Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, the great power of the north of Israel.

This is the same strategy that the Apostle Paul used on his mission trips. The man who God used more powerfully than any other person, aside from Jesus Christ himself to spread the gospel. He went to cities to spread the gospel. And why does God employ the strategy? People in the city throughout history, they've always been a little more open to change. The nature of the city, the engagement with different kinds of people, trades and challenges, forces them to think more deeply about issues and seek solutions regarding life, death, heaven, hell, and human flourishing. I can attest to this. I'm from the suburbs. I've worked on staff at a suburban church before and I can tell you... Ask Mosaic staff. I can tell you just for hours and hours all the good things about Southeast Pennsylvania, suburban Philadelphia life, I can go on and on. It's a special place in the world.

But as much as I love the people there and confess that they could teach us city dwellers a lot about contentment and resting in the Lord, living there, working there, being on mission there, it was really hard to get them to think about beyond what they're going to eat at their big Sunday family dinner or beyond the big game that afternoon. The best part about living in the city is that people press hard for answers, press hard for truth and don't avoid tensions. Further, God sends Jonah to the city and gets his disciples to employ a city-centered strategy because life primarily runs through the city. Commerce primarily runs through the city. Immigrants arrive at the city and live in the city for a generation or two before considering moving out as the city provides a safe net. Media, theater, publications are still centralized in the city and their material is spread from there.

The city is the heart from which all of the lifeblood of a land flows. And that's Boston. That's our pride. Our license plates say, "Spirit of America." That's not for Massachusetts, you know that's Boston saying that. That's so true when you think of the power of the institutions, power of the companies, the power that young 20-somethings and beyond get when they work on companies that you see touch the global market.

The city is the heart from which all of the lifeblood of a land flows. And as Christianity, just one point to think about is, as Christianity gripped the Roman Empire and spread rapidly in the early centuries after Christ's death, those who were called pagans were the people who typically stuck their fist up to Christianity and chose to live outside of the city as it spread there in the city. The word pagan can actually mean countrymen. People who lived outside of a city, carried on with all kinds of idolatry. And again, I'm not trying to say that about modern, rural or suburban America. I will never stop feeling homesick for my place where I grew up, suburban Philadelphia, but the Book of Jonah and all of Scripture has a very clear acknowledgement of the importance of the city.

Jonah 4:11 says, "And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" And that's saying people who do not know their right hand from their left is probably children. And so when you consider the amount of adults, the number probably gets to 500,000, 600,000. So God reminds Jonah of how many image bearers in this case, particularly children are there in the city. Jonah's upset about God taking away a plant at this point that gave him shade from the sun, but he does not care about the salvation of hundreds of thousands of people. And we just need to be careful that just even being residents in the city, that cynicism toward the city does not grow. We have to be careful that we don't lose heart for the image bearers of God around us.

And the question is, do you care for the city? Do you actually have a heart for the city? I think as a church of people who were pent-up in small apartments for an extended time in COVID, we were left panting for space, panting for breathing. Our view of the city might have become a little more matured or nuanced, especially as transplants who just don't know a city life that well, many transplants here. We really need to pray for God to renew our hearts for this city, for Boston, for Brookline, Jamaica Plain, Cambridge. Furthermore, are you here to use the city or just get out? Or are you here because you view your time here as a person who was sent by God to be here to first and foremost do his service or work? A lot of people, the typical Mosaic person who comes for a program just says, "I'll ask these questions later. I'll think about the good of God's name in this city when I'm done my program." And I say, "Don't hesitate, engage them now."

Next, God prepares his servants to do great things by the giving of power. And this is from Jonah 3:3-4. "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, 'Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'"

So Jonah goes into the city. The way the text describes his efforts, the focus isn't placed on the quality of the sermon. It's just eight words here in the English, five words in the Hebrew. Many think this is just a summary. There's a lot of debate. Was this his full sermon or was it just a summary of what Jonas said? I think it's more of a summary statement. I see the limited content on what Jonas says to draw us attention not to his words, it's to have us keep our attention on the power of God in this moment, how God used Jonah. Verse 5 says, "And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them." The people of Nineveh believed God. They didn't believe Jonah, they didn't hear Jonah through his sermon, they didn't hear his words. They heard God, his words. It was God, his power, which gave the people of Nineveh the ears to hear his voice, which led to their complete and wholehearted repentance, which is chronicled in more detailed verses 6 through 9.

Verse 6 says, "The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes." And it says, "The word reached the king." Better translated, "The word touched the king of Nineveh." That's God's power touching even the heart of the king. So how did Jonah strike the hearts of all the people of the city and ultimately the king and the nobles? He repented in his own life and the Lord used his sermon, paired it with his power to lead the city to repentance.

What does the city need more than anything? This great conversion that we see or this great repentance that we see in the city. What does the city need more than anything in Nineveh? What does it need more than anything today? Repentance before God. Individuals, heads of households, heads of state weeping for their sin before God, turning from their violent and evil ways and turning to God for mercy. The city more than anything needs more people with repentant hearts before God. Do you think that Christian, or do you agree with what you hear out there in the media? Do you ever hear modern politicians, local or nationals say that that's what the city needs? Individual repentance, a turning from sin and turning to God, a change, a true change in the hearts of people? No, it's always band-aids. It's diplomacy, negotiation, urban planning, therapy. That's what the politicians, that's what anthropologists, that's what sociologists, that's what college professors, that's what counselors say, but it's repentance before God.

It's a new heart, a changed heart, a heart that does a complete 180 that stops looking for itself all the time and starts looking to God continually. So God's called children need to trust that when he sends them, he sends them in power. That's the only reason why I'm here in Boston today. I have no confidence in my own strengths. I'm a preacher because I truly believe that God gives us power. When we speak, when we spread the word faithfully, when we fight for holiness in our daily lives, he uses us in our weakness for his glory. We need to remember that. And this is what Mosaic believes. This is what has built this church.

I've been blessed to see Mosaic grow from 15 people in 2011 to what it is today. And the strength of Mosaic has always been its fight to stay faithful to the word of God. And it's not because we have a website with nice design. It's not because we do have lot of young, cool, trendy, attractive people. It's because we have gathered people around the preaching of God's word and God's power has gone out as he says it would. We believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first and also the Greek. It's what everybody in the world needs to be saved to be right before God and to live a righteous and holy life going forward until Jesus returns or until they die.

The local church isn't to focus its energies and resources on efforts focused on big picture systemic change and politics, but on individual soul salvation, which makes people new from inside out. God will be glorified, the city will be renewed when one person, one household at a time turns from their evil ways and turns to receive mercy from the Lord. So do you believe this? Are you expending all of your energies in all of these other areas at the cost of being faithful to the stewarding, the sanctification of your own heart? At the cost of being faithful to being present with brothers and sisters in Christ who are asking hard questions of God, of the gospel, who are asking for help and encouragement as they fight sin?

For the Christian, there should be a whole recalibration of how I'm saved in Jesus. Now, how do I better invest my time to honor God, to bring glory to his name? And a lot of young people are... Sometimes that means stay there, stay where you are and really try to be a witness to God there. But if you're not accepted after faithful effort, after faithful effort, God says, "Stomp your feet off and go and find somewhere else."

And so how are you actively trying to identify your calling today? And a lot of it, it begins with loving God. What did you say? Love God, love your neighbor. Are you looking to be present to serve God with the people who are physically next to you? Not the people online, not the people on social media. And even I say if you've left mom and dad and they're in a city far away, you have to be present with the people who are there in person before then. You have made the choice to actively leave them to be present somewhere else. And you either accept that and own it and be present where you are. And you still praise God. We get to call them and have FaceTime and video chats in our day. Or you say, "All right, I've got to go home. God wants me there." And so we need to be present with the people that God place in our life. We need to love God, love neighbor.

Do you believe what the world needs is the gospel, is Jesus, is repentance and faithfulness before him? And it's so easy, it's such an easy offer. All people have to do is turn in faith, believe the good news, and they get the Holy Spirit, the power of God to work about a new identity rooted in him. It's the greatest deal in history. So Christians, we need to share God's word with boldness and faith, trusting that his power will go out. The God who once used the delivery of gospel to save you at some point, to convict you of your sin before him, he will send the power out when you share the gospel and try to live it out faithfully. We need to stop being ashamed. If we're in the gospel, we have what all people hear, whether rich or poor need. That's the message which brings about peace and restoration before God. So God, he gives us grace and he calls us here to go out in power. And furthermore, how does he prepare his saints for great service like he did for Jonah?

And last is the suffering. God gives his servants suffering to equip them to do great things. He gives them suffering to be as powerful of a one-man army as Jonah was in this book. And I don't get this text from Jonah 3, I get it from Matthew 12:38-40, which is Jesus's analysis of this text. It says, "Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him saying, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.' But he answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.'"

Jesus is communicating here that it's out of his death that others will receive life. It's not miracles that ultimately show his power and authority and make him worthy to follow as God, but it's out of his weakness, his death, that the sufficiency of his saving power will be born, that he himself will show himself worthy of worship. Jesus was the suffering servant. It's through suffering that Jesus makes his followers good servants. A servant cannot be greater than his master. When we are saved, we are called to be formed by suffering in our service. There's no doubt that the greatest form of preparation for Jonah's ministry was his suffering, the dissent into the deep, into the abyss, a near-death experience because of his rebellion against God that he was prepared to take up this task.

And why is that the case? Why is suffering a good thing? Particularly in this instance, Jonah's suffering enabled him to embody the message that he delivered to the Ninevites. What's the message that he had? What's the message of the gospel? God is both righteous and merciful. He's not just merciful. The church is really good. Modern church is really good at hitting mercy, mercy, mercy, grace, grace, grace. God is both righteous and merciful. He is holy and righteous by nature, and he cannot and will not accept anybody into his presence who is marked by sin. At the same time, he is a gracious God and merciful, slow to an anger and abounding and steadfast love and relenting from disaster toward anyone who repents of their sin and calls on the name of Jesus Christ. That was Jonah's message. That's the message of the Bible. That's the message of Jonah. That's the message of the gospel.

And Jonah knew this very well. He knew of God's righteous condemnation of his sin because he was put in the belly of a fish for it. He knew of God's grace and mercy through his experience of being spit up by the fish and given a second chance at life, a second chance to do the work of God. Jonah's ministry to the Ninevites was so powerful because his life embodied the message of God's righteousness and mercy towards sinners, and that is the same of Jesus Christ. When we look to the cross, when we look at Christ's life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and ultimately his return, we see the righteousness and mercy of Jesus.

Jonah, when he would've told of the judgment coming for a sin, he would've told them with all sincerity of its inevitability and reality. When he would've told them of the grace and mercy of God, he would've told them in a way that convinced them that he knew it personally. He knew this all because God allowed him to suffer. Remember chapter 2 he says, "Your waves, your breakers were cast over me in this experience in the water, in this experience in the belly of the fish." God appointed suffering is what gave Jonah the humility, gave Jonah the appreciation of grace, gave Jonah the humility to rely on the power of God in service, even in a place as wicked as Nineveh through his suffering. And he does the same with us.

And just Jonah, why was his ministry so powerful? Because his life, his presence embodied the message that he delivered to the people. And I ask, is that true of you? All Christians know upon conversion, they're going to have a moment of true conversion. They're going to know that they're under the conviction of a holy God. And that strikes the fear of death, fear of hell in you. And the thing is, you can't stay there. A lot of people stay under conviction that's an old historic word before they turn and receive grace. They're there for too long and they think they just have to self-loathe and feel guilty for their sin. But no, when you feel this, when you see your sin, your folly before God, you have to look quickly and receive his mercy and find forgiveness, love, joy, freedom in him.

So Christian, are you benefiting from your suffering? Are you learning in your suffering? And I press this point that it's up to us to... We have the power to decide how suffering affects us. This isn't what a lot of counselors, this isn't what the world's going to tell you. We have the choice to let suffering embitter us and paralyze us, or sharpen us and embolden us. It's all a matter of faith. When you suffered, you trust that God could be using it to better enable you to embody the message of salvation that you offer to other people, to understand just how much your savior went through for you, to understand his righteousness, his grace better, or do you harden yourself and get angry and close yourself off to him and others? So God used suffering in the life of Christ. He used it here in the life of Jonah, and he can do it in yours.

To close, I just want to ask, how are you going to start living for something greater than your own glory or good today? How are you going to start living for something greater than your own glory or good today? As you ask that question, remember that to do that, God has persistently called you. He has generously offered grace time and time again. He has given you the strategy, he has given you his power, and he has blessed you with suffering to embody the message that you deliver. Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you that we have this great passage of Jonah before us. We thank you for the hope that it offers to us as sojourners, as aliens living in a foreign land away from heaven, away from the fullness of your presence right now. We have this hope that you can use us, jars of clay, just weak vessels for your glorious and grand purposes. We praise you that you do not change, that we have hope that you can move here in Boston today as you once did in Nineveh.

Lord, we ask that you would shine your face upon us, that you would give us grace, that you would continue to give all of us here as individuals and as a body, just great mission, great call, and great purpose, the honor to serve you and the tensions between heaven and hell. The honor to serve you as we face the thorns and thistles of life. The honor to be a part of your calling home of your children.

Lord, we ask, give us eyes to see all the ways that you are forming us, training us, encouraging us, sharpening us, molding us to be more humble, more faithful, more repentant servants in your kingdom. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.