Good morning. It's great to see you here this morning. I don't know if it's early in the day or late in the day for you. But we're thrilled to have you here. Maybe some of you have just gotten up and made it out of bed and dragged yourself to church. We're thrilled that you're here. I hope you feel welcome. I hope you know that we want this to be your home, a place where you can come and you can be yourself. And you can enjoy your family and friends while we worship the Lord together. I do have just a couple brief announcements for us. First of all, I want to encourage you if you are a visitor to fill out a visitor card. Sometimes when you come to a large church like this, you're trying to crack the code. You're trying to figure out, you know, we're here. How do I get involved? What do I do? What's the next step? I like it. We'll fill out a visitor card and drop that in the offering plate along with a large check. No, just fill out a visitor card. Fill out a visitor card and we'll give you a call and we'll get to know you a little bit because we want to get to know you and I'll tell you what, honestly, we want you to be involved in our church for our sake because we need you. But we want you to be involved in this church for your sake, too, because you need us. We need each other in the body of Christ. We need to walk together. Now, you may not know it, but vacation Bible school starts on Tuesday. We're very excited. We have lots of adult volunteers and a lot of children. If you still want to sign up, your children, I think you can do that on the internet or give Dana Lail a call. We'd love to have you participate in that. Now, I'm going to commission some of our mission teams this morning, but before I do, I want you to recognize we have a big crane off to the side of this building. We're replacing our roof. We had some tornado damage and it peeled off a section of our copper roof and we're having that replaced. And so if you see that and it'll be up for a little while, just know that we're going to replace the damaged roof and hopefully it'll be nothing more than that. Now, if I could invite our mission teams to come forward, we have three. One that's headed to Peru, one headed to Kenya and another to New Orleans. So if you'll come forward and just kind of stand in the front here for me, Dale, we kind of huddle our people and Dr. Hawkins and Tom, y'all come on down from the choir. The buses will wait. Robert, glad to have you back from Florida and that great retreat y'all did last week. Wow. I talked to a lot of the high school kids. They loved it. So that was encouraging for me. So we have this group. We've purchased them one way tickets and we're hoping that they're effective. If they're effective, we're going to purchase around trip, return flight. We've got people going to Peru. If you're going to Peru, could you just raise your hands so we'll know? There's our Peru team. We have a group going to Kenya. Could you just raise your hand, our Kenyan team? Great. I'm on that team going to Kenya. And then we also have a group headed to New Orleans. If you're going to New Orleans, could you just raise your hand? All right. Great. Now I'm going to just thank you first of all for going. I pray that you would go representing Christ and representing our church. I pray that when people come to visit us from all over the world, they say, hey, I met somebody and they're from your church. And we couldn't wait to come to your church because they were vibrant Christians. So that's our prayer. Now I'm going to go ahead and say a prayer and commission you. And I'm just going to come down here by my wife and put my hands on your shoulder, sweetie. And who's this girl next to her? Okay, let's pray together. Father, we come before you and we praise you for your goodness and your faithfulness. Lord, you had to send someone to get us. You sent someone on a rescue mission and they found us and they told us about Christ and they loved us. And Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters that as we go around the world, that you would go before us and prepare every heart of every life. And Lord, not only the lives we're going to touch, but you would prepare our hearts that we would be faithful to preach the gospel about a loving God who gave his son for the world. Thank you for the privilege of appointing us as your servants and your representatives. May we be filled with your spirit. May we be overflowing with love. May we have wisdom and discernment. And may we give our lives for the sake of your kingdom. It's our great joy. We pray in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, amen. Y'all may be seated. I just want to remind you all that now it's time to prepare your hearts for worship. And you hear that week after week and some of you are thinking, what does that mean? Does that mean I close my eyes? Does that mean I stop speaking? I put down my coloring book. I turn off my cell phone. I want to suggest to you that one of the ways you can prepare your heart for worship is just to go ahead and begin looking through the bulletin. You might be meditating on the words that David let us in. You might go ahead and read through the call to worship or slide your eyes down to the hymns and think through the words that we're going to be singing to the Lord so that you can sing intelligently and meaningfully. But go to the bottom of that first page in your bulletin and look at the confession of sin. We're going to be saying these words together before holy God. And I would encourage you to go ahead and look through those words and begin thinking and say, you know what, do I agree with that? Do those words reflect my heart? Lord, prepare my heart that I would do the greatest thing that a human being could ever do and that's worship the one true living God.
Would you please stand for our call to worship? Our call to worship this morning is taken from Psalm 100. Now, my family doesn't know this yet. My wife does, but we are going to memorize Psalm 100 as a family, our children and grandchildren. So I'll be texting everybody here in the next day or so and say, hey, let's memorize Psalm 100 together. And for your family, you might think, well, let's do that too. Maybe you're memorizing Leviticus right now. We'll take a little break and go ahead and let go of those sacrifices and offerings for a moment and read a joyful Psalm 100 celebratory Psalm. And so I would encourage you if you're a single person or if you're married, have a family, go ahead and commit that to memory. And if it's hard to memorize it, just read it out loud every day to your family. And over time, some of it might stick. So this is such a joyful celebration as we enter the Lord's presence to worship him. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth, serve the Lord with gladness, come into his house with singing, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name and we're standing here, Father, because of your faithfulness. We're standing here because year after year, generation after generation, nation upon nation, you are faithful and you have brought us to yourself. And we stand here, Lord, in the midst of this scenic city. And we pray that you would lift our eyes above our surroundings and that you would lift our eyes to the very throne of God. And we would worship the one true living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, O Lord, for all you've done for us, for all you're doing now and for all you would do in the future. We adore you, we worship you, we praise you, we cannot wait to lean in and sing these wonderful, wonderful words that reflect your love for your people. We receive your love this morning. We make our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. I wanted you to recognize, says by which we are entering into God's presence, we are praising Him, we are recognizing how great He is. And in the process of recognizing how great God is, we're led to recognize our position as sinners. And so, as we move through our order of worship, that's called a liturgy, by the way, many of you have never been to a church where we have a very clearly ordered worship service. When you worship alone at home, you have the opportunity to be quite spontaneous. That when hundreds of people are worshiping together, we need clear leadership, so that our hearts might join together in corporate worship. And so we've provided this opportunity for you not to restrict you, but to free you, to embrace with your brothers and sisters the truths of Christ, that our minds might be alike, that we might be like-minded in our worship. And there is no greater document apart from God's word itself, that helps us in such a process. And so for our affirmation of faith, we have the Apostles Creed. So Christian, I ask you, what is it that you believe? I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sit it on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, amen. You may be seated. Earlier, we were singing, thou O Christ, art all I want, more than all in thee I find. When we find ourselves to be filled with sin, and in great need of the righteousness of Christ, God calls us to confess our sin, to agree with him that we are sinners. And so this morning, as part of our worship service, we make it our regular practice that we confess our sins together as a church. It's our prayer that you are continually confessing your sin before the Lord on a daily basis, even moment by moment throughout the day. But today, we confess our sin together before the Lord. Would you please join me in this confession. Gracious and merciful God, we confess that we have been unfaithful in our covenant with you and with one another. We have worshiped other gods, money, power, greed, and comfort. We have served our own self-interest instead of serving only you and your people. We have not loved our neighbor as you have commanded, nor have we rightly loved ourselves, forgive us, gracious Father, and bring us back into the fullness of our relationship with you and one another. We have a great opportunity now to confess our sin. This is a time for spontaneity, a time for you to respond to the move of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we might confess our sin. Let us send a prayer of assurance which is quite a celebration of what Christ has done for us, and then we'll pray the Lord's Prayer together and at the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, we'll all stand to our feet. I would even say if you understand the moment of this worship, you'll leap to your feet in order to sing glory to God in thanks and response to all that he's done for us. Oh Father, we find our assurance not in a prayer that we have prayed, not in a decision that we have made. We find the assurance for the forgiveness of our sins in the completed and all sufficient work of Jesus Christ who died for our sins before we were ever born. He took all of our sins upon himself and bore them on the cross, so our assurance is not based on having a particular penitent heart, saying a particular prayer or making sure we confess every single sin our hope is outside of ourselves, our hope is in you Father, in you Jesus, in you Holy Spirit for the assurance of the forgiveness that we have found because you have found us. And so as you were disciples prayed, we join our voice with theirs, saying together, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen. In this greeting of peace, define someone possibly their new to you and say hello to them and say to them, the grace of the Lord be with you, so let's greet one another.
Again, come before the Lord's throne of grace. Let us pray. Father, as we come and as we recognize again that you are the one who is provided this vital connection in our relationship with you, that we may come at any time before your throne of grace, knowing that we will be heard according to your promises, according to your grace. Lord, that we have come with confession, we have come with thanks and praise, we have come with a sense and confidence of assurance not in ourselves but in Christ and is perfect and finished work on the cross. And so, Lord, we come. We come by virtue of the Son's advocacy and the Spirit's work as helper empirically. Lord, I think as we come in prayer in such a personal and in a way even now as a more corporate way as a body together, what I think of the Jacob's ladder and I think of the angels coming and going up and down this ladder to heaven, singing your praises and Jacob was in awe. Father, may we never become so familiar with prayer before your throne that we cannot be in awe. Jacob was in awe of angels coming and going on a ladder to heaven. And we have total access before the throne of grace even greater than a ladder. It's a ladder that you've extended down and your son came down on. We don't need to climb up to you, Lord, you have opened wide the gates and you've sent your Spirit. Lord, may our hearts be honest with you because they're already exposed. But we come not only with praise and thanks and there are many things to be thankful for always, always. We come as well with the things that break our hearts or that break the hearts of those that are around us whom we love. Lord, we come with the burden of neediness, not only our personal needs but of those around us that you've called us to intercede on behalf of. Lord, there are many unspoken requests that you are hearing and that you will respond to even now answering each prayer but in your way not always our way. Lord, I think particularly for those who are in need of our uplifting prayers this morning, a couple of families who are grieving the camp family. Lord, we lift up Sarah and the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren even now. The passing of beloved kin, a great servant, a loving father and grandfather and great grandfather we pray. And thanks for his ministry and legacy here at First Presbyterian. We lift up Jerry Locklear and his family with the passing of his brother, a body and we know that there is a large family represented there that needs our encouragement and support even now. Lord, we thank you for the successful procedure and curry but we know that that is only part of the process of the path that you are leading her on at this time and seeking health and well-being. We continue to pray for her and the family. Lord, we as well think of Charles Perry and Helen and many others. And Lord, we're also mindful this week of events that need our special prayer, the vacation Bible school this week. So many volunteers and so much energy and planning have gone into this month's ahead of time. Lord, the time is now. And we ask that you would pour out your blessings upon the labors of your servants and upon the children and young people who will be in attendance. That many for the first time will understand Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of their lives and their eternity. And Lord, as we come as well, we ask that you would make our giving and tithing and offerings this morning to be very special. Again, I'm a stand of a David's words that he could say, Lord, who am I? And he was a king. And Lord, who are my people? And they were Israel. That you should be so gracious and merciful to us as to allow us to give to you through sacrifices and offerings. What is yours already? That we might honor you in our giving of that what your name has upon it itself. Lord, in that same light may we give accordingly, may we give bountifully, may we give gratefully and graciously. And it's in your name we ask all this, even the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word. Tom is going to read for us this morning. Our two readers happen to belong to our choir. They also happen to be elders. And they're also going on missions trips. So we just thought it would be appropriate to get you up here. So Tom, will you read for us, brother? Verses 5 through 11. Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when the dawn dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it weathered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was fainted. And he asked and he might die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, yes, I do well to be angry enough to die. And the Lord said, you pity the plant which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not, I pity none of them, the 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. It's the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The pouting prophet, I don't know if you understand pouting. I think if you're married, do you understand pouting? And I think if you were ever a child, do you understand pouting? Because pouting is something we do when we do not get our way and we don't want to address it like a mature individual. We simply kind of turn our back a little bit and put our head down. I'll never forget bringing home our third child, little baby Carter from the hospital. And his sister Sarah, who was almost two years old, when I walked in with Carter, Sarah turned her head. She would not look at him. The princess had been dethroned. Oh, she was very upset with the thought that someone else would enter in and take her position as queen of the universe. So she pouted. She pouted. She didn't get her way. And this was the way that she expressed it. Now some people outgrow that. And some people find it to be one of the major forms of communication. When they're disappointed, they pout. And you ask if anything's wrong and they say nothing you are in, big trouble.
So here's Jonah. And going through Jonah, to me was a bit like an examination of our hearts. I don't know if you've ever had an echocardiogram but an echocardiogram goes in and it allows us to see the heart even. It has some capabilities to show you kind of an inner slice of the heart, one slice at a time. And I believe that as we've gone through the book of Jonah together, that we've received as a church an echocardiogram. We've been able to see that God's heart is a great heart, a heart that is compassionate, a heart that is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, willing to relent from disaster. So as we see the results of God's echocardiogram, we see this marvelously healthy, wonderful heart. But in the process, we have to honestly look at our hearts and say, in what condition do I find my heart? Am I a gracious, merciful, slow to anger and my compassionate? Am I willing to relent quickly? And so I would ask you this morning, how did your echocardiogram come back when last week we talked about man's heart containing sin? What about when we talked about man's heart containing iniquity and transgression? You see, we saw the results of our echocardiogram and my question for you is how did you respond to that? Because just because your heart was tested and you saw the results doesn't mean that you're living any differently now than you did then. I mean, how many doctors after showing somebody the results of their tests have seen absolutely no response or maybe a little response for a little while? I want you to know something, if you are here at this church as a member or if you're visiting this church, this church is a good place for the broken hearted. This is a very good place for people who honestly see themselves through God's Word, the Word of God is powerful. It goes into our heart and it divides our outward appearance from our motives. It divides the results from the intention of our heart and it reveals ourself to us as accompanied by the Holy Spirit. And we see this echocardiogram and some of us are afraid to face the news. And this morning I want to invite you to embrace the news about your heart and it comes right from the little book of Jonah. I believe that if Jonah really understood something, he would have been more free. If he would have understood that personal failure doesn't lead to disqualification from ministry. Personal failure does not lead to disqualification from ministry. In fact, if you embrace humbly and honestly your personal failures with your family, with your friends, with your church, God restores you, God reconciles you, God brings good out of disaster, some biblical examples. Think of the life of Adam. Adam had a miraculous start, let's say. He was living in the garden. He was along with his wife Eve, the only human beings who had a completely unfettered free will. They could choose to sin or choose not to sin. And Adam chose to sin. Was he disqualified? Was his job just pulled away from him? No, God met Adam sin with redemption, the promise of redemption in the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the seed of the serpent, Genesis 3.15. God's a God, God's a God who restores you in the midst of your broken heart, who is with you. And I believe he even exponentially expands your ministry to others because broken-hearted people know how to minister to broken-hearted people. And if you're not a broken-hearted person, you can't connect with a broken-hearted person. Usually what we'll do is two things. We'll condescendingly pat them on the head, oh, I'll pray for you. We kind of look at them and say, well, what's wrong with you? So you're that guy, huh? You're that messed-up person. Yeah, well, you know what, messed up people. This is church. Church heading for people like you. You need to learn to dress properly. Or you need to act like everything's okay whether it is or not around here. No, no, a thousand times no. This is the home for the broken-hearted. This is the home for a sin-six soul. This is the home for people who have failed, utterly failed. But they've met the grace of God in their failure. And their ministries are not only restored, their ministries are multiplied. For as a broken-hearted person, you're able to minister to broken-hearted people without being condescending, without being judgmental, without being removed from them. You're able to lean in the midst of their mess and say, me too. I'm with you. Let's go to the cross together. Let's see the Lord as the ministers to the broken-hearted. What if He would have disqualified Moses? Remember Moses and his ministry had a pretty good start, 40 years in Egypt, trained up great educational background, trained by the scholars of the world. But then He had a little problem. He murdered somebody. He killed an Egyptian, buried him in the sand, took off and fled to the desert. What do we do when we make a mistake? We don't want people to know. We flee, we run. Moses took off. He's in the desert. The Lord goes and finds him in a burning bush, reveals himself to him, restores him, and places him in a position of leadership, of humble leadership, of a stiff neck presumptuous people. Jonah understands some of this. As you've looked at the four chapters of Jonah, I want to give you a bit of an outline for Jonah. Four simple words. Chapter one is goes. The word of the Lord goes to Jonah, and he goes to Tarshis in disobedience. Chapter two is woes because of his disobedience. He ends up in the belly of a whale. Chapter three, the word of the Lord goes back to Jonah, and then Jonah finally goes to Nineveh. He goes northeast toward New York, instead of southwest toward Dallas, ended up in Chattanooga. Chapter four, he's woeing again. His woes. So Jonah's easy goes, woes goes, woes. Why is he woeing? Why is he pouting? Because God's not doing what Jonah wants him to do. Look at the text. You just won't believe it's actually in print. It's overwhelming when you think about it. Jonah is very upset, and he's pouting. He built him a little booth on the east side of the city, and he's watching because he wants to see if God's going to destroy these people. It's kind of morbid when you look at the depth of a person's sin, and you see their desire for this ugly stuff. Look at verse six. Now the Lord got appointed a plant, and made it come up over Jonah. Now you need to think about the appointments of Jonah. Just read through the text, and you'll see four particular appointments. You'll see that God appointed a fish, he appointed a plant, he appointed a worm, he appointed a wind. You get those appointments. It's very important to understand the text because what happens is God appoints this plant, and it came up over Jonah, and it made shade for him to save him from his discomfort. You see, comfort was Jonah's God. So Jonah was exceedingly glad. Jonah was exceedingly glad because his idol was fed. He lives for comfort. And God provided comfort, so Jonah likes God all of a sudden. Hey, God's doing what I want him to do. I like him. I'm greatly pleased with God. I'll give this year. You see, the immaturity of Jonah is that he pursues his comfort beyond his consecration. God is calling Jonah to be consecrated to him whether he's comfortable or not, and we struggle with this. We struggle in America. We are a comfortable people. We act like we are okay that we don't have sin. We feel like if we admit our sin will be disqualified from becoming a member of the church or an officer of the church or a pastor of the church. When, in essence, a redeemed failure by God qualifies you for leadership because you learn to not trust in yourself, but to trust in the Lord. So here we find Jonah. He's happy because he's comfortable. Consecration has nothing to do with it. But then the Lord removes this. The Lord removes this plant. He removes his shade. He removes his comfort. You know, it's interesting me in Jonah. Jonah is learning the lesson to not only look side to side, but to look up. It's not just what the Ninevites think, and it's not just what his people back home think. It's what does the Lord think? Remember Moses, remember Moses, when he killed that Egyptian, he looked over here. He looked over there, kind of looked around, and then he killed him. What do you think would have happened if he looked up? What do you think would happen to you in the midst of your temptation, in the midst of your sin rather than looking around? No, no one's in the dorm room. No, no, no one's here at the country club right now. No, no, no one's here at the house. I'm all alone. What if, rather than just looking around, you look up, and you say, oh, oh, the Lord is here. And my life is consecrated to the Lord. My life isn't driven by comfort. My life isn't driven by other gods, money, power, prestige, popularity. My life is consecrated to one. I've lived my life for an audience of one, if you will. You see, Jonah's learning this. He's learning this process, and the thing that offended Jonah the most was God's grace. I want to let that sink in. What offended Jonah the most is God's grace. Jonah was learning he could do absolutely nothing to earn God's favor, just like the Ninevites could do absolutely nothing to earn God's favor. It is the most offensive thought to humanity that we are helpless apart from a loving God. It offends the poor. It offends the wealthy. It offends the uneducated. It offends the well educated. The grace of God is that God must give you unmerited favor. In other words, if God gives you something because you merit it, it's not grace. You can only gain grace through unmerited favor. Jonah's learning this. Now, let's just kind of think this through for a moment. We had an echocardiogram on Jonah's heart. We've had one on our heart. I want you to think about an echocardiogram as Jonah represents the nation of Israel, the nation of Israel, or greatly blessed by God. Why? Because of his grace. Look at Deuteronomy 7. Deuteronomy 7, beginning in verse 6. For you are a holy people. Now, just hang on. The word holy, don't overreact to that. The word holy means set apart. It means set apart. And in this particular text, it means set apart for God's purposes. Let's say Raymond gave me $100 and he said Tim, go pick up lunch for the few of us. And I came back and instead of lunch, I came back with a new sandwich instead of sandwiches. I misused the holy money, the money that was set apart for lunch. I misused it. So when you see this phrase that says you are a people, holy to the Lord, it means you're set apart for his purposes. And anytime we use our lives, for anything other than his purposes, we're not fulfilling or calling. Let's go on and here, this is the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. Why did he choose this? Because he's going to make us his treasured possession. Out of all the peoples who were on the face of the earth, it was not because you were more, what? It was not because you were more enamored than any other people that the Lord has set his love on you and chose you for you were the fewest of all people. God didn't choose them because they were great. God chose them because they were little. He didn't choose them because of anything they had done. He chose them because he loved them. It's like a parent who has a child. You love them. You just love them because they're yours. God loves us that way. And his God poured out his love on Israel. Israel took the blessings of God and they began to take credit for the blessings of God. They not only began to take credit for the blessings of God, they thought they were a great people because of them, not because of their God, and they became arrogant and they became presumptuous or presumptive. And the people of God were punished by God by using the Assyrians, Nine of a capital of Assyria. I'm back in Jonah if you haven't been following. The people of God were going to be scourged by the enemy of the people of God. And in the process, God was going to save the Ninevites and then the Lord was going to return his people to Himself. How do God do that? He did that through Jesus Christ who came out of the Jews, who came out of this arrogant, self-righteous people, presumptive about their own strength and power rather than humble and contrite serving the one true living, all-powerful God, to whom did Jesus speak the most harshly in the New Testament? The Pharisees, the leaders of the Jews. He called them whitewash tombs. He called them horrible words. And so as he looks at our heart this morning, and as you see your heart this morning, kind of a spiritual echocardiogram, it's just popping along in your chest there, where are you? Do you see yourself in utter need of God's saving grace? Or are you going to go back at it again? Are you going to say, okay, we're going to memorize Psalm 100? We're going to prove you wrong, we're going to show you how good we are. No, thousand times no. Memorize Psalm 100 to celebrate God's steadfast love, not to earn it. I'll tell you something that happens in church every Sunday, you may not know it. When I was a little boy, we played a game, and we got in a circle, and then we put a couple kids in the middle, and we passed out balls, and we called it dodgeball. And you would get somebody in the middle, and you would throw that ball at them, and they would dodge, and the person behind them would catch it, and it would be out of position, and it would hit them, and it would be knocked out. In church, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, God throws his grace at you, and you go, not today. Like, oh, that was pretty close. Not today. I heard what the choir said. I heard them singing. I get it. I know where they're going with this. They're going back to that Jesus guy again. And in order to do that, I have to admit that I can't do it by myself. I need to, uh-uh. It was beautiful. Love them. No, not going there. We played dodgeball in here every Sunday morning. My prayer is that you get hit smack dab in the face every Sunday. That grace comes flowing through God's Word, and the accompanying means a grace, and hits you so hard in the face that we all fall down flat. It's not out gone, and we say, you got me. You just got me. I have no hope apart from Christ. Now Jonah ends in a fairly negative way. Jonah cares more about his comfort than he does the souls of 120,000 people, and thus goes the nation of Israel. The question I have for us this morning is, is that where you're going? How do you go this morning? How do you go? How will your life end? Are you going the way of self trust and pursuing comfort in the American dream to the exclusion of being consecrated to God? Here's the trouble with the American church. We want both. When I'm pastor, I'm consecrated to God, but I want comfort too. Isn't that okay? Is that wrong? Serving two masters is very tricky business. Very tricky business. For you will end up loving the one and hating the other. And so this isn't about priorities. It's about Christ being your everything. It's about him being the lover of your soul. It's about him redeeming you from your failures and your sin. It's about him restoring a real life ministry to you so that when you go to school or you go to work or you return home, you don't offer people anything other than the beauty of Christ. American church do not pursue comfort above consecration. The Bible proves that you will end in great distress and destruction. Turn to the Savior and pursue Him. May God have mercy on us. It's more difficult for a rich man. It's more difficult because we're so self-sufficient and we belong to a culture that celebrates individualism and comfort. May God have mercy on us. May His grace overwhelm us this day. Jonah wrote this on purpose. He was humble. The book didn't end well, but Jonah got it. My question is, do we? Let's pray. O Father, we come humbly before you as those who live in the midst of great wealth. We come humbly before you as those who have been and are continually being deceived or at least tempted to believe that we are okay to believe that we do not need God and to believe that we can live comfortable lives apart from our dying world. So Father, we humbly repent of this wrong thinking and this wrong living. Lord, quite simply, may we be as generous with your kingdom's efforts as we are with ourselves, breaking the hold of comfort over us. Oh, guide us, Father. Guide us for your glory and thank you for your grace. We pray in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. If you'll please stand for the benediction. I'm going to speak the benediction over us and then we're going to have a closing hymn after the postlude immediately following the postlude, I should say. We're going to continue our congregational meeting to elect officers. If you're a member of this church, I ask you to please remain. The meeting is a brief meeting but it's a very important meeting where you'll be casting your votes for new elders. If you're a visitor, you're welcome to stay and watch how we do the business of the church or you're free to leave. Please forgive me. Usually I run to the back to say goodbye to you or to give you a hug. To meet you maybe for the first time, I'll be up here leading this meeting so if you would like to meet with me, you'll just have to wait a little bit longer if you wouldn't mind. And now, if you will turn your face toward the Lord and receive this good Lord, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace both now and in the life everlasting. Amen.