Episode Transcript
[00:00:18] Okay, so a question for you.
[00:00:22] And you don't have to answer this out loud, but here. Here is a question for you kids. This is for you, too.
[00:00:29] Have you ever experienced something painful that ultimately led you to receive something greater on the other side?
[00:00:39] Have you ever experienced something painful that led you to receive something greater on the other side?
[00:00:48] Something that, had you not gone through that pain, you wouldn't be able to receive the good that the Lord actually had for you?
[00:00:57] I want you to think about that for a second.
[00:01:01] Quick story from my own life that kind of reflects what I'm talking about. I've shared this before, but for those of you who are not aware, about six and a half years ago, I lost my sense of smell.
[00:01:14] So if you're doing your math correctly, this is a year before the pandemic. So I'm not like Agent Zero or whatever.
[00:01:22] I visited several doctors about this.
[00:01:26] I tried all different types of medication, and the only thing that they could give me was a diagnosis. And the diagnosis was that I have something called chronic sinusitis, which is a really fancy way of saying your sinuses are really, really bad and we don't know what to do.
[00:01:46] And so the next six years, my sinuses became very inflamed. I was daily dealing with all kinds of issues. I was constantly blowing my nose. My sense of smell was gone. I was sneezing, I had congestion.
[00:02:01] It even affected my taste.
[00:02:03] And a lot of my family and a lot of my friends, many of you prayed for me, prayed for solutions, prayed for healing, but nothing was working. And I had kind of come to accept that this was going to be like my thorn in the flesh.
[00:02:22] It's a very dramatic way of putting it. Right?
[00:02:25] Paul had a legitimate thorn in the flesh. But a few months ago, I started seeing a new immunologist, a new doctor, and he recommended that I get this allergy injection that was supposed to target the inflammation of my sinuses. Now, kids, when I say injection, I'm talking about a shot with medicine in it. How many of you have ever gotten a shot at the doctor's office?
[00:02:49] Okay, is it fun or is it painful?
[00:02:53] Painful. It hurts, right?
[00:02:55] Let me tell you, when I got this injection, it's probably the most painful shot I've ever experienced. It feels like somebody is pinching my arm as hard as they can for about 20 seconds. It's just.
[00:03:12] It really hurts.
[00:03:15] And so I get the injection. A few days go by, nothing really happens. But then suddenly, on, like, day four, I'll never forget where I was. I was outside at a conference with Pastor Brad and Pastor Sean. And I remember smelling freshly cut grass, like mowed grass. And I was like, I think I got it back. I think I can smell, like, the flowers, like, like that, that we were kind of walking by and I tried to, like, identify, like, with Brad. And I was like, this. This is rose. And they were like, no, like, you don't know what flowers are.
[00:03:50] But suddenly it's kind of like paradise opened up. Like, I was able to taste again. I didn't have congestion or drainage anymore. It was amazing. And it's been this way for about three months now. Like, that was back in April.
[00:04:06] But here's the catch. The catch is, is that every two weeks I have to go to the doctor's office and the nurse has to give me this injection. And it hurts like mad. I never wanna go. I never wanna do it. But that's the trade off. The trade off is, is that I have to endure a little bit of pain, but I get to smell, I get to taste.
[00:04:29] I'm not sneezing or have drainage. There is something, some kind of pain that I have to go through in order to receive something greater on the other side.
[00:04:41] C.S. lewis, famous Christian writer, would call this idea a severe mercy.
[00:04:50] A severe mercy. It's a phrase that he coined in a letter he wrote to a close friend who had recently lost his wife very tragically and suddenly from a liver infection.
[00:05:01] And Lewis very gently counseled his friend, saying, you have been treated with a severe mercy.
[00:05:09] It's this idea that God uses severe means of pain and suffering and even the extraordinary. Like in our story today, a giant fish is going to violently rescue Jonah out of something bad into something glorious.
[00:05:30] And this is inherently and radically merciful.
[00:05:36] This is what's happening in our text this morning. So let me. Let me catch you up. If you haven't been with us in our series on the Book of Jonah, let me give you some context as to where we are in the story.
[00:05:48] Jonah is fleeing God's presence and God's call on his life to preach repentance to the Ninevites. And so he gets. He boards a boat sailing towards Tarshish, which is the exact opposite direction of Nineveh.
[00:06:04] And God sends a storm to awaken Jonah.
[00:06:08] The sailors find out that he's fleeing the presence of Yahweh, and they become even more afraid. And so Jonah proposes to them that the sailors throw him overboard into the sea. The sailors oblige and they toss him overboard. And immediately the sea ceases from its raging and the big bad storm abruptly ends. And what the text says is that the fa, the sailors came to fear the Lord and even offered a sacrifice to him, and they made vows to him. So. So the sailors actually get saved by God amidst all this chaos and throwing Jonah overboard. But as we come to verse 17, Jonah has now been tossed overboard into the sea. And he finds himself sinking to the bottom of the sea.
[00:07:00] No life jacket, no life preserver, no food, nothing for survival. He is going down. He's going to die.
[00:07:11] At the beginning of this book, you think back to where he was at the beginning. At the beginning of this book, Jonah is this great prophet who receives the word of the Lord. He's given this task to go to Nineveh, but through all of his resistance and all of his rebellion, by the end of the chapter, he finds himself literally falling to his death.
[00:07:33] He's drifting to his demise.
[00:07:36] And so throughout our time in this story, Pastor Brad has been connecting Jonah to this idea of revival, namely the revival of our own hearts that we might see, as Tim Keller puts it, the intensification of the ordinary operation of the holy spir through the instituted means of grace.
[00:07:58] What does that mean? Let me break that. Let me break that down for you.
[00:08:04] Essentially, it's an awakening of our hearts that we might practice the spiritual disciplines and bear the ordinary fruit of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. It's an intensification of the means of grace that is the word of God, pray, prayer, communion, seeking him in evangelism, all of these things. It's an intensification of the Spirit in producing everyday obedience.
[00:08:36] That's the kind of revival we're talking about. And so if you're here and you're a Christian and you're following Jesus, there are undoubtedly areas of your heart and areas of my heart that are still asleep that the Lord wants to awaken both new affections and. And fresh obedience to the Lord in. Or maybe you're here and you're a nominal Christian. That, that is, you're just a Christian and name only.
[00:09:04] Maybe the Lord needs to reawaken your heart to the good news of Jesus that brings about this complete renewal of your soul.
[00:09:13] Or if you're here and you're not a believer in Christianity or the church at all, revival for you means being saved by the Spirit and trusting in Jesus for the first time.
[00:09:25] So wherever we find ourselves today, whether we're sleeping, whether we're a nominal Christian, whether we're a non Christian, whether we're even awake Today, the hope is that in this text we might arise and awaken to the love of God in Christ Jesus. That's revival.
[00:09:42] But the reason why I emphasized at the beginning this idea of a severe mercy is because what we're going to see from our text this morning is that sometimes God needs to use unconventional and unusual methods in order to get our attention.
[00:10:00] And in the case of Jonah, it doesn't get much more unusually miraculous than a giant fish to rescue Jonah and awaken him to his mission. Sometimes God uses extraordinary means to produce ordinary obedience.
[00:10:19] And so what we're going to see is that God uses this severe mercy to snatch us from the depths of our sin and bring us into righteousness and right, fellowship and eternal life with Jesus. So that's the banner. That's the title of the sermon, Severe Mercy. And so I want to highlight for us two things about God and one thing about us.
[00:10:41] Three points. Okay, kids, are you with me?
[00:10:45] Here are the points.
[00:10:46] Number one, if left to ourselves, we, you and I, will sink under the weight of our sin.
[00:10:55] If left to ourselves, we will sink under the weight of our sin. Number two, God is always in control, even in the darkest places.
[00:11:03] And number three, by his mercy, God does whatever it takes to rescue his children. That's what we're gonna see today, okay? So severe mercy, left to ourselves, we're gonna sink. God's always in control.
[00:11:17] And God does whatever it takes to save his children. Okay? So number one, left to ourselves, we will sink under the weight of our sin. So here's the thing.
[00:11:29] This is something that's happening outside the text, right? If you look at the actual passage, the text doesn't say this, but it's just an implicit reality.
[00:11:38] Jonah has chosen to allow himself to be thrown overboard by the sailors. Right?
[00:11:45] Now, on a cursory reading, we would look at that, and we might think, well, that's a sacrificial gesture from Jonah, right? He's saying, let me be thrown overboard to allow the storm to stop and the sailors to survive.
[00:12:02] But I want to propose to you something different. I actually want to propose to you that this act of Jonah being hurled into the sea is actually an act of rebellion against God.
[00:12:14] Because if you notice, the sailors are the ones calling out to the Lord for deliverance.
[00:12:21] The sailors are the ones who are fearing the Lord. The sailors are the ones who are offering sacrifices to the God of Israel. And the verses prior to this, in the Above Passion, above passage, it makes no indication that Jonah is doing any of these things.
[00:12:39] Now he's smart enough to know what's going on.
[00:12:42] Okay?
[00:12:44] He knows that this terrible storm is happening on account of him because he says, I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.
[00:12:53] So he's aware that his resistance to God has put him and his crew in the situation. But this is a good reminder for us, because knowing our sin is not the same thing as repenting of our sin.
[00:13:07] Knowing our sin is not the same thing as repenting of our sin. Many of us are aware of the things that we do. Many of us know that we shouldn't lash out in anger. Many of us know that we shouldn't engage in gossip or lie or be anxious about tomorrow or lust or what have you. Many of us are good about being self aware with our shortcomings. I'm very good at it.
[00:13:32] But self awareness does not equal repentance.
[00:13:37] It's a necessary first step. We have to be aware of our sin, but we can be aware of our sin and still be crushed under the weight of it.
[00:13:47] Sin is a weighty thing, isn't it? And that's what Jonah has permitted in his own life.
[00:13:54] In fact, I believe that Jonah is so resistant to God's call that he's allowed his sin to blind him, to numb him and to isolate him to the point that he's sinking towards his death. In other words, day after day, since the Lord called him to go preach to Nineveh, Jonah has allowed his hard heartedness, his. His own pride in his ministry over God's call, his own comfort in going to Tarshish and his own prejudice against the nine to slowly infect his heart to the point that he is blind. He. He's numb and he's isolated. And now he's at the end of himself and he's literally drowning to his death.
[00:14:41] This is what sin does to us, right?
[00:14:45] When we allow it to fester, when we allow it to take up residence in the living room of our own heart.
[00:14:52] Remember the image that God uses for Cain in the book of Genesis? He says that sin is crouching at your door.
[00:15:01] That's what sin does.
[00:15:03] It sneaks under the door. It goes into the living room, it gets into the kitchen and the pantry, and eventually it makes its way to the bedroom. The most susceptible and sensitive places of our hearts.
[00:15:16] Until we find that we have an insidious roommate residing in the home of our hearts.
[00:15:23] And before we know it, like Jonah, we become blind to it because we forget what our house actually looked like before the bad roommate came in. And messed the place up.
[00:15:34] We get so used to seeing our couch dirty and stained that we convince ourselves that it's always been that way.
[00:15:41] We're blind to it.
[00:15:44] And that leads to numbness. Or if you want a fancier term, spiritual apathy.
[00:15:51] Meaning you know the mess is within you, but you continually justify it to the point that you become like Jonah and you would rather die than take your sin before the Lord.
[00:16:03] And so blindness leads to numbness, and numbness leads to isolation.
[00:16:09] And left to ourselves, we bear the weight of our own sin on our own, and it crushes us.
[00:16:17] So before we move further, I just want to ask, do you know what that is for you?
[00:16:22] What sin or desire in your own life have you allowed to take up residence in your own heart?
[00:16:31] What's causing spiritual blindness? What's causing numbness? What's causing isolation for you?
[00:16:39] Could it be the way. Could it be your tongue? Could it be the way that you're speaking about other people to your co workers, to your family, to your kids?
[00:16:50] Could it be your eyes allowing them to linger a little bit too long on that image you know you shouldn't look at?
[00:16:59] Could it be what you're allowing yourself to listen to?
[00:17:03] Or perhaps the way you're spending your time or your money?
[00:17:08] Remember, sin doesn't begin the size of an elephant.
[00:17:13] It starts small.
[00:17:15] It slithers inside the home innocently and undetected.
[00:17:19] As the book of James says, our temptations bring about desires, and desires give birth to sin. And sin, when it's fully grown, brings forth death.
[00:17:31] So this is exactly what's happening to Jonah. He's so far outside his calling, he's so far from the presence of God, that he's descending to his death and he's allowing the weight of his sin to become so heavy that he's going to. To die. It's what David says in Psalm 38. There is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my iniquities have gone over my head and listen to this like a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me.
[00:17:58] Friends, here's the reality. We cannot bear the weight of our own sin.
[00:18:05] We cannot bear it.
[00:18:07] Paul says, the wages of sin is death.
[00:18:10] It must be paid for.
[00:18:13] Because not only can we not bear it, but your sin accrues a debt that we cannot pay back.
[00:18:21] And this is the hard true about this debt, this unpayable wage. We will either spend eternity for paying for our sin apart from God, or we will trust in the one who paid it all on Calvary.
[00:18:34] But either way, it has to be paid.
[00:18:39] Every sin must be paid for, either in the past by Jesus or by us in the future.
[00:18:47] But the good news for us is that it has been paid.
[00:18:51] God sent his son to bear the penalty, who, as Colossians says, cancels the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
[00:19:01] This he set aside nailing it to the cross. Left to our own devices, sin will weigh us down.
[00:19:09] We will sink every time.
[00:19:11] So whether sin is blinding you or numbing you or isolating you, don't allow yourself to sink this morning.
[00:19:21] Look to the one who has paid your debt already.
[00:19:26] We can walk in the freedom that's already been prepared for us. It's been nailed to the cross.
[00:19:32] His blood has been poured out for us.
[00:19:37] We weren't meant to bear sin on our own. Amen.
[00:19:41] Amen. Jesus has paid it all.
[00:19:45] So, number two, God is always in control, even in the darkest places.
[00:19:51] When we talk about the sovereignty of God, okay, it's a big word, sovereignty of God. What we're speaking of is a God who knows and ordains everything that happens from beginning to end.
[00:20:04] He's over it all.
[00:20:06] But he isn't just our divine supervisor. The text says that the Lord appointed a great fish for Jonah.
[00:20:15] That word appointed means prepared or arranging. In other words, the fish was part of his ordered plan.
[00:20:23] The amazing thing about God being in control is that in his world, in God's world, there are no accidents.
[00:20:31] There are no surprises with God, okay? He isn't looking at my situation or your situation right now with surprise and trying to figure out what to do with you.
[00:20:45] He actually has a plan.
[00:20:47] And his plan for you and his plan for me doesn't fundamentally involve us at the center.
[00:20:57] It doesn't involve a happy or comfortable or fortunate life. In fact, his main plan for the world is redemption.
[00:21:07] That's God's plan.
[00:21:08] That every knee would bow and tongue would confess and all things would be put under submission of the authority and grace of Jesus.
[00:21:18] That's his plan, A for his people.
[00:21:20] But that being said, the Lord does have a plan for your life, right?
[00:21:26] He does know your. Your life plan specifically. In fact, he's orchestrated every part of your story, even down to the depths of your suffering and. And the darkness that you face.
[00:21:40] And so it's true, as we've highlighted, that, that Jonah is where he is because of his sin. But now in this text, he's suffering the consequences of his own sin.
[00:21:50] He's going down. He's descending further and further into his own peril. But in that peril, the Lord appoints a fish.
[00:22:00] He's in total control.
[00:22:03] And so my question is, do you believe that?
[00:22:06] Do you believe that God is in control this morning? Do you believe that God knows the suffering that you're experiencing better than you do?
[00:22:17] Do you believe that he has a plan?
[00:22:21] Do you believe that he's working all things, even bad things, for your good, for those who are called according to his purposes?
[00:22:32] And I'll be honest with you, like, I.
[00:22:35] I worry about my future.
[00:22:38] I don't know what the Lord has for me in terms of my future marriage or my. The. The. My future min. Ministry or where I'm supposed to go or what I'm supposed to be. And that's hard. That's hard for me not to know.
[00:22:55] And I felt myself yesterday, even as I was writing this down.
[00:23:00] I was allowing fear to take up residence in the home of my heart.
[00:23:06] And I just had to stop and pray and say, like, lord, there are things in my future that I'm unsure of, and it's scaring me, like, will you help me?
[00:23:17] And you know what happened?
[00:23:19] I got more anxious.
[00:23:21] Okay, that's me. That's my problem. That's not God's problem. I got anxious, but I needed help.
[00:23:29] I was fearful. I was worried. I was experiencing anxiety. And so I called a close brother, someone I treasure deeply. He knows who he is.
[00:23:40] And this is what he said.
[00:23:42] He said, fear is of the enemy.
[00:23:45] But what casts out fear.
[00:23:49] Perfect love.
[00:23:51] Perfect love casts out fear.
[00:23:54] And he reminded me that the struggle that I'm in is warfare, that we're in a spiritual battle with our flesh.
[00:24:04] And he said this too, and this is so key, that Jesus has already secured the victory for us.
[00:24:11] He's already secured the victory. And so the battle that we're fighting is a winning battle.
[00:24:19] We're not going to lose.
[00:24:21] We just have to grab hold of Him.
[00:24:25] Jesus has already secured the victory for us.
[00:24:29] And so in light of that truth, friends, that God has complete victory over our sin, that he's in complete control. What. What would it look like for you to trust in the God who appoints today?
[00:24:42] What would it look like for you to trust him with your career?
[00:24:46] What would it look like for you to trust him with your marriage and your family and your future and all the unknowns of life, all the different hurdles that you weren't anticipating?
[00:24:59] And kids, this is for you, too. You don't have to answer this out loud, but here's a question for you.
[00:25:05] How can I trust God. When life gets scary or life gets hard, what would it look like to let Jesus be in charge of my life instead of me?
[00:25:20] Friends, don't allow the illusion of control or lack thereof to drift you further and further from the presence of God.
[00:25:30] You can go to him in the pain, you can go to him in the trial. You can go to him when you don't have all the answers. I'm still battling that fear right now. In real time. Live.
[00:25:42] Right.
[00:25:45] But can I just encourage you with something as well? And I need to hear this too. It is good that you and I are not God.
[00:25:53] It's good that we don't have the power to appoint.
[00:25:56] It's good that we're not sovereign, that we don't ordain things, that we don't oversee the universe. You know why? Because we would make really bad gods.
[00:26:08] We would make really bad gods because when we do hit those dark places, when we do find ourselves sinking to the bottom of the pit, and that's going to happen, what we need is not something that comes from inside of us. What we need is a sovereign God who transcends our situations, who transcends our suffering, and remains age, age always in control, always steadfast, always for our good.
[00:26:34] That's what we need.
[00:26:37] We don't need us. We don't need this. We don't need. We don't need to go inward. We need to go up.
[00:26:42] We need to look up and say, help. And we need to reach out to brothers and sisters and say, help me. Speak truth to me.
[00:26:51] I'm sinking.
[00:26:52] I need help.
[00:26:55] Reach out to us.
[00:26:57] We want to help.
[00:27:01] And so here's the thing. There's nothing in your life, nothing in my life that God has not already foreseen, that God is not already there.
[00:27:15] He's there in the future. He's here now.
[00:27:19] He's there even in the darkest of places, even in the lowest of places.
[00:27:26] He's appointing. He's in control.
[00:27:28] He's working something, and he's for you.
[00:27:33] So that's point two. God's always in control. Point three, by his mercy, God does whatever it takes to save his children, kids. The greatest part of. Of the story of Jonah is not that he gets swallowed by a fish or a whale or a sea creature and lives to tell the tale. The greatest part is that God is the hero. Hero who rescues Jonah from certain death.
[00:28:02] That's the greatest part. And he does it in unbelievable fashion. You think about it. God easily could have sent another boat to rescue Jonah. Right.
[00:28:13] He could have allowed Jonah to fall in the sea and be washed up in the shore. In an instant.
[00:28:21] He could have snatched Jonah out of the water and put him back in the boat.
[00:28:26] He could have done a thousand different things to safely save Jonah.
[00:28:33] So why, of all things, would the God of the universe send a fish to. To swallow up Jonah? Why a fish?
[00:28:43] Now, I'm not going to attempt to answer that question because I don't think the text answers it for us, but here's an insight, and this comes from C.S. lewis and the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Many of you are familiar with this. When Lucy hears about who the lion is, when she hears about who Aslan is, she asks, is he safe?
[00:29:03] And Mr. Beaver responds with a very important characteristic and insight about God. He responds with, who said anything about safe?
[00:29:13] Of course he isn't safe, but he's good.
[00:29:18] He's the king. I tell you, God is in control, and he's completely good. But that doesn't mean his priority in rescuing Jonah was his safety.
[00:29:30] In fact, God is so radical in his grace towards Jonah that this act of sending the fish could be described as a kind of violent deliverance.
[00:29:40] I mean, the fish swallows Jonah whole.
[00:29:43] That's pretty brutal, right? He had to, like, go down into the belly and, like, the. The digestion system, you know, that's. That's a very brutal image to think about.
[00:29:57] It's. It's gross.
[00:29:59] But again, this is what severe mercy is. The Lord is taking extreme measures to save.
[00:30:08] Now, look at this second sentence in Jonah 1:17. It says, Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Okay? Now, if you're reading this in light of the New Testament and the finished work of Christ, that should immediately trigger a connection in your brain, right? Three days, three nights. Jesus, the tomb.
[00:30:28] Got it. We're tracking. Okay, so here's what happens 800 years later.
[00:30:34] Jesus in the Gospels actually relates this story and this verse to his own mission and ministry. I just want to read this portion of Matthew 12 to you. And you can go, you can turn there if you want. It's Matthew 12, 38, 41, it says. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. Okay? 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. Interesting.
[00:31:10] 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.
[00:31:19] The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
[00:31:32] So the question is, actually think about this. What is the sign of Jonah?
[00:31:38] And we think about that and we say, okay, well, it's the three days and the three nights and the belly of the fish, right?
[00:31:45] And that's certainly a metaphor, that's certainly a signpost that signifies it.
[00:31:52] But consider Jonah himself, okay? Think about as we progress in this story, what he's actually going to bring to the Ninevites. What does he bring them?
[00:32:05] Nothing.
[00:32:06] He doesn't really bring them anything. All. There's no miraculous staff like Moses. There's no fire from heaven like Elijah, no parting of the seas. Jonah brings nothing but the word of the Lord. And then God is the one who produces the fruit of repentance.
[00:32:26] So in the same way, Jesus is the sign of Jonah, because for a wicked and adulterous generation, Jesus is saying, I give you no sign but myself.
[00:32:39] For those who are hard hearted, for those who lack generosity and compassion, for those who trust in their own righteousness for salvation, Jesus is the sign of Jonah. Not only Jesus is the sign of Jonah, because he gives you truly nothing but himself. Remember, Jesus in Mark says, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
[00:33:11] And so to those who are needy, to those who are poor, to those who are desperate, to those who are blind, Jesus works miracles.
[00:33:21] But for those who have hard in their hearts, he's basically saying, it's just me and the heart of the earth, three days and three nights. But make no mistake about it, it's still good news, ironically, even for those who have hardened their hearts.
[00:33:39] In fact, Jesus says as much because he says he's greater than Jonah.
[00:33:44] And the lack of signs that Jonah offers to the Ninevites. In fact, Jesus is greater than Jonah in every way possible.
[00:33:52] Think about it.
[00:33:54] Jonah rejected his mission from God.
[00:33:57] Jesus embraced the mission from the Father, and with the joy that was set before him, endured the cross.
[00:34:05] Jonah despised the fact that God wanted to show mercy to Nineveh.
[00:34:10] Jesus came first, showing mercy to sinners and tax collectors. And to the least of these, Jonah would rather die than see Nineveh be spared from the wrath of God.
[00:34:23] Jesus would rather endure God's wrath on our behalf that we might be spared.
[00:34:29] Jonah descended to his death by his own rebellion.
[00:34:33] Jesus defeated death by the power of God's spirit.
[00:34:36] He is greater than Jonah in every way imaginable.
[00:34:43] And make no mistake, God goes to great lengths in order to rescue his children from sin. God appointed a great fish to rescue Jonah. But for our rescue, he appoints a Roman cross reserved for his only begotten son.
[00:34:59] And there's nothing safe about that.
[00:35:02] It's good news, but it's horrific.
[00:35:06] The horror of Jesus Christ on the cross is meant to signify us how far God actually has to go to redeem his people from their sins.
[00:35:18] You want to know how ugly your sin is? Look at the cross.
[00:35:24] Look at how far God had to go. Look at the means that he had to use. Look at the severity and the violence of the cross that Jesus had to die. Such a gruesome, heinous, suffocating death, not to mention him bearing the wrath of God all at the same time.
[00:35:48] But he did it to save his people from eternal destruction. This is the essence of severe mercy.
[00:35:56] God does whatever it takes to save his children. Even if it's severe, even if it's brutal.
[00:36:04] God pursues us.
[00:36:06] Jonah was swallowed by a fish and lived. But even greater than Jonah, God sent his son to be swallowed by death. And that Jesus Christ, even today, lives and breathes and is at the right hand of the Father right now. Amen.
[00:36:23] So what is our response?
[00:36:25] What's the so what here? How do we respond to God's severe mercy? What is God calling us to this morning? If you're here today and you're not a Christian and you have not experienced the severe mercy of the gospel, that's my prayer for you. I want to invite you to do that.
[00:36:44] Because you can't bear the weight of your own sin.
[00:36:48] You're not really in control of your life.
[00:36:50] But the good news is that God will forgive your sins from now into eternity, if you turn from them and trust in Jesus.
[00:36:58] If you receive this gift of salvation that God has gone to such great lengths to rescue you from the clutches of sin and death, he's already provided a way.
[00:37:08] And if you would turn and believe that God raised him from the dead, the scriptures say you will be saved. That's a promise.
[00:37:16] And if you're a Christian, maybe you find yourself weighed down by your sin.
[00:37:22] Maybe you find yourself drifting, even sinking, to the bottom of the sea like Jonah. Maybe you're just numb to the things of God currently.
[00:37:33] I want to encourage you in this, that God's discipline can serve as our rescue.
[00:37:40] His discipline can serve as our rescue. There are hard and painful things that the Lord sometimes appoints for us to endure so that he might show us a new element of his glory.
[00:37:53] Fresh obedience, fresh affections. But we have to go through that thing first. We have to repent from sin. We have to endure and bear suffering with one another.
[00:38:07] As Proverbs says, do not despise the Lord's discipline. Why? For the Lord reproves those whom he loves.
[00:38:17] It's good to endure discipline.
[00:38:20] God loves his children enough to discipline and deliver us from the weight of sin on the faithfulness and coattails of Jesus Christ.
[00:38:30] Kids, you've done a really good job. Thank you, parents. Thank you for sitting with them. I want to recap one more time for you guys.
[00:38:40] In very simple terms, this is the sermon, okay? Number one, God is always in charge.
[00:38:46] Even in the darkest places, sin pulls us down. Number two, just like Jonah was sinking into the sea. But this is the best news. God rescues.
[00:38:58] And he doesn't just rescue with a big fish. He rescues us in his mercy by his Son, Jesus. So today, kids, is a great day for you to talk to God and even pray and even say, jesus, I want to be rescued.
[00:39:15] Would you rescue me today?
[00:39:17] That prayer is for you today just as much as it is for us.
[00:39:21] Okay?
[00:39:22] So, brothers and sisters, let's move forward and. And the power of the Holy Spirit and the reality that God's severe mercy snatches us from the clutches of sin and death and delivers us into everlasting fellowship with the triune God. Amen. Amen.
