Book of Jonah - Ch. 3, Vs. 1-10 (09/22/2019)

With a quick prayer, Most Gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this time and this place to come together and worship you.

And thank you for giving us a country where we can still meet without a threat of retaliation or terror.

Thank you for giving us your word, both your living word, your Son, the Redeemer, and your written word, the

Scripture. Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit, the illuminator of the

Scripture, without whom we could read the Scripture and read it and never understand it. We also thank you for your love, your agape love, a love not dependent upon us, but dependent only upon you.

Thank you for your mercy, generously given, both to your children and to those that are not.

And thank you for giving us your grace, an unmerited gift of favor, available only to your children.

Thank you again for all that you have done for us and all you will do for us. Go through the rest of the service today and bless us and keep us in your spirit.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We are in Jonah chapter 1.

No, chapter 3. I saw the 1, that's verse 1.

Jonah chapter 3, verse 1. And the word of the Lord came into Jonah the second time.

Now, I stop there to say this. This demonstrates God's amazing love for his children.

Even though Jonah did everything he could do to resist the first call, God called him again anyway.

He was under no obligation to do that, but he called him again to show his love and his mercy and his grace to Jonah.

And he's eventually going to show his love, mercy, and grace to the Ninevites. And that's not going to make

Jonah too happy. Saying, arise, go into Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

Now, when I first read that, I thought it said bide, that I will tell you.

But it's past tense. So he's already told Jonah what to say. Now, God is indeed the

God of second chances. But you'll notice here there's a subtle difference, slight and subtle, between the first and the second call.

Not so much for Jonah, but for us. I'm going to read the first call. This is chapter 1, verse 1.

Now, the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittiah, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it.

So what was he told to do? He was told to go to Nineveh and to cry out against it.

However, if he were told what to do, the scripture doesn't relate that message to us, at least not yet.

Now, in his second call, God again tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, but this time we will be told the message that Jonah is to deliver.

So there is a difference between the first call and the second call. Actually, there's two things that are different.

Here he identifies, in the first he identifies Jonah as the son of Amittiah, and in the second time he just identifies him as Jonah, as if one identification is enough.

Well, it is for me. For me, I am 100 % certain that this Jonah is the same as the second

Jonah. There are commentators that say that the Jonah of chapter 3 is a different Jonah than the

Jonah of chapter 1. I can't understand how they could possibly say that, but that's what they say.

I mean, it's not like Jonah is a real common name. Yes, sir. You're right.

It also says the second time, so that's even more ammunition against it. But people, commentators, frequently leave out phrases that do not reinforce what they want to say.

Thank you.

Okay. So this time, Jonah is going to be told to go to Nineveh, and this time we'll be informed as to what he is to tell them.

So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh, according to the

Word of the Lord. And that's an improvement on Jonah's part.

Last time, he headed off in the opposite direction. This time, at least, he heads toward Nineveh.

He has learned the lesson that resisting the will of God is both futile and counterproductive.

So now he obeys the call, and he goes to Nineveh. Now, Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

That's not three days' way. That's three days to walk around it. Nineveh was about 500 miles away from Joppa, and almost that far from any other large body of water.

Nineveh is in the corner of what is Iraq and Iran now, and what is near Kurdistan.

It's Mosul. Mosul is where Nineveh was.

Far from any water. If a whale vomited

Jonah up, he's not going to reach Nineveh in three days, unless it's a supernatural whale that was able to deliver him close to the city.

Walking an average of 20 miles a day, which is a good pace when you're going to do that for 25 days, would take 25 days to walk around it, to get to it.

The three days refer to the time it would take to walk around it, or one day to walk all the way through it.

That's with no traffic problems or obstructions, and we know what that's like going to Dallas each week.

There's always traffic, and there's always obstructions, and we never get as far as we think we will.

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey. So, okay, he must have been slowed by traffic, and he was probably about in the middle of town now, about mid -city.

And he cried out and said, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Now, I assume that's the same message Jonah had been given to deliver to the people of Nineveh the first time he was called.

But this time, Jonah delivered the message with relish.

After all, this is a message that mirrors his attitude toward Nineveh.

So why didn't he go the first time he was called? He wanted Nineveh destroyed, and the

Lord says, yet 40 days, and the city will be destroyed. Why didn't he go the first time he was called?

I would have thought he had been anxious to go. The city that he hated and wanted to see overthrown, the

Lord says, go and tell them in 40 days the city will be overthrown. Why do you think he didn't go the first time?

He liked the message. The message was the city is going to be overthrown. He really didn't like the

God he was talking to, because he thought God might be generous, might be merciful, might be loving, and might not follow through on what he promised to do.

And there he would be, Jonah, the great prophet, saying the city will be overthrown, and it not be overthrown.

I think that's what was deep down inside his heart. Now, that's again just me, and I may be wrong on that.

So the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

We'll see in just a minute. That's everybody from the king and his entourage all the way down to the least of the children.

Every single one of them believed. And Jonah didn't really like that.

Much to the chagrin of Jonah, the people of Nineveh believed. Everyone in the city believed.

They believed God. Not necessarily Jonah, but they certainly believed

God's message delivered through Jonah. God's message for Jonah was to repent.

How do we know that? How do we know that that was his message, not in 40 days I'm going to destroy

Nineveh? No.

You know how we know that his call was to repent? What did they do? They repented.

They did exactly what he wanted them to do. He didn't think he was going to send

Jonah into Nineveh to announce that Nineveh would be destroyed and then be surprised by the fact that the people of Jonah repented.

If 100 people in Nineveh had repented, that would have surprised the

Lord. Well, this would have because this is not what he had planned.

Are you talking about Jonah or the Lord? The Lord. Okay, what did the

Lord tell Jonah? It's just a matter of how we look at it. What did the

Lord tell Jonah to tell Nineveh? He didn't tell him to repent.

He told Jonah to tell Nineveh, just wait in 40 days the city is going to be overthrown.

That's what he told Jonah to tell the Ninevites and that's what Jonah told the Ninevites and that made

Jonah happy because he wanted to see Nineveh overthrown. Okay, now we know,

I agree with you, John, we never do anything that surprises the

Lord. The people that read the book.

Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, the first adventure for me was to teach a lesson.

It wasn't that God didn't know. I think that's the way I'm looking at this. I'm not arguing,

I'm just saying. I understand that and we won't even disagree when I say it one more time.

Yes, sir. Okay, now we're going to back up and we're going to say this again.

How many people in Nineveh were saved? All of them.

How many repented? How many repented? All of them. The king repented, his entourage repented, the rich people repented, the poor people repented, the old people repented, the sick people repented, everybody repented.

That didn't surprise the Lord at all because that's what the Lord had planned. But what

I said was suppose 100 people had repented.

That would have surprised the Lord because that's not what he knew was going to happen.

That didn't happen. What did happen was every single one of them repented and if anybody has ever had any dealings with revivals, even a great revival has less than 90 % converted.

I've never heard of such a thing. One would have thought Jonah would have been delighted to be the agent of the greatest revival in all of history.

Every single man, woman, child repented. Including the king.

Nothing surprises the Lord. The Lord knew they were going to repent. His call to Nineveh was to repent.

His call to Jonah was to tell them that in 40 days they're going to be destroyed. Repentance begins by believing

God. As we believe in him and his word, we have the power to transform our lives, not as we see fit, but as he sees fit.

If we repent and we believe the Lord, our lives will be changed and they'll be changed according to what he has in store for us.

Some of us will be changed one way and some another, but we'll all be changed as he wills.

You can do a lot of things associated with repentance, but if they do not begin by believing on and trusting in God, they're all useless works of the flesh.

You can donate a million dollars to the Christian church here and the school here at Park Meadows.

If that didn't come from the Lord, it will be a useless gift and you will have received your reward when we put on your wall donated by John Carpiac.

Or whatever it is. But now if you do it, believing on him, working at his will, then it is true repentance.

When repentance comes, something has to change. If you repent and nothing changes, you didn't repent.

Because repentance means turning away from that which you used to do. In this case, the people of Nineveh took off all their normal clothes and put on sackcloth.

If you've ever thought about wearing a burlap bag for a covering, you kind of get the idea of what's happening here.

It's a thick, coarse cloth normally made from goat hair and wearing it normally displays a rejection of earthly comforts.

It's not comfortable to wear a cloak made of sackcloth.

It's a symbol of mourning. Verse 6, For word came unto the king of Nineveh.

Now I don't know whether the word came to the king of Nineveh from Jonah or from somebody that came in and told him what

Jonah was out in the city saying. It doesn't say. It just says, For word came unto the king of Nineveh, Jonah's message, which was,

Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And he, the king, arose from his throne, and he lay his robe from him, and then like all the other people of Nineveh had already done, covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes.

So the king is in mourning too. But he doesn't leave it there. He also added a proclamation.

Here's what he said, And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by decree of the king and his nobles, saying,

Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water.

This is a severe fast. This is one that can't last long. If you can't drink water you won't fast very long.

You'll mourn. Yes, mourn, but also repent and turn away from your evil deeds.

Here's the rest of his proclamation, But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto

God. Yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

The king calls on the people to repent. And they do. Every last one of them.

Not that Jonah told the king to repent. He only told the king that in 40 days

Nineveh would be destroyed. But I believe God told him to repent, and that's why he repented.

And why do you think God told the king of Nineveh to repent? Because it was in his plan from the beginning that this king of Nineveh would repent, and all of his subject with him.

This is no surprise to God. I know what you're saying, and I don't know.

Some people say it has something to do with the wilderness wandering when they wandered in the wilderness for 40 days.

Well, it was 40 years, but there was a period of 40 days where they did something also.

And it rained 40 days and 40 nights. There's got to be a connection. There's got to be something there, but I don't know what it is.

It was 40 years. It was 40 years that they wandered in the wilderness, but there was a time of 40 days and 40 nights associated with Moses and his disciples.

I can't remember what it was. I think he was well known in the town of Gathheber near Nazareth.

He might have been known in Nazareth. I don't think he was all that well known, but he was the son of a well known person.

Unless the Lord had in his plan that we'd all repent, and that would be a miracle of great proportion, wouldn't it?

Well, do you think we could do that? Do you think he could go on TV and ask us all to repent, and we all would?

If God so moved and was so gracious to us as to give us another 100 years, that would be a miracle.

And so here's what he said. This is the king talking. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not?

He has no assurance that God will spare him and his city.

He only has the chance that he might.

If we humble ourselves, if we repent, maybe it is in his heart to spare us.

He does have assurance that if they don't repent, they won't be saved. He has that assurance. Okay, now the question is, and you know, we're only one verse from the end of this chapter.

But we're a long way from the end of today's lesson. Well, did

God turn away from his fierce anger? Well, let's read it and see. And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not.

And as we go a little bit further along, Jonah is going to throw this back in the Lord's face. And he's going to say, see, I told you when

I ran away the first time that this is what you would do. Now the quick question is, how do we process this statement?

Can we rely on God to be consistent with his word? The quick answer is yes, we can.

We can if we are one of his. I think we can rely on God to do what he says he's going to do, whether we are his or not.

If we're not his, we just don't know. You're absolutely correct.

Now let me read something from Jeremiah. God speaking through the prophet

Jeremiah. This is Jeremiah 18, verse 7. And if you would go there, please,

I think it would be helpful. Jeremiah 18, verse 7.

And the Lord is going to be talking about, well, we'll see when we get there.

At what instant shall I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down and to destroy it?

Now look at verse 8. If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil,

I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. Now had the king of Nineveh been a

Jew and had read Jeremiah, he might have known that the

Lord can change his mind if he wants to. Well, I don't know exactly how to say that.

Change his mind is not exactly what I want. It certainly is.

J. Vernon McGee is going to have a really good illustration in just a minute, which we'll get to. Yes, sir?

To pity for the evil that I pronounced, that I thought to do unto them.

Okay, let's just go on through. I think J. Vernon McGee does a great job in explaining exactly what's going on here.

It is the best illustration of this passage that I've ever heard.

And it's not really J. Vernon McGee that says it. It's some guy from England, but he quotes him. And I'm going to finish reading this.

9. And at what instant shall I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then

I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.

Now, here's what J. Vernon McGee says. And I wish I could...I'm

country enough, but I wish I could be a little bit more Tennessean and read this like J. Vernon McGee would have read it.

God said he would destroy Nineveh, but he did not destroy Nineveh.

The only prophecy of Jonah that we have recorded is, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

But it wasn't overthrown. God did not destroy

Nineveh. So, did Jonah give a wrong prophecy? That's J.

Vernon McGee's question. His answer is no, it happened to be a right prophecy.

Has God changed his mind? Was God wishy -washy?

And here is the answer. Someone asked that of Dr. G. Campbell Morgan some years ago in England.

He said, Dr. Morgan, is God as changeable as a weathervane? His reply, you used the wrong illustration.

The weathervane is not changeable. It never changes.

It operates according to a law that says it doesn't make any difference which way the wind blows.

The weathervane always points in the direction the wind is going. He says it's the wind that does the changing.

Now, if you hadn't applied that to this passage, it wasn't God that changed. It was the people of Nineveh that changed.

Based upon what Jonah had told them and based upon what God had planned that they were going to do. He knew that they were going to change in the direction they were going.

So, he is going to give them a different outcome than he would have given them had they not changed.

But he knew and they did change. So, he didn't change, they changed. Now, what about that?

That really helped me with regard to this business of whether God is changeable.

We can always count on the Lord to do what he says he will do. Now, any other comments or questions?

Yes, sir. I totally 100 % agree with that.

It is Jesus that is actually the God that. It does.

Yeah, they lived in a city three days march around.

Walls, walls, walls, walls. 100 feet high almost, 40 feet thick surrounded by a moat. They were totally 100 % safe and secure.

That's right. And it is the people of Nineveh that changed. Not even

Jesus. God the Father knows everything all the time.

It's not in him. But Jesus, the God with us in time is doing what is to be done by what they did.

The Father knew they were going to do what they told the Ninevites to do and what he had told

Jesus to do. He knew it all. So, he doesn't change at all, ever. Yeah, that's right.

And I can't say what if the Ninevites had not repented. If I could say that,

I could say if the Ninevites hadn't repented they'd have been destroyed in the 40 days just like he said.

But that wasn't in the cards. That was not for them to do. They didn't do that. They did repent and so they were not destroyed, at least not yet.

And that brings us to the last thing I want to deal with. Was McGee correct when he stated that Nineveh was not destroyed?

I said, well, almost. It was destroyed.

It just wasn't destroyed 40 days later. So, that let him off the hook.

They weren't destroyed 40 days later. It took another 100 years.

And then, not only was it destroyed, but it was hidden from view for almost 2 ,500 years.

I said, it was destroyed just not 40 days later. It took more than 100 years of time to pass and then it was destroyed and then it was destroyed so well that it remained hidden for almost 2 ,000 years.

Not almost, more than 2 ,000 years. They did.

The book of Nahum can be considered a sequel to the book of Jonah.

Jonah prophesied over a century earlier than Nahum. Jonah recounts the postponement of God's promised judgment toward Nineveh.

While Nahum depicts the later execution of God's judgment. Nineveh, and we just talked about this a few seconds ago, was proud of her invulnerable city.

Her walls reaching almost 100 feet high, with a moat 150 feet wide and 60 feet deep surrounding it.

But Nahum established the fact that the sovereign God would bring vengeance upon those who violated

His law. Go ahead and turn to Nahum chapter 1, verse 2.

That's just a couple of chapters over from Jonah, but about 100 years later.

That's right. I think all of them repented and were gone.

Even the youngest ones would have been 100, 500, 600 years old.

God is jealous and the Lord revengeth.

Nahum chapter 1, verse 2. The first verse just says who it is that's talking.

God is jealous and the Lord revengeth. The Lord revengeth and is furious.

The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries and reserveth wrath for His enemies.

The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and will not at all acquit the wicked.

The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm and the clouds are dust of His feet.

He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry. He dryeth up all the rivers.

Bashan langueth, Carmel and the flower of Lebanon languetheth.

The mountain quake at Him and the hills melt. The earth is burned at His presence.

Yea, the world and all that dwelleth therein. Who can stand before His indignation?

Who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are thrown down by Him.

The same God that has shown retributive judgment against evil is also a redemptive

God bestowing His loving kindness upon the faithful. Reading on, The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble and He knoweth them that trusteth in Him.

This prophecy brought comfort to Judah and to all who feared the Assyrians.

Nahum said Nineveh would end with an overflowing flood. He continues, But with an overflowing flood

He will make an utter end to the place thereof. And darkness shall pursue

His enemies. And it happened just that way when the Tigris River overflowed to destroy enough of the walls to let the

Babylonians through. Nahum later predicted that the city would be hidden.

In chapter 3, verse 7 it says, And it shall come to pass, and this is how

I know it was Nineveh that we're talking about. And it will come to pass that all that look upon thee shall flee from thee and say,

Nineveh is laid waste. Who will bemoan her? Which shall

I seek comforters? Art thou better than Populus? No. No is no

Ammon. It's also called Thebes. It's an ancient city in Egypt about 300 miles south of Cairo that was situated among the rivers that had water round about, whose rampart was the sea, and her walls were from the sea.

Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength. And it was infinite.

Put, Lumen, were thy helpers. Yet she was carried away.

She went into captivity. Her young children were also dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets.

And they cast lot for her honorable men. And all great men were bound in chains.

Thou, he's talking about Nineveh now, thou also shall be drunken. Thou shall be hid.

Thou shall also seek strength because of the enemy. Okay, Nineveh was destroyed in 612

B .C. The site was not rediscovered,

John, until 1842. It was hidden from sight 612

B .C. And it wasn't rediscovered until 1842.

That's almost 2500 years. It was so well hidden that many liberal

Bible scholars discounted the fact that Nineveh even existed.

If you had been a Bible scholar in the around 1800, there would have been people alive that were telling you that no such city as Nineveh ever existed.

And you'd wonder how they could be Bible scholars and say that. Because they didn't believe the

Bible. Had they believed the Bible was literal, they would have known that Nineveh had to be a literal as well.

I think that's what the lesson is. I think the lesson is we need to be the holdouts, the ones that believe in what the scripture tells us.

Regardless of what that leads us to. Right now, in this country, it doesn't lead us to any great hardship.

Oh, we're criticized, we're ridiculed, we're laughed at, we're made fun of, but they don't take us to jail, or they don't stone us, or they don't kill us, yet.

Yet. But that will not necessarily continue to happen. By the time of Jesus Christ and the

Apostles, there was no physical evidence of Nineveh. Lucian of Samosata, somewhere between 120 and 180, that's his lifetime, a

Greek writer lamented, Nineveh has perished. No trace of it remains.

No one can say where it once existed. Such lack of visible remains led some scholars of the 19th century to express skepticism that Nineveh or any part of the

Syrian Empire even existed, much less dominated the world. Indeed, the only historical source in those days that verified the existence of the empire was the

Bible. That's the only place that there was anything said that verified that Nineveh even existed.

Old Testament histories and prophecies spoke about Assyria. Jesus himself proclaimed the existence of Nineveh as a historic fact.

We read that a couple weeks ago when we read Matthew 12, 41. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than Jonah is here.

Yet some scholars disputed the testimony of Jesus and the prophet. That is until one spectacular decade in the middle of the 19th century when

Austin Henry Lanyard, Austin Henry Laird and Paul Emil Botha rediscovered in northern

Iraq the ancient remains of three Assyrian cities, one of which was

Nineveh, and evidence of a wide range of military equipment that had been used to crush all resistance from the

Tigris all the way to the Nile. The Assyrian Empire in all of its awesome power had been resurrected through archaeology.

It was in the Bible the whole time. And we look up and we see the stars, there's not nearly as many stars as there are sand.

And they thought the Bible was wrong until we got better eyes and we could see further and we could see and those are the stars that we can see.

But when we bring that up and look more deeply and then we see little fuzzy things in our telescopes and we recognize that that's not a star, that that's another galaxy and there's millions of galaxies just like our galaxy and we recognize that we can't see it all.

If we could see it all there'd be even more of them. There's way more stars than there are grains of sand.

And so the Bible was not wrong, the scientists were. And the kids are today.

And what the kids believe today is that there is a God and the

God is Mother Earth and we are destroying her as if we could.

We haven't been able to change the temperature of the planet even a tenth of a degree and we couldn't even if we tried.

We couldn't make it cooler, we can't make it warmer. We have to rely on the Lord to make it cooler and warmer.

And while I'm ranting and raving I'll add one more thing. There are greenhouse gases.

You know that. And carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas. And it is like 1 400th as plentiful as the more effective greenhouse gas.

You know what it is. Water vapor. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas.

Much more plentiful. And we don't hear any calls to eliminate water vapor.

The big culprit. It has nothing to do with the environment.

It has everything to do with who and what do I want to worship. And the real answer is people of the day want to worship themselves.

And that's what it's all about. That's what it has been about ever since Satan decided that he was going to worship himself and he was going to put it in the heart of Abraham and Adam and Eve to worship themselves.

You can be like God. Right. Okay. That was kind of off base.

But we went there. Any comments or questions. That was the last thing

I had. You know what's really funny?

There was a hold out. There was a hold over in the Arab world that was mostly Christian until just a few years ago.

You know where it was? Right there. Right there.

In what is now called we call Mosul now. That's the city of Nineveh was right there.

Oh, now they've all been killed or run off. Who? He was a

Jew. Jonah is the title of Jesus.

Right? Jesus. But he himself hated it.

There's a difference between him and Jesus. He didn't understand even why he was doing it.

We had that same discussion a couple weeks ago at my house as to whether how could

Jonah be a model of Christ. Well, not in how he behaved because the

Lord took on his job joyfully. But in what they were called on to do.

He was set to be a model for Jesus. Jesus is going to be kind of like this.

But he didn't like it because he didn't like the outcome. He didn't like the fact that he was sent to save Gentiles as well as the

Jews. Oh, I don't know that.

It does not say that Jonah mentioned God. He just said this place is going to be destroyed.

And yet they knew somehow that we need to repent to God.

It says they believed God. You're right, but now let me ask you this. Remember Abraham?

When the Lord came to Abraham? What was Abraham when the Lord came to him? He was not even a

Jew. He was not even a

Jew. He was an idol -worshipping pagan. They had multiple gods, but he was an idol -worshipping pagan.

When God came to him. And God called him out.

Why did God call him out? Because he had it in his plan to call him out. And I get that. The difference

I'm seeing here that's kind of confusing to me is that we know that Jonah is a man of God.

But when he comes, he doesn't seem to mention God at all. He just says, you're already going to get destroyed.

He didn't go. The only thing he did with relish is proclaim that they would be destroyed.

Obviously God was speaking in their hearts. God is speaking. He wasn't.

It's God's message they responded to, not Jonah's. Oh, and let me say

It's as if I went into a place and I didn't mention who

I believed in or anything. I just came in and said you guys are pagans and you're about to die.

And then I walk out and go sit on a hill just to watch them die. And then all of a sudden they go, that was

God. We've got to go repent. And you know why they thought that?

Not because of what you would have said, but because of what God told them.

It's just like this. It doesn't really matter what I say. It doesn't really matter what

Brother David says. What really matters is what God tells you. That's triggered by what we said.

So even though it didn't sound like Scripture at the time.

It was, Brother David. And that's why

I was asking earlier, was he well known? His plan of salvation was terrible.

That's right. And it's really comforting to people like me that when

I do my lesson there's like 20 things when I get through I wish I'd have done differently. And I suspect that there's the same for you.

And we say, if I had done this better, the Lord's message would have gotten through like it should have. Well, let me tell you.

Here's what I finally learned. It doesn't matter. God's message will get through to those

He wants it to get through to, regardless of how well I present it or how bad. Paul figured that out after he did his sermon on Mars Hill.

He gave probably his most coherent, well thought out sermon that he ever delivered and not a single, well maybe not a single.

Any of you ever heard of the Church of Athens? I haven't.

I've heard of the one at Antioch and Rome and lots of places but not one in Athens where he gave his best altar call.

The one that he went to where they were and talked in terms of the unknown gods that they worship and he said, now there's one more unknown god.

There's one that you don't know. The real god. This is him. This is the one you ought to worship. If any message should have delivered anybody, it should have been that one.

And Paul, no. That's not the one that did it. I know

I've run over now. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all our many blessings.

Thank you for giving us your Lord, your Son rather. Thank you for giving us your love, your mercy and your grace.

We know we deserve none of them but we know that you are a kind and loving God and you've given us all of them.

Thank you. Go through the rest of the day and be with us as we go through the week.