God Spake

So I'll be reading Jonah chapter 2, verse 10. Then Yahweh spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. You may be seated. That was the word of God. Sounds like a strange verse, I think, to some people. in general bodily functions and noises are not the kind of talk we use in church a lot and and we don't like to think about things like vomiting and thankfully I'm not going to preach a complete sermon on vomiting my wife I think for a moment thought I might and I probably could but But vomiting is not the most common theme in the Bible, and I think it would be inappropriate to make a whole sermon out of it.

But this verse does have something going on that I want us to see in just a few words what's happening. And my focus this week is on God's word. we are a confessional church which means whether we were 1689 london london baptist confession of faith subscribers or if we subscribe to the savoy declaration or even the westminster the reformed tradition in general confessional would say that we believe the holy scriptures are the infallible word of god and the only ultimate authority we have to know what god has said And that's the whole first chapter of our confession. In fact, Reformed people are sometimes criticized for the fact that our first chapter is based on the word of God and not God himself.

And yet the defense of that is that we don't know God without his word. We know things about God without his word. And you can certainly gather some things from nature. And you can look in the back at a little baby and you know that God is very good. Right. Nobody can deny that who's ever even seen a baby, right?

But we know God through his word. But today what I particularly want to help you to see is how powerful his word is. And then make some applications. So I once again have some points for you. My points are that when God speaks, creatures obey. In fact, that's not the point.

That's the point. and then I have sub points to defend that. In Jonah 2.10 Legacy Standard Bible that I'm reading from, it says, then Yahweh spoke to the fish. It's fun, in the King James it says, and the Lord spake. We don't use the word spake very much, but I think we get the idea. And so when God speaks, creatures obey. I'm going to give you four ways that this happens.

One of them is in creation. One of them is in providence. One is physical regeneration. And another one is spiritual regeneration. And then we'll make application. Turn to Genesis 1.1.

I have a friend, Dan Phillips, who has said many times, and he's right, that if we would just believe the first sentence of the Bible, the rest of the Bible would not be complicated anymore. All of the things that we take issue with in the Bible would no longer be issues if we simply accepted this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

It's that simple. I imagine that most of the people in this room could have quoted that verse had I asked them to. and even the little ones that maybe didn't know it yet, we could probably teach it to them in less than a half hour and they'd remember it for the rest of their life. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And we see in verse 3, God said, let there be light.

And there was light. And throughout the narrative of Genesis 1, the creation narrative, it's verse 6, then God said, let there be an expanse. Verse 9, then God said. Verse 11, then God said. Verse 14, then God said. Verse 20, then God said.

I think you get the picture. God speaks and creation comes to be. we're going to make application later but it ought to be coming to your mind that this amazing power to create out of nothing at all would be able to do anything that his will pleased to do and so often we often I think we limit God in his ability and in his power by our thinking. And I think we forget that he created out of nothing.

The greatest minds that have ever existed, who have created things, always created things from stuff that was already there. So we have gadgets, right? We have iPhones and Androids, and then we have the other things, whatever else there is out there. And we think we're so smart because we've invented these things. And what's interesting is that something like an iPhone is the culmination of centuries of discovery that people have made.

I mean, nobody makes an iPhone from nothing, right? And so centuries of discovery have built up to the point where now we can make things easily that 50 years ago they still couldn imagine But it because of what they had 50 years ago that we can even do the things we do now and then they go back 50 years and you could just go back pretty much to the beginning but god created from nothing in hebrews 11 we going to jump around a little today to prove these points hebrews 11 what's that chapter we all know what's it called the hall of it's called the hall of faith right it's supposed to remind you the hall of fame if you remember, but the Hebrews 11, the hall of faith, faith is believing what God has said. It's the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

But in verse three, it says, by faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God. So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. this is the awesome power of god's word the creative power to be able to make things out of nothing in fact there are some people who are so i don't want to say they understand this but they're so inclined with this that there is a group of people in uh all over the world but in the United States that actually think that because we're made in God's image, then we have the same creative power. I don't even know what the heresies call that they're buying into.

It's really the health and wealth people that teach this, where you can just speak into existence whatever you want. And they train people to believe this. And what's interesting is although they take it to the wrong end, at least they're believing that God is doing that and has done it. They're just applying it too much to us. And some of us don't apply it enough to God.

Turn to Psalm 119. So the first point today, interestingly enough, I think I have two points. The first one has four sub points and the second one has three sub points. So if you're an outliner, that's how it's going to be. But point one, when God speaks, creatures obey. Point one, point one would be for one dot one, I should say, is that.

Creature creation obeys even just being created. But point number two, in God's providence, everything obeys him. He's the one that actually holds everything together. And this is exactly what happens in the case of Jonah and the fish. So I'm taking God speaking to the fish and the fish obeying God and vomiting Jonah up onto dry land. I'm taking that and I'm expanding that to its greater context.

And then I'm telling you that that's that's really what 1.2 is. And it's God's providence. All things serve God. All things are made to do what God commands them. Psalm 89, excuse me, Psalm 119, verse 89 begins. forever, O Yahweh, your word stands firm in heaven. His word is not created.

His word is eternal because his word reflects his thoughts. His thoughts are his will and himself, and he is eternal. Therefore, his will is eternal. His word is eternal. Eternal doesn't mean really, really old, by the way. Eternal, it means ageless.

All right. God's not really old. I mean, we call the ancient of days and we understand the concept. But God doesn't have an age. It's not like he ever had a start point. He simply is.

But his word stands firm in heaven. It's unchangeable like he is. Keep in mind, his word will have to take on all of the attributes that we could describe of God, especially since Jesus is the incarnate word and he himself is God. verse 90 your faithfulness endures from generation to generations you've established the earth and it stands so he's the one that put the earth in its place and it stands where god has told it to stand he says they stand this day according to your judgments for all things are your slaves everything in all of creation is a slave of God in fact we're the only physically created thing that doesn't obey God all the time you understand that? your cat obeys God all the time your cat doesn't obey you all the time probably but your cat obeys God all the time the rain obeys God the clouds obey God the rivers the streams everything in all of creation is God's slave and in God's providence he commands what he wishes and it is done so when God tells this fish swallow Jonah even though probably unlikely there was a fish that wanted to swallow him in the first place it wasn't instinctual, the fish does it.

Somehow Jonah's not digested. And the fish somehow keeps him down for a few days, right? And then when God decides and God speaks to the fish, which is a very interesting way to phrase this, the fish obeys and cannot keep Jonah inside any longer, even had the fish by that time wanted to. Just to get back to the vomiting analogy for a moment, there's really nobody that ever really just wants to vomit.

I mean, it's an unnatural concept When you ever want to it because there something inside you that is so wretched that expelling it as quickly as possible in a manner that sometimes painful and usually at least very gross and uncomfortable is preferable to keeping it inside you. Do you understand me? Usually when we vomit, we wish we weren't vomiting.

But usually when we vomit, we're kind of happy the thing came out. Well, God made Jonah such a unpalatable thing inside the fish's stomach that by then the fish would just spew him out onto the dry land. God's providence is ruled by his word, is my point. His creation came into being ex nihilo, out of nothing, by the power of his spoken word, and providence is controlled still by his word, by what he says.

Your physical regeneration or any physical regeneration is by God's word. Turn to John 11. This is the third point. God's word creates or we'll say generates. God's word governs providence. And God's word regenerates.

So if you want an easy way to remember it, it generates, governs, regenerates. So it's almost alliterative. If I was in the SBC, I'd be forced to come up with something alliterative and may have gotten awkward. God's word generates, governs, and regenerates. Most of you know the story of Lazarus. Let's read some of it.

Verse 39. Jesus said remove the stone Martha the sister of the deceased Lazarus said to him Lord by this time he smells or I do like the King James here he stinketh for he has been dead four days there is nothing about Lazarus at this point in time that the author of this scripture and that God himself allows us to think that he's still alive there's no, maybe he got buried alive going on here. Maybe after one day or even two days, you'd think he could have been buried alive.

Jesus indicates for us a little earlier in the passage that he actually waited to go see Lazarus and Mary and Martha so that it would be clear what's going on. Jesus said to her, after she tells him that Lazarus is going to stink because he's been dead and rotting, Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God? So they removed the stone.

Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. Interesting note there. You don't have to close your eyes to pray. Jesus looks up to heaven to pray. I encourage children sometimes to close their eyes to pray so they're just not distracted. Jesus continues I knew that you always heard me or I knew that you always hear me when Jesus speaks his father hears but because of the crowd standing around I said this so that they may believe that you sent me and when he had said these things there's a lot here but the point is he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go. When Jesus spoke to a dead man, the power of the word of God caused the dead man to be regenerated. So generation is to give something life. regeneration is to give something life again or to give life back.

Lazarus, at this point in time, obtained new physical life. His physical life had expired. By the word of God, the power of God is able to simply give Lazarus new life. That is power. the same power that created all the world, point one, the same power that governs everything in all creation, the power by which all things are the slaves of God, his word, the same power that can cause a dead, excuse me, a dead flesh to be brought to life, is the same power that causes spiritual regeneration.

So you have generation, governing, regeneration physically, and then regeneration spiritually. So look at Romans 8, verse 30 for a minute. It should be, not that we don't have to regularly review things and teach them, but it should be known in this church that we do believe that God has to regenerate us, that we have to be born again. To be born again is to be born from above.

In the scripture, the word used is to be born from above or from the spirit. And we use the phrase reborn because that's the idea. We've been born once. We have to be born twice. We have to be born again. And there's a guy on YouTube who I kind of like.

Sometimes I think of you when I watch this guy. It would be nice if we could talk to him. He's got a shirt he wore this week. It said born squared. Had like a little, you know, the power of two. It was just kind of neat And underneath it said John 3 or something like that So we have to be born twice What do they say If you if you born once you die twice If you're born twice, you'll die only once.

That's the promise we got even from John 11. We didn't read it, but it's there in Romans 830. We see something interesting. It's called the chain of redemption. So there's these links in a chain. And if any of the links were broken, you wouldn't have a chain.

That's why it's called a chain. And we're told a little bit about how salvation is accomplished. That's what the book of Romans helps us understand, the first 11 chapters at least. And in Romans 8.30, we're told, Those whom he predestined, he also called. and those whom he called he also justified and those whom he justified he also glorified now there's some steps skipped in there that actually do happen in the life of people but the point is this that if you are going to be glorified one day you have to be justified the chapter is actually the promise of glorification it's to give people assurance that even though they're still dwelling in the corruption in which they still live that one day they will be glorified.

Elijah just read that promise in chapter 9, paragraph 5, on free will from our confession. Because chapter 9, paragraph 4, that we didn't read this week, reminds us that although you've been regenerated, you still have some affections for things that are not right because you still have a corrupt flesh. But what I wanted you to notice is the power of God is that he called.

It says those whom he called, he justified. When God calls, he calls by his word. There is not a person who has believed on the Lord Jesus Christ who was not called somehow by God's word other than any exceptions that God chooses to make because physically they're unable to. and that we will read that in chapter 10 next week of our confession where it talks about how the effectual calling of elect infants are those who are otherwise unable to be called externally but everyone in this room has ears to hear and you have eyes to see and you've seen a sunset how beautiful it is and you've realized that god is good you've seen a sunrise and how powerful it must be for God to basically tell the sun what to do.

And we don't think of it that way because we think, oh, no, no, the earth goes around the sun and there's like a law of motion that it follows. And it's like, well, but God's the one that made these amazing laws that move these gigantic bodies around. So God doesn't have to be constantly like, you know, pushing a button to move the earth along for him to still be the one governing it by his rules, right?

And so God calls you to spiritual life by his word. Romans 10. You cannot be saved unless you hear of Jesus Christ and you cannot be saved unless you believe in Jesus Christ and you won't be saved unless you hear of him and believe. So second point of this is second. Second. Second.

Thessalonians. I should have practiced that more. 2 Thessalonians 2. But we should always give thanks to God. Oh, excuse me. 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 13.

Help you out, wouldn't it? But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. Faith in the truth implies that you've believed something God has said. But listen to verse 14. It was for this he called you through our gospel that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is God's calling through his word that calls people to new life. Now, God generates or creates, God governs or his providence manages all things. God regenerates life if he chooses to. And in fact, everyone will one day be resurrected. God can regenerate a dead soul and as the King James puts it he can quicken that soul he can grant new life to a dead soul that is following the prince of the power of the air at this time God commands the fish to expel Jonah, and the fish obeys.

A big, dumb fish. Yet God told Jonah, go to Nineveh, and Jonah disobeyed. And before you get on the, well, Jonah was a really bad guy bandwagon, there's probably some things God has clearly stated that you are supposed to be doing or should have done, and you disobeyed, and you knew it. and while you're out there rebelling against God disobeying things that you know he said let alone the fact that you've ignored the rest of the Bible that you haven't even studied hard enough to know all the stuff that's actually required of you while you're disobeying God and rebelling against him sometimes just in your heart the rest of creation is literally trying to sing his praise and just obey him suffering under the curse that you have brought on us.

I looked outside and a squirrel today didn't know what he was trying to eat. He was really cute. He was burying something in my yard. Even I thought maybe he's got a nut. And all I could think is at any moment, a predator could just. In fact, the predator could have been my cat.

I was waiting to see my cat like defend our land, I should say. But this squirrel groans with the rest of creation for the revealing of the sons of God so that one day a new creation can be made where righteousness will dwell and there will be no more death or crying or sickness or tears. So what's our problem? Why are we so hateful and rebellious against such a gracious, loving and kind God?

We're the only physical creatures that disregard his commands in his word. Now, there are fallen angels. Fallen angels are not physical. So that's why I made that distinction. Everything else is his slave. And in fact, even his elect angels, the ones that are not fallen, they obey him all the time.

Which is what makes it so amazing that God would shed his love on us. Can you imagine being an elect angel with sentience? So you can think, you can see, you can talk. And you're an elect angel and you've never disobeyed God for as long as you've been created, which could be thousands of years at this time. And you're singing his praises all the time, doing whatever he bids you. and you look down at the children of men and you see the kinds of things that we do to one another and the rebellion we have against God, shaking our fists at him, and you're an elect angel and you've got to wonder, why is he loving them, right?

Well, God made us in his image, not angels. three applications of the power of god's word to create the power of god's word to govern his providence the power of god's word to regenerate both physically and spiritually three applications you can trust the power of god's word when god speaks that's his word you can trust the power of god's word to justify sanctify and glorify all right we even saw in thessalonians because God has chosen you as the first fruits for salvation. He says through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth, by the spirit and faith in the truth is just saying by the word and spirit. Just the phrase Elijah just used, right?

Chapter 10, paragraph one. God affectionately calls by his word and spirit. You can trust the power of God's word to justify, sanctify and glorify. God's word is powerful unto salvation. So if I ask most of you in this room, hey, when were you saved? What you're going to do is you're going to think back to the day that you prayed the prayer of salvation.

Or the day you maybe you didn't pray a prayer that day, but there was a day that you just knew, well, I really trust Jesus. I'm resting on Jesus today. Some people will think about the day of their baptism. Usually that's not the day people got saved or justified. But when the Bible speaks of salvation, it's talking about a much bigger process than what we usually refer to, which is usually the day that we exercised faith and could tell that we were justified.

Salvation refers to the whole thing, actually. It actually goes back to your election. So if you're saved, it started in what we call eternity past in God's decree. But salvation is your justification. that is your being treated by God as if you had lived the perfect life of Jesus Christ rather than the life you've lived and being treated by God as if Jesus lived the life you lived and paid the penalty for it.

That's justification and that's great. And if that's all God gave us, it would be pretty amazing. But God promises sanctification. and that sanctification promise is the one most of us overlook and we think well oh we'll get to that and then god promises glorification and most of us kind of look forward to that but for the wrong reasons because we want to be pain-free usually is what it is it's usually not we want to stop hurting others with our sin so god please change me and be conformed into the image of your son and glorify me.

God, please make me so I am no longer sinful in my corrupt nature so that I will worship you in the splendor of holiness. It's usually God, get me out of here. My knee hurts or God, get me out of here. This other sinner is making things hard for me this week and I just can't take it anymore. That's usually why we want to be glorified. It rarely God I can wait to kneel down before you and actually worship you without being constantly distracted by the sin that comes from my own wicked heart that I still carry around But you can trust the power of God's word to justify.

Do you have unsaved friends and family? Maybe you're unsaved. God's word is powerful to save. God's word will accomplish all of its holy purposes and the thing that's hardest for us sometimes is it's going to happen in the timing that God decides because I'll tell you what if everything happened in the timing and the way that I wanted it to happen this world would be way different than it is right now and I can tell you by faith that I know that God's wisdom is better than any wisdom that I have and so I'm pretty glad it's not going my way God at one point gave me a lot of the wishes of my own heart and all it did was lead me to destruction and thank God he led me to the point where I finally gave up trusting in my own wisdom and strength and I turned my life over to Jesus Christ and rest upon him but God's word is powerful to save no one's going to resist his will Romans 1.16 the gospel is the power of God unto salvation by faith Romans 10 quoted it earlier how will they hear well how will anyone call on the name of the Lord if they haven't believed in them how will they believe if they don't hear of them and how will they hear if somebody doesn't go and tell them the message or the phrase I love in the Bible how will they hear without a preacher but I think you can tell people the gospel with a written letter with a tract I think you can write people a note I think you can talk to them You can post it on Facebook.

You can have a sign. There's a lot of ways we can communicate the truth of God's word to people. Excuse me. And so I want you to trust the power of God to save people. I want you to trust that if people have heard the gospel of salvation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, that he lived the perfect life, that sinners could not live, that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried for three days like Jonah in the belly of the fish and then spit out of the grave by the grave itself that couldn't hold him anymore when God decided it was over.

And then he resurrected to new life, was given new physical life, and ascended into heaven. I want you to believe that God can do that with anybody that you love. He can do it with your kids. He can do it with your dad. He can do it with the most hardened sinner you ever met. He can do it with every person yesterday at Ohio State if he wanted to. he did it with Nineveh I don't mean to spoil the end of Jonah for you but there was a bit of a revival something you can trust the power of God to sanctify through his words you can trust God to justify you can trust him to sanctify John 17 17 Jesus' high priestly prayer wonderful dialogue we'll say a discussion between Jesus to God He says, sanctify them by the truth.

Your word is truth. Sanctify them by the truth, he says. He says your word is truth. Logically, now he's saying sanctify them by your word. You're sanctified by the word of God and only by the word of God. The word and spirit working together.

This is why when you come to church, instead of me getting up and reading a self-help book that maybe has some good advice in it. Instead of me just saying things that I think might make you feel good this week, what I try to do is tell you what the Word of God says. Because the only thing that I believe can sanctify believers is the ordinary means of grace that God has provided, and that's His Word.

This is why we don't have 75 different programs, although I'd love for the men to get together again soon for what we call a men's meeting, which will again be focused on His Word. I'm not against bounce houses. I'm probably too big to slide down any of the slides at this point. But if you wanted to get a bounce house and let kids play, I don't care. But we're going to preach the word of God.

And we're going to open the word of God. And we have Elijah coming up and effectively preaching a five-minute sermon. And we have Jeremy who's going to read later. And men make comments on things. And when we go to the dinner, I expect everyone to be admonishing one another with the word of God. and loving one another and encouraging one another too. It's not always correction.

But that's how you're sanctified, is by the Word of God. A church that has every program known to man for a person to participate in that's not preaching and teaching the Word of God and as the regular staple of the week is not serving their people. even if they're giving them a lot of other really good things. There are things in our lives that we ought to be mortifying and treating as sanctification issues, yet we often think of them as just physical difficulties that we must live with.

So this is going to step on a few toes here because some of these things are things that we struggle with. But my issue that I have with a lot of Christians and Christianity today is that there are a lot of people who seem to think that they simply have some physical thing that makes life more difficult and that just how it is And there's no doubt that there's people that have physical difficulties. There's no doubt that there's physical difficulties that make life harder for some people as well, in fact, even sin issues.

We do not want to make the same excuses that pagans make for their evil. because most of the evil that's committed today comes down to, if you really listen to what people are saying, it comes down to, I have a really, really strong urge in this direction, and I refuse to acknowledge that it's wicked, so therefore it is what I cannot help but do, and because I don't want to call myself wicked, we'll just call it good. That's what most people today say. Now, they don't use those words. they say things like ever since I was a little a little boy I didn't like girls and then they'll tell you their story of how they just felt more natural you know they'll say things like dating men when really they're talking about living in sexual morality there isn't a there isn't a rapist in the world right now that wouldn't tell you well you know i i had a really strong urge to do it they're not going to say i just woke up and like fought you know i had all these urges to do righteous things and i just fought them and did the bad thing anyway like they felt compelled no excuse for it still so let's be different from that so So a couple options here.

Do you have anxiety? Very common sin in the church today that people justify. Is it possible to have a form of anxiety that is brought upon you that is not itself sinful? I'm going to say yes. For example, if someone walked in here right now with a gun and threatened all of us, we would all have an immediate physical reaction to that that could be classified as no less than anxiety and like adrenal overload.

And I don't think anyone would be in sin because of that natural physical reaction to that particular extreme stimuli. Do you understand? Sinful anxiety generally comes when we have created an environment in our mind where everything is a man with a gun now. Everything's an emergency. So it feels real to us because we've already made it an emergency in our mind. and it's usually the result of of uh bad choices we've made that got us to that point that's why there's the phrase you know i'm not a big ted talk guy but you know there's the phrase halt and if you like acronyms halt don't ever become too hungry angry lonely or tired those are the like that's the phrase they give like drug addicts and stuff to try to help them keep away from their triggers, you know.

But the God who made your body, the one who can create out of nothing, who can give life out of nothing, the one who governs everything, who can tell a fish to vomit a guy, who can tell the sun to go left or right if he wanted, or even stop it for ten minutes one day, right? He did that in Joshua. That God can also have command over your body. And He can not only command your body to change, He can give you the grace to not be anxious as he's commanded.

Some people think, well, it's just something I have to cope with. Yes, you may suffer a lot of physical difficulty that makes life harder for you to not sin. But in some cases, I think it's a lack of just trusting that God actually has power over that. It's a lack of really praying by faith. Jesus said, if you said to a mountain, get up and go in the ocean, and you had faith, it would actually happen.

And some of you don't have the faith to just ask the God who could create everything out of nothing to relieve your anxiety. Are you drawn to lust or pornography? That's a strong, very strong physical thing. There isn't a guy in the world that is addicted to that stuff that would say, yeah, it's just something I can give or take. They are drawn to it. they feel bound to it it's like once you're starting to get caught up in it it's like you're on the end of some rope and the other end is just pulling you you can even think oh I'm trying to get away it feels strong well the same God has power to deliver you from those inclinations however natural they may seem however strong and normal they may seem to you no matter how justified everybody else in society would let you feel we live in a day and time when honestly I don't know if being a stripper would be considered something that people would be allowed to look down upon anymore we're not yet at the point where we exalt it like we might a female doctor or something sexual immorality, we would be excited.

If a woman was a doctor, thanks for making a face, I know that may sound confusing. If a woman was a doctor, we might say, hey, it's a great job, great accomplishment. We may not be at the point where we say that to a woman who became a stripper but I think we past the point where we judge them Okay so hopefully that clarified If you live in a society that permits and even encourages you to be sexually immoral, it's going to feel like the most natural thing to do stuff that God has told you not to do.

But God, who made your body, has the power to change the way it feels if you would ask him to. I'm not saying it's magic. It's supernatural. I'm not saying that it happens overnight. And I'm not saying it won't happen without means. So you can't just keep looking at porn every day and then asking God, take this away, take this away, take this away.

You have to. He works through the work people do. All right. It's confession of sin. It's having other people pray for you. It's taking the ordinary means of grace on a regular basis.

Communion. Fellowship with the saints. Singing the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Listening to the word. Are you afraid to submit to an earthly authority? Do you feel it in your bones?

To the very core of your being sometimes that you physically cannot obey. God's word has the power to change your heart and your mind so that you may not fear anything that is frightening in Matthew 9 a woman with the issue of blood she was hemorrhaging for 18 years or whatever it was and it couldn't be healed and she knew that if she would just touch Jesus physically she could be healed physically and you remember she was i'm not going to read it's matthew 9 20 to 22 she touches jesus jesus isn't even looking at her he has to turn and say who touched me okay so he's all knowing as god but as man he had certain limitations and i think at the time he was being honest and i think it's an exhibition for us that his power can heal that woman knew by faith that he could heal her physically and yet i'm telling you that god can heal you and by heal you i mean sanctify you deliver you from the imprisonment to some of your besetting sins that you deal with he can do that as easily as he can heal that woman who had been non-stop bleeding for over a decade i don't remember the exact number and yet do you draw near to him. She fought through a crowd just to touch him.

Some of you won't spend 15 more minutes a day praying about your own sin that's affecting people you love. Finally, I don't want to miss the fact that death could not hold Jesus any more than the fish could hold Jonah. Once God declared that the prisoner therein must be expelled. Once God spoke to the fish, Jonah was going to be a free man. At least free from the fish.

Once God commanded that Jesus would come out of the grave, Jesus would come out of the grave. You realize the Bible says he raised himself from the grave? Also the Holy Spirit and the Father, there's inseparable operations in the one being of God. But Jesus had the power to raise himself from the grave. The living God cannot be held back even by the powers of death and hell.

So although Jesus really died, a real man died, the presence of his perfect life inside the belly of the earth caused it to spew him out. When God commands his creatures, his creatures must obey. The earth had to obey. The earth could no longer hold Jesus Christ. And yet God has only bestowed his special love and grace upon one type of creature, the human race.

So may we obey in such a way as to show our gratitude for being made in his image. So I don't mean to turn this into a you got to go do all this stuff sermon, but if God saved you, if a fish is going to obey God, can you just try? Repent when you don't? with Paul may we know the power of his resurrection in our lives that's Philippians 3 10 the power of his resurrection is the promise of new life while we're still in this world under the curse the power of his ascension is the knowledge that you can trust the power of God to glorify you through his word as well I told you that the application of the fact that God's word generates, governs, and regenerates everything that he wants, that allows us to be sure that there is justification by his word, sanctification will occur by his word, and glorification.

The same God who created out of nothing, governs and directs all things, and called you from death to life can give life to your mortal body. He will finish the work that he has begun in you. Rest in that today. God's creative, providential, and life-giving word will call, justify, sanctify, and glorify those whom he loves, his church. I'm going to ask the men to come up and pray.