Jonah's 3 Rs

If you turn to Jonah chapter 2 with me in verse 7, Jonah said, While my soul was fainting within me, I remembered Yahweh, and my prayer came to you, to your holy temple. Those who regard workless idols forsake their lovingkindness, but as for me, I will sacrifice to you. With the voice of thanksgiving, that which I have vowed, I will pay. salvation belongs to Yahweh then Yahweh spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the second time saying arise go to Nineveh the great city and call out to it this very call which I am going to speak to you so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of Yahweh.

Now Nineveh, I'll finish that verse. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days walk. That was a reading of the word of God. One of the things that I remind you of once in a while is that when the Bible was written, it wasn't written with chapters. Very often we get, we'll say even a little infatuated with the chapter divisions. People have come up with different ideas like, well, there's this many chapters in this book, and that's why you do this or that.

Other than Proverbs and Psalms, the Bible was really just written in books. You know, and so there's nothing significant about the last verse of chapter two being anything other than that's where the guys that decided that and like the 18th century decided to put it. And I don't always agree with what they decided. So what's nice here is I was just able to read Jonah 2, 7 through Jonah 3, 3.

And in fact, I wanted to stop halfway through 3, 3 because I'm not going to get to the second part of 3, 3. But you have a special treat today for this preacher's, I guess for being a listener to this preacher. I have three points and they're alliterative this week. And so for those of you that that's the style that you either prefer or it helps you learn, congratulations.

Your prayers have been answered, as I normally am just the ramble-through-the-text preacher and just tell you kind of what I thought about it. So your three points, if you're going to take notes, are going to be Jonah's repentance, Jonah's reconciliation, and Jonah's response. So in fact, all three points begin with the letters RE. So it's repentance, reconciliation, and response.

And what they do, I think, in this passage and also in other parts of the scripture, as well as in your own life. These three words or we'll say concepts. Form a chain and their links in a chain that are related in a way where they overlap and they will not be easily separated from one another. Could we preach one whole sermon about repentance? Yes. Can I do that without also at some point mentioning reconciliation and a response?

It'd be hard. So these go very much together. There's a lot of overlap, but they are three concepts that I think we can glean. The end of chapter 2, Jonah says in verse 7, While my soul was fainting within me, he says, I remembered Yahweh. And he prays. He prays to God and his prayer comes to God in his holy temple or comes to God where God dwells.

And then Jonah proclaims some truths. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness. We discussed what this means. He says, ask for me. I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed, I will pay.

And what we see in this situation is repentance. So your first point is repentance. Jonah's repentance. Jonah has had a lesson. And God has a few ways of teaching us things. One way is that God has proclaimed a bunch of truthful things in his word.

And if you will get up every day and take a look at it, listen to it, read to you, memorize things from Scripture, read the catechism, read the confession, even come to church, you will be blessed with knowledge and lessons from God's truth. One of the ways that God grants us, by his grace, knowledge and wisdom is through the schoolmaster of affliction. Jonah was absolutely afflicted.

There was nothing. Now we can say, well, Jonah asked for it. He disobeyed God. Well, in a sense, we all do that. But Jonah was afflicted by God that he might be converted to what God had called him to do. Now, I'm not saying Jonah just got saved in the belly of the fish, but certainly the affliction that God put him under through going down into the water, down to the base of the mountains, he said, down, down, down.

Jonah was able to feel, I think, a lot of fear, a lot of turmoil. I tell you what if I could take anyone in here I would never do this So just don twist this but if we could go to a lake and I could just try to hold you underwater for probably more than a few seconds, you would immediately be fighting with almost all of your strength to get out of that. Most of us will do whatever it takes to breathe.

In fact, your body has physiological mechanisms built into them to make sure that you breathe. That's why parts of your body eventually stop working, because if you're having trouble breathing when you're using certain parts, your brain will shut them down. And so that's kind of a physical therapy concept people understand there. But so Jonah's gone through a lot of affliction and then forgetting for a moment being drowned and maybe even dying.

I think it's arguable whether he died or God sustained him. You also have this guy Jonah living in the belly of a fish. And I think in our minds, well, whenever I think of it, I often think of Geppetto and in the story of Pinocchio. And I imagine this kind of big fish and he's inside and he's got a lantern and a desk and maybe I'm not even remembering Geppetto right.

But you almost imagine something of some level of comfort. I don't think that there was any level of comfort for Jonah either. I think it would have been as disgusting as you could imagine. And if you're me, I don't like water or fish. So the whole idea, even catching a fish is kind of gross to me. Now, I know for some people that's a fun activity.

They like touching them, but not me. But so here's Jonah going through the difficulty he went through. and like David who said, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Jonah has learned through the schoolmaster of affliction a lesson in grace. Jonah has, I think, an increased appreciation for even some of the most basic comforts of God.

And Jonah has learned that to be in God's will, no matter how uncomfortable that may be, to be outside of God's will is even more uncomfortable. You parents understand this because it's usually how a parent who loves a child will try to train their child. Even parents that don't think they're following the Bible, that maybe their goal isn't, I want to raise a biblical kid.

Those parents will do things to inflict discomfort upon their child in order to train the child to choose the thing that the parent's telling them to choose. And hopefully most parents have good intentions with it. Most parents aren't utterly capricious. They look at their kid. They think, I don't want my little kid to run into a street where cars are moving.

And they know that the only way that that's going to happen is if that kid learns to hear the voice of his mother or hear the voice of his father and will stop when someone yells, stop. And so you train them in less urgent situations in their life to learn to obey your voice. and one of the ways people do that is through spanking but there's other ways. We sometimes will withhold a treat from them.

Sometimes we won't let them play with the toy they want to play with. There's all sorts of ways that we train children to decide I will choose the obedience that my parent is asking me to do rather than the discomfort that is promised by disobedience. Well, God does the same thing with his children. God, I think he does it with even those that are not his children sometimes.

So Jonah is repentant. Now we will get to the third R, which is the response. But I will say in passing right now that you cannot truly talk about repentance without also talking about the response. the reason is that if you are repentant there will automatically be a response even though i can separate them in concept they always will go together i will give you an example if anyone in your life has ever told you they are sorry for something and then they continue to do the same behavior, you know they are not sorry.

I don't need to explain that to most of you. In fact, most of you have probably experienced that more times than you'd like to. When a person is repentant, that repentance is not only the mind change, which is kind of literally what that word means, a change of mind. But repentance will always result in at least the attempt to change the behavior. In the situation of Jonah, Jonah repents and he promises, I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving.

Rather than be a grumbler and a complainer who refuses to do what God told him to do. And in Jonah's case, did the opposite. Jonah vows that he will now do what God has commanded. That is the repentance that is in the mind. And then we will see shortly that Jonah responds with the proper response. Now, there's an analogy that I didn't make up.

Todd Friel, I think, or Ray Comfort, one of them taught it to me. And it is that. And it is in opposition to the teaching that well repentance is just a change of mind And yes repentance is a change of mind But it the idea that I going to use an example Hopefully everybody can understand. We're right by I-70. And if I said, hey, we're going to go to Boston.

And everyone thought, OK, let's go to Boston. I know some of you are like, why would we go to Boston? But let's say I said, let's go to Boston. and we all hopped into Elijah's Toyota. He's got it all souped up to hold as many people as are in this church here. And we all get in there and Elijah says, OK, Michael, you're driving us to Boston. And I get in the car and I get on 70 West.

Now, some of you are thinking already, wait a second. He said 70 West. We're in Columbus, Ohio. we'd have to get on 70 east to go to Boston. So the idea here in my concocted hypothetical is we're going in the opposite direction of where we need to go, which is what Jonah was doing, and in fact it's what every one of us is doing whenever we're disobeying God.

There's no kind of sort of obeying God, you understand that, right? It's really black and white. You're either obeying him or disobeying him. But if I was going west and then, Aris said, Mr. Coughlin, Boston's east. I could tell you, wow, you're right.

I agree with you. I've just changed my mind. I no longer want to be going west. I now want to be going east. And if I never turned around, you would not believe me. You understand?

If I never turned around, you would say to yourself, well, maybe for a moment he agreed with her. Maybe for a minute he admitted he was wrong. Maybe even for a short period he seemed remorseful about going in the wrong direction. But if I never stopped and turned around, you would consider it to be at the very best inauthentic or disgenuine. And so real repentance will always be accompanied with a turning around.

Now, I would allow you to argue that the turning around is more the result of your repentance than part and parcel of it. Okay, if you want to quibble about those details, I think there's some quibbling allowed and philosophical distinctions you could make. But ultimately, repentance will result in your response. But next, I want you to see that Jonah repented and the sequence of events, both chronologically and logically, usually in the scripture is the sinner repents.

Then the sinner is reconciled. Then we see the sinner's response to that reconciliation. So Jonah's repentance was the first point. Now Jonah's reconciled. Look at verse 1, chapter 3. After causing the fish to vomit him onto the dry land, it says, now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the second time.

I'll tell you what, I'm unhappy with my kids if I have to tell them something twice. So you just imagine how offensive it is to God, right? Now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out to it this very call, which I am going to speak to you. Calvin wrote about this verse. Jonah also proves at the same time how much he had improved under God's scourges.

He had been severely chastised, but we know that most of the unbelieving grow hardened under the rod and vomit forth their rage against God. Jonah, on the contrary, shows here that chastisement had been useful to him, for he was subdued and led to obey God. The idea here is that reconciliation is now implied. Jonah has repented. And now God, rather than leaving him in the fish, casting him into the place of the dead, or simply commissioning him to go home, never to preach again, God instead immediately has commissioned him to continue on the same mission that he originally put him on, the one that Jonah had fled from. imagine if you will an adulterous man being returned to the marriage bed imagine a thief being made a treasurer a lying a liar becoming a witness think of the apostle paul a persecutor and a blasphemer a blasphemer of god and a persecutor of christ himself and his people And then the Apostle Paul becoming the primary dispensary of the gospel to the to the Gentile world.

And in some ways to us, even through the scripture. Right. God has a way. Of reconciling sinners to himself, always through the atonement that Christ alone makes. but God doesn't give up on people. And I don't mean that to say, well, God has ever put his faith in people in the first place. My point is that we are a little bit more quick, I think, to write people off.

God has so much more right than we would to toss away a worthless sinner. And yet he more ready to forgive sinners and then employ their services than we are When we double crossed we quick to forget the person God is quick to forgive them and forget their sin. And so I think that we can be imitators of God by being more inclined to seek reconciliation with people.

Now, there's a distinction that is made with theologians sometimes with forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness would be the act of no longer holding an offense against somebody. So forgiveness is a person steals $100 from your house and you say, you don't have to pay me back. I'm going to forgive it. So forgiveness means you've now suffered the offense instead of that other person.

Reconciliation is letting them back in your home again. Now, some people have some distinctions they can make therein, and I understand that. There's sometimes there's people whose lack of repentance for their sin makes them a person who is now outside of your circle of relationships. But in the church of God. If a person is shown to be repentant. And I don't mean if they just say, hey, by the way, I repent.

Let me let me have the money bags again or whatever it happens to be that they've repented of. If a person has expressed repentance and shown themselves to be repentant by their life in the church, the church should be ready and willing to not only forgive that person, but be reconciled. All right. We don't we don't have people in the church that wear, you know, probably most of the people in here have heard of the scarlet letter.

Maybe some of the kids haven't. We don't we don't have people wearing a T-shirt that says, you know, like thief, adulterer, you know, jerk, whatever. We don't brand people that way because we know God can change people. And so we don't write people off for maybe all future work simply because of their failure to do what they've been called to do. And our example is God himself.

This is not a plea to throw wisdom out the window. There will be times that at least temporarily a person would be prohibited from certain services. because they've proven themselves unreliable. Now, when God calls Jonah, his reconciliation is implied here. Matthew Henry said, note, God's making use of us is the best evidence of his being at peace with us.

And so you today sitting here are evidence of God's reconciliation. There have been three men now who have gotten up to speak, and all of them in some sense taught a little bit. I would be willing to Baptist wager that all of us at some point in our life had done things and violated God in ways where we felt absolutely useless. where we knew that at that moment we were maybe the worst Christian alive or the worst person alive.

There was something that was so remorseful that we knew that I shouldn't be allowed to speak his name. And then at some point he at least lets you feel better, which is nice enough and kind enough of God. But then for God to actually use you in his service is miraculous grace. And this is exactly what the Apostle Paul expresses in First Timothy when he says this is a faithful saying.

That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And then he says, of whom I am the foremost. And I don't think that this was the Holy Spirit inspiring Paul to let everybody know like, oh, by the way, Paul was actually the worst sinner. So then the rest of us could try to figure out maybe we were we the second worst sinner. I think the idea is that we are all supposed to have the attitude of understanding that I am such a bad sinner that if they were to rank us, I might be the worst.

And it is my worst sinnerness about me that exalts the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, who would choose you to forgive you. Not because of anything he would even foresee that you would do. And sadly, to most of our shame, God has proven to us that he didn't save us because of what you would eventually do so well by our repeated failures to even keep him on our mind sometimes for more than a few minutes when we're supposed to be focusing on him.

But it shouldn't drive you to despair. it should drive you to your knees to pray and thank him for his grace. Because when every one of us gets to heaven, there's not going to be a line with John MacArthur in front and Paul, not Paul, John Bunyan in front. Paul Bunyan's made up character, John Bunyan's in heaven. We will be all equal. And we will all be seen as holy because Jesus Christ washed us clean.

A good example from church history, which I think is a valuable tool to understand, is the life of John Newton. Most of you know John Newton as the author of Amazing Grace. Probably the most popular. song in the entire world, most played at funerals and different activities. When I was a non-believer, I knew Amazing Grace, I sang it, and I loved it. No idea what it really meant yet.

John Newton is a good example of repentance, reconciliation, and then finally response. And I'm going to talk about John Newton briefly, then we'll look at Jonah's. John Newton was a slave trader. in 2022 maybe the worst thing you could possibly think somebody was would have been somebody who was okay with the slave trade now biblically speaking maybe that's not exactly true but in our culture it certainly is and what he did was horrific john newton stole men which is biblically unlawful.

It's called man stealing in the Bible. John Newton stole men from their place in Africa and then he would transport them under harsh conditions and sell them. He was a wicked, blasphemous man. In his biography, he says that he had such a dirty mouth that other sailors were offended by him. Which is really insane if any of you have ever heard the phrase, cuss like a sailor.

He was an insolent man. He was kind of a silver spoon type where his daddy could get him out of a little bit of trouble, and so he was a little spoiled. I think he thought too highly of himself and God dealt with John Newton the slave trader and he reconciled John Newton to himself by grace and John Newton understood that he was saved only by the grace of Jesus Christ and what was his response?

John Newton actually is instrumental in the history of the ending of the English slave trade repentance is a turning away from the direction you're going and a turning to a new direction repentance from being a slave trader is maybe not just stopping slaving stopping trading slaves in john newton's case it required that he actively opposed the slave trade in such a way that he is one of the heroes of ending it, which is astounding when you consider that there are probably slaves who their, I won't say murdered them, but their imminent death could be credited to him and his poor treatment of them. But God has a way of reusing us once he reconciles us to him after granting us repentance. So there's another R-E word, right?

Reuses us. Jonah's response is similar. Before we talk about his response, let's remember what Jonah was called to do. Turn to chapter 1, if you will. The word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, and this is what God told Jonah. Now keep in mind, this is prophetic.

This isn't the lady at Kroger, that looks at you and says, God told me to tell you to have a great day. That's not what we're talking about. This is Jonah with absolute certainty, knowing that the God of heaven is speaking to him. He says, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city. He says, call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. And Jonah's response was, I'm going to flee the presence of Yahweh.

I'm going to hide from the all-knowing, all-seeing, ever-present God. That was Jonah's response. Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. Oh, sorry, I'm in chapter 3. Now the new call, which is the same call in verse 2, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out to it this very call which I am going to speak to you. God gives Jonah something to tell Ninevites.

And in fact, it sounds like Jonah's not even sure what it's going to be yet. He knows he's going to call out against them. so he's going to go into the most wicked land at the time basically the capital of the Gentile world of wickedness and he's going to tell these people as a Jew who they hated by the way, essentially God's wrath has bubbled up against you enough and he's going to do you in now. and Jonah response to God call the second time rather than flee from the presence of Yahweh was so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of Yahweh. The faithful, repentant individual who has been reconciled to God will respond by faith.

Your faith will cause you to do things that do not make any sense other than the fact that God said, do it. And just like Jonah, most of your life will be spent with general direction. Go that way. And when you get there, I will be your guide. God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path and that's a wonderful comfort so if you imagine a dark path you're on a trail in woods you don't know your way around you don't know what's going to happen and you have a lamp and you have a light and so you can say to yourself well I know, I can see but try going out at night sometime with a little flashlight to a trail you will never be able to see very many steps in front of you yet when God shines the light of his word into your life and he gives you in a sense the next step to take God's responsibility is not to tell you all the secret things that are going to happen in fact if he did you'd probably do what Jonah did most of us wouldn't have done the hard things we've done if we had known how hard they were going to be and we would have never got the benefits and the rewards that came from having made the resolve and then persisted in the difficulties but god tells us what to do generally speaking in his word god tells us where to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations God tells us we're not to forsake the assembling together of each other we were challenged on that one not that long ago weren't we when the response to the pandemic began we had people telling us hey assembling on Sunday is not that important what's more important is loving your neighbor and we had to ask ourselves when God told us assemble on Sunday was it a simple command that we were to by faith believe and then obey or was it just kind of a suggestion maybe a maybe wishful thinking on his part we had to understand that sometimes we were going to do things because God told us to do them without knowing all of the results of all of them Jonah arose I like that it's the opposite of the first chapter as well God told him arise, Jonah arose Jonah went the opposite direction from Nineveh in this chapter he goes to Nineveh according to the word of Yahweh you have a couple things that are going to happen to you in life that you will have to make a decision sometime you will be you'll be making a recipe and you'll run out of an ingredient and you'll have to decide if you can substitute a different ingredient great figure it out on your own the bible's not going to tell you which ingredient to pick and the bible honestly doesn't care.

I'll say God doesn't care in the sense that there's no moral equivalence that's going to happen because you chose almond flour or peanut flour, assuming you're not obviously making something for Ezra in this case. So you avoid nut flours entirely with certain people, right? But there are things you're going to have to make decisions about that have a moral implication to them.

And when you have to make some of these decisions, you're going to be challenged, maybe hopefully in your own spirit. Well, do I have warrant from the word of God either to make this decision, either by direct command or through wisely interpreting what the word says. And like Jonah, you have one choice that is the right one. In verse 3, Jonah went to Nineveh according to the word of Yahweh.

When you decide what you're going to do, it is either something that is outside of the purview of Scripture in which case you have to employ your own wisdom and knowledge to make it or you are being called to make it according to the word of Yahweh And when you violate the word of Yahweh you show yourself to be unfaithful, at least in the moment. And so this is why we are not only saved by faith, but our entire life is a life lived by faith. What does Paul say in Galatians?

It is not my life I live, but I live by faith in the Son of God who gave himself and died for me, right? Our life is marked by faith. Believing what God has told us is what gives us the knowledge of what is right and wrong so that we might do what God has commanded. Jonah shows us what repentance looks like in his prayer we see the reconciliation that is wrought by God when people are repentant and we'll just toss in there that the repentance was a gift of God in the first place it's not like God was waiting and reacting but it is part of the system and then we see the reconciliation and the repentance lead to a response.

And the response on Jonah's part is, I am going to do what God has told me to do. I am going to, by faith, believe the words God has given me and obey. And that is an example for each and every one of us. So turn to Jeremiah 15. We'll finish here. I want to give you one example of how Jonah showed in his response faith.

I want you to see that Jonah is a good example for us in this case. Jonah 15 16 Excuse me, Jeremiah 15, verse 16. Read some context here. And your words were found and I ate them, he says. And your words became for me joy and gladness in my heart. For I have been called by your name, O Yahweh, God of hosts.

God's word is joy to him. I did not sit in the circle of merrymakers, nor did I exult because of your hand upon me. I sat alone for you filled me with indignation. Why has my pain been perpetual and my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you indeed be to me like a deceptive stream with water that is unreliable? So Jeremiah is kind of coming at God here.

He's like a little bit unhappy with the situation. And I don't want to call Jeremiah like in sin, but there's a couple of times Jeremiah said things that were like, whoa, that sounded more natural and sinful than spirit led. But listen now to Yahweh's answer. Therefore, thus says Yahweh. He says, if you return, then I will cause you to return. Before me, you will stand.

And now listen, Jonah was sent to the Ninevites to preach. God says to Jeremiah, if you extract the precious from the worthless, you will become my mouthpiece. They, for their part, may turn to you, but as for you, you must not turn to them. Jonah has been given a commission by God. And one of the interesting things that we see from chapter one to chapter three is that God did not alter what he wanted Jonah to tell the Ninevites.

No matter how difficult it was for Jonah, no matter how scary it was to walk into a great city that would take three days to walk from one end to the other and to walk in the middle of it. and probably somehow be clearly known as a Jew in the middle of Syria or Assyria. And then to open his mouth in the midst of a people that already hate him and basically let the people know, by the way, God's angry with you and he's going to bring destruction on your city. And all Jonah had to do was change it a little bit and say, guess what?

Every day is Friday. God loves you. God cares about you. God needs you. God wants you. He could have said anything he wanted to say, and he probably could have become a hero of a pagan nation, and we've seen it happen time and time again in our great country here, haven't we?

If you don't believe me, go home and turn on the TV, or just go to Amazon or whatever you have and type in like Christian church or something And most of the most popular things that are going to pop up are going to be people who are willing to say Whatever a pagan nation wants to hear So that they will exalt that person And lift them up. You do not alter God's word. And God doesn't alter his word.

If you are going to extract. The precious from the worthless. They may turn to you. But you may not turn to them. We do not change. God's message because some people don't like to hear it.

Now we might have to change ourselves a little. There's some refining that needs to go on with the saints so that when we adorn the gospel with our good works, maybe we'll look a little more like we believe the rest of the Bible also, but we don't change what God has said. And if you don't think this is a temptation, you can come with me to Ohio State and you can stand on the cement block I stand on and you can preach just the Bible to people and you can see how quickly your little heart will tell you to just alter it enough so that people will stop being mean to you.

And if you don't think people don't react this way. Yesterday we had a guy walk by and I didn't realize this. Apparently he had been listening for a little while and this guy yelled at me and he said, I liked what you were saying until you called me a sinner. And all I could think to myself was, I don't know what else I could have said. I know he's a sinner.

And they even called back. They said, how do you know? Well, I believe what God told me, not what men tell me. But listen, let's just see the conclusion of this little section. Then I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze. Jeremiah 15, 20.

And they will fight against you, but they will not prevail against you. You go stand for God. You try to extract the precious from the worthless. God doesn't want you to go take all the dirty stones and bring them in. He's telling you to go mine for the diamonds. Do you understand?

He's telling us to go out and preach His word freely to all people, knowing that His elect are the ones who will respond by the effectual calling we read about in chapter 10. No, 11, right? And they will fight against you, but they will not prevail against you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares Yahweh. So I will deliver you from the hand of the evil ones, and I will redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless ones.

Some people have theorized that one of the reasons Jonah was so averse to go to Nineveh was that he was afraid for his life. I am not entirely convinced of that because of Jonah's statement he makes right at the beginning of chapter four, where he says, the reason I didn't want to go is I knew you were going to save these people. So I'm not convinced that Jonah was really afraid for his life, but maybe there was some fear there.

And God promises to be with you. God promises to be with his people wherever they go. And he will always be with you. And he doesn't promise that it'll be easy. The same God that said, I will be with you is the one that said, in this world, you will have tribulation. He says you must suffer with Christ in order to be glorified with him.

And so the exhortation is that you need to repent. If you want to call back to me and say, how do you know? Well, I read the Bible. You need to repent. You need to be reconciled to God. Now, maybe some of you think, well, I've already been reconciled to God.

If you confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. That's a continual process of a Christian. That's not just the one time thing. You need to be reconciled to God and you need to respond. And your response should look different from what your life looked like before you repented. Christians in general, I'm not trying to do one of those Paul Washer sermons where everyone's terrible, but in general, in the United States, you can't tell the difference between the Christians and the non-Christians.

I'm not saying you need to wear different kinds of slacks or whatever. I understand some of that stuff, But in general, we're not that different. We aren't doing things that set us apart that much. And I think as a church, we can try to start. God is happy to use his saints for his good purpose. And so we can trust him no matter how scary something may seem that we've been called to do something.

We're sure we're sure that the word of God tells us this is the right thing. We can also trust him to be the one that protects us from evil and to bless us as we honestly attempt to do his will. I'd like to invite the men to come up and pray particularly about the word that we just heard