DM 620480

If you turn your Bibles to Jonah, I'm going to ask you to remain seated for the reading of God's Word, because we are going to read the whole book of Jonah. I won't do that every week as we go through Jonah, but I thought for the first week, Jonah is a short enough book. Is there just too much sound coming? Is that better? now it's not doing it, it was too close to my mouth and nose I think maybe alright, too much? alright, we have to figure it out some other time you can turn that other thing off I guess I will just shout into this microphone really doesn't bother me a bit So it's more that it's often in the way of what I'm looking down at on my podium here.

I will say this briefly before we begin. This is the Word of God, and we should pay attention to it. You should be paying attention throughout the worship service. But I will say that I think there is special attention to God's Word that we should pay. And also, it occurred to me that if reading four chapters of Jonah today ends up being more than you've read all week in the scripture, because you don't have a daily habit of being in the scripture, that should be a bit of an indictment to you.

You should be convicted that you should spend more time in God's word. I'm reading from the LSB. Now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. Yet Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. So he went down to Joppa, found the ship which was going to Tarshish, and paid its fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh.

But Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea, so that the ship gave thought to breaking apart. Then the sailors became fearful, and every man cried to his God, and they hurled the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down below into the innermost part of the vessel, laying down and falling deep asleep.

So the captain came near to him and said to him, How is it that you are deeply sleeping? Arise, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. Then each man said to the other, Come, let us have the lots fall, so we may know on whose account this calamitous evil has struck us. So they had the lots fall, and the lot fell on Jonah.

Then they said to him, to him, What is this you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh because he had told them. So they said to him, What should we do to you that the sea may become quiet for us? For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. So he said to them, Lift me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will become quiet for you.

For I know that on account of me, this great storm has come upon you. However, the men rowed desperately to return to dry land, but they could not, for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy against them. Then they called on Yahweh and said, Ah, O Yahweh, we earnestly pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life, and do not put innocent blood on us.

For you, O Yahweh, As you have pleased, you have done. So they lifted Jonah up and hurled him into the sea, and the sea stood still from its raging. Then the men greatly feared Yahweh, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. And Yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the stomach of the fish, And he said, I called out of my distress to Yahweh and he answered me. I cried for help from the belly of Sheol. You heard my voice. For you had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea. And the current surrounded me. All your breakers and waves passed over me.

So I said, I have been driven away from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward your holy temple. water encompassed me to my very soul. The great deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the base of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever.

But you have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh, my God. While my soul was fainting within me, I remembered Yahweh, and my prayer came to you to your holy temple those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness 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 was an exceedingly great city a three days walk then Jonah began to go into the city one day's walk and he called out and said yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown and the people of Nineveh believed in God and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them then the word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne laid aside his mantle from him, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat on the ashes.

And he cried out and said, In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let man, animal, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat, and do not let them drink water. But both man and animal must be covered with sackcloth, and let men call on God with their strength, that each may turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands.

Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn away from his burning anger so that we will not perish. Then God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. So God relented concerning the evil which he had spoken he would bring upon them and he did not bring it upon them. But this was a great evil to Jonah and he became angry and he prayed to Yahweh and said, Ah, O Yahweh, was not this my word to myself while I was still in my own land?

Therefore, I went ahead to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and one who relents concerning evil. so now oh Yahweh please take my life from me for death is better to me than life and Yahweh said do you have good reason to be angry then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of the city and there he made a booth for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city so Yahweh God appointed a plant and it came up over Jonah to be a shade over his head and to deliver him from his miserable evil. And Jonah was extremely glad about the plant. But God appointed a worm at the breaking of dawn the next day and it struck the plant and it dried up.

Then it happened as the sun rose up, God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun struck down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and asked with all his soul to die and said, death is better to me than life. Then God said to Jonah, do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? And he said, I have good reason to be angry even to death. Then Yahweh said, you had pity on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came to be overnight and perished overnight.

So should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals? That is the prophecy of Jonah. It's not the hardest thing to read. It took me less than 10 minutes in the first minute or so. I wasted playing with the microphone, so it's probably less than 9 minutes in reality.

I would suggest you begin looking through the book of Jonah. Get yourself familiar with it. It's one of my favorite books of the whole Bible. I hate having favorites, I guess, of the Bible. But I really enjoy Jonah. I find it to be packed, packed with all sorts of good things in it.

And as you're reading through it, there's things you'll start to notice the more often you look through it. And we'll try to bring some of those up here. So a few notes on the book of Jonah. Trying to be able to see the podium, excuse me. A quote from this man, G. Campbell Morgan. he said men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God and one of the things that we want to do when we look at any book of the Bible but we'll say in particular as we study Jonah is what you want to remember is that this is God's revelation to us about himself and as exciting as it is to imagine the impossibility of a couple of the events that are highlighted in the book of Jonah, specifically a man going to the bottom of the sea and then living in the belly of a fish for three days and then being vomited out and as well a plant or a tree growing overnight that was large enough to provide shade for an adult man and then a worm eating enough of it that it dies the next day And I seen pictures of the worm people think did this a little coloring book things If you go to most churches and you look at their Sunday school curriculum Jonah and Noah's Ark and probably a couple other major events are the big ones you're going to see the pictures of, right?

All right. Although it is interesting to talk about the miracles of God, And although it's exciting to know he has that level of power to even do these things that are clearly impossible from man's perspective. The point of the book of Jonah is to tell you about God and how great he is. And as a matter of fact, without spoiling the surprises of the book of Jonah, The repentance on the part of the Ninevites, frankly, even one of them, is a far greater miracle than Jonah living in a fish for three days.

And so we have a tendency, as Morgan said, to be looking so hard at the great fish that we fail to see the great God. now Jonah was not first mentioned in the book of Jonah if you turn to 2nd Kings chapter 14 you don't have to this isn't a big important cross reference here but if you want to I like these kinds of things in verse 23 we're told in the 15th year of Amaziah the son of Joash the king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria and reigned 41 years now if the word Jeroboam rings a bell in your mind, it's because that's who Jeremy Bowman's named after, right? No, that's not true. There's two Jeroboams though, and so when you're thinking about the kings and in the history, and a lot of times we memorize some of the names, and some of them jump out more than others, there's two Jeroboams and we'll see that.

It says, this king, Jeroboam, he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. Now here's where we'll see Jonah. It says, he restored the border of Israel from Lebo Hamath as far as the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of Yahweh, the God of Israel, which he spoke through his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai in case we thought there was maybe more than one Jonah that was a prophet I think that the Bible narrows it down for us says Jonah the son of Amittai the prophet who was of Gath Hefer for Yahweh saw the affliction of Israel which was very bitter for there was neither bond nor free nor was there any helper for Israel but Yahweh did not say that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.

So there was some accomplishment under this leadership of Jeroboam the son of Joash that cannot be ascribed whatsoever to him being a good king and simply Yahweh wanting to preserve his promise not to blot Israel out under the name of heaven. Or not to blot out the name of Israel from under heaven. And so Jonah, we get this little snippet about him, where he is in fact mentioned as a prophet in Israel.

Whether or not Jonah was a successful prophet in Israel, or even this prophecy about the border, whether or not that all happens before he gets his call to Nineveh, or after, I don't think is clear. And the reason I don't think it's clear is that the people that I studied, if I know what they thought about it, they give two different stories. Some people think Jonah was a successful prophet in Israel.

And so it's interesting to see his reaction to his call to Nineveh. And then other people, Matthew Henry is very gracious to Jonah, claiming Jonah was a young man. He was just learning when he got called in Nineveh, and it was his learning experience that made him the prophet he would one day be, to be of assistance to Jeroboam in that way. Nevertheless, Jonah is in fact clearly stated to be a prophet.

He is also stated to be from Gath Hefer. I want you to turn to the book of John chapter 7. Today is effectively a Pope-Haree cornucopia overview of the book of Jonah with just some highlights. We will dig into more verse-by-verse study next week, Lord willing. But I want to give you some things to think about as general rules about Jonah. It's an exciting book because on the surface it just sounds like a neat narrative, of course, with the fish.

And most people forget about the tree at the end being a miraculous thing of God. But the whole fish thing is neat. And if you ever saw Pinocchio, I hate to spoil it for people, they kind of imitate the story. But Jonah will force us to talk about the immutability of God and his impassibility Jonah will force us to talk about how a person actually gets saved and what they have to believe in order to be saved Jonah will force us to think about a lot of different topics.

And today, the one point I want to make it to here is I want to talk about missions. Because if you read the book of Jonah and you think to yourself, that's the heart of a missionary you're not understanding the book of Jonah and so assuming nobody thought that I said that for effect I still want you to think about it in those terms today that the heart of a prophet of God is in fact the opposite of Jonah's heart and I will give you some examples and some thoughts on that in John chapter 7 in verse 40 it reads some of the crowd therefore when they heard these words were saying this truly is the prophet so people started to see Jesus as the prophet who was to come people who read their Bibles understood that there would be a prophet priest and king who would come so they said this is truly the prophet others were saying this is the Christ still others were saying no for the Christ or it says for is the Christ going to come from Galilee Gath Heifer is in Galilee Gath Heifer is two miles north of Nazareth which if you think of Galilee is like the region Nazareth and Gath Heffer are like the smaller cities in the region. So like Columbus, Pickerington Canal, we're all in Ohio.

It's a bigger region. So Jonah is from Galilee. And they say, no, is the Christ going to come from Galilee? So remember, they wanted to reject Jesus as the Christ because although born in Bethlehem to fulfill all the prophecies necessary to be the Christ, they wanted to accuse him of actually being from Nazareth or Galilee, which is not where the Christ would come from.

And they said, has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Christ divides. Some of them were wanting to seize him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, why did you not bring him?

The officers answered, never has a man spoken like this. The Pharisees then answered them, have you also been led astray? Have any rulers or Pharisees believed in him? To their point, look, if your religious leaders of the day don't believe in the guy, you shouldn't, right? but this crowd which does not know the law is accursed Nicodemus he who came to him before so chapter 3 we meet Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night Nicodemus being one of them said to them does our law judge a man unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing rhetorical question the answer is no and they answered nicodemus now who they perceived as to be defending the christ or as they saw him just as this man that they were saying is not the christ and they say are you also from galilee so they just start accusing him right like you're not a prophet either and they said search and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee.

At that moment in time anybody who had read the Bible and understood where Jonah came from should have known that the Pharisees were the false teachers. It should have been utterly obvious because Jonah the prophet had they searched and seen they would have known he came from Galilee. He's absolutely a prophet, a prophet of their own. The first note is more of a geographical thing.

Jonah's from Galilee. I find studying through how the New Testament talks about anything in the Old Testament to be one of the most interesting studies you can do. Studying how the Old Testament uses itself is also very interesting. but the New Testament does seem to shine a broader and brighter light on some things that were a little bit dark and shadowy before.

And so when the New Testament is talking about Jesus and talking about the city where Jonah was from, where he was a prophet, I almost just have to laugh if it wasn't for the fact that apart from God's stunning grace in my life, I wouldn't believe any of these things either. Which brings us to our second point. Back to Jonah. Chapter 1. The word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh.

We'll do a little geography next week. But Nineveh was not close to Jonah. It was work to get there and it was in the middle of an extremely evil land a land who after the Israelites Helped them in fact to remain would eventually take them captive Just a few decades later Very wicked people in Nineveh this was not This was not like the way we talked about Michigan for example where we're just kind of joking and we say we don't like them but in reality If you had a friend from Michigan, I wouldn't, you know, judge you for that.

These were mortal enemies of the Assyrians. And when I say Michigan, I don't mean the Bowman relatives, the Christians relatives. I mean actual Wolverine fans, right? But the Assyrians were an extremely wicked, barbarous people. They were not merciful. and in fact one of the ways God decided to punish Israel for their sins against him was just to turn them over to the Assyrians and if you just compare that in your mind if you know about these things it would be somewhat similar to how a guy like Hitler and his people treated the Jews in the Holocaust in the 1940s there was no Jew in the 40s that could have rightfully said, well, I wish I'd have been in the Assyrian exile instead.

I really don't think that would have made much sense. So these were very difficult people. And Jonah is told to go there, and God says, for their evil has come up before me. When Sodom and Gomorrah's evil, came up before God, they were destroyed, and there wasn't much warning. But in Matthew 10, 15, Jesus tells us, Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city, referring to some Israel cities.

I think Bethsaida and Capernaum I don't remember the context right now Matthew 10.15 though was the verse I was referring to the judgment that God has upon those who receive revelation from him who refuse to turn and repent is greater than the judgment that he even had on our example of the worst judgment imaginable Sodom and Gomorrah is still a term people use today to reference the wrath of God on people who sin against him whose evil comes up before him and one of the issues that we have that Jonah had that we need to face the facts of in our own life and appreciate Elijah's prayer that we need to look at ourselves before we start pointing fingers at others and that is that we are no less wicked than the Ninevites. And you're no less wicked than the Sodomites. And in fact, nobody in here is any less wicked than Judas was.

The difference between each and every one of us and the worst person you can think of that ever lived is the grace of God having restrained you from doing all the evil that's in your heart all the time. Now praise Him, He does that on a frequent basis. because he hasn't seen the need to destroy the earth yet like he did when he sent the global flood to kill all flesh except for eight people. So God has restrained evil by his sovereign grace and I would argue in fact through his covenant people that he bestows the Holy Spirit to, evil is often restrained simply by speaking the word of God to people.

We saw that today, if you haven't heard of it, the Mary Flesser story. Great evil was abated in Nigeria because of this one Scottish missionary who went there and spoke the word of God to people and taught them. we are as wicked as the Ninevites and so was so was Jonah Jonah did not recognize this turn to Lamentations 4 couple things to think about for you Lamentations 4 interestingly enough Lamentations 4 appears to be one of those chapters I hadn't looked at it in my actual preaching Bible yet it's a 22 verse chapter where each section starts with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet so this would have told you that chances are little Hebrew boys and girls would have been expected to memorize Lamentations 4 and that would have meant Hebrew adults as well I'll start at the beginning how dark the gold has become how the pure gold has changed the sacred stones are poured out at the head of every street the precious sons of Zion weighed against fine gold how they are regarded as earthen jars the work of a potter hands Point is this the people of God the people of Zion they weren't shining like refined gold. Compared to gold, they were just like a jar someone had thrown together.

And although useful for a time, everybody knows the difference that scripture is trying to make when it compares pure gold to some earthen jar made with hands. Even jackals. Now, before I read this, I want you to think about our culture for a moment. And I do want you to have a healthy focus on yourself. But hopefully, in this room, we have people that love their own children.

And if you don't love your own children, Christ offers forgiveness. But I want you to think about this for a moment, that we live in a culture where the thing that people are shouting the loudest about and fighting the hardest about is the right to murder their own child when and where they want to, anytime, without consequence whatsoever. And when I say that, I mean they even want us to offer some kind of counseling and weird stuff afterwards that they're going to tax us to give them so that they don't even feel the guilt that comes from murdering people. it's not just they don't want to go to jail or get executed which is what should happen they don't want to even feel guilty listen, even jackals offer the breast they nurse their young but the most beastly creatures take care of their own kids we're the only culture that really does this we're the only species I should have said we're the only one that's wicked he says but the daughter of my people has become cruel like ostriches in the wilderness the tongue of the nursing baby cleaves to the roof of its mouth because of thirst at least the Israelites let their kids be born before they hated them and let them suffer right we murder them as soon as we can in this culture the infants ask for bread but no one breaks it for them those who ate delicacies right prosperity has come God has given Israel all sorts of prosperity over the years under Solomon they had peace and money and all sorts of good things and that's supposed to be the goal those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets those reared in crimson embrace ash pits.

And God says, so the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands whirled toward her. We need to get out of our minds this idea that Sodom was just so bad and we're so good. Or in fact, I would argue that we can say we can't be that bad because God hasn't destroyed us yet. God has His purposes and His plans.

Turn to Matthew 12 now. Matthew 12, verse 38. Jesus tells us what the book of Jonah is about, essentially. and we'll be referring to this frequently, he says, Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered and said to him, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. He's telling them the word of God. He's living a perfectly righteous life, obeying God's law in every jot and tittle possible.

We want to see a sign, though. It's not good enough. and but he answered and said to them an evil and adulterous generation eagerly seeks for a sign he says and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth he tells him that Jonah's whole experience was a shadow of the prophet, priest, and king who was going to come. Jonah being a prophet.

Not a very good one at the time. And then Jesus tells them, the men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it. Because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And then he makes an argument from the lesser to the greater. which God does a lot in the Scripture. And he says, And behold something greater than Jonah is here And then he talks about Solomon as well Same argument The idea is this is you have the scripture where you can actually read that Jonah made an error Don't make the same error with someone who's a way better prophet than Jonah.

So we have a problem with Jonah. Or Jonah had a problem, which is effectively revealed to us in chapter 4 that Jonah knew the type of God that he served. He knew that God was compassionate and gracious, abounding in loving kindness or steadfast love, forgiving iniquity. And when God told Jonah, you go to Nineveh, I don't suspect that Jonah was particularly afraid that he might get hurt.

Maybe. It isn't my guess that he feared for his life. He frankly was willing to die instead of go to Nineveh. Jonah says it himself. I know that you're a God who's abundant in loving kindness and compassion and mercy. Jonah did not want to see the Ninevites forgiven of their sins.

It's that simple. He wanted his enemies judged by God. And some would say, well, that was the message he was to give them. Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. Why wouldn't he want to go give that message and maybe even gloat in it if that's what he wanted? It's because of the truth that we read in Romans chapter 10.

And the truth is that it is a mercy of God to send a prophet to anyone. Because Jonah went to Nineveh, the Ninevites had an opportunity to hear the word of God and exercise faith. Had Jonah not made it to Nineveh, we can rightly say that all those that didn't hear about Yahweh would have died in their sins. there would not have been a moment that a king called a national fast which includes water and everything else even the animals couldn't eat that moment wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the prophet of God revealing God to them I remember it was in How to Answer the Fool that Saiten Bruggeke was arguing with somebody.

I shouldn't say arguing. He was discussing with one of the people in the movie how to get saved. He was referring to the fact that like Romans 10.17 says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, which helps us understand verse 13. It says, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And then the part in the middle just says, how are they going to call on somebody if they've never heard of them?

And Cy Tenbrugge's point that he was making to this young lady who was arguing that people that never hear of Christ can go to heaven still. Because somehow out in the middle of wherever somebody is that hasn't heard of Christ, they're going to find a way to muster up faith in a God that they don't know. That God will know their heart or whatever it is that people say.

I don't remember exactly the part of the movie, but I remember when she said this, Sai said, why send a missionary anywhere? If people can be saved apart from hearing about Christ from God's revelation, then the nicest, kindest, most loving thing you can do for people would be to build walls around where they live so no missionary could ever reveal to them God's law or anything that they could reject. but because all men are dead in their sins all women are dead in their sins from the moment of conception and the way they have faith is by hearing the word of Christ and believing it we need to send people out to do those things Jonah would rather die than tell people that he hated about the gospel, basically. He would rather die than reveal Yahweh to them for fear that Yahweh would actually have saved their souls.

That is not the heart of a prophet. That's not the heart that Jesus had. Jesus came to die for his very enemies. I want to read an excerpt from this story about Paul Schneider I hope I saying his name right He was a pastor during the time of Hitler He was a Christian pastor. There was a lot going on and he got in trouble because he continuously would speak the word of God, which came into contradiction with the powers that be at the time. it says after a week Gretel joined him so this is after he was given a banishment order you are not to preach anymore her hope, his wife, her hope was that he would give into the Gestapo and find a church outside the Rhineland so that's where he was given this banishment order so he had a choice, he could just leave where God had put him where he felt called by God and he could continue to do the work of God most likely in a place where people needed it as well.

He could have justified this very easily. Paul, however, had made a firm decision while in the Gestapo prison at Koblenz. He would resist unjustified bullying. With questioning in her mind, Gretel reminded him that if he went back to his Dickensheed pulpit, he would be re-arrested. Paul quoted some words from a Bible verse to her They came from Judges 5.18 and said, translated literally, Zebulun and Naphtali risked their lives to the point of death.

Hearing him quote this, Gretel hung her head in despair. Her voice quivered as she asked, Paul, don't you think about the children and me? Paul, don't you love us? Paul's eyes filled with tears. With powerful arms, he hugged Gretel to his chest. My darling, he sobbed, I have never loved you or the children more than on that night of decision.

I wept for you. With those words spoken with such deep emotion, pathos and conviction, Gretel knew that her only choice was to identify herself with her husband. So of course he goes on preaching. And he gets arrested and he's in concentration camp. On the morning of Sunday, the 28th of August, 1938, So this is during a period that he was in like a solitary type of confinement for his refusal to bow down to Hitler in the swastika and to honor Hitler's birthday.

Paul Schneider preached through the bars of his cell to men lined up for the 630 roll call. Jonah wants to go thousands of miles away from where he's told to go. Paul preached through the bars of his cell. Survivors recorded what he said. He said, our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save us from our sins. If we have faith in him, we are put right with God.

We need not fear what man may do to us, because we, through Christ, belong to the kingdom of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, has promised that we, by faith in him, may participate in his resurrection. he said I am the resurrection and the life he that believes in me shall never die accept the Lord Jesus as your savior and God will receive you as his child after two minutes guards rushed into his cell and pulled him away from the bars of the window for this message he was once again tied to a rack and suffered another 25 strokes of the whip when asked why he would do such a thing his response to a friend was somebody has to preach God's word in this hell most likely a little bit of Jonah in every one of us but the heart of Christ and the heart of men like Paul Schneider is a heart that wants to see God's word proclaimed no matter what the circumstance and desires the genuine forgiveness of even his very enemies. Father, forgive us for each time we have failed to exalt your word above all things, for each time we have been fearful of men and not feared Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land. forgive us for even wishing evil upon our enemies without also desiring that if it be your will, you would save them and bring them into the family of God.

We understand imprecations, but we ask you to give us hearts hearts that truly desire to see your enemies brought to Christ like we were. Amen.