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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 a 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 fallen 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 And tell us now on whose account has this calamitous evil struck us? What is your occupation and where do you come from?

What is your country? From what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men became greatly fearful and they said 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 reading of God's holy word, you may be seated.

We've been looking at the book of Jonah and I believe this is sermon number six. but so far rather than really look at what's happening very specifically in these verses of Jonah so far all we've been able to do is go look at other passages of the Bible to support doctrines that I believe have been I wouldn't even say taught so far in Jonah but assumed So there's some things that the biblical author assumes to be true about God, about prophecy, about God's providence, his omnipotence, or excuse me, his omnipresence, his omniscience. There's some things that were worth talking about. And so we did a little bit of a look through the Bible at some of those topics. and I think we we spent the first week talking about how Jesus refers to Jonah in Matthew 12 saying a wicked and perverse generation seeks a sign but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah who was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights and so we're back here now and I want to look at the narrative now.

And so narratives are different from letters. So we went through 1 Peter. And when we went through 1 Peter, one of the things we were able to do was trace what ultimately was a discourse, a logical argument. So Peter started by saying something that he wanted to say after the greeting. and then he would give some supporting information about that something and then sometimes that would lead to a therefore something else and oftentimes there was very clear indicatives given.

This is a truth about God or about the gospel or about God's word or about Christ and then those indicatives would be converted into imperatives. So you had this is true about God or the Bible And as the result, here is what you should do. So when you read a letter like Galatians, Philippians, Ephesians, all these different letters in the Bible. It's a little easier to identify the statements that are what we call indicatives.

They're a statement that I'm sorry if that's a big word for some of the people. I mean, an indicative is something that indicates something. So you just take that root word, it indicates something. So an indicative is just a sentence that teaches you a truth. You can call it a proposition. It's just a factual statement.

And those indicatives usually are very clearly turned into imperatives where you're given a command. So because this happened, because the gospel is true, because of Jesus doing X, Y, or Z, Now you ought to live such a life. In the letters, the epistles, that's normally easier to kind of pull out on your own. And from a preaching standpoint, it's infinitely easier.

The sermon practically writes itself. We've been going through Hebrews every other Friday morning or so. And it almost mindless how simple it is if you just read what the words are to say well here what he saying next Now with the narrative it a little different and there going to be some things that you kind of have to pull out and you have to read and you have to take them as they written, and you have to trust that the Holy Spirit has put every jot and tittle there for a reason as well.

But it's not just going to come right out at you and tell you, oh, here's what happened, and here's what you should do. Remember how Jonah ends? God just asked him a question. There's no real resolution. The resolution in many ways is left for us to, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, figure out how then we should live. So the question that we ask when we're studying Scripture, very often, it sounds smart-alecky, is so what?

A lot of times people say, so what? And one of the things we want to be able to do is when we read the narrative of Scripture, we want to be able to say, so what should we do as the result? Because what happened in Jonah 1, 1 through 10 really happened and we believe it. What should we believe about God, about man, and how then should we live as the result?

So it's my goal to give you some thoughts on that, as well as pull out some indicatives. So things that are true about God that aren't necessarily stated as an indicative. So, for example, omnipresence, omniscience, God's providential working in all things. Those are things we studied. They weren't stated in Jonah. They were understood.

So I want to go to verse 2 very briefly. God says, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. When God says that someone's evil has come up before him, this is another use of anthropomorphism, or when God uses human language to describe an event. God already knows about all of the evil that everyone has ever committed and will commit.

And so if you read this and your first thought is, oh, God kind of liked Ninevites for a while. They were doing okay in his eyes. But now suddenly they've crossed a line. That's not the way it works. God is simply stating the truth that at this point in history, in his creation, he is deciding to intervene in a particular way through a prophet. The Ninevites' evil had always been before God.

There was nothing that was ever hidden from God. And so Jonah arises. God told him arise, right? And Jonah arises, but he flees the other way. He goes to Tarshish. And he went down to Joppa.

And it's an interesting way that in this language of the text, it gives you these words. So when you say you're going to go, so we're all in Ohio. If we said we're going to go to Tennessee, most of us, there's always some exception, but most of us are going to say, we're going to go down to Tennessee. That's just the way most of us look at it, Glo. So maybe in South America and Australia, they say something totally different.

But we look at a map and we think of north as up and south as down. And usually we think of east and west as kind of over, at least. You may think of them as left or right even. So it's interesting that Jonah goes down to Joppa. and one of the reasons is Joppa is south or southwest of where Jonah would have been but then later in the same verse we're told Jonah paid its fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh and then later in verse 5 in the middle of it you see it says But Jonah had gone down below into the innermost part of the vessel.

And then it says again, laying down. And there's this sense in the poetic use of words that God is able to do throughout all of his scripture. That we are seeing a descent here. there's this repetition that Jonah's going down this is not Jonah rising up which is what he was commanded to do this is not anything in the positive direction Jonah's going down he's going down, down, down and isn't that exactly what Jesus did for us not that Jesus went down because he was fleeing God but Jesus suffered and he went down into the grave And so we always want to keep in mind Jonah being the picture of Jesus.

In verse 3, so back to verse 3, that was the first thing I wanted to point out was this down, down, down. Verse 3, Jonah paid the ship's fare. I read some different people that had different ideas of this. and one of the people said something that was interesting. He said, generally you would pay the fare when you got off the ship at the time. I don't know if that's true.

I don't know where this guy heard that. So take it for what it's worth. I'm just relaying this. But it was interesting the way this guy applied that, that he said you know when it comes to dealing with Satan in a sense you always pay up front and so Jonah paid the fare to be on this ship And Satan demands that we pay So when we're doing sin, when we're doing evil, when we're fleeing what God has commanded, we're going to take the glasses off again.

It is humid in here. When we're fleeing what God has commanded us to do, there's a price to be paid. So regardless of whether it was customary to pay the fare first or last, Jonah paid a price to be on this ship. He paid a price to go where this ship was going to take him, and wherever the ship was going to go was where he was going to end up. If the people on that ship decided to change course, Jonah was going to change course.

Promises from the devil never fully materialize in your life. And that's what I want you to think about here. When you pay the fare to get on the devil's boat, he does a couple things. One of them is he always promises more than he can deliver. And secondly, he always charges a little less up front than what it's really going to cost you. And so when you are going to follow the temptations of the devil, when you are going to follow the temptations of the accuser of the brethren himself and you're going to go into, we'll say, his ship towards sin, where he's going to take you away from God, it's always going to cost you more than you bargained for.

It's always going to cost you more than you can afford. It's always easier to say no before you get on the ship than it is to get off the ship once you're on it. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't say it's always easy to avoid sin and temptation. What I said is it's always easier to avoid it in its infancy rather than when it's fully grown. And so what we need to consider is the devil's schemes.

We're told to do this in the New Testament. Excuse me. We're to put on the armor of God that we may withstand the fiery darts of the devil. I can't see real well, but I see Elijah laughing and I know why right now. We'll tell you all later. We're told to...

Excuse me. We're told to avoid the fiery darts of the devil and to extinguish them. not avoid him, but to extinguish him with the shield of faith. And we have the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness. And when we think about the way the devil attacks believers, and it really is an attack. He's described as a roaring lion. This is not some gentle adversary out there that sometimes is a little bit against you.

This is a constant battle of absolute hatred on the part of Satan. And if you consider for a moment that Satan cannot get to the one he hates the most, God Almighty, he will do all he can to destroy the ones he can get to, God's children. And so when we think about the devices of Satan and how he tempts us, one of the things we need to keep in mind is how to keep a right mindset on what it is and what it isn't that He may do.

So we already know the Ten Commandments. So if anybody went to this church, and you all did in the last year, we've been through a discussion of the Ten Commandments. In fact, we actually believe in and adhere to the commandment that all the other Christians don't, right? We're probably semi-proud of it, hopefully not in a sinful way. So we know what sin is and what sin isn't most of the time.

And usually afterwards, afterwards when you have found yourself uh the phrase we like to use is falling into sin like we were just walking down the street we were just trying to do righteous things and there was this hole that we didn't see and we fell in it and oops now we sinned well when we dove into sin which is what is really the right term we should use or when we partook of it when we committed sin feels like we fell into it because we were so not on guard all right when these things happen And afterwards you realize, wow, I shouldn't have done that. In fact, I knew I shouldn't have. Sometimes you think about it after.

You're like, yeah, you know, I don't want to use a word that people don't want their kids saying. But sometimes you just think, wow, that was really stupid. You know, we think that to ourselves. How could I be so stupid? because afterwards it's like well yeah of course of course that temptation was going to lead to sin and of course that sin was going to get worse and make me feel bad in the end and one of the devices that we can notice that satan uses is that he will almost always package the sin in a way where when you're looking at it it looks prettier than the results will really be.

And the cost it is to you is going to look very low. So Jesus tells us before becoming Christians to count the cost. That's his command to people. Count the cost of discipleship. I think we can count the cost of sin as well. And when you're faced with the next temptation, particularly the besetting one.

The one that keeps happening. The one that you wish would just go away. Right? The one that you pray, God, would you just take this one away? The one you think makes you so tired Let me give you a little I don know the right word not a spoiler but the one that won go away is actually sort of the one you like So I know we think we don't like it, so we ask God to get rid of it.

But the reason it doesn't go away is partially because that's your favorite one. and I speak generally here I'm sure we all have some of them where we really are done and the flesh is just strong but Satan will often make it look like hey it's really not that expensive you can afford to do this you can get on this ship to Tarshish and what we need to recognize is we need to take every thought captive and obey Christ and when those temptations come we need to be more on guard rather than this, oh I was walking down the street and I didn't see the thing and I tripped and fell into sin we need to recognize that we're the ones that are committing acts of sin we need to change our language sometimes to help us to remember and so recognize sin for what it is I want you to recognize it as a pernicious evil traitorism against your God and Father who loved you and sent His Son on your behalf and I want you to know that when the temptation comes God has always provided an escape and He promises that. He promises it in His New Testament and we know that His promises are always true so when you sin it's because you chose to and it will always cost more than you can afford, but it'll never, it'll never appear to have the upfront cost that it really will ultimately have on your soul. Continuing in Jonah, verse 4, Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea.

Okay, that's a lot of theology right there. Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea. God is sovereign over the storm. He is the one who sent it. He is the one who brings it. Behold, the storm of Yahweh, says Jeremiah 30, 23.

Wrath has gone forth, a sweeping storm. It will burst on the head of the wicked. The theology, we've talked about this already. The theology that God is up there trying to create rainbows and unicorns all the time and Satan's down here making thunderstorms is a really bad theology. And in fact, the problem with bad theology isn't that now you can't be a seminary professor.

The problem with bad theology is that bad theology always leads to bad practice. so you can believe something that's wrong and in and of itself we can say well you know we forgive you, you haven't learned it yet it's a hard doctrine but bad theology will always lead to bad practice because of what I said earlier everything that we believe is an indicative a truth, a proposition made by God is something that does transform into our action. If you believe, like, listen, if we believe this building was on fire, what would you do? Most of us would be walking out, making sure the children are walking out with us is what we would be doing.

We'd be calling a person that has the training to come and put out the fire. That's what we would do. Because of what we believe, our actions would be different than what they are right now. we believe the building's not on fire. So we're not taking that action. Well, the same is true about everything about God. If you believe false things about God, some of them are going to have a bigger impact on your life.

And so God is very gracious, and he has given us a lot of doctrine that if you get it wrong, it doesn't practically change your life a whole lot. Most of us are still going to stop at a red light over there, and you know what? So are atheists and Muslims and charismatics and Presbyterians, right? But there are some things we can believe about God that have really disastrous ends.

The belief that God is not the one in control of the weather has a disastrous end. Satan's not in control of the weather and neither is Kenneth Copeland. They both have the same spirit, you could say. God's in control of the weather. Even the sailors understood this, to some extent. The sailors became fearful, and immediately these men cried to their God.

Now, I'm going to conjecture here, so this isn't written. And I'm going to guess these guys weren't normally really prayerful guys. I don't know how many sailors you've met. I don't know how many stories of sailors you've met. My guess is these guys weren't the most religious fellows all the time. But they knew when the storm came that there was one power that had control of it.

And even if they cried to the wrong God and they worshipped the wrong God because what God has told us, that he has put knowledge of him on the heart of every man that's ever been born, we know that they knew that it was God's doing. This is why we have the problem of theodicy. philosophers and theologians argue about. That is the question of how can there be evil in the world if there's a good God?

Because everybody knows, deep down inside, God's the one that has to cause all things to come to be. So when something bad happens that tears up an orphanage and kills all the children, and then the tornado goes and tears up this other thing, and at the same time there's a tsunami over here that kills people, and then there's a hospital of cancer patients that died. And what does Ray Comfort say?

170,000 people die a day now? 170,000 people die now a day? And everyone knows deep down inside they have to have an answer for how they can believe in a good God and yet those things happen. And then they come up with all sorts of excuses. Well, God's really not that powerful. Satan is.

Is the excuse they come up with. And it's wicked. And it's a lie. And even though that might make you feel better about some of the difficult things that happen in this world under a curse, that theology will take you to hell. And if, Lord willing, somehow you're saved and have that theology, it'll strip you of all your assurance that he can keep you to the end.

In Isaiah 45, you don't have to turn there. I'll read a couple of verses to you. I am Yahweh and there is no other he's speaking about himself listen the one forming light and creating darkness producing peace and creating calamity I am Yahweh who does all these look at Amos 3 verse 6 in Amos 3 God says if a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble if a calamity happens in a city has not Yahweh done it it is the truth of scripture that God is in control of all things and that could have been another whole sermon in and of itself but I want you to see this I want you to understand that God is the one who's sovereign over this storm.

Verse four still. Yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea. So he creates this great wind. And there was a great storm on the sea. Now listen, so that the ship gave thought to breaking apart. Just a brief note on this.

If you are a biblical literalist, you now have to believe that ships have thoughts. Or you will do what most of them do and you'll declare that somehow this is an exception. Or you'll say the Bible is not inerrant. The ship gave thought to breaking apart. I don't want to belabor this point, but it's a figure of speech, right? The idea is that the ship was going to fall apart.

This was no normal storm. This is not a commentary scientifically on how ships happen to cogitate. So the next time an atheist comes to you and says, well, your Bible is wrong because the Bible thinks ships can break apart. you can respond and say we understand that quite clearly as a figure of speech and in fact your insistence that anybody wouldn't shows your foolishness.

Then the sailors became fearful, verse 5, and every man cried to his God. Now listen, this was no normal storm. And they hurled the cargo, which was in the ship, into the sea to lighten it for them. This is a big deal. And one of the things about biblical narratives that actually is kind of the beauty of studying them yourself and in family worship and going and listening to sermons about them is taking time to look at some of the things a little bit deeper.

Because that's an easy verse to read past. And I can picture these guys now. And I picture this wooden boat. It's kind of like all the pictures of the ark they have in the kids' books. And they've got these guys throwing this stuff overboard. I just picture it.

And what I want you to think about is what this means. I want you to understand that this ship would have been carrying things that were important. These guys, this is what cargo would have been. All right. So they wouldn't have had bags of shredded paper that they wanted to throw away when they got to Tarshish. All right.

What they would have loaded on this ship that would have been so substantial that to save their own lives and maybe prevent the ship from falling apart, they would throw it all away would have been things like their own personal goods. Some of these guys, probably everything they owned was just on the ship. And how do you think they, what do you think they did in it?

Do you think they were just guys that, I mean, when we think of the word sailor, we think it just where they lived it just what they liked to do These guys would have been the ones transporting goods from one part of the Mediterranean Sea to another They would have had other people cargo that they were paid to bring to the other side. And for them to show up without what they were supposed to have would have been really tantamount to stealing. I mean, if you were supposed to bring me something, if the UPS guy was supposed to bring me something and he showed up and didn't have it.

And he said, well, there was a storm and I threw it out of the truck. I'd say, well, you're paying for it. It was your job while it was in transit. In fact, there's logistical terms for who owns the product, actually, when it's in transit, even in our day. Who pays customs, all these different things. It's kind of interesting if you want to dig into it.

But the idea is that I would say, no, you owe me the money for this. So for these guys, for these guys to throw the cargo out of the ship meant that this storm was of a different nature than normal. This was an extremely bad storm from their perspective. People who were used to traveling on the high seas and moving a ship around with cargo in it and getting it there so that they got paid.

They thought it was better to throw away either their own stuff or other people's stuff, which ultimately represented their own money. to preserve their own lives. That's how serious they thought this was. They're praying, they're crying out to the God, and it says, but Jonah. Now there's a lot of buts in Scripture, and we often say make sure when you see but to pay attention, because something's about to contrast, right?

And what we love is when it says, but God, right? So we were done in our trespasses and sins, but God and the richness and kindness of His mercy, and we have all those great verses. But Jonah, but Jonah had gone down below into the innermost part of the vessel, laid down and fallen asleep. So here's your picture. And I know for a lot of us, we think, oh, that reminds me of Jesus being in a boat and there was a storm and he was asleep.

And yeah, I think there's a reminder there because it's similar in circumstance. But Jonah is absolutely dreadful in his sin right now fleeing the presence of God, hiding from God, doing exactly what he wasn't supposed to be doing, not trusting God, and by faith, believing the words God had given him when he's in the bottom of the ship sleeping soundly, when he should have been awake doing something. And Jesus is the exact opposite.

So before you want to draw that parallel, I get it. It maybe makes you think of him. I don't see any kind of type of Christ being in the bottom of the ship sleeping. But you think it's a bad type. he's not foreshadowing Christ well, but here he is. He's supposed to be acting. He's sleeping.

And not only is he supposed to be going the other way to Nineveh, but while the ship is in danger and these men's very lives are in danger because of him, Jonah is down there zonked out snoring. I added snoring. I don't know if he was snoring. It's a figure of speech. And there's nothing, there's nothing that's waking this guy up I mean just the very idea that the captain of the ship has to go down to wake Jonah up what that means is that while everyone around him is perishing Jonah is just sleeping soundly and I tell you what it's not because Jonah was so faithful that the Lord would deliver him if it was the Lord's will or something like that.

Jonah was doing the wrong thing. Spurgeon commenting on this verse said, and remember real quick the context, these men are all praying to their God. so let's say there's 25 men who knows you got 25 guys or so praying to 25 different gods maybe they're praying to 25,000 gods I have no idea what pagan religion they all believed in at the time they're crying out for help and you have one guy on the ship that knows he knows the one true God he also will know these guys don't there's no way he didn't know this he didn't evangelize them yet I don't think he's just let me on I'm going to sleep Spurgeon says yet further let us remember that as Jonah was the only man in the ship whose prayer could be of any avail so the children of God are the only men who can do any real spiritual service to the perishing world. Leave it to Spurgeon to twist this whole thing about Jonah into the church and the world and evangelism.

Continuing with Spurgeon, all the cries of the shipmaster and his crew were addressed to the gods of their various countries who had ears which could not hear and hands which could afford no aid. Jonah was the only man who worshipped the Lord that made the sea and the dry land. Hence his prayers alone could save the ship Now the salvation of the world under God lies with the church Christ has finished the atonement It is for the church to finish the ingathering.

Do you know what he means by that? Christ has accomplished everything necessary to die for his people. We get that. That's called the limited atonement. It's called the efficacious atonement. It's in our effectual calling chapter. in our confession.

It's the first real chapter about salvation. We believe that there's nothing we can do to add to Christ's work. There's nothing that anyone can do or has to do in order to inherit eternal life but believe on Christ. But the way that people enter the covenant of grace is by believing in Jesus Christ. And how will they believe if nobody goes out and tells them the gospel? it's up to the church to finish the end gatherings Spurgeon again Christ hath paid the purchase price and completed redemption by blood it is for the church to seek the Holy Spirit and fully to redeem the world by power suppose then that you who fear God say this is no case of mine I am not my brother's keeper suppose that you waste opportunities and throw precious time to the dogs.

He says, then the world must go down to its awful doom. But mark you, its blood shall be upon your skirts. Jonah is the only hope that this sinking ship has. and he's more concerned about his own comfort and his own hiding from God. That he has no concern for those around him who are in fact getting ready to die. It's a physical death that they're about to experience and Jonah of all people should know that it's a spiritual death an eternal one, that unless he would call on his God on their behalf, there's no hope that they can abate it or avoid it.

So the captain came near to him and says, how is it that you are deeply sleeping? Arise, call on your God. He says, perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish. I know that people will disagree with the concept of this statement, but if you consider that the world is filled with the elect all over the place right now, some of them having been regenerated and by faith trusting in Christ and our brothers and sisters in local churches, and some of them not yet saved.

The world is out there waiting. waiting for Christians to call on their God on their behalf. There are people that you know who, God forbid, they die unprayed for, at least. Call on your God. And why does it take the captain? Why does it have to be the captain that comes and wakes Jonah up? It's amazing how God will use even pagans in your life to wake you up.

Isn't it? In verse 2, remember God's command. Now, not all commands are phrased in the same way, but what was God's first command to Jonah in verse 2? He says, Arise. He tells Jonah to arise, and Jonah's response is, I'm going down. I'm going down to Joppa.

I'm going down into the ship. I'm going down below. I'm going to lay down. I'm going to go to sleep. And then the captain of the ship says, arise, call on your God. And Jonah arises.

I find it to be concerning how often we are so easily ready to obey those around us. How easily swayed we are by the person right in front of us sometime telling us to do something. And yet God has given us clarity on so many commands that we waffle on. And I'll tell you what, it's rare in a Christian church that a Christian says, hey, I know this is a command of God.

I'm just not going to do it. All right. We disobey God a number of ways. One of them is by just open rebellion. But usually what people do is they say, yeah, you know, I don't really think that's a command. and then they do some kind of hermeneutical gymnastics to explain it. Like, yeah, you know, God didn't really say that.

You know, who else did God really say? It was Satan, right? And a lot of times people say, well, you know, that's a command, but that's not a command for me. For example, I don't have the gift of evangelism, therefore I'm not called to evangelize. I've heard that one more times than I'd like to recount. And so usually people will manipulate God's word in some way to make themselves look righteous.

And so you need to watch for that in your own heart You need to watch for the times that you take the commands of God and instead of following them with the clarity that they been issued you decide it means something different than it says, it doesn't mean that for you, or I'm obeying this other command that is super-duper important too, and so I can't do the other one that God has commanded of me. That's the other way that we really try to proclaim our own self-righteousness and faithfulness while disobeying God. And I get it, it can be hard.

I mean, it can be hard. Imagine that we're commanded to confront false teaching and rebuke false teachers, and then at the same time we're commanded to be meek and gentle. I'm not saying it's always easy to figure out all the details. What I'm saying is that often in our desire for self-righteousness, we will find ways to skirt around God's clear commands.

So what I want you to consider, I'll remind you of a couple of things. The cost of sin is greater than you can afford. It always is, and it will never appear so to you at first. So if you hate sin and you love righteousness, if you love God and you hate the devil, you will maybe work a little harder than you've worked up to this point to prepare yourself to say no to temptation.

God is absolutely sovereign over everything. There isn't a, I think it was R.C. Sproul that said, there's not a rogue molecule in the universe that isn't under his control. And so we trust that God is sovereign over even the calamities, even the difficulty, in fact, even the suffering. and let me remind you that Jonah was sleeping while the world around him was perishing while there were people that God wanted to send Jonah to to preach the gospel Jonah was sleeping on a boat going the wrong way and I don't want to be one of those guys that likes evangelism and so every time I preach I always bring it back to the gospel and evangelism.

But there's a world around us perishing. And to some extent, some of us are sleeping. We've thrown, as Spurgeon said, we have thrown precious time to the dogs. Rather than be out doing the work that God's given us to do. So I want to challenge everyone here. You name almost every sermon, I wouldn't do this, we could name them, Don't Be a Jonah.

I mean, thank God nobody wrote a book about some chapter of your life that you don't want people remembering for all eternity, okay? But don't be Jonas. We've been given the precious gospel of Jesus Christ that he came and he died and rose again for sinners. and there's people out there that are closer to you than Joppa and Tarshish and all these places.

There's people probably in a pretty immediate vicinity to all of us that we can think about and realize, wow, I've never really opened my mouth to that person. And it's usually because you're afraid for some reason. It's afraid you're going to lose a job, lose a client, lose a friend, lose a family member or have to fight with a family member or whatever it is. lose your reputation.

And so let's not sleep on our tasks that we've been given. Let's not be resting peacefully in Christ while the world around us perishes. Let's be up and about, going where we ought to go to tell people what we ought to tell them. And praise God that even when you fail, and even when I fail, and even when lots of other Christians are going to continuously fail, that even when we go in the absolute wrong direction, God will still use us, maybe, in spite of ourselves, to the salvation of sinners.

Father in heaven, please bless the rest of our worship today and cause us to be mindful of our need to get up and arise and go and proclaim your word to all those who can hear it. we thank you for the opportunity to preach the gospel of Planned Parenthood this week. As we approach Thursday morning, that day when we plan to be there, Lord, we ask that you would prepare hearts. That as much as we would love Planned Parenthood to be closed, we also ask you to prepare hearts of all those who may show up there and hear your gospel or receive a gospel tract. and please prepare our hearts as we plan this endeavor for Thursday.

Let us not fail today and tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday to remember that we're still on the same mission those days. Help us to be faithful in the little things. Sharing your gospel with a neighbor at the store. Having a track ready wherever we may meet someone. loving people in such a way that shows that we recognize that their ship is sinking and their only hope is Jesus Christ.

Amen.