0:00 I'm sure you can agree that every single day, there seems to be something new that we have to face as a people, as a nation, and it's, almost overwhelming to to just look around in every direction and see nothing but chaos and pain and fear and, all these other mixture of emotions. With that being said, we have to understand one thing. The Bible tells us that you and I are called to be imitators of God. That's what Paul says in Ephesians five. Be imitators of God.
0:36 The Christian, if he is truly born of the spirit, has a newfound ambition in life to know Jesus Christ personally and intimately and to represent Jesus Christ faithfully and consistently. If that is not a desire in the heart of a professing Christian, then he has to really examine and ask if he is truly a born again Christian, because that is one of the most clear signs that a person has been born of the spirit. Be imitators of God, Paul says. Now being an imitator of God doesn't mean that we live in such a way that we attain godhood. It doesn't mean that we try to operate in the miraculous on command.
1:17 No. Everything about being imitators of God is surrounded by character traits and attitudes and the way we should love and forgive and our purity and our holiness. This is what it means to follow Jesus. This is what it means to imitate God, to see him for who he is, and to say, this is my goal in life, to reflect him as much as I can in the flesh. We don't have to guess who God is.
1:43 We have his word, and and God went beyond to just give us commands from heaven. He came down into this world in the flesh and reflected the glory of God perfectly and showed us how, as a man, you can follow and live for the Lord. Now when we look at Jesus and when we are committed to imitate him, we have no right to choose what to imitate and to choose what to reject. That is to make a Christ in our own image. We are simply to receive him as he is, to worship him for who he is, and then to prayfully say, lord, melt his image into my being.
2:23 And as much as it is a desire for every Christian to know Christ and to imitate Christ, it is not without challenge. It's a desire, yes, but it is a challenge because every faculty of our being is contrasted to who God is. And so God, in his love, often has to break us and mold us and melt us and bend us until we look like what he wants us to look like. It's not easy, and that's why our whole lives, we are continually being sanctified. But amongst all the things that are difficult to find in us to to reflect God and how difficult it is to to deny ourselves so that Christ could be in us and and shine through us, I could say that one of the most difficult things is to imitate God in this, in his compassion for the sinner.
3:19 To view the lost as God does and to act upon the revelation of their barrenness is nothing short of a difficult challenge for us. For many reasons, we are selfish, we are lazy, maybe we are apathetic, maybe we, for all these different reasons. And and here's the thing. This message is not gonna be a session where we get beat up and tossed around because we don't evangelize or witness enough. That's not what this is gonna be about.
3:48 We just wanna look into God's heart and see how he views the lost, and then prayfully ask that he would make that reflect in our own hearts. We're not talking about God's definition of the lost or who fits into the category of being in rebellion against God. No. We're talking about his emotional perspective about them and how he identifies with them. This is something that is beyond us, and again, for many reasons.
4:20 And it will be the Holy Spirit's job to scan our own hearts to say, why why do not not connect with God as much as I I should on this matter? And, again, if we just make this all about mechanics, if we make this all about disciplines, and we do not come to the root of it, then all those things will be very loveless, and all those efforts will be very shallow, and there will be no joy in them. So this isn't a how to evangelize. This isn't about how we should, it's not about a how to. It's about who.
4:55 It's about looking at who god is and then saying, lord, do something in me as I look into who you are. Why is that important? Because we are witnessing in our day iniquity amplifying in America in an overwhelming rate. It seems like this year alone has been nothing short of a manifestation, a consistent manifestation of brokenness and darkness appearing and surfacing in every sphere of society. It's like a new wave a new wave of chaos is arising when we're still trying to manage and ride a previous one.
5:38 And so in the past six months alone, America has been in a storm. And from this point on, it can only get better or it can only get worse. And we're we're hoping it will get better, but we should not be surprised if it gets worse. And there are some people who say, well, okay. Yeah.
5:54 It's bad, but we've seen this before. We've seen riots, and we've seen diseases. But listen, that's not supposed to be the source of our comfort that we've seen this before. The bible tells us that it's only gonna get worse and worse and worse. And the fact that we've seen it before should make us even more grieved.
6:12 Why? Because we're not learning from history. We're not learning from the past. We're not learning how to deal with fear. We're not learning how to deal with different issues.
6:21 We're finding ourselves even worse in our responses to these things. And we have to be careful, don't we? Because what we see and what we turn on and all these Facebook posts and all these things that we watch, they invoke emotion. They pull something out of us just because we are we are creatures. We're human beings that have emotions and judgments and opinions, but we have to be cautious because we're called to be imitators of God.
6:51 We're called to represent him and reflect him and view it the way he does. Sin, events, chaos, pandemics, riots, whatever it may be, we are called to perceive them from a view that is from heaven. You remember Jonah, don't you? That old testament story, that short book that is compacted with so much awesome truth. Turn your bibles to the book of Jonah.
7:15 And as you're turning there, if you're not familiar, here's what it's all about. God commands one of his prophets to go to preach to a city outside of his own land, And God's desire was that this messenger would go to preach a message of repentance. And God had given this messenger the warning to pass along that if they would not change, they would indeed meet God's judgment. But the story of Jonah is about how a man, the moment that we are introduced to him, runs away from the call of God. He goes the opposite direction of where God wants him to go, and he does not wanna fulfill the mission.
7:57 Very shortly, you read that he ends up turning his ways and does do what God calls him to do, though he was reluctant at first. And when he does, what happens is the people of Nineveh actually repent. They're sorrowful, they are grieved, and they are broken in the sight of God in such a way that God revokes. He chooses to turn and changes his mind about what he's gonna do to them and instead extends mercy and love and grace. And you would think that's how the book of Jonah ends.
8:27 Right? No. It doesn't. That's just the middle part. Jonah as a prophet sees all of this, and you and I might rejoice in that news that revival has come to his city.
8:38 But in Jonah's case, he is upset, deeply upset. So much so that as he sees these people, repenting and turning to God, he exits the city. He goes to a distance, plants himself and camps and hopes and waits that judgment will fall from heaven upon these people. And as he's sitting there, we don't see fire coming from heaven. We don't see a plague triggered.
9:05 We see something else. There, Jonah is sitting there, and all of a sudden, our bibles tell tell us that a plant comes out of nowhere, and God is the one who made this plant come. And this plant provides shade to to give comfort to Jonah, and Jonah is so comforted and he's so pleased about it. But as dawn drew near, God appointed a worm to attack the plant, and it withered. And so the shade that Jonah had in that heat was now eliminated, and on top of that, God appoints a scorching wind to blast Jonah, and the the heat of the sun was sizzling on his head.
9:42 Jonah was so upset at the loss of this plant and so grieved by his circumstance that he expresses his grief to the point of wanting to die. And then we read this in Jonah four verse nine. But god said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, yes. I I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.
10:13 And the Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in the night and perished in the night. God reminded Jonah that he made no investment into this plant. He didn't till the soil. He didn't plant the seed. He didn't water it day after day.
10:36 No. It appeared without any effort on his part. God also reminded Jonah that there was no long term relationship with this plant. It came in one night, and it perished the next day. And God is doing all of this to to expose something from Jonah's heart.
10:54 You know, reading this, look at Jonah's life from beginning to end in this book, and you see the extent to where God goes to teach this man, how he has to appoint animals and plants and all of nature just to get to Jonah's heart, just for Jonah to be honest with himself and to examine himself, it's amazing to what lengths God has to go sometimes to get our attention and to even get us convicted. He wants to use this as an object lesson to show Jonah what was truly in his heart and what was truly in Jonah's heart. The prophet showed more grief and more sorrow at the loss of this vegetation than he would have if the entire city of Nineveh had been burned to powder. Jonah here is being proved that he is more concerned about God sparing a plant than if God were to spare the souls of men. You know, you read this in verse 11 and you see why God did all of this.
12:04 Verse 11, and should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle. And the book ends. That's how the book ends. It ends with a question. Now, the most concerning thing about this whole conversation is that Jonah was not an ordinary man.
12:34 Jonah was not just some average Jew that God picked out. Jonah was a prophet. He was a man of God. He represented God. And if there's anybody who knew God's heart, surely, it should have been Jonah.
12:48 If there's anybody who should have faithfully represented God's heart, surely, it was Jonah. But I learned something very scary here, and it should it should put us all into check that even a man of God can get it wrong. Even a man who is serving God in ministry can be so disaligned with who God is, and he begins to operate and act and respond and perceive the world outside of god's alignment. It's possible to even identify with this god, and our mindset can be a it can be framed in such a way that has no influence from heaven. Jonah here is not so just some average Joe.
13:27 He is a messenger, and he still could not connect with the Lord on this. He couldn't see people the way God saw people. He couldn't see God's message for what it truly was. He he didn't understand the motive behind all of this. And that's that's scary because if Jonah, a prophet who could hear God's voice and who who experienced the newness of God more than any of us, could get it wrong, How much more you and me?
13:53 How much more you and me? We can fall into the same trap of thinking that we know God and thinking that we grasp who he truly is, and we miss it. Now there's always more of God that we have to understand. And this is surely an invitation for us to examine if we agree with God on the way he sees men who are lost, men who are lost. Nineveh was a wicked city.
14:22 And if you're wondering why Jonah didn't wanna see Nineveh repent, it's because we know that the Assyrians were an ancient enemy to the Jews. And so Jonah, out of his righteous anger, so he thought, believed that Nineveh did not deserve repentance, but deserved pure judgment, divine destruction. And so when God commanded Jonah to go, he was reluctant to extend the possibility of them responding to the message of repentance. But if God had commanded Jonah to go and to say, tell them that their fate is sealed and that I'm gonna make them look like Sodom and Gomorrah, Jonah, I'm sure, would have gladly made his steps towards Neveh. He was operating under anger, out of frustration, out of pain.
15:13 And Jonah, unfortunately, did not understand God's heart in the matter. You know what this, this tells me? It tells me this, at least one other thing, that we should be thankful that God is God and that you and I are not God. I praise God that he's gonna sit on the throne at the end of it all, and he's gonna make the judgment towards who deserves mercy and who doesn't. Because if Jonah was sitting on the throne in heaven, we wouldn't have this story.
15:39 If Jonah sat on the judgment seat to determine who would extend, who would receive mercy, and who would be receiving judgment, oh, Nineveh would have been gone a long time ago. You know, it's amazing how men criticize God. They criticize his judgments. They criticize his standards as though we think that we are better at determining who experiences what. I can guarantee you this.
16:02 God is much more merciful and forgiving than you and I are. God is much more patient and loving and willing to receive us over and over again than you and I are. If we were God and we experienced the pain and the rejection and the inconsistency that he experiences today, imagine where you would be. I can tell you this personally and honestly. I don't know if I would be able to relate to most of the people that claim to be in association with me if they treated me the way we treat God, yet God still, with a smile, is willing to take us because his mercies are new every morning.
16:39 I praise God that even a holy man like Jonah, a prophet, did not determine the fate of the Ninevites, and we should praise God that he's the one who makes the ultimate decision of the souls of men, because he is the perfect and righteous judge. Jonah viewed the world out of anger. Jonah viewed the loss out of frustration. And we look at Jonah, we might criticize him, but we can't criticize him too soon because there are even many professing Christians who view certain types of people who sin in a particular way, and rather see them experience judgment, rather see them eliminated from the face of the earth than for god to restore them. There are people who view sinners with no motivation because they lack the understanding of the value of the soul.
17:40 They don't have this sense of burning understanding of how God loves them and where their fate will be. We can talk about different reasons for why we fail to understand sinners the way God does, but it comes down to this. No matter what the reason is, God sees them differently than we do. God sees them differently than we do. What you and I are facing in the book of Jonah is a contrast between how even the holiest man in the category of a prophet can still be so far from God who is perfectly holy in his estimation and value of a person.
18:17 And we see that. Right? Look at what God says in his question. He says here in verse 11, and should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a 120,000 persons? Do you realize that God knew the number of people in that city?
18:33 Not not only did he know the population number, he knew every single one of these 120,000 people. For God to count them means God values them, that God understands who's in there, who's running the city. He understands even their possessions, their livestock. He understands that there's even much cattle. Like, this is God who knows, who knows who's dwelling here and who cares about them.
19:00 And he looks, and it says here that he has pity. As a righteous judge, he has pity. What does that mean? He is moved with sorrow. He is moved with grief because of an unfortunate event that is taking place in somebody else's life.
19:15 And this is something that is worth considering. When he says here, who don't know their right hand from their left, he's not speaking about a lack of general knowledge. He's speaking about their lack of a moral compass, that they are blind and stumbling, that they can't determine. Now would you feel bad for somebody if you ask them, please lift up your right hand, and in confusion, they bounce around and think that they are lifting their right when they're actually lifting up their left? Could you feel pain for somebody if you looked at them and says, can you give me what's in your left hand?
19:52 And and that person looks at his hands and he doesn't know which one to extend to you. In like manner, God is saying the same way they can't tell between their right and their left is the same way that they can't determine between good and evil. What's what's black is light, what's good is wrong, and their moral framework framework is shattered. Their foundation is cracked. And it's not to say that they will not be held accountable for their lack of understanding, but what God is showing us is that before even judging them, he feels pity for them.
20:30 There's a sense of deep grief in the fact that they're stumbling around in society, and they have no sense of righteousness. See, you and I have to, to some degree, view people who are in sin and realize that it is a sickness. It is a sickness. Now that is not to excuse them for their sin, because God has provided the remedy, and those who refuse to realize that they are sick in their soul will be judged for that. But nonetheless, they are sick.
21:04 You and I were once sick. You and I were under a spell thinking that what we were doing was right and it wasn't harming anybody and we were still good people. We were also deceived. And God says, I pity them. My heart breaks for them.
21:23 And not only that, in the beginning he says, should I not pity Nineveh, that great city? You know why that's important? Because Nineveh was not within the boundaries of the holy land. Nineveh was not in the same category of the other cities that are found in Israel. No.
21:38 It was outside of the city. And in the Old Testament, we know that God had a specific program and gave specific attention to the Israelites. And yet in the book of Jonah, even the Jew at his time who had read this and even down the road who had read this book would have been shocked to realize how God was willing to go beyond the limits to extend his love and his grace. He was willing to go beyond the borders because his love is sovereign. His love goes beyond our understanding.
22:08 And this is why it was so shocking to Jonah. It's no surprise if you send a prophet to one of the cities in Israel, but why are you sending me to Nineveh? Are we not your special people? Are we not the ones who are set apart? You want you want me to go there?
22:25 And God says yes. And this is a prelude. This is something that we are anticipating when he's gonna come for the gentile nations altogether. His love is not just specific to one place in the world. No.
22:34 It is extended to the four coronas of the earth, and we're getting New Testament gospel flavor from the book of Jonah. And Jonah couldn't get it. Jonah couldn't understand it. I bring this to our attention because God cares for cities. God cares for Chicago.
22:58 God looks over and he knows the number of people that live. He knows who's in the suburbs. He knows who's in the city. He knows who's running the city. He knows how people are stumbling around morally.
23:09 He knows the deaths. He knows the murder. He knows the bloodshed. And he has pity. And we have to ask and examine our hearts, do I relate more with Jonah, or do I relate more with God?
23:25 You know, I had to ask myself even personally this past week, Lord, it's easy to be angry and frustrated with how our government is so broken, but am I broken about it? Like, it's easy to criticize. It's easy to look at it and say, look how messed up these people are. It's easy to look at our school system and see how they're teaching confusion in the realm of sexuality, and and be so angry about it, and and not be broken about it. Not be sorrowful about it.
24:00 And I look at even a book like this, and I say, lord, you're inviting Jonah to feel as you feel. I don't wanna miss it like Jonah missed it. I don't wanna be in ministry like Jonah was in ministry and not have your heart towards the lost as you do. You know, we see this in the life of Jesus Christ when the same God that we read of in the book of Jonah, the one who is greater than Jonah, shows up on the scene. And after his triumphal entry, when he comes into Jerusalem as he is preparing himself that week to be the sacrificial lamb, On that day when it was festive, on that day when people were singing, and palm branches were going up and down, and there was rejoicing and shouting, and Jerusalem was packed with people who were ready to to sacrifice the Passover lamb that week.
24:56 All for a sudden, can you imagine the sight? Can you place yourself there? All you see all these people rejoicing, and here's Jesus walking onto the scene. And as he approaches a certain site where he can he can look over the holy city, we read in Luke nineteen forty one. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it.
25:16 He wept over it. What a sight. In the background of Jesus, you hear people chanting and rejoicing and quoting the Psalms, and then all of a sudden you see Jesus looking over Jerusalem and so moved by something clearly that he breaks down in that moment. And then he opens his mouth, and the Holy Spirit records the language of his tears. And it says in verse 42 saying, would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.
25:58 He was broken in the fact that he had come to visit them, to invite them into peace, royal peace, heavenly peace. But he knew, even though in that moment they were celebrating him, that in a few days they would kill him and reject him. And Jesus' concern for the city was that they would lack peace. In fact, the opposite of peace conflict is distress, and he prophesies how this city will one day be destroyed, and it will be watered with their own blood. That's a wonderful principle, isn't it?
26:37 His concern was for their lack of peace to the point where it broke them. But the the equation here is simply this, if you reject the prince of peace, you reject peace. You cannot have peace, whether in an individual level, or citywide level or a nationwide level. You cannot know peace until you submit to the prince of peace. To try to see harmony and to try to see stability, to try to see common love will never ever happen until Jesus Christ sits on the throne of your heart and mine in the heart of our government, in the heart of our schools, it will never happen.
27:23 You reject the prince of peace. You do not embrace the prince of peace. You will never experience true peace. And then Jesus sets an amazing model in Luke nineteen forty five, right after he weeps, we are told, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, it is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it into a den of robbers. As one preacher said it, Jesus wept before he whipped.
27:58 Jesus was broken. Jesus was shattered. Jesus was was mourning because he had pity, And because of their failure in their sickness to receive the remedy found in Christ, in his righteousness, he came and he judged, and he cleaned the place up. But see, there are many people who wanna whip without weeping. There are many people who wanna shake people who are lost and broken without first grieving over them.
28:26 No message, no counseling, no witnessing will ever be effective, will ever have the emotion and the touch of God on it that it needs to have in order to be effective until we first connect with God's heart. Jesus Christ wept over Jerusalem. I wonder if he weeps over America today. I wonder. And here's the thing.
28:54 The same god that pitied Nineveh and the same Jesus that wept over Jerusalem, he's the same god that looks over our cities and our nations and feels pity. But God has a program. God has a plan. God has a way of dealing with even our own city, and it's the church. The church is God's plan.
29:18 The church is God's extension of mercy and grace and light. I'm gonna go to a familiar passage of scripture, but maybe we just need to be reminded of familiar truths. And this is important as especially as we're coming back together as a church. This is an awesome time for the church, by the way. This is this is an invitation for the church to tune in with God and then to to respond based on that place.
29:47 Let's go to Matthew five. What do we read of? Jesus tells the church in verse 13, you are the salt of the earth. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
30:05 You, church, are the salt of the earth. Now salt in itself is characterized by a preservation power that it has, despite the rottenness that is around it. It has a purifying element to it. It has a it has the ability to heal. It's medicinal.
30:25 And Jesus, out of all the elements that he can identify with concerning his church, he goes, you are the salt of the earth, The balm that brings healing, the element that brings cleansing into our world is in the church. The hope of America is not the White House. It's God's house. We cannot keep looking to politics and thinking that laws are gonna change anything. God's program for healing is found in God's house.
30:55 You are the salt of the earth, but it's possible even for a salt to lose its saltiness. It's possible for us to be so blended and to be so washed over by different influences that we lose our flavor, and we lose the very thing that this world needs. So it's a charge Jesus brings for you and I to maintain in touch with him and to be continually led and controlled by the Holy Spirit, lest we lose our influence. So in America, in in a time of crisis like this, if the world can't taste something of the church, then we're doing something wrong. I don't have a plan.
31:42 I don't know how that works. All I know is this, that by being salt, by remaining connected to God, we do our part. And then by seeking him, he's able to sprinkle us where he wants to sprinkle us. But I I don't want us to fail to realize the opportunity that we have as a church. Again, I don't know how it's gonna work.
32:01 I don't know how a small church in the corner of University Street is able to do anything for the city. But if we know God, then God is able to do something. And we're not the only church in Chicago, nor are we the only churches in America. No. God sprinkles us everywhere, and he sanitizes one area with one church, and he sanitizes another area with another church.
32:22 All we have to do is remain salty, if I can use that word. But he doesn't just say that. He says here in verse 14, you are the light of the world, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. So the city might be dark, but there's another city that's shining bright, and it's a church. Nor do people light a lamp and put under a basket, but on a stand.
32:44 And it gives light to all in the house. Now I love this part in verse 16. Look at the possibility. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. It is so possible to live as the church, as the light of God, that even the unregenerate, even the wicked, even those who are not enlightened totally can see the church living one way and be so moved by it that they begin to glorify God who is in heaven.
33:15 If you're Christians and and you represent this God that I read of, then praise be to your God. You say that's not possible. They're too depraved and wicked. Has our governor thrown anybody into a furnace yet for disobedience? As the mayor said, here's a golden statue of who I am.
33:35 When you hear the sound of this music, everybody in Chicago has to bow their knee and worship it. We're complaining the fact that we can't meet here more than 10 people, and we should have a desire to meet together, but we have never seen something as outrageous as what Nebuchadnezzar did. And yet God sprinkled some salt in Babylon, and God brought some light into Babylon through Daniel and his friends in such a way where if you notice that when Daniel steps up and he remains steadfast in his convictions, that Nebuchadnezzar could not help but worship god as a result. This is the true and living god. Anybody who speaks against Daniel's god will be punished.
34:19 You see how even the unrighteous. And I believe Nebuchadnezzar came to a point where he turned his life around for god, but in the process even, he was so moved by these men who were operating by a different spirit. We need wisdom. If Daniel needed wisdom in Babylon, we need wisdom. We need to be a voice, lest we fall into the trap of becoming an echo and sounding just like the world.
34:44 And it's very easy to do that. Right? It's very easy to get tense. It's very easy to be fearful. It's very easy to take sides, and what we end up doing is talking more politics than gospel.
34:57 And we're trying to now prove to people that we are more true Americans than we are truly citizens of another place. Be careful. Be careful in these tense times that you lose your voice and you become an echo, and you're no different, and you sound no different than another person who doesn't have God in their lives that has some kind of stance. You are the salt. You are the light.
35:26 You are a Christian more than you are an American. I look at Jesus' heart. I look at God's heart in Jonah, And we might brush it up saying, well, that's God. That's God in the flesh. Don't try to intimidate me in thinking that I have to be like him.
35:51 Well, I'm not intimidating you. I'm just giving you what the Bible says. But if we need a human to look to, I know that Paul was a man that tapped into God's heart this way. Here's a verse to prove it. In second Corinthians five fourteen, I'm gonna give you two verses and we're gonna close.
36:08 In second Corinthians five fourteen, when he's talking to the Corinthians about his motivation for his ministry I love this verse. This verse wounds me in a good way. Paul says, for the love of Christ controls us. For the love of Christ controls us. Oh, Paul's saying, I am so convinced of the love of God, I am so intoxicated by his compassion that it actually influences the way I behave.
36:42 My sacrificial love, my willingness to go beyond for the church, for the message of the gospel, to reaching the lost, to identifying with the lost, to to becoming a Jew for the Jew and a Greek for the Greek. The reason behind all of that is because I am compelled by something outside of my emotions, outside of my intellect. It's a supernatural thing called the love of Jesus. Now that tells me something, doesn't it? The love of Christ is not something to be studied only.
37:15 The love of Christ is not something to be acknowledged by a creed. The love of Christ is a substance that needs to seep into the soul, into such a way that it begins to determine the way I speak and react and post and serve and and move and do whatever I need to do. He was compelled by something greater than himself. And then you read something else. In Philippians three eighteen, He says, for many, Paul, the saint Paul says the love of Christ controls us.
37:47 For many of whom I've often told you and I tell you with tears. Notice, with tears. He goes, I'm telling you with tears. As I'm writing this, as I'm about to give you this this truth, I'm writing it with tears falling upon this parchment. I'm writing it with with something that's melting in my heart.
38:03 He goes, many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. And Paul could have been talking about the Judaizers who didn't want the the cross alone, wanted circumcision, and he could have been talking about Christians who were living with profession, but by practice, they were compromises, both fit as enemies of the cross of Christ. But no matter what it was, Paul was so moved by either compromise or rejection that it actually brought tears to his eyes. And I'm not saying emotion is the mark of a person who's in tune with God, but something of Paul in his life, not just his emotions, but in his life proved there is something controlling me.
38:53 I want that. I want that. I don't I don't wanna just give sermons. I don't wanna just hear messages. I don't wanna just give my political opinion.
39:05 I don't wanna look at a fearful world and mock them. I want something to control me. I want the love of Jesus to control me. I wanna be possessed by him. I wanna be possessed and rewired by his spirit.
39:22 And I'm sure that's your desire. And so I end here. I'm really not gonna give a how to get to this point, But I think it's important to simply say, Lord, just do it in me. Just do it in me. The prayer that we should be having during this time is, Lord, let us not fail to be the salt and the light.
39:48 Don't let us miss it. Don't let us miss it. And if we we think that it's not possible, we can look at a city like Nineveh. If we think it's not possible, we can think that just like Paul, who was willing to go to one place for just a group of people, even though there was riots when he came, it it doesn't matter. It's it's the heart behind it.
40:10 And so I'm not here pointing a finger to you through this livestream. I have three pointing back at me when I say, I want this. I want this love. It's easy to get angry. It's easy to to mock and to criticize.
40:26 It's easy to be like Elisha and see a bunch of people bashing themselves with swords on Mount Carmel and being like, where's your god? Where is he at? He can't hear you? Maybe he went on a vacation. It's easier to do that.
40:39 But god wants to take us beyond that. He wants to control us with his love. And I'm sure God is looking over us, his church, the same way he looked over Jonah, and he goes, Jonah, do you not get it? Do you realize that the book of Jonah ended with a question with no answer back from Jonah? Why?
40:57 Why did the Holy Spirit do that? Why did the Holy Spirit allow God to ask the question and give no response from Jonah? Did Jonah die? Did he go mute? No.
41:07 It's because the fact that it's ending with a question towards Jonah doesn't mean it's just for Jonah. It's for the readers. Then when we see God's heart and he says, should I not pity? We have to look at our own and say, Lord, do I? The question is for us.
41:29 And it's not to feel beat up and not to feel condemned, but it's to say, god, if it's possible, take me there. I wanna be there. I wanna pray differently. I wanna go to work differently. I wanna post differently.
41:42 I want your love to control me. If we can turn on the news as we've been seeing the past couple days and not feel broken, there's something wrong with us as a church. Totally. Come on. Let's be honest.
41:53 We're God's program. We're God's plan a for what's happening in America. And this is our invitation to partner with God. I don't know how it's gonna happen. I don't know how God is able to do it, but I know this, that if God was able to allow a pandemic to shut the world down, then God is able to release a move of his spirit that could bring this world to life.
42:16 The church must seize this opportunity. We must not stand back, nor must we just lay back. We have to seize this opportunity. I don't know how it's gonna happen, but I know a God who does. So let's pray together, especially as we are planning to come back together soon, that we would take up our arms, that we would connect with God and say, Lord, put us to work, and show us how to be light, and show us how to be salt, and show us how to bring flavor to this world that is eroding by corruption, and God will answer that cry.
42:46 We are living in an amazing time of history. Please do not say, well, we've seen this before. Please don't do that. We weren't living in those generations before. This is our time.
42:55 I'm not gonna look back and say, well, we've seen that, and we've seen this, and this has always been a problem, and we've seen disease, and we I'm not concerned what happened in the past. There's an opportunity now, and that's what we have to take advantage of. Let's pray. Let's pray. Lord, we see your heart.
43:16 We see your heart. We feel your heart. And, Lord, even if we don't, this is the time that we're asking that you would change us, Lord. Change us, Lord, to have compassion, to be broken, to be to feel pity, Lord, that in such a way that it would move us, Lord. Had pity for those who could not determine their right hand from their Lord, protect us from a a righteous anger that can become just pure anger, where we hate sinners, and we hate the what what they stand for, and how they're ruining a generation.
43:47 Protect from having a righteous anger that is vacant of a righteous brokenness. Lord, we pray together. I pray, Lord, that you do something in my heart, Lord, to seize the opportunity. We don't know how we're gonna do it. We don't know how it's possible, but, lord, we pray that you would reign righteousness.
44:09 You would reign righteousness, lord. And that somehow, if this world is planning to only get darker as we've been seeing in the past few months, that your church would shine all the brighter. Help us. Fill us with your spirit and guide us into that place. In Jesus' name, we pray.
44:28 Amen. Amen. Praying with you, praying for you, and anticipating the day where we are able to seek God together in the same room. Until then, God bless you in Jesus' name.
