Transcript
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past reflect along with the champ mahan ali.
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Welcome back muhammad ali hey, good to be here and from cody sparks, from the cody sparks band welcome back still here, yeah, and then we also have brianna mota hello, who is going to give us a female perspective, which we're really always excited about I'll try my best.
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Yeah, you're a mom, way to go.
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I am a mom, all right.
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So, hey, one of the things we're going to be talking about is the book of Jonah.
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We opened it up this week, got into Jonah, chapter one Fun fact about Jonah so, jonah, you only hear about him as a prophet and it's kind of singularly focused on his life.
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It's kind of singularly focused on his life, jonah.
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Go tell the king to expand his territory from Lebo Hamath all the way down to the sea of Aquabah, which would have been the dead sea, so the part about or sea of Galilee.
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So the thing that I wanted us to take a look at or understand is here is Jonah prophesying good things for King Jeroboam, prophesying good things for King Jeroboam, and he does it not for King Jeroboam, but because he was having compassion on the people.
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You don't find that out from Jonah.
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That comes from second Kings 14, uh, wherever, uh the.
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It talks about the history of Israel and even though King Jeroboam walked in the ways of his forefather, king Jeroboam I, which was complete idolatrousness and just kind of power hungry, god blessed the people of Israel because he had compassion on them for their ways.
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Now, at the same time, there were other prophets in the land, namely Hosea you guys are familiar with Hosea, the guy that was told by God to go marry a prostitute.
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I mean, talk about a wild moment.
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You're hanging out.
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God speaks to you and this is where, if anyone comes and says to you, I think God's calling me to go to the brothel and marry a prostitute, I would just really double check that one.
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But he does, and God clearly does call him to do that.
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He marries a prostitute and then his mission in life is to reveal God's love for Israel in the way that this man loves his prostitute wife and goes and pursues her and then even redeems her when she's worth essentially nothing.
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And then, finally, you also have Amos there.
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Amos is a prophet from Judah, from the southern kingdom, who is railing out against King Jeroboam for his idolatry, social evil.
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And then he's saying, hey, all the land that you gained through the prophecy of Jonah Leba Hamath, down the Sea of Aqaba, that is going to be taken away.
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And not only that, you are about to be exiled.
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You need to repent.
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So it's into this environment that God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, who is the ultimate enemy of Israel.
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Israel was evil, but they weren't this evil.
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I mean, these guys were murdering, impaling, just crushing souls with their murderous rampages, and the evil of Nineveh came up before the Lord and hit all of God.
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And so he tells Jonah to go up and speak out.
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Prophesy against Nineveh.
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Now why do you think and Mo, I'd love for your perspective here why do you think his first reaction is to flee?
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If it were me, like God says, all the evils come up before me.
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I think you need to go to Nineveh and tell them they're doing bad things.
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Give me thoughts on why he would be excited about that.
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I think it's kind of weird because in the past God commands to go into evil nations and wipe them out.
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What.
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He knows that.
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The what Mike's out.
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Do we need to restart the what Mic's out?
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Do we need?
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to restart what happened.
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Alright, try again.
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Mo, hello, hello, can you hear?
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me 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, here let's start out this way.
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Brie, I want you to ask we'll talk through each one of these people.
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All right, brie, you're ready?
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Hey, hey, hey I'll be like I'll ask you do you remember any of the people we talked about?
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And you can just come up with one when you remember.
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If you remember, I'm great, if you don't, it's fine.
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Yeah, and then someone else jump in about who Jose is.
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Are we ready?
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Yep.
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Yep and welcome back to Pastor Plex podcast.
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I'm your host, pastor Plex, and with me in studio is none other than the champ Muhammad Ali.
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Welcome back, hey, along with Cody Sparks from the Cody Sparks band.
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Welcome back, cody Sparks, still here, and then Brianna Mota from her house I'm so glad you're here.
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She's a mom and she's awesome.
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She's not at her house right now.
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She's just here, oh right, but she came from her house, right?
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So this past week we talked about Jonah and the classic story of the prophet who was swallowed by the great fish, and I think the great fish and I think what makes that story really interesting, at least for me, and I don't know if this was interesting for you.
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I'd love to hear your perspective and this is where you can give me a good sermon critique here, like if this encountered the boring factor or if this is like oh good to know, fun fact or like excessive.
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So we talked about all the characters involved outside, really, of jonah and all the characters that we would actually see in the story.
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Uh, how did that hit you when we talked about that?
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I liked it.
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I like the little animated pictures of them that was my ai creation.
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I had to write in an ai thing.
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I felt very uh ai savvy on my drawings very cool so so do you remember any of the actual people that we talked about?
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All right hosea for sure okay, hosea, and do you remember what kind of what was his role?
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um all I remember is he married a prostitute that's right.
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He married a prostitute and his whole role in life was to reveal to israel and the nations.
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You know this is kind of a big deal.
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Think about a celebrity christian marrying a, a straight up whore and then constantly following her around.
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It's wild.
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And so he prophesies against King Jeroboam by name and says hey, you need to repent from the idolatry that you're leading this nation into.
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And the same way I feel about my wife that God called me to marry and I chose her even though I knew she would be just like she is.
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That is how God loves Israel and one day will provide a way for her to be redeemed.
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Okay, so you got Hosea speaking out against King Jeroboam.
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Do you remember anybody else?
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Amos.
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Amos, right.
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So it wasn't famous Amos and the cookies, but rather Amos, who was a shepherd in the southern kingdom of Judah, who God calls him to go to an evil nation and speak out against.
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It Kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it so?
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And he goes to Jeroboam and warns all the parts of Israel that you have restored through military conquest, god's going to take that back from you, and then also, on top of that, you will one day be exiled.
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And then, of course, you got King Jeroboam, the evil king, who does obey Jonah, and Jonah does tell him to go and expand, uh, the territory of Israel.
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By the word of the Lord, this isn't just Jonah's opinion.
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God speaks to Jonah and he says go and expand Israel to the boundaries of before, from Lebo Hamath all the way to the Sea of Aqaba, kind of from east to west, across the southern border is spread out, and they kick out those who are not of Israel, which is wild.
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Okay, so you've got King or King.
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You got got Prophet Jonah and Prophet Hosea and Prophet Amos all speaking to Jeroboam and declaring to him different things From Jonah, you have this go and do great stuff by the power of God and bring compassion on your people and expand the territory so they're not harassed by foreign invaders.
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And then, at the same time, you've got Hosea and Amos calling out Israel and Jeroboam, specifically about leading Israel to commit adultery against God and all the religious and social evil that was there.
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So it's sort of a wild complex thing.
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So here you have Jonah, who then is called to go to Nineveh, the ultimate enemy, the ultimate bad guy, because the evil has come up before God.
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Now, at that point, to me, if you've been like you've been prophesying about the destruction of the nations, mo, why do you think that Jonah doesn't get that?
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He's like oh, this is just another like every other, calling here's another nation that God's going to judge because he gets.
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This is a regular thing for him to go and judge nations.
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Any thoughts on that?
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Yeah, I think in the past, especially when, like Israel, entered the promised land, the people who were there before it wasn't hey, you guys repent and you're, for if you repent we're going to come in here and make everything.
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Okay, right, it's go in there and slaughter everyone.
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And he knows that if they do repent, even then there's still going to be a chance that they're going to harm Israel itself, because Israel is doing a lot of evil, and so they could actually be just like the, you know, darius Artaxerxes, whoever like agents of God's wrath against his very own nation.
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Love it.
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Yeah, I agree with that.
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I think also, um, for me, the thing that sort of struck me is that whenever Jonah prophesied, he didn't go to the nations or to the areas that they were going to expand their territory to, he did that while in um Bethel or um, yeah, the, the capital of Samaria.
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That he did it there and just told the king, like here's what's going to happen.
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I don't know if he had a press conference or what, but then the king would obey that and go.
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He didn't actually have to leave Israel.
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And so to leave Israel, just remember, like when you go and you're an emissary, it's a big deal, there is a chance of repentance.
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So when you don't go there, it's just go.
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And you're an emissary, it's a big deal, there is a chance of repentance.
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So when you don't go there, it's just happening and we're documenting that this thing is going to happen and so that God can get the glory for the destruction of the enemy.
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Anyway, I thought that was sort of a fascinating just reality there.
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One of the things that I saw here is that when Jonah goes, when God says to him, go, arise, to Nineveh, he goes immediately to Tarshish, which we know is 2,500 miles away from Joppa, which is roughly 3,000 miles away from Tarshish.
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Nineveh.
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Sorry, nineveh, thank you.
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So he's going in the complete opposite direction, as far as the world can go To get away From the presence of God.
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Did anyone else was that strike you as odd?
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Like he's trying to get away from the presence of God?
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A little bit weird.
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Especially if you've been there before.
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Or if you're a prophet.
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Well, that too.
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Yeah, you're a prophet and you know that God is everywhere, so there's nowhere you can go.
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And I'm sure he knew the Bible, which was if I go to the heavens, you are there.
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If I go to the depths, you are there.
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There is no escaping the presence of God.
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So why do you guys think that three times he makes it clear he was going to flee the presence of God.
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What do you guys think that was all about from Jonah's perspective?
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I feel like I mean the whole, the whole pinnacle of this thing was at the very end, where you talked about.
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Jesus is a better Jonah and and I feel like uh, to really help contrast that, it helps.
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You know, like the son of God is willing to come down from heaven and here is a prophet who's supposed to be doing God's work, and even the best of the best still isn't Jesus and he's going to be unwilling.
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I love what you just said, because Jesus is the better Jonah, which he says in Matthew 12, I think it was.
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But remember Garden Gethsemane, yeah, like God gives him the mission to go to the people and sacrifice his life, those who were pagans.
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And Jesus does it, uh, not because he's thrilled about it, because it is his will, not God's will, not his own, and he does it in complete obedience, which I, I, man, that's.
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That's a powerful thought.
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And so Jonah uh, eventually acquiesces because God forces him to, but this is out of Jesus goes to the cross for the joy that was set before him.
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He um, endured the cross.
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I thought that that's actually a great point of how this also always points to Jesus as the better Jonah, although Jonah did, in uh, chapter one, uh, offer his body up, uh, but he made the sailors throw him out, which I thought was kind of funny.
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Like if you were like, hey, I'm the storms here.
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Uh, he's asleep on the boat.
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Hey, why don't you know?
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He could have just jumped off, yeah, but I think it was because he didn't want anybody to think that he was repenting.
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Yeah, I think the reason why he was so fast asleep is he was completely at peace with his decision to die and make to make Israel great again or to expand her borders, and he got caught up in the religious fervor of making Israel as awesome as possible and did not want to hear God give any sort of leniency.
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He wanted judgment on Nineveh for all their evil, which they deserved, but he couldn't see that Israel also deserved that same punishment, which I thought is kind of wild that he couldn't see that.
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But when it's your own culture, you might be blind to all the offenses.
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I think it's like how Jonah could lay there and be peaceful and know like, hey, I know what's coming, I need it, and then Jesus, to be there at any given time, going to the cross, could have just said, no, I'm not doing this and stepped away, but it had to happen.
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So it's just interesting how Jonah could just be like yep, I know this has to happen, here we go.
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I'm not going to do it, but they're going to do it.
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Here and I just found this out from my sermon study for this week, which I may or may not share on Sunday, but so whenever he got the word from the Lord, he rose and fled to Tarshish, he went down to Joppa and then in verse two it says he went down to the boat, and then it says he went down to the inner part of the ship and then, when he was swallowed up by the fish, he went down to the depths.
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Isn't that wild.
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So when you avoid God's presence, you're going down, and I think if someone could just get that stuck in their head.
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You're going down.
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When you run from God's presence, it is not going to go well for you.
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Even if in the moment it feels like a better decision, Like when he got on the boat and he's sleeping soundly, he's like this is it?
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I finally have defeated god and his ability to give compassion and he in that moment is probably at peace.
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But is the storm is coming for you yeah, do we talk about how long jonah was in there in the fish?
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three days and three nights in the belly of the fish in that, and that's jesus was three days three nights in the heart of the earth, which, which I agree, is sort of a wild thought, and I appreciate that.
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Jesus, like you know, when the people of Israel in Jesus' day are saying give us a sign that you're really the Messiah, he's like no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.
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Yeah.
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Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the or in the belly of the fish.
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So the son of man will be three days, three nights in the heart of the earth.
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Yeah, do we talk about Jonah being in there and and singing praises while he's in the fish?
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Yeah, so that's this one of my favorite things.
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Yeah, we're going to be talking about that this week, which I'm excited for because that you're going to him come to repentance, which is sort of wild.
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Um, other thoughts on here that I loved is that the, the pagans, whenever they were told by jonah, yeah, how to be saved, they believed him and they said the way that they could be saved is they needed a substitute to die in that wild.
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Yeah, anytime salvation happens at least we're, and I don't know if anyone can think of a time this doesn't happen Anytime salvation happens, it's because someone is substituted, and that blows my.
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I just think back to Adam and Eve.
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You know they are their sin, they needed a covering.
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God kills some animal and covers them with animal skins.
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Even from that point forward, there has been some substitute to make people right with God, and here in particular is Jonah is a less than Jesus, but he is the substitute for them and then through his um, through giving him up and offering up to God, they are saved.
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Uh, I thought my point was pagans believe God's word and exchange Jonah's life for theirs, and I think that's what really people are calling, or that's what God calls people to do.
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Yeah, um, any thoughts on that?
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How did you?
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When you were listening to this Brie either Sunday or right now, how were you able to apply all this?
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Um cause?
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I did ask people are, are?
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Is there something that you have a tendency to run from?
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Yeah, that was like a good thing.
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Where's it like fill in the blank.
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Yeah, I would rather run from God than what's the thing paul and I actually had a really good discussion about this yesterday because I asked him, like what was your thing?
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And for me it took a while to figure it out because I was like, well, if it's like, if someone came to me as like presence of god or this, I would always choose the presence of god.
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But I'm like, maybe it's something I'm doing unconsciously.
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Um, so it took a lot of reflecting, uh, because I think it's easy for a lot of christians to be like, oh well, I'd always choose god, but then their actions say otherwise right, and maybe it's because we just don't go.
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I am currently, right now, choosing this thing over god, and maybe we just need to say that more often.
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Yeah, uh, that would probably help our be like okay, when you bring god into it, you know, like that's cheating.
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Uh, I think that's where, like, when it comes to like, would you rather be in the presence of god or look at porn?
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Okay, well, yeah, you know, of course, I'd rather be in the presence of god.
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Well then, why do you not do that?
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Because I can't.
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You know, like, I think that's where people go.
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Yeah, um, and I think that's a struggle that they're facing.
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Um, what did you say on that?
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um mainly just comfort financially comfort financial.
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I think that's a common one for women in general and it just it'll look different, different seasons of life security, security.
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I think that's the ultimate thing, like, and it might be that's just the control, right, I want to know what I can, how, what we're going to need, and I don't even care if it's good or bad, just tell me what I'm supposed to do to kind of, yeah, I'm with you, it eliminates the walking by faith when you have control.
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Yeah, for me, I think it's fear of like.
00:19:05.997 --> 00:19:10.234
I think if, if, like, I'd rather run from God than confront somebody.
00:19:10.234 --> 00:19:16.041
I hate that, um, but you know you do it, cause that's what the Lord calls you to.
00:19:23.690 --> 00:19:26.077
Cause I think the fear, I think it's like fear of man would probably be the right way of putting that.
00:19:26.077 --> 00:19:26.578
What about you, mo?
00:19:26.578 --> 00:19:27.362
Any thoughts come up just generally.
00:19:27.362 --> 00:19:31.314
Oh man, I'd you know if you, if I think about it, the comfort, yeah, I would rather you know, watch a bunch of things and veg out.
00:19:31.314 --> 00:19:37.032
But that's that's kind of tough too, because I feel like what, what is the presence of god even mean?
00:19:37.032 --> 00:19:42.092
Right, if you can't flee from it, then why does it say that he fled from it?
00:19:42.092 --> 00:19:44.577
And I feel like it's a different kind of presence.
00:19:45.339 --> 00:19:50.984
So yeah, the actual word is face, and so you might so, and this is where you know presence.
00:19:50.984 --> 00:19:56.952
We translate presence because that probably makes more sense, but face of God, it's like I don't want to face God.
00:19:56.952 --> 00:19:57.673
Yeah, there we go.
00:19:58.614 --> 00:20:05.978
That's the actual, and maybe I should have said that in the sermon and the other thing, too, is like finding the presence of God where you think that it's not.
00:20:05.978 --> 00:20:06.538
You know what I mean.
00:20:06.538 --> 00:20:16.624
Like I've realized over the years like God's presence is there when I'm worshiping, through changing diapers, you know like that's being in the presence of God.
00:20:16.624 --> 00:20:23.147
I'm being what I'm called to do, right, and it's work that has to be done, and I'm doing it for my family, which means that it's for his glory, yeah, so it's like.
00:20:23.307 --> 00:20:23.867
Oh, that's good.
00:20:23.867 --> 00:20:24.910
You know what I?
00:20:24.970 --> 00:20:25.230
mean.
00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:29.855
So it's finding the presence where I before wouldn't usually think that that's the presence of God.
00:20:30.015 --> 00:20:31.415
Yeah, yeah, Um.
00:20:31.415 --> 00:20:41.163
What was cool is we had three people when I asked the question will you receive the great exchange for Jesus life?
00:20:41.183 --> 00:20:52.999
for years, Three people texted in Jesus which is that's awesome, so and we had met with them up all three of them afterwards and it was really awesome.
00:20:52.999 --> 00:20:54.945
So I'm looking forward to them connecting and growing in their faith.
00:20:54.945 --> 00:20:59.314
So I think that's the big thing for me is the great exchange aspect with this as well.
00:20:59.314 --> 00:21:00.015
It's so big.
00:21:00.015 --> 00:21:11.247
It's like I think, when it comes to most people, we think of terms of repentance like rowing as hard as we can to try and get back with God.
00:21:11.247 --> 00:21:27.258
And when you try and row that hard because, as the sailors were rowing like crazy, it was only until they just kind of acquiesced to the God's word and gave up Jonah that they were saved and I thought that was powerful, I thought that was a wild thought.
00:21:27.951 --> 00:21:31.661
I don't know if that's what resonated with people, that thought, or if just God was just like moving in their hearts.
00:21:31.661 --> 00:21:36.852
You know, sometimes you preach a sermon and they come and tell you like you really spoke to me when you said this and I didn't say any of that at all.
00:21:36.852 --> 00:21:39.497
So who knows, you know what, what, what moves on somebody's heart?
00:21:39.497 --> 00:21:40.558
The Holy spirit just does what he does.
00:21:41.902 --> 00:21:43.424
I do want to say I think it was really powerful.
00:21:43.424 --> 00:21:45.492
You mentioned something about um, um.
00:21:45.492 --> 00:21:52.922
Like no one else can calm your storm, like you can't calm someone else's storm they have to be the one to run back.
00:21:53.222 --> 00:21:54.559
Right, you can't repent for somebody else.
00:21:54.599 --> 00:22:01.705
Exactly, and if your storm isn't calming, then you need to take a look on your life and what you're doing.
00:22:02.036 --> 00:22:05.519
And that doesn't always mean like, that doesn't always mean that you're in sin.
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:10.118
Remember Paul when he shipwrecked, uh, like clearly that was God's will.
00:22:10.118 --> 00:22:23.827
But, um, a lot of times, a lot of times, if you're sick, if your things are not going well, it might be God's discipline or it could just be like God's.
00:22:23.827 --> 00:22:32.503
It's tough to tell if, whether it's God's discipline or God's training ground cause it looks really similar and it's the kind of the if your heart has a pure conscience.
00:22:32.503 --> 00:22:41.541
I think I was listening to like a John MacArthur book, um, about something that he was doing and people were like, see, god's judging you and he's like, no, God's preparing me.
00:22:41.561 --> 00:22:49.423
So it's, you know it's it's tough to know what reality looks like based on, like, your decision that you made means this is a bad thing, I think.
00:22:49.423 --> 00:22:58.086
For me, uh, one of those times was when, when you know, the elders and us decided to we, um, we leased this space.
00:22:58.086 --> 00:23:09.523
We're in now and next door was the um, the children's ministry and all of our offices, and we built all the offices, we built out the children's space, and then, a month later, we got a letter saying you need to tear it all down or not.
00:23:09.523 --> 00:23:10.866
We, they were going to tear it all down.
00:23:10.866 --> 00:23:14.240
We spent like a hundred thousand dollars on it and I was like, and people were left the church over that.
