Look Again

So I'm amped, pumped, excited, exhilarated. I'm ready to open God's word to Jonah chapter 2 so that we can cover what I believe God has for each one of us. And I pray that it's relevant to you wherever you might find yourself today. But it was, it was a good week for me.

You know, you do ministry for months on end and you just, you just need to be able to recalibrate, zoom out, and get a reinvigorated perspective on not just your calling, but maybe some of the areas that are deficient in your life.

And so it was good for me, and I, I think it kind of works within what I was already prepping to talk to you all about today. But before I jump into the text, I want to, I want to tell a brief story. I don't know how brief it's going to be. It's going to be a story though, amen somebody.

It's going to be a story about how my wife and I met and got together.

So, you got, you got to — if you don't want it, you got to tell me. You want something else? But are you guys okay with me telling you that story? Amen.

Just one person?

I appreciate you. Just say yes if you're okay with me telling that story. You okay? Cool.

I, you know, I encourage participation because it's so natural for us to just kind of sit.

And again, the more energy you put into something, sometimes the more effective your experience becomes. So I'll tell you the story how my wife and I met, and I'm not going to look good at the end of it. I just want you to know that up front. This isn't for me, it's for you.

So when my wife and I met, we were in college.

I was a junior in college and she was a freshman. Yep, people made fun of me, they say, "You robbing the cradle, Matt? " Anyway, she was a little bit younger, and she came in — if you didn't know this about my beautiful, awesome, amazing wife, got to say that first — she's a pastor's kid, so she grew up in a church, just for context. It was a Southern Baptist Church, and her dad was a Southern Baptist — is a Southern Baptist preacher.

Now for me, I didn't become a Christian until I was in eighth grade, and so I was a weird — like I was weird when I became a Christian. I'd already experienced some of life, not that much, but a little bit, just enough to listen to too much Eminem and hang out with the wrong people.

And so I grew up a little bit differently, and so I was old enough to say, "Hey, I actually get to discover the Bible and church as someone who has at least some cognitive ability. " Some might disagree that a 13-year-old has any cognitive ability, but I did, a little bit. Anyways, so we grew up differently, and we met at a college party. Now I went to a Christian college, it's called Ouachita Baptist University.

I felt called to ministry, and so I felt like I had to go to a Christian college. So that's where we met.

So when I say party, don't want you to get the wrong idea — I'm a Christian, it's a Christian party. So we showed up at a lake, and I was that guy at every party I went to. If you don't know what that guy is — anyone know who that guy is? Tell me, what do they do?

They bring something.

What do they bring? Okay, I — you might not know, maybe that guy is somebody different in your mind. For me, that guy is the guy that brought a guitar no one asked him to bring. Oh, was that guy — luckily for me, there was another "that guy" at the party, and we were both playing guitar together around the fire, as you do, in order to impress girls.

And he could sing, I couldn't, but I could play.

And there was this girl across the circle who kept saying, "Oh my gosh, play this song! Oh my gosh, play this song! " And I didn't know any of the songs she was recommending, because I don't listen to Casting Crowns and Jeremy Camp and all those other super preacher-kid Christian songs. So I didn't know all those songs, and I got frustrated.

I was like, "Who is this little freshman girl who's going to tell us what to play while we're trying to impress other girls? " And so I didn't get a good first impression. And my wife would say the same — Hannah, you got to say it out loud at this service.

I didn't ask you to. Did you like me when we first met? Say it louder. You heard it.

She didn't.

I heard her. I know, we've talked about this before. I didn't like her, she didn't like me, we didn't get along. "Who's this goody-two-shoes pastor, preacher kid who's going to come here and tell me what to do when I'm a junior?

She needs to learn her lesson, she can't run the school.

This ain't high school, take off your letterman jacket, girl. " And that was my posture. I don't know how it happened. She tells me I randomly walked up to their table in the lunchroom and said, "Hey, I hear you talking about ESL, I want to go to the conference with you.

" And then I invited myself to a conference and hung out with them all weekend. But I don't remember exactly how we met or started hanging out, but we started hanging out. And here's how cool I was in college — I told her, I said, "Hey sweetie" — I didn't say sweetie, I tell her sweetie now — I said, "Hey Hannah, I don't want you to get the wrong idea, so if you start to have feelings for me, I need you to let me know so I can let you down easy. " No lie, did I say that, Hannah?

Now there was context to it — some other girl got the wrong idea, and I was trying to overcorrect, but still, I said it. So we started hanging out, we hung out for like nine months, nothing. I was like, "She's not my type, I'm never going to marry a redhead. " She's a redhead, I'm not doing it.

And so, I'm just being honest with you, no offense to the redheads in the room, but that's what I told her. We hung out and we became like best friends, right?

So we would sit there, we would not study together, but we would study next to each other, different subjects. And she went to the same church that I went to, and I was a Bible study leader at the church, wasn't I, Hannah? And then she watched, and she looked up to me — just kidding. But we got to know each other really well.

I even went down to visit her family's house, and we went to like Schlitterbahn water park.

Nothing, nothing. Then I get back to college my senior year, and my friend Matt, who lived near my apartment, we were chatting one day and he said, "A wise man once told me you shouldn't overlook what's right in front of you, man. " That dude, he shouldn't have said that if he didn't want me — 'cause then, I'll never forget, went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, walked into the Books-A-Million right before we went to IHOP for my birthday, and I ate a steak and egg omelette that gave me salmonella or something, 'cause I was sick the next day. I remember I was standing there and I looked to my left — no, it's to my right — and I saw Hannah.

She was looking at books that I knew she wasn't going to read. And I looked and I was like — I thought she was mid at first, but then I was like, "Oh okay. " I looked at the specifics, I was like, "Okay. " It was a second look.

I looked, I looked again differently than I had initially. And from that point I just, I couldn't go back. Right, there's a Scripture — anyone who has tasted and seen that the Lord is good — it talks about how if you have entered into his presence genuinely, it's really, like, it's impossible. Hebrews would tell us to go back from that moment.

That's how it was for me, sweetie, couldn't go back.

I couldn't change my perspective. At first glance it wasn't what I was looking for, but when I looked again, things shifted. I don't know what it is for you today, but many of you, you need to take a second look. You need to look again at your family situation.

You need to look again at your spouse, because it's been a while since you've looked at them at all.

You need to look again at how you're interacting with your kids. Look again at the position God has you in, at your job or wherever you work. Look again at the family and friends and neighbors that you have around you, because God wants you to have a perspective that is different than your first glance. It's time to look again.

This happens in our spiritual walk as well.

When you first interacted with the Bible, when you first went to church, it might have been a negative experience, it might have been a confusing experience. But I want you to know that once you have truly tasted and seen that the Lord is good, it is impossible to scale back from that. But many of us, it's not that we've tasted and scaled back, it's that we never took a second look. It's time for you to dive in and understand more and more the character, the shape, the color, the curvature of your relationship, or the potential of a relationship, with God.

And we come into chapter two of the Book of Jonah.

Anyone remember the title of our series? It's called "Not Jonah" — we don't want to be like Jonah, but we're in Jonah, so we're going to look into Jonah's life and figure out how not to operate. But there is a moment here where he operates correctly, and when we step into chapter 2 of Jonah, we see that God has orchestrated the situation such that Jonah, almost — there's really not another option for him — to look again at the Lord. For those of you, and it might be your first week, I want to catch you up.

The Book of Jonah is about a prophet named Jonah.

This prophet — typically at that point in history, prophets were called to the land of Israel. Jonah was called to the Ninevites. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, at some portion of the Empire. Now the Empire had been expanding westward and taking over country after country.

At that point it was the largest empire that had ever existed, and they weren't the nicest people.

I told you all last week that the Ninevites actually have inscriptions and pottery and pictures of what they would do to the people they captured. They would skin them alive, they would cut them up. There's paintings and pictures of this act — that's how you know, how much they loved executing other people. And Jonah looks at these sinners, he's like, "I don't want to be a part of that, Lord.

" But God calls him to the Ninevites anyways, and instead of going to the Ninevites, Jonah goes the opposite direction to a land called Tarshish. Well, he doesn't make it, because a storm batters the boat he's on.

And the people on the boat, they are not followers of Yahweh, they start freaking out, calling on their own God. Eventually they find Jonah in the hole in a deep sleep, and they said, "Call on your own God. " And he says, "Y'all should just throw me out the boat, because it's my fault. It's Yahweh, the God who created the land and the sea, who's sending this storm.

So to stop the raging of this storm, toss me out the boat. "

Jonah sinks down, and last week we talked about the idea that God sends Jonah a fish, and that fish became provision for Jonah, and how often God sends us provision in our lowest moments to draw us closer and closer to himself. In chapter 2, Jonah is in the belly of the fish, and he prays.

And I want to read this, in verse one it says this, and I'm going to go to verse 7. "From the inside of the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God, and said: 'In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

I said, "I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again to your holy temple. " The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.

To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them.

But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. '"

I'm going to verse 9, 10.

"By the way, what I have vowed I will make good. I will say, 'Salvation comes from the Lord. ' And then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. "

Jonah's in this moment in the belly of the fish, where he looks up to God, and the first thing he says is — in verse one he says — "From inside the fish Jonah prayed. " From the inside of the fish, Jonah prayed. I struggled to come up with points for this sermon, and the Lord reminded me, he just — just read my text and communicate what this text The people, my word is good enough for them. And so I want to walk you through this text and be in some ways helpful to you, but I think the text speaks for itself.

And when he's in the fish, it says Jonah prayed.

Many of you, I want to compare where you are in your life right now to being in the belly of a fish. If it's your first time here today, or if it's your first time back to church in a long time, many of you didn't come because your life was perfect. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, I believe he says, remember where you were when you were called. And he goes further, he says, not many of you were wise according to the principles of this world.

Where were you when God called you back to church?

Where were you when God called you into your faith? For most of us, and some of you, you walked into church one day because you wanted to be here, God spoke to you, and it was just this perfect trajectory from the start of your faith all the way to where you are now. But for me, and for many in this room, the reason we showed up at church is because we were on our last leg. We showed up at church because we were struggling.

We showed up at church because we tried it our own way and nothing was working.

We showed up at church because we had put ourselves into a bad position, and the only option we had was a supernatural option. And so we showed up at church, and we said, God, I'm going to look to you today because I feel like you just say this literally, but you meant it, I'm in the belly of this fish and I don't see it as provision right now, I see it as painful and struggle and I don't know how to get out of it, so I'm here today trying you out. That's why you came to church, that's why I went the first time. Well, actually it's cuz my mom made me, which means I was on my last leg, you know, that's why I came.

But I didn't become a Christian when I came to church for the first time.

I became a Christian when this girl Melissa talked mess about me and said I was going to go to hell, and I realized that I was living in the wrong direction and I had to stop that immediately, right? Like, I was in a bad spot and the Lord convicted me of my sin and brought me closer to him. Mom, you played a part in it too, though, that was cool. Whatever it was for you, I believe God allowed you to be put in that position because he knew that you had to be put in that position to finally turn toward him.

Jonah had not — like we have this assumption that Jonah was just regularly communicating with God.

It says that God called Jonah and he went the opposite direction. There's no conversation we get to see in chapter 1. In fact, this is the first portion of a real conversation that we have between Jonah and God. And it took Jonah not just being frustrated to talk to God, not just going the opposite direction and a storm coming to the boat to talk to God, not just Jonah telling the group of people that they need to toss him out the boat to talk to God, not just sinking deep to talk to God — it took him sinking all the way to the depths.

It says the roots of the mountains were what he was seeing, and then he got swallowed by a big fish, or whale, as we called it last week, to talk to God.

It took him being stuck, cramped — Hosea would say the fetters walled up around us — it took that for Jonah to speak to God. And I want to tell you, for many of us, that's what it takes to get us to talk to God. I'm not saying that's a great thing. I'm not saying it's optimal or ideal.

I'm saying that's the sinful human condition, that's what it is.

It takes us being in a bad position before we seek God to put us in our right position. And while it's not ideal, I get it. And so I want to tell you right now, regardless of what you've done, regardless of whether it was somebody else's fault or your fault that got you into this fishy predicament — whether it was, yeah, someone like my punishment, I appreciate you — whatever it was that got you into this position, I care about it, and there are things that need to be discussed, processed, you got to move forward out of those things. But right now, all it takes is for you to turn to God in the midst of your predicament and look toward him.

The psalmist says, in the midst of a difficult battle, he says, "I lift my eyes to the hills where my help comes from. " This is why he says it, because he recognizes that in the midst of a difficult scenario, it is important to look to the only one who can redeem you out of that difficult scenario.

Yes, there are good habits to acquire in your life. Yes, there are good people to surround yourself with in your life. Yes, there are things that you can do to make your life a little bit better. But when you turn to Jesus, he doesn't just resolve the symptoms, he resolves the deeper problem.

And when you come to him and look up to him, he can take you into this place — you can't get yourself there, only he can.

And I love that from the inside of a fish, God will hear our prayers. This is what it says: Jonah prayed to the Lord God, he says, "In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. In my distress I called out, and he answered me. "

Yes, I would love to reach out to the Lord in the midst of my success, or when I'm living in excess — I would love that to be the time that I reach out to God. I would love for everything to be perfect in my life, and I still look up to him and live in gratitude for all of the things that he has given me, and I'm working toward it. The Holy Spirit, by that power — sanctification, right, that's what we call it, the process of being made whole in Christ Jesus — sanctification is happening for me.

I'm better than I was in eighth grade. But everybody, look at your neighbor, say it's hard, it's hard. Ain't none of you perfect — sorry, brought my Southern drawl out, I was in Birmingham this week, sorry, I apologize — none of you are perfect, and I am not perfect. So sometimes, oh, and I wish it wasn't this way, it's in my distress that I call out to God.

That was me this week.

In my distress I was calling out to God — my stress about some things in me, my distress about the organization I'm trying to lead, my distress about people in bad positions that I wish I could help, but I can't physically help them, they need the Lord to do something for them. It is in the midst of my distress that I pray to him. And I want you to know this, because sometimes we give an excuse that's not really that helpful. We say, "Well, I don't want to just call on God or ask for help because I put myself in this position.

" No, no, no, no, that's not helpful, that's a lie straight from the pits of hell. Regardless of how low you are in your life, whether it's somebody else's fault or your fault, if you look up to God and you pray to him, he will hear you and answer you.

The text goes on, and he says, "From the deep, in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. " We see in Jonah a man who literally put himself in this position — like, there's no apologetic out there for Jonah, not at all. All you have to do is go back to chapter one — Jonah put himself there, Jonah put himself there — and now God hears him when he prays. You're not Jonah.

I think you're probably in a better position than Jonah. God has given you a calling, and you can turn back right now and you can look again to him.

It continues, in verse three, says, "You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me, all your waves and breakers swept over me. " And I've read this year after year, and when I'm reading the prayer, I tend to read it like I'm reading a Psalm, and like everything's good that comes out of Jonah's mouth in this moment. But that verse is funny — can we toss up, I think it's verse three, can we toss up verse three — he says, "You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas. " I found that interesting.

Did God hurl Jonah into the depths? No, it was a group of syrophenician sailors who didn't want to throw him into the depths, but Jonah's like, "This is the only way, guys, you got to throw me in" — just in chapter one. And on first glance you don't see what's happening here, but on second glance you're like, no, he's praying and he's frustrated at God because he feels like it's God's fault that he's in his predicament.

But it's not God's — it's not God's fault that sin is in the world. It's not God's fault that somebody else made a decision that impacted you negatively. It's not God's fault that you made a decision that makes you feel guilty and filled with shame and that prevents you from coming to God. Like, that's not God's fault, I want to be very clear.

It stinks, whatever it is that you did, or whatever it is that was done to you, it's terrible, it's horrible, whatever got you to this low point is not good.

And I say this all the time, it's not all your fault. But it's interesting that Jonah put himself in this position and has the audacity to blame God in his prayer to God. Don't feel bad, though, because God even heard that. If you approach God frustrated at God, he still hears it.

He still loves you enough to draw you to himself.

Can you imagine how frustrated you would be at Jonah if you had asked him to go to the Ninevites and he didn't, and then he had the audacity to complain to you about falling out of a boat? That's how I feel sometimes when people post on Facebook and they blame the church for something that somebody did. -oh, that's how I feel when someone posts about something bad that sometimes they did, or you go to the church, you took one glance and you said, "I didn't like this one thing, " so you pull out, and then you go and live your life blaming God for something he didn't have anything to do with. And if you would simply — if you would look again, if you would look, I want to encourage you, it might not be this church for you, it might be another church, but don't give up, because there's a church out there that God is going to speak to you through, and it's going to make all the difference for you.

If you looked once and it didn't work out, just remember, me and Hannah, we wouldn't have got together if someone didn't tell me to look twice, look again, because God has given us the church, the body of Christ, as an instrument through which the world can be blessed.

And sometimes it is a fish, but it's still a blessing and provision for this world. And sometimes people are frustrated and they're a struggle to deal with, and they make you so mad, and make you feel guilty, and they get you into this place where you're like, "I love Jesus, but I don't like his people. " Look again, look again, it's worth it. It would be a benefit to you if you looked again.

I didn't know I was going to go there, but I'm trying to speak directly to some people in this room. There are a lot of times in my life where I could have blamed the church, and probably did.

It's frustrating, oh my gosh, people are people. You got some people acting like Jonah, some people acting like syrophenician sailors, some people skinning people alive on Facebook like the Ninevites. You got people that are difficult to deal with. That's why God put in place provision through his son Jesus, so that we can proclaim not ourselves but his glory, his power, his resurrection from the grave.

That's why Jesus is at the center of our lives — we're not proclaiming ourselves, we're proclaiming Jesus crucified and resurrected.

So I don't want to blame God for something he didn't do, but even when I do blame God, he has the posture of Jesus on the cross who says, "Forgive them, they know not what they do. " Even when they're hostile, he wants to break down the dividing wall of hostility and draws to himself. God is in the business of redeeming us to himself, and recognizing that even in our weakness he can reveal himself to us. Even in our frustrations, he can speak directly to that heart of resistance against him and redeem even that.

He does it with Jonah, he'll do it with you. And when Jonah prayed to him, he heard his prayer, and when you pray to him, regardless of what you've done, he will hear your prayer.

Seek him where he can be found, and he will be found by you. And then he says, in verse four, "I said, I have been banished. " Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, you've been banished? No, you've been called, you've been set.

Apart, you've been. You've been considered a prophet in the land of Israel.

Yeah, in the land of Israel you've been set apart for the glory of God in the land of the Assyrians, in the capital city, the great city of Nineveh. All the human beings in Nineveh, the kings, rulers, and their cattle, as it would say in chapter 4, all of that stuff, like that. Like, I set you apart. You haven't been banished.

You took yourself out.

But Jonah — even though he gets a little off there, and a theologian might disagree with me, I think Jonah is being a little bit like internal here —, but then it says, "Yet I will look again. " Yet I will look again. Blame doesn't help anybody, does it? You blaming yourself — it didn't get you closer to God.

Adam and Eve blaming themselves, it got them hiding in bushes. Get out of that and recognize that the Lord loves you and has a calling on your life.

And even if you feel like you've been banished, or "I've done too much wrong, " I've heard it said my whole. "I've done too much wrong to trust in Jesus, he wouldn't want me, I'm bound straight for the pits of hell. " Nah, he didn't banish you. You can't banish you, unless you resist his grace when it comes to you.

And Jonah is sitting there in the belly of the fish, which is God's grace manifested in a fish — that's God's grace for Jonah — and he's sitting there and he looks again toward, he says, your Holy Temple. The impetus of this message is not to just talk mess about Jonah, it's to identify with where he found himself, recognize the pit that we are in, and look to God again to redeem us and to bring us out of that pit.

Simply put, is to make a decision to come to God for the first time, or to go back to God if you've done it in the past but you've pulled away. And he says, "The engulfing waters threaten me, the deep surrounded me. " I'm in verse 5. "Seaweed was wrapped around my head.

To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever.

But you, Lord my God, you brought my life up from the pit."

And if you can get to the place right now where you're seeing whatever the fish is for you as a redemption move of God, then all you have to do is look up. The Bible says, "Seek me where I may be found, and I will be found by you. " Just look up. Just lift your eyes.

The Bible says — Paul says it in Ephesians, I believe, I could be wrong on this — he says, "Open the eyes of my. " he says, pray that the Lord would open the eyes of your heart, that when you look again you would see the manifold riches of God's nature in your life, that you would look past some of the barriers that had been put up that prevent you from seeing God. For Jonah, he had idols.

If I just go further, it says in verse 7, "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your Holy Temple. " Verse 8, he says this: "Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. "

It's such an interesting thing that he says — he says, "Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them. " I. I think the idol for Jonah was probably a mindset. It was a mindset, that started during the 8th century before Christ, but continued to amplify all the way into the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st century before Christ, when the second temple was built.

And it's a mindset that says Israel — to them — was the most important thing, and the Ninevites were irrelevant.

To Jonah, it was a mindset of ethnocentricity that Jonah had, that forgot the call of God to Israel to be a blessing to the rest of the world. And I know that's nuanced and historical, but for you, what are the idols that are preventing you from understanding the love of God? It could be something as simple as, "You know, I. I.

I don't feel like it. " I think one of the plagues in the American church is that we think we can introduce God into our life as one small aspect.

I call it "Christian Hinduism, " where you introduce God into one small aspect of your life, invite them into your circle, if you will, and don't give them the rest of your circle. In fact, what God's calling us into is to step into what he's called us to, not introduce them to what we feel like doing. And I think that's the plague of the American church — we are apathetic to the things of God, and we want him to just be a little hobby on the side that makes us feel better once a week. If that's you, I mean, hear it, receive it, that's a big plague — it's apathy.

But I think there are other things that are idols for us.

The American dream — which a lot of people are saying are dead these days because of inflation — but the American dream was an idol for so many people. It's "make enough money, ", "so that you can marry a good person, and then have enough kids so that then you can retire, and then those kids have kids, and you have grandkids that you can spend time with. " That's amazing, right? That sounds like an awesome life.

But for many, that becomes the idol — the very barrier that keeps them from a deeper relationship with God. And I want to be very clear, I want all of those things I just listed, but without God, and without the love of God that comes from a deeper connection with God, they're worthless.

Amen? They. They don't — it's crazy to say, right — but if you don't have God, the direction your kids are going to go, the direction your marriage is going to go, the direction your work is going to go — all of those things, they take you out of a place where you have the love of God. And so you still feel anxious and filled with dread when you wake up in the morning, and you might feel happy from time to time, but without God's peace, you are.

You are in trouble.

That's why I often pray — and I don't pray this very specifically, so I don't want you to think, "My man, I'm going to a different church where the pastor prays good things on my life" — sometimes I pray that the Lord would send you a fish, so that you would have faith. Because God is so loving to Jonah that he says, "I see that there's a barrier between me and him. There is hostility developed, and it's this idol, or these idols, that he has put in front of me. And so, in order to remove those idols, I'm going to put him into a cramped, compact position where he has to.

He has to do something.

He can continue to be stubborn unto death, but if I can push him into this cramped position, maybe, just maybe, he will seek me and find me and recognize the love that I have. " And maybe these people in this room, if they get a fish, if they get that type of provision, then that fish will spit them out in a place where they're serving me, where they're focused on me — but the idols are less important than me. Because I'll say this: God wants you to have kids if that's in his plan for your life. God wants you to have a spouse if that's in his plan for your life.

God wants you to work consistently if that's his plan for your life. God wants you to do so many of these things that I just listed.

But what he wants more than any of those things — which is why he will put those things in disarray if you're not close to him — he wants you to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, so that he can be the one that adds that provision to your life. He wants you to seek first his kingdom. And so Jonah — I love this — he prays, he looks again, and recognizes the reality that those who cling to things that don't have eternal value or weight are worthless. And so he encourages, in this text I believe God encourages us as well, to turn toward God's love and to offer our bodies, as Paul would say, as living sacrifices.

And we don't offer our body as living sacrifices for salvation — that happens very simply when we confess that Jesus is Lord, that he died on the cross and rose from the grave.

It comes out of the recognition that he has saved us, and so we live a life in sacrifice to him because we're grateful for what he's done. And he says he'll do what he has vowed — from when he became a prophet, he says, "What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, salvation comes from the Lord. " And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

I'm not saying it'll happen this way for you, but what I know is, if God allowed you to be put into a position where you're struggling enough to make the decision to come here today, then I think he did it on purpose — not so that you would just flail in whatever fish you're floating in or sitting in, but that you would have faith, maybe for the first time today. That's why you were in that hard position.

But in order to do that, you might need to look again. Isaiah 53 gives us an image of the Messiah, and it says in verses 1 through 3 that he looks different than you might expect. He wasn't in shapely form. He wasn't anyone that people would look at and write home about.

It says —, some translations would say — he's not necessarily attractive.

And there are a lot of things about this faith that might not seem attractive at first glance. But when you look again, you recognize that many of the things that the world would consider foolish, God is utilizing to draw people to himself. And so I want to encourage those of you right now who came in here and you have not encountered Jesus in a real way, you've not tasted and seen that the Lord is good — I want to invite you to look again to his temple up in heaven, where Jesus is seated at God's right hand, God the Father's right hand, and look to him and commit to him with your life. And so if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes — there are people in here who need to trust in Jesus for the first time.

But to make it as easy as possible for you to remove any barrier, we are all in this room going to pray this prayer out loud, for you who are praying it for the first time.

So if you could repeat after me, you might say: "God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross. I believe. Died on the cross.

And rose from the grave.

From the grave. Forgive me of my sin. Forgive me of my sin. Help me turn toward you.

Help me turn toward you.

And I will follow you. I follow, for the rest of my life. For the rest of my life. Today is the day.

Today is the day that I look up. "

God, we love you and we thank you for this moment, for many people in this room who are trusting in you.

It's in Jesus's name that we pray. And God's people said — amen. If that was you, can we celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus? Please, please, please, if that was you, let us know about it.

Just fill out that connection card and check the box that says "I have decided to follow Jesus. " I'll reach out to you this week and help you take your next step toward God.

And for the rest of you, it might be time to look again. And by "look again, " it doesn't mean look once and say, "Ah, didn't fit. " It means continue to gaze upon the beauty of God. And I promise you, as you seek him in his word, as you seek him through his people, he will reveal himself to you.

But as you search for him, do so with integrity. Don't do so looking for a way out, but looking for a way up.

And for those of you who are ready to do that, we'll continue to be in prayer for you. But let's continue worshipping our God with one last song.