John: Hey, friends. Welcome back to the Eagle Community Church of Christ podcast. My name is John Gunter. This week, I was actually off. I was well, I say I was off.
I was in another state preaching to some more people. So that was a lot of fun. Jordan Santos, our youth minister, stepped in and he continues with part 5 of our fix your focus series. And so he's talking about Jonah today. We hope it blesses your life.
As we say each time, if there's anything we can do, we'd love to help you out. Come see us sometime.
Jordan: I thought it would be a little ironic if instead of talking about fixing your focus, we took a break from focusing and talked about something else. So whenever I asked John if he wanted to he wanted me to continue with this, or if he wanted me to do something else, not step on his turf, you know, and he said, do whatever. I said, well, yeah. If we're talking about focusing, it would it would be really ironic if we just stopped focusing on focusing for a little bit. So, we'll continue with that, today.
But first, I wanted to take a moment, to offer some sort of encouragement, a challenge. It's not a hard thing, but, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot this week because I was reminded of something from my past. So, back in elementary school, I remember a specific Wednesday night where my mom and I got into a big argument because I did not want to go to church. Okay? And, we were a family that we went every time the doors were open.
That's just how it was. It's what we expected, and I did not want to go on that Wednesday night because there was a new Disney Channel original movie premiering at 7 PM. And this was before there were streaming services, beef we didn't have a TiVo in our house, and, the way that Disney advertises these new movies is that, this is one big event you have to watch right now. And from my perspective, I had no idea when it was gonna be back on TV again. And from my mom's perspective, it was like, I'm sure it'll be on tomorrow.
But I did not want to miss the premiere. And, obviously, we went to church still. My mom wasn't gonna let me skip church for a Disney Channel movie premiere. But we went to church anyways, and I go, and I'm pouting the whole time. I have a frown on my face.
I am not in it. I was a big old stinker. And after church, I was ready to get home to see if I could catch some of it, which the logic of that is crazy. Why would I want to catch the end of a movie if I was so worried about seeing it? You know, that doesn't that didn't make any sense.
But, I was ready to get back home, and an older lady at church that I had a good relationship with, she'd been very kind to me. She came up to me afterwards, and she said that, she had been thinking about me this week, and she found this in the newspaper and wanted to it to me. And it was a coupon for a free ice cream at Dairy Queen. I don't remember if she had one for my other 4 siblings as well or if it was just me, but I it brightened my day. I was so happy, and, like, imagine if I had not gone to church that week.
But every time I think about that, first of all, I don't even remember the movie. That's how impactful that was on my life. Right? But I remember, what this this kindness that this woman had shown me. And from my little perspective, church, we view church very differently.
I view church as a disruption to what I had going on in my life. But she viewed church as an opportunity to love and encourage people that she cared about. Right? And I think the easy thing is to view church as an interruption of something you just have to do. You got so many other things going on.
Like, oh, I have to go to church too. Right? But I want to encourage all of us to take this time together as an opportunity to, do as she did and to love and encourage and bless the people that are here. Right? Because we know that we're called to do those things.
And how could we possibly expect to love and encourage and bless people outside of the church building if we don't do it in here first. Right? And so I want to encourage us to take this opportunity for as special as it really is because, oftentimes, I think it's easy to take that for granted. Right? I've just been thinking about that a lot this week, and so I wanted to offer that up before we jumped into things.
Now to realign our focus, back to focus. We've been talking about fixing our focus the past few weeks, and John's done a really good job. And I've loved that he's kind of gone back to the same verse over and over again starting in Colossians 3. I'll read it for us real quick just to get us started. Since then, you have been raised with Christ.
Set your hearts on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. So, whenever I think about the contrast and the comparison between earthly things versus heavenly things, I'm reminded of just last year, I'm taken back to when we spent the whole year looking at the biblical narrative, as a complete story. Right?
We went all through the entire bible, and the kind of core of that curriculum that we went through is, finding an understanding between the upper story and the lower story. The lower story being things that are going on on earth, what's going on in our lives, what's going on right in front of us, and the upper story being what God is doing behind the scenes that we don't always necessarily understand. Right? And so that that idea of upper story versus lower story has always been kind of challenging for me emotionally because I think it's so easy to focus on things that are going down going on right in front of us, obviously. Right?
And it makes it almost impossible when we focus on that, to hear and to understand and to follow wherever it is that God is leading us. So, I wanted to share an example in the bible of this. I didn't want to kinda keep going through what John was going through, but I also didn't want to completely turn away from this. So, I found an example that I, believe really hits home with this comparison, and we get to see it in action. So this example is found in the book of Jonah, and I guess you'll never guess who I'm gonna talk about from the book of Jonah.
So, Jonah. Right? I love using these, like, little children's book pictures. Jonah here has jeans and a sweater and a beanie on, and he's cooking inside the big fish, so that's fun for him. But, Jonah is a fairly short book.
I don't know if any of you, recognize it. It's only 47 verses long, which is shorter than a a lot of single chapters in the Bible. Right? But I love Jonah because I believe he's very relatable. Okay?
And, I got to know Jonah and his story really well, in college. So at OC, everybody has to take bible classes. It's Christian school. Everyone takes bible classes to graduate. But as a bible major, I obviously had to take some upper level courses that generic people didn't necessarily have to.
And so, one class that, bible majors had to take that other people didn't was called homiletics, which homiletics is just it's it was preaching class. It's the study in art of preaching. Right? And so, I was, I had to take homiletics 1 and 2. Most of my majors only had to take homiletics 1.
And I remember one time in homiletics 1 class, and if you know a college student, you know a lot of times they're shooting for the minimum. Right? They're just doing as much as they have to do to get the correct grade or whatever it is. Right? And so, obviously, in preaching class, we would have days where we would all preach together.
And, a lot of those preaching days were kind of defined by a time limit that you had to or a time minimum that you had to get to. Right? And so it was usually, like, 10 minutes, which is not even the length of a full sermon. Right? And so I remember one time a kid did not come prepared, and it was very obvious that he did not come prepared.
And so in order to meet his time minimum, he spent the first 7 minutes of his sermon praying. So he's he came up and said, before we get started, I wanna pray for, what I'm about to talk about. And he prayed for 7 minutes, and then he talked for 3 minutes about I don't even remember what it was. So that's, that was homiletics 1 class. Homiletics 2 class, not everyone had to take, but I did.
And, that class ended up being me, one other student, and the professor who happened to be the dean of the bible department. And, that was very intimidating for obvious reasons, not because he was a mean or scary guy. It was just because, oh, that's a lot of pressure. And, each week, so in homiletics 1, we would preach, like, once a month, and we'd work all month, working towards, like, having a preaching moment. In homiletics 2, we would preach every single week, And I would have to preach as if I was talking to a whole crowd, but it was, like, my one classmate and the, professor who was, you know, staring right at me, soaking up every word.
It's not like, you know, all of you are a very captive audience, but I'm sure in a couple minutes, some of you will doze off. No. He was he was locked in the whole time. Right? And so I couldn't get away with anything.
And so one thing that we did in homiletics too is we preached over Jonah, which there are 4 chapters in Jonah, but we spent half the semester in Jonah. And so, I had to spend 9 weeks preaching about Jonah, and there are only 4 chapters. So I had to attack it from different angles, really dig into it, so I became very familiar with the story of Jonah. And if through that, I realized, like, oh, he makes a lot of decisions that if I'm honest, like, I kind of you know, maybe not to say that I would make the same decisions, but I get it. You know?
And if you're reading a bible story and the character is making decisions that you kind of understand, maybe you should pay a little more attention to the message of the bible story. Right? And so, Jonah and I have had a lot of time together, and I realized how relatable he is. And so I want to take a minute to kinda walk through parts of his story. I'm not gonna go in detail over everything because even though it is short, it's it is long.
But starting from the beginning, we meet Jonah, in verse 1 knowing very little information about him other than the fact that God wants to talk to him. Right? He gives him a message saying that he wants to go to Nineveh to tell these people, to preach against them and to tell them that they need to change their ways. Right? So we learn when we meet Jonah in verse 1, and by verse 3, he's already running away from God.
How many of you have ever been given a responsibility that you immediately do not think you are able to handle? Right? I that happens to me all the time. And part of that is, you know, part of that is anxiety and not believing in myself. Part of that is thinking that I have so many other things going on, you know, all these excuses.
But, he he very quickly decides that this is god must have made a mistake, that this was not really for him, and so he tries to run away from god. Which if you think about the logic of that, it does not make sense to try to run away from a voice from the sky. Right? If God is talking to you, from heaven, how how are you gonna run away from that? I don't understand.
But, he gets on a boat, and avoids going to Nineveh. He's trying to go to Tarshish instead. And the reason he does not want to go to Nineveh. Nineveh is, the capital of Assyria, which was another nation, and they had a very very prominent reputation as a place filled with evil. So in, Colossians, when Paul lists all of the earthly things that we should be casting off, Nineveh could have, embodied all of those things.
You could say all those things about Nineveh. Colossians 35 through 10. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived, but now you must also rid yourself of all such things as these, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.
Do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. So all of those things could, describe Nineveh, and Jonah has decided that people who act that way, are scary, and they don't necessarily deserve my effort. Right? Which I get it. If you asked me to go into the most dangerous place in the world where everybody would hate me and hate everything I told them, that's not an appealing activity for me.
Right? I I totally understand his perspective. But he attempts to run away from God. He gets on a boat, sailing somewhere, the opposite direction. God sends a storm, to kind of stop the boat in its tracks.
The people throw him overboard when they realize that it's, it's Jonah's fault for what's happening, and a big fish comes and swallows him up. Does not digest him, but he stays inside for 3 days 3 nights. And while he's in, the fish, you know he has to be doing some serious, life judgment reflections. Right? So he's thinking about every mistake he's ever done.
You know what smells in there. You know? He doesn't know that he eventually gets out. Right? He's he thinks he's about to be digested, and so through all this thought and vulnerability that he has, he prays to God.
And chapter 2 is just his entire prayer. I won't through up read through all of it with you, but, it finishes like this, verse in verse 9, but I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say salvation comes from the Lord, and the Lord commanded the fish and have vomited Jonah onto dry land. And so Jonah finally through his after his 3 days of, thinking about what he had done, he finally praised to God and says, you know what, I'm going to do it.
I'll do whatever that you asked of me. I will, complete my vow that I have made to you. And I will tell the people in Nineveh that salvation comes from the Lord. And so, Lord says, okay. And he, spits him off onto dry land so he doesn't have much much more to travel, right?
And so Jonah gets to the city, and he, he goes around, he's telling the people that, what God wants them to do. 40 days in Nineveh will be over thrown. And from my perspective and my understanding, Jonah is doing this haphazardly with not all of his, emotions into it. He's probably very reluctant to still be doing this. He's like, oh, you should repent.
Oh, in 40 days. And, we've already established that Jonah does not really care about the Ninevites. He, at this point, he at least cares about fulfilling what God's acted asked of him to do, but he's still only doing it with half energy. Right? But surprisingly enough, the city immediately immediately turns their life around.
Other people heard him. They start, ripping off their clothes, putting on sack cloths. Word very quickly travels to the king, and the king makes a decree that they should follow god instead. And, I've never seen someone change so quickly, not and it's not a single person. It is an entire nation of people, even the king at the top of it all, immediately changes, and turns to God.
When God saw that they had turned it from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction that he had threatened. And so now the people of Nineveh are saved. They have a new relationship with God, and you would think that things are really going well, and Jonah would be happy that, he has accomplished his mission. But if you're looking in your bible and your bible has chapter headings, you may notice the heading for chapter 4 says Jonah's anger at the lord's compassion. He is not happy that God has been gracious to these people.
And, I don't think of myself as a person like that, but if I'm honest, there have been times where I have been upset that other people have been blessed in ways that I didn't think that they deserved. Right? There are times where someone is not a great person and they kinda figure it out, and I've been kinda rooting on their downfall because, I've been good with God this whole time. I've been following, the way that I should I should be following God, and, this person has lived a life full of sin, but all of a sudden, you know, God is cool with them. And that leaves a weird taste in your mouth sometimes, Starting in verse 4, I'm it's 11 verses long.
We're gonna read through this together. But Jonah but to Jonah, this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That I would that it excuse me. That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.
I knew that you are gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life for it is better for me to die than to live. But the Lord replied, is it right for you to be angry? Jonah had gone out and sat down, at a place east of the city where he made himself a shelter, sat in the shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. I think he was still hoping that God would change his mind and destroy the city.
Right? And so he wanted to get a good view. Then the Lord provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the plant. So he's angry about the city, but he's very happy about the plant.
But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm, which chewed up the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die and said, it would be better for me to die than to live. But Jonas but God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant? It is, he said.
And I'm so angry. I wish I were dead. This is so dramatic, by the way. But the lord said, you have been concerned about you have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend to it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight.
And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and so many animals. And so Jonah is so focused on the earthly things, whether within himself and his own pride that, he's holding close to, but also the earthly things that of Nineveh, how they were so evil, and idolatrous, and, how they were so far away from God. He was so focused on that that he did not recognize the earthly things that were going on in the way that God was willing to work with those people. Right? He said, you're upset about the plant that you had nothing to do with, but these people that, are my children that I have loved so dearly that are on the verge of past.
Right? I get really, you know, from ways that we felt in our past. Right? I get really there I there are so many times where I've been upset about things changing that I had nothing to do with. Right?
That I remember being so upset whenever my family decided to move from Texas to Oklahoma, that I was losing all these friends, but, it was something that was better for my family. And God did so much good through, that move and where we ended up and the people that we ended up meeting. But I was so focused on the things that were going on in my world from my perspective that I did not allow room to be happy about what God was doing in my life or other people's lives. Right? Jonah is a character that has a lot of emotions built up within him.
And that last verse, that is the end of the chapter. We don't get to hear about Jonah's redemption. If he comes around and agrees with God, we don't get to hear how he dies, if he dies just sitting in the desert, or what happens to Jonah. And I think I I remember being disappointed in that at some point, because, the way we look at stories, we wanna know the happy ending, or we wanna see a good win in the end. And we the book is named after Jonah, and we view Jonah as the main character.
And so when his story is not necessarily resolved fully, that gives us a little bit of a weird feeling. But I think the message of this is that, Jonah's personal goals did not supersede God's goals in the end. Right? And that was evident through every decision that happened. When Jonah tried to do something for himself or had a thought about himself or wanted to make a selfish decision, God's, will for him and the people of Nineveh kind of superseded all of those things.
Right? I want to kind of connect this to something that may be a little more close to home for all of you. How many of you are familiar with the hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900? None of you were alive. Even our oldest members were not alive yet.
I did the math. But in 1900, there was a, huge hurricane. This was before hurricanes were like a a well known thing in the United States, and they were not prepared for the hurricane that came and it devastated the city. Right? But, unfortunately, there were still signs that could have prevented a lot of the damage that happened yet, there were some people involved that through their similar pride and focus on earthly things, caused a lot of life and damage to be lost.
So I'll give you a little bit of a history lesson. Don't fall asleep. I promise it is relevant. But, so September 7, 1900, okay, there was a hurricane that hit Galveston. But that morning, there had been a storm warning from the USWB, which is the United States weather bureau, had, kind of predicted that there was gonna be a storm coming to the area.
But this is Galveston. They were used to having storms, you know, it would it would it would flood sometimes. Maybe there would be heavy rain, but, the city was kinda built to deal with floods like that. You know? They had raised up sidewalks that kind of allowed for things to flood and drain well.
And so no one was really worried. One person was especially not worried, and it was the, kind of the head of the USWB office in Galveston. His name was Isaac Klein. Okay? Remember that name?
I'll say it a few times. Isaac Klein, he was, the head of the department in Galveston, and so when he got word from his higher ups, from the national office, he goes and he checks his he goes through his own procedures checking the the weather and how things are the tides are moving that morning. I don't know the science behind it all. But he goes through his process, and he confirms that, you know, there will be a storm that comes today. But, again, he was not worried, and he did not think that, he should cause panic among the people because he didn't think that it could grow beyond just a normal storm that they'd seen before.
Albert Klein might have been a little biased. Almost 10 years earlier, he had written an article article about how impossible it would be for a hurricane to form and attack Galveston, which is insane to say now. Right? It would be impossible for a hurricane to form and attack Galveston, even calling it, quote, an absurd delusion that a hurricane could come and hit Galveston. Right?
There there had even been groups of people that were advocating to build a seawall. You know, Galveston has a seawall now. It didn't have the point. And so there were people that were advocating that they should build something like that, and he publicly opposed them, and put a stop to their their calls for that. And so, again, he's and he said it would be impossible.
It would, hurricane would never hit Galveston. And so it's safe to say that Klein would not admit, that a storm warning might possibly lead to a hurricane even if signs report, pointing to it happening. Another important layer to, the whole mess of it all is that, the nation of Cuba, who was at the time, under control of the United States, had had some pretty, nasty storms a couple days earlier. And the meteorologist in Cuba had, telephoned the, the national office of the USWB and told them, hey. We've had crazy storms.
It's coming towards, it's going through the Gulf of Mexico and miss, mixed with the warm waters there. We think it'll form into a hurricane. You should tell the people, along the coast, especially in Galveston to evacuate because the storm is coming, and it'll be it'll be really great. But the but Isaac Klein's boss, his name is Willis Moore. He was the head of the USWB in, Washington DC.
He did not like the Cubans. He had a very negative view of the Cubans. He did not think the Cubans were as smart as the American meteorologist. And so he declined to pass that information along to, the people of Galveston. So there are a couple layers of things that could have allowed the people to evacuate in time that did not.
Even on top of that. Oh, I was gonna put a picture up there, but I haven't yet. But so far, we've had pride both pride, the pride of Isaac Klein and his own biases, and prejudice of, Willis Moore, prevent people from hearing this life saving news. I didn't put a picture of Pride and Prejudice up on the board, but you can imagine that right now. Isaac Klein had been ignoring all these signs, even though his own observations were telling him differently.
On top of that, his younger brother, who was also a meteorologist, came to him that same morning and said, hey. It. So there have been so many opportunities to save the lives of these people, but that did not happen. Later that day, the streets began to flood, the winds came, and the city was torn apart. Almost 12,000 people died in that storm, which was about 16% of the population of the city.
It was devastated. It looked like this, obviously. This is not the worst of the damage that was done. Sorry. I'm still getting over a cough.
But here we see in even our own local history instances where being so focused on earthly things, whether that's your pride, your biases, your prejudices, your malice. All those things can lead us so far away from the truth. And in Jonah's experience, luckily, God stepped in, the people listened, and Jonah was willing enough to at least tell them. Right? But here we see how drastic it can really be if we allow our own perspective and our own comfort and our own focus on everything else, distract us from what's really going on.
Right? When we're talking about fixing our focus, I think that, from my perspective, as someone who has ADHD, I grew up and it was really hard for me to focus on things. Either, there were so many things going on and my brain could not decide on what to focus on, or I would hyper fixate on things to where I would miss other things that were important. Right? And so fixing our focus is not just I'm focused on evil things all the time.
Right? Or I'm or I'm focused on, selfishness necessarily. Sometimes it is way less sinister or evil than that, but it's still equally not as holy. Right? I think my charge for all of us is that whenever we're going through our everyday lives, whenever we're interacting with the people around us, whenever we have our own things going on, so easy to fall into the temptation of thinking that whatever we having have going on is right and the most important.
And whenever we neglect the needs of others or the well-being of others or, concern of others, it leads us down a negative path, obviously, but it can also have the effect like it did in Galveston, where it can lead other people to hurting as as well. And so focus is something that is hard to grasp, but I think it's easy whenever we have our anchor in the right place. Right? It's not always easy to discern, but whenever we have God as the center of it all, I think he helps us to figure it out, I believe. And so, today, my prayer for all of you as we close this morning is to find God in the center of all the things that are going on and allow that to be and I'm not gonna say your focus because, duh, that's what we're talking about.
But allow that to be your tether to all the craziness that goes on in the world. Because the further you get away or the looser you grasp onto him, the easier it is to get lost in everything that's around you. Right? And I don't think any of you are evil or malicious, but I do think that we are all a little bit lazy sometimes. And so, hopefully, this can be a reminder to grab on tight to the one who knows better than all of us.
This morning, if, you have been struggling with that, if you've been, looking for a place to start, if you felt like you've drifted too far away from God, if you felt like there are so many things going on around you, you have no idea what should be the center of your attention, That's exactly, like I said earlier, what this meeting should be about, what these people should be about. We should be about encouraging those, to, being an example for each other, for lifting each other up, and loving each other as well as we possibly can. This morning, if you have a need, there are a lot of people who are gonna care about that need, and so we'd love if you'd bring that, forward this morning. If you want to, commit your life to Jesus, if you have not been baptized and you want to, finally have that tether in your life, we would love to, pray with you and make that happen this morning. If you have any other needs or anything that you'd like to bring for the church, now is the time.
It's coming.