Turn the Bibles this afternoon to Jonah chapter 1.
Jonah chapter one. Man, that's not fair.
I don't think my dad wants to get his job taken for me.
Preaching too good. So he's trying to get me to cry
before I start. But that's good.
It's a good service this morning.
One thing I want to remind you of before I start this afternoon
is thank God for our pastor. He does.
He's done so much work to, to he's poured so much work into
me. But if you could see how much he
does for this church throughout the whole week and on Sundays, I
mean, getting here early all the time to make sure everything's
ready. He does so much that nobody else
gets to see. And I'll tell you what you see
is what you get. He's he's the same here as he is
at home and anywhere else. So thank God for him.
I also thank God for him being my dad because last night I had
to find out the hard way how to cut my own hair and it didn't go
as well as I was thinking it was.
I got down to here and I was thinking, wow, I'm doing pretty
good. And then and then I went down to
the three and went all the way up here with it.
So he had to fix that. And you should have seen how
hard he was laughing last night. Couldn't believe it, but so I'm
thankful for him being there to be able to clean that up too.
And then also thank God for Johnny.
Thank him for for all the years that we we got to be here with
him. I'm only 16, but I count it one
of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to have gotten
to know Johnny and to be friends with him.
So I thank God for that. This afternoon Jonah chapter 1
And we'll start in verse one this afternoon.
It says, Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of
Amitai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh that great city, and cry
against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.
But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of
the Lord, and went down to Joppa.
And he found a ship going to Tarshish.
So he paid the fare thereof and went down into it to go with
them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
But the Lord sent out a great wind into the into the sea, and
there was a mighty Tempest in the sea, so that the ship was
like to be broken. Then the Mariners were afraid,
and cried every man unto his God, and cast forth the wares
that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them.
But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay
and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him,
and said unto him, What meanest thou, sleeper?
Arise call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us
that we perish not. Here in Jonah chapter 1, we see
that Jonah is on the run from God.
God told him to go to the people of Nineveh, which were the
Assyrians, and to preach repentance to them and to try to
get them to turn away from all the sin that they were in before
it was too late, before God had to destroy them.
And as I said, the people of Nineveh were the Assyrians.
They were known for their torture tactics.
And I think that's one of the reasons why Jonah didn't was not
all that enthusiastic to go see them.
They were known for for torturing people.
And, and I think another reason Jonah didn't want to go was
because, as we'll see you later on, he was, he was a little bit
selfish, but these people were not the type of people don't
want to be messed with. They were they were so to to
give you an idea of how crazy they were, they would, one of
the things that they would do would be to RIP the skin off of
people while they were still alive.
And then they would impale people.
They were crazy and they were not the people you want to be
mess you want to mess with. So we see in this passage that
Jonah essentially backslides away from God and we find him in
a boat headed the opposite direction from Nineveh.
Now from Joppa, which was his launch point.
Tarshish, which is where he was going, was 2500 miles away,
while Nineveh was only 550 miles away.
It took him way more effort and he used way more resources to go
away from God than if he had just stayed and done what God
wanted him to do. But anyway, we find Jonah in the
bottom of the ship that's on its way to Tarshish and he's asleep.
The shipmaster comes to him and says, what meanest thou?
O sleeper, arise, call upon thy God.
If so be that God will think upon us that we perish not.
The Solomon message this afternoon comes from this
passage and Jonah one verse 6. O sleeper, arise, O sleeper,
arise. Let's pray and then we'll get
into the message this afternoon. Your father, thank you for this
day. Thank you for the service and
thank you for just the the blessing you gave us of, of
being able to meet here this afternoon and this morning as
well. Pray that you keep everybody
safe as they're travelling home this afternoon.
Pray especially for Brother Justin as he's heading back up
to college. Pray that you keep him safe.
And then also be with Brother Johnny as he's going to
California. Pray that you just keep him safe
with that as well. Pray that you'd be with this
message. Pray that it would touch the
hearts of the people that are here and that we'd be able to
learn something from the life of Jonah this afternoon.
Pray Jesus give us a good rest of our day-to-day in Jesus name,
Amen. I want to start before I start
into the points, I want to say the message I have for you this
afternoon is a lot similar to the kind of the kind of what we
heard through the Bible conference and even what we
heard this morning some. But I think God's laid it on my
heart to preach this and, and I just, I hope that it will maybe
maybe when you're hearing these things again, will will touch
your heart in a different way. So the first point I have for
you this afternoon is what meanest thou, O sleeper?
What meanest thou, O sleeper? Why are you backsliding?
Jonah can be compared to a good number of Christians today.
They're they've backslidden away from God and they're spiritually
asleep. So what does backsliding look
like? It comes and oftentimes it comes
in the form of excuses. Do you find yourself saying,
well, just a little bit of this sin is OK or just a little bit
of that sin is OK? I'm fine with with doing this as
long as I can get away with it. Do you find yourself getting
away from from your daily Bible reading, from studying the Bible
and do you find yourself getting away from praying?
Do you find yourself making excuses for why you can't be in
the in the Bible and praying? Do you find yourself making
excuses for why you can't go to church?
You find yourself acting and dressing more like the world and
listening to the things that the world is promoting.
If you're, if you're doing these things, it's a pretty good
indication that you're backsliding away from God.
If you're not going forward for Christ, then you are going
backward. And, and brother David Cloud on
his year long discipleship course that we've been going
through on Wednesday nights, he gave this illustration.
The Christian life is a lot like paddling upstream in a, in a
kayak or a canoe. It's hard sometimes to paddle
upstream, but the moment you stop going forward is the, is
the moment you start going backwards.
And, and that's, that's the way it is with the Christian life
that you can keep going forward for Christ, but the moment you
stop is the moment that you're going to start backsliding away
from him. So turn in your Bibles to 1st
Corinthians chapter 10. First Corinthians chapter 10, We
have no excuses for backsliding. God has saved us.
He's done something that that we can't do for ourselves.
He's done something that no one else can do for us.
He paid. He died on the cross to pay for
our sins so that we can go to heaven with Him and so that we
can have a relationship with Him on this earth.
Shouldn't that make us want to live for Him?
Shouldn't that make us want to serve Him?
Shouldn't that fact alone keep us from backsliding?
First Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 13 says this.
There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to
man, but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be
tempted above that you're able, but will with the temptation
also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear.
God tells us in this verse that he'll go through temptation with
us. He'll give us what we need.
So when we're tempted to, to do things that will make his
backslide away from him, he gives us strength and he'll go
through the temptations with us. So we see that we have no
excuses for backsliding, but then we also have no excuses for
being self-centered. Jonah was very self-centered in
the way that he didn't necessarily want the people of
Nineveh to repent and, and to get right with God.
And, and we should also not be self-centered because again,
Christ has done so much for us and we're, we're in such a great
debt to him. We should be humble, knowing
that we're nothing without Christ, but also we should want
to serve him because of all he's done for us.
So we've seen that it makes no sense to be in Jonah's position
of backsliding. He was asleep.
But my second point is this. Arise, arise.
We live in a time when we need Christians to wake up.
We need Christians who will get in the fight.
We're in a fight for souls. We're in a fight against sin.
We're in a fight against the devil.
It's not a time to sit back and relax.
It's a time to wake up and start fighting.
We need Christians who will not back down from their fight.
We see too many, especially young people who grow up in
churches just like this that are giving up everything that
they've, they've ever been taught and everything they ever
have known. And, and they're, they're
backsliding. And, and that's, that's not the
type of Christian we need today. We need people who will stand up
and fight in our churches. But then secondly, we need
churches to wake up. Churches have fallen asleep.
They've gotten so close to the world with their with the
pastors and with the the music groups that they have in and
it's just, it's crazy. But, but churches used to lead
their communities and and now they're one good musician away
from being just like the world. But but now they're, they're
more than they're just a little more than a feel good speech on
a Sunday morning for a couple minutes after an hour long rock
concert. It's time for churches to stand
up and to fight again for the cause of Christ and we need to
be a church that does that. We need to be fighting and we
need to be always going forward for the cause of Christ.
We must seek to stand up once again and to make a difference
in our community and not try to fit in with what the world is
with is pushing. We need to stand up and fight
and we need to lead as many people to Christ as we can with
the time that we have. But then thirdly, we need to
arise now. You don't know how much time you
have left to serve God. We just came back from the, from
the funeral of, of one of my uncles.
He was 31 years old. You know you don't, you don't
know that you have 31 years old, that you have 31 years to do
something for Christ. You don't know when your last
breath on this earth will be. And then also another example,
one of my best friends at at school, Eli Freeman died when he
was thirteen years old, a tragic accident.
You, you don't know how much time you have.
So it's time now to wake up and to get in the fight.
We also we also know that Christ is coming back for us soon and
we don't know how soon that is. It keeps it's getting closer and
closer. So we need to we need to take
the opportunity that we have now to serve Christ and to and to
lead as many people to him as we can.
So we've seen that Jonah was asleep.
We've seen that who is in need of arising.
And then lastly, the shipmaster wisely told him to call upon thy
God. Call upon thy God.
The first thing this means for us is if you're, if you've never
accepted Christ as your Savior, we must call upon God for
salvation. Jonah and the men in the ship
needed God for salvation from the storm.
They couldn't do anything themselves to stop the storm
that they were in. And everyone today must do the
same #1 you're drowning in your sin.
If you have not accepted Christ as your Savior, you're drowning
in your sin. Christ cannot let sin come into
heaven. And, and, and this has been, I
guess, reiterated many times, but if you if, if you tell one
lie, what does everyone call you a liar?
If you steal one thing, what does everybody call you?
So if you commit one sin, then you are a Sinner and and one sin
is enough to keep us out of heaven because God is just, He's
perfect, He cannot let sin enter into heaven.
So number one, you are drowning in your sin #2 you must realize
you're in need of a Savior. You're in need of a life
preserver, so to speak. You can't get to heaven by
anything but Christ. And my dad's used this
illustration before. If someone throws you a life
preserver, you're not going to go do good works.
You're not going to pay any kind of money.
You're not going to lean back on all you've done.
You're just going to grab it. You reach out, you grab it and
you take the gift of the life preserver that's been thrown to
you. And Jesus Christ is that life
preserver. He, he died on the cross.
He paid for our sins so that we can go to heaven with him when
when we die. So once you realize that you're
drowning in your sin and that you can't get to heaven on your
own because of your sin, that you're, second, that you're in
need of a Savior, then third, you must call upon the Lord,
call upon Him to, to save you and to and to, to forgive you of
all your sins and to come into your heart and so that you can
have a relationship with Him and so you can go to heaven when you
die. But second, if you've already
called upon Him for salvation, which I hope many of you in here
have already done, we must call upon God for His power.
We must use God's power. We, we heard a message about
this recently, but, but God wants us to access his power.
It's, it's there, it's at our disposal and, and God wants us
to use it. How do we, so how do we access
his power? The first way is by getting in
his word. We, we gain power through
getting into his word and studying and, and seeing what he
has for us to do. And we gain encouragement and
power if you're reading the, the word of God.
But then second, we can access this power through prayer.
Pray and ask God every day to give him to give you his power.
Power to witness, power to be bold for him and, and, and power
to to get through the everyday. Neither Jonah nor the men with
him had any power to stop the storm.
God is the only one who could stop the storm for them, and
He's the only one from whom we can draw power.
So, so first, we must call upon him for salvation.
Second, we must call upon him for his power.
And then lastly, we must call upon God for strength.
Sometimes in the Christian life, we'll face difficulties.
It may be a loved one dying, it may be you're struggling with
sin or your backsliding away from God.
But we, we face difficulties in this Christian life.
We may lose a battle here and there.
And when these troubles come, we must lean on God for strength.
He'll, he'll give us strength. Second Timothy 17 says, For God
has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love
and of a sound mind. And he'll give us strength when,
when, when we need it and when we ask him for it.
So he will help us in our time of need.
And we can give everything that we have to God, knowing that he
can handle it. And so first, Peter 57, many of
you know this verse says casting all your care upon him for he
careth for you cast everything all your cares upon him.
He cares for you and he can he can handle any situation that
you ask him to help you with. So we can rely on God's strength
to help us get through this life.
So we've been able to learn, hopefully we've been able to
learn a lot from the from Jonah's life and from the lives
of the men that were on the ship with him.
In closing, we see that Jonah did wake up.
Thankfully, he it took took a lot of doing.
He had to get swallowed by a great fish and and then thrown
up. But he eventually he did what
God told him to do and we and we, we were able to see that he
was able to get a lot of good things done for Christ.
So how about you this afternoon? Are you asleep?
If you are that I beg of you to arise and to get in the fight.
It's time for for us as Christians to wake up to get in
the fight. Have you called upon God for
salvation? If if that's you, I beg you that
you get your eternity settled this afternoon.
You don't know how much time you have left on this earth, but
then remember that since you don't know how much time you
have left, serve God with all the time that you do have and
make today count for Christ. What a powerful lesson from the
life of Jonah. Are you asleep?
Then I beg of you, O sleeper, arise.
Let's pray your Father, thank you for this day again.
Pray that you'd just touch the touch the hearts and the lives
of the people here. Thank you for their willingness
to to be here and to to hear all the preaching that goes on in
this this church. I thank you for this church and
for the pastor. Pray that you'd continue to give
us power and help us to to be able to make an impact in this
community and in this world for you and also to be able to lead
many people to you in the time that we have.
Pray that you give us a good rest of our day today in Jesus
name, Amen.