Nearly died and really beached sermon;What to do when life takes you under (2-4)

Title: Nearly died and really beached

Theme: Your life is the message, the God of the second chance

Text Jonah 3

Goal: Help the community open up to the God of the second chance by moving from sin toward God through grace.

Introduction

Me: orientation: (find common ground with the audience)

Have you ever had what one might call a crash and burn experience?

I suppose it is like jumping off a cliff hoping to fly only to experience a real close visual of fast approaching ground.

Jonah experienced it

I have experience it

Maybe you have too.

We: Identification (Make it clear that you struggle)

Focus can be extremely important. That becomes more difficult when following is cluttered with concerns of trust.

·        It breaks marriages when one or the other can’t be trusted

·        When someone hurts, steals, or is abusive

·        Where trust has been destroyed through damaging experiences in the past.

Focus becomes difficult when our vision is blurred.

·        With obstacles that compete for our vision

·        Uncertain of what we see

·        Where are heart is

·        Where we look.

( illustration of how we aim a camera) Tom and Inhwa Costea

How are you focusing upon God?

God: illumination (The goal here is to resolve the tension by pointing people to God)

I.            God has a plan

1 Then the Lord spoke to Jonah a second time: 2 “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you.”  3 This time Jonah obeyed the Lord’s command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. (NLT)

A.     Intimacy breads understanding with God

1.    How intimate are you with God?

2.    Obviously Jonah had a relationship to have God give him a message for Nineveh. ( twice1:1; 3:1)

3.    Whatever your understand there was a relationship to hear the instructions of God.

4.    Do you have that type of hearing or do you depend on others to tell you?

B.    Everyone is watching

1.    I think what we miss as Christians is that we all have influence upon others. What do others see?

·        Touchy feely couples sometimes it is a front… have to see them in various settings.

·        Love relationship with God

·        Better to be who you are everywhere and work from there.

C.    Your life is the massage (words too)

·        Our life is our message

·        Words too!

II.          Sin

A.     Define sin

4 On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!”

1.    Harpers: sin, that which is in opposition to God’s benevolent purposes for his creation. According to the biblical writers, sin is an ever-present reality that enslaves the human race and has corrupted God’s creational order. Sin is a religious concept. All sin is ultimately against God, God’s laws, God’s creation, God’s covenant, and God’s purpose. It is the basic corrupting agent in the universe.

2.   Perhaps the most basic is a Hebrew word meaning revolt or transgression and indicating a deliberate act of defiance against God. This lies at the heart of Genesis 3:1-7… humans to be like gods.

3.   All sin is idolatry attempting to replace the creator with someone or something else.

Sin is connected with:

·        Connected with blasphemia to insult God

·        Connected with deceit, promises to do what it can’t deliver

·        Sinis reaching after pleasure

·        Sin is connected with lawlessness

·        Sin is connected with injustice, unrighteousness, evil

·        Sin causes us to worship self, forget to serve God

·        Sin is to accept the worlds standards instead of Gods, judge things as man see them not as God does.

B.    Personal life

Where is it in your life?

For Nineveh…

8 People and animals alike must wear garments of mourning, and everyone must pray earnestly to God. They must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence.

Where is it for you…

Too busy

Too many other gods… more important

Money, comfort… pleasure

C.    Church life

Gossip

Comfort

Wanting the church to do for us what we should be to the world.

III.        Second chance

10 When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.

A.     God has always had a plan Psalm 139:13-16

1.    God has a wonderful plan for your life.

2.    Our life becomes the message

B.    How we live what we say

1.    God desires for each of us to walk with him.

2.    Our words, action… God wants to use

3.    The God of the second chance can use all in your life for his glory

C.    Heart changes bring transformation

1.    Our lives grow and change through the success and failure; obedience and sin.

2.    If we give our lives to him…

3.    We will find meaning and joy…

4.    Touch the world around us.

5.    Believing in God produces action

You: Application (tell people what to do with what they have heard)

God has a plan and wants the best for you.

God of the Second Chance

Believe and do

Your life is the message

We Inspiration is an emotion identify, vision casting

To follow God where we may write a page but gratification is beyond our life time.

That is powerful struggle in a world that wants gratification now.