 Tomorrow is September 11th, and it's a day I just can't forget. I was a student at New York University on that day, and so as we're going through the Book of Jonah, I'll also share with you what the Lord did on that day in my life. From selfish to sacrifice. I have a beautiful two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. She is a terrible two. She's gorgeous, and you don't have to teach kids to be selfish, do you? We'll even pray with her, and I'll be praying with her. She'll fold her hands, and she'll say amen at the end, and I'll say, Lord, help Abigail to share with her brother Gideon. Eyes open up, she stops the prayer and says, Daddy, I will not share. I will not share. I'm like, OK, Abby, well, let's keep praying and see if the Lord changes her heart. Daddy, I won't share. I'm like, all right, well, let's keep praying. We can pray, but I won't share. I'm like, OK, all right. She says all those words. She's an eloquent speaker, but she, yeah. So we're out of, we're just going to hope she grows out of it. She doesn't respond to discipline at this point, but, you know, it's not just kids, it's adults, right? Even adults in the moments that they want to be selfless are selfish a lot of the times. It was about eight years ago, I'm at Calvary Chapel Bible College for a Youth Workers Conference, and I see Shannon, this beautiful red-head youth worker. I said, well, I have to impress this one, don't I? And after a few days of getting to know her, I knew I wanted to get her to know her more. And so a bunch of mutual friends were going out to BJs for a bazookie. And I'm from New Jersey, so I didn't know how angelic and beautiful pizza cookies are. And so I'm looking at the menu, and I want to order all of them. And Shannon sitting next to me says, well, how about this, since you're so excited, you can have half of mine and I'll have half of yours, that way you can try two flavors. I knew I was going to marry her at that moment. And so I said, that's a great idea, thank you. So the pizza cookies come out, I have the normal one. I devour the entire cookie within a minute. And then I look and I'm so happy because I remember, I get half of her cookie too. So I eat half of her cookie after I have the last bite of it, I'm kind of hoping she'll give me a bit more. I said, oh no, we were supposed to share. She looks right at me and says, that's okay, you're selfish. I said, man, she's not going to want to marry a selfish person. I blew it, I ruined it. But I tricked her and we got married. Even when you want to be selfless, you end up being selfish. And we see it in the scriptures here, Jonah was a selfish prophet. He was a selfish prophet and this evening we're going to take a look at how God took selfish Jonah and made him live sacrificially. And this is a process that all believers have to go through at some point in their life is moving towards sacrificial living. And if we do that, and I hope that we can be motivated to do that even more, then we can live a life that's sacrificial that's going to cause people to look at the sacrificial one. It's going to cause them to look at Christ. And so that's our goal for this evening. Jonah chapter one verse one, we see that God's calling all of us daily to serve him somewhere. Verse one, he says, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitya, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it for their wickedness has come up against me. It says Jonah the son of Amitya, showing us that he's a real prophet. He's not just some guy that was having a bad day. Jonah the son of Amitya in 2 Kings 14, 25, we see was a real prophet that was used to assist the king of Israel to expand the borders to win some battles against the enemy because of the revelation that he got from God. So this, this prophet is used to talking to God and then fulfilling the mission. But on this day when God said, arise, what a privilege for God to talk to any of us and say, you know, get up, I've got a mission for you. Get up, today's not a normal day. Get up, there's ministry to be done. And I want you to go to Nineveh. And that was something that seemed to bother, to bother Jonah. He was just supposed to go there and cry out against it because they were wicked, pretty typical prophet stuff, and yet he didn't want to. For me, however many years ago it was now, what, 13, 14 years ago, I was a student at New York University and I was living five blocks away from the World Trade Center and God was telling me, he sent me from a born again Christian family to New York City. I mean people call New York City Babylon. I mean talk about wickedness there. And I was supposed to go there and cry out against it. I was supposed to go there and be a shining light for the Lord in a very dark place and yet I chose not to. And we choose to not follow God for all sorts of different reasons. In verse three, we see that Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down onto it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Instead of when God put it on his heart, arise, I've got ministry for you to go in this direction. He arose alright but he took off running in the opposite direction and he found a ship. Isn't it true that when God's put a calling on our heart when he's just put a simple godly idea on our heart like, you know, maybe you should read your Bible or maybe you should go and share the Lord with that person. Isn't it true that there's always a ship going in the other direction? It's like clockwork. God gives you the idea, maybe I should do this thing that I know. Please the Lord, expand the kingdom. It's good for my soul. Oh, wait a second, my favorite TV show just turned on. Oh, wait a second, what's that over there? And there seems to always be a ship heading in the opposite direction. And I think the enemy of our soul is to thank for that one. He's always more than willing to provide us the other kind of a way of escape and escape from the Lord instead of an escape from our temptations. And the sad testimony for us is that we're even willing to pay for it. Jonah paid to get on this ship, right? It wasn't even a free ship heading in the opposite direction. He had to take some of his money and put it towards it. And it's so true that sometimes we even put money towards our sin. We put money towards our distractions rather than the privilege of serving the Lord, the privilege of God waking us up and saying, hey, today's going to be a special day. Today you're going to bump into people that other people aren't going to be able to see. Today you're going to meet discouraged people that need to hear my love for them. Today you're going to meet people that are just completely in darkness that haven't seen the light. And what a privilege each day we can wake up with that sense of purpose where the Lord is saying to us, arise, but then we've got the choice. We can arise and go where the Lord is calling us to cry out against or we can get on a ship. And a lot of the times we choose the boat, right? We'd rather cruise than be with the Lord. We're not told until chapter 4 why Jonah didn't want to go. You don't have to turn there. But he said, I fled previously to Tarshish for I know that you're a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abundant and loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. Jonah knew God, right? I mean, if you took out the first sentence here, I fled previously to Tarshish and you just read the rest of it, it sounds like it's Moses or someone speaking about the good character of God. Look, listen to it. For I know that you're a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abundant and loving kindness and one who relents from doing harm. Well, that sounds great. What's the problem, Jonah? Well, that's the reason why he didn't want to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was a great city. It was great in its size and its power, its influence. But I think mostly it was great in its wickedness. You see, Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh because he knew who the Ninevites were. The Ninevites would come and do raids in Israel and they would hear what they would do. The Ninevites were great in their wickedness. They would conquer a city and they would take all of the leaders, cut their heads off and put them in a pile in front of the city. Just to scare people. They would take the mayor of the city and they'd put them in a cage naked and keep them alive for months and just bring them along as they go on their journeys. They did all of this to put so much fear into their enemies that when Nineveh came to town, you would give up and say, let us just pay a tribute towards you. This is your city. Let us live here and just send you money. And it was a fear tactic they did. Jonah didn't want people like that getting saved. You know, he was a part of the covenant family of God. They had rules, they had character, they had morals. Why would you bring such immoral people into the covenant family of God? Jonah didn't want that at all and he knew God was so kind that he just might do it. And so he figures all spoiled God's plan by not being a part of it at all. And in a silly way, he tries to flee from the presence of the Lord, the omnipresent one, the one who is everywhere. He wanted justice. He didn't want God's patience. He didn't want God's forgiveness. Let's pause for a moment and contrast Jonah and Jesus just to show how different they are and how they respond to the mission. Jonah was happy doing what he was doing. He was doing good ministry as a prophet. But God said, I want you to go to another place to do a different ministry for the sake of people that I love, people who are facing judgment. And Jonah said, no. Jesus was in heaven ruling in paradise. His father said, go to another place where you're gonna be rejected, living a life that's gonna lead to torture and to the cross. You will become the sacrifice for the people that I love who are facing an eternal judgment. And Jesus said, yes. What a contrast between the selfish Jonah and the selfless sacrificial Jesus that we have. But you know what? God doesn't like to be ignored. And you've probably found that true in your life as well. Look at verse four. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship was about to be broken up. When God finds us ignoring him, sometimes he says, okay, I'll present a blessing of this minister opportunity to somebody else and our punishment is simply not being able to serve the Lord, which we know is such a joyful thing for us to do. So there are times when we run and head to Tarshish, even though God's calling us to Nineveh because of our fears or whatever, he just says, okay, I'm still gonna save him but I'm gonna use this guy now. And instead of you being a part of my plan, now this guy's a part of my plan. And yet there's other times where he really wants to teach us a lesson and so he sends a great wind. Could be a wind of adversity, of suffering, just a giant wake up call. Don't confuse it for some of the horrible things that happen that we see in the news. It wasn't God's idea to put hatred and anger in the heart of the terrorists who hijacked the planes and flew them into the towers at 9-11. That wasn't God's idea. God is the one multitasking and I can tell you stories. I've personally heard dozens of stories of people who said I was supposed to be in the towers but I was late or the traffic was too bad or I just had this feeling like I shouldn't go and so I took a vacation day. There's more stories for that morning of God diverting people away than I've ever heard before for a single time. God is the one that's comforting and encouraging those that are hurt. He isn't the one inspiring that kind of a terror. So when I say the Lord sends great winds to us, I'm not saying that he does what the enemy does, trying to disguise it as the Lord doing it. I'm saying the Lord knows how to wake us up. The Lord knows how to get our attention. He knows how to get us on our knees and I'm grateful that he does that and sometimes it can be us hitting rock bottom. This ship was about to be broken up because this wind was so bad. Even the sailors were afraid. So why does God care so much? Why not leave Jonah alone and pick somebody else to serve him? Why does it have to be Jonah that's being used here? And why does God even care so much about the Ninevites? They're a wicked people. They deserve judgment. Well, verse five says, then the mariners were afraid and every man cried out to his God and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load. And the picture of these strong sailors who probably are never afraid of a storm being afraid is a good reminder to us that this world is full of people that are afraid, that are scared. They've got fear in their hearts. Yeah, they can not think about death for a while but then all of a sudden a loved one dies. All the sudden war begins to rage around them and they hear talks of nuclear bombs and they start to think about the afterlife and they're afraid because they don't have the light of Christ in their lives and these mariners were terrified and they were doing everything they could to try and help themselves. You know, my freshman year at New York University, you'd think it'd be the just most joyful place to be on the planet, right? I mean, middle of Manhattan, all kinds of action and activity and my freshman year, nine of my fellow students committed suicide, nine. That was a record for the year and all of the news organizations descended upon us and they were asking, why do you think this is happening? Why do you think it's happening? Why do you, of course, it's an easy question to answer. NYU costed over 40 grand a year to attend at that time. It was high academic standard so you had to be studying a lot but you're also in the middle of Manhattan so everything, even just buying a hot dog, costs you a ton of money so you're spending all of your money and then all of your friends are in Manhattan for the first time in their lives and so they're going out partying every single night and alcohol costs a lot of money and so you've got the stress of grades of having to perform for your parents and all the money that you have is going out and then all of a sudden you realize none of this makes me happy. I'm stressed out, I'm miserable and if this is all there is to life, then why live? We had a 10 story library at NYU and the inside of it was hollowed out and students were jumping off into the lobby and just landing in the lobby killing themselves. We had to put up nets in the school. All the roof access had to be locked and I didn't have a chance to tell the reporters, it wasn't me that they were asking but it's because you can't live in a stressful situation like that and not have God as the center and think that it's gonna last very long and that's just an example of how most of the world is living. You just can't expect to find satisfaction in everything but the Lord when you were created to have fellowship with the Lord. People are afraid, that's why God cares so much because he sees people around that are scared, ignorant. Yeah, they're rebelling against him but they're also ignorant. They're also in darkness and they just don't know who he is. The end of verse five shows us that sometimes we're found sleeping on the job unfortunately even though people are scared. It says, but Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship. He laid down and was fast asleep. Jonah was caught sleeping on the job. There's people there that they're not Hebrews. They don't know the covenant God. They're in darkness worshiping pagan gods and Jonah instead of being a prophet, being a good example is just passed out sleeping while everyone else is bawling their eyes out, crying while everyone else is afraid. Like Jonah, the people around me at New York University were afraid. They were crying but I was asleep spiritually. I wasn't doing what I was raised to do in a home that was honoring Jesus. Instead, 45 minutes after I got to New York University and my parents dropped me off and left and looked at me, hugged me, my mom's crying or little baby boys leaving for college. 45 minutes later, the guy who grew up in a Christian home who in high school he was the Christian because I was the only one not drinking, not chasing after girls, not doing drugs. 45 minutes later, somebody hands me a fake ID and says you're going out with us tonight and the basketball team that I was a part of all decided to go out drinking and I had my first sip of alcohol and it was a year and a half, two years of me just turning my back on God, pretending to have a good time, going out and partying and thinking I'm having a time of the world and yet every night I would come home before I go to bed. It's as if I had to say, I know, I know. I was created for more than this but I was too stubborn to stop and I was caught in my sins and I was sleeping on the job and I'm around all these people who aren't honoring the Lord and need someone to stand up and be a good witness and someone that could be influential and instead I decided to be asleep spiritually. On September 11th, 2001, I woke up hearing the phone was ringing off the hook and all I heard outside was police siren, ambulance siren, fireman siren and it's just happening all over and finally you start to put it together wait maybe something's happening. I pick up the phone, my mom says the twin towers have been hit by an airplane. I said, wow, I gotta go and I grabbed my phone and go outside and I'm only five blocks away and I see the smoke just all in the skies. I don't see the towers yet, I just see the smoke and I start heading towards it. People are chaotic, screaming, running all over the place, running in the opposite direction. I finally get to Broadway Street and you see both towers are just on fire. By the time I had gotten there both towers had already been hit by the planes. The police are trying to set up a barricade here and I snuck past it because I was a dumb college student and I went and hit it a bush. That's basically from the back of the stage to the exit sign is where the base of the towers were from where I was. Just hiding in a bush and I looked behind me and I saw the police barricade getting set up. In front of me there was about 50 firemen just running back and forth into the building out of it and trying to evacuate people and a friend from NYU called me and said where are you and I said I'm right at the base of it, I'm right underneath and he says get out of there, those towers could fall and I said they're not gonna fall and then all of a sudden my phone gets a beep through and it's my mom and I tell my mom and I said mom don't worry, I'm far away. Even if the towers fell down horizontally I'm four times the distance of the towers laying down horizontally away, I'm on my way to Brooklyn, I'm safe because it's my mom. My mom would have gotten a helicopter and come and got me and she would have got hurt or something. But the truth is, and you can put the photo up this was a photo taken about three minutes before the towers fell by my roommate. The truth is I was right at the bottom of it and I wasn't gonna tell my mom that but that's the last phone call, I hung that up, I looked around, all of a sudden I hear people screaming behind me, the police line is taking off running that way, I turn and look and right above me the left tower is just starting to come down like this. I just couldn't believe it, I turned around and started running and by the time I got almost towards the police line it's starting to hit the ground, the ground's shaking and then the smoke hit me there's a light gray and then it got into a dark gray and then eventually it was pitch black and I couldn't even see my hands in front of me and I start walking and I see a light and it's a store and I walk over and it's Evelyn's hand-dipped chocolate it's this tiny little boutique shop right there on John Street. I'm about to go in and I hear somebody behind me and there's two ladies and I kinda walk them into the store and then we shut the door and the door's broken because of what happened, it's a glass door and it's just shattered so the smoke is filling the inside of this chocolate shop, maybe two or three times the size of this rug that's underneath of me is a tiny thing. There's 15 of us in there just freaking out not knowing what just happened and the whole place is filling up with smoke and you're starting to cough and you're pulling your shirt up over your mouth because there's ash this big that's coming down and then eventually you start getting lightheaded and you realize this smoke's not gonna go anywhere a twin tower just fell down like this is gonna keep burning and that's when I realized we needed oxygen so I went to the owner behind the counter and I said do you have a basement or a closet or anywhere with oxygen? She starts crying her eyes out and says no. I turned around and realized I can't go out there there's more smoke, there's things falling and I'm in here and I realized I was gonna die. It's like I'm gonna pass out and then a few minutes later I'm gonna die and the night before I was out drinking and I just started to get real with God and I said Lord I am so sorry for wasting these past two years and I began to recite the gospel message to myself and I repented of my sins and I told him I knew it was unfair that I was about to die and that is the reason why I was doing this but at the end of reciting the gospel to myself do you know that even though I'd slapped the Lord in the face for two years in a row but a peace and a warmth came over me and I knew that I was God's child and I always was and the Lord had forgiven me and now that I was finally not thinking selfishly I turned and said Lord if there's anything that I can do and I was gonna finish the sentence by saying to help these people the Lord cut me off mid sentence and gave me a vision gave me a picture of a building that would have oxygen in it now I grew up Baptist we don't have visions okay so it was real and I'm never gonna have a vision ever again all right you can call it a memory if you're concerned about it being a vision but earlier in that day when I was walking towards a tower and I had just turned and looked and I had I saw a building where the security guard was locking the doors early and so I knew that building probably had oxygen in it because those doors are shut and so the Lord cut me off mid sentence almost saying it's about time you know that you're asking me how you can help me and so I walk out and it's just eerie noises I can't see my hands in front of me and I begin to sing an old hymn let the weak say I am strong and I get across the street just a step at a time and when I get there the Lord leads me right to the to the place I'm supposed to be and there's two ladies just coughing and banging on the doors and it was a glass door and so I was able to kick it and get it open and let them go inside I went inside and took a breath I said go up to the third floor that's where my my old office building was for the web design firm I'd worked at and I went back across the street but this time I missed I headed back on an angle and I had to kind of feel my way across the wall until I got back to Evelyn's hand up chocolates and I said hey I found oxygen come with me and everyone stands up holds hands about 10 to 15 of us and we walk across the street we still can't see anything and the Lord leaves us right to that building and there was enough oxygen in there everyone goes up to the third floor a police officer who was holding hands with us takes his gun out and shoots the door handle off to let everyone in which everyone realized was an overreaction and scared everybody and it was about 15 minutes later that all of a sudden this wind kind of came through downtown whether it was natural or supernatural it's up for debate but it was it sure cleared the smoke people got out and started heading towards the you know towards the east away from the towers and I was heading there and then I saw somebody heading back towards the towers I said what are you doing I said we need to get some oxygen tanks over to a deli where people are passed out so we went to an ambulance that was crushed and the back was already kind of split open we grabbed a medical bag and some oxygen tanks brought it to the deli they told us to come in and he went in and I went back towards where the towers were and I just couldn't believe what I was looking at the whole thing had been reduced to just a little mountain of beans and I'm walking around and I'm just screaming is anybody alive and all that I saw was a little pigeon shake itself off and fly away and I just couldn't believe it I'm walking around and I turn around and there's this short little lady just standing there like this not moving at all just covered in dust not moving and I went over and touched her and she starts screaming and I told her it's going to be okay and I looked behind her and it was the closest surviving fire station and so we went into the fire station and as I escorted her in there I looked on the left on the ground there was a fireman that was laying there and somebody was holding his hand and his chest was just gushing blood and you knew that he was going to die and then I looked on the right and there was a man who had just had a broken leg and you could tell the fireman was kind of ticked off that he had to deal with that guy because his friend was about to die and he couldn't be with him and I walked and I handed her off to somebody else and I said what can I do to help and they said just leave and I said well if I want to help and they gave me a mask and some goggles and said we're going to go looking for a missing fireman just wait here I go outside of the fire station and I look up and there's an apartment building that's on fire and there's a man trying to put it out with a bucket I told him to get out of there and the next tower could fall and he ignores me and another man says we're trapped the door has some debris on it and me and another fireman came and pulled back the debris so the man in his family could get out of the bottom door and then the group was ready to go looking for a fireman named Charlie there's about seven firemen and one or two police officers and they're screaming Charlie Charlie and I'm walking with them nobody was alive it was almost felt silly carrying the medical bag with band-aids and stuff in it you were it seemed like it was dead or alive there wasn't really much in between and they're screaming for this guy and then all of a sudden we hear this deep deep noise like an ocean wave that's coming but then all of a sudden it leaves the category of ocean wave and you just never heard anything that loud in your entire life and it was the second tower that was coming down on us and we realized we were even we were even closer this time and so we took off running and went to this hotel that had these glass doors and I ran into the back the towers hit the smoke comes and the back door that led to the basement was locked and there was nobody there and it was just a tiny little lobby the smoke filled the lobby but the firemen were there and they had the equipment to help us deal with it but our eyes are burning and and about 15 minutes later they go outside they have their flashlights but they're only going about this far and they're still screaming for this guy Charlie I just didn't have any faith at all he'd be alive and then sure enough to a fireman comes holding this guy named Charlie and all the firemen then I would start crying because he was alive they told me they said get into that get into that deli and get all the water bottles you can because our eyes are burning and we're thirsty so I emptied out my medical bags stood on top of a fire extinguisher and jumped into the building that it was through a window the glass had shattered and it was a you know I jumped over that went to the back room and and got all the water bottles out of the fridge and threw the bag over and went back with the firemen and we started passing it out and putting it on our eyes so we could see better we searched through a building that people that somebody said people were in but nobody was there and then we turned the corner to what everyone would see on the news as ground zero as as right there there's a fire truck that's completely gray until I touch it and then you see the reds underneath of it there's firemen with hoses and they told me they said grab you know grab that hose and connect it together and they had to teach me how to do all this and I'm connecting fire hoses and and holding them for the firemen and then eventually a giant truck pulls up with huge Poland spring bottles and and this this man came to be and said he was a marine and and you know he said your job is to take these bottles of water up and down the lines of the firemen and pour them into the mouths of the firemen as they're putting out fires and I did that but what what freaked me out was that I was the only one doing it every time I went back there was just as many water bottles that I had left there and so I felt this tremendous pressure to go up and down the lines as fast as I could and I was pouring into their mouths and they're putting out fires and trying to search buildings and one time I decided to go as far as I could away to get a group that hadn't had water water and I now you know I'm from Jersey because we say water instead of water and I carry this jug and I put the whole jug down this time because they were far away and I wouldn't be able to get back to them I turn to leave and and the fireman says thank God where did this angel come from and I thought it was a fireman joke so I turned around and pretended to laugh he wasn't laughing all he ran out the water and started drinking it passing it to his his friends and I just couldn't believe that to him the Lord had answered his prayer and sent somebody for a few hours I was the only one going up and down the lines handing out the handing out the water and eventually I looked around and I realized it's not just the fireman policemen me and paramedics anymore now there's a thousand just citizens volunteers from the city that are there with shopping carts and supplies trying to help out and I just realized I wasn't needed anymore got to the point where there were so many people there that I didn't I wasn't doing anything and so I sat down on a beam of the World Trade Center that I'd fallen and I was next to firemen and we were just kind of saying our goodbyes and there was a line at the pay phone because that was the only thing working because the cell phones weren't working and I left and I walked and I went to Wall Street and exchange and and there's five streets to intersect there and the ashes this high on the ground all the windows are caked shut and there isn't a single person down any of the streets right in front of the Wall Street wall you know Wall Street Exchange and it just messes with your head you just don't know what to do and I walk back to my dorm and I say everyone's evacuated up north to the gymnasium start walking through Chinatown and people are putting out signs saying you can use the bathroom here's water and somebody handed me a glass of water and I realized that the whole day while I had been handing out water to people I hadn't had a sip of water or anything to eat the whole day and the Lord had sustained me the Lord had given me all the strength I needed I got back to New York University's sports complex where they were evacuating everyone about 40 blocks up and when I got there everyone starts crying because the last person I was on the phone with before my mom was a student and they told everyone I was underneath the tower and they hadn't heard from me all day so they're crying because they thought I was dead I go downstairs and they get me some clothes to change into so I could shower up and I normally don't tell shower stories but this one's G rated and so I'm in the shower and I'm just taking the shower and some guy comes in and says hey are you okay I said well I'd be more okay if you weren't here thank you and he says you've been down here for over an hour and I said that's not true I just got in the shower he goes you've been down here for over an hour and I looked up my hands they were the prunius I'd ever seen them I had just passed out taking a shower for an hour and he said he looked at me and I was sleeping when he came in I was messed up that night of NYU just said sleep wherever you can and I was on the 14th street dorm there's tanks driving through the city there's you know the army's there with machine guns and every time I'd walk and there's a subway would go underneath of me I would think that the building's gonna fall on me that happened for six months plus for six months every time I'd walk into a room I'd look around seeing where the best spot would be to sit just in case the building fell down and that night that had happened where it were 15 of us are all in this one dorm room and a remote control falls off the TV and we all start crying we were just messed up you know you're not built to handle these things and yet through it all even though I was a selfish college kid turning my back on the God I knew was real the Lord saved my life twice from running from the towers twice from the smoke and people began to say God has a plan for your life and I was like well what is it and it was through that event that I was able to meet Pastor Lloyd Pulley and Pastor Brian Brodersen and the leadership and after I graduated NYU it was because of that relationship where they hired me on at the church and the Lord used it in my life to get me refocused on him and to remind me of his great love for me now there are probably some people here in this room that can say the Lord has saved my life physically from a car accident or from a war or something but what's true for all of us is is that God has saved all of us spiritually for those of us that trust in his Son all of us have had just as a dramatic saving event in our life when Jesus saved us at the cross see even unbelievers want us to be sincere about our beliefs and want us to be telling them about this look at verse 6 back in Jonah 1 so the captain came to him and said what do you mean sleeper arise call in your God perhaps your God will consider us so we may not perish I mean that's a freebie right somebody comes up to you and says can you tell me about Jesus that happened to me once and I knew immediately I'm getting no points for this in heaven I just need to be faithful I didn't develop the situation at all the Lord just sent somebody to me but this captain says hey sleeper like are you seriously sleeping through a storm that's going to kill all of us he was offended at his laziness call in your God perhaps your God is the real God I mean Jonah here has a setup like he couldn't imagine to talk about his God the problem is is that a hypocritical testimony lacks power to help people and that's what Jonah had in verse 7 says they said to one another come let us cast lots so that mean we know whose cause this trouble has come upon us so the cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah they said to him tell us for whose causes this trouble upon us what's your occupation where do you come from what is your country of what people are you and he said to them I am a Hebrew I fear the Lord the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land it's a good testimony but it's a hypocritical testimony because the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him why have you done this for the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord because he had told them so what an opportunity people are saying just tell us everything about your life even who your God is and because his life wasn't backing up the words that he was saying these people were just as afraid they had no peace come from them because Jonah's actions and his words weren't lining up at all and that happens for us too I remember a time at New York University when I was rebelling against the Lord that on over a computer on like a chat on a computer I was chatting with a friend back in New Jersey and I'd just gotten back from a bar and of course I kept that whole life secret from my church in New Jersey and my family in New Jersey and I remember encouraging somebody with scripture over the over the computer and the entire time I felt guilty and yet the Lord used his scripture but you better believe that he was still holding me accountable to the way I was living my life and it didn't have as much power because I was living a life contrary to the word of God the only solution for a situation like that is to move from selfish to sacrifice and thankfully Jonah eventually gets there in verse 11 they said to him what shall we do that the sea may be calm for us for the sea was growing more tempestuous and he said to them pick me up and throw me into the sea then the sea will become calm for you for I know this great tempest is because of me finally it's not about Jonah anymore about Jonah heading in the other direction finally it's about the people on the ship that are afraid and Jonah says the first sacrificial thing that he's done in the entire story it's such a distraction to live a selfish life we can be so focused on what makes us happy what's convenient for us what makes us comfortable and yet that's not a life that's going to affect anybody we all need a change of heart from selfish to sacrifice sorry my whole family's terribly sick and we were praying that it'd be better by tonight and I'm not I feel worse than ever but all mankind needs a change of heart towards God look at the end of verse or the beginning of verse 13 they heard this nevertheless the men rode hard to return to land now God had revealed through a profit a way for the entire crew to be delivered from the storm of judgment they had to throw Jonah into the sea they had to trust in the sacrifice of one man if he laid down his life then everyone would be saved but these men wanted to survive the storm without the sacrifice they wanted to turn again to their own means to save themselves their own works now that's great courage but it's also great rebellion against what a prophet is saying it's extraordinary resistance against God's revealed will and this impulse to depend on our own resources that is embedded in all humans we want to be the ones that save ourselves we want to be ones that say well I go to church I give money to the church I'm not as bad as that guy I try and volunteer on Thanksgiving of course I'm going to heaven we want to be the ones that get ourselves to heaven right we want to be the ones that are that are God that we can say we're the ones that are in control of our own lives but that kind of an attitude needs a change and at some point we need to realize that we can't survive the storm the rest of verse 13 says but they could not for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them so they were trying to do it in their own strength but they couldn't do it because you can't resist God it's a silly thought to think a human can resist God these simple four words but they could not that's the turning point of this story when the crew realized they could not beat the storm and in desperation they turned and bet their lives on the sacrifice of one person but they could not the storm of God's judgment is stronger than we are you know we do not have the ability to escape that storm nothing that we could do we can try as hard as we want the storm of God's judgment will destroy us unless we trust in the sacrifice of Jesus we have to trust in him verse 14 therefore they cried out to the Lord and said we pray oh Lord don't don't let us perish because of this man's life do not charge us with innocent blood for you oh Lord have done as it pleased you so they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea so eventually they did take their trust and put it into the revealed will of God and say all right we're going to trust that if you sacrifice yourself then we're going to be okay and you know what the cool thing is is that sacrificial living produces a response there was a response from God there's a response from the crew and then there's a response in our own lives when we live that way verse 15 says the sea ceased from its raging that's the response of God God responds to sacrificial living he brought peace then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows these pagans became proselytites right they converted into the the true religion right they can convert it into Judaism they made vows they made offerings to the Lord and they feared God fearing God is the beginning of wisdom just think about that maybe you've never thought about this the men on the boat that threw Jonah into the ocean are going to be in heaven one day you can talk to these people over the next few billion years when you're in heaven you might bump into some really burly looking guy kind of looks like king graves you know he was he was one of the sailors that threw Jonah into the water and you can be like hey what was that like and it was the turning point in their life to trust in the Lord and there's a method that provides us that God provides us to deliver us from our storm and it's a sacrifice of his son on the cross that's the only way we can get past God's righteous judgment Christ was the one thrown into the sea of God's judgment so that through faith we could be saved what a good picture here in Jonah and thankfully God is a God of second chances in verse 17 it says the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights see Jonah would have his own resurrection story three days later you better believe he thought he was dead a fish just ate him he's inside of a fish right he's inside of a fish's belly it's acidic it's dark he couldn't be more afraid and he spent three days there but that was God giving him a second chance that was God saying I'm not done with you you stubborn little prophet you stubborn little Abigail terrible too you know I'm not done with you I'm not going to give up on you and you know what's interesting is that Jesus speaks about Jonah and tries to use his life to warn us why don't you turn with me to one last passage before we close and that's Matthew chapter 12 Matthew chapter 12 starting in verse 38 some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Jesus saying teacher we want to see a sign from you but he answered and said to them an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth the men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and indeed a greater than Jonah is here Pharisees wanted a sign he's like that's a wicked thing to not believe what you've already seen here's a sign the sign of the prophet Jonah and he's speaking about that his resurrection will be the last sign that they'll be able to see but he says but another thing those Ninevites that ended up after Jonah was spit up near Nineveh and he went and preached and they faithfully quickly repented sincerely and there's a whole generation of Ninevites that are in heaven because of God not definitely not because of Jonah Jonah to the bare minimum but because of God and he says those Ninevites repented because of the preaching of an angry stubborn prophet who didn't even want them to be saved he did the bare minimum 40 days there's going to be judgment he's probably mumbling it under his breath hoping that I'm going to understand Hebrew and they start saying what and they start repenting on the spot and he's just ticked off about the whole thing hoping that God will change his mind that's the character of the preacher that the Ninevites an entire city changes and Jesus says a greater than Jonah is here and that's true for us today we don't want the Ninevites of all people to be judging us one day because a greater than Jonah is here we live in a generation where we all have multiple copies of our own Bible in our own language and if you forget your Bible you can like pull up another dozen on your phone I mean we have no excuse we've got the risen Lord himself we've got the testimony of Jesus Christ and his apostles and we've got from Genesis to Revelation we've got the whole picture think like oh but if I could have been Jonah and heard God speak then I would have repented or if I could have been Peter and I could have you know hugged the Lord then I would have repented I bet you almost any of those guys would have traded their ministry as a prophet for an entire copy of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to be able to read through multiple times a year we don't want the Ninevites judging us a greater than Jonah has preached to us and he backed it up unlike this prophet who is selfish and so his testimony lacked power because it was one of hypocrisy our great prophet Jesus backed it up and he allowed himself to be nailed to a cross because of his love for us I think there's probably a few people in here that need to realize that if they were to examine their lives they'd the truth is is that you're living a selfish life that if you're to look at most of your decisions you've made in the past week or two it's about what's going to make me happy me convenient you know me comfortable it's the easiest thing I can do for me and that is no way to be living our lives and so how do we move from selfish to sacrifice the main way we do it is by focusing our eyes on Jesus his great love for us is something that we can't comprehend but we need to think about a lot his sacrificial death for us on the cross changed everything and yet sometimes we live as if it doesn't mean anything we forget about it when days and weeks go by so if you're here tonight and somebody brought you and you know you wanted to kind of commemorate September 11th because they either meant a lot to you or maybe maybe you felt so distant from it so you wanted to hear somebody that was right by the towers and so you came to hear that story and and tonight as I'm talking you're realizing that you don't have a relationship with God then and that's that's why the Lord brought you here the Lord brought you here not to hear a story about September 11th but to hear about the God who saves the God who wants to transform your life not to give you a life full of rules you have to follow and money you have to give he wants to save you from your sins and to give you more purpose than just living selfishly but to begin to live for him and to live for others and there's more joy and satisfaction in that life than a life live for yourself and so if that describes you then please don't leave here without talking to the person who brought you or one of the pastors or elders that'll be available after the service but if you're a believer maybe you're realizing that you can have a more effective ministry than Jonah I wish I could stand here and say that the person I you know I feel closest to in the scriptures my testimony is closest to theirs it's Joshua that'd be cool but I have a Jonah testimony all right it's it's a bummer for me I hope my kids don't have a Jonah testimony but maybe you're realizing maybe it's not as extreme as having a Jonah testimony but maybe you've had like a Jonah week maybe you've had a selfish week and you realize man that was no way to live this week I let the distractions of this world rule me I let the enemy blind me a bit and I stopped looking and setting my mind on things above and I set my mind on things below and you kind of felt that maybe you were a bit harsh with your words and uh and you heard other people or just felt like a lazy depressed kind of a week because you weren't focused on the Lord and for those of you that that describes then we just need to be inspired by the sacrifice of Jesus and his great love especially in comparison to a human like Jonah and humans like us his great love for us should inspire us to self selfless living