Jonah Chapter 4

[00:00:00] Good morning. I'd like to greet each one of you in Jesus' name this morning. It's good to be here. I want to wrap up our study of Jonah this morning. We're turning to Jonah chapter 4. We've gone through the first three chapters. This is our first time into chapter 4. And I guess this morning it's going to be more of a, I don't have a central thrust or a central theme. [00:00:36] I'm going to do more of a verse by verse exposition. And children, you do not have sermon notes because I did not get my notes to Monica. That is my fault. I will give you some things to write down. If you want to have a pencil and paper, I'll give you a few things right now that you can be looking for and listening for. as we go down through. The number one thing, or the first thing, is the reason Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh. [00:01:08] When we read chapter 4, we're going to find out, he's going to tell God why he didn't go to Nineveh. Second thing, there are two things Jonah was angry about. Two different times God asked Jonah, Are you right to be angry? And the two things that Jonah was angry about. We're going to read that Jonah built a booth. Why did he build a booth? Why did he need a booth? We're going to see four things that God prepared. One of those is back in chapter 1 and we'll go to that. But there's four things that it says, and God prepared, or the Lord God prepared. [00:01:49] God prepared. And in verse 8 it says, the Lord God prepared a vehement east wind. We're going to see what that is actually called. We're going to talk a little bit about what that means. We're going to talk about two kinds of gifts that God gives us. What kind of gifts? And I think that's what I have written down. [00:02:21] So I'll make sure I point them out again as we go down through. Jonah chapter 4, 1 through 11. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. I guess I better give a little bit of a background to this. This is after Jonah had went to Nineveh against his will, or maybe his changed will. When God first told Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah said no. He went to Joppa, or tried to, and was swallowed. We all know the story. [00:02:53] He was thrown overboard. He was swallowed by the whale. He repented. God asked the whale to spit him out. He did. Jonah went to Nineveh, and the Ninevites repented. In sackcloth and ashes, they turned from their sin. They believed God and turned from their sin. And God saw their works. In chapter 3, verse 10, it says, and God saw their works that they turned from the evil way and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not. [00:03:27] When the Sadducees and Pharisees came down to the water to be baptized by John the Baptist, he said, Why are you coming to be baptized? Bring forth fruits, meat for repentance. He was saying you have to have a changed life. We talked about that last time. So now we're into chapter 4 and we see Jonah's response when he went in, told the people in 40 days Nineveh will be destroyed and then they weren't after all because they repented. It wasn't that God's word didn't come true, it was that they repented and God, it says God repented which means God changed his mind or God relented. [00:04:06] He did not do what he had said he would do because they repented. Now chapter 4 But it displeased Don exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take I bespeak thee my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. [00:04:36] Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wishing himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. [00:05:16] And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons, that's 120,000, persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle. [00:05:48] But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry Jonah went into Nineveh and told them, 40 days, you guys have been wicked We need to realize this was not a message where judgment is coming, you need to repent This was Jonah going in and pronouncing judgment on these people He thought he was announcing their death sentence And then they repented and God didn't destroy them [00:06:19] And Jonah was very disappointed Are we disappointed when someone else receives God's favor? Do we hope they'll get what they've got coming? Children come to us and tell on their brother or their sister He did this, she did this They don't do that because they're concerned about My brother is sinning They're concerned because this might be a chance for me to get even. [00:06:50] They tell because they like to see, or they're not, they don't tell with the right attitude. They come and tell on each other because they want the other one to get in trouble. How are we when we see sin in another's life? Do we have compassion and try to help? Or do we say, they'll find out what happens to those kind of people. Let them live like that. If they want to live like that, so be it. They'll find out when they die that you can't live like that and get away with it. [00:07:23] They'll pay. Do we in some selfish way hope they will be punished for embarrassing us good Christians who never would do such things as they are doing? How often do we look down on someone and can't believe he does that? That's an embarrassment to us. He shouldn't fall in that kind of sin. I'm way above that kind of sin. We look at each other and judge each other and hope that they will fall, hope that something bad will happen to them or are glad when something happens to them [00:07:54] because they are an embarrassment to us or they are a mark on our congregation or the people we associate with. How do we view those that are living in sin or having trouble with sin? Also, I want to notice that we say, try to help. We can cry, plead, or beg. We can do whatever we want, but if someone is determined to live in sin, we can't turn them from their sin. But we still need to work with that person, but then we need to leave it to God, [00:08:31] but we're never glad when they get what they've got coming to them. that we do not rejoice when a sinner is punished. Verse 2 And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I prayed thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish. Therefore, why did Jonah not go to Nineveh? For I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, [00:09:02] slow to anger and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Jonah said, God, I didn't go to Nineveh because I knew they would repent and I knew you'd forgive them and it would be a waste of trip. There was no reason for me to go if you're not going to do it anyways. It's kind of ironic to notice that Jonah is accusing God of being a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and repentant to the evil. [00:09:35] Almost like that's a character flaw with God. I didn't want to do this because I knew that's how you are. That's one of the, those are the traits that make God so precious to us that we praise God for because that is true in our lives as well. And we see in this chapter that God's anger goes from Nineveh to Jonah. Now Jonah is the sinner. Jonah is the one that God is needing to deal with. The Ninevites have repented. And Jonah seems to have a pretty bad attitude through the whole thing. [00:10:12] Verse 3, Jonah says, Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. By the way, I want to make sure the children caught that. In verse 2 there, the reason Jonah didn't want to go was because he believed God would forgive them if they repented. He didn't want to, or at least that's the excuse he gave at this time. In verse 3 he says, Take now my life. Why does Jonah no longer want to face life? [00:10:43] If we go to Deuteronomy 18, 18-22. Deuteronomy 18. Deuteronomy 18. We see a little bit what God told His people about prophets. I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. Verse 19 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. [00:11:19] So God is saying, when a prophet comes and speaks words in my name, and you do not hear him, you will be guilty. in verse 20 but the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name in other words a prophet that comes and gives his own message saying it's from God which I have not commanded him to speak or that he shall speak in the name of other gods even that prophet shall die and if thou say in thine heart how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken how do we tell if it's a false prophet [00:11:49] when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord If the things follow not, nor come to pass, that is a thing which the Lord hath not spoken. But the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously. Thou shalt not be afraid of him. So God gives his people, he said, this is how you tell a false prophet. If a prophet comes and prophesies something, saying it's a message from the Lord, and it doesn't come to pass, that word is not from the Lord. That is a false prophet. Well all of a sudden Jonah is facing a situation where he came into Nineveh and said in 40 days you'll be destroyed and now God's not going to do it. God is not going back on his word. He is being merciful and if these people had not repented, there's no doubt, they would have been destroyed. [00:12:36] But at the same time, it makes Jonah look like he's lost his credibility. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, he made a prophecy, and I don't know what year it was. Well, I think he died in the 1800s. But he prophesied that, I believe, I should have done my homework a little bit, but I think it was in 1964, something like that. Israel would be reestablished in the state of Missouri [00:13:08] We laugh at that now or we smirk at that We say that's an obvious sign that Joseph Smith was a false prophet But you mention that to a Mormon and they say I still believe that with all my heart I don't know what it means I don't know how it will be fulfilled But I do believe that is still a legitimate prophecy We need to realize when a prophet prophesies, when someone prophesies a cut and dried statement like that, and it does not come to pass, God has told us that it is not from the Lord. [00:13:50] But in an instant like this where there is repentance involved, obviously this still was still a message from the Lord. Was Jonah embarrassed that his word did not come to pass? Did he feel he could not go home and face his friends anymore? What about the idea that he was instrumental in the saving of one of Israel's archenemies? Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. Would his countrymen blame him that Nineveh was still in existence? [00:14:20] Nineveh, as the capital of Assyria, represented one of the nations God had used to punish Israel in the past. This was God telling Jonah, giving him notice, that in 40 days I'm going to destroy Nineveh, one of your worst enemies. But I want you to go tell them first. So Jonah goes and tells them, they repent, and all of a sudden Nineveh is still there as an enemy to Israel. [00:14:53] So in one, I mean, he was doing what God had asked him to do, but to his countrymen he might have looked like an instrument that preserved Nineveh. He could be blamed for that. Let's look at 2 Kings 17, the whole chapter there. I'm not going to read the whole chapter, but we're going to cover it a little bit. 2 Kings 17 We're going to look here, we've got a couple of, well there's actually a lot of different places where it talks about Assyria as being [00:15:26] A lot of times when an enemy of Israel is mentioned, it is Assyria It's one of their, their obvious, it's obvious that they are one of their biggest foes 2 Kings 17 1-6 and then I would like to read 1-6 and also verse 23 7-22 gives a list of the sins of Israel and why this is happening 7-22 but we're not going to read those verses but we'll just look here a little bit at what happens with them [00:16:01] 2 Kings 17 1-6 In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, began Hosea, the son of Elah, to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Hosea became his servant and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hosea, for he had sent messengers to Saul, king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. [00:16:37] Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Hela and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes. And then it says, then the next 7-22 gives reasons why they did it. It says there in the first six verses that they lived in sin, but then 7-22 lists some of those sins. [00:17:13] And then in 23 it says Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight As he had said by all his servants the prophets So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day So there we see that Assyria was used to fulfill God's punishment God, the king chose to live in sin The people followed him into sin And God sent Assyria to punish them 2 Chronicles 5 is another example 2 Chronicles 5, 25-26 [00:17:51] Well, I've got a problem there. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It's 1 Chronicles. And they transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a-whoring after the gods of the people of the land whom God destroyed before them. And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pol, king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilneser, king of Assyria, [00:18:25] and he carried them away, even the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Hala and Habor and Hera, and to the river Gozan unto this day. There again we have the story of God raising up Assyria to punish Israel. Also in chapter 18 of 2 Kings there's the story of the huge army of Assyrians coming up against Hezekiah and the king was at Sennacherib and it's interesting in my Thompson chain, a lot of you guys have that in the archaeological supplement in the back. [00:19:06] There's quite a bit of details about this. They found, well, the story is about when the Assyrians encamped against Israel, and they said, or against Hezekiah, and the king sent messengers saying, don't even try to fight, just give up, because, and he names off all these other people, these kings he has conquered, and he said, what happened? They all had their God that they trusted in, and look what happened to them. Don't even think of trusting in your God. Just give up, make it easy, and this won't take long. We'll just have you as our servants. [00:19:40] Well, we know that Hezekiah went, he took this letter, laid it before the Lord, and said, Well, Lord, the king of Assyria is saying that you're just like all the other gods. Your reputation is at stake, and we can't do anything about it. It's up to you. And that night, there were 185,000 men of the Assyrians. The angel of the Lord went out and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night. And if you read the king's, well it says, and when they arose in the morning they were all dead corpses. [00:20:18] I like how that is put. But the king, Sennacherib, went home. He just left. And the clay tablets that they found where he actually kept the records himself He says, he gives all these different kings that he defeated And he talks about Hezekiah and he says, I shut him up like a bird in a cage And he never finishes what happened He never says why he didn't actually capture Hezekiah He didn't give God the glory there, he just skipped that part [00:20:53] Struck that from the record I guess So anyways, we see that Israel, Judah was always at odds with Assyria. Assyria was a country that was not liked. They were an enemy. They were someone the Israelites would have gladly seen get wiped off the earth. And yet Jonah goes and warns them of it and they repent. So now we see Jonah, he's kind of stuck between his countrymen and God, I guess you could say. He's doing what God asked him to do and yet it's making him look bad to his country. [00:21:28] Verse 4. Let me get back to Jonah here. I took my marker out. I always have a hard time finding it. Okay, chapter 4, verse 4. Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? [00:22:00] Okay, children, here's one for the first reason he was angry. We already talked about it a little bit in verse 1. But the first reason he was angry was because the Ninevites were not killed. He had said they would be destroyed, and they weren't. That's what got him angry the first time. And God says, Doest thou well to be angry? And the literal translation is, Is doing good displeasing to thee? God says, I'm doing good, and now you're upset. Is that, should you be? [00:22:33] And Jonah doesn't give an answer. He doesn't answer at all. That's recorded. He just gets up and goes out and makes a booth and sits down to see what would become of the city. There's differing thoughts on this. Some people think he was hoping God would change his mind and still destroy the Ninevites. He wanted to sit there and watch and see what would happen. Others think that he hung around to see. See, this was still a fairly new thing that in the Old Testament, if you weren't a Jew, you were out of the loop. [00:23:09] God didn't accept Gentiles as a rule. Sodom and Gomorrah, they were evil. God pulled Lot out and destroyed them. This was kind of a new thing, or at least different than usual. Perhaps he was sitting there wondering, what is God going to do? How will he relate to these people? But notice he didn't associate with them. Even after they were, I don't know if you'd say converted or they repented, he probably would have been welcomed. [00:23:40] He would have been their hero maybe because he was one that had come and warned them and turned them away from their sin. On the other hand, there were probably those that said, well, would it ever have happened? Did we repent for no reason? And we do know that they were destroyed later on because they went back into their sin. If you think about it, Jonah probably didn't know what to do next. I don't know what I would have done. Where would he go? He goes home. They might not like him. He goes to Nineveh. [00:24:11] He's a stranger. He's not really one of them. Maybe we can learn from Jonah that waiting on the Lord isn't a bad thing to be doing. If we're not sure what to do, maybe we do need to just sit down and wait. Let the Lord lead us instead of trying to make something happen if the Lord isn't leading. But we do need to have a heart to learn and follow His leading. We can't just simply sit there with a bad attitude and pout. [00:24:41] We do need to have a heart of openness. Okay, a booth. Why did Jonah need a booth? It says, So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth and sat under it in the shadow. That shadow would be shade. Jonah needed a shade because, at least in the commentaries I read, the daily high temperatures in that area during the hot season are around 110 degrees. A little shade would be kind of nice if the sun was beating down on you at 110 degrees. [00:25:17] So he has some shade, but he's still in a bad mood. And then in verse 6 it says, And the Lord God prepared a gourd. Okay, there's your first thing. Well, actually it's the second one because back in Jonah 1.17 it says, Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. When Jonah was thrown overboard, God had prepared this fish to swallow him, preserve his life. So that was the first time that it says that the Lord had prepared something. [00:25:49] Now in verse 6 we see And the Lord prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah That it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief Evidently this booth wasn't doing a very good job of shading him Somehow the gourd made a lot of difference And Jonah was really glad about it Let's look a little bit at the prepared in the verse 6 through 8 Let's just read those together again And the Lord God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. [00:26:27] So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. And then verse 7, But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day and it smote the gourd that it withered. And then in verse 8, And it came to pass when the sun did arise that God prepared a vehement east wind. and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and wished himself to die and said it is better for me to die than to live so those are the four prepared the wind, the worm, the gourd and the fish [00:26:59] and then the others aren't quite the same word but in chapter 1 verse 4 it says that he sent out a great wind when Jonah was on the sea running away or sailing away maybe you'd say The Lord sent out a great wind, which would be pretty much the same idea. And also, when Jonah was in the fish, the Lord spoke to the fish, and he spit Jonah out on the dry ground. [00:27:30] So we see six times when God spoke to nature, spoke to the wind, the gourd, the worm, the fish, and they did what they were asked to do. They did what they were. Another way that prepared can be translated is appointed. All of these, prepared means to appoint, and all of these did their job. All the worm ate the gourd like God had commanded. The gourd grew like God had appointed it to do. The fish did what it was appointed to do. [00:28:04] Are we doing the job that God has appointed us for, that God has prepared us for? Have there been things in my life, hard times, trials, etc., that have been sent by God to prepare us for ministry, to prepare us for service to others, Prepare us for whatever there is, opportunities that we have, and we get through this hard time and then forget all about it. [00:28:38] Or forget what it's like to be in it. Maybe there's someone else going through a similar circumstance. And yeah, I went through that a year ago, but I'm not outgoing. I'm not the kind that can really relate to people. Or are we using our experience to minister to others in a way that God has appointed us to do? Why do we face things? It's to make us better and also, I believe, to help us relate to others and make it easier for them. I think I shared when we lost our twins, there was a lot of people came through and it meant a lot to us. [00:29:15] But there was one man that I hardly know him. We hunt coyotes with him. And I wondered why in the world he was here. And he said, 35 years ago, I went through the same thing. And he knew what it was like. And just, that meant so much that he didn't just, he went through it, but he also ministered to others. And it's just, try to let your experiences in life make you better. What is God using this experience that I'm going through to teach me something I faced a year ago, ten years ago, thirty years ago? [00:29:51] How can I use that experience to better the lives of others and to do what God has appointed me to do? Verses 6 and 7 God gave Jonah something he could quickly learn to appreciate. The vine came up and it was there and he loved it. It says he liked it exceedingly. So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd. And then the next night it dies. [00:30:25] And all of a sudden Jonah is exceedingly sad or angry. And once again, oh, my life is just not worth living. It seems he was quite emotional. But he was guilty of overloving that gourd. That gourd was simply a gourd. There are different translations of bush or a weed or a vine. A plant of some kind that came up and shaded him And Jonah grew quite attached to that door the first day [00:30:56] And I believe this was all orchestrated by God To give Jonah an idea of what he was actually valuing in life And how upset he was after it was gone Was in direct proportion to how much he valued that plant to start with I would like to read a little paragraph here out of the Expositor's Bible Commentary about this east wind that came up. A scorching east wind is normally called a Sirocco. [00:31:29] S-I-R-O-C-C-O I do believe I have the pronunciation right. A Sirocco, which means east wind. And this is something I was not familiar with, and that's why I thought it was interesting to read it. In various areas, other terms are found. Dennis Bailey, the geographer of the Bible, describes it thus. During the period of a Sirocco, the temperature rises steeply, sometimes even climbing during the night. Now think about this. Jonah went to bed, or to sleep at least, with this nice new fresh gourd that had grown up in a day, [00:32:06] Shading him and all's well with the world because he now has quality shade. He has good shade he can lay in. And overnight, this is what happens, probably. This is probably what the Lord brought. During the period of the Sirocco, the temperature rises steeply, sometimes even climbing during the night, and it remains high. Now, we talked about it, the average high temperatures at that time, or in that area, is 110 degrees. So, if you do the math, it remains high, about 16 to 22 degrees above the average. [00:32:37] That would take it to 126 to 132 degrees. At times, every scrap of moisture seems to have been extracted from the air, so that one has the curious feeling that one's skin has been drawn much tighter than usual. Sirocco days are peculiarly trying to the temper, and tend to make even the mildest people irritable and fretful, and to snap at one another for apparently no reason at all. Obviously such a wind desiccates and withers all green growth When a seraphim comes, all who can hasten to find shelter [00:33:10] But for Jonah there was no shelter unless he was willing to reenter Nineveh The booth he had made for himself would not exclude the wind And only partially broke the force of the sun's rays Completely dispirited, he in essence said I would be better off dead than alive Usually we think of a summer breeze as being a cool, you know, the breeze makes it warm. I've never spent any amount of time in Arizona. I remember Kevin B. saying that in Arizona when it's hot you roll the windows down and you hold your hand out the window and it's a hot wind. [00:33:43] It doesn't cool you off at all. And that would be how this would be, I'm sure. And it's a dry wind that sucks the moisture out of your skin, makes you feel tight, and makes you feel irritable, I guess. So, we do understand why Jonah was in such a poor spirit. And then in verse 9, God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? So now Jonah is upset again because the gourd died and it withered. This wind just took care of it in one day. [00:34:17] And now here's the second reason that Jonah was angry. God says, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? and he said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Think about what Jonah just said, where he came from and where he's at now. At the beginning of the chapter, he's upset because God didn't destroy a city or an area that had 120,000 people, probably small children. That's what we think that means. Couldn't tell their left hand from their right hand. [00:34:50] Jonah was upset because God didn't destroy them. Now God does destroy a weed, a vine, that came up in a day and perished in a day. And Jonah is all upset about it. He says, do you have any right to be angry about the gourd? The question isn't, do you have any right to be angry that I've chosen to spare the Ninevites? They're off of that subject. Now Jonah's upset about the gourd. He's degenerating into worse and worse situations. He's not even worried about the Ninevites anymore. [00:35:23] When, in verse 4, when God asked him about the Ninevites, he said, are you right to be angry about this? Jonah doesn't answer. Now he's in the bad enough mood that by this time he says, yes, I have the right to be angry. And now they're talking about this weed, this gourd. I have the right to be angry unto death. I am, I'm just, my life's worthless because this gourd is gone. If you put it in that kind of language, you realize just where his focus had went. [00:35:54] How attached are we to earthly things? If they disappear out of our lives, would it just ruin us? Maybe we have a old one town in the country and we hit a telephone pole with it. That's what I did three weeks ago. How does that affect us? Do we, this object or this material thing, How attached are we to our things that when something happens to them, we are just at a loss? [00:36:28] Chapter 10 and 11, I think I'm going to save 11 for later. I think I'll come back to that next time. But chapter 10, I would like to look at what is your doored? God gives up the, or 10 and 11 both I guess, but I was going to talk some about the children, but we'll do that later. Just the relationship there, God says, okay, you're all upset because this gourd was destroyed. And you were upset earlier because I spared all these people. [00:37:02] What is your gourd? What do you have in your life that you are exceeding glad of? or overloving, loving more than you should. Do you have anything that if it were taken from you might cause you to be angry with God? Make you stop trusting Him or even argue with Him? What do we have that is really worth anything that we can claim as the work of our hands? And then in James 1.17, [00:37:34] this is the kind of gifts that I was going to refer to. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. I think we need to, I'd like to leave you with this challenge. What are you holding on to? What are you valuing in your life? What is there in your life that you think is indispensable? Maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your children. [00:38:05] What are you valuing more than your relationship with God? We love our families. We love our, maybe we love our things. What do we love? Jesus said we need to, in comparison to Him, we need to hate our families. We need to hate our parents, our father and mother. That doesn't mean we dislike them, but that means that when it comes to choosing between God and a person, We need to choose God. We need to have God as our number one priority. [00:38:39] What is your gourd in life? Let's stand for prayer. Lord, I thank you that we can be together like this. I thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to come and meet freely. Lord, I pray that you would work in our lives, That we could understand, that we could see what we're holding on to, what we're loving more than we should, what we don't have the right attitude about, what we're holding closer than you or valuing above. [00:39:17] Thank you Lord for the food that's been prepared. I pray Lord that you would bless this meal and bless our fellowship Thank you Lord for all you do. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.