A Whale Of A Tale | Cornerstone Church | Brad Wilkerson

When I was 12 years old, the dynamic and the paradigm of our family changed in one defining moment. My family was a family that spent every weekend at the lake. All day Saturday, all day Sunday on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri. Yeah. Beautiful God's country. Amen. But

we had a family member in our extended family that was in ministry who invited our family to go and visit their church one weekend. They called it I know probably you've never heard of anything like this. They called it a friend day. By the way, every Sunday is friend day at church.

And they invited us to go to church and my dad literally said, let's say yes so they'll quit asking. And so that day we went to church, we went to the lake on Saturday, we went to the church on Sunday and at the end of the sermon,

this guy got up in a suit and a tie and he sang a song, maybe you've heard of it called, Just As I Am. And somewhere on the fourth or fifth verse, my dad left the row that we were sitting in. He walked down to the front and he met with the pastor and he gave his life to Christ that day.

And the dynamic of our family changed because no longer did we go to church or or to the lake on Saturday and Sunday. We became a lake family on Saturday and a church family all day on Sunday. I grew up in an old school independent fundamental baptist church. Where we were not just born again but come on, we were born against.

Like if it looked like the world we called it unholy and we abstained from all of that stuff. Right? I mean, I grew up in the church where the boys had to wear pants at the water park which is totally unsafe. But we couldn't wear shorts because somehow we thought that made us holy. Listen, it made us weird. But

the dynamic of our family changed and I'm grateful for it. And I'm grateful for my upbringing. And one of the things I loved about my church was as a 12 year old sixth grade boy there was a lady by the name of Joanne Calmes that was my Sunday school teacher.

And she would teach us the great stories in the bible. She used this modern technological tool in 1982 to teach these great stories called flannelgraph. How many of you know what flannelgraph is? Alright. You grew up in that church with me. Right? How many of you have no clue what I'm talking about? Wow.

Okay. There's your assignment for the rest of the weekend. Google it. But before you Google it, let me tell you, it looks nothing like the adventure port. This was basically a felt board. A felt board that would have like some kind of material on it that would hold one d stick type figures of biblical characters

and she would tell the story from the bible but then put the characters on the board. Stories like Moses and the Red Sea. Stories like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Stories like David and Goliath And my all time favorite stories like Jonah and the Whale. Come on Jonah and the Whale.

And as we continue in our series today, the greatest stories ever. That's what we're gonna look at today is Jonah and the whale. And let me just tell you from the start, it's a whale of a tail. Come on, I worked on that all week. Y'all didn't do nothing. A whale of a tail.

But before we dive into Jonah chapter one. By the way, there's four chapters in Jonah. David called me and said, Can you come preach February 28 and March 1 for Len? I said, Yeah. I said, What are y'all in? He said, Greatest stories ever. Alright, which one's mine? He said, Jonah.

I said, David, you understand Jonah has four chapters. That's a four week sermon series. I'll even give you the title, Rebel With A Cause. Let's just do a whole series on Jonah. I'll stay for four weeks. He said, no man, you got thirty five minutes.

So there's no way I'm gonna get through all four chapters. I'm gonna read from chapter one. I'm gonna tell you how the whole story plays out. But here's what I need you to know before we dive in. The first thing is this. I need you to know that most of us, we're more like Jonah than we want to admit.

I need you to know that you and I look a lot like Ninevites. Not mosquito bites but Ninevites. Here's another thing I need you to know. Jesus is on every page of your bible. You can find the gospel in every story even in the old testament. You're gonna see that today.

The third thing I need you to understand is Jonah's not the main character. The fish isn't the main character. There's only three verses about the fish. The main character of the book of Jonah, are you ready for this? I know it's gonna blow your mind, you ready? God. God's the main character.

Last thing is this, if you'll look deep enough, if you'll re familiarize yourself with a familiar story, I think you'll find yourself in the story as well. Let's pick it up in Jonah chapter one.

We'll read together verse one. The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it. That's what prophets do. They preach against darkness. They take light into the darkness. Go to Nineveh,

preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me. Verse three, But Jonah ran away from the Lord. He did what prophets are not supposed to do. Instead of running to Nineveh, he ran away from the Lord. And he headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa.

Now, you write in your bible or you're writing in a journal right now, just write this down. If you run from the Lord, chances are you're gonna go down. It's always gonna be a downhill slide. He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, write this down if you're taking notes.

Anytime you run from God, it will cost you something. Chances are it will cost you more than you ever wanted to pay. He went aboard and he sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Last week, Brent asked you this question. He asked you, when God calls, will you answer?

When David told me, you're week two. Brent's the week before you. I'm like, are you kidding me? I don't want to preach after Brent. Give me week one, make Brent week two. He did an incredible job answering that question. When God calls, will you answer through the life of Moses?

I'm gonna take that question a little bit further this weekend. You ready for this? But what if God calls you to do something you don't wanna do? Like you actually answered the call, you didn't screen it this time. You didn't look down and said God, you hit decline.

You hit the green button and you said hello and God said to go do something but you didn't wanna go do it. I mean, all love to hear the voice of God, amen? I love it when God is, and by the way, the word of the Lord is still speaking today. God is still speaking to people.

In fact, he talks to me all the time when I take a shower because that is the one place where I don't have a phone and I don't have a calendar and I'm I'm just in the presence of God and I'm relaxed and hear all kinds of things.

God still speaks. But I can tell you, I can testify. Maybe you can testify as well. There are times God says things to me and I'm not on board with it. There's just sometimes God asks me to do things and go to certain places where I don't wanna go and I don't wanna do. This is Jonah. Jonah answers the call.

He just gives the wrong answer. God says, Go. Jonah says, No. Come on, that's good. It rhymes. I'm an aspiring rapper, worked hard. God said go. Jonah said no And in that moment, instead of becoming the prophet that God had called him to be, he became a prodigal prophet. He became a man who ran.

And when I tell you he ran, he ran as far as he could. In fact, he ran to a place called Tarshish. Tarshish is 2,500 miles from where he currently is. Nineveh is only 550 miles. One's to the East, the other's to the West. It would have been much easier for Jonah,

everything would have played out a lot better if he'd have just obeyed and went to the East. But instead, he went as far as he could to the West. And you have to understand in Jonah's day, everybody thought the world was flat. Some of you in this room still think the world is flat. That's a sermon for another day.

But for Jonah, Tarshish, which is modern day Spain, would have been the end of the world. You understand when you get to the end of the world, God will find you there. When I was 16 years old, because of that decision my dad made, when I was 12, not only did I say yes to Jesus, but at 16,

I surrendered my life to God for full time ministry. Now at 16, I didn't have a clue what that looked like. My mama told me I was gonna be a preacher when I was 12. She said, you gotta be a preacher because you talk too much. You have way too much energy, you're obnoxious

and you never shut up. If you're raising that young man, congratulations. You're raising a future pastor. But God called me to ministry when I was 16. I surrendered, I gave my life to him. I said, don't know where, I don't know how, don't know when but I'm all yours. Here I am Lord, send me.

I went through the rest of my high school years and then we packed up and my folks moved me to a Christian university to study ministry, study the bible and I couldn't wait for my parents to pull out of the parking lot. Because for the first time in my life, I was experiencing freedom without the oversight of my mom and dad.

See, I grew up in a very, very legalistic household. If mom and dad if you're watching today, I love you. I'm not throwing you under the bus. But my mom and dad instead of telling me how to be in the world but not of the world, they told me just don't even look over there.

Don't acknowledge that. Don't even don't even act like it exists. Come on, you tell a kid don't look over there, you know what a kid's gonna do? Look over there. So instead of teaching me how to be light in darkness, they just said stay away from the darkness, don't even act like the darkness exists.

Let me just tell you, when they pulled out of the parking lot, you know what I found? Darkness exist because because I made unwise decisions and I began to run from my call and run from the Lord. I was a 21 year old mess, confused, engaged to be married to my beautiful now wife

and and I didn't have a clue what I was doing. All I know was I had hit rock bottom. One day I went to get the mail at the campus mailbox and I opened it up and there was a letter from the president of the university addressed to me. I'm like, oh this is so cool. The president the president must see something in me.

I open up the letter and it says we'd like to cordially invite you not to come back next year.

I was running from God. I was running from my call. Here's what I learned in my running. Maybe maybe this will apply to you today. If you choose to run from God, the devil will gladly give you a ride. He'll gladly let you go with him.

So I came home. That was an interesting come to Jesus meeting. Literally a come to Jesus meeting. When I moved back in with my parents.

I had hit rock bottom in my life because of my running from God. And let me just tell you, I wanna encourage you today because I know some of you you have this story as well or maybe right now you're in the midst of running. Let me just tell you, when you hit rock bottom, if you know Christ is your savior, if you gave your life to him and you've chosen to run, when you hit rock bottom, here's what you're gonna find. Jesus Christ is the rock that you hit. He's

the rock because he never leaves you, he never forsakes you and we're all messes, we're all broken people that have been healed by the grace of God and healthy people are broken people that have been healed that never forgot they were broken. And you'll hit the rock of Christ. Jonah. Jonah's on the run.

Let's pick back up and see what happens as we continue the story. Verse number four,

says, Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea and a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own God. These are sailors who are praying to little g pagan gods.

And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. Look at this, But Jonah had gone down below deck where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. I don't know about you but every time I run from God or run from the call of God, it just seems like a storm comes.

Life is kinda like a perpetual cycle of storms. Wouldn't you agree? You're either in a storm, you've come out of a storm or you're headed for the next storm. Storms are a part of life. God allows storms. Listen to me, nothing happens in your life that didn't first pass through the hand of God.

And God allowed this storm but not all storms are Jonah's storms. Sometimes God allows storms to protect us.

He'll allow things in our lives to protect us. I, that would be Mark chapter four when the disciples are in the boat on the Sea Of Galilee and a storm comes up and the wind is blowing and the waves are crashing over the boat and Jesus, Jesus is back asleep in the back of the boat. They wake Jesus up

and he stands up and he says, peace be still in the winds and the waves. They fall silent. That's a storm of protection. There's also a storm of perfection. Storms that perfect our faith.

Sometimes you're in a storm, sometimes God allows a storm because He's trying to build your faith. Because a faith that hasn't been tested is a faith that cannot be trusted. This is Matthew 14. This is when, when the disciples are in the boat and the storm

is raging on the Sea Of Galilee and Jesus comes walking to them on the water. You remember the story? Peter steps out of the boat, if that's you Lord, bid me to come and Jesus says, come. Everybody says Peter walked on water. Listen, Peter didn't walk on water, Peter worked, walked on the word of the Lord. Come.

And he stepped out on the water and he walked to Jesus but what happened? He took his eyes off Jesus and when he did he began to sink. Jesus reached down he says, Why do you still have little faith? See he was perfecting Peter's faith because he had big plans for Peter. Read the book of Acts.

He needed to perfect his faith. But then, then there's the storm of correction. Storms that correct. And that's Jonah's storm.

See that storm has a purpose and it's on purpose. And maybe just maybe today, the storm that you're in. Maybe it's to protect you. Maybe it's to perfect you. But but just maybe just maybe it's to correct you. And it's a storm that's not sent to break you, it's a storm that has been sent to redirect you.

To get you back to what God originally called you to do. Now, I know this would never happen at Cornerstone. But the church that I pastor in Texas, Rock Creek. I I I come across people from time to time who just seem to always, come on, be in a storm. Like they just can't break out of the cycle of the stormy lifestyle.

Let me give you another word for storm. Are you ready for this? Constant drama. We call them e g r people. Extra grace required. It's the same conversation every time. It's just a different drama. It's a different storm. Don't miss this today. There's a lot of people who are followers of Christ

that don't wanna break free from the storms of life and the drama of life because being in a storm and being in drama brings them attention.

If I had a mic I'd just drop it right there. Thank you Holy Spirit. Yeah. Like like like like Jesus has set you free, why do you still live in bondage? Jesus has set you free, why do you keep going back to Egypt? Because going back to Egypt, you get the attention.

At some point, you gotta grow up. At some point, you gotta kick over the high chair. At some point pastor Lynn has to quit spoon feeding you and you have to read for yourself and learn for yourself and step out and follow Christ. Take your next step, move out of the drama.

And our boy Jonah, man, he's not just in a storm but he has quickly become comfortable and compromised. The sailors are panicking. They're throwing stuff overboard, trying to save the vessel and our boy Jonah is down in the bottom of the ship asleep. And the bible says he's not just asleep, he's in a deep sleep.

Don't miss this today. Sometimes I think when I look at the state of the world and the state of my community, the problem is not that darkness is prevailing, the problem is the church is in deep sleep. That we have, we've grown comfortable and compromised of going to church but not not being the church. It's very possible

to get so numb because of the storm that you don't feel the pain, you don't see the hurt that's all around you. You can learn a lot about a person if you look in their eyes. You can see pain. You can see hopelessness. Come on, you can also see crazy. Look in their eyes, it'll tell you every time. Uh-oh.

Lamentations one twelve says, is it nothing to you all those who pass you by? Have you looked into the eyes of people at Fry's lately? That rhymes. Have you looked at those at work? In the hallways of your school? Have you seen the hurt? The pain?

Are you so numb to it? Are you so deeply asleep? You know, if there's any culture that should be woke right now, it's the church of Jesus Christ. Woke in the right way. Waken back up. Listen, God is blowing. His wind is blowing. Revival is Look, I don't want to just pray for revival, I wanna be revival.

I wanna be in the middle of it. I wanna be the generation that experiences that and I gotta move out of my compromise. I gotta wake up and see the storm that's all around. It continues in verse eight.

So they, they being the sailors asked him. I love this. They go down to the bottom of the ship. I don't know how they knew to do this. But I don't know a lot of things about God because I have a God that's mysterious. By the way, I don't wanna worship a God that I can figure out in my human mind.

So they went down and they asked Jonah, tell us, who is responsible for making all of this trouble for us? I love this next line. Men have been asking each other this question for years. Hey, what kind of work do you do? What does that matter? What do you do for a living? Where do you come from? What is your country?

From what people are you? Look at the answer verse nine. I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven. Do you see this? This man who is in deep sleep, compromised, in complete disobedience of what God has called him to do tells them, I'm a Hebrew, I worship the Lord.

There are people every Sunday in church houses across America who worship God with clapped hands, raised hands and yet are living in complete disobedience to the commands of God. And I'm just telling you, it's got to go deeper than hype. You can't build a church on hype, build a church on holiness. I'm

not I'm not saying that this up here wasn't good and I'm not listen, if Jesus is alive, church shouldn't be a funeral. Amen?

I'm excited about my Jesus. He came out of the grave, He's not dead. But at the same time, it cannot be entertainment that I'm looking for. You They didn't sing my songs this weekend. They didn't do my jam. Listen. Listen to your favorite songs all week and then come in here and just worship God with whatever songs are sung.

I mean, probably some of you in the room have no idea that we sang a song today that was written by Bill Gaither. Can you believe that? Some of you are like, Bill Gaither? Who is that? Google it. It's all on Google folks.

Song was written in the seventies and you guys were moved by it because it wasn't the fact that it was written in the seventies or Daniel sang it's because the presence of God was in it. And you walked into this room with a spirit of anticipation and expectation like you do when you go to a sporting event. You were ready.

I leaned over to my wife, I said, man, I need to just go preach right now. Just let me preach right now because the room was was being moved by the spirit of God. Not hype but holiness. People expecting God to move. People coming with a heart seeking God.

Not hype. Holiness. Watch this. Not just morality but actually being on mission. I know a lot of good people who are moral people but have no mission in life. We have a huge mission. Here it is. Populate heaven, depopulate hell. That's a huge mission. In fact, I'm backstage getting ready to come out and David says to me, hey,

make sure you really really hone in on the altar call moment because eternity is a long time. And I thought to myself, I have never thought that before I walked on a stage. That that's the most important part of the message is when we give you a call to action for Christ. Because eternity is long and life is short.

Let's not just be hype, let's be holy. Let's not just be moral, let's be on mission. Let's not worship God and yet be disobedient to God. So how does the story end? Well, Paul Harvey would say, let me give you the rest of the story. The last verse in chapter one it says that, the sailors threw Jonah

overboard into the sea and that a large fish that God had prepared swallowed him. Now don't ask me to explain this. Because I can't explain it. Here's what I'll tell you. If you can, if you can believe Genesis one one. Then you can certainly believe that God could prepare a fish to swallow Jonah.

The second thing I'll tell you is Jonah's not Shaquille O'Neal. So don't think that way. Jonah on his best days probably about five five. Okay? So, there are fish in the ocean right now big enough to swallow me and to swallow you. And God prepared that fish to swallow Jonah and when that happened,

Jonah plummeted to the depths of the ocean in the belly of a big fish. We don't know if it was a well, it was just a fish. And and and the second chapter Jonah is all about Jonah praying in the belly of the fish.

I'm gonna give you some deep theological teaching right here. Write this down. If you ever find yourself in the belly of a large fish at the bottom of the ocean, the best thing to do in that moment is pray. And he prays.

God hears his prayer from heaven which tells me this, even at the bottom of the ocean God can hear your prayer. He hears his prayer. He becomes beach barf as the well belches him up onto the beach. And then in chapter three it says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

Aren't you glad that God comes a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth time and a seventh time and an eighth time? The word of the Lord comes to Jonah again and this time Jonah relents and he goes to Nineveh.

A place where none of us would have wanted to go and where he didn't wanna go. Watch, because they're brutal people. They're brutal. And when I say brutal, I mean I mean think Isis caliphate brutal. They would literally impale and skin people alive. Take them into the desert.

Take an anchor, bury it in the sand and nail their tongue to that anchor and lead them there to die. This is why many think that Jonah didn't want to go the Ninevites. But the truth is, because it's gonna manifest itself as we wrap up today. Jonah didn't go to the Ninevites

because Jonah didn't think they deserved the grace and the mercy of God. It's not that he's afraid of them. He thinks that they're too brutal, they're too far gone for God to love them and forgive them.

In chapter three he goes, he preaches and the bible says that the entire city of Nineveh repents. Turns their hearts toward God. Did you hear that? The entire city. And then it even says, even the king of the Assyrian empire, because Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria. Even the king relented and turned his heart towards God.

Now I'm just telling you, if I was preaching in here today, all four services and everybody in the room said yes to Jesus, I'm not only celebrating it but I'm retiring tomorrow

because there's no way I could ever outdo that. And you would think Jonah being a prophet doing what prophets do, he would celebrate what God just did but he didn't. These are the words of Jonah back to God. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. A God who relents

from sending calamity. I knew you'd save him. I knew you'd do it because that's the kind of God you are.

And then it just ends in the weirdest way. If you don't believe me read the fourth chapter. It just ends. It's like a Netflix series that you binge watch. It had five seasons and you get to the last episode and it's the ending you didn't expect and you're you're bothered about it for two weeks. It's crazy.

But as we land the plane today on this story, let me ask you again, who's the main character of the book of Jonah?

God. And Jesus is on every page of your bible. The gospel's in every story. Here's what you need to know. Jonah points to Jesus and Jesus points back to Jonah. Matthew chapter 12, Jesus is talking to a group of people. We know him as the pharisees.

Verse 38 says, then some of the pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, teacher, we want to see a sign from you. People are still saying that. Well, if God give me a sign. He answered a wicked and adulterous generation asked for signs, but none of you 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 huge fish, so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at judgment with this generation and condemn it. Man Jesus does not beat around the bush. The men of Nineveh are

going to stand up and judge your generation. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah and look at this, and now something greater than Jonah is here. Write this down. Jonah is a better Jesus. See Jonah didn't want to go to the Ninevites because he didn't think they deserved grace and mercy. And God sent his only son

to the earth for people like you and people like me who didn't deserve grace and mercy. God could have stayed in the throne room of heaven but he wrapped himself in human flesh in the form of a baby. He grew up as a sinless spotless lamb of God.

He died on a cross. He bled out for you and for me and three days later he rose again. For what? So that the Ninevites could say yes to salvation. You and me. People who left to our self and left to our sin would be brutal people and Jesus has made a way because he is a better Jonah. That's the gospel.

Today, I've come all the way from Texas to tell you, if you've never said yes to Jesus, salvation is in the house today. Say yes to him. At the same time,

maybe you're like me. You said yes to Jesus when you were 12 and now you're running and you've been running perpetually for years. As we say in Texas, when the floods come and they cover the roads, are you ready for this? Turn around. Don't drown. Turn around means to repent. Come back home. Stop running.

No. I'm gonna get as far away from him as I can get. You know what you're gonna find when you get there? He'll be there waiting on you. Come back home. Come back to Jesus. Stop running. He still has a plan for your life. I'm gonna ask you to bow your heads right where you are. Just in a spiritual posture of prayer.

Everybody in the room just just let God move in this moment. If you've never said yes to Jesus, Jesus is a better Jonah. He died for you. He gave his life for you. Would you say yes to him today? In the book of Romans, Romans ten nine and ten it says, if you confess Jesus with your mouth and you believe

that he's God's one and only son and that God raised him from the dead, the bible says you will be saved. Your eternity would be changed just like my dad's was in 1982 on that Sunday morning.

If that's you today, if you are if you're in here and you want to say yes to Jesus, you know you need to say yes to Jesus, would you just say a prayer something like this. Just say, heavenly father, I admit I'm a sinner. Jesus, I believe you are God's one and only son.

I believe you died for me and you rose again three days later. Forgive me of my sins. I repent. Give me a new life in you and the promise of heaven for eternity.

If you prayed that prayer, anywhere in this room if you prayed that prayer, I'm not gonna come off the stage but I I just wanna celebrate it. Would you just raise your hand right where you are? Just lift your hand high. I pray ed that prayer. Yes. Yes. Yeah. All all over this auditorium.

People are raising their hands saying, I said yes to Jesus. Listen.

Out in the lobby, there's this big word that says life and there's a bunch of light bulbs. I want you to go put your light in the light in the in your light bulb in the word life and turn it and turn it on. Those of you that got your hands raised right now, would you have the courage to go do that right now in the lobby? Pastor Robin would love to meet you, would love to give you a bible as you turn your light bulb. Come on church, let's celebrate those who have given their life to Jesus. Come on, let's celebrate it. Yeah.

Right now.

People are doing it right now. If you'd make your way to the lobby, pastor Robin would love to meet with you. Beyond that, you can let us know by texting Jesus to tune 1999 and we'll start a conversation with you. Last thing I'll say this, if you're running,

stop running. Let me just say it this way, if you're running from God here's what you should do today, you should run down here to one of the prayer team members and pray.

Ask for forgiveness from the Lord and come back home to God. God, thank you again for the weekend. Thank you for how you've moved in this room. We love you and we thank for you sending Jesus for us. And all God's people said, amen. God bless you guys. Have a great rest of your weekend. We'll see you next week.