Allergic to God: For That Great City

Show me what love could do. You taught me so much. You showed me so much in love and the sensitivity that since you've been gone, I don't think I've ever felt this way before. Now, if that was the main theme of the song, that song would have been a beautiful love story. But listen to the end of the song. They say this: "I guess I think we both said a little too much today. After all, you're with somebody else and I'm with somebody else." Misplaced desires.

If I had talked to Rick James, I would have been, man, what are you talking about? What is at the very core of your desire that makes you want to step out of your marriage and engage with another woman? Pastor Jeff did a great job last week digging into the question of anger. And today, I want to dig a little deeper into anger and some of the causes of anger, which we define as misplaced desire.

We desire things to be a certain way and desire is not a bad thing. But what desire does do is expose your heart, expose what you truly care about, because whatever you desire is going to reflect the way you live. It's going to reflect your behavior.

And what we see in the book of Jonah is a person—but not just a person, but a prophet of God—who had misplaced desires. Yet God did not kill him. God challenged him, put the mirror in front of his face, and exposed him to himself, but also exposed Jonah to what he thinks his kingdom desires.

Throughout this book, we are witnessing this tension between what God desires and what Jonah desires. What we see is God not only doing a work in the Ninevites but also God is doing a work in Jonah. So today, we will examine the life of Jonah and see the harm that misplaced desires could have. We will see the grace that God gives us for self-examination with the hope of giving us kingdom desires, which I define as God's desires.

So let's go ahead and pray and we'll get started.

Lord, I want to thank you for this opportunity, Lord God, to preach your word. And I pray for myself, Lord God, that this word that you have given us not only speaks to the congregation, God, but also speaks to me. And may I get from in front of you, Lord God, and hide me on the foot of the cross. We say this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Misplaced Desires and Harm to Others

Misplaced desires could cause you to do harm to others. Remember, desire is not a bad thing. It's simply something that we wish to happen. But as Christians, we either have two desires: a desire to please God or a desire to please ourself.

See, God desired Jonah to go to Nineveh, but instead, he booked it in the other direction. He goes to Tarshish. And y'all remember the story. He gets on a boat, headed there, falls asleep. And the sailors of the boat wake up Jonah because of this great storm—the cause of Jonah's rebellion. And then they started throwing cargo out of the ship.

See, if Jonah had never entered that ship, the sailors would have never suffered their loss. And this is not a yacht where people are throwing clothes and extras over the building. They're actually throwing out their livelihood. These professional sailors encountered a storm so bad that they were overcome with fear and started crying out to their god. They didn't know what to do.

They wake up Jonah and tell him to call on his God. Then they cast lots and Jonah is left with the short stick. And then they all asked him. They looked at him. "Who are you really?" And he tells them, "I'm a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of the heavens who made the sea and the dry land."

What's interesting in this text is that he didn't refer to himself as the Israelites or even Jewish. He said, "I'm the Hebrew." It's as if the sailors remember the story way back when, when the Hebrews were under the oppression of Egypt and God performed all these miracles, split the Red Sea. See, all these other gods they are praying to, but yet with this God, they are seized with fear.

But check out the predicament that Jonah put them in. They say, "What should we do, Jonah?" Jonah says, "Throw me over." Jonah's rebellion put the sailors in a tough spot because if Jonah really is the prophet of God, I can imagine them thinking, "Alright, if God is causing this storm in this sea because of this prophet, then what's he going to do to us if we throw him over?"

See, sometimes when we have misplaced desires and other people are involved, we could call those with us to also fight with God. The text says the men rowed hard to get back to the dry land, but they couldn't. Why? Because the sea was raging against them more and more and more. Every time they rowed, the storm got worse.

And when they finally realized that they cannot win against this God, they finally submitted to his will. They said, "Please Lord, don't let us perish because of this man's life and don't charge us with innocent blood. For you, Lord, have done just as you please." Then they threw him over.

They threw Jonah over. See, if Jonah never got on the boat, they wouldn't have lost their cargo. The boat wouldn't have nearly broke apart and they really almost lost their lives in the storm. See, misplaced desires could cause harm to others but we don't have to look back at Jonah's life in this particular book to understand that misplaced desires could cause harm to others. We could just look back at our own lives.

I remember talking to countless people, men and women looking back at their life and saddened because of their desire to get that promotion at their job, and then they neglected their families in the midst of that. And when the kids become older, I can see this relationship kind of strained. They're trying to figure out what do we do. I have both seen friendships break up and spouses verbally and physically abuse each other. Why? Because of misplaced desires. I have even seen adults and kids with the desire to escape the reality of life and they get lost in the grips of substance abuse causing great harm to the family. So you got to ask yourself, is your desire to be x, whatever that x is to you, is it causing harm to others?

How Misplaced Desires Harm Yourself

Because not only can misplaced desires cause harm to others, but misplaced desires could cause harm to yourself. There's a well-known Buddha quote that says this:

"Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

And we see this in Jonah. His anger towards the Ninevites was so bad that he ended up in the belly of the fish. Some commentaries say that he sacrificed himself, but I believe it was something different. I believe Jonah asked the sailors to help him with his death. Think about it. The storm is bad enough that professional sailors can't even maneuver in it. And I'm be honest, if I'm on that boat and God is telling me to go somewhere and that boat and those waves are moving up and down, I'm not asking the sailors to throw me over. I'm grabbing one of those paddles and I'm swinging right back to where we came from. But Jonah does not do that. His desire to not go to Nineveh was so strong that he would rather drown and die than go preach to them.

I can't imagine what it was like inside the belly of the fish. The smell of dead carcasses, the rushing of water every time the well opens its mouth and water comes in and it feels like you are drowning. The coldness, the sleepless nights, the darkness. Again, misplaced desires can cause harm to yourself and we see this in another instance in Jonah.

Jonah preaches to the Ninevites, Ninevites repent, then rather than rejoicing, he hopes that God would uphold his word and destroy Nineveh. But think about how demonic this is. He builds a booth in hopes of God destroying that city because God said within forty days and he's sitting there watching, watching families playing, kids playing, friends celebrating life, enjoying life together, but yet Jonah is sitting on top of the hill waiting for them to die. I can imagine the mental strain he was putting himself on because of his expectation of God destroying the city. He could have stayed in town and celebrated with Ninevites but instead, he chooses to suffer.

Listen to this in verse seven:

"But God designated a worm after he created the plant. When dawn came the next day and then attacked the plant and it withered. And when the sun came up, God designated a scorching east wind and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and he begged with all his soul to die. Saying, death is better to me than life." — Jonah 4:7-8

You see, I love North Carolina but one of the things I hate the most about North Carolina is the humidity, right? Amen to that? Amen. And some people will argue it's not that bad but to me, it's bad. I'm from California, went to Santa Cruz Beach almost once a month, cool weather. But out here, if that sun is out and that humidity is cracking, I'm not going outside. My kids get mad at me because I'm not taking them to no sports games or nothing like that. I'm staying inside and I'm staying cool. But Jonah, on the other hand, because of his misplaced desire, is gonna stay out there in that scorching heat waiting for these people to die.

But you know what Jonah is essentially saying? He said, God, I would rather die and be with that plant that you killed than to live a life with you. Misplaced desires.

And I can imagine Jonah writing this book and reflecting on his life, seeing all the hardship that he had caused to the sailors, to the people of Nineveh, to even himself. All because of these misplaced desires. I could see him crying and say, man, if I had just done this, then life would have been so much different. But thanks be to God that he's merciful and full of grace. Because even in our misplaced desires, God does not kill us. Even in our failures, God can use us to draw people to himself and we see this in the life of Jonah.

In his rebellion, sailors got saved. In his rebellion, the Ninevites got saved. All these things that God did regardless of who the messenger was. Because here's the thing: the power is in the message, not in the messenger. And that should be good news for us. Because even in our own lives, we are failures. But yet God could use that.

See, our misplaced desires can cause harm to others and ourselves, but God's grace leads us to self-examination with the hopes of changing behavior. Even in our misplaced desires, God's grace allows us an opportunity for self-examination. But the challenge is that we focus so much on the event rather than thinking, "What is God teaching me in this?" We do this with the book of Jonah, right? The first thing we think about is the fish, but we have to peel back the layers and ask, "What is God teaching this? What is God teaching us?"

In Jonah's near-death experience in the belly of the fish, God gives Jonah time for self-reflection. He writes this wonderful prayer in chapter two, and y'all can read it—he talks about the goodness of God and his own folly. See, God had every right to kill Jonah. In the Old Testament, if a prophet did not speak the command of the Lord, he was struck dead. But God's grace protects him from death and puts him in a place to do what? To reflect on his own actions.

You see, the challenge of living in this day and age is that we keep ourselves so busy that we don't have time or create time for self-reflection. We don't allow God to examine our hearts. And I get it because examining our hearts is hard. It's painful. It can cause us to shift some things in our life—the way we spend our time, the way we spend our money, the way we interact with our relationships. But what it does do, it realigns our hearts to what God's heart is.

But I don't know about you all, but most of the time that I spend time really deep praying with God is when I desire something for myself or I want God to get me out of something. So I try to create time so I can ask God, "God, what are you speaking to me in this season?" Because truth be told, most of my frustrations is not what God is doing. My frustrations come when I think about what God should be doing. We need to change the way we think. God's grace leads us to self-examination.

Again, when the worm ate the plant, God wasn't doing that to be an evil God. God was trying to draw something out of Jonah. God was exposing Jonah to Jonah. Holding up the mirror. Again, don't get caught up in the event. What is God speaking to Jonah? What is God even speaking to us?

But God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" He said, "I have good reason to be angry, even to the point of death." Then the Lord said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight." — Jonah 4:9

Man, I wish I could speak to Jonah and tell Jonah it was never about the plant. The plant just exposed what Jonah really wanted. And our plant even exposes what we really want. We are mainly concerned about things that affect us. The plant was a source of safety, comfort, security, relief. You know what Jonah is essentially saying? "God, I'd rather have everything that this plant has to offer than have everything that you have to offer. Kill me now." He would rather die and be with the plant than be alive with God.

CTK, what is your plant? What is the thing that you will die for? You may not say die, but what are the things that you will sacrifice your time? What are the things that you will sacrifice your money? Maybe your plant is finding a spouse. Maybe your plant is finding a job, school, a house. Maybe your plant is in your identity. But my question to you is, how would you respond if God took your plant from you?

I have witnessed people get angry because their plant got destroyed. They leave the faith. Why? Because their plant, their source of comfort, security, and identity was taken from them, and they turned their back on God. And in some instances, they even blame God. "Why would you do something like this to me? I don't deserve this. What kind of God that says he loves me do this to me?"

And what this says is that they say they love God on the mountain, but it's in the valley that exposes who you really love. They say they love God on the mountain, but it's in the valley that exposes who you really love.

CTK, I want to ask you a question. Are you frustrated? Are things getting on your nerve a little too much these days? Maybe God is calling you to self-examine your life and get to the core of your desires. What do you really want? Because He wants to give you this kingdom desire.

You ask and you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives. Why? So that you may spend it on your own pleasures. — James 4:3

What do you truly desire?

And it's through God's grace that we are able to pursue kingdom desires. So, first God exposes our misplaced desires, brings us to a place of self-examination, and then fills us by the Holy Spirit with kingdom desires.

"Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle." — Jonah 4:11

Now, when you read the book of Jonah, some questions that ought to pop up. How can God call Nineveh a great city with all this evil that he has done, not only to the Israelites but to the other nations? Three times he calls the city a great city. And when we talk about greatness, we associate it with something positive. "That was a great game last night. The food you cook was great. You did a great work at your job." But in Hebrew, this particular passage, this word gedol, which translates great, has a different type of meaning. This meaning means to grow up, to become strong, wealthy, and important. It has an idea of something being molded and shaped to something better than it was before.

So, if Nineveh is already strong, wealthy, and populated, and thriving, then why would God call that city a great city? I'm glad you asked. The reason God calls it the great city is because God doesn't look at the history or what it is now. He looks at what it can become. He sees the potential. And every time God engages with humanity, he envisions what we can become. He looks at each one of us with a vision. He sees potential in all y'all. God is the great visionary, the great architect. God looks down from heaven, sees the brokenness of the world, and begins to shape and mold it to the way it ought to be.

But here's the good news: God does not intervene based on what we have done in the past. Because if that was the case, then none of us will be in heaven. The Bible says:

"None is righteous, no, not one." — Romans 3:10

Jonah observed the history of Ninevites and thought, "These people are beyond salvation. As a matter of fact, these people don't even deserve it." But God says, "No. My desire is that all people be saved regardless of the history, regardless of where they're at now." Kingdom desires.

But in order for God to give us access to this potential, he has to offer forgiveness, and we find this forgiveness in Christ. But you know what Jonah's challenge was? He did not look at what God can do, but he looked at what God shouldn't do. He was stuck in the past. He remembered the havoc, the chaos, the terror that this nation caused other nations. His unforgiveness to this nation clouded the desire that God had for this great city.

It's hard to have a kingdom desire with an unforgiving heart. You can't have both. Maybe the reason that we don't have a kingdom desire is because we are holding on to unforgiveness. Is there anybody in your life that you need to forgive? And sometimes we have a right to be justified in our anger, but as Christians, it's not our right to pronounce judgment or withhold good from anybody.

And can I be honest? When the war in Ukraine and Russia first started, I was shocked. I prayed that God would take down that leadership. Children being killed. People being executed. Women being abused. Everyday life is being shattered. But then I came to church. And the first Sunday, Jeff opens up: Jonah is more than a fish. You know what happened? I see my life in Jonah. Just like Jonah did not want the Ninevites to receive salvation, I wanted the same thing for Russia. But God had to challenge me. He convicted me. He said, "Dax, this is not kingdom desires. This is your own desires." And in order for me to adopt God's desires, I have to forgive them.

Another Aspect of Kingdom Desires

Another aspect of kingdom desires is to be a blessing to other nations. When God first approached Abraham, he said this:

"I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great. Why? So that you will be a blessing and all the families of the earth shall be blessed because of you." — Genesis 12:2-3

In the Hebrew, the word Mishpaha, which is translated here as "family," means "people." So, if you substitute that word, it reads like this: "In you, all the people of the earth shall be blessed." Some people, a lot of people, all people. And this has a salvation aspect to it, yes, but people will also be blessed. Why? Because of the way that people live under the covenant.

Deuteronomy 4 says this. When Moses is speaking to the Israelites receiving the law:

"See I've taught you statutes and rules as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you're entering to take possession of. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples. Who, listen to this, when they hear all these statutes will say, 'Surely, this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'" — Deuteronomy 4:5-6

For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him? And what a great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

See, these statutes and rules gave them direction and how to interact not only with God but with one another. And because of this, other nations would be drawn to the Israelites because of the way they treat others.

I would never become a Muslim personally. One, because I disagree with them theologically, but another reason I wouldn't join that religion is because of the way that I see them treat women. Sometimes I see them treat women as second class citizens or even as property. But as for me, I don't want my daughters growing up in a world where they see them as second class citizens or a piece of property. And I get it. We as Christians, we have our own struggles and our own hiccups, but positionally in heaven and on earth, all genders are equal. There's none that is above the other. So for these reasons, I would not join the Muslim faith.

But can you imagine some of the reasons that people put out there because they don't wanna join Christianity? Maybe they observe the way that we treat other nations. And as a western Christianity, I wanna define other nations for you all. See, in the United States, the other nations are the immigrants coming to this country. In the United States, the other nations are the LGBTQ. The other nations are the different religions that surround us. To us as Christians, the other nations are the Black Lives Matter movement. The radical left, the radical right, KKK, any other group that is contrary to what we believe is true—those are other nations.

And God is saying to us, be a blessing to these nations. Why? So they can say, "Surely this is a great God. What kind of God blesses people not because of what they believe in or who they follow, but because they are created in his image?"

See, God lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust. We have to see all people as potentials—potentials to be a citizen in the kingdom of God. We have to be a blessing to other nations.

But what typically happens in Western Christianity? Rather than pursuing other nations to be a blessing, we want to create our own nation. And what I mean by that is whatever the world creates, we create a Christian version of it, right? Rock, then we have Christian rock. We have rap, and then we have Christian rap. We have sports leagues and we have Christian sports leagues. We have county schools and we have Christian schools and on and on. Y'all get the picture.

But none of these things are bad. None of them are bad. But the question is, what is the motive behind it? Because God calls us to be a blessing to other nations, but if all our circles and all our life is Christian this and Christian that, then how are we gonna engage with other nations?

Some people do this for better education, a better atmosphere, and I get it. But some people do this just to protect themselves from non-Christians. What if the motivation is not what you can get out of your experience, but what this experience could get out of you?

What if your kid did go to a public school and she was the one bringing light to the nations by giving hope to a kid who's just about to commit suicide? What if you did go to a traditional gym and you were bringing light to the nations by bumping into someone who just lost a loved one and they were struggling with depression? What if you did start a men's or women's group in the community and you were the one who led them to Christ?

Do you hear God's call? All of us to go to the great city. Do you see people as potential to the kingdom? And if you don't, when did they stop being in the image of God?

Luke says this:

No one lights a lamp and puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket but where on the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. Again, no one after lighting a lamp covers it with a basket or puts it under a bed but puts it on a lampstand. Why? So that those who come in may see the light. — Luke

Question. How are people gonna see the light when all the lights are in one room? May I ask you a question? So if all of us are in here, we all have light bulbs, with all these buildings and stuff around, will someone from North Raleigh be able to see this light? No. Somebody will have to go there to be a light.

See, God is calling us to walk in the darkness because when you do good work in the dark, people will be drawn to the light, which brings us to the final sub point of kingdom desires—which is ultimately to give God glory.

Kingdom Desires and God's Glory

The ultimate goal for us transforming our misplaced desires to kingdom desires is to give God glory.

See, what if Jonah did not focus on the history of the Ninevites but rather focus on giving God glory? So the question pops up: Well, how do we as Christians give God glory?

Because in order to give God glory in this day and age, you have to be empowered. And I got good news for y'all. Over two thousand years ago, there was a man who claimed he existed before he physically existed. He stepped out of light into a world of darkness. He was falsely accused. He was despised. He was used. His closest friends left him and the world in which he created rejected him. He was tortured, forced to carry his own cross up a hill. They nailed him to the cross, put a crown of thorns on his head, made fun of him, hit him, but under his breath, you could hear the whisper. He said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Then he gave up the spirit, but on the third day, he rose again with all power and all authority.

But do you all know why he did this?

Father, this is Jesus speaking, the hour has come. Glorify your son. Why? So that the son may glorify you. — John 17

In the book of Hebrews, it says this:

Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame. — Hebrews

See, the joy that was set before Jesus—not only the joy of saving us but glorifying the Father. Jesus's vision, as we have seen in Revelation, is billions and billions of people worshiping and glorifying the Father. And the good news is that after he died, he rose again and sent the Spirit, so now we have the ability to glorify the Father. And he did it for each one of you because he saw your potential. And he sent his Spirit to not only enable us to enter the kingdom but to give us the desire for the kingdom.

So my question: Do you have a kingdom desire? Because if you are saved, you already have it. You just need to do some self-examination and realign your heart with God. But if you don't have a kingdom desire, if you don't know Christ, I want to encourage you to tap somebody on the shoulder. We preach the gospel every Sunday, so I'm pretty confident they know what to say.

So just like Jonah left with a question before the book ended, I want to leave you all with a question: Do you have a desire for God's kingdom? Or do you use God in order to get your own desires?

Let's pray.