Embedded Files
Amid the Thronging Worshipers
Verse 1
Amid the thronging worshipers
the Lord, our God, I bless;
before his people gathered here
his name will I confess.
Come, praise him,
all who fear the Lord,
the children of his grace;
with reverence sound his glories forth
and bow before his face.
Verse 2
The burden of the sorrowful
the Lord will not despise;
he has not turned from those who mourn,
he listens to their cries.
His goodness makes me join the throng
where saints his praise proclaim,
and there will I fulfill my vows
with those who fear his name.
Verse 3
He feeds with good the humble soul
and satisfies the meek,
and they shall live and praise the Lord
who for his mercy seek.
The ends of all the earth will hear,
the nations seek the Lord;
they worship him, the King of kings,
in earth and heaven adored.
“He Will Be”
Verse 1
God is faithful to His word
Even when there seems no way
Though time may pass His memory will not fade
His promises will never fail
Chorus 1
Faithful He has been faithful He will be
Time and time again His Word returns complete
To His truth I cling when the night is deep
Faithful He has been faithful He will be
Verse 2
God is gracious when I doubt
He draws near though I retreat
Though I may wander through the wilderness
He goes with me and gives me peace
Chorus 2
Gracious He has been gracious He will be
What I don’t deserve the Father gives to me
Where He leads my feet I shall not want or need
Gracious He has been, gracious He will be
Verse 3
God is worthy of my song
Countless are His awesome deeds
His mighty hand has parted raging seas
For those He loves He has redeemed
Chorus 3
Worthy He has been worthy He will be
Crowned in endless praise all earth and heaven sing
Holy is the Lord who reigns in majesty
Worthy He has been worthy He will be
Chorus 3
Worthy He has been worthy He will be
Crowned in endless praise all earth and heaven sing
Holy is the Lord who reigns in majesty
Worthy He has been worthy He will be
Tag
Worthy He has been worthy He will be
“Behold the Lamb”
Verse 1
Behold the Lamb who bears our sins away
Slain for us and we remember
The promise made that all who come in faith
Find forgiveness at the cross
So we share in this Bread of Life
And we drink of His sacrifice
As a sign of our bonds of peace
Around the table of the King
Verse 2
The body of our Saviour Jesus Christ
Torn for you eat and remember
The wounds that heal the death that brings us life
Paid the price to make us one
So we share in this Bread of Life
And we drink of His sacrifice
As a sign of our bonds of love
Around the table of the King
Verse 3
The blood that cleanses every stain of sin
Shed for you drink and remember
He drained death's cup that all may enter in
To receive the life of God
So we share in this Bread of Life
And we drink of His sacrifice
As a sign of our bonds of grace
Around the table of the King
Verse 4
And so with thankfulness and faith we rise
To respond and to remember
Our call to follow in the steps of Christ
As His body here on earth
As we share in His suffering
We proclaim Christ will come again
And we'll join in the feast of heaven
Around the table of the King
“I Will Sing of my Redeemer”
Verse 1
I will sing of my Redeemer
and his wondrous love to me;
on the cruel cross he suffered,
from the curse to set me free.
Verse 2
I will tell the wondrous story
how, my lost estate to save,
in his boundless love and mercy
he the ransom freely gave.
Chorus
Sing, oh, sing of my Redeemer,
with his blood he purchased me;
on the cross he sealed my pardon,
paid the debt, and made me free.
Verse 3
I will praise my dear Redeemer,
his triumphant power I'll tell,
how the victory he giveth
over sin and death and hell.
Chorus
Sing, oh, sing of my Redeemer,
with his blood he purchased me;
on the cross he sealed my pardon,
paid the debt, and made me free.
Christian Hearts in Love United
Verse 1
Christian hearts in love united:
search to know God's holy will.
Let his love, in us ignited,
more and more our spirits fill.
Christ the head, and we his members—
we reflect the light he is.
Christ the master, we disciples–
he is ours, and we are his.
Verse 2
Grant, Lord, that with your direction,
"Love each other" we comply.
Help us live in true affection,
your love to exemplify.
Let our mutual love be glowing
brightly so that all may view
that we, as on one stem growing,
living branches are in you.
Verse 3
Come, then, living church of Jesus,
covenant with him anew.
Unto him who conquered for us
may we pledge our service true.
May our lives reflect the brightness
of God's love in Jesus shown.
To the world we then bear witness:
we belong to God alone.
Ebenezer CRC - February 1, 2026
Adam Veenstra
SCRIPTURE READING
SERMON INTRO SLIDE I invite you to turn to page 1436 of the Bibles in front of you, to Jonah chapter 1. Our message this morning will look at the role of God’s will and sovereignty in Jonah’s life - and in all of our lives as well.
So I invite you to follow along right from the beginning, at chapter 1 verse 1:
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “O Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
MESSAGE
Part One - Context
In the context that Jonah lived and ministered in, a lot of emphasis was put on names.
SLIDE 1 And his name means “dove”, which - perhaps ironically - represents peace, love, purity, and hope.
SLIDE 2 But also - perhaps more fittingly - spiritual connection.
SLIDE 3 What we see in this story is an individual and his connection to God and his will for his life.
It’s a connection that cannot be broken, because God’s will for our lives is sovereign.
Scholars have pointed out that one of the overarching themes of this entire book is the collective purpose of God’s people: we are meant to understand his sovereignty over all creation, and follow his leading for the love and redemption of all things.
Old Testament professor James Bruckner has called the book of Jonah a “microcosm of God’s relationship to his whole creation in history”: by centering the narrative on a single person, we’re invited to stand alongside him, and consider our connection to God’s will as well.
Other prophets that we read about in the Old Testament typically respond more positively to this connection, and accept the role of God’s will for their lives.
SLIDE 4 But what sets Jonah apart is perhaps what makes him more relatable.
Jonah was ministering from roughly 800-750 BC, a time when political boundaries were being shifted, and there was a lot of conflict among the ancient kingdoms.
We don’t know exactly what his life might have been like before God called him to this particular task, but judging his reaction, it’s likely taking a massive detour.
Nineveh was located over 800 kilometers from where Jonah was living at the time, roughly the distance from here to Holland, Michigan.
It was also known as “the city of blood”, being the capital of Assyria, one of Israel’s most threatening enemies at the time.
So I think it makes sense that Jonah would have his reservations about following God’s call to go and minister to the people there.
On a practical level, it isn’t the safest place to go.
And we find out later in the book that Jonah isn’t sure its people are all that deserving of God’s message.
So our text tells us that Jonah exercised his own will: he boarded a ship, and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
He planned to travel to the other end of the Mediterranean Sea, a distance of roughly 4000 kilometres, to a city completely removed from his own culture, where no one else would be seeking God’s will, either.
It was a place where he felt he could truly be apart from God.
The Hebrew people had a strong understanding of God’s sovereignty, and his will for their lives.
They took seriously the words of Psalm 139, which ask,
SLIDE 5 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
God was inescapable. Jonah would have known that.
So I think his actions speak to his desperation: he is rebelling against all of his cultural and spiritual instincts.
SLIDE 6 He knew that God alone is the source of all life. All of life is dependent on him.
Through the triune God of the universe all things were made that have been made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.
And in this chapter of Jonah every action is in relation to his sovereignty; everything is bound up in his will.
Even the ship’s crew, who we’re told all believed in their own gods, now recognize the Lord’s power and sovereignty over creation!
SLIDE 7 The people of Israel who originally read this story were meant to see it as a mirror.
To see Jonah as one of them.
They were a people who were aware of who God is, and had been chosen for his mission.
They were a people who were meant to recognize and follow God’s sovereignty and his will for their lives.
SLIDE 8 And so in this story they’re warned about the consequences of trying to flee from that will.
There are consequences to not being who God wants us to be.
God’s will for Jonah’s life is as much about who he is as what he does.
God’s primary will for his life is to be aligned with him.
God’s primary will for his life is to be more like Jesus.
SLIDE 9 Because any action, any obedience, will flow out of his character. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may OVERFLOW WITH HOPE by the power of the Holy Spirit.
SLIDE 10 Yes, God had a specific, practical plan for Jonah.
But the thrust of the story is driven by Jonah’s character, by his heart, from which is ability to follow that plan overflows.
From which is own desire, his own will, overflows.
SLIDE 11 Later in the New Testament, Christ himself will provide a different mirror for God’s people.
He will acknowledge that God’s will wasn’t necessarily what he would have chosen.
But also acknowledged God’s sovereignty: “not my will, but your will.”
SLIDE 12 Some of us could say that Jonah was at a complete advantage - there was no mistaking what God wanted him to do.
But there was also no mistaking WHO God wanted him to BE.
There’s no mistaking who God wants any of us to be: his will is that we be like Christ.
Part Two - Mission & Application
We will not get the kind of practical clarity that Jonah does about what God wants us to do.
We’ll have to do a bit more discernment.
So with that unknown in mind, maybe what we work on is the condition of our hearts.
We align them with who God calls us to be - people who are like Jesus.
SLIDE 13 When you ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up, they tend to dream pretty big, and pretty clearly.
They want to be hockey players or artists or astronauts.
When you ask them in grade 10 careers class, things have changed - they’re expected to have an entire future planned out (and get graded on it!).
You’re expected to figure out a real future. And if you were at a Christian high school like many of us here today, that expectation is God’s will for your life.
No pressure.
SLIDE 14 But the reality is that God’s will for our lives has been made just as clear to any one of us as it was to Jonah.
You find it in those books in front of you. The blue ones.
Almost 2000 pages, right at your fingertips.
Will it tell you everything to do? No.
But it will tell you how to be. Over and over again.
It will assure you of God’s sovereign will, and of his goodness, that let’s you trust in that will.
So many of our conversations about discernment focus on what we should do.
We talk about how our gifts and skills relate to the needs of the world and community.
And that is an important conversation to have.
But that conversation should neglect our heart. Our character.
So that we are serving the Lord whoever we are, wherever we are, and whatever we’re doing.
So that we are always sure of who we are supposed to BE, even if we don’t know exactly what we’re supposed to DO.
Writer and pastor Dallas Willard describes this process of discernment as a “conversational relationship” with God.
That we become so in sync and so in step with him, that even without a clear, step-by-step, directive, we’ll have a sense of what to do.
He says “a coworker sees what needs to be done and simply does it. We become so close to God that we do not have to wait to hear his words. We don’t have to be asked.”
SLIDE 15 “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.”
And a person acts.
The more our hearts are like Jesus, the more our wills will be aligned with God’s.
That will naturally influence how we live.
And it will be the solid ground we can root ourselves in, even when circumstances seem to have gone wrong.
SLIDE 16 Because life will feel like it’s gone wrong at times.
That’s one of the themes of the book Wintering that we’ll be discussing tonight - we all have seasons in our lives when it seems like things have gone wrong.
SLIDE 17 Seasons when it’d be easier to hibernate: just wrap ourselves in blankets and books and bingewatching and ignore the realities of our lives.
Has anyone ever heard of the phrase “duvet cocoon”? It’s a very effective, and very mature, avoidance measure.
SLIDE 18 We all have Jonah times. When what we’re supposed to be and do is unclear or overwhelming.
Times when it feels safer just to run away from it all and pretend it’s not happening.
But God with us - he is sovereign, and intimately involved in the people he desires for us to be.
SLIDE 19 There is nowhere that we can flee from his presence.
Jonah saw that as a challenge, or a threat. It drove him further away.
But it is actually a comfort!
SLIDE 20 In fact, in the Reformed tradition we believe that it’s our only comfort: that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
That no matter how deeply we try to hibernate, no matter how far we try to flee, he is always with us, and we are never alone.
Conclusion
SLIDE 21 This is a country music kind of community.
Some of you may react strongly to that, but seriously: look around. Prove me wrong.
So I assume you’ve all heard the song “Jesus, Take the Wheel.”
The song presents such a great paradox: because we’re call to surrender our wills and our control to the living God of the universe.
And so many of us spend our lives trying to figure out what he wants us to do.
But we already know who he wants us to be.
And still we spend so much of our lives rebelling and fleeing from that.
Ultimately God’s plans are all for the love and redemption of his people.
That is what every one of us are called to be a part of: the sovereign will of the triune God of the universe.
Next week we will continue to look at Jonah’s response to that call, and the further impact and consequences of trying to flee from it.
We trust that his story will still be a mirror for God’s people today, as we seek to become more like Jesus. And we trust that God will equip and bless us as we do.
Ebenezer CRC - February 8, 2026
Adam Veenstra
SCRIPTURE READING
SERMON INTRO SLIDE I invite you to turn to page 1437 of the Bible in front of you, to the end of Jonah chapter 1. Last week in our message we reflected on Jonah’s attempts to run from God’s will for his life. This week we’ll be reflecting a bit more on the consequences involved, and the role of God’s discipline in our lives.
So we’ll be picking up right after the men on the ship have thrown Jonah overboard in order to calm the storm at sea:
17 But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. 2 He said:
“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4 I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ 5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God.
7 “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
8 “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. 9 But I, with shouts of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord.”
10 And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
MESSAGE
Part One - Context
SLIDE 1 This is the part of the book that people remember the most.
“Jonah and the Whale” is such a classic story, and this part especially is almost cinematic - the storm and the waves and this huge monster rising from the depths to swallow this poor sinner.
The reality of it can seem impossible.
But sometimes God uses stories of the impossible to help his people grow and become more like Jesus.
Author and pastor Tim Keller once wrote that Jonah is the story of “God’s severe mercies.”
Because sometimes sin and shortcomings in this world require a radical, seemingly impossible treatment, that may seem severe to the modern reader: three days inside a great fish is an extreme method of teaching.
But we see in this passage that this unique form of discipline seems to work.
By the end of chapter 1, Jonah had become aware of his mistakes.
SLIDE 2 But instead of coming to God with open hands and an open heart, he tries to run even further.
If the crew of the ship would just throw him overboard, the storm outside would end.
And maybe the storm inside, too.
SLIDE 3 We don’t know if Jonah could swim. Or if he tried to swim.
But he must have known that being thrown overboard into a raging sea would surely mean that he was going to drown.
As he says in his prayer, he was down to the depths of the grave - into the very deep.
In the Old Testament, the sea represented chaos - something separate from God’s will, that only he could tame.
And the language of the grave, the pit, and the deep is the Hebrew concept of “Sheol” - the place apart from God, a place of death and shadows.
As we said last week, Jonah knew that God was inescapable, but still lets himself be thrown towards Sheol, as far from God as possible.
But, God IS truly inescapable. And he does not let Jonah sink that far.
SLIDE 4 As he descends towards the deep, the text tells us that the Lord “provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.”
And there are a couple of key words in that phrase.
SLIDE 5 One of them is “swallow”: Jonah wasn’t eaten, but was inside the fish for three days and nights.
Growing up with picture books and kids Bibles, it’s easy to imagine this great fish as some giant monster lurking in the depths waiting for his next meal.
But the Bible is very clear to differentiate this fish from other mentions of the leviathan, which is a more dangerous symbol of sea creatures.
SLIDE 6 Because the other keyword here is “provided”.
This word could also be translated as appointed, or assigned: this is the same language used elsewhere in the Bible to show how God’s sovereignty covers his people’s needs.
He always provides for them.
If you’re reading this story for the first time, this could easily seem like the end of the road for Jonah.
But this is actually a second chance!
It is God’s discipline at work.
SLIDE 7 There’s even a shift in the description of the fish to female language: Jonah uses the same word for distress in verse 2 that was used in Hebrew to describe the distress of childbirth.
SLIDE 8 And then the word for depths in the same verse translates as the “womb of Sheol”.
He tried to go as far from God as possible. But instead he is being reborn.
SLIDE 9 Jonah was drowning. He had been thrown overboard and presumably prepared to die.
By sending the fish to swallow him, God saves his life. He saves him for a new life.
SLIDE 10 This is Jonah’s rescue from the elements, and from himself.
So he offers up a prayer of gratitude.
His prayer follows the traditional structure of Hebrew poetry, which is why it might sound like the psalm we heard together earlier in our service: you have the recognition of the reality of despair, and yet the acknowledgment and praise that God is at work.
As God’s people, this prayer mirrors so many of our own: that the circumstances may have been hard, but God is good.
We have made mistakes, but God rescues us.
Old Testament professor James Bruckner calls this a “new dimension of understanding” for Jonah, and for all of God’s people who are delivered from their mistakes.
In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul describes it like this:
SLIDE 11 “15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
This is Jonah as we see him in his prayer, and as we’ll see him in our message next week.
He realizes he has made mistakes, but he is still a work in progress.
SLIDE 12 In verse 8 he makes references to those who still cling to idols - those whom he believes forfeit the grace God extends to them.
Despite the fact that he was in the same boat just a few verses earlier.
And even now, he is not suddenly perfect.
SLIDE 13 But that’s what makes his story so important, and that’s what makes him so relatable.
He still does things that in his hearts of hearts he knows he should not do.
He is both repentant and hypocritical.
But he is reaching up to God in worship, with gratitude, and putting his trust in him.
When we come to the communion table next week, we will not suddenly be perfect.
There will be things we’re likely not fully repentant of yet.
But we will be reaching up to God in worship, with gratitude, putting our trust in him.
That is the journey of sanctification that we are all on.
We have been justified and made right by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So that we can know we are saved for eternal life and are loved as children of God.
Jonah’s identity is not as a sinner: his identity is as a child of God.
Our identity is not as a sinner: our identity is as a child of God.
So the Holy Spirit continues to be at work in us as we struggle with the things we do, or not do.
Harmful behaviours can’t go unchecked.
Harmful behaviours won’t go unchecked.
When God’s people make mistakes, they will experience discipline.
But he never disciplines unjustly, or for no reason.
Instead, he is sanctifying us. He is instructing us how to live lives that will honour him, and be of benefit to ourselves and the world around us.
SLIDE 14 He is fulfilling what we hear from another Old Testament prophet, that “I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
How often have we heard someone older than us say, “I know what’s best for you”?
We usually hear that from our parents.
Unfortunately this isn’t always a true statement.
Sometimes even our parents can fail us, and it can be hard to see that anyone really has our best interests at heart.
And if that has been your experience, I’m sorry.
SLIDE 15 But if that has been your experience, I want you to know that God is our heavenly parent, a perfect parent, and the Bible assures us that he works all things for our good.
SLIDE 16 As a Reformed church we confess that we believe he’s working all things for our salvation - for our great, ultimate good that will last forever.
We can trust that what we see as his discipline is really for our good.
Part Two - Mission & Application
SLIDE 17 In the same way that our earthly parents don’t always reflect what God created them to be, the same can be said of earthly discipline that we may have experienced.
And that can cloud our judgement of how we see what God is doing.
Even just that word “discipline” can be triggering.
Some of you know that one of my earliest jobs in ministry was doing kids ministry in Kingston.
And there were days that I got paid to play games and eat my weight in fruit snacks and supervise bouncy castles.
But the one thing I disliked most about my job was having to discipline the kids, and I avoided it at all costs.
But if you’re a parent, babysitter, teacher, or caregiver of any kind you know that sometimes some problems can’t be ignored.
SLIDE 18 And so you’ve likely also seen that classic disciplined pose: when kids are being disciplined they’ll avoid looking at you. They’ll stare at their socks or the ceiling, maybe even cover their face with their hands, anything to avoid seeing you face to face.
They think “if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.”
I think that when Jonah was thrown off the boat, he thought his hands would finally be covering his face enough so that God wouldn’t see him anymore.
From the time that we are little kids, we experience shame when we’re being disciplined.
The same shame that Jonah felt, the same shame that Adam and Eve felt when they first sinned, and hid from God in the garden of Eden.
That shame is because of sin.
So that shame is not what God intends for us.
His discipline is not meant to be about shame.
His discipline is meant to be about growth.
SLIDE 19 Early on in my time here, council spent time discussing the letters to the churches in Revelation in their meetings.
And in those meetings we made a shift from the language of “failures” and “mistakes” to the language of “growth edges”.
It’s a shift I first learned about when I was involved with Momentum, which is our offering for today.
The shift helps us recognize that no, we are not perfect. But we won’t be until Kingdom Come.
And we can’t be without the grace of Christ.
So what is the point in shaming ourselves over it?
Sitting in shame will only keep us from moving forward in growth.
This church, like every church, and like every person, has been humbled in the past.
There have been periods that probably felt more difficult - where there were more noticeable missed opportunities, maybe where it felt like you were sinking.
Where it was probably more obvious that you were not doing the things you wanted to do.
Maybe there have been times when it felt like you were experiencing God’s discipline,when you didn’t choose to duvet cocoon, it was chosen for you.
What a luxury! To be able to take the time to reflect on what we could do better - to reflect on what Jesus would do.
Not for shame, but for growth.
Conclusion
SLIDE 20 Pastor Steve Cuss writes in his book Managing Leadership Anxiety that when someone on his team has made a mistake, he asks them to write out what they did wrong.
They’re meant to sit with it, absorb it, reflect on it.
As if they’re in the belly of a great fish.
He wants them to hold the mistake in their hands without shame, but simply acknowledge it as fully as possible so that it can be avoided again.
So that the individual can grow for their own benefit, and the benefit of the people around them.
Steve Cuss does it this way because he cares about the result, but also because he truly cares about the person, and desires what’s best for them.
I believe the same is true of God.
Receiving discipline from God is in many ways a luxury, a blessing.
Because it is a sign that he doesn’t just know what is best for us, but desires it, and is willing to do the work with us.
No matter your mistakes, you do not have to hide from God: he believes that you are worth working on and sanctifying.
That will be the central theme of our message next week as we conclude the series on Jonah and celebrate communion together.
In the meantime, I would like us to close with these words of blessing, so that in the coming days you can remember that you are not your mistakes - God does not desire you to feel shame. You are his child - he desires you to grow.
People of God, you do not need to hide your face from him.
Instead, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you. And may the Lord your God, your perfect, heavenly father, keep his face turned towards you, and give you peace. Amen.
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