.
And I think we want to make it where it's kind of a timeless classic.
There are other great films that have been made on that topic.
And our goal is not to remake any film, it's to make something a little bit different.
And in fact, my goal with the film is that even amongst our crowd that you learn almost the whole film.
Like it's going to be a lot of new information.
There's still going to be obviously things that are, as far as the concepts are not going to be needed.
But I think there's a lot of information on this topic that people aren't aware of that's really beneficial, really important.
And I think we have a lot of good stuff coming down the pike.
So I'm really excited about that.
So I appreciate you guys bearing with me being absent so we can kind of work on some of these other projects.
And so I can keep my marriage together.
My wife has to survive me, so you know what I mean.
But she definitely shares me with you guys on Thursday nights.
So definitely a big task for her.
Also on the right we have the list of our expecting ladies.
Continue to pray for them.
And then also we have our upcoming events.
The men's conference in August.
That's always a really fun event.
But I highly encourage you if you can participate.
Everything is free, but you do have to sign up.
Just because it does cost the church a good amount of money when we sign up people.
And we have to pay, basically have to pay up front on these type of things.
So we just don't want to buy a bunch of seats that people aren't going to fill.
So if that is something that you want to participate in, we definitely encourage every man to participate.
It is 18 and up for sure.
If your child is 16 or older, and they have a parental waiver signed, then they can participate.
That's my age cutoff.
It's been the same every year we've ever done it.
So if you are a man 16 and up, and if you're between 16 and...
If you're not 18 yet, and you're just below 16 or 17, you would just need a parental waiver that also has a guardian.
Whoever that is.
So they have somebody that's going to take authority for that person and be responsible for them while they're there.
And then they also have that waiver signed.
And that's just for everyone's protection.
So just FYI.
Also we have some prayer requests.
Continue to pray for the Goodwin family, for brother Edward.
For Ms. Liberty's daughter-in-law's mother, Catherine.
For breast cancer, brother Joel.
Continue to pray for First Works Baptist Church.
We also have some church reminders.
Please remember that children are not allowed on the stage.
And it may be even more inviting that we have this beautiful accoutrement to our baptistry now.
It's got this nice case here.
And it looks like it'd be cool to jump on it or do flips off it or something like that.
But please refrain from your children coming up here.
If you do notice them, please instruct them to get off of the stage.
And really, you know, I encourage that people even help out with that.
So if any parent...
You children listen up.
If anybody tells you to get off the stage, you just get off the stage.
But obviously we want parents to monitor their children themselves.
Also, please know running in the church.
And again, children get excited.
They've been listening to the preaching for like 20 hours, it feels like, and they're just ready to run around.
Please have them never run around in the church.
We don't want anybody to get hurt.
Also, if for some reason children are being loud or screaming or crying,
please just take them out right away and try to console them and then bring them back in the sanctuary.
Because even though I can be louder than them, it's just distracting to other people in the room.
And they may be interested in the sermon even if you're not.
So, you know.
Also, children are not to be in our Mother Bay rooms without their mother.
And that's at all times.
So that's a safety rule.
So we want to make sure that we don't have any issues, that there's nothing awkward going on.
And so we do please ask.
It is a Mother Bay room, and so we do encourage that they're in there.
And also like after the service, we don't want them wandering in there and nobody's in there.
So please make sure that that is being followed at all times.
So just a couple church reminders.
I think that's pretty much all that I have for announcements.
Has everybody gotten one of our church yearbooks?
Everybody get one of these?
Hey, come on down.
This is for you guys.
Did you get one? We have more. Let me get.
I'll put some more here in the pulpit.
I'm sorry.
Look, everybody.
All of our church, every family gets one.
We have extra.
So, you know, did you get one?
Okay, good.
All right.
Just making sure everybody feels like they can get one of these.
Because, you know, I don't need five.
I can look at you all in just one and be comfortable.
That's pretty much all I had for announcements at this time.
Let's go ahead to our third song to fifty nine.
Two hundred and fifty nine. Jesus saves.
We have heard the joyful sound.
Jesus saves.
Spread the tidings all around.
Jesus saves.
Bear the news to every land.
Climb the steeps and cross the waves.
Onward is our Lord's command.
Jesus saves.
On the rolling tide.
Jesus saves.
Tale to sinners far and wide.
Jesus saves.
Sing the islands of the sea.
Echo back the ocean caves.
Hurst thou keeper jubilee.
Jesus saves.
Sing above the battle strife.
Jesus saves.
By his death and endless life.
Jesus saves.
Sing in softly through the gloom.
When the heart for mercy caves.
Sing in triumph o'er the tomb.
Jesus saves.
Give the winds a mighty voice.
Jesus saves.
Let the nations now rejoice.
Jesus saves.
Shout salvation full and free.
Highest hills and deepest caves.
This our song of victory.
Jesus saves.
Very good singing.
Turn our Bibles to Jonah chapter 2.
Brother, Samson is going to read for us.
We'll pass our offering plate.
Jonah chapter number 2 follows the entire chapter.
Right, Jonah chapter number 2.
If you would find your places, we'll read this chapter together.
Starting here in verse 1 where the Bible reads,
Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish and belly.
And said, I cried by reason of my affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me.
Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
But thou hast cast me into the deep, the midst of the seas, and the floods come past me about.
All thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.
The waters come past me about, even to the soul.
The depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped around my head.
I went down to the bottoms of the mountain.
The earth with her bars were about me forever.
Yet, hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God?
When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came unto thee, into thine holy temple.
They that observe lying vanities forsaken their own mercy.
But I was sanctified unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving.
I will say that I have vowed, salvation is of the Lord.
And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
Amen.
Now, we're here in Jonah chapter number two, and we're continuing our Bible studies.
It's been a while since we were in Jonah chapter number one.
And as we remember where we were in Jonah chapter number one,
Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord.
Jonah was supposed to go and preach unto Nineveh and to cry against it.
So, Jonah didn't have a positive message to deliver.
He had a negative message to deliver.
And for a man of God or for us, it's not for us to decide if we preach a positive or negative message.
It's really for us to preach whatever the Bible says.
And sometimes it's not fun to preach a negative message.
In fact, I would argue it's never fun.
Nobody really wants to be the bearer of bad news.
No one wants to deliver a negative message.
Nobody wants to go into a hostile environment and have to preach against anyone.
Yet, that's what God told Jonah to do.
Jonah rebelled.
As a result of Jonah's rebellion and fleeing from the presence of the Lord,
God ended up following him, you know, even in the boat.
He tries to get in a boat, tries to fly in a Tarshish, flee there,
yet the stormy winds come and they assault the boat
and they can't escape this tempestuous wind, this storm that's blazing on them.
And the men are freaking out and they're thinking like,
God's mad at us.
You know, they're not even Christian.
They just know God in general is mad at them because it's an unnatural thing.
It's a supernatural thing.
And they cast lots.
They realize it's Jonah.
Jonah ends up telling them like, yeah, I'm running away from God.
And they're just like, what are you doing?
And Jonah ends up telling them, well, here's the way you save you guys
is by throwing me in the sea.
You have to throw me literally into the ocean and then God will spare you.
And they didn't want to do that.
So according to Jonah chapter 1, they rode as hard as they could.
They didn't want to get to the land, but they just couldn't do it.
And so they end up casting Jonah into the sea.
The Bible says in the last verse, look what it said in verse 17 of chapter 1.
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
So Jonah was thrown into the ocean and he was swallowed by a whale.
Now all of this has a spiritual significance.
All of this happened literally.
We understand that Jonah truly was a prophet.
Jonah truly ran away from God.
Jonah was truly on the boat.
There was really a storm.
Jonah was really thrown in the ocean and a literal whale swallowed Jonah.
And if you've ever seen, I wish I had that billboard with me still.
I don't know if it's in there.
I need to find it.
But have you ever seen a whale in proportion to a man?
Whales are giant.
Whales are enormous.
And so it's definitely physically possible that a man would be swallowed by a whale.
That you would live is another question.
So I don't know if it's even physically possible for a man to survive in a whale's belly for
three days or not.
Probably a miracle.
But either way, it literally happened.
But the spiritual significance is part of the gospel.
It's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's the fact that Jonah, even though through sin we get this picture, the picture of how
Christ is our sacrifice, just like Jonah was thrown into the ocean and he was sacrificed
so that they could be saved, is the same how Jesus died on the cross so that we could be
saved.
And your works will never get you that salvation.
Just as they tried to row to the other side, your works will never get you in heaven.
Going to church, quitting drinking, quitting smoking, trying to be a good person, reading
the Bible has nothing to do with getting to heaven.
The only way you get to heaven is by accepting the gift of what Jesus Christ did for you.
His sacrifice, His death on the cross paid all of our sins.
It didn't pay some of them.
It didn't pay 99%.
It paid 100%.
And it didn't pay just the past ones.
It paid for your present ones and it paid for the sins you're going to commit tomorrow
and the sins you're going to commit the next day and the next day and the next day.
So what Jesus did is He paid the full price so all we have to do is put faith in Him.
A one-time faith in Jesus Christ and you're saved.
Just like the one-time throwing Jonah off the boat, saved.
Now, that's important to get that concept as we roll into chapter number two so that
we understand the spiritual significance.
Because if Jesus died on the cross for all of our sins, here's a question some people
would ask, what happened next?
And often when we go out and we talk to people about the gospel, I'll ask them, I'll say,
hey, after Jesus was dead on the cross, they took His body, they buried Him in the tomb,
where do you think His soul went?
And most people would say heaven.
And I understand why they say heaven, just because Jesus is perfect, Jesus is God, it
makes sense that He would go to heaven.
But here's the thing, Jesus didn't deserve to die, did He?
He died for us.
And our punishment was not just a physical death, it was actually going to hell.
That was our punishment.
So Jesus' soul actually went to hell to take the punishment for us.
And one of the clearest pictures we have of this in your Bible is Jonah chapter number
two.
Now, before we get into this chapter, I know I'm covering a lot, but I think it helps us
as we study this chapter.
Keep your finger here, go to Matthew chapter number 12.
Go to Matthew chapter number 12.
And we're going to see out of Jesus' own mouth how He interprets this passage, how
He interprets the scripture.
And it's really clear that Jonah is a picture of Jesus.
Now, sometimes it can be difficult to understand all the pictures in the Bible.
And I get that, and you know, as we study the scriptures and the more and more we read
and the more and more we let the Holy Ghost teach us, we discover new pictures.
But some of the pictures in the Bible are just on the surface, as easy as it could possibly
be, because Jesus just said, hey, this was a picture of me.
And if Jesus is saying, hey, this is a picture of me, we don't even have to guess.
We don't even need, you know, some kind of a prompting.
I mean, an unsaved person could tell you this truth.
And I'll prove that in a second.
But look at Matthew chapter 12, and look at verse 42, or 40, I'm sorry.
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the well's belly, so shall the Son of Man
be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
So just like Jonah was literally in the well's belly, Jesus is literally going to be in the
heart of the earth.
And you say, well, you're telling me that unsaved people believe that Jesus went to hell?
Yeah, it's called the Apostles' Creed.
Yeah, it's what Catholics have believed for centuries.
It's what Catholics have as their statement of faith, is they believe that Jesus went to hell.
Now, in modern times, they've kind of tweaked that, or sometimes they won't say that part,
or they'll try to, they'll change the word hell to like Gehenna, or they'll change it
to like some other word that people don't know what the heck they're talking about,
and try to disguise it, or the grave.
That's what they usually try to do, is whitewash it with the grave.
But that really just doesn't even answer the question.
It's like we all know he died.
We're wondering like where he went.
Like where did the soul go?
Because the soul doesn't cease to exist at death.
The soul either goes somewhere, heaven or hell.
So the question is, what happened to Jesus' soul?
And Jesus told us, just as Jonas was three days and three nights in the well's belly,
so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the earth of the earth.
So it's unequivocal in the scripture.
It's so plain on the surface, Jesus went to hell.
It's not even funny.
But some people reject this doctrine.
Some people get offended by this doctrine.
I find the only people that get really mad at this doctrine are the pseudo intellectuals
that go to Bible college, okay, or certain pastors.
Your average day person doesn't have a problem with this type of a doctrine because it's
so plain in the scripture and it really makes a lot of sense.
If we deserve to go to hell, just like we deserve to physically die, well, Jesus took
our physical death.
It makes sense he would take our place in hell.
Now, here would be another question though that people would ask, okay, so what was it
like in hell for Jesus?
Well, first of all, none of us know because none of us have been to hell.
We don't know how bad or good it is, okay.
I know it's not good though.
I'm certain on that.
And I've never heard of anybody enjoying hell at any point in time.
I've only heard of it being suffering.
Now, as we read Jonah chapter number 2 though, it's going to give us some information that's
related to Jesus.
Let's see what kind of experience Jesus had in hell.
Now, what kind of experience do you think you would have in a whale's belly?
Probably not very much fun.
And honestly, it's got to be a pretty good metaphor if you think about it because if
you're in a whale's belly, here's a question, how much sunlight are you getting?
Probably none, right?
Seems like it'd be pretty dark.
I don't think there's any lights in there.
Now, what's a descriptor of hell?
Outer darkness, right, where you don't see anything.
So you have this kind of semblance or picture of the fact that you can't see anything.
If you're in a whale's belly, you know what whales are doing?
They're swimming.
They're in the ocean.
They're going around.
So you probably can also feel kind of this weightless feeling.
I mean, if you think about it, you don't even know if you're going up or down.
You don't know.
You kind of have this weird kind of sense of gravity.
You wouldn't know what's east or west.
You wouldn't know what's up or down.
I mean, how are you going to know this?
You can't even see anything.
And the Bible describes hell as a pit, as the bottomless pit.
And if you think about it, what we understand about gravity, even from a limited perspective,
is that gravity is pulling everything into the center.
Here's my question.
When you're in the center, what's happening?
Probably a very weightless feeling, isn't it?
Probably a strange feeling.
And gravity is actually a good thing because if you've ever fallen, it's not a good feeling.
It's kind of scary.
And in fact, some people, even though I like roller coasters,
most people are pretty nervous when they're on a roller coaster when you go straight down
because you get that weightless feeling in your belly, you get that weightless feeling in your stomach.
But you know you're strapped in, so you kind of feel like somewhat safe.
But if we were just to take you off a big building and just drop you, that would be terrifying.
You wouldn't like that feeling of this constant weightlessness and you have no stability.
You have nothing to really hang on to.
And so, again, you kind of have these parallels of being in this well's belly of just this weightless feeling,
complete outer darkness.
There's no one to talk to.
There's no one to interact with.
I don't know what the stomach is like in there, but it could even be acidy.
You know, if you think about it, boiling, I mean, the Bible describes hell as a lake of fire.
I mean, it could even be a same burning type sensation, some kind of an irritating, uncomfortable, hot.
There's no one there.
I mean, I don't want to be in a well's belly.
It sounds terrifying.
I don't even know, like, there's probably water in there.
I don't know if he's constantly trying to swim, having to swim or catch his breath.
That's got to be really infuriating.
So, of course, for Jonah, it was not a fun experience.
Now, for Jonah, it was a horrifying experience.
Why would I then say, if the picture of what Jonah did is what Jesus did,
then think that Jesus is having fun in hell or something, or enjoyed the experience, or good things were happening to him.
It seems like it would be on par with the fact that bad things were happening to him, right?
That's just from the symbolism itself.
But let's get some of the clear text.
Look at what it says in verse 1.
Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly.
So, apparently, he could talk.
So, obviously, he wasn't completely submersed in water.
If we think about it in the Scriptures, Luke chapter 16, we have a man in hell and he lifts up his eyes.
The Bible says he wants a drop of cold water on his tongue.
So, apparently, your spiritual being, whatever is inside the soul, still has eyes and a mouth and a tongue
and all these different appendages that we're familiar with.
And so, obviously, you could even scream in hell.
You could even talk in hell.
So, just like, but here's the bad thing with the people in hell, their cries aren't heard.
But Jonah, in this picture, is heard.
He says, in verse 2, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord,
and he heard me out of the belly of hell, cried I, and thou heardest my voice.
Now, here's my tip.
And this is my personal opinion, but I think when you study the Scripture, it's hard to disagree,
is that when you read Jonah, verse 1 is about Jonah.
Verse 2 is about Jesus.
And then you're going to follow this pattern.
Verse 3, Jonah.
Verse 4, Jesus.
And then you kind of have this alternating pattern.
Now, everything is about Jonah from a metaphoric perspective, too, though,
because we understand that Jonah could say these things from a metaphoric perspective,
but then that verse has a direct application of Jesus as well.
Think about what he said in verse number 2.
I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord.
Both of them, based on this verse, would be in affliction.
Wouldn't you think Jonah's in affliction, he's in suffering, and Jesus in hell,
let me give you the answer to the key, was in affliction in hell.
Okay.
Now, it says, he cried, God heard him, out of the belly of hell.
Now, is Jonah in hell?
The answer is no.
But isn't that an interesting metaphor, at least?
I mean, if you're in the well's belly, you could be like, it was like the belly of hell, right?
That would be kind of a simile, a metaphor, something you could describe it.
But for Jesus, it's literal.
Jesus is literally in the belly of hell, meaning in the center of hell,
crying unto the Lord, and it says, and thou hurtest my voice.
Now, the only person's voice who ever gets hurt out of hell is Jesus.
And I'm going to show you a few verses on that in a minute.
Look at verse 3.
For thou hadst cast me into the deep, into the midst of the seas,
and the floods compassed me about, all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
So, here in verse number 3, it says, he was cast in the deep.
Now, is Jesus cast in the water? No.
What about in the midst of the seas? No.
And the floods compassed me about? No.
All thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
So, none of that really applies to Jesus, does it?
That's applying directly to Jonah in the scripture,
but it's still just giving us kind of an idea of what's going on,
and just the fact that he's surrounded.
But, again, we kind of have this back and forth metaphor.
Then, verse 4 says, then I said, I am cast out of thy sight,
yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.
Now, some of this is going to be a little bit both,
but we're really talking about Jesus here
in the sense that the Lord Jesus Christ is no longer in heaven.
He's no longer in the temple with God.
He's no longer that servant there.
He's been cast out of his sight.
And you have to think about God's sight in a few different ways,
because we understand in some senses of the Bible,
God's sight's everywhere.
The Bible says that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout all the earth.
And the Bible describes that you can't escape his presence,
and I've kind of described this in other sermons
about how the presence of the Lord has kind of a trifold definition.
You could say you're in someone's presence,
and that's like close proximity in the room,
or just you're aware of where they're at.
You're watching them on CCTV,
but they don't know you're there, right?
So we kind of have those three presences,
and they're mentioned throughout the Scriptures in those different ways.
Sight's kind of in the same way, too,
in the sense that there's literally God in heaven
literally seated on the throne,
and there, there's not this direct sight of Jesus Christ up in heaven
because he's not there with him.
He's down there in hell, basically.
Jesus in hell is out of his sight
because he's not with him there in heaven,
but he will be back in heaven to look at that holy temple.
Now, at the same time, God has omnipresence,
and I believe that at all times the Father, you know,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost are in heaven
as described in 1 John 5,
but there is a literal person embodiment of Jesus Christ
that entered into this world,
and that was, you know, came down from heaven
and is in hell, and so it's been, it's out of his sight
in whatever context that makes sense.
We have to think about the fact that God's also eternal,
so he's outside of time,
so some of these things would never,
would never fully wrap our minds around him,
but Jesus in that present moment in time is in hell.
He's out of God's sight, okay?
Of course, God can see everything. We understand that.
This is talking about from a perspective of in heaven.
Verse 5, it says,
The waters compass me about, even to the soul.
The depth closed me round about,
the weeds were wrapped about my head.
So, again, as we kind of followed my pattern,
verse 1, Jonah, verse 2, Jesus.
Verse 3, Jonah, verse 4, Jesus.
Verse 5, again, who do you think had weeds
wrapped around their head?
Jonah, yeah.
So, you kind of see how God kind of just
put this interesting plan here
where he's kind of giving us this back and forth
and it's kind of interesting.
Jesus didn't have the weeds wrapped around his head.
Look at verse 6,
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains,
the earth, where their bars was about me forever,
yet, hast thou brought up my life from corruption,
O Lord my God?
So, again, verse number 6 is about Jesus.
Now, when I say it's about Jesus,
I'm not saying it's not about both
because it is about both.
I'm saying, though, that we take the more literal definition,
the more literal interpretation is Jesus
and they both work for each other.
So, in verse 1, literally, Jonah.
Verse 2, literally, Jesus.
Metaphorically, Jonah.
Verse 3, literally, Jonah.
Verse 4, literally, Jesus.
Metaphorically, Jonah.
So, again, in this verse, when it says that
I went down to the bottoms of the mountains,
the earth, where their bars was about me forever,
Jonah didn't literally do that.
Because Jonah, if you think about the bottoms of mountains,
and I know some people have this foolish idea,
he'll teach us this in school, this thing called Pangaea.
Who knows what I'm talking about?
They say Pangaea.
It's the idea that all the continents
were like one island or something like that,
back billions and millions of years ago, right?
When they had pictures of it, you know?
Just kidding.
But the Bible's clear that, first of all,
the earth's not billions of years old.
It's only about 6,300 years old, okay?
Number one.
But number two, if all the water on the planet
were to just evaporate,
it's not like the continents are just lily pads
floating on the ocean.
All the land's connected underneath.
They're actually, you know, the fishbowl, as it were.
They're basically the bottom
of where the water is being trapped, okay?
So the bottoms of the mountains don't stop,
essentially, necessarily where water is.
They go down below the water.
So if you're below the mountains,
you're below the crust of the earth.
That's what that's really saying.
And it says the earth with her bars was about me forever.
The earth, most of the time in the Bible,
well, I don't want to say this.
I want to say this differently.
Sometimes in the Bible, the earth has a lot of,
it has a definition of just being the physical dirt
is what that means, okay?
Earth can mean a lot of things in the Bible.
Earth can mean the planet.
Like in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
There wasn't any dirt, you know, to speak of
at that point that we know of.
The earth is water at that point, okay?
So the earth could just be the planet.
Sometimes earth is describing land.
So the same word as we use for land, earth.
Sometimes the word earth is describing people.
This, you know, the whole earth, okay?
So, but in this context, I believe what the earth
is being described as, if you think about it,
is just like the dirt, which is really like our crust.
Because our earth has a very thin layer called the crust, okay?
And it's so thin that if you were to take an apple,
the skin of an apple is actually thicker in diameter
than our crust of our earth.
And underneath our earth,
even every liberal scientist will tell you,
it doesn't matter, CNN would tell you this, okay?
Joe Biden would tell you this,
that below the earth's crust is fire, okay?
You got the mantle, the core, you got magma.
You have essentially liquid fire just everywhere under the earth.
Now, that's an interesting coincidence, you know,
that the entire earth is filled with fire in the center of it,
and the Bible teaches us a place called hell.
Now, another thing that's interesting is
no man has ever been able to drill past the crust,
even though it's not that thick of a layer.
We haven't been able through tools or anything like that.
I don't know if we ever will.
I don't know that you want to,
because as soon as you get to liquid fire,
what good is that going to do for you, right?
And the few times that we've had volcanic eruptions,
you know, that's very destructive.
Volcanic eruptions even spit fire up into the air,
and they cause, you know, basically liquid fire
to be coming out from the sky.
That makes me think of a story.
How about Genesis 19,
where God literally rained fire and brimstone from heaven
on the entire city of Sodom
for them being a bunch of men with men,
you know, a bunch of disgusting freaks.
And so, and that actually happened in the New Testament,
called Pompeii.
Anybody here of Pompeii?
It was an island where the entire island had a mountain,
or, sorry, a volcano erupt.
This is in the New Testament,
so this is post-Jesus Christ's death, burn, and resurrection,
where it just erupted, and just liquid fire coming
just melted the whole city and just destroyed tons of people.
People don't know this about Pompeii,
but Pompeii was literally one of the most wicked cities
that's ever existed.
In fact, every business that they've,
because there's been archaeologists that have gone
and done excavations where they dug up all the buildings,
every building had male genitalia
on the front of the building.
So it's, you know, just imagine like a rainbow flag
on the front of every building, you know.
It's like they had this kind of disgusting sign
just on every building.
And it wasn't some of the buildings, every building.
And at first when they started excavating,
they were like, oh, this is a brothel.
And they were like, well, it's another brothel,
it's another brothel.
And they were like, wait a minute,
that first one was the bank.
The second one was a bakery.
The third one really was a brothel, okay?
So I was like, okay.
I mean, they didn't have public, you know,
houses of prostitution and just everything.
But it was like, that's how wicked the city was.
That's why it got to the point
where God just literally just nuked it, okay?
And so what you have to understand is
that even though these things exist physically,
there's also a spiritual element to them.
Now, I believe that hell is a supernatural place too.
I don't even think it's just physical.
It's a supernatural place because the soul,
when it goes to hell,
while it's kind of an eternal state of being destroyed,
it's never going to actually be destroyed.
It's always going to suffer.
That's the worst part about hell,
is the permanency of just suffering,
weeping and gnashing of teeth.
They have no rest day or night.
If they could be destroyed, they'd be destroyed instantly
because you'd be eviscerated like that.
I mean, there would be no like amount of time.
The fact that they even survive one second
illustrates the eternal nature of hell.
The Bible says where their worm dieth not
and the fire is not quenched.
So that in and of itself is describing an eternal punishment.
Because you could say, well, what if it's destroyed?
Well, then it would end, right?
Or what if the fire ceased to be fire, right?
What if the fire burnt out?
Well, then you could stop suffering.
But he's saying neither of those ever exist.
Where their worm dieth not.
And it's not, the worm is a derogatory term.
If someone looked at you and said, man, you're just a worm.
They're not saying you're a little worm.
And I know in today's culture you have to explain that.
But it's a derogatory term saying, hey, your soul that's a worm is worthless.
And if you think about a worm, it's kind of a worthless thing that's in the ground.
That's what he's picturing, worthless things in the earth.
Worms, they're never going to die in the sense that they're never going to cease to exist.
And they're never going to be in a state of anything other than suffering.
This is what motivates us to go and preach the gospel.
When you know that that's where people are headed, if they don't believe in Jesus Christ,
every fiber of your being should say, wow, I need to tell people about Jesus Christ.
I need to confront people with the gospel.
Because if they don't hear this message and they die, that's where they will go.
And I kid you not, I don't care, man, woman, boy, child,
if they do not hear the gospel and they do not get saved, they will go to hell.
That's why the gospel is so beautiful that Jesus took this place for us.
He took that punishment for us and it has this picture of the earth with the bars about her forever.
That's because the earth is a globe.
Isn't this all as good as doctrine we're getting from Jonah chapter number two?
How can you have something about you forever?
Because it's a perfect circle, it's around you in every direction.
I mean, if you're in the center of the earth, what direction could you point and the earth isn't?
No, the earth is everywhere. It's about me forever.
Meaning what? It's just saying that he's fully encircled, he's fully compassed within the earth.
The Bible says, he that sitteth on the circle of the earth.
So the Bible describes the earth as being a circle and that's a really good description of what the earth looks like.
And if you were to back out into space and you look at the earth, what does it look like?
Circle. There's no other picture that you can really draw from that.
It doesn't matter what angle you come from either.
It's always a circle.
Whereas these flat earthers, if someone's a flat earther, they're stupid.
Or wicked or both. And I preach that. I don't have to re-preach that.
You can go look up the sermon if social media still exists for me.
Probably not.
Actually, that's a good point. I don't have any social media hardly anymore, so good luck finding any of our sermons.
But that's a different sermon.
You're in person, so you get to hear that.
It says here in verse number seven, when my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came in unto thee, and to thy holy temple.
So, we've kind of been doing this bouncing back and forth.
Verse number seven, I believe it's kind of Jonah when you think about it.
Because, and again it's fitting perfectly, the odds are Jonah, the evens are Jesus at this point.
Jesus never really needs a moment of repentance, because what Jesus did is perfect.
Jesus didn't deserve hell. Jesus went to hell for us.
So, there's no part of Jesus' journey here where he needs to kind of change his mind.
But for Jonah, he kind of does. Jonah was rebellious.
Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh.
But now that he's in the belly of a whale, he's kind of thinking, you know what, Nineveh doesn't sound that bad.
And he's thinking, hey, when my soul fainted within me, when he's just like, man, I don't even want to live.
You know, like this is terrible.
He's like, I remember God thinking like, you know what, God's still on his throne.
And he says, and my prayer came in unto thee and in my holy temple.
So, he's saying, hey, even though, he was like, he went into the ocean, the whale swallowed him up,
he's probably confused for a little bit, probably then trying to figure out, I don't even know where I'm at.
Am I in hell?
He might have been like, is this what hell is like?
And then when he's just like, man, this is terrible.
I just want to die.
Like, I don't even know what to do.
How long am I going to be in here?
Because while we have the benefit of knowing how long Jonah's in this situation, Jonah doesn't have any idea necessarily.
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe the Lord already told him.
But I don't have any reason to believe Jonah knew that he was going to be in there for that period of time.
Otherwise, why would Jonah, if Jonah knew this stuff in hindsight, he probably would have just obeyed the Lord and went straight to Nineveh.
So, from Jonah's perspective, he's like just living this for the first time.
He's in the whale's belly and he's thinking like, I should pray to God.
And, you know, this is really, I think, the practical application we get out of this sermon.
And I'm going to visit it kind of at the end again too.
But there's never a bad time to get right with God.
There's never, you know, you screw up, you do wrong, you're in suffering, you've really butchered it.
But, you know, God is still up there saying like, just change your mind.
Just pray.
Why don't you seek my mercy?
Because God's a very merciful God.
God's a long suffering God and so he wants us to call out to him.
In fact, that's the reason why he put him in this predicament in the first place is to get him to change his mind.
You know, sometimes you go through a difficult period of your life
and you're thinking like, why am I going through this suffering?
Why am I going through this affliction?
Maybe it's because God wants you to make some changes.
You know, God's wanting you to change something about your life.
Maybe you're in rebellion to God in some area of your life.
Maybe you've been running away from God in some area of your life
and God's trying to knock at the door of your heart and say, hey, why don't you pray,
why don't you get this right and actually fix some things?
And you know what, none of us is perfect.
We all have sin, we all have a past, we all have issues
and instead of just wallowing in our sin, wallowing in the consequences of our sin,
why don't we just pray unto God and ask him for that mercy?
Ask him for that grace.
Look what it says in verse 8.
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
But then Jonah brings up this idea, but you know what?
Some people, they're just never going to get it right.
They're never going to seek the Lord's mercy.
And it says that they observe lying vanities.
Vanity means that it's pointless, it's meaningless, it doesn't have any benefit.
I think when we read this chapter, the primary context is really on the surface a lot about the gospel,
about Jesus Christ, about his death, burial and resurrection.
And we haven't quite gotten to that.
We're really close.
But if we think about the fact that salvation is being a really primary context of this chapter,
those that observe lying vanities and forsake their own mercy,
one of the applications of this would be the fact that there's so many people who are religious,
but they're not saved.
They go to Catholic church and they're observing lying vanities,
and they're, by doing this, forsaking their own mercy.
They actually have an opportunity to be saved,
but you know you go and you knock on their door, you go and talk to them,
you say, hey, would you like to hear from the Bible how to be saved?
And they say, I'm Catholic, I'm not interested.
I don't want to hear that.
I don't want to listen to that verse or I don't want to hear a presentation.
I'm just going to be Catholic,
even though I guarantee that person has problems with the Catholic church
and knows some of the things they do are lying.
But they just feel comfortable in that vanity or whatever.
They've just decided to just go ahead and embrace a little bit of lie,
and that little bit of embrace of that lie is going to cause them to miss the greatest truth ever,
the gospel of Jesus Christ.
There's so many people that are willing to cling to some level of lie.
That's why when you seek, you find,
because all truth leads to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It doesn't matter what truth it is.
All truth leads to Jesus because Jesus is truth.
He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
This is also why it teaches in Romans chapter number one that they're without excuse.
Why? Because if you seek truth, you'll find Jesus.
The reason why people don't get saved is because they don't like truth.
They observe lying vanities, like what?
Islam, lying vanity, Catholicism, the Methodist church.
It doesn't matter what it is, atheism, hedonism.
It doesn't matter what lie is out there.
People that observe lies are going to forsake their own mercy.
They're not going to ever get that mercy because they just cling to a lie.
We have to humble ourselves and be in pursuit of truth in order to get saved.
Now, what I'm describing is a process that people can sometimes go through.
Obviously, getting saved is simple.
I mean, in fact, it's a moment of time, it's a flash of time.
I mean, you can get saved in ten minutes.
You can hear the gospel and get saved.
But for many people, it's kind of a lifelong process
where they have to eventually humble themselves,
because they hear a lot of truth, they end up changing their mind about things,
to end up getting their heart into a place where they're willing to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And I think what Jonah is kind of bringing up is this idea and this concept
of the reason why people don't have mercy is because they like lies.
And really, this whole world can just be boiled down to lies and truth.
Every issue, everything that's going on in our society right now
is just about lies and truth.
And really, that ultimate truth of the gospel.
I mean, I've even heard people that I don't really agree with.
I don't even think they're saved.
But it's interesting some of the points that they make.
When it comes to a lot of this transgender nonsense that's going on,
or this idea that you can just change your gender just on a whim and a wish,
or you could change to be a dog or a tree or any of these things,
people will end up asking this question.
And there's a famous documentary that came out recently.
It's been making a lot of noise.
But it's a good question, and the question is, what is a woman?
And people have been asking this.
And it's like, these people that believe in this trans stuff can't answer the question
because they don't have any standard of truth.
They have no objective reality.
What is a woman? It's someone that identifies as a woman, is what they'll say.
And then you say, okay, so then what are they identifying as?
I don't know.
They have no idea because they have no objective reality.
Why would the world want to have no objective reality?
It's because the devil wants to influence our culture
and wants to influence our world to say there is no truth,
whatever you say is truth.
And by observing that lying vanity, you'll never accept the real truth of Jesus Christ.
And everything in this world is to undermine us preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
All of the censorship is to say what?
Why are they censoring hate speech?
You can't even tell me what hate speech is.
Why? Because hate speech is not an objective truth.
There is no such thing as hate speech.
Hate speech is a man-made construct
because what's hateful to some is loving to others,
and what's loving to others is hateful to some.
So there is no concept of hate speech.
What does that even mean?
You can't even define what hate speech is.
And because they want to basically just make up their own reality,
make up their own definitions, make up their own ideas.
There is the idea of hate speech in the Bible,
but let me tell you, it's anything that's contrary to the Bible,
which ends up becoming an objective reality.
Their definition of hate speech is whatever they don't like,
but I'm sorry that's not real.
Whatever you don't like doesn't make it true.
There is true hate in the Bible.
There is true hate in this world.
There are true things that you could say that are hateful,
but their definition of hate speech is a relative one,
just like there's really a woman,
but they don't have a real definition for a woman.
They don't have a real definition for hate speech.
They don't have a real definition for anything
because this is the boundaries of the world that we live in,
and when you reject those boundaries, you reject all truth,
and that's what the devil wants.
He wants you to just observe any lying vanity
so that you'll never get the truth of the gospel
and you'll never get saved,
and the devil wants to undermine our society
and get to a point where objective truth doesn't exist,
and all objective truth comes from one source in this book.
Our founding fathers understood this reality,
and, in fact, the Bible was the source of all truth for our country.
Why do you think it is that every politician,
every elected candidate in our country still to this day,
when they get sworn in office, what do they put their hand on?
A Bible, and, in fact, almost every time it's a King James Bible, too.
I don't know if you realize that.
Maybe now some of them don't,
but why do they put their hand on a Bible?
It's because they were saying, this is the truth.
Every law in America at first, it said all of its authority is coming from this,
and, in fact, in a courtroom setting,
if the Bible could be brought up to define the law,
it was always considered the supreme in every single situation
because that's where all laws emanate from is from the Word of God.
Now, there's nothing wrong with crafting new laws
based on the concepts and principles of the Bible.
Just like the Bible teaches that you should have a battlement around your house,
the roof of your house, so that no one would fall off,
we get the concept of what?
Safety. We get the concept of public order.
And so, obviously, in a modern context,
we may update that law to be relative to society today.
They didn't have cars, necessarily, in the times of the Bible,
but they have laws such as reckless manslaughter.
That would translate today to someone being drunk and driving.
So we could emanate laws from the Bible,
but if you created a law that didn't line up with this,
it was wrong, and it could be overturned
because this is the objective truth. This is the objective reality.
So what the devil wants to do is he wants to say,
that's not the truth. We get to decide what the truth is.
And all of it is, all the goal is,
is to get someone to cling to a lying vanity
so that they won't hear the gospel and get saved.
Because if you think about it, and you and I both know this,
if you knock on someone's door,
if you're talking to somebody about getting saved,
sometimes we don't ask this question,
but the most undermining point is if you say,
hey, I want to show you how to be saved through the Bible,
they say, I don't believe the Bible is the word of God.
You basically have no chance.
I mean, those people are virtually impossible to get saved
because you have to first believe that this is even the word of God
for you to have a chance to end up getting saved.
The people that don't even believe this is the word of God,
well, why would they put their trust in that then?
I mean, step one, and in fact, most doctrinal statements of every single church,
what is number one on every single doctrinal statement?
It's their statement about the Bible itself.
Because faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
You can't even get saved without the Bible.
How are you going to get saved if you have no Bible?
We have to first even have the word of God
to even then put that faith in Jesus Christ.
And if you think about doctrinal statements,
usually their layout makes a lot of sense because it goes what?
Bible, God, salvation.
Because you have to get these concepts in this order for you to even get saved.
If I give you a Gospel presentation with no Bible and no concept of God,
that means nothing to you.
If I give a name that you've never heard of,
you have no association with that,
and it's based on no text with no concept, it's meaningless.
I've talked to a Mormon who believes salvation is by faith.
That was a rare case.
Usually they'll just admit it works.
One told me it was all by faith.
But you know what?
Their concept of Jesus was that he was brothers with the devil.
He was a created being.
So sorry, that's not going to save you.
Just like a bush, even if I had a bush and I named it Jesus,
that's not going to save me believing in that.
It doesn't have all the right keywords.
It's not having the right keywords, it's having the right concepts attached to those keywords.
You've got to have the right Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, the Word of God.
That's why it says faith coming by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
We're putting our faith in the Bible, objective truth and objective reality.
There is no such thing as my reality.
It's called my fantasy.
It's called my imagination.
And there's nothing wrong with imagination except for when you use that to deny reality.
You know, I love children having imagination.
There's nothing wrong with a child deciding they want to be a dinosaur or a car or a truck or a dog.
You know what?
There's something wrong when the public schools of America are literally bringing in litter boxes into the public school
because the children are claiming that they're cats.
And I say that because it's happening.
In the state of Texas, I have a friend, his wife teaches, and in some of the school districts,
they're being requested to bring in litter boxes for the kids who are claiming they're a cat.
And they only answer the teacher in purrs.
That is the society that we're living in where they say there is no reality.
And you say, well, where is it going to go?
There is nowhere good when you just say there is no objective reality.
When you say there is no truth.
They that observe lying vanties forsake their own mercy.
Because here's a question.
What does the word mercy even mean?
What is mercy?
Isn't mercy the fact that it's undeserved favor?
Well, for something to be undeserved, that means you did something wrong.
If you need some mercy, there's an error.
But if there's no objective truth or reality, then who's to say you even need mercy?
Just like Donald Trump got up and said, hey, I'd never ask Jesus for forgiveness.
If I knew something to ask forgiveness for, I'd ask.
If you had no concept of what a sin is, why would you ever ask for forgiveness?
And it's kind of similar.
I mean, think about this.
You know, women do this.
They'll get mad at another lady, but they won't tell her.
And they expect them to come and apologize.
And I'm thinking, like, she's supposed to just invent the reality that you're mad at her.
She just knows that you're mad at her and then come and ask forgiveness.
You're not going to go and ask forgiveness of someone when you don't realize they're mad at you.
Okay?
Here's another reason why so many people are going to hell.
They don't realize God's mad at them.
They hear from Joel Osteen, God's not mad at you.
They hear from Joyce Meyer, God's not mad at you.
That's stupid.
That's foolish.
No, for all of sin it comes short of the glory of God.
And if we observe the lying vanity of, I've never done anything wrong in my life, well,
then you're going to forsake your own mercy.
I talked to an atheist one time, asked that they would listen to the gospel.
They said, I'm an atheist.
I don't believe that.
And I just, well, if I was able to just, you know, show you in the Bible, would you at least still want to hear?
And they said, yes.
I said, okay.
If I show them the gospel, let me show them the whole gospel.
They understood everything from an intellectual perspective.
They could repeat back to me everything that I taught them.
Yeah, the Bible says it's a free gift, by faith, all of that.
I said, it's okay.
Did you believe it now?
No.
I said, why?
She said, I don't think I've done anything bad enough to deserve hell.
Well, that makes sense.
If you don't think you've done anything bad enough to deserve hell, why would you get saved?
You wouldn't.
So you have to first realize that you deserve hell.
But she's observing a lying vanity that she's somehow a good person.
She's not willing to humble herself and accept the fact that she's a sinner.
And you know what?
Even though this is in the context of salvation, and I believe that's probably one of the best ways to apply this verse,
it could also happen in our lives where we hear some part of the Bible that rebukes our lifestyle,
and instead of realizing it's bad and wrong and getting it right, we just believe, oh, no, no, drinking's fine.
I mean, how many people that are Christian in America will say, hey, drinking alcohol, no problem.
It's just that you'll get drunk.
And I'm always thinking like, okay, where's that line of drunk again?
What is that line?
And it's just they've never raced it.
Okay, they always get, they've never gotten past that line apparently, you know.
Well, that's interesting that you never got past the line that you set the bar for.
I mean, a rubber ruler.
Here's the line.
You're not even supposed to look at it according to Proverbs chapter 23.
They say, oh, I don't have to go to church.
That's a lying vanity.
I don't need to stop drinking alcohol.
I don't need to stop doing drugs.
I don't need to get married.
I just live, we love each other.
You know, marriage is so confining and stuff like that.
I don't need this kind of stuff, you know.
I mean, there's so many lying vanities out there, and instead of just getting it right,
instead of saying, you know what, I've been a drunk my whole life,
why don't I just pray to God that he will spare me from those bad decisions and give me mercy,
they end up forsaking their mercy because they lie,
they observe a lying vanity that drinking's not actually wrong.
You know, we need to humble ourselves and accept all the truths in our lives
so that we can receive God's mercy.
God's willing to forgive Jonah here.
God's willing to help Jonah in this situation.
And he's not going to continue observing this lying vanity of saying like,
you know what, I don't want to go to Nineveh because they'll get saved,
and they don't deserve it.
You know, that sounds weird, but there's people that think that way.
There are people that don't want to go to the poor neighborhoods because they're like,
well, I'm better than them.
I didn't, you know, waste money, and I didn't do drugs,
and I didn't have a bad upbringing, right, whatever.
So why do they deserve to get to go to heaven, you know,
by me just going out there and preaching them one time?
They should have to at least go to church or something.
Or you could just look at a whole nation, a whole country, a whole area and say,
well, those people, I don't like Muslims because of 9-11.
Well, that's stupid because George Bush did that.
Okay, that was an inside job.
So to hate Muslims for 9-11, you're just an idiot.
You're observing a lying vanity.
You know, to think that a 47-story skyscraper fell due to office fires, you're an idiot.
I mean, you're a moron.
You're observing a lying vanity.
To just keep eating American pie, you know, apple pie, right,
wearing that flag as a cape, you know, and just thinking America could do no wrong,
and I hate every country that hates America.
You know, there's a lot of reasons to hate America.
America's not as great as you think it is.
There's probably a lot of countries that are way better than America from a moral perspective.
I can think of plenty, the Caribbean, Jamaica, Bahamas.
I mean, these countries are not nearly as wicked as America are, okay.
Arguably, these Muslim countries are not that great either, okay.
They have their problems, but they're different problems, okay.
But here's the thing, I'm not going to just condemn a whole group of people
or just say, you know what, people in Mexico, I hope they go to hell.
Or some people get mad, like they get really mad at all these migrants coming in from Mexico into America.
And I'll say this, I personally do not believe that they should be able to just migrate across the border
without being checked because if you don't have a job or a house,
you shouldn't be migrating into our country in my personal opinion, okay.
I don't think you should just let people just wander in
because if you don't have a job or a house, what are you going to do?
Just like I don't let people just come into my house for any reason.
I don't let people hang out in my front yard for any reason because that doesn't make any sense.
If they're coming over a purpose, okay, that makes sense.
But at the same time, I can't change that.
I'm not going to go round them up, I'm not going to get a lasso and go drag them back over there or something like that.
And a lot of these people, they're really just trying to seek a better life for themselves, it's not really their fault.
And a lot of them are more receptive to the gospel than Americans.
And instead of just being like, I hope all those people go to hell,
I mean, they're coming over here, they don't deserve to be in America.
You're right.
I mean, does Nineveh deserve to be preserved?
No, I mean, they're wicked, okay.
But why shouldn't I then just have compassion in my heart and still want them to get saved?
What's wrong with someone being a person that did nothing good,
they travel in our country illegally, and then I get them saved and they go to heaven?
That's better than them dying and going to hell, no matter what they did.
And yet, there's probably plenty of Christians that don't even care, that would rather them go away,
would rather them go away and then never give them the gospel.
It's not like, well, let's put them back in Mexico and then give them the gospel there.
They just want them to get away from them.
They want to live in their nice little house and have their 401k and just no more inflation
and no more problems and no more Biden, just give me some America, give me some more Trump, you know.
And they just observe all these lying vanities about how money and the riches of this world
is going to give them some kind of a blessing rather than saying, you know what,
here's an opportunity to get someone saved despite the fact that I disagree with every reason
why they should get saved, okay, I don't think they should be here.
I don't think I should be here. I don't think any of these things should be happening.
It's like, quit worrying about all that stuff and just give the guy the gospel.
Preach the gospel to them.
Stop worrying about why they're here and try to get them saved.
He says in verse number 9,
But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that that I have vowed,
salvation is of the Lord.
So, he ends up changing his mind.
He says, hey, I'm going to do the right thing here.
I said I'm going to serve God. I'm going to do it.
And then he realizes salvation is the Lord.
Now, the salvation, if you think about it, is twofold.
Because for Jonah, it's physical, but then the gospel picture is what the salvation is the spiritual as well, okay.
And even for Jesus, it was a physical salvation because Jesus came out of hell.
It says in verse 10,
And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
Go to Acts chapter 2 for a moment,
and I just want to strengthen a few statements that I've made with a few more verses,
just to make this abundantly clear.
Jesus died, was buried,
his soul went to hell for three days and three nights,
and unfortunately it suffered.
It's not that I like that, it's not that I want that.
It's just what the Bible teaches.
It literally says, out of my affliction, pride I.
Okay, that's what it said in Jonah chapter number 2.
What else does it say?
Acts chapter number 2,
look what it says in verse number 23.
Him being delivered, being Jesus, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,
He hath taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.
That's the Jews, they crucified Jesus through the hands of the Romans.
It says in verse 24,
Whom God, having raised up, having loosed the pains of death,
because it was not possible that He should be holding of it.
Here's the thing,
when Jesus died,
His soul was in hell for three days and three nights.
When does the Bible say that He was loosed from the pains of death?
It says whom God had raised up.
He didn't raise Him up the moment He died on the cross.
He raised Him up three days later.
And that's when He was loosed from what?
The pains of death.
Now, some people say, oh, let's talk about the cross.
He suffered pain on the cross.
Let's make that abundantly clear.
He felt the weight of the world.
He felt the rejection of the Father.
Ultimate suffering.
Nothing that we could ever imagine.
But the suffering didn't end because the moment the suffering ended was the resurrection as the Bible describes here.
And notice it said that there was pains of death.
The word death in your Bible is hell.
It's equivalent to the word hell in many places.
Not every place, many places.
But let me explain another thing to you.
Jesus wasn't dead on the cross.
It wasn't the pains of death on the cross because He wasn't dead.
He was dying, sure, but He was alive on the cross.
The pains of death are the pains of hell.
Doesn't that jive with the affliction that we see in Jonah chapter number 2?
Very clear. Very clear.
So, again, you say, what was He doing in hell? Suffering.
But it was not possible that He'd behold Him.
This is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not going to spend eternity in hell.
So God raised Him up three days later.
It says in verse 26,
Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad.
Moreover, also my flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.
Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to seek corruption.
So He's saying, man, I was just so glad that I wasn't going to be stuck there.
Again, you don't want to be stuck somewhere that you don't want to be.
Evidenced by the fact that it was not fun.
Verse 27,
Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt suffer thy holy one to seek corruption.
Thou hast made known to me the ways of life.
Thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.
Men and brethren, let me speak freely unto you of the patriarch David,
that he is both dead and buried, and in several occurs with the son of this day.
Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him,
that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh,
he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne.
He's saying this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ,
that his soul is not left in hell, neither's flesh did see corruption.
This Jesus had God raised up.
So when David said, hey, he's not going to see corruption,
when David said these type of things in the Psalms,
what Peter's trying to explain, he's saying, look, Peter's still in the grave.
I'm sorry, I'm getting my words confused.
David is still in the grave. Peter's explaining the Bible.
David's still in the grave.
So when he was speaking, he wasn't speaking about himself.
This he spake of Jesus.
That's why he says, verse 31, he's seeing this before, spake of the resurrection.
So it's like David could see prophetically the fact that this is about Jesus,
and when he was speaking, he was speaking about what Jesus was going to do,
and how Jesus was going to be risen from the dead,
and how Jesus' flesh is not going to see corruption.
That phrasing is not real familiar to us, but what that's meaning is his body wasn't going to rot.
His physical body didn't rot.
Important point.
Why is it important that Jesus' body didn't physically rot?
So that when he came back to life, you could still see the holes in his hands from the cross.
You could still see the hole in his foot from the cross.
You could still see the thorn, you know, basically marring of his head.
And when we get to see Jesus, we're going to see a lamb slain, is what the Bible describes in heaven.
It's really hard to prove to you, or to me, that Jesus died on the cross and risen again
when we see a completely different body, or we see a body that isn't even marred.
You know, it's going to be hard to deny it when you see the lamb slain.
And then all the Jews are going to see, oh wow, that's the lamb slain coming back.
That's the Lord that they're going to bow to.
That's the Lord that they're going to have to confess is Lord, is the lamb slain, the one they crucified.
Even says when he comes back, every eye shall see him, and it says they pierced him.
It says they're going to see the one whom they pierced.
How does that make sense if there's no wound?
They're going to see the man that was pierced.
They're going to see what they did to him.
They're going to see the ugliness of their sin on Jesus Christ, and we see the beauty of the gospel.
Go over to Romans, chapter number six, Romans chapter number six.
You know, I'm not saying that you have to understand all this to be saved.
Some people are just very ignorant on this topic.
Some people don't understand that Jesus went to hell or that he suffered.
I'm not going to make that necessarily a salvation issue.
I do think it's important. I do preach it every time I preach the gospel.
But I think that there's some people that just have never been explained this.
They have no idea. They have no concept.
They don't believe the death, burial, and resurrection, but they're just ignorant on what happened.
Even if they have the wrong idea, I'm still not going to say they're unsaved.
To say that they're unsaved would basically say that virtually no one was saved in the 60s, 70s, and 80s
because that's what every old-eyed preacher taught, is that Jesus either didn't go to hell or didn't suffer in hell.
They taught weird stuff on this.
It doesn't make them unsaved.
But sometimes it does become a salvation issue to me
that someone who knows the truth about this then goes back? That's weird.
When a preacher understands the truth on this and preaches the right things and then goes backwards, that's weird
because he can't unsee spiritual truths. I don't understand that.
It makes me question anybody that would go back on this or change their mind.
I'd think there's something really bad about you, something really wrong about that person.
But I'll say this. 99.99999% of people that I've talked to in my life, probably even 100%.
I'm just giving you that caveat.
I just have no problem with this doctrine.
I don't think I've met a person in life where I'm talking to them in person and they had a problem with this doctrine.
And yet I've heard that it's a horrible doctrine.
I've heard, oh, Pastor Shelley is such a heretic for teaching this.
And I'm thinking, okay, prove me wrong.
But they can't.
And of course, it's not about me being right. It's about the Bible being right.
It's about fully understanding what Jesus Christ did for us.
It's about understanding Jonah chapter 2.
Jonah chapter 2 is a chapter in our Bible.
We have to explain it somehow.
How are you going to explain how Jesus is having a party in hell when you read Jonah chapter number 2?
And Jesus is literally saying in Matthew chapter 12 verse 40, hey, this is about me.
And think about this.
Jonah chapter 1 was all about Jesus' death and resurrection.
That kind of mini gospel there.
But if you think about it, Jesus didn't say, for as Jonas was thrown into the ocean, Jesus Christ was going to die on the cross.
He said, for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the world's belly, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth.
So you have to say Jonah chapter 2 is about Jesus specifically.
It's one of the closest metaphors, one of the closest similes.
Just ignore all that symbolism.
It's really just ignore what Jesus did for us.
And I think that's very disrespectful.
It's very blasphemous.
And, you know, I don't like that teaching.
I want us to bring back the right doctrine here and champion this.
There's another great verse here that kind of helps us understand this.
Look at verse number 8.
Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.
Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, notice this, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him.
There was a point in time when death had dominion over Jesus for three days and three nights, but he rose again.
And notice as the Bible describes it, death hath no more dominion over him, meaning he can never die.
This is an important point.
Go if you would to Revelation chapter number 1.
I don't know if I told you that was the last verse I was going to, but I want to go to Revelation 1, right?
Revelation chapter 1.
You have to believe that Jesus died to even be saved.
You have to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The very definition of death in the Bible is that you're in hell because death is a state of being and hell is its location.
Now, yeah, there are some contexts in which death is just describing the parting from the body and the soul.
And the Bible makes it clear that all of us will die one day in the sense that our body will be separated from our soul.
But we're not dead.
The saved believer will never die.
Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die, believeth thou this.
Meaning that if you believed on Jesus Christ, death will never have dominion over you.
Now, even though your body is separated from your soul, it's still alive and it still goes straight to heaven.
Death is when it separates from the body and it goes to hell.
That's what true death is.
So, understanding what the Bible really teaches about this, when we think about what Jesus is going to say here,
what it says in Revelation chapter 1, we have to realize that means that Jesus was in hell.
Look at Revelation 1 verse 18.
I am he that liveth, and notice this, and was dead.
And behold, I am alive forevermore.
Amen and have the keys of hell and of death.
And I've heard people get mad at me for this and they say,
well, if you think that Jesus went to hell and suffered, then you think he died.
And I'm like, yeah.
And they're like, that's wicked.
You think that eternal life died?
Well, if you want to play mad gab, then sure.
I wouldn't word it that way because the Bible doesn't word it that way.
We understand Jesus is eternal life and, yeah, Jesus died.
But how am I going to sit here and deny that Jesus died?
I mean, he said it.
I didn't bring it up. Jesus is bringing it up, okay?
He doesn't even bring it up one time.
Look at verse 8 of chapter 2.
And then the angel of the church in Smyrna write,
these things say the first and the last, which was dead and is alive.
You know, they'll say, oh, that's a contradiction.
How could eternal life die?
Okay, well, how could a virgin give birth to a child?
How could someone that's never sinned take all the sin of the entire world and lay it upon himself?
How can that happen?
How can God bring everything into existence just by speaking?
How can an animal talk to a man?
How could God flood the entire earth?
How could any of the miracles in the Bible happen?
Because God can do whatever he wants, folks.
It's not that hard, okay?
And if Jesus said he died, you know what I do?
I believe that because I'm saved.
Someone is going to tell me that Jesus didn't die,
I question that person's salvation.
How could you get up and say, oh, you think Jesus didn't die?
Or you thought Jesus was dead?
He can't die.
Well, then you didn't get saved.
Because the only way for me to get saved was for Jesus to die and to be dead.
And then here's a really important part of the gospel.
Be raised from the dead.
Now, here's something that a live person can't do.
Be raised from the dead because he's not dead, okay?
You have to be dead in order to be raised from the dead, folks, okay?
So you have to believe in the full gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That's what the Bible teaches.
That's what we have to understand.
And, you know, I don't want to take away from what Jesus did.
I want to understand all of the gospel.
I want to understand everything they did for us.
Yeah, a child can have a basic understanding of what I said,
death, burial, and resurrection, and saved just as much as I am.
But as we study the scripture, we want to get a fuller understanding.
We want to understand more about the gospel and appreciate what Jesus did for us.
And realize, again, the application I have for this sermon is this.
No matter how low you go, no matter if you're in the well's belly,
don't keep observing lying vanities.
Get it right and pray to God.
Don't forsake your own mercy.
If you've screwed up your whole life, if you've been doing something bad,
if you're in a bad spot, you know what? Get right with God.
Get into church, get on your knees, pray to God,
start reading your Bible again, start going back soul winning.
You know what? There's never shame in getting right with God.
And even the apostle Paul made it abundantly clear that he was an example of God's long suffering.
This is the last thought I have, and I just want to close on this, okay?
Sometimes I get really mad about some of the really wicked people being alive today.
Who's had that feeling?
Really wicked people still being alive.
And I'm thinking, why does God not send this person to hell?
Why does God not kill this person already?
That's what they deserve.
But then I thought about this.
You know what? I too have not gotten what I deserve, though.
Because I'm thinking, is God slack in his judgment?
Is God slack in delivering justice?
Here's the thing. God is not slack in justice or judgment.
God is not going to allow anything to be unpunished.
This is what God does. He just delays punishment.
But the punishment is still going to be just.
The punishment is still going to be exactly as it deserved.
Everyone's going to get exactly as they deserve.
It's just delayed.
And here's the reason why it's delayed.
So that you get saved and all of what you deserve went to Jesus.
But if you got what you deserved, the first time you sinned, you would have gone straight to hell.
I would have gone straight to hell.
Why didn't that happen? Because God was long suffering.
God was merciful.
And even though there's some people that will never get that mercy,
it just illustrates how God's long suffering.
Even though this person is just like, that person deserves it.
But it's like, it can't have it both ways.
It can't be like, that person should get what they deserve, but I don't want to get what I deserve.
The reason why they don't get what they deserve immediately is the same reason I didn't.
It's because God's long suffering and merciful and He wanted me to get saved.
And you know what? The only reason we're on this earth, even with the terrors that exist in it,
is to drag as many people with us into heaven.
Every fight you have.
Inflation.
Just the president, the governors, the mayors, the ordinances, the fights on social media.
All of it is just to get you and me to stop preaching the gospel and getting people saved.
It's all an attack on the gospel.
That's always the agenda.
It's not coming from one person. It's not coming from some group.
It's not just the new world order. It's the devil.
Influencing his minions and trying to get us to stop preaching the gospel.
And we have to just keep fighting for the love of the lost, for those that are going to go to hell.
And we read about what hell's like.
Don't let that just go in in one ear and out the other.
Realize it's true and get saved.
Not only get saved, get other people saved.
That's the only thing that's really going to matter at the end of the day.
All the other stuff is just lying vanities.
Closing prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for the word of God.
Thank you so much for this church.
I pray that we would not observe lying vanities in our lives.
That whatever lies and deception are out there, the deceitfulness of riches,
the lies of the media, the lies of false religion, the lies of the wicked,
that they wouldn't seduce us into stop serving God.
Rather we'd see the importance of going out and preaching the gospel.
We'd realize that the harvest truly is plenteous but the labors be few.
But we would say, here my Lord, send me.
I'll be one of those few laborers in your harvest.
And I pray that we would just be able to pull many people out of the fire.
That you would help convict the hearts of people in Houston.
That we could be a bright and shining light and we'd get many people saved.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
For our last song, we're going to go 467, the B-I-B-L-E.
Four hundred and sixty-seven in our hymnals.
We sing it two times. Isn't that good?
All right.
The B-I-B-L-E.
Yes, that's the book for me.
I stand alone on the word of God.
The B-I-B-L-E.
Yes, that's the book for me.
I stand alone on the word of God.
The B-I-B-L-E.
Bible!
All right. Y'all have a good night. God bless.
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