Death To Self-Interest

Some believers will only obey God after He teaches them a lesson the hard way. Jonah finally went to Nineveh, a bit the worse for wear after three days inside a fish. Even then, the prophet of God was not happy that wicked Ninevites might repent. Today, part three in the saga of an unwilling servant of God.

Stay with us. From Chicago, this is The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching with Pastor Erwin Lutzer. Today we continue a series on brokenness, how God gets us to say yes, a study in the life of Jonah the prophet.

Later in our broadcast, Dr. Lutzer takes us to Jonah chapter three with a message on death to self-interest. Pastor Lutzer comes now to open our time of worship. In a moment, we're going to have the opportunity of singing together hymn number eight, praise to the Lord the Almighty. And after we have stood to sing, we'll continue to stand.

Pastor Mark Peary, our pastor of Christian education is going to be reading God's word to us. We'll also continue to stand as we participate in the special music as the sanctuary choir sings Humble Thyself. And then, of course, we'll also be ready to sing 390, May the Mind of Christ, My Savior. We hope that you have come here today with the desire to worship the Lord with hearts that are open to him.

Please join me as we pray. And now, Father, open our hearts to your truth. We pray that all distraction shall be removed from us because we have one desire, and that is to sing your praises authentically with hearts that are in tune with you and your will. Grant, O God, that those areas of our life that have not yet been yielded to you may come under your authority even as we sing and we come to that fourth stanza of dedication and loyalty. In Jesus' name, amen. Praise to the Lord, almighty, holy of creation. For my soul, praise to all the Israelites, salvation. All ye who live, bow to this temple, draw near to me in my evaporation. Praise to the Lord for all things to impress me bravely. Shelters, they are his wings, his sojourns, his wings are slain.

That's not the same, how all my longings have been, mentally but be forgiven. Praise to the Lord, to the cross, for the Lord can defend me. Surely his goodness and mercy give me a standing.

Under the roof, holy almighty, can you be with us, the king in prayer. Praise to the Lord, almighty, holy of creation. For my soul, praise to all the Israelites, salvation. For my soul, praise to all the Israelites, salvation. Let me, amen, suffer with strength, oh, my friend.

Let me, oh, let me, come home. Our scripture reading this morning is printed in your bulletin for you. We'll be reading from Mark 9, verses 33 through 37, and James 4, verses 6 and 10.

Please join with me on the bold print. They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, What were you arguing about on the road?

But they kept quiet, because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the twelve and said, If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last and the servant of all. He took a little child and had him stand among them.

Taking him in his arms, he said to them, Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but the one who sent me. Scripture says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Keep silence. Keep silence.

Keep silence before him. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. And he will lift you up.

I am the vine, you are the branches. And you will bear much fruit. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. And he will lift you up higher and higher, and he will lift you up.

Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. And he will lift you up higher and higher, and he will lift you up. And he will lift you up higher and higher, and he will lift you up. And he will lift you up higher and higher, and he will lift you up higher and higher, and he will lift you up higher.

And he will lift you up higher and higher, and he will lift you up higher, and he will lift you up higher. May the peace of God my Father, who I like in every day, that I may be proud to comfort, safe and sound only. May the love of Jesus will be, as the martyrs fill the sea. Hail his holy self, O praise he, this is with glory. Holy, holy God to Jesus, as I our Lord. May his beauty rest upon thee, as I see the lost today, that may they forget that shall not see only Jesus.

Thank you. Where there is hatred worth me so long, where there is injury or love, where there is doubt, pain, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, where there is sadness, joy. Holy, my Master, friend, that I may last so much sleep, to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is the living that we receive, it is the morning that we are born of, it is the morning that we are born to his love. Thank you so much, choir, and it is true, isn't it, that it is God who has given us the responsibility and privilege of being an instrument of peace.

Maybe we can't bring peace to the Middle East, but we can bring peace to our families, peace to our community, and peace to our city. So thank you so much, choir, for that ministry. Today, God willing, I'm going to be speaking on the topic of the repentance of the people of Nineveh. It's a remarkable story.

The Bible says that the king himself humbled himself, and our emphasis today has been to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. And as I was thinking of that story of the conversion of this city, or at least the repentance of this city, I was thinking of the city of Chicago. I asked you last week to pray for the city of Chicago, and I think God would be pleased if today we focused on praying for the city of Chicago. And I want you, in silent prayer, to be involved with me.

Would you join me, please, as I pray and as I guide you? Our Father, today we want to thank you that you are a great God, and yet even as you saw the children of Nineveh, one hundred and twenty thousand, in the very same way you see the children of the city of Chicago. And we thank you, Father, that you see us. You see us in our need.

You see us in our self-centeredness. And we pray today that you shall give to us a spirit of repentance, a spirit of openness, a willingness, O God, to be exposed to your will, and whatever those challenges involve. Grant us, O God, that today. We read in your word that you are compassionate and merciful, and that's what we're counting on as we pray.

We come in the name of Jesus, but we thank you that you invite us to come boldly into the very throne of grace, into the very holy of holies, in his blessed and most glorious name. And we want to do that today on behalf of the city of Chicago. And so, Father, we want to begin today by praying for the mayor of Chicago. And may the mayor of Chicago acknowledge you. May there be righteousness in City Hall.

Let's pray for that right now. Father, we pray for ourselves that we might overcome any barriers in our ministry or in our lives that forbids us or hinders us in building bridges to people with whom we work, people whom we know in our neighborhoods, in our communities, with whom we've never shared the good news of the gospel. Father, help us to make those bridges, we pray, and give us a burden for those who do not know the warmth of the Father's home. Lord, make us the people that we should be for your glory, for your honor, and the church that we should be. Invigorate us, come by your Holy Spirit, and be to us all that you can be, that we might be energized to do your will.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Nothing chills the heart of man like passing through death's gate. But to Him who enters daily, death's a glorious fate. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to be a holy pride, and to daily cross death's threshold to the holy life inside.

Enter in, enter in. Surrender to the Spirit's call to die, and enter in, enter in, find peace within. The holy life awaits you, enter in.

The conflict still continues raging deep within my soul. A spirit wars against my flesh in a struggle for control. My only hope is full surrender, so with each borrowed breath, I inhale the Spirit's will for me to die a deeper death.

Enter in, enter in. Surrender to the Spirit's call to die, and enter in, enter in, find peace within. The holy life awaits you, enter in.

If mourners should lament, then let them weep for those alive. For only when self-will is killed can my soul survive. Enter in, enter in. Surrender to the Spirit's call to die, and enter in, enter in. Find peace within. The holy life awaits you, abundant life is awaiting you.

So enter in, enter in. Surrender to the Spirit's call to die, and enter in, enter in, find peace within. The holy life awaits you, abundant life is waiting for you. The holy life awaits you, enter in, enter in. Thank you so much, Joe.

Thank you. Some people find it difficult to swallow the story of Jonah. Jesus evidently believed it, and if Jesus believed it, that's good enough for me. One of the things that we see very early on in the story of Jonah, and you may turn to it in your Bibles, is that Jonah was very stubborn. He was a very stubborn prophet, and you and I are stubborn prophets. But we read in the third chapter of the book of Jonah, then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise and go to Nineveh. God is the God of second chances. God is the God of new beginnings.

There are some people who will not give you a second chance as they look at you through their own homemade microscope. But God is the God who gives people a second chance, and so the word of the Lord comes to Jonah, and you'll notice in verse three it says, so Jonah arose and went to Nineveh. It does not say but. If it had said so back in chapter one verse three, so Jonah rose to go to Nineveh, the whole story would have been different, but back there Jonah had a but. He was willing to stand against God, and then it says in verse four, but the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and now Jonah is finally willing to give in to God, having spent 72 hours in the belly of a fish. Sometimes we give the impression that Jonah was spewed out by the fish in the suburbs of Nineveh, and then what he did is he arrived in the city, and he was wearing very smelly clothes, very smelly clothes as a matter of fact, and we think that he had some seaweed still wrapped around his head, and his body was white because of all of the gastric juices that he had encountered in the Creative Learning Center. But actually that's not the way it happened, because if you look at a map you'll notice that Nineveh is at least 400 miles from any place in the Mediterranean, and so it may have been three weeks or a month later that Jonah arrives in Nineveh to preach his very short message. Now, Nineveh was this great city, and Jonah was intensely nationalistic and filled with hate toward those people, because he knew that Nineveh had a reputation for violence, and he also knew that the Ninevites might come against Israel as they had plundered many other countries, and so because of this intense nationalism, he greatly resented the fact that God was going to possibly be gracious to these evil people who really deserved judgment. They didn't even deserve a chance judgment. It would be like you being asked to go speak to the terrorists who are blowing up cars and blowing up American troops and preach to them and say that there's going to be judgment, and then God converts them and makes them stronger than ever.

Wow. And so Jonah resents it. There were 120,000 children in the city of Nineveh, but Jonah did not care about those children, and there are more than 120,000 children in Chicago, and the question that we have to ask, particularly in the next message in this series, is do we care about those children? All right, what God does now is he gives Jonah a lesson in compassion. Jonah is going to deeply resent that. He didn't mind if grace and compassion is given towards him or towards those who he deemed to be the people of God. That was understandable because they were worthy of that kind of compassion and concern, but he deeply resented the possibility that God might be gracious to wicked, evil, sinful Ninevites. So how does God get him to say yes?

We're not sure if he ever really got him to say yes. I guess I should change that and say, how does God try to get Jonah to say yes? First of all, by where he was sent. The Bible says that he goes back to Nineveh, and Nineveh was an exceedingly great city.

It says, three days journey in breadth. Verse four, Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. You'll notice that when he was running from God, he was running from God because of Nineveh. God brings him back to Nineveh.

The very issue from which he was running, the reason why he was running. God says, Jonah, you can't be in my stream of blessing unless you go back in your detour to where we began. I am directing you to where you should have gone in the first place. Listen, when God gives us a second chance, he brings us back to those issues that caused us to run from him in the first place, and it is those issues that we need to deal with, whether it is resentment or anger or disappointment or situations.

God says, if you want to be in my blessing, you go back to where you were supposed to be. And so Jonah arises and goes to Nineveh. Three times the Bible says that Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. It was great geographically.

Three days walk through it. People say, well, that's not possible because the inner city was actually quite small. It had a wall of a circumference of about nine miles. But we're told that the wall was nearly 100 feet high and was 50 feet wide on top so that you could have several chariots going on on the wall at the same time. Those walls were huge fortifications. When it says that it was a three days journey, maybe what we should understand is that that includes all of the outlying areas. There was also a further wall, and beyond that, there were various towns and various settlements, and maybe that's what took three days to walk through.

But Jonah goes one day's journey, and he begins to preach. Yes, it was great geographically. It was also great culturally, by the way.

In fact, archaeologists tell us that there was a library in Nineveh at that time, clay tablets, thousands of them, so that they had culture and they had advancements and they had education. It was great culturally. It was also great in terms of its wickedness. I will not in a public setting give you the details of everything that they did, but the Ninevites impaled children. They skinned people alive and a host of other things that you don't want to hear about. They were really cruel. They majored in cruelty and in evil and in violence.

Now, those are the Ninevites, the Assyrians, of many, many generations ago, and as I like to point out, this has no relationship to the Assyrians that we know, Assyrians who are here today worshiping with us. But these were the people to whom Jonah was sent, and you look at this business of being sent there, and you find out that God did an incredible miracle, as we shall see in a moment, because there were certain limitations. We'd have never expected God to do this. Think about it for a moment.

First of all, the limitations of method. Jonah came to the city and he didn't have advanced personnel. He didn't have cottage prayer meetings before he arrived. He didn't have television. He didn't have radio. He didn't have newspapers to pick up the story so that others could hear about what God was doing.

He didn't even have a flannelgraph board, as far as I know. He simply went there and began to preach, and maybe it's the way in which he looked, maybe it's because of what the Ninevites were going through. There's some stories there that they were at a very pivotal point in their history. They began to respond to this message. Not only was there a limitation in terms of the method, but the message itself, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah, where's grace here? Where's something about God's forgiveness?

Where's something about God's compassion? If he told them about that, the text doesn't tell us. The main part of his message must have been that one statement, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So you have the limitations of a message.

You also have the limitations of the messenger. Jonah did not want to preach this message. It probably went like this, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown, and he hoped to God that it would be overthrown. So that's the way in which he preached. He preached with anger, shall we say, and he needed a course in anger management, which God tries to give him in the next chapter.

But he resents, he resents this idea that maybe they'll repent and God will be merciful. So God tries to grind down his stubbornness, first of all, by where he was sent. The very place he did not want to go. His feet took him where his heart was not. Secondly, God ground him down, if we can use that expression, by what he saw.

Oh, he did not want to see this. You'll notice it says in verse 5, and the people of Nineveh believed God and they called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. Fasting, who told them to fast?

They somehow knew that if we're going to get in touch with God, we want to show our desperation. And so they fasted there. Here at Moody Church, we have a day of fasting twice a year and it's hard to get people to fast for a whole day. Feasting, well, that's a different story. When we call a feast, we have people show up who we thought died during the days of Ironside.

I mean, everybody's here during the days of Ironside. That's when we have a feast. But when you have a fast, the attendance is a little lower. We have more people in the supper room than we do the upper room.

We've noticed that. And then these people, they put on sackcloth. Sackcloth, my friend, was goat's hair. Now, just think about that. That was prickly.

It was terribly uncomfortable. What they were saying is, we want to show our desperation in God's presence and we even rid ourselves of creature comforts so that we can call on God and God knows how serious we really are. In fact, it says in verse six, the word reached the king of Nineveh. We don't know whether or not this was like the mayor or whether or not it was the whole king of the Assyrian empire.

And he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, sat in ashes. Could you imagine Mayor Daley going back to Grant Park, sitting in ashes, and then giving the city of Chicago a proclamation? Now, I've been to many of these prayer breakfasts and so forth where there is a proclamation from the president, from the governor, and from the mayor. And if I may be a little bit facetious, it reads something like this. Whereas prayer is not a bad idea, and whereas there's some religion in our previous history, and whereas we're into tolerance, and whereas we're a relatively free country, we exhort anybody who wants to to say a prayer today, something like that. Notice this proclamation.

Wow. Verse seven, by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish.

Now, there's a proclamation. You know, when God sends revival, everybody's on the same level. The mayor, the king, those who are in positions of authority, the president, they all bow in the presence of God, they all acknowledge their sinfulness, and here we have this universal revival taking place in Nineveh, and we read it and we say, could this really have happened? I mean, even they put sackcloth on the animals. The animals were supposed to have repented. I remember a dog in our neighborhood who should have repented. And we had a cat or two that I tried to get to repent.

It wasn't very successful. You know the difference between dog theology and cat theology. A dog says, you feed me, therefore you must be God. A cat says, you feed me, therefore I am God.

Isn't that true? You see, these people realized that their sin was affecting even the animal kingdom and the animals, I'm sure, didn't know what was going on because they never understood Jonah, they never understood the message, but they said, we are so desperate that we're even putting sackcloth on animals and we're forcing them to fast so that we might turn to God. You know, it's interesting that this is not recorded in any of the various annals of Assyrian history and so some people have said, could this have happened? Maybe it was a temporary repentance. Maybe their repentance ended when their fear ended.

We don't know. We don't know the depth of their repentance, though, as we'll see in a moment, Jesus Christ did acknowledge this as a great moment in history, but the people repented and because they repented, we read in verse 10, when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them and he did not do it, which was exactly what Jonah thought might happen. How was God trying to get him to say yes?

By dragging him to a place where he didn't want to be and maybe you're there today. Maybe your vocation, maybe your situation is exactly the place where you do not want to be and then secondly, God says, I'm going to have you see something that you don't want to see. You do not want to see this city repent because you're so full of resentfulness when God blesses those whom you think he should not bless and then God says, I'm going to get you to say yes or at least work on you by the way in which you feel. That's really next time's message, but you'll notice in chapter 4, verse 1, it says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry. Do you know what the Hebrew text says? The Hebrew text says, and it was evil to Jonah with a very great evil.

That's the literal translation. He was very, I mean he was steamed and he says that's just what I thought. A terrible thing happened. I preached and everybody repented.

What an awful thing. And because they repented, you're not going to bring them the judgment that they so richly deserve. They deserve nothing but judgment and here you display nothing but grace. What kind of a God is this? He says, that's what I know.

He goes on to say that you're compassionate and you're loving and that's what I feared. You know, it's interesting in the text we find that the Ninevites, they certainly repented. God repented. You know when it says in verse 19 when the Lord saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way. By the way, when it says that they turned from their violence when the king says that, the Hebrew word is Hamas. You'll probably recognize that as a terrorist group today.

Well, they turned from their terrorism. And it says in verse 10 when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented. The word actually is he repented. Now, that doesn't mean that God repents the way in which we repent. What it means is that Jonah's message was a conditional message. When he said, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown, he should have added, unless you repent. And so God says, okay, you are repenting. I will not bring the calamity that I promised you because it was a conditional message. But isn't it interesting that the Ninevites, they repent and God even has a form of, quote, repentance, but the one man who will not repent, who will not bring himself to the end of self-interest and self-advantage and self-protection is Jonah. And he remains stubborn. There are some lessons, I think, that this passage of scripture teaches us.

First of all, our attitude should follow our obedience. It was good that Jonah went. It was much better that he go to Nineveh than that he stay home.

We can be assured of that. It was good that Jonah went. But his heart wasn't there. You know, he said, like the little boy who was told to sit in a corner, he said, I'm sitting down, but in my heart, I'm standing up. In other words, if this is what I have to do, this is what I'll do it. But I will grin and I will bear it and I will consider it my duty because after all, God can do such things as create fish and put me in difficult circumstances.

So here I am. But his heart was out of sync with God. My wife and I have on a number of occasions been in Weimar, the seat of the great German enlightenment. And there is a statue of Goethe. You have to know how to say that word of Goethe in Weimar. And in that statue, Goethe is looking at the university, but his feet are taking him to the tavern. Part of Goethe's problem was he could never quite decide where his loyalties were.

In that case, his feet were going to his real loyalty, namely the tavern. But in the very same way, it's possible for us to serve God and we say, yes, I'm serving God out of obedience. If this is what God wants, if this is what he has for me, I will do it. But your heart is out of sync with God because you have not been willing to embrace God's will as something good and perfect and acceptable and you chafe against it and you fight against it and God says, I want you to say yes.

Let's consider right this morning here. There are many of you who are listening to this message who are in the right place. God wanted you in this sanctuary today. But I need to ask, is your heart right with God?

It's possible, you see, for you to be in the right place geographically and your heart be out of sync with the Almighty. Jesus spoke of the Pharisees. He says that they honor me with their lips. They're saying the right thing. They come to the right temple. They even bring the right gifts. But their hearts are somewhere else. Their affections lie elsewhere. And what God is trying to say to us today is don't you understand that I want your heart and your vocation and my calling to line up.

Why all this self-protection, this self-serving rebellion? So that's the first lesson. The second lesson is that God is bigger than our expectations.

He's bigger than our expectations. Who would have ever expected that Nineveh would repent? Who would have ever believed that there is this city that would turn to God just because they heard a message of judgment?

No one would have ever predicted that Nineveh was going to have this awesome revival, would they? And Jonah was full of deep resentment because of it. Let me ask you this question. Are you resentful because God is generous? Are you resentful because God sometimes blesses your enemies and God keeps blessing them and giving them health and giving them money and God just seems to be lavishing upon them and here you are, you're trying to serve God and look at what other people have and why does God have all of this disparity in terms of the way in which he runs his world and down deep inside you are resentful because God is merciful and compassionate and patient with people that you and I know he ought to just wipe out, right?

Let me ask you something. Did Jonah need more grace than the people of Nineveh at the end of the day? No, because not a one of us deserve what God gives us. The reason that we compare ourselves with others and think, well, you know, we are worthy of grace.

Did you know that that's an oxymoron? Nobody is worthy of grace. If you're worthy of it, it can't be grace. It is the unworthy who come before God. It is those who have absolutely no claim whatever on their maker. Those who bring nothing to the table except their great need coming in humility and brokenness to receive. It is they who receive mercy. It's not the people who deserve anything that receive it.

And so what you see here in the text is that God is bigger than our expectations. There are people that perhaps you know whom you've given up on. You no longer pray for them. You no longer believe that God can do anything in their lives, but you don't know. I think of what the king says.

Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Who knows what God may do with those who are wicked? Who knows what God may do with those of us who think we're not wicked and who deserves something? Who knows what God may do?

He is bigger than our own expectations. There's a final lesson. And that is that we are responsible for our own repentance. We're responsible for our own repentance. Jesus had a divine commentary on this event. He said this in Matthew chapter 12, verse 41, The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

If we are to read the passage, we discover that Jesus uses the word greater three times. He certainly is greater than Jonah. His message is much greater than that of Jonah. The people of Nineveh heard only a message of judgment.

And if you want to know something of what that judgment eventually became, you should read the book of Nahum because that shows that eventually God did judge Nineveh over a hundred years later because they went back to their violent ways. And so Jesus Christ's message is greater than that of Jonah. Jesus preached a message of love and compassion.

He said, I came not to condemn the world but that the world through me might be saved. It's a message of love. It's a message of grace.

It's a message of wonderful inclusion to those who humble themselves to come and to receive it. The city of Nineveh will rise up and condemn the city of Chicago someday. The city of Chicago has had the opportunity to believe in Jesus. You can buy Bibles, no matter what translation they are. You can buy Bibles in any one of the bookstores in the city of Chicago. You can turn on radio and you can hear messages. You can turn on television and sometimes even there hear the gospel if you're listening to the right person.

And you can seek God. We have churches that are open and in Nineveh they didn't have any of that. The city of Nineveh responded to only one preacher. The city of Chicago has heard dozens of preachers and has dozens of churches and they with greater opportunity have not repented. I think that Jesus would say that the people of Nineveh shall rise up and condemn this city because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold a greater time with greater opportunities and greater grace is here.

But now I'm speaking to you. Who knows how many people there are here today who have never personally received Jesus Christ as Savior? You've never responded to the Jesus who is much greater than Jonah. You've never opened your life to him and said Lord Jesus I want you to to be my Savior and I trust you as my righteousness and I'm trusting you for my forgiveness.

I mean personally not just generally but personally to know him on that kind of a level and to respond to him. You know what the Bible says? How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Because we live in a day when God's arms are open to everybody and you have not fallen so far but that God can receive you. The Ninevites were received by God after all despite their violence and their wickedness and their huge sins.

They were received. How much more under this era of grace in Jesus can we all be received? Perhaps the men of Nineveh shall rise up and condemn you someday because they repented in the day of judgment but possibly you haven't. So I have to ask you as I conclude has God brought you to the point where you're willing to say yes? I say that to those of you who do not know Christ as Savior but as well as to those of you who do. What is there that that holds you from finally giving up the fight and the manipulation and the criticism of God to finally say okay God it's over? Let's pray. Our Father we want to thank you for this story.

A story that reveals the human heart a story that is such a beautiful contrast between your compassion and one man's petty anger at your will and purpose. Teach us from it oh God we pray today and may your grace be evident in the lives of all who would repent and all who would submit and in all who would be broken in your presence and say yes Lord. And now you talk to God if he's talked to you you talk to him too. What is it that you need to say to him today? Father do not deal with us at this moment as a church deal with us as individuals.

At this moment we're not thinking of the city we're thinking of ourselves. Grant oh God that sense of submission and yieldedness to your matchless undeserved grace. In Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Let's sing together a few stanzas of 201. It's a song about God's grace.

Two hundred and one. On today's Moody Church Hour Pastor Lutzer brought a message on death to self-interest the third in a four-part series on brokenness. How God gets us to say yes. On our broadcast next week join us for a look into Jonah chapter 4 and death to self-justification. We're so grateful to all who support The Moody Church Hour and during this month we have a special opportunity. Every gift you send will be doubled thanks to a matching gift fund. It's been set up by others who value The Moody Church Hour as it reaches the wider culture and addresses crucial issues of the day. You can make your gift a double one by calling 1-800-215-5001 the number again 1-800-215-5001 or you can write to us at Moody Church Media 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, Illinois 60614 Online go to moodyoffer.com that's moodyoffer.com Join us next time for another Moody Church Hour with Pastor Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.