Obedience Conforms the Outside to God's Wishes

3 of 4 in the series "Inside~Out: Developing the Heart of God" More sermons by Charles Sackett at http://www.madisonparksermons.com Audio also available at http://www.madisonparksermons.com


I admit to just a little twinge of guilt every time it happens. You sit down in an airplane and you are waiting to take off. You finally get to the place that it’s near time to go, and the flight attendant comes and says, "Please take that card out from the seat in front of you and open it up and we are going to walk through all of these instructions." And I always feel just a little bit guilty about not doing that.

I mean, the first time or two I was on a plane I was pretty compliant, and I went ahead and did that. And the more I thought about this is, what difference is it going to make anyway? At 35,000 feet if it comes down, it comes down, you know. Having read the card probably isn’t going to help. So I either sleep through it or read through it, and I have learned to not be guilty. It’s amazing how little attention I, in fact, pay at all on an airplane.

Until coming back from Baltimore one night flying into St. Louis I heard the noise under the plane a couple or three times, tried to figure out what it was, couldn’t. I’m no mechanic. Pretty soon when the flight attendant came down the aisle with a flashlight looking at the floor I thought, that’s not a good sign. Pretty soon the lights came up and the announcement came on. The flight attendant is going to be giving you instructions about how to prepare for an emergency landing. I listened. Carefully.

I can teach you how to get into the correct position, and the correct position, if you ask me, is nothing more than a recipe to break your neck immediately so that you don’t have to feel the crash when it actually happens, because the way they have got you bent over your head is right against the back of the seat. I’m thinking it’s a done deal. It was amazing to me how the thought --

Oh, by the way, the problem was a simple little problem, shouldn’t have been a major issue. We just couldn’t tell whether or not our landing gear was down. I suppose if you are going to land a plane, that’s a bit of a problem.

I was amazed at how much attention people paid during that announcement. It was almost like the recipe for destruction was enough to get your attention. It reminds me just a little of Jonah Chapter 3. Have you read this chapter? I trust that you have been reading through the book of Jonah as we have been looking at it, and quite honestly it’s such a simple message. It just is so brief and to the point. Jonah Chapter 3, the verse is Verse Number 4. Excuse me. Verse Number 3. Well, I’ll find the right chapter, and then I’ll know. Verse Number 4, right in the middle. "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."

Now, that’s my kind of sermon. Eight words. Well, I mean, it’s my kind of sermon if I’m listening. It wouldn’t be my kind of sermon if I’m preaching one. Essentially five words in Hebrew. Eight words. Forty days and Nineveh is going to be overturned. You know that Jonah didn’t want to say that, because he really wanted Nineveh to be destroyed. But for some reason that brief message spoken as often -- and it may have been spoken in the three days. Well, frankly we don’t even know how long Jonah preached because it only identifies the first day. It says that Nineveh was