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[Music] [Music] [Music] ♪ And he was so close to me ♪

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♪ Holy day of ♪ ♪ Miracle merciful ♪ ♪ To the foster of our heaven's love ♪ ♪ Holy day of ♪

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♪ Miracle merciful ♪ ♪ To the present day ♪ ♪ Oh, we hail you, oh, we hail the rising sun ♪ ♪ To the source of all divine ♪

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♪ Oh, we hail you, oh, we hail the rising sun ♪ [Music] In this book of the Prophet Jonah, the fourth chapter in the first five verses, we have the basis of the morning message.

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begins with the words, "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." This is a word that is given us after Jonah has gone to the city of Nineveh, declared to the people the good news of God. They have responded favorably, but Jonah is unhappy. He's angry. So the title of this message is "Unhappy with Success." Unhappy

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the success. There are times when we do what we ought to do, and the results are what they should be. They are desirable results, and yet there is unhappiness. Such was the case here in the life of a prophet of God, who lived in the long ago, whose life experience is a message for each one of us today as we consider our relationship to each other and

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our relationship to the eternal. Steinbeck wrote a novel entitled The Pearl, in which the persons involved in the story were concerned about a precious pearl. Finally, the leading character is able to get that precious pearl, is able to succeed

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in the quest. He gets that pearl. But after having received this pearl, the most precious pearl in all the world, there is unhappiness. There is so much discord. There is disaster that seems to surround their existence. And so, finally, the world is in a state of disarray he takes the pearl and casts it into the ocean.

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It seems that here is a crystal clear example of success that brings unhappiness. happiness. At a time when we are celebrating our nation's freedom, we've had a great deal of fanfare concerning the 100 years that we've had the Statue of Liberty and all of the fireworks that have been mentioned, many people who made the pilgrimage to New York to be there

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at this time. It's well that we consider what I would like to call an anatomy of freedom. We considered earlier in a previous message, Jonah receiving the call of God to go to Nineveh and to proclaim the good news of God. The gospel is good news, but before it is good news, it comes to us as bad news. It's a warning. You do not get right if

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you do not set your house in order. Destruction awaits you. That's bad news. But the fact that God is open to change, that God is ready, willing, and able to redeem, that's good news. Jonah is a reluctant prophet.

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He has to have certain unfavorable experiences. He goes through a crisis and finally he goes to Nineveh and does what God commands him to do after having been commanded the second time. And the wonderful thing about God is he's a God of a second chance.

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Second chance. May make mistakes and we may mess up this opportunity that we have now, but God gives us a second chance. chance another opportunity every day is a second chance it's a new day it's a

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day of grace I like to say that his grace is new every morning every morning it's an opportunity form of opportunity says they do me wrong who say I come no when once I knock and fail to find you in for every day I stand outside your door did you wake rise to fight and win second chance Jonah receives a second

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chance he is is punished he goes into the belly of the whale but he comes out and he has a second chance to do what God told him to do he didn't do it the first time but he has a second chance. And so it seems to me that here we have a message about freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom. First thing I see here in the

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life of Jonah is freedom from the right to be free from. Everybody needs to be free but how is that freedom expressed we like to be free from in other words I like to be free from you and you like to be free from me and it's and it's absolutely necessary in order to be really free you've got to be free to

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make your own decisions to do your own thing as we say be free from in fact that's the individuality that's that's really what makes each one of us different that's what makes you you and me me. Be free from. Be free from. That is expressed in so many ways in a positive sense but yet Jonah chooses to express

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it in a rather negative sense. In other words I want to be free of these non-whites I want to be free from them I don't want to have anything to do with it you know sometimes we want to be free from people that means to isolate ourselves so that you know I can get along well without you and maybe you can

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get along well without me so we can be free from each other free from and that was Jonah's attitude but you really can't be free in the truest sense if being free from means that it is only in a negative way. His freedom from the Ninevites meant that he really did not want to go to Nineveh but somehow in the

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midst of this experience he comes to understand what it really means to be free from. In the most intimate relationship of marriage you still need to be free from. Free from. In other words, there has to be a certain free from in order for the husband, the wife, each one to make his or her own unique contribution, you have

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to have that free from in order to do that. I remember a dear sister who said several years ago when a husband took his retirement she said oh he's around the house all the time and it just worried me to death. Free from. Some suggest that that maybe a couple ought to take a vacation alone so that they continually

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have an experience of being free from because in that being free from there is an enriching contribution that each is enabled to make free from free from Jonah has to come to understand that to be from to be free from the Ninevites that in the truest sense he has to make a pilgrimage because you really can't be

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free from unless you are free for. To be free from another is to be for the other and that really makes for freedom. So to be free in the truest sense is not only to be free for me and to be free from you it's also to be free for you. So one is not really free unless he's free for other people. That's what Jonah really

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didn't understand. Jonah go to Nineveh this time Jonah obeys and he goes Because you see, y'all don't belong to a race where the Ninevites were the enemy. Israel is facing a terrible foe in the Ninevites and here Lord you expect me to go there? Yes you've got to be for these people even though they're strangers

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even though they're foreigners you've got to be for them. To be free is to be far. So really to be free is to be for other people. I really can't be me all by myself. I've got to relate to you and it's in my relation to you and your relationship to me that we are privileged to be each other. He goes to Nineveh, the gospel is declared and there is a radical change in the life

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of the people. The king repents, highest man of the land repents, and all of the people repent, even animals. Everything seems to have had a change to take place because the gospel is declared in Nineveh.

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The gospel is heard. But Jonah is unhappy because God spares the city and the people. Jonah is unhappy. It looks like you should have been happy.

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This is a citywide revival. Everybody is saved. Why shouldn't this man be happy? But Jonah is unhappy with his success because he really wanted God to destroy the Ninevites,

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take care of them, crush them, blot them out from the face of the earth. They are the enemy. And Jonah goes outside and sits down and waits for God to destroy them. A lot of people, you know, just waiting for something wrong to happen to the enemy so

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they can rejoice and be glad that this happened. So he builds himself a booth. He's got a little comfortable place for himself while he watches what God's going to do to these terrible people, the men of ice.

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But God spares them and Jonah is angry. He's not only angry with himself, he's angry with God. And many times people get angry with God because God blesses somebody else. You know what Lord, why did you do this for them? You haven't done that for me in that way.

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And they miss seeing their own blessing because they're somehow angry with God because what he does for somebody else. But what Jonah doesn't really recognize is that his blessing from God is related to being for the Ninevites. We really can't be saved by ourselves and if we aren't involved in the salvation of other people we're not saved by ourselves. Somehow we've got to be involved in the salvation process and God has to be using us and in using us to save other people he's also in the process of saving us.

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Freedom for, freedom for other people. That's one of the things that America has said time and time again. We're free, liberty and justice for all. That's what we say in our creed.

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And what Gunda Meredol said a number of years ago is that there seems to be a gap between what we say and what we do. That's the American dilemma in being free-fall. So you see, it's an ongoing process.

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It's not some static process that we can just boast and say, "Well, we are freedom-loving people and that's just that. We've got to still be involved. The Statue of Liberty, where so many come

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to the New York Harbor and pass that statue. So many foreigners, we saw them. Many, many. And then we heard a word from our neighbors south of the border, the Mexican-American, said, "Well, that really has included me." And then we heard another word from our black brothers those in Haiti saying well, you don't let me come in like you do to others

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And somehow as we look at ourselves we as a nation we need to recognize What it really means more and more as a message here being for all peoples being for all people freedom for Not only is that true for us as a nation. It's true for us as individuals.

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I think we could probably learn some lessons ourselves. We'd be really free for. You know I look at us from Sunday to Sunday, some of us come in, we sit down, and we get up and we walk out. We don't shake hands with nobody else.

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You know, we just get on out ourselves. This is a fellowship. Fellowship. Somehow it's not just coming and getting what I want myself and being pleased with the singing

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and the preaching, but it's somehow real worship and freedom in worship means not only being free from, it means being free for. Somehow there is an interaction and an intermingling, there's a fellowship. Jonah, here you are out here with this booth sitting waiting for the Ninevites.

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What's wrong with you fella? But Lord, I'm angry. You didn't do what you said you were going to do. You sent me to preach, to tell the people they were going to be destroyed.

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And that's why I didn't want to come in the first place. I knew what you were going to do. I knew you were going to change your mind. when they change their actions

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and you really make me look bad I said that they were gonna be destroyed and they aren't destroyed. Jonah's concerned about himself he's more concerned about self-pity than he is really about the Lord's work and cooperating with the Lord and the Lord caused a gourd to grow. This gourd grew up that was the hot sun

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shining and Jonah was so relieved because that was this gourd to provide him with shade and then while he was rejoicing the gourd the Lord caused a worm to eat away the gourd and the gourd withered away. See a lot of these things we have the gourd comes up from the earth now these things we get oh yes we

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get them by getting an education and by working and all those things but still the Lord gives it because we wouldn't have a good mind we wouldn't have the strength and all that if it weren't for the Lord but then the Lord also permits a worm to come and destroy it. All these things we have, the fine clothes we have, the cars

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we have, the houses we live in, all these things, some worm is right now eating away at us. Even this body that we've got, when it's all gone, worms are going to destroy it. Go, destroyed by worms. But the umbrella that is provided with all of its spiritual, All of its material comforts, all of that, that somehow change and decay all around thy seed.

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O thou who changest not, abide with me. Go on. And then the Lord said, now look Jonah, you really had sympathy for this going, And you're disturbed with me because I had sympathy and provided salvation for the Ninevites.

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How much more precious are these Ninevites than that Gohorn? Because you see my brothers and sisters, not only is it necessary for us to be free from, and not only is it necessary to be free for, we must have the freedom of. And the free, you can't be free from and free for without being possessed with the freedom of God.

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And the freedom of God involves the love of God. You can't be free from people and free for people without being possessed with the freedom of the love of God. That's really what makes life worth living, is the freedom of God. To be free, to be free is to be so possessed with the love of God that no matter what happens, you're willing to serve God and be faithful to God. Freedom from, freedom for, freedom of God.

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Unhappy with success. Oh, so often we see it. I remember a family where the father and the mother said to the daughter, "I want to give you a good education so you can get a good husband."

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And they gave her a good education and they sent her to a place where she would be expected to get a good husband so she could marry a doctor. There's a medical school there, so she's married a doctor and so the father says he has really done it. She's fulfilled my expectations. He's got an education. She's got a doctor who will make a lot of money and he'll have a good life.

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Though it didn't quite work out that way Because They made money and yet The doctor was more concerned about money and he began to gamble and he began to drink because he wanted to make a whole lot

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He wanted to get it real quick And in his concern about all of those things more and more as he became concerned about those things, he became less concerned about developing and cultivating his marriage, and so they grew further and further apart. And it ended up on the rocks.

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Or they had a fine house. Expensive. They had a good bank account. They had all of these credentials that we say make for success.

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And it seems that they really got it made, but somehow it's built on a false foundation. The foundation of sad. And you really really can't live life abundantly without being free in the sense of being possessed of God. And somehow it's the Spirit of God that really enables us to be free, to be ourselves, to be free for other people, and to be free from people.

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Oh how wonderful it is when you're possessed with the Spirit of God. Wonderful thing to have all these other things but if you don't have any of those things, if you have freedom in God you can be happy. The song, one popular song said, "If I never had a penny I'd be rich as Rockefeller." It's the kind of

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freedom in God, a freedom that somehow is beyond all of the mundane things and That's what Jonah had to somehow recognize, to be free, to somehow be free in God. Because you see, Jonah has a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea. There is kindness in his justice which is more than liberty, for the love

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of God is broader than the measure of man's mind and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind to be free in God to be possessed by his spirit and that involves the cross Jonah must face the contradiction it's a contradiction over what he wants and what God wants gotta face the

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contradictions of life. Face the contradictions that somehow in the midst of it all many times people try to do the work of God without being possessed by the love of God. Somehow our will has to be swallowed up in His will and we have to be led by the one who cries out in the very darkness of his

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life as he's out there in the garden of Gethsemane, Father not as I will but as thou will. And that's what it really means to be free, to be free in him is to be free from, is to be free for, it's to be possessed by the freedom of God that is revealed in the love of God. More love to thee, O Christ.

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[MUSIC] [ Music ] ♪ Lord of the free ♪ ♪ Lord of the free ♪

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♪ Lord of the free ♪ ♪ Hear the angels' ♪ ♪ Choir ♪ ♪ Oh, say can you see ♪

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♪ By the dawn's early light ♪ ♪ What so proudly we hailed ♪ ♪ For all to see ♪ ♪ For all to see ♪

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♪ What a day this can be ♪ ♪ Of each other ♪ ♪ How did you know I'd see ♪ ♪ Each other's way ♪

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♪ In all my passion be ♪ ♪ For us, O Charleston be ♪ ♪ For us, O Charleston be ♪ ♪ Walk on through the years ♪

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♪ In the land of the free ♪ ♪ Live for the day ♪ ♪ This is our shining star ♪ ♪ Our hearts shall praise ♪

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♪ This is the land of peace ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]