Great Sin, Greater God
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Welcome to summer camp 2024, it’s so good to be here with you.
Introduce myself.
If you didn’t get a booklet go ahead and raise your hand…
So that’s enough about me, let’s get into what we are doing tonight, and what we are doing this week. This entire week, we are going to be in the book of Jonah.
Turn to Jonah 1.
Amazing book with very complex writing
But it’s about a real man, who really ran from God.
Another historical book in the bible mentions him.
23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. 24 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. 25 He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.
Jesus mentions this story as fact in Matthew
40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 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.
The point is, Jonah was real. And this real story is written in a very specific way to help you see the point of the story.
It was written in satire.
Define Satire.
Taco town video.
Follow up to Taco Town video.
Jonah is written that way, to accent some really prominent truths.
Jonah’s sin was great
But God’s compassion is boundless.
We are going to see that time and time again this week. The boundless compassion, the boundless love, the boundless grace of God. When we say boundless, we mean that it has no boundaries…no end…it can’t be contained…it’s too great to measure.
That’s what God’s compassion for sinners is like. And Jonah…he was deep in sin. And here in Chapter 1, that’s what we really get to see, that’s what this book is accenting in this first chapter…is the foolishness, the stupidity, the sinfulness of Jonah. And that brings us to our first main point tonight….
Don’t be Jonah
The bible is filled with many heroes of the faith that we should strive to be like…but Jonah is not one of them.
Nowadays when someone is named Jonah it’s to point out the boundless compassion of God. But in these days…the name Jonah meant “dove” which in Hebrew implied the meaning “silly” and “senseless”.
And that’s what Jonah is being, silly and senseless. And the language of this book is showing that. Let’s look at it together, we will go verse by verse and explain as we go.
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
Now you’ll remember that I said that Jonah is filled with really complex language, and we see it right here in the first three verses. And it’s this language that shows how silly and senseless Jonah is being.
The word “down” here is a euphemism, meaning death. (explain Euphemism).
Examples of Euphemism: Death: "Passed away", "bit the dust", "kicked the bucket", "bought the farm", "no longer with us"Pregnancy: "A bun in the oven". or when someone is “let go” rather than fired.
The scripture is literally saying, that Jonah, by fleeing the Lord’s presence…which you can’t do by the way…was not only being stupid…but was as good as heading towards death. Meaning, to run from God is to run away from life, and towards death.
So, I told you that you don’t want to be like Jonah right? Well let’s get specific..and see the way that you may be like a Jonah. If we don’t want to be like Jonah then…
Don’t run from God.
Many of you would say “i’ve never run from God”. To that I would say…are you sure? Because running from God doesn’t always look like buying a boat ticket and trying to physically outrun God.
Running from God means knowing what is right, what is obedient, and yet choosing to do wrong.
Is that you?
Are you being Jonah? Maybe this summer camp, God is wanting to reveal to you the ways you’ve been like Jonah…so he can reveal to you his boundless compassion towards you…like he will to Jonah several times.
Let’s keep going…
4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”
I just want to point out that God could have just ended Jonah. Could have punished him for disobeying. Could have smote him. Great word right? Smote.
But he didn’t…already, 4 verses in, and we are seeing God’s boundless compassion. But…we will get to that in a bit…for now our main focus is Jonah, his foolishness, and particularly in this section, his hard heart.
Don’t harden your heart.
When we say that Jonah had hardened his heart…we see he didn’t care about God’s will, and he didn’t care about others either. In fact, the captain of the ship…who was a pagan by the way…cared more about others than Jonah. This is in direct violation of God’s greatest commandment…
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Jonah let himself get to the point, where he stopped caring about God…and stopped caring about others. Stopped loving God (because if you love God you follow his commandments 1 John) and stopped loving others.
We don’t know exactly how he got here…but that doesn’t matter because scripture teaches us how anyone gets to the point…
Idolatry and sin.
Is that you??
Have you hardened your heart towards God and begun treasuring in your heart other things?
Let’s continue..
7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
Don’t be a hypocrite.
If you don’t know what a hypocrite is…it’s saying you believe one thing…but acting the opposite.
It’s not just running from God in disobedience…but it’s like you’re running from God, while pretending you’e not running..
Jonah said he feared the Lord…right there in verse 9. He said “I AM A HEBREW AND I FEAR THE LORD”
And yet…we know for a fact that he didn’t truly FEAR the Lord. You see, he claimed an identity that wasn’t real.
He said he loved and followed God with his mouth…but his actions weren’t following his words.
Is that you??
Okay, by now we should be feeling it…by now we should be seeing the places that we are more like Jonah than we want to be and than we should be. So now we need to ask the question…
What do I do if I’m like Jonah?
First answer….
Trust in God’s boundless compassion.
11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.
Look at that…God, could have just ended Jonah. Could have sunk the ship. Could have caused the sea after Jonah was thrown overboard to continue raging until it killed Jonah…but he didn’t. In fact, God saves Jonah.
17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
God had no reason other than the fact that he is endlessly compassionate, endlessly gracious, endlessly forgiving, endlessly kind…no reason to save Jonah other than who he was.
And not only does God prove that by saving Jonah, who has sinned greatly against him…but he also proves it by saving the sailors who were with him.
You saw it there in verse 14, and in verse 16. God is so boundlessly compassionate that he’s the kind of God that unbelievers can call out to him…unbelievers who have lived their life worshipping and serving other Gods, can be saved by him.
Guys…if you’ve been like Jonah…if you’ve been away from God, if you’ve been hard hearted, if you’ve been a hypocrite and loving sin over God…God has compassion that knows no end. All you need to do is turn to him, like you see the sailors do here…and like you’ll see the Ninevites to do coming up. Like you’ll see Jonah himself at least do in part in the next chapter…
I also want to note that some of you might be feeling like you’ve gone too far. That things are too screwed up in your life…to that, we see our final point for the night. That even if you give your life to God, repent, turn away from sin and turn towards him…even if you do that…that you’ve screwed things up too much already..
That the people around you will never understand, that you’ve lost your chance to show them Godliness in your life…
Our last point is for you.
Trust in God’s boundless sovereignty.
Jack is going to cover this a ton more tomorrow, so I won’t dive deep into it. But as I invite the worship team to come up, I want to look back at verse 16 to end tonight’s message.
16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
Despite Jonah’s stupidity. Despite his foolishness. Despite his sin and disobedience. God was sovereign, God was in control….so much so that despite all those things…God still brought those sailors to come to believe in him.
God can work just as much IN SPITE of our actions and he does BECAUSE of our actions.
Friends.
You haven’t gone too far. You’ve haven’t screwed up so much that God can’t work in you and through you.
God’s love, his sovereignty, and his compassion are boundless.
It’s our prayer, that over the next three nights…you come to see that, you come to believe that, and you come to trust in that.
***Pray***
