Jonah 1:1-2
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(Will You Obey Now?)
(Will You Obey Now?)
The story of Jonah is most likely familiar to most of you.
If we are honest, stories like Adam and Eve, Daniel and the Lion’s den Jonah, Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, Samson are probably a few of the most popular stories that are traditionally taught in Children’s Church, Vacation Bible School, Sunday School.
Most of you this morning, I have no doubt, if I were to ask you what is the story of Jonah about, the majority of you could probably AT LEAST, give a summary of the plot and even most of you could probably do so with some detail.
But I wonder how many of us have taken a closer look at Jonah?
Have we ever considered why Jonah is in the Bible? Why this story?
Is th
And at this point, I will say that I don’t think this story is in the Bible merely to entertain us.
I don’t think its in the Bible to give us some good children’s church material, you know, because every kid loves a good man eating fish story?
No. I don’t believe thats the case at all. I believe this story is included in Scripture for better reasons than that.
I believe its here for at least four reasons:
To display and to exalt the Glory of God above all other gods.
After all, that what all Scripture does.
Every word in Scripture is designed to reveal God and glorify Him. That includes the difficult passages for us to read. Thats why we never apologize for Scripture.
Scripture is a declaration of who God is and it expresses his glory.
To display God’s sovereignty and providence over Creation as the Creator of all things.
This relevant to our day and time even today.
Believer, you should be acting differently in this world of chaos, because of this truth.
Our God is sovereign. We aren’t. If this outbreak of the coronavirus has proven anything, its proven this. We are finite. Our lives are fragile. How long did it take this to completely upset the norm? My hope is that amid this time of panic and concern, that believers find the anchor of their soul to be true.
Jonah teaches us that God is sovereign and works every thing after the counsel of His will.
To display God’s ability to accomplish what he purposes regardless of man’s rebellion against Him.
God will do what God wants to do. And Jonah or anyone trying to stand in His way will prove to be ignorant.
Many nations have tried to stand up to this God, and God by Israel has defeated them. Jonah will be unsuccessful as well.
Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them.
God may be grieved or angry, but he is not worried that His plans are in jeopardy when his puny creation tries to rebel against him. He will accomplish what he sets out to accomplish. Jonah teaches us this.
To display God’s mercy, grace, and compassion for the wicked, for the undeserving, and for the nations.
In other words, this story like every story in Scripture, is about God.
This story is not to captivate our attention and fix our gaze on a fish or even Jonah for that matter.
This story is to direct our attention and stir our affection for the God who will accomplish what he determines and save those whom he wills.
And Like every story, this story directs us to look to Christ and recognize that the heart of Gospel is that God is the sovereign Savior of Wicked People. Jonah teaches us this.
So as we take a closer look at this book over the next several weeks/months, my prayer is that you will come to understand these things more deeply.
This has and will be a little different sermon than you have ever heard me preach probably. Lots of background information both this week and next week.
First:
The book Jonah, is considered one of the Prophetic writings in the Old Testament.
There are two groups of Prophetic Books in the Old Testament.
There’s the major prophets.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
Jonah is apart of a group of books called the “Minor Prophets.”
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
They are divided this way based on size.
So Major and Minor is not based upon value. Its not that the major are better. They are just bigger.
Jonah is a minor prophet, but Jonah is also different.
Jonah is unique even from the Minor prophets in that, this book is a narrative about a particular task he was asked to do rather than a record of what he said.
If you read through Nahum, you will basically find a record of what Nahum said.
Jonah is a autobiographical record of his own dealing with God.
Jonah wrote this of himself in the third person between 793 and 758 BC.
Another thing you should know if you happen to dive deeply and study this book for yourself while we are going through it.
Jonah wrote this between 793 and 758 BC.
You should know that modern scholarship is attempting to discredit this story as fictional. Some even say this is merely a parable.
These are people who work from a naturalistic understanding of things that denies the miraculous.
You should also know that these people are wrong. While there may have been a day where the majority of people accepted the Bible as God’s Word, a lot of people today have made it their aim to discredit everything.
So in light of these claims.
First of all the Bible records this a historical fact.
There is nothing within the text of Scripture (any text) that would warrant a denial that this indeed literally happened.
Second, God operates according to his nature not our. He is sovereign, omnipresent, and omnipotent. He does not operate within our limitations. He has the ability to accomplish the miraculous and the supernatural.
Third, Jesus himself refers to Jonah as a literal historical event.
He does that in , , and .
Not gonna read all of these, but look at the screen.
But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
So we know Jonah is a literal story. This actually happened.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,
Now I want to turn for just a second to man in this story.
I know most of us in here probably have a negative vibe about the Jonah the prophet.
Most of us, when asked: Who was Jonah in Scripture?
Most of us would respond: Oh, thats the prophet who ran from God, who was swallowed by a giant fish, and then puked out on land to go be obedient. Then he pouted.
A lot of our understanding of the prophet Jonah would center around negative connotations.
But you should know that Jonah was once a faithful prophet.
Also, Jonah was most likely a very popular prophet among the people of Israel.
His predecessors were Elijah and Elisha
I want to show you this real quick.
Turn with me in your Bibles to
In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years. He did 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 sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, which was very bitter; for there was neither bond nor free, nor was there any helper for Israel. The Lord did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam and all that he did and his might, how he fought and how he recovered for Israel, Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel, and Zechariah his son became king in his place.
A few things this passage tells us about the ministry of Jonah and the time in which he lived.
The king and the kingdom were both evil. Jeroboam was king and continued in the sin of the previous generation and he led the nation into sin. verse 24
evil. Jeroboam was king and continued in the sin of the previous generation and he led the nation into sin. verse 24
However, despite this, God was still at work. The borders of Israel were restored during this time verse 25.
This was all according to Jonah’s prophecy see end of verse 25
tells us that Jonah prophesied some wonderful things to the nation of Israel. He had no doubt become a prophet of good news to the people. He was popular. Some of the prophets, not so much.
He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.
If you go read Amos, you would probably determine that he was not very popular. He brought a declaration of judgment
Jonah brought declaration of blessing even despite their sin.
So Jonah would have been faithful up to this point, and most likely very popular.
But now we come to the book of Jonah, Jonah has been given a very different task to a very different audience.
Now God is sending him elsewhere. Now the question arises: Will this otherwise faithful prophet be obedient?
Keep in mind this is a man who possessed an enormous amount of privileges.
He was a prophet of God and no doubt a faithful prophet of God.
Don’t move past that without recognizing the importance here. The Old Testament prophets spoke on behalf of God. They proclaimed the Word of the Lord to the people. It was their duty to deliver the message of God.
Jonah had done that and his prophecies had come true. Now, thats very important.
In fact, That is undeniably THE test for true and false prophets in the Old Testaments. I would say that of New Testament times as well.
In Deuteronomy chapter 18, God gives the people a test of whether or not they should listen to prophets or not.
‘But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ “You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ “When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
The test for true prophets vs false prophets was based upon whether or not what they said came to be.
God is God of truth, and therefore, his prophets must speak the truth.
Jonah had proven to be faithful. He had proven to be true. he had faithfully delivered God’s word and prophecy and it came true.
Indeed, Jonah was a card carrying bonafide prophet.
And not only that, as we mentioned earlier, he was given the benefit of delivering well pleasing prophecies.
But again, the question becomes for Jonah:
Will he be obedient to God now?
Will the prophet of God submit to the God of the prophet?
Certainly, he has been obedient up unto this point. God has proven himself faithful to Jonah. Will Jonah prove himself faithful to God?
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
And here
When we meet Jonah in the first few verses of chapter 1, he seems to be a different man.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
Look at verses 1-2 with me and we won’t cover this all this week.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 1
The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,
2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
3 But Jonah
The word of the Lord came to Jonah.
This had happened before. He had been faithful before.
Look what the Lord tells him.
“Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
Arise. Get up from what you are currently doing and do this now.
And he tells him why.
Cry against it. Preach judgment. Why?
Because their wickedness is an offense to God.
We will come back to that next week, but look with me at the first two words of verse 3.
But Jonah.
A man who was once faithful. A man once obedient. A man who once gladly proclaimed the truth of God’s Word.
Now he stumbles and falls when asked to do a hard thing and obey God.
Here is where we must examine our own lives today?
Are we being obedient to God today?
Or are we living our lives as if God’s expectation of obedience has changed?
Jonah’s past resume would have been impressive.
But when we meet him in , something has changed.
The once obedient prophet is now balking.
Not just balking. He is rebelling. He is being told to do somehting, and he will do the exact opposite.
We have to ask ourselves. I have to ask myself.
Am I currently being obedient to God?
The question is not: have I been obedient? Am I obedient now?
This is what we expect of our children is it not? We expect obedience and so does God
In other words, There is never a point of arrival in the life of the believer. There is never a point when God ignores present disobedience in light of past obedience.
As the created, we don’t have the right to tell the sovereign Creator God of the universe what we will or won’t do.
When we encounter the Word of God and what it calls us to be, there are two options.
Obedience to God and Disobedience against God.
And if we slip into disobedience, we can be sure as believers, we should expect to be disciplined by God.
Sinclair Ferguson says it this way:
“No past privilege, nor all pass privileges together; no past obedience, nor fruitfulness in service, can ever substitute for present obedience to the word of God. Great blessings only bring present fruitfulness when they are met with continuing obedience.”
The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
Jonah has two options. Obedience or Disobedience. The rest of this book shows us that Jonah will be disobedient but God is sovereign and accomplishes his will.
He will do through his ordained means, even if Jonah as the ordained means rebells.
In the story of Jonah, we see that man is no match for God and that God will not overlook disobedience.
No man will thwart or prevent God from accomplishing his purpose to save wicked people.
We see that throughout Scripture.
God accomplishes his purposes.
I am so thankful today that he did that with me.
Today I am thankful for Jesus Christ.
I’m thankful today for Jesus Christ who was obedient to the end.
He never stumbled.
There was never a time when he failed to do what the Father planned for him to do.
Preach the Gospel.
And I am thankful today that God saves wicked people.
Believer:
Are we being obedient today?
Will you obey when its hard?
When God requires discomfort or even pain?
Please don’t try and run on the fuel of past obedience?
God requires obedience, now.
Unbeliever:
Will you trust in Christ?