God speaks through His Word
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
We are starting a new series titled: God is that you?
The goal of this series is to try to answer the question of how God speaks to us today.
How we will attack this is by looking through the first chapter of Jonah.
Now Jonah won’t be the only passages we look at but will be the starting point each week from which to launch from
We also won’t be covering all of the ways that God speaks to us today but really 3 of the most prevalent ways we see through the story of Jonah
Now when we think of the story of Jonah, if you have any type of church or Biblical background, this is probably what you think of
Picture of Jonah and the Wale
If you’ve ever heard the story as a child or been in church and heard the story this is the part that most stands out
But this is such a small piece of the story of Jonah
Really the story of Jonah is a story about God first and foremost just like the rest of the Bible but it’s of man with a mission from God who is reluctant to obey. Reluctant to the point it causes him to flee. And so through the story of Jonah we see the redemptive character of a loving, gracious, kind, saving, God
So to kick off this morning we need to all start on the same level. Here is where we need to begin:
God still speaks today
God still speaks today
So to first answer the question “God is that you.” We must begin by realizing that God still speaks to us today.
We will discuss how he does
and we will discuss how we as believer can listen and where we go to hear God speak
but it must start from a place of realizing that God does speak. And if you don’t agree there, then hopefully by the end you will agree
Pray
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
Passage breakdown
Passage breakdown
Jonah is identified as the northern Israelite prophet of the early eighth century BC (2 Ki. 14:25)
We see that the book of Jonah begins in an exciting fashion, with God’s self-revelation to the prophet of Jonah
This opening phrase is one that is unique to the book of Jonah
The word of the Lord is mentioned seven times in this book
When the Word of the Lord comes to Jonah it is accompanied by two imperatives:
Go
It’s a definite and firm call from the Lord
It carried with it a sense of immediacy meaning to go at once
Preach against it
This may be better translated to “preach in it”
It’s less about speak against it because the wickedness is evil - although that is true
But gives insight into what you see later in the book, that God wants to show compassion
So, what we see through these imperatives is a God who notices, a God who is active, and a God who takes sin seriously.
He is not a God who set the world into motion and just allows it to continue unnoticed
No! He’s a God who is near.
Then what we see is a tragic decision by Jonah
God commissions Jonah to go and preach and Jonah chooses the opposite
Kids
God tells Jonah to go about 500 miles northeast of Palestine to Ninevah and Jonah chooses to go to Joppa, the nearest seaport and takes a ship to Tarshish which might have been the most western place in the ancient world.
Why does Jonah deliberately disobey God?
He was no coward - he was thrown into the sea
It wasn’t the journey - for the travel to Tarshish would have been much more dangerous.
He was a passionate nationalist that hated Assyrians. He loved Israel and hated Assyria, so the last thing that he wanted was for God to show grace and mercy to Ninevah.
I would ask you, how do you let your own politics and prejudices distort God’s voice in your life today?
So Jonah runs. Now my question is why in the world would Jonah think that He could hide and run from God?
And why would you choose the sea to be the avenue in which you tried to accomplish such great a feat?
Jonah had to of had some bad theology, which is why theology is important.
There was a virtually uniform ancient idea that a god only had power in the places where he was actively worshipped
Which may also be another reason he was so against going to Ninevah.
And so Jonah attempts to escape to a place that He believes God is not
Application
Application
For some of us in this room we are not wrestling with the question of “God is that you?”
We are faced with the question of “Will I obey?”
You can not hide from God
You can not run from God
You can not escape God’s calling
But according to Jonah, how do we hear from God?
The primary way that we hear God’s voice in our lives today is through His word.
No He probably wont speak audibly to you but he has spoken everything you need through the Scripture
We will discuss and see other ways that hear God’s voice, but every other means is secondary to hearing God in the Scriptures.
The Word is
Inspired
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
It is true and it can be trusted
It is the standard for righteousness
Timeless
24 For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.
It’s truth is bigger than my context
Story of Bruce
What we like to do as church going, Bible thumpers is turn God’s Word into a religious vending machine
We must not treat it as something we go to only in times of troubles
We don’t study Scripture just to memorize good verses to put in graduation cards or on our coffee mugs
We must understand that the Bible isn’t about us
It tells the story of God and His character and who He is
It’s a historical document so as we study Scripture we must first understand the context before we ever move into interpretation or application.
Learning to hear God is much more about becoming comfortable in a continuing conversation, and learning to constantly lean on the goodness and love of God, than it is about turning God into an ATM for advice, or treating the Bible as a crystal ball - Dallas Willard
Effective
13 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.
It’s truth is sufficient to guide my life today
Closing
Closing
Last week I had the privilege of speaking at Calvary and we walked through Romans 12 so we read Romans 12:2 which says:
2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
And I posed the question to them that I will ask you…why did Paul use the mind?
If I were to be tasked with reading the Bible and then asked to fill in this blank
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of you ______”
I would fill in heart
But why does Paul not use that? Why doesn’t he say heart? Or life? Or attitude?
Here’s why, I heard someone say it this way: The heart cannot love what the mind does not know.
If none of you knew my wife and I stood on this stage and told you how much I loved her and then I went on to describe her to you but when you met her you realized that everything I said was false how much would you doubt my love for her?
In the same way we should not and cannot say that we love God but know nothing, very little, or at best pieces of Him
Your love grows as your knowledge grows
My love for my wife grows as my knowledge of her and time with her grows
So we do not use God’s word to get our daily application out of it, although that does happen at times, we study God’s word to learn more about God and deepen our love for Him
And as we study, as we read, as we learn about God, His voice becomes more clear.
You won’t be able to understand God’s voice, until you know God’s word.
You won’t be able to understand God’s voice, until you know God’s word.
We must be drenching ourselves in the Word of God everyday
It’s not enough to just pick it up when you feel like it or when you need advice
The word is alive
12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Even when you don’t seem to get anything from it. Even when you have to force yourself to read it, even when your eyes are getting heavy reading it God’s word is seeping into your soul and it is for your good.
To be able to hear God in the ways that we will talk about in the next couple of weeks you have to start here. By knowing the Word of God.
There are so many tools today to be able to do this.
New - cornerstonecc.church/read-the-bible
preceptaustin.org
blueletterbible.com
youversion bible app
dwell to listen and they read it on youversion