God's Counter Move
God's Counter Moves
Jonah 1:1-17
The essence of disobeying and departing from God is pursing your own agenda!
Examples:
Judges 17:6; 21:25
“...and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
Luke 6:46
“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?”
Luke 9:57-62
Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Then He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
What is God willing to use to bring us back to Himself?
1. He uses powerful tribulation (1:5)
A. Storms affect you
§ “Sometimes God has to shake us to wake us.”
§ Israelites/40 years wondering in the desert.
§ Sampson lost his eyes and spent the rest of his days pushing a grinding stone.
§ King David was forced to run from His own son.
Illustration:
As C. S. Lewis has said: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks into our conscience, but shouts in our pain.”
B. Storms affect those near you
§ A.C. Dixon said in his book on Jonah, “Our sins will certainly get others in trouble.”
§ When your life is touched by a storm it almost always touches someone else's life, as well.
§ Calm may not come to the lives around you until it comes to your life first.
2. He uses personal confrontation (1:6)
o God used Assyria, Babylon, & Persia to chasten His own people.
o God used a witch at Endor to correct Saul.
o God used a little girl to speak to Peter at the fire.
o God can use the righteous or unrighteous to accomplish this purpose.
Illustration:
A young man called a pastor late at night and asked if he would meet with him the next morning. They made arrangements to have breakfast at a nearby restaurant.
The next morning the young man told his pastor that on a recent business trip he had stayed too late at the hotel bar with a woman colleague. The alcohol, distance from home, and easy laughter the two shared had led to the obvious. They ended up in bed together. "Now what?" asked the man.
The pastor took a deep breath. He thought of the young wife and small children whose lives could be so terribly affected by a night of indiscretion. To preserve the family, he briefly considered advising the young man to cover up the error, but then the eternal consequences of establishing such a spiritual pattern convinced him that honesty was the path to follow. To make the young man think biblically about what he must do, the minister asked him a series of questions:
· Had he prayed to ask God's forgiveness and pardon?
· Had he confessed his sin to the young woman involved and told her that the intimacy would never happen again?
· Had he confessed his wrong to his wife and asked her forgiveness?
And, if he was not yet ready to do this, had he at least arranged to have an AIDS test? For until he had been tested, he could not approach the marriage bed without endangering his wife and the child she was expecting.
The young man listened to each of the questions without expression or comment. When the pastor finished, the young man pushed his breakfast plate away from him, leaned back in his seat, and said, "I came for grace, not for discipline. You disappoint me, Pastor."
The words cut the pastor to the heart. He did not wonder if what he had said on this occasion was wrong. He wondered, rather, what he had said in the past that would lead an intelligent, capable man such as this to believe the promises of grace mean we will never have to face any consequences of wrongdoing.
Bryan Chapell, Holiness By Grace (Crossway Books, 2001)
3. He uses public humiliation (1:7-8)
o God used Pharaoh to expose Abraham's lie about his wife (Genesis 12:10-20).
o God used Mordecai to expose Haman's plot to have the Jews exterminated (Esther 4-5).
o God used Paul to expose Peter's hypocrisy (Galatians 2:11-16).
Illustration:
Jack Abrahamoff said, “God sent me 1,000 hints that he didn't want me to keep doing what I was doing. But I didn't listen, so he set off a nuclear bomb.”
Jack Abramoff, political lobbyist disgraced in a 2006 scandal; "Notebook," Time (2-6-06), p. 15; submitted by Ted De Haas, Bedford, Iowa
4. He uses physical affliction (1:15)
o God's hand of protection can become His hand of correction.
o The Lord sent snakes to correct the Israelites (Numbers 21). Interestingly, some two to three million Jews had wandered through the desert without the report of a single snake bite until God removed His hand of protection and it became His hand of correction.
o Ananias & Sapphira died for being deceptive and lying to God.
o People were physically suffering for failing to show respect for the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:28-32).
o What is God willing to do to bring you back to Him? WHATEVER IT TAKES!
Illustrations:
Harley Sheffield gained celebrity status through an unusual mishap. He was part of the fifteen thousand-mile relay that carried the Olympic torch to the one hundredth gathering of the games in Atlanta. His section of the relay went over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington on May 7, 1996. While carrying the flame in a special stand on his bicycle, the rear tire blew out, Sheffield lost control of his bike, and the Olympic flame went out. People gasped in disbelief, but the attenders of the torch knew exactly what to do. They simply reached into the van that accompanied the traveling torch, pulled out a new torch and lighted it from the “mother flame” which always stays in the van. The procession continued and Sheffield earned a spot on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. What happened on that Washington bridge happens all of the time in our Christian pilgrimage. We stumble and the flame of spiritual zeal is dowsed. We stare at the extinguished torch and wonder if we can ever again burn with spiritual passion. When we turn in repentance we find that the Holy Spirit has been with us all of the time and he carries the “mother flame” that can never go out. Our zeal can be reignited and the standard of Christ can once again burn brightly in our lives. (Houston Chronicle, May 12, 1996, 16B)