God is Intimately Invested | Jonah 1:1-3
Jonah • Sermon • Submitted
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· 12 viewsFirst, God calls people to his service. Here Jonah is called to preach to a foreign city, Nineveh. Second, God cares enough about sinners to send a word of hope, love, and grace - salvation. Finally, even God chooses fallen people to accomplish His means.
Notes
Transcript
Intro & Overview
Intro & Overview
We face an impossible task, (anything God asks us to do is an impossible task). Love with all your heart, mind, soul; be a living sacrifice; save the enemy who will destroy you in a few years. Yet we must obey. But sometimes we are just unable, recognizably so. Even more than being unable we are unwilling.
One of the most popular of the minor prophets. It is unlike any of the other minor prophets because it is mostly narrative.
This book has some key players in it, Jonah, the great fish, the sailors, the Ninevites, but mostly importantly this book is about God. God is sovereign - what He wills, will happen. God desires all to come to repentance - everyone is His people, His creation. God is compassionate and just - despite jonah being a reflection of Israel’s history, their failure will not stop His salvation from going out into the world.
Some important questions are going to come up for us in Jonah:
1. Is God’s love only for me and my friends, or does it include the worst enemies I can imagine?
2. Is nationalism more important than God’s plan for salvation?
3. What is the reach of God’s control?
Our human heart is no better than the prophet Jonah. Jonah was chosen by God to deliver His message to Israel. He is successful
25 He restored Israel’s border from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word the Lord, the God of Israel, had spoken through his servant, the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher.
Yet we know he is disobedient.
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me.” 3 Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence.
God calls people to his service, cares about all non-believers and He chooses fallen people to accomplish His will.
Calling
Calling
The word of the LORD came to... establishes one's credibility as a prophet. OT formula used to authentic one as a prophet of God. Unique phrase does not open another biblical book. Prophets typically begin with a title ‘the vision of ...’
Not only is the word of the LORD with Jonah but the presence of the LORD.
Care
Care
2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me.”
Arise! Go! - double imperative, sense of urgency. Obey immediately.
Pay attention to this word ‘great’ as we go throughout our text these next couple of weeks. If you notice any type of pattern, text our group. This is one of the words that will be repeated in our text and we should take note.
Great city was doing great evil. ‘Everythings bigger in Texas...’
Preach against, announce/proclaim my judgment against it.
Nineveh great in influence as well as size. Bible portrays then as an evil enemy of Israel, so evil Yahweh threatens to destroy them.
Tiglath-Pileser flayed victims alive and made great piles of their skulls. Other kinds tore off their lips and hands.
20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is immense, and their sin is extremely serious. 21 I will go down to see if what they have done justifies the cry that has come up to me. If not, I will find out.”
Sin is before God but some is so significant that God calls for localized judgment - 1 John 5:16; Sodom. Note that God is not ignoring your disobedience. Actively takes sin seriously.
It is not right to call every calamity an act of judgment by God; however, know that God is just. And if you don’t pay now it is because of His mercy.
9 The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
This word evil or wickedness is a word that refers to personal and corporate calamity or trouble. The systemic racism that exist in the American church is one of the biggest oversights that still has affect on American Christianity. Slavery, civil rights, and now police brutality, the church has always been behind. You see such hypocrisy when comes to the churches complicity with the sin of racism that you do not see with any other sin. The church continues to deny the experiences of our black brothers and sisters and it devalues a whole people group who are made in the image of God. Some people will even try to argue that institutional sin does not exist - abortion, sex-trafficking, and racism.
44 For I am the Lord your God, so you must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy. Do not defile yourselves by any swarming creature that crawls on the ground.
The impossible task is to be Holy as I am Holy.
Here is the problem, some of us have seen the impossible happen. We are living the impossible because we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ by the grace of God.
8 Instead, you yourselves do wrong and cheat—and you do this to brothers and sisters! 9 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, 10 no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. 11 And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
We get to the other side of impossible and look back and think we are better than them. We can no longer relate to sinners. People have no excuses for continuing to live a sinful life. We are amazed that sinners sin! And we act like we were never there. Or we start to think well it is because we do all these things.
Chooses
Chooses
Jonah is an example of a righteous and successful person who believed more in his national identity than the salvation plan of God.
3 Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence.
Jonah knew God really well.
2 He prayed to the Lord, “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.
Despite the OT ‘God’ as being vengeful and spiteful, Jonah knew Him as compassionate and abounding in faithful love. So much so that Jonah didn’t want to go because He knows God!
13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 14 How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. 16 But not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message?
This goes out to all my Christian nationalists. People who equate their politic preferences with righteousness and ultimately salvation.
The crazy thing is although we could not and still struggle to bring ourselves to do the right thing because sin entices like taking a kid into a candy store - they have to walk out with something. The world pulls at us in so many directions. And it is not just the world there, it is the lusts and pride in your heart that exists no matter how much you try to isolate yourself.
Sin will have you doing things like try to flee from the presence of the Lord.
7 Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
Sin blinds you to the obvious and you are not even seeing your oversights.
This idea of leaving the presence of the Lord has physical component.
However, in the language of verse 3 we also see a spiritual component.
16 Then Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
flee from His presence = refuse to serve Him in any. You see this emphasis on going ‘down,’ a metaphor for his spiritual life as well. Down to joppa, down in the ship. You think you are as bad as you could be, you can go lower. Jonah evenutally goes down in the belly of the fish, and he can’t get any lower but for death. God raises him up and commissions him a second time.
Tarshish has several implications in the bible. I think in our text, it would be like us saying to our kids ‘if you don’t act right we ware going to ship you off to Timbuktu.’ Yes, it is a real place. The idea is you are going far away from here.
Calling, Care, Chooses
Calling, Care, Chooses
We face an impossible task. Preach the gospel to your enemy, forgive a family member, allow for theological diversity within orthodox, shepherd your children towards godliness, go be a missionary, go to PP and actually save babies by trying to talk ladies out of it.
And our unwillingness. It is not that we don’t know, we are unwilling. How do we do the impossible? How do we see sin that we cannot see? How do we move from a life characterized as wickedness and enter a status of righteousness?
The Cross
The Cross
40 For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah’s preaching; and look—something greater than Jonah is here.
Jesus became Jonah so we could have something greater.
Our only opportunity to do the impossible is to be filled with the savior who has done the impossible. Even Jesus said not my will but Your will be done. Turn to Jesus and say to Him, not my will but Yours be done. He has already done the work. You cannot pay your fare! It is too costly. You must trust in Him.
Will you accept His price? He promises to never give us more than we can handle.
13 No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
All we must do is trust with the faith given us and demonstrated by our Lord Himself. Jesus is the source of our hope for accomplish, and He is the object of our hope. Let us trust in Him, give ourselves over to His plan. Don't say no to God, say Yes and Yes, now God. Obey immediately.
Calling
Calling
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:
1.
a. God has called you for service.
b. You don't need more revelation.
c. You begin to wait when God's called you to obey.
d. Denying the purpose God has called you for. Start living on mission.
e. Rise up. Go. Are you willing? Oh but God I’m planting a church, I just started a new job, I have 8 kids… are you willing to obey?!
f. Beware of the areas we want to disobey God because its not the outcome or circumstance we want,
g. God cares, He is not a cosmic grandad. God is real and intimately working things out for His purposes. We have such a limited purview. We can't even see all the angles for things that happen in our own lives much less God's point of view.
Cares
Cares
2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me.”
2.
a. Evangelize. Go! Mk 16:15
b. You think you care more about people perishing than God does. God cares about the lost, indigenous person more than you.
c. See God not as compassionate and merciful but as vengeful, wrathful, and harsh.
d. Start acting like the gospel is the greatest give you could ever give someone. Move in a direction that leads to gospel proclamation.
e. Care about the loss and preach the gospel.
f. Repent for any times you resist sharing the gospel.
g. What about the person who won't hear the gospel?
Choose
Choose
3.
a. Praise that he would use me, the foolishness of preaching to save men.
b. Thinking we need to figure out first, learn more, have life together (bigger house, make more money).
c. We are pursuing spirituality that doesn't lead to faithfulness and fruitfulness.
d. Start looking for opportunities to serve, start being intentional about it in your life, stop loving the world.
e. Spreading the good news about our Lord and Savior.
f. When we focus so much on folk's earthly condition that we forget consideration for their spiritual condition. The nonbeliever friend you care so much about but you've never preached the gospel. Or you don't even have non believer friends because your life is so pure that noone has the chance to hear the gospel from you.
g. God has been planning the salvation of mankind for centuries. He has legitimately given of Himself completely and you so God isn't doing enough. No its your rejection of Him. Rise up, Go! Quit saying no.