God: The Soverign Evangelist

Introduction

I grew up in Lutheran school from pre school to 6th grade. If you were in a church of any kind in the late 80’s and early 90’s you know about the felt board.

In my school it was felt board story time all the time.

Everyone knows the main felt pieces. Daniel and the Lions Den, Noahs Arc and all the animals, and Jonah and his whale.

Mix in a song about Zaccheus being a wee little man and you have every church or christian school covered.

Sadly as we get older we don’t work to get to know the Gospel truth of these stories and the books that contain them.

From the felt board to today we need the book of Jonah.

Only three verses deal with a fish. The other verses that make up these 4 chapters are all about God.

G. Campbell Morgan “Men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the Great God”.This book is God like you’ve never seen Him. Like Israel had never seen Him.

This book is about God the Evangelist.

If you have a pen write that at the top of the introduction in your bible.

Each week we are going to look at a different attribute of God the Evangelist.

This book is a unique and literary masterpiece.

It is not make believe or a cute story of a big fish to put along side James and the Giant Peach.

This is the real life events of a man and a city both impossibly important to God that God would harness all of nature to save.

The book centers on God’s power to save. Chapter 2:9 is the centerpiece of the book

“Salvation Belongs to the Lord”

This week we are going to be in chapter one and God the Sovereign Evangelist and how His sovereignty is displayed to accomplish His unstoppable purposes.

1. Sovereign Over Every Life

2. Sovereign Over All of Nature

3. Sovereign Over Salvation Everywhere

We will read the chapter as we go.

1. Sovereign Over Every Life (1-3)

Jonah 1:1–3 CSB

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me.” 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.

The Book of Jonah is a skillfully written narrative recounting a series of actual events from the life of the prophet Jonah. Its purpose is to instruct God’s people more fully in the character of their God, particularly his mercy as it operates in relation to repentance.

God was sovereign over Jonah’s life.

We have seen him before in our bibles. If you want to write down 2 Kings 14:25

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.

Jonah was a seasoned veteran prophet.

In particular He was a prophet to the King and saw God expand the boarders of Israel.

His specialty was Pro-Israel anti Foreigner preaching and he had seen God defend his country.

God was sovereign over this prophets life especially to privilege him to see God’s character first hand.

Jonah was privileged to see the power of God, the mercy to save of God, the mission of God.

Imagine being the One Prophet who got to announce to God’s people that God had decided to bless the country?

God had been shaping Jonah all his life.

God was Sovereign to shape Jonah into a prophet with a special mission to convey the scandalous nature of His grace.

If anyone had seen the unmatched mercy and grace of our great God it was Jonah.

In one verse the author has introduced the main characters, and now the drama.

So what was this mission God had prepared for his prophet?

Verse 2:

2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

The actual words in Hebrew mean Get up and Go, as in immediately a command from God as Jonah had received before.

Rise up and Go to the great city of Ninevah.

When you see great in the book of Jonah write important the word is best translated as important.

Only a seasoned prophet who had seen first hand the radical mercy of God could undertake such a call.

Why?

Nineveh was a city of the Assyrians.

The Isis of the day. That is not hyperbole. They are historically established as one of the most brutal tortuous peoples ever to have an empire.

This was the equivalent of me telling you to go to Syria find the capital of ISIS and tell them God cares about your lostness, your sin breaks his heart repent and be saved or youll die.

Anyone up for that call?

But the Sovereign God, maker of every life for His purposes is Sovereign over every life in Syria as much as he was in Assyria in 800 BC.

God was working long before Jonah’s call to prepare the field for a harvest…but Jonah would have to have trusted God was the God who preps the soil for a harvest.

The once great empire had been in a spiral. Terrible kings, defeats, and several brutal famines had proven Assyrian god’s impotent.

They were broken and primed for a message of salvation.

But Jonah didn’t trust that God was longing for his creation in Nineveh to be reconciled to him as much as he loved Israel and longed for relationship with them.

Verse 3 tells Jonah’s response

He obeyed the rise and go part…but rose and went to flee to the end of the known world all the way to the coast of Spain.

He is running from more than a call but the character of the One who has called him.

Douglas Stuart here says “God’s servants cannot expect (1) to oppose him and get away with it; or (2) that he will somehow be unfaithful to his own character of patience, forgiveness, and an eagerness to show mercy. Jonah hopes all along that somehow God won’t turn out to be consistent with his own well-known character”

Jonah is not scared to go. He is too angry to go.

He hates that God would show mercy to those who are not part of his tribe.

Unreal to me is this aspect of God’s sovereignty as the great Evangelist.

He boards a boat who’s captain and crew are all unbelievers.

God has so much unstopable control that even Jonah’s running is God’s means of getting the saving gospel to lost sailors who never would have heard it without Jonah.

God was sovereign over every life and circumstance

Why?

Because God loves His enemies with a scandalous love.

Paul knew this radical love when he said in Romans 5:8

8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

How prone we are like Jonah to forget that.

We have a front row seat to see scandalous salvation of our souls while we were His enemies and then assume we can decide the lives God should care about in the same way.

Douglas Stuart says here “What Jonah did not understand or want to believe, however was the fact that God Loves His Enemies”

That is the heart and character of our God

As the drama builds we see our second point of God’s Sovereign Evangelism

2. Sovereign Over Nature (4-10)

Jonah 1:4–10 CSB

But the Lord threw a great wind onto the sea, and such a great storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break apart. The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his god. They threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. Meanwhile, Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel and had stretched out and fallen into a deep sleep. The captain approached him and said, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up! Call to your god. Maybe this god will consider us, and we won’t perish.” “Come on!” the sailors said to each other. “Let’s cast lots. Then we’ll know who is to blame for this trouble we’re in.” So they cast lots, and the lot singled out Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us who is to blame for this trouble we’re in. What is your business, and where are you from? What is your country, and what people are you from?” He answered them, “I’m a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of the heavens, who made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men were seized by a great fear and said to him, “What have you done?” The men knew he was fleeing from the Lord’s presence because he had told them.

I can picture Jonah laying back on the boat as they leave port. Smooth sailing, sun going down, leaned back.

Thinking see theres no lightening bolt to the head I’m not in trouble.

“God I knew you would come around you know you aren’t gonna expect me to do that”

We get God’s discipline so wrong. He breaks us at the strategic times not instantly in a moment…hoping to break us to repentance.

And God uses all of nature like pieces on a chest board to break the lost sailors on the boat and the rebellious runaway asleep on the boat.

God’s sovereignty over creation is displayed in this passage where the hurricane, the ship crumbling sea, and the enormous fish are represented as minions in the service of the divine will.

This was before the days of radar, the national weather service or radio. These men relied on the power of nature and their gods to tame the sea.

A hurricane hits. They are shown the waekness of their gods in the face of the True God and make trip after to trip to the hold of the ship to throw the cargo overboard.

Down burried deep in the hold was Jonah. In a deep sleep.

Not that he was not concerned or impartial he had no idea what was happening outside.

Depression causes crashes and a deep sleep i cannot describe. It is a survival mechanism God has given us to heal. I know this sleep as i have battled mental illness my whole life.

I believe Jonah had vicious clinical depression at this point that caused the sleep like this.

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 31: Hosea–Jonah Comment

Blankness, listlessness, and sleepiness (sometimes bordering on narcolepsy) are extremely common symptoms of physiological depression. That depression should have followed upon a prophet’s decision to end his career and exile himself from his home and country is hardly surprising. It is also possible, however, that we are to assume that the special deep sleep is actually divinely produced

He is found in the sailors panic to clear the hull of the ship.

He must have thought he was having a nightmare as the captain starts with the very words of God to him…Rise and call …the same 2 words...

Most people in the region where the ship left port had 3 types of gods

personal-

family -

national -

this captian says call them all whoever yours are because we are going down get up maybe yours will hear you

These weren’t belivers…but God was the Sovereign Evangelist and he was going to use Jonah to save them.

There choose a god buffet hadn’t helped so they were trying some divination to get them a clue and cast lots to see who it was that caused this....

God is Sovereign…even over the lottery

Proverbs 16:33 CSB

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.

Jonah is called out. Dazed from a depression induced coma, hearing the same call from the captain he heard from God.....

They know its him and rapid fire questions because time is running out.

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 31: Hosea–Jonah Comment

The first question is the most crucial. Its answer is not obvious. The crew quite naturally wonders if somehow they might have done some wrong deserving of this calamity. Have they offended Jonah? Are they helping him do something wrong? Is it guilt by association? Or is Jonah alone to blame? Are they transporting someone who has committed a great crime?

Even in depression and knowing he has failed he still speaks with contempt for outsiders of the Jewish faith…but shares the God who alone can save...

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!”

He uses Gods covenant name and tells them it is this God who is more than all their gods combined…and these men believe it

They have more healthy fear of the True God than God’s prophet

They even had more compassion…Jonah said throw me over and God will calm the sea…and they tried any way they could to save themselves without killing him but failed.

They have to kill him

Jesus used the “sign of Jonah” in Matthew and Luke to use a familiar Jewish episode to describe the sign they would see.

Here is the first before the 3 days and 3 nights in death...

The sailors are trying to save themselves. They cannot.

Even their best intentions cannot.

What it took was the sacrifice of a life given to calm the death of others. The Lords prophet had to die to stay God’s hand.

This was the sign of Jesus. The true Prophet. The faithful one would die to satisfy the wrath of God.

What a picture and a glimpse of the heart of God.

Sovereign in nature in a small boat sinking in the ocean..all to save some sailors and discipline his prophet

Sovereign in your life and mine to use us to share the gospel… and be more and more like His son

Last week i had a meeting scheduled. It was a very important meeting and on the heels of a brutal week.

The storms came that day last tuesday.

With the elderly in the congregation the meeting was moved to another date.

Now i am not a running prophet.

But I know the Lord is sovereign and this week was when he wanted that to happen not last week…unless he halts it again....and he can and my mission is the same regardless.

He is moving a hurruicane like a chess piece to lovingly pursue the lost and bring one of his own back to relationship with Him.

Does it not leave you in awe that God’s general dispostion to us is love not anger or wrath?

He prefers love and mercy over anger and judgement

He could have sunk the boat and all onboard and been right in doing it.

Yet he harnasses the wind and waves to be an evangelist

Jonah knew Psalm 139 and i have to believe as he was about to be thrown overboard he remembered David’s words

Psalm 139:7–12 CSB

Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I live at the eastern horizon or settle at the western limits, even there your hand will lead me; your right hand will hold on to me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me will be night”— even the darkness is not dark to you. The night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to you.

God is all powerful but he is all loving and is sovereign to save.

this is our third point from Jonah 1

3. Sovereign Over Salvation Everywhere (11-17)

Jonah 1:11–17 CSB

So they said to him, “What should we do to you so that the sea will calm down for us?” For the sea was getting worse and worse. He answered them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea so that it will calm down for you, for I know that I’m to blame for this great storm that is against you.” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they couldn’t because the sea was raging against them more and more. So they called out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, don’t let us perish because of this man’s life, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For you, Lord, have done just as you pleased.” Then they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. The men were seized by great fear of the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

With Psalm 139 in his head and the unrelenting demand it seemed of God through the waves Jonah was at the end of himself.

this was an unnatural storm he knew was from God.

So did the pagan sailors…they didn’t want to throw him over out of fear..man this is your God doing this and we aren’t trying to make him mad by killing you…his guy

But as we saw earlier they couldn’t save themselves…the prophet had to give his life as a ransom for many

15 So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

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.

Get a picture of this scene

They didn't know God would save Jonah.

Jonah had no clue God would save the sailors.

But God saved them both.

Even sinking in the sea, Jonah’s testimony in verse 10 is used by God to save the sailors.

When it says “the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.”

it means their lives are saved and maybe more…i want to believe It means in Old Testament Covenant Language…they got saved.

Are you kidding me.

God is everywhere he is not stuck in space and time like us he was in the sea and he was in the boat.

As Jonah is sinking after his last gasp of air the lord is not done with his prophet yet.

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.

I don’t want to linger to long here because as we can see the fish is a small part of the story.

What i want us to see is something more miraculous.

God could have crushed and drown Jonah…but he wasnt done with Him. He still loved him and wanted him to see the joy of the Lord in his own life and in playing a part in saving an important city.

This is an exerpt from my wifes bible the CSB “She Reads Truth” from chapter one of Jonah we are reading and it is spot on:

“Gods pursuit is relentless precisely because he is so loving. He could’ve crushed Jonah under a tremendous sea surge and found another man. Jonah had his chance and he clearly took the cowards way out, right? God gave him a clear instruction (something we all long for) and he ran like a frightened child in the other direction. Why didn’t God give up on Jonah? God wanted Jonah. Isn’t that amazing! I sometimes feel like I’m a sub standard version of the person that should actually be living my life, and the truth is I do fall short. I do worry there would be someone that would be a better parent to my kids, spouse to my partner, friend to my friends, but despite my imperfection and failings I am the best parent for my children, spouse, and friend. God gives specific callings to specific people. That means God wants me for my particular calling in life. We can’t escape God and his storm gale of purpose. He pursues us with love that is filled with a beautiful intensity unlike anything else we have ever known.”

As we saw his sovereign hand is preparing hearts through busted up sin filled life to lead us to repentance.

He is sovereign over the sea, Ninevah, the boat, your office, your day, your neighborhood. What is more he is the most passionate evangelist in all those places.

HE IS ALL ABOUT HIS MISSION

all working at His plan to save the lost and make his sons and daughters more like Him.

Save the lost. Discipline and refine those who are His.

Conclusion

John 3:16 says this “16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life

God so loved the world.

Do you see his character. Do you see it in your life.

He has so loved his rebellious creation that he gave his son to death on a tree to have you back.

To have the worlds population back.

He prefers grace to wrath. Mercy to punishment.

Stuart says “He has loved the world, not just one nation or people and our view of his love must never forget that”

Church Israels greatest sin was to become inward focused. Not missional but thinking hey are special because the temple was booming. second they were nationalistic.

As Jonah demonstrates they thought they alone were God’s people.

They didn't have the heart of God. It led to horrific consequences.

I cannot tell you the direct mirror to the declining churches in need of revitalization in this city.

Inward focused. In love with the affulence and social capital of a booming church culture.

Closed off. All one tribe. Unconcerned with the lost or missions. Unconcerned with the mission of God. Convinced that giving to a cooperate program where 1 percent of that money makes it to the mission field is doing missions.

Brother or sister this is why these churches are dying.

Inward focused thinking God would never do away with the needed SBC. Yes he will and he can. And his mission won’t miss a beat in doing it.

He is not worshipped rightly in every heart in this great city and that is a problem of infinite concern to the God of the universe who impaled his son on a tree for you....so it should be your main concern from the moment you wake til you lay down at night to be part of that mission in where you live, work, eat, play, or whatever you do.

If that is not the heart you have you do not have the heart of Christ.

He told you why he came…to seek and to save the lost.

Not build a brand or have campuses or write books or be comfy or have Jesus on Sundays and live like the world the other 6 days.

He came to seek and save the lost.

Praise God because you and I were the lost. and there are more he is after so get after it in how you live.

If you are hearing this and you see Gods heart for you come to him.

You have heard his heart for you. He came to get you back.

Come to him reach out and we would love to answer your questions and talk about what it means to follow Him.

What a start to a great book we need today. Lets be about the mission of God this week.

Lets pray