Intro to Jonah

Intro

Read Jonah 1:1-6

How many of y’all know the story of Jonah or at least have heard of this story? I figured it would be a decent number of you.

Jonah is an interesting prophet because in this particular story of his life, he is called to preach at a time where Israel is thriving and does not have any serious enemies or threats. However, the people that God calls Jonah to go to, historically are Israel’s enemies.

Context

Body

In response, Jonah runs from his responsibility as a prophet, ultimately because he did not care for the Assyrians.

Sometimes, we are called to extend love to people we don’t like. Sometimes we know that there are things we are supposed to do and we don’t do them.

Share story about me and Nick my senior year, and how I ran from what I am called to do…forgive

Maybe for you it’s not necessarily that you actively dislike someone or hold a grudge, maybe it’s that you’re apathetic towards someone or a group of people. You see a need that you could fill, but instead you sit in your own comfort and ignore it. That is what apathy does - love for ourselves and our own comfort keeps us from loving others.

Imagine if we all acted like that in the world? We only looked out for ourselves and our own comfort…the reality is though, at some point, we all need help. List examples… school, chores, hard relationships with friends, trying to do the right thing but failing constantly, we feel lonely, we feel incompetent, not good enough

and we all look for solutions in different places besides God

But, there is no going up when we run from God

Closing

Thankfully, God shows us a better way

Instead of being apathetic, he is compassionate, to the point that he uses his status to free us from our bondage

instead of running away, he runs to what God has ordained so that we could repent, even though we were his enemies