Jonah

Jonah 1.

Offering

Last time I was here, we finished our discussion on Moses.

You may think now would be a perfect time to move on to a series on the story of Christmas

and you are not wrong

Normally I probably would and as most of you know, I love Christmas and it is something I definitely enjoy talking about

The Joy of the coming Messiah, is a great pleasure to share with others

however, This is not where I feel lead today

Today we will begin a series on another man in the OT that draws comparisons to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Jonah

This will be the next chapter in our series on going back to the basics.

Let’s jump into chapter 1 vs. 1

The New International Version Chapter 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.”

Let’s set this up for a second.

The Lord God, creator of all things, commanded Jonah, a prophet, to travel to Nineveh to preach against it.

How do we know he was a prophet?

The Scripture tells us in 2 Kings 14:25

The New International Version Chapter 14

He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, i in accordance with the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher

Now, I have talked at length of my story and how I took the long way to find out how important it is to Follow God when He calls on you

and to do as He leads you to do.

Here He calls Jonah to Go to the city and Preach against it, why?

because of it’s wickedness that has come before God

If you are following servant of God, we should always be willing to preach His word against any kind of evil.

Notice He didn’t ask Jonah to send a message to Nineveh with a snide comment about why they are wrong

or complaining that they don’t believe the way he does

these would be the mid 700’s BC version of what Christians do on Facebook every day.

Instead, He calls Jonah to Go and preach

preach what?

A divine message from God, that we will discuss more of in chapter 3

For us it is the Word of God

That’s what He calls us all to do

not to hide behind your phone or keyboard and make clever little whips, but preach the Gospel

yes, you too, not just pastors and missionaries.

Now some background

Nineveh would have taken Jonah about a month to travel to

It was on the East side of the Tigris River

MAPS

This was the second largest city, only smaller than Babylon

Modern day, this is in Iraq in the east side of the town of Mosul

vs. 3

The New International Version Chapter 1

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

MAP 3

We saw that where he was going was not in the right direction, but what we don’t think about or notice often is how far Jonah was trying to get away.

this is Southern Spain, about 2500 miles from joppa in the opposite direction.

I want you to think about this for a second.

There is not a place we could travel from Evansville in the Continental United States that we can get to in 2500 miles

The best thing i could come up with is if we left North haven here in Evansville and drove to Guatemala City, Guatemala

This would take us 46 hours by car.

Jonah was literally heading to the furthest place he new of in the opposite direction

What links have you gone to, to avoid the calling of God on your life.

how fare are you willing to run.

Jonah new God, yet feared the world more than he did God

vs 4

The New International Version Chapter 1

Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

God causes a violent storm and the sailors were all afraid.

They responded in two ways

they called out to there gods for help

Then they did all the things a sailor would do in a storm.

much of this was not mentioned, but there were several steps they likely took to be as safe as possible

then they took the last step which is mentioned in the text.

they lightened the ship, as seasoned sailors they knew a lighter ship sits higher in the water so it is more stable and sitting higher can help prevent waves from crashing over as much, also, if they are blown near land into shallow water, the ship would be safer.

Now the preacher in me wants to analyze this point, and deliver an entirely different message based on lightening your ship, but we will hold on to that until another day.

Jonah responded in contrasting fashion

He goes to sleep’

why?

Scripture isn’t clear of exactly why and how, but I don’t believe it was the same situation as Jesus in the Boat 800 plus years later

Rather, I believe it could have something to do with what we see later in this book, that Jonah wanted to die.

He would rather die than to follow God’s command.

Regardless of the reason, it took a pagan ship captain to call upon a man of God to prayer

Calling upon God in times of need, in good times, in times of peace in all times should be not even second nature but instinctive for us.

Who are you calling on today?

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