Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

Today we are going to start in the book of Jonah.

These first few verses bring up a great question for you to ask yourself.

What are you running from?

Hopefully the answer is nothing.

Hopefully the answer is that you are running with God and not from God.

But today, we are going to have a front row seat in seeing a prophet of the Lord who ran from his Creator.

He is the only prophet that we see in the Scriptures that does this.

The prophet Amos once said:

Amos 3:8 (ESV)

The lion has roared; who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

But not Jonah.

As we will see, his response is much different.

Join me as we read God’s Word:

Let us pray.

Prayer

Before we start into the study of this book, it must be said that this is a historical narrative.

Liberal theologians have tried to attack the historicity of this book over the past couple of centuries.

Yet, until the 19th century it was accepted as historical narrative by virtually every Biblical scholar in the world.

But even moreso - we see Jesus refer to this book as historically accurate when he compares this account to his own burial and resurrection to come:

Is this story unbelievable?

Apart from the sovereign and powerful hand of God, absolutely.

But our God is an unbelievable God who does unbelievable and supernatural things.

If you have a hard time believing the historicity of this book - then your god is too small and frankly, your god is not real.

He is not the Lord God - Yahweh - Maker of Heaven and Earth.

Today we are going to discuss three reasons that people run from the Lord.

The first is:

I. Are You Running From… The Word? (1)

The book of Jonah starts off extremely direct.

There is no background of Jonah given.

We are just told that the word of the Lord came to Jonah and that he is the son of Amittai.

Amittai is also a man in whom we know little about.

We have only one verse in all of Scripture that even mentions the prophet Jonah outside of this book.

2 Kings 14:25 (ESV)

He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.

We are shown here that Jonah was a prophet of the Lord during the reign of King Jeroboam II during the 8th century BC.

He had given a good message to Israel that was fulfilled.

It was a message that one of the borders of Israel would be restored.

And it came to pass!

Jonah was from Gath-hepher which was a town in the land of Zebulun.

And he had given a positive prophesy and was most likely revered for being a prophet of good news!

He had two contemporaries - Amos and Micah - who were prophets who spoke mostly judgment.

So obviously, the people of Israel would have appreciated seeing Jonah come by more than his fellow prophets!

So Jonah probably thought as the word of the Lord came: what good news will be given from the Lord this time?

Will another of Israel’s enemies fall at the hand of the Lord?

Will there be prosperity to come for Israel?

We can sense the anticipation of what is to come.

How many of us like to have good news given to us?

Or like to be the ones that give good news?

Jonah was there as well.

My friends, we will see that this Word from God was more merciful than it first appears.

This is a word of judgment - yes, but it is also a word of mercy and a chance at repentance.

Many today run from the Word of the Lord.

Many today run from the Gospel.

There is no good news of the Gospel if there is not bad news.

People may hear that there is a place of eternal judgment called Hell and flee from the conversation because they do not want to hear any more.

They do not like this Word.

But just like the message Jonah is eventually going to deliver is covered with mercy and a chance for repentance, the Gospel is full of grace with an offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The message of the Gospel is that we are all sinners and deserve punishment.

But God as we see in Ephesians 2:4-5 here:

He sent his one and only son - Jesus Christ - who lived a perfect life, took the punishment and death that we deserved by being crucified on a cross.

But God acted even further again.

Three days later, Christ was raised from the dead and took the keys of death and Hades and now if we will repent - or turn away from our sins and turn toward Him, we can have eternal life with Him in heaven forever.

My friends, are you running from the Word of the Lord?

Are you running from the Gospel?

I pray that you are not.

I pray earnestly that you have embraced the Gospel and that you are saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

No one should run from the good news of the Gospel.

The next question we should ask ourselves in this passage is...

Scripture References: Amos 3:8, Matthew 12:40, 2 Kings 14:25, Ephesians 2:4-5

II.

Are You Running From… The Work? (2)

Jonah is obviously in Israel at the time.

The following map shows Jerusalem in relation to Nineveh of Assyria.

We are unsure of where Jonah was when the Lord spoke to him but Zebulun, where he was from, was around 60 miles or so north of Jerusalem.

Verse 2 starts off with the verb - arise.

This Hebrew word means to get into a standing position and then the Lord commands Jonah to go.

He is to get up and go immediately.

The God who created the heavens and the earth has just given a word to the prophet Jonah.

But where is Jonah to get up and go to?

God calls Jonah to go to the great city, Nineveh.

For those of you who aren’t history buffs, Nineveh was a great city in Assyria.

The Assyrians were a rough people group.

They were known for their brutal war tactics and lack of compassion in war.

We have heard many news stories regarding the war crimes of Russia in the preceeding months.

These are in fact an abomination to justice - but the Assyrians took supposed war crimes as a badge of honor.

Nahum spoke of Assyria’s eventual downfall in 612 BC because of their great wickedness:

At the time of Jonah however, Assyria had an up and down kind of power.

They had strong seasons and weak seasons depending on their leadership.

According to secular history records, Assyria was in between their peaks at the time of Jonah.

They had struggled with famine as well as frequent battles with their enemies.

Yet, their wickedness was still strong and their evil had come up to the Lord as we see at the end of verse 2.

Jonah 1:2 (ESV)

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

All sin is an abomination to God.

He hates all sin.

Yet, there is some wickedness that calls for special localized judgments.

We see this with Sodom and Gomorrah due to their sexual perversion.

We see here that every single male of Sodom - both young and old - wanted to lay with these two angels who appeared as men.