Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

We don't know much about Jonah, son of Amittai, before God called him to go to Nineveh.

He was a Hebrew prophet who served the Lord during the reign of Jeroboam II of Judah.

We don't know when God called him to be a prophet and we don't know how long he served as a prophet.

What we do have is one brief glimpse into the life of this prophet who accomplished so much and hated every minute of it.

Whoever wrote that everyone is famous for at least fifteen minutes could have been referring to Jonah.

One would think any man of God who achieved the kind of success Jonah did would be happy with the results.

He was called to preach in one of the world's great cities and the people responded to the Lord in a way that most preachers can only dream about.

The point of Jonah's story is what it took to get him to the place where he could preach that sermon and what happened afterward.

Jonah's story begins with his calling.

I. THE COMING . . .

OF THE CALL OF GOD.

God chooses different means of speaking to His people but He always speaks clearly.

How will we know when the Lord is calling us?

This is important isn't it?

There's your answer.

God's calling is too important for Him to not speaking clearly to those He is calls.

You'll just know.

A. This is a . . .

PRIVILEGED CALL

B. This is a . . .

PREEMPTIVE CALL

In the New king James version we read the first part of verse 1 as:

Jonah 1:1 NKJV

Now the word of the LORD came...

The Hebrew word for came used here has the connotations of: to become, will come to pass, will happen.

thus looking forward in a preemptive manner.

C.

This is a . . .

PERSONAL CALL

In the first part of verse 1 we read:

“...to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,”

This makes the Call personal to Jonah.

D. This is a . . .

PRACTICAL CALL

The Call of Jonah is similar to the Call of Paul during his Damascus Road Conversion as we read in Acts 9:6:

Acts 9:6 (NKJV)

So he, trembling and astonished, said, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”Then the Lord said to him, “Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

II.

THE CLARITY . . .

OF THE CALL OF GOD.

Jonah's calling was not only clear it outlined for Jonah a clear path of obedience.

That path would lead him all the way to Nineveh.

Without a doubt this was a path Jonah didn't want to take.

Funny thing about God's calling is that He never asks for our opinion.

God needs no input from us to formulate His plans and make them work.

The Lord doesn't deal in generalities.

He didn't ask Jonah to go to the place of His choosing to preach the Word.

He told him to go to Nineveh.

Like most of the Jews of his day, Jonah was a prejudiced man.

He was unapologetically Hebrew and the Assyrians, of which Nineveh was the capital, were their implacable enemies.

While there was no problem with the clarity of Jonah's calling there was a real problem with Jonah.

God's calling is not about what we want to do, it's about what God wants us to do whether we want to or not.

We won't always feel good about what God wants us to do and the job He calls us to do won't always be easy.

Jonah was told :

A. The Place "Arise, go to Nineveh that great city, . .

."

In the first part of verse 2 we hear the command to arise and go to Nineveh:

The words here are absolute, imperative and final.

Arise and go are forthright instructions and a call to action without question.

So that you know: Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq.

The site of Nineveh is 500 miles from Palestine, bordered on three sides by rivers, it was capital of the gentile world, it sits on the East bank of the Tigris River, and Nineveh was one of the oldest cities in the world.

It is bordered by deserts to the south and mountains to the north.

It was the largest city in the world for approximately fifty years until the year 612 BC when, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria, it was sacked by a coalition of its former subject peoples including the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians.

The city was never again a political or administrative centre, but by Late Antiquity it was the seat of a Christian bishop.

It declined during the Middle Ages and was mostly abandoned by the 13th century AD.

Its ruins lie across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate.

The two main tells, or mound-ruins, within the walls are Tell Kuyunjiq and Tell Nabī Yūnus, which is the site of a shrine to Jonah.

Large amounts of Assyrian sculpture and other artifacts have been excavated there, and are now located in museums around the world.

B. The Plan

In the latter part of Jonah 1:2 :

Is God’s plan for Jonah to accomplish:

Jonah 1:2b (NKJV)

cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me

God here is declaring or calling out, Nineveh's Sin, Nineveh's Shame, and Nineveh's Sentence

C. The Purpose

" their wickedness is come up before Me."

While Nineveh’s sin is not specifically spelled out here , we know from Proverbs 16:5 :

III.

THE CONFRONTATION . . .

With The CALL Of GOD

We read in Jonah 1:3 :

Consult any period map and you'll see that Tarshish was in exactly the opposite direction from Nineveh (it is directly due east across the Mediterranean Sea).

Many of Jonah's day believed that the influence of the gods they worshipped only extended to the borders of the countries where they lived.

Get out of your country and you could get away from your god.

Some have suggested that Jonah actually believed this.

I'm not sure what Jonah believed but I am sure that he somehow thought he could run away from God.

Jonah wasn't the only one to have this foolish thought.

The fact is, try as we might, there is no running from God.

Even David thought it was possible to run from God but soon discovered that God went with him wherever he went no matter how far or how fast he travelled.

David says in Psalm 139:1-9:

Like Jonah we may reject God's calling but like David we'll never be able to shrug off God's company and conviction.

A. The Confrontation With GOD'S PERSPECTIVE

"But . . .

" We read in 1 Samuel 16:7 :

B. The Confrontation With GOD'S PLAN.

"Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish."

Jonah refused, rejected, & renounced the office of prophet rather than obey God.

C. The Confrontation With GOD'S PRESENCE.

In the first part of verse 3 we see that Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord."

But we are left to wonder why he thought he could runaway from God; again as we know from Psalm 139:7-10: