Obey or Run?
The Voice? • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 4 viewsNotes
Transcript
What is your source for getting answers?
Magic 8 ball: Teens in my youth service. Call their name. Ask what puzzling life question they had. Then we would ask the all knowing “Magic 8 ball”.
A standard Magic 8 Ball has a total of 20 answers – 10 affirmative, 5 non-committal and 5 negatives.
Ask three times: Is this sermon gonna be great?
Concentrate and ask again / Better not tell you now / Very Doubtful
The Voice:
Wk #1 of this series we talked about how to decern God’s voice.
Wk #2 we talked about what if we don’t hear God speaking to us.
This wk: I can hear you, now what? Listen and obey or run?
In the old testament in the bible God would speak to a select few prophets and they would rely His word to the people God wanted to speak to.
Today we have the Holy Spirit who can speak to us that are Christ followers. This is a great privilege.
Let’s look at the prophet Jonah and what God was asking Him to do.
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:
Word: Hebrew - dabar: It means Speech.
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
Nineveh: Great city? Yes great in size and at being horrible and evil. Located in modern-day northern Iraq.
3 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.
Jonah ran away, why? Ninevites were enemies of Isreal.
Thru the Bible Vol. 29: The Prophets (Jonah/Micah) Jonah Goes West
Jonah hated the Ninevites, and he did not want them saved. There was a basis for his hatred. Assyria was one of the most brutal nations of the ancient world. They were feared and dreaded by all the peoples of that day. They used very cruel methods of torture and could extract information from their captives very easily. One of the procedures was to take a man out onto the sands of the desert and bury him up to his neck—nothing but his head would stick out. Then they would put a thong through his tongue and leave him there to die as the hot, penetrating sun would beat down upon his head. It is said that a man would go mad before he died. That was one of the “nice little things” the Assyrians hatched up.
Where did he plan to run to? Tarshish a port in southern Spain. 2,500 miles in the other direction from Nineveh. - Show Map?
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54111b43e4b04f85eb6b8afe/1610059125417-3S08TFVDBZY8ZWNI4CFP/6f3d9-jonahrunswithdistances.jpg?format=1500w
He paid money to get away from what the Lord was telling him to do.
Have you ever ran away from what the Lord wanted you to do?
Running away from what God is telling you is a bad idea.
(Slide Only)
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
Vs. 4: God was done using “DaBar” - His word, His voice. Jonah if you are not going to listen, I will then take action.
Parents: You know there is a time when you have to stop talking to your disobedient child that is not listening and take action. (Child kept slapping his mom in the face. Soft calm voice “please stop hitting me sweetie”)
Hear me out. I don’t think you should go full on Momma Bear and maul your child to death, but you should put them in their place.
God to Jonah - I am done talking until you get back on track doing what I asked you to do.
(Slide Only)
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.”
The MacArthur Bible Commentary (C. The Pursuit of Jonah (1:4–16))
Sailors, accustomed to storms, were afraid of this one (v. 5), a fear which served God’s purpose
(Slide Only)
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
Vs. 7: Casting Lots - Like Yahtzee dice game but they would use stones and sometimes bones. Remember they caste lots for Jesus garments.
(Slide Only)
8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” 9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.) 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
(Slide Only)
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
The MacArthur Bible Commentary C. The Pursuit of Jonah (1:4–16)
Unwilling to go to Nineveh and feeling guilty, Jonah was willing to sacrifice himself in an effort to save the lives of others. Apparently, he would rather have died than go to Nineveh.
2. Not listening to God can put you in a dark state of mind.
(Slide Only)
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
3. Not listening to God can put you in undesirable places.
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
This is impossible. Story from June 2021.
56-year-old Michael Packard lives to tell tale after spending 30 to 40 seconds inside huge marine mammal. In a story reminiscent of that of Biblical Jonah, a veteran lobster diver was swallowed whole by a humpback whale on Friday off the Massachusetts coast and survived to tell the tale. Michael Packard, 56, was diving near the Herring Cove Beach in Cape Cod Bay in order to pluck lobsters off the sandy seabed. “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” Packard told the Cape Cod Times. “I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth,” he recalled. “Then I realized, oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth… and he’s trying to swallow me,” he said. “And I thought to myself OK, this is it — I’m finally — gonna die.” His thoughts went to his wife and children. Packard estimates he was in the whale’s mouth for about 30 seconds, but continued to breathe because he still had his breathing apparatus in. His struggling apparently did not agree with the marine giant, which then spat him out. “I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side, and the next thing I knew I was outside,” he told the local newspaper. He was rescued by his crewmate in the surface boat. Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and whale expert at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, told the newspaper that such human-whale encounters are rare. Humpbacks are not aggressive and Mayo thinks it was an accidental encounter while the whale was feeding on fish, likely sand lance. Packard was briefly hospitalized after the ordeal and apparently did not suffer any serious injury.
Jonah 2 is Jonahs prayer while he was held hostage.
10 And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Can you imagine what he looked like and smelt like after being in this giant fish for three days?
We serve the God of second chances.
1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” 3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.
Vs. 1: Second Time - Let’s try this again.
Vs. 2: Proclaim the message I give to you.
Vs. 3: Jonah obeyed and went.
4. Listen to God’s voice then take action.
Does God keep speaking to you about something? You have sensed Him prompting you in your spirit. Have you been prompted through His word in the bible? Or this sermon? James says:
(Slide Only)
17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
(Slide Only) (Break up)
4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. 6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
Vs. 10: When God saw what they did he relented.
God of second chances not only to the man of God but those far from Him.
5. When we listen and obey God’s voice, be prepared to see Him move.
Ill: Story of forgiving Dad? Find another Ill?
1 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.” 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Is there something God has been asking you to do that you have been running away from?
Answering the call to salvation.
40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.