Jonah: Are you sure?

Introduction

Well we begin our fall season here in Merritt and as I stated last week we will be working our way through the book of Jonah.

There are various reasons why I set out to study various books of the Bible and this study was brought about by having a book brought to my attention from my dear wife.

It was written by Timothy Keller, a prolific writer and pastor in the States and it was a collection of sermons brought together over several years.

Interesting enough, one of the times He preached through Jonah was directly after the 9/11 period.

He has titled his book, Rediscovering Jonah: The secret of God’s Mercy.

It got me thinking, Is God’s Mercy a secret in your life?

Have you come to fully understand how God’s mercy is played out in the world, and our lives as followers of Christ.

As I read through the book of Jonah and read through Keller’s take on the book of Jonah, I was really intrigued by the message of this minor Prophet.

It is my hope that by the end of this series, you will have a greater understanding of the prophet Jonah, a deeper understanding of God and His mercy, and a stronger desire to follow Christ and a willingness to follow the call of God upon your life.

Background about Jonah

This book, if you still haven’t located it in your Bible is the fifth of the minor prophet. If you were to read the Hebrew Bible they would be grouped together.

In case you were wondering and maybe you are knew to the faith and study of the Bible, These books are minor not because of their importance, rather their length.

The minor prophets take on various styles and this book was almost completely written as a narrative and for most people they believe that the prophet himself penned these words even though the text itself doesn’t clearly state this fact.

So who was this prophet.

The text gives us a glimpse

Jonah, the son of Amittai, from Gath Hepher in Galilee (cf. 2 Kings 14:25; Josh 19:13)

He was known to prophesy around the reign of Jeraboam II.

What is interesting to note is this was around the year 793-753 BC a time in which the Assyrian country was on the verge of becoming a weak nation. Up until this point, Nineveh, was a fierce and strong city known for it’s pagan ways and brutality towards its competitors.

On person stated,

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 7: Daniel and the Minor Prophets (1. Background)

The consciousness of weakness and possible defeat would go far to explain the readiness of Nineveh to accept the prophet’s message.

One last item or thought about this prophet before we jump into the text,

Jonah was the only prophet that was charged by God to go to a pagan nation. The other prophets spoke about the nations, but He was asked to go.

I guess that is why I titled today’s message

Are you sure?

Maybe today, you have been seeking the Lord’s direction for your life and the message you have been getting begs you to ask the Question

Are you sure?

Being followers of Christ, there may come times in our lives where God is asking something from us

in response we cry out, or the question,

Are you sure?

This entire book answers that question

Let’s read,

Jonah 1:1–3 ESV

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

God Spoke

The beginning of the book gets down quickly to the heart of the matter,

God Spoke.

A Holy God, the creator of the universe, the one that sustains the world came to a man and spoke.

The text is not clear in what manner God spoke, in fact if you read the Hebrew there is not a clear way the message came it arrived.

It’s an often similar experience with other recorded prophets in How God communicated with them.

One person wrote,

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 7: Daniel and the Minor Prophets A. Jonah’s Flight (1:1–3)

In many cases there must have been the overwhelming certainty of the divine message without any consciousness of how it had come.

In other words, we don’t know if it was an audible voice, in a dream or it came to him

Pause for a moment,

pause

This whole book can be summed up in the following way

It is about God speaking to a prophet

The Prophet’s response to the spoken Word of the Lord,

God’s Response

The Prophet’s lesson

It’s a book not centered around a fish,

It’s not a book centered around a lost people group,

It’s about a God who pursues His Prophet and displays Grace.

It has all those elements, but

You will learn that God continues to be a God full of compassion and Grace no matter where you find yourselves.

But the Chapter begins with,

God Spoke.

Let me tell you something about God, He still speaks today.

The Word of the Lord is this book we have in our midst today.

One way that God speaks to us today is through this Word.

One of the greatest Joy and greatest fear is standing in front of you every Sunday and speaking.

My desire is that you Hear the Word of God.

I don’t want my words to get in the way of the Message from God.

Often people come up to me after a service and say, “Great sermon, Pastor”

If we have the chance, I often like to respond by saying,

“What did God speak to you about today?” or “What did you hear from God today?”

God still speaks today.

You see

John 1:1 ESV

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14 ESV

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Acts 1:8 ESV

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

WE know God

We Grow to be like Him as He dwells within us

We Give to others because of what He has done.

God speaks to others through us.

So I ask you today, What has God spoken to you about lately?

Or should I ask, are you waiting and listening for God’s Voice?

As we walk through the book of Jonah, I want you to listen to what God said to Jonah, observe how Jonah responded to God’s Word and compare how you respond to God’s Word in your life.

God’s Message

God spoke, His message came to Jonah.

If you read the text, the message was quite clear.

It was an imperative,

Stand up!

One thing is certain, God’s voice was clear.

There wasn’t any confusion on the part of God or Jonah.

Stand up, Go!

Notice it wasn’t,

Jonah, It would please me greatly if you would consider as part of your ministry to pack your bags and head off to the place I want you to Go. You know, that city to the east of us

or this way

Jonah, I have a spot on the mission trip of a lifetime, and was wondering if you would free up your schedule and gather funds so that my message could be heard to the people of Nineveh.

The scope of God’s Message

The scope of God’s message was clear,

Jonah 1:2 ESV

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

The evil forces of the day, was so repulsive that God, the God of compassion was tired of it and wanted it to stop.

Folks,

To the Jewish readers of the day that first heard this story, it would be a shocking story on several accounts.

The first I mentioned earlier.

Jonah was being asked to go to another people group and become a missionary to those people.

He was begin asked like no other prophet before him.

Go to Those people.

pause

If you were here earlier you may have notice that the large bulletin board has been transformed to a large map.

As we work our way through the book of Jonah, this map will become an living tool of the responses to the messages.

This week’s response is simple.

After the service, I would like to have you pick up a map pin and place where you live on the map.

Let me change that.

Arise, after the service, and Go and place a pin on the map.

This will give us as a people group gathering here were we have each have been placed by God.

If you watching on Zoom, you can stop by the office during the week and place your pin.

Easy, by the way, I’ll let you choose between 4 colours.

What I am asking you to do is small compared to the message Jonah received and what the people heard what was being asked of him.

God was asking Jonah to go to someone other than their own kind.

The second shocking thing about this ask was,

who those people were.

It was the Assyrians.

The meanest, cruelest people of that time.

I could go on to describe that antics of this nation against its enemies, but I notice there are young listeners in the audience.

What I can say in terms we all understand is that they were the bullies of the day.

During the time of this event, these people group would be the ones that would invade and destroy the northern kingdom of Israel.

It was this group of people that the message was to go and

Well,

Call them out.

Call what out,

Stand up and point out to the people of their Tax evasion.

No

Stand up and point out to the people of their stealing from other people.

no

Stand up and point out to the people of their, what,

Evil.

Has God ever asked you to stand up against evil?

I took some time this week to look over the different translations of this Hebrew phrase.

Some of your translations say,

To Preach........ Is that what he was doing.

A funny story,

When I was in Calgary working at Lowe’s and pastoring part-time at a small gathering, one of my co-workers said this to me when she found out I was a preacher.

A preacher’s job is to stand up each week and tell the people what they are doing wrong, the people pay him to do that and they come back week after week to do the same.

Is that the world’s view of preaching.

Is this what Jonah was being asked to do?

Another text, translates this as

“Announce judgement”

I’m here to be the bearer of bad news. Condemnation is just around the corner you you because God is not happy with you.

Maybe your translation says, “Cry against it”

It gives you a description of earnest pleading towards the people for their sin needs to be dealt with because God is not happy.

The Message, a paraphrase states it this way

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 1

Preach to them. They’re in a bad way and I can’t ignore it any longer.

All these translations are needed for us to fully understand what God was asking of Jonah.

He was simple to Go and proclaim the message without his own interpretation of the message.

God was unhappy with their evil ways and God and they needed to be told.

IT was God’s job to deal with the people.

It wasn’t Jonah’s responsibility other then to go.

Amazingly enough to both Jonah and the readers of this story,

Both would say, why Jonah?

Jonah as you could find out, was a pure nationalist, stood up for the nation, spoke out for the people of God.

Spoke out about the enemies of God.

Jonah knew it, the people knew it, in fact God knew it,

but,

God word came and said.

Arise, go....

Think for a moment,

When God speaks to you, especially during those times it doesn’t quite make sense why, what do you do?

When God puts to your mind that co-worker that is always hassling you, to show God’s love and mercy to him or her, what do you do?

To that neigbour that keeps you up at night, and God asks you to put out his or her garbage cans as they have forgotten, to show love and mercy, what do you do?

To the unknown person on social media that negatively blast publicly all that you stand for, and you want to respond, what do you do?

The Prophet’s Response

If you don’t know already,

What was Jonah’s response,

I’m outta here....

I’ve titled this sermon,

are you sure as a picture of what Jonah was thinking.

He wasn’t the kind of prophet at this point in the story to debate with God.

He, didn’t apparently struggle with what he should do and weigh out all the options.

He did do one thing right.

He did arise,

But he went in the opposite direction.

He did the very opposite as sort of a parody.

God told his to go east, he went west.

He would have to travel over land to get to Nineveh, he headed out by boat.

He was told to go to a great city, he chose a remote part of the earth as his destination.

God asked him to go, not to stay, yet he bought a one way ticket as far away, well in his words,

Away from the presence of the Lord.

We will find out later as we go through this book, but at this point we are not given any information what was going through the mind of the reluctant prophet.

Fleeing was his option

We could guess what was he was thinking.

Maybe in his mind it wasn’t the best use of his time.

After all, he was a prophet for the people of God.

They needed to hear God’s voice and he felt he was the one that God needed.

Maybe in his mind it won’t matter what was said to the people of Nineveh as they were evil as it got and they wouldn’t change their minds.

Maybe, just maybe, it was jealousy. If they heard the message of God and turned and repented, God’s grace would show mercy and that is the least, in the mind of Jonah that these people needed.

The reality is at this point,

Jonah had a miss trust in God.

Jonah was not the only one in the Bible that have a miss trust in God.

Adam and Eve miss trusted God when they were given the instructions not to eat.

They too were given the instruction without a reason why so they felt they knew better.

God asked Jonah to go without giving the reason why he should go. Jonah didn’t trust at this point that God knew what was best.

Miss trust will attempt to drive you away from God, the very thing that you actually need.

Running from God

Keller in his book outlines that there are two ways of running from God.

Both are described in the first three chapters of Romans.

One way is to outright ignore God and the other is to follow God’s law.

Let me explain.

Romans 1:29 ESV

29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,

This is a description of a person who is the opposite of God.

Their hearts are hardened and seeking only things that are for them.

Paul then mentions a second type of person.

Romans 2:17–18 ESV

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law;

Although on the outside, they look like they are doing all the right things, but have missed the mark.

Paul then concludes that the two different people are in God’s eyes the same.

Romans 3:10–12 ESV

10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

We all have fallen short of running towards God. Some of our lives are filled with the very opposite of what God is telling us to do while others try to do everything right and in the end expect God to reward us for our piety.

Keller in his book makes the comparison of the two brothers in scripture.

One flees from the father and squanders all his father’s riches, while the older stays behind and does what ever is asked but is made when grace appears.

One does it for selfish reasons, instant gratification, while the other does it for selfish reasons, delayed gratifications. Both miss out on the father’s love. Both are running away from God

Keller writes,

Both of these two ways of escaping God assumed the lie that we cannot trust God's commitment to our good. We think we have to force God to give us what we need. Even if we are outwardly obeying God, we are doing it not for his sake but for ours. If we, as we seek to comply with his rules, God does not appear to be treating us with we feel we deserve, then we veneer of morality and righteousness can collapse overnight.

-Timothy Keller- Rediscovering Jonah pg19

Jonah is running from God, but what happens.

Jonah 1:4 ESV

4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.

Life was about to get interesting for Jonah.

Next week we will dig a bit deeper into the story, but what is in this story for us?

Our Response

What is our response when God calls us.

One thing I know for sure is that God has called each one of us to the following:

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

After the service as you go and place your pin on the map where you live, remember these verses and the place God has called you. See where others have been called.

Paul told the Roman believers,

Romans 10:13–15 ESV

13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

Today, let this be a reminder to us all that Jonah was called to Go, we are called to Go

Jonah was called to Go to a city that was hostile to the people of God.

We are called to go to people who may also be against God for whatever reason.

Our response is simple, we must go, but what will we do, where will we go.

In Summary

As the worship team makes their way back to the stage, where are you in listening and following God?

Has God been speaking to you, asking something of you that you have been pondering. Does it appear not to make sense of why He would be speaking. Is your trust in the almighty for what He is asking.

If you are struggling with voice from God,or a direction from God, I would love to chat over a coffee.

God want’s the best for all of us, He wanted the best for Jonah and as we work our way through the book, you will discover, the best that God has will be given to Jonah. And what is given to Jonah is also freely given to us.

Let’s respond in worship

Response to Worship

Benediction

Psalm 67 ESV

To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm. A Song. 1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah 2 that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. 3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! 4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah 5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! 6 The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. 7 God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!