Jonah 1 Series

Good Evening. I ‘ve got some good news for you. Or maybe you won’t like it so much but it’s still going to happen. I’m going to be bringing the Word to you tonight and on Sunday. So, I get to do something that I don’t normally get to do. We’re going to have a two-part message for tonight and Sunday. For both messages we are going to be in the book of Jonah. Tonight, we’re going to be in chapters 1 and 2, and on Sunday we’ll be in 3 and 4.

So are you ready to dig in?

As you’re finding Jonah in your Bible, I want to give you a little bit of information about this book. Jonah is one of the books of the minor prophets. It is in the “minor” prophets, not because they are less important, but because the books are shorter. Jonah is only 4 chapters long. Obadiah, the book before Jonah is only 1 chapter long, and is the shortest book in the Old Testament. Compare that with the major prophet Jeremiah, which is actually the longest book in the entire Bible, with 52 chapters. While Psalms has more chapters, most of them are very short, so it isn’t as long as Jeremiah.

Next, Jonah stands out as different from all of the other prophets, and all other prophetic books. Similar to most other prophets, the book starts out, “the Word of the LORD came to Jonah.” Now, all of the other books of prophecy go on to basically communicate the message that God is giving through the words and poetic language of the prophet. They record the message that God wants to communicate with to the people.

Jonah is different. While it starts out similar to other books of prophecy, Jonah only says 8 words of prophecy in the entire book (5 if you’re reading Hebrew). Instead, Jonah is a narrative about a particular time in the life of the prophet Jonah.

While it is different from other prophets, Jonah still does what all other prophets do. That is, the Book of Jonah reveals to us who God is, and calls us to respond to god, and to life the way He wants us to live.

So the question before us this evening is this: What do the first two chapters in Jonah reveal to us about who God is, and how are we to respond?

Now, we’re going to be painting with some pretty broad brushstrokes tonight and on Sunday. There is so much packed into these 4 chapters that we could spend weeks and weeks looking and still have more to find. So we’re going to look at a few of the broader messages we get from Jonah.

One of the first things we see is that God is concerned with, and cares about, all people. Not just his “chosen” ones, not just the ones that claim to be his followers. Now, we’re going to leave that for a bit. We’re going to revisit it on Sunday, as the last two chapters in Jonah speak even more on that point.

So, let’s suffice it to say that it very possibly took Jonah by surprise to hear that God wanted him to bring a message to people who were not Israelites. Sometimes I try to imagine what Jonah’s reaction was to this revelation from God.

G: Jonah

J: Yes God?

G: I am calling you to be a prophet

J: Wow, I’m humbled God. What message would you have me bring to your chosen people Israel?

G: Actually, I need you to go to Nineveh.

J:

G:

J:

G:

J: Sorry, I think you have the wrong number.

So, Jonah doesn’t like this at all, and to e perfectly honest it’s understandable. The Ninevites are not nice people. The descriptions of Nineveh in the Bible are not pretty, and some may say that they are exaggerated caricatures as there was no love lost between the two nations. But even extra-Biblical sources, such as the writings of ancient historians Herodotus and Aristotle, describe Nineveh as a lawless and sinful place.

If Nineveh existed in the Star Wars universe, it would surpass Mos Eisley as the most wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Suffice it to say that Nineveh was one place that Jonah didn’t want to go. So, Jonah decided to run away. He wanted to get as far away from Nineveh, and from God, as he possibly could. Nineveh was located to the East of Israel, so Jonah went West, and Tarshish is just about the furthest West that it was possible to go at that time. Tarshish was located in Spain, past the Straights of Gibraltar, and thought to be near the ends of the Earth.

So, Jonah runs away from God, and from God’s calling on his life. But here’s the thing that we learn about God. Just because we stop pursuing God, even run away from him, doesn’t mean that He stops pursuing us.