Part 1 - Lost Grace Series

Grace Community Church, Winchester, VA

www.gracecommunity.com

Watch this message at https://youtu.be/NDlefgUVE-A

Chuck Swindoll said, “The clock of life is wound but once, And no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop. To lose one’s wealth is sad indeed. To lose one’s health is more. To lose one’s soul is such a loss that no man can restore.”

Every hour 5,417 go to meet their Maker. 39 People died while we started this sermon. How did God equip you and what are we as a church doing to help reach lead people to a closer relationship with God? The reason we gather here on Sunday is not for the value of entertainment; good music, a motivating speech, warm fellowship. All of these things have a good and essential purpose, but they are not THE reason.

We come here to worship God (that’s obvious). However, it does not stop there. You have a higher calling, but we have a tendency to run away from God. This is called disobedience or sin. The good news is we serve a loving and merciful God. This is the basis of the Book of Jonah.

What are some common reasons that you do not share your faith with others?

The majority of believers do little with their faith beyond Sunday worship and morning devotions. Our relationship with Christ requires us to be sticky and influence others. Most believers do little with their faith, and most churches do a poor job equipping the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12). All-the-same, we all have a commission, the Great Commission and we all have been gifted by God to help fulfill that commission.

We begin our series of Jonah quite directly with the issue of disobedience and a wayward prophet refusing to answer God’s call.

I.Understanding the History and Context of the Book of Jonah

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, (Jonah 1:1)

When one thinks of Old Testament prophets, the image of firey preachers proclaiming the judgment of God against a rebellious people, or an entranced visionary seeing mysterious images of the events of the last days, come to mind. We think of Isaiah in the throne room of Heaven or Daniel and his statue as conventional prophetic images of the Old Testament. Then we come to study the Prophet Jonah.

The actual author of the Book of Jonah is not readily known. Linguistically, we can see that the Hebrew dates the authorship back to pre-exilic times. Couple that with 2 Kings mentioning Jonah and we can narrow the date to somewhere between 800 and 900 BC.

The story of ‘Jonah and the Whale’ is familiar to many, especially children growing up in Sunday School. This incredible nautical event typically overshadows the real message intended by the author which is God's mercy to rebellious people. So, what kind of prophet was Jonah?

Jonah the Prophet is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 and by Jesus in Matthew 12:40. Consequently, the narrative of Jonah is much more than a parable or a legend. Jonah was a real person, and he had a real problem. Because we know that Jonah was a real person, we can see that Jonah is filled with man’s failures, contrasted with God’s love. The prominent message of the Book of Jonah is about God’s mercy to those who least deserve it. We will see something in Jonah that all of us can relate to in our own lives: a constant struggle between our will and God’s will.

God's will is perfect, but most of us run away from it, rather than toward it. We want to be in control. The greatest men and women in the history of the Church were those who learn to stop trusting themselves and trust in God alone. Missionary statesman Hudson Taylor had complete trust in God’s faithfulness. In his journal he wrote: Our heavenly Father is a very experienced One. He knows very well that His children wake up with a good appetite every morning...He sustained 3 million Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years... Depend on it, God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.”

II. Disobedience Leads to Indifference in Our Relationship With God.

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." 3But 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. (Jonah 1:1-3)

The first chapter of Jonah does not begin with salutations or authors. It starts with what would be an underlying or secondary theme of the book: God speaks. This is where Jonah’s struggles begin. For that matter, it is where most people struggle with God. God speaks His will to us through the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. When God speaks, it is usually for instruction and command. The rest of the Book of Jonah describes how Jonah responded to God’s voice.