The Reluctant, Rebellious Prophet: Jonah, Chapter 1
Today we will begin the first of a four part series on the book of Jonah. I hope to be in the church building in three Sundays from today, and we will finish this series the Sunday after that.
I've decided to take a break from the Achieve New Balance series, as my study time is abit on the lean side with working on the church, and I know that most of you didn't hear this in Bible study last year when I was at Pursley.
Turn in your Bibles to the book of Jonah, on page 1323 in your pew Bible. For those of you that are using your own Bible, Jonah is between Obadiah and Micah, only a few books back from Matthew which is the first book in the New Testament.
What do you think of when you hear of Jonah? Most people would say "a whale", but it's more than just a big fish story. Once we get through this study, which I may also do in Sunday School to get us finished in the next few weeks, you may just have a new appreciation for God.
Here's a few things that we will learn:
1) God is not a respecter of persons.
Rom 2:10-11
10 But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile:
11 For there is no respect of persons with God. (KJV)
God does not play favorites. God does not just choose to work with the rich, the athletic, the beautiful, the intellegent. If that were the case, I'd be in big, big trouble! God loves you regardless of who you are, were you came from or what you have done in your life.
2) Even those in the service of God can sometimes be wrong, and can sometimes be more than just wrong but against God in their actions. We see this in some churches that are warm and comfy on Sunday mornings while the folks down the street are freezing and starving.
3) When God tells you to go, you'd better listen up. God doesn't trifle with us, if he urges you on to something you'd better do it!
4) The book of Jonah is authentic. Let me touch on this briefly. Jesus proved this point in His quote from Matthew:
Matt 12:38-41
38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You."
39 But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
40 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
41 "The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.
(NKJ)
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Jonah 1:1-17
1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
2 "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me."
Did the prophet Jonah really exist? We do have biblical proof:
II Ki 14:25
25 He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher. (NKJ)
Jonah was a prophet in the service of Jeroboam, the king at that time, which was about 800 years BC.
Gath Hepher,--800 miles or so from Nineveh
Point #1) God told Jonah to GO.
When God tells you to go, what do you do? What would you do if God told you to go to an enemy and tell them the Good News of Jesus Christ?
"go to Nineveh, that great city," Nineveh was a town named after either Nimrod, an evil king or may have been named after a fish god, more than likely Dagon, who was half man half fish. The city was quite large in size--the city as a whole would have been about 60 miles in diameter which would have put the population between 600,000 to 1,000,000.
"cry out against it;" God wants Jonah to go on a missionary trip. This is the first evangelistic calling to go to Gentiles! Jonah was to go to the over 600,000 in Nineveh and preach to them.
"wickedness" : Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, and the Assyrians were known for their cruelty.
Not only this, but God also considered the nation as an abomination (REVIEW) in his sight because of idol worship. They openly worshipped the idols Assur and Ishtar.
3 But Jonah arose 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 from the presence of the LORD.
Point #2--Jonah said NO.
Have you ever told God no? Have you ever went against God's wishes? We all have, in one way or another. Sin is telling God no to his Word, His desire for us. But with Jonah it was more serious.
Jonah was a prophet for Jeroboam II, a spokesman for God to him. When God wanted to speak to Jeroboam, he used Jonah as His tool. God had used Jonah mightily in the past, but now Jonah said no.
He went down to Joppa, hopped on a boat and sailed for Tarshish. Although the exact location of Tarashish is uncertain, historians have noted that it about far west as you can go from Nineveh, which was to the east of Joppa and Gath Hepher.
The text said that Jonah to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. Here's a question--can you flee from the presence of the Lord? Of course not. But have you ever noticed that when you do something wrong the last person that you would want to find out is someone that you know is close to the Lord? We have to remember what I've taught here before about the three heavens (EXPLAIN).
DARKNESS HATES THE LIGHT! CHURCH ATTEND.
Why would Jonah have fled?
1) Jonah hated the Ninevites. They would move like a plague, even bringing along their wives and children to watch everything. Here's a few of their methods of torture and execution:
1) Dismemberment
2) Skinning the victims
3) Burying the victims, head exposed and tongue pierced.
Perhaps some of his family were killed.
Also, they were Gentiles. And, he was also probably frightened of them.
2) He knew God, and he knew that if God used him as an instrument to carry a message of judgment to the Ninevites that God would use that message to convict the hearts of the people of Nineveh and bring them to salvation. Clearly, he did not want that!
4 But the LORD sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up.
Although the book of seems to be very short, we see 10 distinct miracles in the text. Jonah is far from a boring book, it's one of the most action-packed books in the Bible!
Point #3--God had the wind to BLOW!
God showed his power by creating not just a storm, but a whale of a storm (pardon the pun).
5 Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.
God puts you and I in the path of the unsaved, even when we are in disobedience to Him. God uses Jonah in the presence of pagan sailors and Jonah does not have a clue! In fact, what is Jonah doing? He's fast asleep! Here's Jonah not even concerned enough to lose sleep over betraying God's command. Did you know that Jonah is the only prophet that told God NO?
6 So the captain came to him, and said to him, "What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish."
Get up and pray, you sleepyhead!
7 And they said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
Is gambling of God? No, it's not. But we can see that God does use things that aren't according to his will to reach the unsaved. For instance, we can see two different uses of things ungodly to prove His point. First, we see the WITCH OF ENDOR. Second, we see the WISE MEN seeing signs in the stars.
We see the next miracle in the lot falling upon Jonah. This use of gambling proved to all that it was indeed Jonah that caused the mess.
8 Then they said to him, "Please tell us! For whose cause is this trouble upon us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?"
9 And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew; (A TERM USED TO INDENTIFY THE JEW TO THE GENTILE--MONOTHESTIC) and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land."
10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, "Why have you done this?" For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.
11 Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us?"-- for the sea was growing more tempestuous.
12 And he said to them, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me."
Jonah knew that he not only did wrong, but that he had endangered the lives of these men. Although he could sleep with what he had done, he could not bear the thought of endangering the lives of innocent men.
13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to return to land, but they could not, for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them.
God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh to see their souls saved, and Jonah said NO! But look at what these men tried to do--they did not want to throw Jonah overboard and kill him. The showed mercy, the trait that we as Christians are supposed to show.
They "rowed hard". They didn't just try, they rowed hard to save the life of the man that had brought them to this place of trial! That is unselfish love for another.
Sometimes we as Christians act worse than the world that surrounds us, and those of the world actually act more like the model of Jesus Christ that we're supposed to be. For Pete's sake, we need to do better!
14 Therefore they cried out to the LORD and said, "We pray, O LORD, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood; for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You."
POINT #4--WHAT TO DO WITH JONAH? THROW!
Now we see miracle #3:
15 So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.
God can stop a storm, just as Jesus stopped the storm with His hand.
16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.
Now, we see the final miracle of Jonah Chapter 1:
17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
(NKJ)
The question comes up--could Jonah been in the belly of the fish for three days and lived to tell the tale? Only God could come up with a story like this.
What is my favorite saying about sin, folks? You can avoid the sin, but you can't avoid the consequences of the sin. But, one thing that is clear to those that are saved--if you do wrong, and you do have to endure the consequences, God does forgive. God deals with those that he loves as a father does a son, with the idea of bringing back to a restored relationship to the saved.
Look back at verse 16. Like I've mentioned before here at Victory, we see three things in John 1:12 that we must do to be saved:
John 1:12-13
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (NKJ)
Believe--Recieve--Become.
What do we see in verse 16? We see the components of saving faith
fear of the Lord--Do you respect the Lord? If you respect the Lord, you can establish a relationship with Him, or should I say that He can establish a relationship with you. God has never saved a proud man, woman or child. We must all come to him with a humble heart. (story of Patty being saved).
They offered a sacrifice. What does this have to do with being saved? Everything! In Jonah's time, in the Old Testament, sacrifices had to be made to cover the sin of the person or persons making the sacrifices. Blood must be shed, or as we have studied, a life must be given. All sacrifices, including this one, point to Jesus Christ.
"And made vows"
Jesus was the once-for-all sacrifice, and when we humbly, with respect, come to Him and place our trust in Him by making a vow, by asking Him to forgive us, we are saved.
One of the most remarkable things about God is how He uses the most unusual circumstances to bring folks to faith. People get saved because of tough times, or because they seek answers and can't find them. God sends them to someone that can bring the Gospel--the Good News of Jesus Christ--to them. Maybe you are that person. Maybe you have a God shaped hole in your heart, and you've discovered that God only can fill it.
God Gave Us His Word--I Jn 5:13 These things I have written to you who believe in (trustworthy belief) the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
Rom 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Rom 6:23a For the wages of sin is death (first death is physcial, second death next)
Rev 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."(also is eternal separation from God and all that's good)
Rom 6:23b ...but the gift (can't be taken back) of God is eternal life in (or with) Christ Jesus our Lord.
Rom 10:9-10, 13
9 that if you confess (Gk on the same page) with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in (trustworthy belief) your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Rom 10:13 For "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.(from eternity in torment)"
MAKE YOUR VOWS TODAY!
