Four questions God asks Every Believer
Where Are You Going?
Where Do You Come From?
What Are You Doing?
What Do You Care About?
In the next few weeks we are going to look at the critical question of purpose, the important issue of priority, and the vital parts of everyday decisions.
In other words, we’re going to look at the important work of God in the world, the eradication of evil, the cessation of looting, violent crime against men, women and children, the establishment of peace and the end of war, wiping out poverty and hunger across every continent, the evangelism of nations, the revival of multitudes, and the redemption of humanity – from the perspective and activity of one person. That person is you.
You say, “Now, wait just one little minute… I don’t have the capacity, skill, influence, power, presence, patience, or perseverance to make the slightest difference in these world wide problems. What can I do that will make a plugged nickel’s bit of difference to this broken world.
In Teaching to Change Lives, Howard Hendricks tells about an 83-year old Michigan woman he met at a Sunday school convention in Chicago. "In a church with a Sunday school of only 65 people, she taught a class of 13 junior high boys. She had traveled by bus all the way to Chicago the night before the convention. Why? In her words, ’to learn something that would make me a better teacher.’ "I thought at the time, most people who had a class of 13 junior high boys in a Sunday school of only 65 would be breaking their arms to pat themselves on the back. Not this lady." Hendricks concludes, "84 boys who sat under her teaching are now in full-time ministry. 22 are graduates of the seminary where I teach."
Well let’s begin with a look at a man named Jonah. You’ve heard of him – the guy who was swallowed whole by a great fish and then was barfed up on shore to carry on the great task of preaching to the city of Nineveh.
His story is written in just four short chapters in the Old Testament. You’ll find it by opening your Bible right in the middle to the book of Psalms, turn right past Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obediah,… and then comes Jonah. Or you could go to the table of contents in the front and look up the page number – but that’s too easy!
The book starts out with these simple – and powerful – words.
Where Are You Going?
Jonah 1:1
The Lord spoke his word to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it, because I see the evil things they do.”
I’d like you to stop right here and consider the calling of God in your life. Now what do I mean by the calling of God?
Simply this – you are no accident. You were created by God. He imagined you way before your mom and dad ever met one another.
His purpose for you and for every other soul, each imagined and created by God, on this terrestrial globe is for far more than momentary fun through hedonistic pleasures.
More that this – God calls us to his purpose. That calling comes in as many different ways as there are colors, sizes, and shapes of people. In fact his calling is unique and special – different for every person – because it is God calling you to accomplish his purpose.
Where Are You Going?
The Calling of God is Personal
God called Jonah, son of Amittai. God could have put out a general appeal. God could have called all the men named Jonah in Israel. Everyone whose name starts with the letter J line up over here next to the bus marked Nineveh.
That’s not how it works. God chose Jonah, son of Amittai. This is particular person with unique characteristics and special abilities. God selected him – personally.
God is always personal – he has selected you for his purposes. He has named you and either has called you, or will call you to his purposes someday – soon.
The Calling of God is Specific
God told Jonah to, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because of the evil things they do.”
God called Jonah to a particular people and a specific city where there was great evil. God didn’t call him to a generic work with a fuzzy set of goals. He told him to preach against the evil of this great city.
The Calling of God is Challenging
Nineveh was known to be a passionate, violent city. The Nineveh-ites invented cruel tortures. The Assyrian king acknowledged that his people’s ways were ”evil“ and characterized by ”violence“ (Jonah 3:8). And they were ”carefree“ (Zeph. 2:15), thinking themselves invincible. The Prophet Nahum wrote about several of their crimes (Nahum 3:1, 4, 16). Nineveh was well known in the ancient Near East for the brutal atrocities it inflicted on its war captives.
This city was also known for its idolatry; it had temples dedicated to the gods Nabu, Asshur, and Adad; the Ninevites also worshiped Ishtar, a goddess of love and war.
Preaching against evil is never easy. It’s so, well, “negative.” It’s far easier to just say nothing about the evil that runs rampant in our world.
Have you noticed that when someone in the public eye speaks of “evil” the reaction of many is a kind of wholesale shudder – like, “Oooh, he said the word evil.”? It’s as if this is a concept that doesn’t have any acceptance today. Sin is a joke. Righteousness is a myth. Integrity is a virtue – but it’s definition depends on the ethics of the moment. The concept of being a virgin is a blockbuster comedy coming out of Hollywood.
Relativism is the philosophical standard of the day and it is a lie straight from Beelzebub’s lips.
I ran into a nice elderly and talkative gentleman at the doctors office recently. When he asked what I did and I told him I was a pastor he wanted to make sure that I knew he was an agnostic. Then he went to great lengths to say that all that matters is that everyone does what he thinks is good and that he’s done his best all his life to be a good man.
I found myself pointing out (gently – he was elderly) that goodness is a relative idea and that there are absolutes of right and wrong. These absolutes do not come from what we think is good or evil but from a standard that flows from the heart of God.
The truth: we live in a world system that abhors absolutes and loves relativism. I don’t agree with the catholic pope on a lot of things but I do agree with him in this – we are in the midst of a cultural struggle over the relativism of men vs. the absolutes of the Almighty God.
The Rejection of God’s Calling Leads to Rebellious Disobedience
3 But Jonah got up to run away from the LORD by going to Tarshish. He went to the city of Joppa, where he found a ship that was going to the city of Tarshish. Jonah paid for the trip and went aboard, planning to go to Tarshish to run away from the LORD.
Jonah 1:3
Jonah got up to run away. Jonah was called and Jonah ran away from God’s purpose in his life.
Here is the question that is critical today. When you recognize God’s calling what do you do? For some of you it’s a little more difficult and regretful – What did you do?
Jonah ran. He rejected the calling of God and there were very real consequences. I’m not talking about a fish swallowing Jonah. That was God’s means of redeeming Jonah and restoring him to his purpose. Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish was likened by Jesus to the three days he would be in the tomb. In both cases – with Jonah and Jesus – they were dead. And in both cases they were resurrected to new life. The fish in Jonah’s life was not a bad thing – it was the means for resurrection and new life – but I’m getting ahead of myself.
But Jonah got up to run away he became disobedient and revealed the heart of rebellion. He didn’t want to go to the Assyrians. It’s quite certain that Jonah lived at a time when he would have had personal memories of what the Assyrians had done to his country just one generation before. It may very well have been that some of his friends, his village, his family, perhaps even his parents had felt the edge of sword at the hands of an Assyrian soldier. Jonah may well have had the face of that Assyrian soldier, grimacing with the effort required to slash and cut off the heads of loved ones, forever etched into his memory as a child hiding in the ruins of a burnt out house. You want me to go to Assyria and the city of Nineveh to preach against evil! I don’t think so!
Jonah went in the exact opposite direction. God said, Go this way. Jonah said, “No” and went the other way – very purposefully. Not your way God. My way.
The Rejection of God’s Calling Leads to Callous Complacence
5 The sailors were afraid, and each man cried to his own god. They began throwing the cargo from the ship into the sea to make the ship lighter. But Jonah had gone down far inside the ship to lie down, and he fell fast asleep.
Jonah 1:5
The sailors are taking in the sails, rowing the boat, securing the lines, and bailing water out of the bilges of the ship while Jonah lays down for a few z’s. The callous complacence of this child of Israel, this believer, this man of God, in the face of such a severe storm is just plain amazing.
But when you reject the calling of God and turn to satisfy your own personal felt needs you just sort of block out the cries and screams of the people who are about to drown around you. It’s a defense mechanism. Call it denial. Call it focus. Call it weariness and a need for rest. Call it what you will – God calls us to reach out to a lost and dying world and we go want to take a nap and rest our eyes.
The Rejection of God’s Calling Leads to the Hardening of the Heart
9 Then Jonah said to them, “I am a Hebrew. I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
10 The men were very afraid, and they asked Jonah, “What terrible thing did you do?...”
Jonah 1:9-10
These pagan sailors were more fearful and respectful of the Almighty God than Jonah was. He knew God. He’d been raised in church and read the Bible. He memorized John 3:16 and Acts 2:38 when he was in kindergarten and yet he was able to just simply turn away from the calling of God in his life.
Believers are capable of turning away from God for one simple reason. They think that the whole of this world and all of this universe circles around them They act as if they are the center and God exists to take care of them. It is a false view of life and it leads to much tragedy.
It leads to the terrible thing of rejecting the calling of God.
Jonah is a story of Repentance, Redemption and Resurrection
The story of Jonah is not one of condemnation. Not of Jonah. Not of the Assyrian nation. Not of the city of Nineveh. Jonah is the story of repentance, redemption and resurrection. It is your story. It is my story.
The story of Jonah is the story of a man who turned from God and then repented and turned back to the calling of God. It is in this repentance – this turning back that I take refute today. I was going away from God but now I have turned my face toward the almighty and I am struggling resolutely through the storm to where he has called me.
Repentance Comes In the Heart of a Violent Storm
12 Jonah said to them, “Pick me up, and throw me into the sea, and then it will calm down...”
Jonah 1:12
Repentance is more than sorrow at being caught. It is the willingness to turn to God and to put your life in his hands.
Throw me into the sea… Sometimes as hard as it is the storm is what we need to tempt us to turn from our rebelliousness and to turn back to God.
Sometimes we are driven to repentance by the pain of the present circumstances – which are of our own making.
The prodigal son turned from the pigs. Paul turned from violent persecution and stoning of believers. Jonah turned from the storm in his life to the God of the storm surrounding his life.
This is the first step toward the calling of God – step into the storm and into God’s arms and then it will calm down. This is repentance.
Redemption Comes Through Submission to the Will of God
15 So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea became calm. 16 Then they began to fear the LORD very much; they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made promises to him.
Jonah 1:15-16
Not only did Jonah submit himself to the will of God but all those who were witness to the power of God came to the importance of submission to the will of God.
We are a will-ful people. We are filled with our own selves. We are a rebellious people and we need to become a submissive people.
The Lord’s prayer models this for us as Jesus prayed, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus taught us again in the garden of Gethsemane the night he was taken when he prayed, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
When his will becomes our will then the peace of God will become our calm in the most violent storm.
This is when we learn to live again. This is redemption.
Resurrection Comes After God’s Discipline
17 The LORD caused a big fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 1:17
The book of Hebrews in the12th chapter speaks of the necessity of God’s discipline.
In Hebrews 12:10b-11 the scriptures say, “God disciplines us to help us, so we can become holy as he is. 11 We do not enjoy being disciplined. It is painful, but later, after we have learned from it, we have peace, because we start living in the right way.”
The fish was a necessary step for Jonah’s ultimate resurrection to a new life. A life in which God is the center and his purpose is Jonah’s. A life of peace and joy – peace that comes from being in God’s will, joy that comes from doing his will.
God’s discipline is not something anyone enjoys. You may well have to bear the consequences of your own rebelliousness, callous complacence and hardened heart. In fact you will. Do I dare say this? The discipline of God is both necessary and ultimately good – because it leads to your purification and holiness. To be like God is our ultimate purpose.
The three days of being in the belly of the fish was not fun – but it was necessary and it led to Resurrection.
So… Where are you going?
Have you responded to or rebelled against the calling of God? Are you running from or stepping into the arms of God? Have you accepted the discipline of God or are you angry and resentful because you have been caught in sinful selfish indulgence.
Today is an opportunity to repent. To seek redemption and resurrection. I offer the invitation of God to hear and heed the calling of God in your life to do his work. What that work is I do not know – I am not God. I know it is personal, specific, and challenging. I know also that God will guide to it… but you must first step into the storm and into the arms and discipline of the Father.
I invite you also to pray for the people who stand in the afterwards of Hurricane Katrina. Pray for their physical recovery and for their spiritual renewal. This is a prayer time for you who in the Heart of a storm – here or on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
