Will You?
Jonah 1-4
October 29, 2006
Experiencing God #7
Today is our final Sunday I our series called Experiencing God. We’ve been walking on this journey together for the past 8 weeks spending time in small groups, Sunday School, reading and praying at home.
It has been my prayer and the leadership of the Church’s prayer that we as a church would come to better understand who our God is, how He works and how we can join Him in His work through this focused time of study.
The final reality of this experience is #7. It is printed on the back of your bulletin. Would you read it with me?
"You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you."
Obedience plays a key role in us experiencing God and being used by Him.
Obedience/Faithfulness/Trust in God and His ways is fundamental to you and me experiencing God and being used by Him.
Again reality #7:
"You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you."
One of the qualities of the Bible that I love is that it doesn’t glorify ordinary people. The writers of the Bible didn’t make holy-rollers out of ordinary people. In the many and varied people in the scriptures, we see them both at their best and at their worst. When their faith was extra-ordinary and quite ordinary. The human beings that our Bible talks about went through chapters of both faith and faithlessness, courage and discouragement, loyalty and being disloyal, trust and distrust. And in my opinion, Jonah is one of the best at displaying the full spectrum, the breadth of full out obedience to God and full out rebellion.
I want to finish this series with Jonah, because I don’t believe that these 8 weeks have fixed or cured any of us of our propensity for sin. There aren’t quick fixes, remedies or solutions to the Christian faith. I finish with Jonah because in his story we are given a picture of how an ordinary person kept encountering God no matter his level of obedience or disobedience. God would not give up on Jonah. He wanted Jonah to experience Him and in the same way He wants you and me too as well.
The book of Jonah is 4 short chapters. You can find it on p. 1436. Most of us know this story for the whale, but there is a lot more to it that that.
A quick outline of this book is this. (Back of bulletin).
Chapter 1 is about Jonah running from God.
Chapter 2 is about Jonah running into God.
Chapter 3 is about Jonah running with God.
Chapter 4 - Jonah is trying to run God.
The "from", the "into", the "with" and the phrase "trying to run God" is each very significant. Small things.
Small behaviors
Small words can be quite significant.
So let’s jump in.
1st - Jonah running from God.
In chapter 1:1, we read, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai and that word was (read with me)
Verse 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."
God has a request, a command, an assignment for Jonah. "Go and preach to Nineveh, It’s wickedness has come before me." Wickedness gets God’s attention. Evil behaviors and deeds grab God’s attention.
But God in his grace didn’t want Nineveh destroyed.
Didn’t want to write off the people so he wants to send a prophet, a preacher.
Jonah go - Go and preach.
If verse 2 was God’s request, verse 3 is Jonah’s response.
Verse 3, "But, Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish."
Tarshish was in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh. Nineveh was east of where Jonah was. Tarshish was west. A year and ½ long journey west. When Jonah heard God’s request. He heard it - He didn’t ignore it. He didn’t stay put, but neither did he obey it. He acted in disobedience and he knew it.
Though he was running from God, trying to escape God’s desire for him, he couldn’t outrun the guilt. The mixed up, out of balance feelings that one has when not relationally right.
There he was on a boat and headed west, his disobedience was right there with him. Verse 10 - "The crew knew he was running away from the Lord because he had already told them so."
And verse 12 - "Pick me and throw me into the sea and it will become calm. I knew it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."
When you and I run from God, storms happen
Disobedience brings not freedom and release but captivity and fear.
God’s request was clear. Go and preach.
Jonah’s response clearer - He ran.
The result - He was thrown off the boat and into the sea.
End of the story? No way.
Verse 17 - "But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was inside the fish 3 days and 3 nights
Chapter 2
Jonah runs into God.
No amount of disobedience on our part can out journey God’s grace.
No amount of rebellion on our part will disqualify us from being invited to join God in His work.
Jonah realizes this in that fish, for in that fish he runs into God.
If chapter 1 was about rebellion, chapter 2 is all about repentance.
In that belly
That -confining
tight
restricted place
That dark
dank
and stinking place.
As that whale swam the depths of the sea - taking Jonah down with him, Jonah called out to the Lord most high. Read verses 2-9.
It was the grace of God that swallowed Jonah up and as Jonah marinated in that grace he surrendered himself as a child of God.
And it was the Lord’s grace to hear the prayers of the once disobedient person. Jonah’s disobedience didn’t forfeit or prevent God from hearing Jonah’s prayer.
Using the terminology of experience God. Inside that whale Jonah experienced a crisis of belief, adjusted himself to God and committed himself to walk obediently. And as a result - v. 10 - The whale vomited Jonah on dry land having been baptized in the forgiveness of God.
When rebellion takes us from God
Repentance brings us back to God.
Obedience is when we walk with God.
And experience Him.
In chapter 3, we see Jonah at his best, a life surrendered to our God.
The God of second chances comes near to Jonah a new with the same request as before.
v. 2 - "Go to Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
v. 3 - Jonah’s response, "Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh." With the result being v. 10 - "When the Lord saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."
Jonah’s obedience to God brought rescue/redemption to the people of Nineveh. God, through this 1 man’s obedience, showered his grace on an entire city.
God used Jonah -this man who formerly was running from him.
-but now had surrendered himself to him to save a city.
When a life is running with God -God is able to do - to his hearts content.
There are times in my little 12-ft yacht when the wind is blowing steadily, when I’ve got the sails trimmed just right. When I am leaning out over the side and I’m almost skipping across the water, waves splashing, face smiling, hold on tight because we’re flying. We’re smoking. Everything is running as it should, each time I’m in my boat, I try to capture those times.
O how our God desires for us to be fueled by His Spirit. To be steered by Him. Friends there is hope for our world.
There are answers to your prayers and he waits for our lives to be fully surrendered, running with Him and when they are, lives are changed.
Lets review - Chapter 1 Jonah running from God.
Chapter 2 Jonah running into God.
Chapter 3 Jonah running with God, Nineveh saved.
And just as Jonah is cruising along with God, living obediently and experiencing Him, He takes a nosedive and tries to run God.
Chapter 4 verse 1 - "but Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry."
Why is Jonah angry? If I were him, I would be ecstatic. Preach an 8-word sermon and have a whole town surrender to God. Well I can go on and on for 17 pages of words and have . . . Why’s Jonah angry, v. 2
What torques Jonah is who God is.
Jonah is upset about God’s graciousness.
His compassion
His abounding love.
His change of heart to not send calamity.
Jonah doesn’t think God should be this way.
He wanted the Ninevites to get what they deserved.
I catch myself every so often thinking the same thing. There I’ll be, thinking all kinds of derogatory thoughts about a person, about why God shouldn’t be gracious to them. I’ll go on and on and on and then finally God will say, "Who are you? Do you have any right to try to run me?"
In the midst of Jonah’s complaint, God has a vine grow up over sulking Jonah. This vine provides shade for him. It is a place of refuge but at dawn a worm eat it up, exposing Jonah to the sun and the wind.
And Jonah has had enough, v. 8, "It would be better for me to die than to live."
Jonah wants out.
He cannot control anything.
He isn’t in charge, not of God
Not the Ninevites.
Not of God’s grace and love.
He is a selfish little child wanting his own way.
The book ends as it begins with God speaking. The Alpha and the Omega. The one who spoke life into being and receives it at its close says to Jonah. Read verse 10-12.
And that is where the book ends.
It ends with a question.
And we are not told how Jonah answered.
We are not told how Jonah responded.
Did Jonah find himself staying long in disobedience - running from God?
Did he align himself anew and go with God - walking obediently and as a result becoming a blessing to others?
We just don’t know.
We just don’t know.
And this is where we will end this 8 weeks. With that question.
God’s Question/ with His invitation that awaits your response.
Are you tired of running from me? I’m always at work.
Will you run
-from
-with
-into
-or try to run me?
Will you ever quit trying to run me?
Will you run with me? Will you be obedient?
If you will, you will experience me.
My friends - our God is at work.
He pursues a relationship with you.
He invites you into what he is doing.
He speaks.
Most often His speaking leads us to a crisis.
Will we adjust and go with God or go out on our own?
If we choose our own way - Jonah tells us - God’s grace will catch you. You will be caught, but will you surrender yourself to obedience? To a life lived immersed in God?
Allow me to close with a story from Bob Ekblad, A Minister in Burlington and the Chaplain for the Skagit Valley Jail.
In May, my 13-year-old son Luke and I traveled to Mozambique and South Africa for three weeks of ministry. I had been asked by Heidi Baker of Iris Ministries to teach in their pastor’s training school in Pemba. Luke and I stayed for two weeks, teaching and going on outreaches in surrounding villages in this impoverished but awesomely beautiful land.
As Luke and I walked along the beaches, orphaned children tried to sell us carvings, artwork, and musical instruments, while bartering for shirts and shampoo. Many told us they were trying to make enough money to buy a pair of shoes so they could attend school. Luke wanted to adopt some kids, give away his clothes, or buy whatever we could to help these entrepreneurial street youth.
One night I had a conversation with Shara, a woman in her mid-twenties who serves as Heidi’s personal assistant. Shara told me how inspired who was by Heidi and Rolland Baker, who had worked as missionaries for over 25 years without making formal fundraising appeals. The practiced literally Philippians 4:6 - "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God."
God has consistently supplied their needs and caused their ministry to grow into some 24 countries. God also supplies the needs of thousands of village pastors, who receive no salary but depend on subsistence farming and God’s provision. Shara told me a number of stories about how she was living by faith, making her needs known only to God, and how God had been taking care of her in miraculous ways. As she talked, I felt inspired--called back to the way Gracie and I have lived for most of our married life and before, until pressures of funding a growing family and ministry and conventional wisdom began to slowly affect us.
As Shara told her stories, my heart burned. I felt God nudging me to give her every dollar that I had in my money belt. Now, where we were in Mozambique, ATM machines are non-existent and credit cards often unusable. We had been told to bring US dollars, which we could always exchange for meticais (Mozambican currency). So, giving away all my dollars would leave me with nothing but a few meticais. I was somewhat reluctant to give all, but finally could not resist. I gladly gave my $201.00 over to Shara, who looked shocked. I felt a great freedom and excitement.
The next day Luke and I traveled to Xai Xai, where I was to participate in a regional conference for Mozambican pastors and leaders. The conference started with an outreach in a nearby village, where the Jesus film was to be shown, along with preaching and prayer for healing. When we arrived, we discovered that our baggage had been stolen from the back of the canopied truck somewhere along the road. So there we were, without money with only the clothes we were wearing.
That night, several men were drawn to me as I stood in a crowd of African villagers. One by one they began asking me how they could get free from addictions and troubles with the police. I offered to pray for them, and Heidi came over and we prayed together.
Later, as Heidi was leaving to return to Pemba, she hugged us goodbye and handed me an envelope. Later at our campground beside the Indian Ocean, I opened the thank you card to find four, crisp hundred-dollar bills and a million meticais (around $800). God had more than doubled my 201.00 within 24 hours! The next day the Mozambican leaders Jose and Sopresa took us clothes shopping in the poverty-stricken center of Xai Xai, insisting on buying our clothes!
My friends will you
Will I
Will our church
Will we
Choose to run with God and to experience him?
Living lives fully surrendered
fully lead
fully turned over to our Lord?
Amen
