There's A Storm A Coming! Series

Heavenly Father, we know that in every life, storms will come – sometimes, they’re of our own making. Sometimes they’re made for us. We cannot always control the trials of life, but we can control how we respond to them. We know that You can calm storms – or uphold Your people to walk above them – or miraculously bring your people through them. And we know that we can always trust You to see us through every storm of life until we arrive safely on the shores of eternity with You!

May we enter this new year and all its unknown challenges with a greater confidence in You, with a 2020 vision of You, and may we face every wind and wave hand in hand with the Creator of skies and seas – in Jesus’ name, Amen!

As we begin looking toward our mission conference in a couple of months, I want to share some thoughts with you from the book of Jonah. The very first verse introduces our reluctant hero. It says, Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai.

The name, Jonah, means dove – which symbolizes a messenger of peace. And in the end, that’s what Jonah turns out to be, although he is a very unwillingly messenger.

This book is unusual among the prophets in a couple of respects. First, the whole book appears to be just one long STORY. All four chapters are telling a story about an event in the life of the prophet Jonah. The other prophetic books might occasionally tell a story, but they mainly consist of sermons the prophets preached to the Jewish people. But in Jonah, the only sermon is the eight-word message that the story records him delivering to Nineveh. The entire book is really just one long story – and while this story has a big fish in it, it’s no big fish story. What it tells us really is what happened. Jesus Himself confirmed that it was true.

But I’m going to let you in on a little secret that the Old Testament rabbis never knew about this story. It really was a prophecy after all. Not one the prophet uttered, but one he acted out! Just like the priests in the temple acted out the crucifixion every time they sacrificed another lamb – Jesus would later explain in Matthew 12:40 that Jonah was acting out a prophecy of Christ’s RESURRECTION!

Another unusual thing about Jonah is that his sermon was not to a JEWISH audience. It was to a crowd of Assyrians. Now it’s true that other prophets sometimes included messages to other nations besides Israel, but they predominantly preached to Israel. And any messages they had for other nations were preached within the safe confines of Israel’s borders and allowed to find their way to the people of other lands by word of mouth. Daniel is really the only other prophet who preached in a foreign land to foreigners, but then, he lived in that foreign land.

Jonah, however, is the only Jewish prophet who was called upon to travel to a foreign power and deliver God’s message of doom to them in person. And he balked at it, and people have criticized him for balking at it ever since.

But the truth is, Jonah shouldn’t have been the only prophet in all the nation’s history to go as a missionary to a foreign land and preach about God’s judgment to them. The Jews were God’s CHOSEN PEOPLE to, among other things, show the glory and praises of God to all nations of the world.

Throughout the Old Testament, Israel was commanded to tell all the other nations around them about God and His message of salvation. They were repeatedly given such commands as Psalm 96:3, Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people.

Or I Chronicles 16:23-24: Sing unto the LORD, all the earth; shew forth from day to day his salvation. Declare his glory among the heathen; his marvelous works among all nations.

Or Psalm 18:49, Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and sing praises unto thy name.

Or Isaiah 43:21, This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise. Over and over Israel was commanded to be a missionary nation, declaring the glory and praise of God to the world.

And how did they do as missionaries to the world? For the most part, about like Jonah!

Jonah is remembered as the reluctant prophet – so reluctant that it took a whale ride to get his attention and put him on track with what God wanted him to do.

We often give Jonah a hard time for being so callous to the Gentiles that he didn’t even want to share the gospel with them. But the truth is, his attitude wasn’t all that different from any of his contemporaries. Jonah was pretty representative of his entire nation. So if anyone ever wonders, why didn’t God just send a more willing messenger – well, there’s your answer. Jonah, reluctant as he was, was still about as willing a messenger as God Himself was going to find in Israel!