Why Is Jonah In The Bible?

"When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD."

God heard his prayer and commanded the fish to vomit him up on the shore.

And again, the word of the Lord came to Jonah telling him to go to Nineveh. And guess what – Jonah obeyed the command of the Lord and went to Nineveh.

Unfortunately, that’s where the knowledge of Jonah stops for most people. I know when I was a little kid in SS, that’s pretty much the story I would have told.

Jonah said no. God made him get eaten by a fish. Fish spit him out. Jonah did what God told him to do.

Our text today tells what Jonah did when he got to Nineveh.

......And, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Jonah preached one of the shortest sermons in the history of mankind. He said: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”

Now, an important thing to note is that Jonah didn’t even make it all the way into the heart of the city. Nineveh was a big city. It took three days to walk from one end to the other. Jonah went in and on the first day, he delivered his sermon, the Word of God. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”

It was short, but you know what? It worked! The entire city believed him. Or maybe we should say…they believed God. The people started fasting. They put on sackcloth. And when the King heard about the message, he sent out a royal decree. Everyone, from the greatest to the least, was to fast. And they were all to put on sackcloth…even the animals. I can’t imagine trying to put sackcloth on Toby. (my dog) And they were also told to give up their evil ways.

Now, there’s a little more to the story, but I’m going to save that for the end of the sermon.

There’s still that looming question out there. Why? Why is this story in the Bible?

I’d like to take just a few minutes and look at it from 3 different viewpoints.

A personal viewpoint. A Christological viewpoint. And from God’s viewpoint.

First, a personal viewpoint.

When I say personal viewpoint, I don’t mean mine…or just mine. I’m going to relate a little personal story, but I believe that everyone who hears this message can relate to it in his or her own personal way.

From a personal viewpoint, I think we can look at how we react to the call of God.

Many of you know my story. I was called by God to be a preacher. And I don’t mean when I was called here to SOS. I was called when I was in college. My former pastor asked me if I ever thought of going to the Seminary. I was honest. I said “NO!” But he didn’t give up. He started to tutor me. He taught me about liturgy. He taught me about Scripture. He taught me about theology and doctrine. And when the time came for me to answer the call and go to the Sem, I ran.

No, I didn’t jump on a boat, I just decided that there were other things that I wanted to do with my life, so I pursued the world of high finance and big corporations. And I’m not going to say I wasn’t successful. I was. But there was always a nagging feeling in the back of my head that I wasn’t really doing what God had intended. So, several years later, I decided to answer the call. I made application to the Sem, got myself all ready to go…and when the time came, I ran again. I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say, I was getting pretty good at this running thing.