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The Great Commission

August 14, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

The text known as ‘The Great Commission’ is probably one of the most well known texts in the Bible, but it is also the one least followed by most believers in Christ. I want to take us back to that text this morning and challenge us to consider its implications for us as children of God.

Matthew 28:18 – 20.

‘Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”’

This text of Scripture carries for us a commandment of primary importance. Matthew puts it at the end of his Gospel probably to make it unforgettable as the last thing we hear from the lips of Jesus before His ascension. It is really one commandment or commission but I want to divide it into segments for us so that we may grasp the significance of each phrase. I have divided it into four commandments and a promise.

The first commandment is:

1. Go.

Here were the disciples of Christ, eleven of them since Judas was no more one of them. Some of them were still doubtful about the Resurrection even though they had seen him on several occasions. But here they were, on top of a mountain, away from the crowds that followed him; away from the common people, in their seclusion with Christ. And they worshiped him. It was a special moment in their lives, a moment of grace. Christ was with them, alone and real in all His risen glory. They could see Him, touch Him, hear Him and they worshiped Him. And His first word to them was ‘Go.’ What does it mean?

A. They could not accomplish their chosen task in the seclusion of worship and fellowship.

If they were going to follow the call of Jesus to become fishers of men they were going to have to leave the mountain top of worship and fellowship and go where the people were.
Now there was nothing wrong with this time of worship and fellowship on the mountain. It was necessary and it was good but there is one thing it was not designed to be. It was not designed to be a place of evangelism. It was to be a place of worship and instruction.
Here is my point. Coming together in a place of worship was not designed to be a place of evangelism. Coming to church was designed to be a place of worship and fellowship. We are called together to worship Christ, to be touched by Him, to be lifted up by Him to be instructed by Him. For some of us that can be a mountain top experience. And some evangelism will happen there. Notice I say ‘happen.’ Unbelievers who come among us will also feel and sense the presence of Christ and be drawn to Him. Praise God for that. But that is not why we are here. We are here to meet with Him and worship Him and be taught by Him.
But the commandment of Jesus to us is to ‘go.’ We cannot accomplish the task in this place. We cannot accomplish the task if we stay on the mountain top. We cannot accomplish the task if we stay in our Jerusalem. We cannot accomplish the task if we confine ourselves to our homes and the homes of our Christian friends. We have to ‘go’ where people are and bring the message to them where they are. And that is not easy in these days when everyone thinks religion is alright and every opinion is to be respected and tolerated, but it can be done. We are called upon to ‘go.’

Here is the second part of this commission.

2. Make Disciples of all Nations.

We have been given the task of making disciples of all nations. This has many implications.

A. What is a disciple?

A disciple is one who is committed to learning and obeying the teachings of Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus are contained for us in the Four Gospels and expounded by Paul and others in the rest of the New Testament. Discipleship is not merely professing faith in Jesus Christ and attending Church. It is far more than that. We have to learn what Jesus is all about.

B. How do we make disciples?

We tell them about Jesus Christ. Some of us who are evangelists proclaim it in the act of preaching, but the tasks is not ours alone. It is the task of all believers to share their faith, or to use a New Testament phrase, to ‘gossip the Gospel’ (Acts 8:4).
C. This is a joint effort. Evangelists do it. Missionaries do it. Pastors do it. Christian lay people do it. It is a commission to every single one of us who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ. And part of the problem with carrying out this commission today is that the majority of Christian lay people refuse to become directly involved in the mission thinking that this is what we pay the Pastor to do and this is why we support missionaries overseas and evangelists at home. That is not the teaching of Christ. The teaching of Christ is that we are all to be involved in the sharing of our faith and doing whatever we can to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ.

This brings us to the third part of this commission.

3. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

A. The Sequence.

Please note the sequence of things here. First you are to make them disciples, which is to say, we are to bring them to have faith in Jesus Christ. That is primary. But following that we are also to baptize them.

B. The Mode.

The word ‘baptize’ comes directly from the Greek baptidzo. It means ‘to dip or immerse.’ It was the word often used of the dyeing of cloth when the cloth was dipped in the dye. Christians were not the only group of religious people who used it. Many others did but the form was always the same – to dip or immerse.

C. The Meaning.

In the New Testament baptism was a public confession of faith that one had accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of their and therefore was dead to the old life of sin and risen to a new life of forgiveness and faith – example Acts 16:29 – 33; Romans 6:4. Christian baptism is about living out our relationship with God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and it is the first act of obedience a new believer in Christ is asked to do.

4. Teach the obey everything I have commanded you.

Before we look at this part of the commission look back for a moment at how Jesus introduced the statement. He said in verse 18, ‘’All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” Now why did He say that? What was the purpose of that little prelude or introduction to the Great Commission? Jesus is saying that He has legal and constitutional authority over the universe and therefore over planet Earth and therefore over all nations and peoples on the face of the Earth. If people are to become disciples of Jesus Christ they need to know this. They need to understand that He is absolute sovereign, that He is Lord of all creation, and that becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ means that you and I recognize his absolute and complete lordship over all we are.
Now there are many places in scripture where this is taught – see Daniel 7:13 – 14; Psalm 2:8, Philippians 2:9 – 11. The teaching here is very straightforward – ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’ When people are therefore invited to become disciples of Jesus Christ, they are never invited to ‘accept Him as their personal saviour,’ as we sometimes hear it phrased. They are actually invited to receive Him as their Lord and in receiving Him as their Lord He first of all saves them and then He goes on to lead them.
Some of you will question my theology at this point so let me point you to some of the great New Testament invitations to salvation – see Romans 10:9 – 10 & v.13; Acts 16:31; Colossians 2:6. That is the invitation, that in coming to Jesus Christ for salvation we bow to recognize and accept His lordship.
But this is also important for a second reason. In leading people to faith in Christ we are to teach them to obey the teachings and the example of Christ. A Christian’s life, the life of discipleship, is to be marked by obedience to Christ. Disciples are to learn and follow the ways of Christ. If we think of Jesus Christ as anything less than absolute lord of our lives we are probably going to take the human way and self-centered way out when we face difficult choices in life.
We read in Mark 10 the story of the Rich Young Ruler who came to Jesus seeking salvation – Mark 10:17 – 22. The young man desperately wanted eternal life, salvation. Jesus told him to go and sell everything he had and give it to the poor and to come and follow Him. And at this point we read these word – ‘He went away sad because he had great wealth.’ He wanted eternal life but when faced with the choice he would not bow to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
I’ve known people like that, people who would not bow to Jesus because of wealth, or because of family, or because or religious tradition, or because of some other pleasure in life which they realized was wrong. And like the rich young ruler they walked away from Jesus.
Jesus was very clear about entrance into His kingdom. He told His disciples, ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of Father in heaven.’ And you cannot do what you don’t know and what you don’t understand. Disciples must learn to obey everything that Jesus has commanded.

Now then, attached to these four phrases in the Great Commission, is this promise.

5. I am with you always.

I believe it was John Wesley who with his last breath before he died, said, “Best of all, God is with us.” Jesus was named by the angel ‘Emmanuel, God with us.’ Why is it important that you and I know that Jesus, the Lord of creation, is with us as we carry out this commission?

A. Because we cannot accomplish this task without His resources.

The task that Jesus has given to us is far greater than any of us can ever handle, but He is with us to gift us and empower us and help us all the way. Remember the Rich Young Ruler we just talked about? When that young man heard the demands of Jesus he was not the only one who was shocked. The disciples were as well. In fact as the young man was leaving they said to themselves, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus heard and answered, “With man this is impossible but not with God; all things are possible with God.” We should not be afraid or ashamed to share our faith in Jesus Christ because Jesus is with us to help us all the way.

B. Jesus has given us three great resources to aid us.

He has given us His Holy Spirit, His word, and Prayer. The word and the Spirit work hand in hand. We speak the word and the Holy Spirit uses the word. But the Holy Spirit uses the word in response to the prayers of God’s people. Isn’t that amazing? God chooses to bring people to faith in His Son Jesus Christ through the prayers of His people. That means that if we are to carry out this commission we must learn to pray for people.

C. We are to remember that we are following a living Christ.

We are not mere followers of some ancient Jewish rabbi who lived 2000 years ago, but followers of a living Christ whose presence and power is demonstrated daily in our lives.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Baptism, Christ's Teaching, Christian living, Daily Living, Great Commission

Jonah Part 8

July 12, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

God’s Abounding Love – Jonah 4:5 – 11.

Today we come to the final message on the book of Jonah. The last time we looked at the story Jonah was outside the city of Nineveh sitting in a makeshift shelter, sweltering from the heat and sulking. After first running away from God and refusing to proclaim His message, he finally gave in, went to Nineveh, preached the message and the whole city turned to God. But, instead of rejoicing at the conversion of the city, he was sulking.
Interestingly however, instead of punishing Jonah for his attitude, God comes to him and reasons with him. It was the Prophet Isaiah who penned these words, ‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord, and here we have the Lord coming to Jonah to reason with him.
But the book ends abruptly with a statement and a question. The question is not answered and we have no idea of what Jonah’s response was or what happened in his life following that confrontation. Jewish tradition has this to say about the end of the story, ‘in that hour Jonah fell on his face and said, “Govern your world according to the measure of mercy, as it is said, To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness.”
What are some of the lessons God would have us learn from this closing passage? I believe there are two main lessons. The first I call:

1. The Lesson of the Vine – v. 10.

The Lord said in essence,

“Jonah, you are concerned about material things but you are not concerned about people. Jonah, people matter to me.”

Jonah was more concerned about the vine that gave him shade than he was about the people who were saved in Nineveh.

Now there is nothing wrong with being concerned about material things. Things like money to pay the bills, food to eat, a house for shelter, medication to cure illnesses, transport to get from one place to another, are all important things. Some we have because we need them and some we have because we like them. They are important. But there must be balance in life. We are not just physical, material beings, we have a spiritual side as well. Sometimes, in fact, oftentimes, we spend so much time catering to the material that we forget or neglect the spiritual. Jesus asked his disciples this rhetorical question, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his souls?” (Matthew 16:26). Every day we come across people like that, people who are so occupied and preoccupied with accumulating material things and personal security that they forget to feed the soul and prepare it for life beyond the grave. Yet many of these people will tell you they believe they do have a soul which will live on in the next life.
The Lord also says to Jonah,

“Jonah, material things are gifts from me which you did not earn.”

God had caused a vine to grow up to provide shelter from the sun and the heat for Jonah, but Jonah thought this was something he earned, something he deserved. At last God was giving him his just reward. But he hadn’t earned it. God gave it freely to him and he did not receive it as a gift because he thought it was his due.
Now this may be hard for you to believe, but the gifts, the abilities and the knowledge you have are all gifts from God. You may say, but I worked hard for what I have, but none of that hard work would have accomplished anything without you having the gift in the first place.
Take for instance, the ability to make money. Where did that come from? Read Deuteronomy 8:17 – 18. It is a gift from God. Jesus once told His disciples, “Freely you have received, freely give,” (Matthew 10:8).

Here are three things you need to remember about gifts from God:

o Gifts have their source in the grace of God; you can’t earn them.

o Gifts are to be discovered, developed and dedicated to God, not hoarded and worshiped.

o Gifts are instruments to bring blessing to others, use them wisely.

So much then for the lessons from the Vine. Jonah also needed to learn:

2. The Lesson of Nineveh – v. 11.

The lesson of Nineveh was all about loving the lost. The Prophet was not pleased about God saving the people of the city of Nineveh, but God was pleased. Here was a group of people who would now be able to enter His kingdom. Jonah, on the other hand was more concerned about the vine when it dried up than about the people of Nineveh been saved from Hell.
Many years ago in a city where I lived, a woman went for a drive in a new car her husband had recently bought. Sometime after leaving home she called her husband. On the phone she told him, “I was in an accident.” He replied, “Is the car badly damaged?” “It’s a total write-off,” she said. “Well,” he said, “just call the insurance company and they’ll take care of everything. And call a taxi if you need a drive home.” “I can’t,” she said, “I am calling from the emergency room in the hospital.”
The story is not fictional. It happened and that marriage ended in divorce. Why? Because one man was more interested in material things than he was in people.
Nineveh had approximately 120,000 people. Ramara has 9,427. Brock county has 11,979. Mississauga has 700,00 and Toronto 2,400,000. Do they matter to God? Every last one does. The question is, ‘Do they matter to us?’

Jonah had his reasons why the people of Nineveh did not matter to him. Here they are:

 Prejudices

  • Jonah was prejudiced against the Ninevites for good reasons. They were wicked and they followed many wild pagan practices. They were especially wicked towards the Jews.

 Priorities

–Jonah had other priorities. Perhaps he wanted to spend his time teaching the people of Israel the word of God and warning them about the coming destruction of the nation. Perhaps he just wanted to be a pastor to the little flock in Gath-Hepher. He had his priorities. What are yours? What comes first in your life, the plans you made for yourself or the plans God has for you? What if God should put on your heart the desire to spend next Saturday cleaning up the neighbour’s yard, but your desire is to spend the day boating on the lake, which would come first? Get your priorities right.

 Principles

– One of the great principles of scripture is this, ‘God loves the world.’ He loves the world of people and He loves the material world, but people come first. If we claim to be children of God then we too must love the people around us and the people of the world.

Challenges:

 How easy to be consumed with the trivial.

For many Christians life is just a game of Trivial Pursuit. Avoid this attitude at all times.

 How easy to be guided by anger.

We sometimes become so angry over petty things like what songs we sing in church and what bread we use when we serve communion that we lose sight of our great calling, to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

 How easy to neglect those around us because of wicked prejudices or wrong priorities.

Get these things right in your life.

Jesus came to seek and save the lost and He hasn’t changed His mission yet.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: God's Love, Jonah

Jonah Part 7

July 8, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

Anger and Compassion – Jonah 4:4 – 8.

Let me begin today by pointing out three things about Jonah which we have looked at over the past number of weeks.

• Jonah is displeased and angry – 4:1.

• Jonah makes his complaint to God in a prayer – 4:2.

• Jonah makes a request of God – 4:3. He wants to die.

Now we come to verse 4 and God asks a simply question of Jonah, ‘Have you any right to be angry?’ He is really asking, ‘Jonah, is your anger justifiable?’ It is a good question. It is one we ought to ask ourselves when we get angry. Can we justify it? Have we really thought it through or are we just reacting to circumstances we don’t like?
Now we need to know that God is a God who often asks questions. In the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sinned and tried to hide from God, God came walking in the Garden and he asked these questions, ‘Adam, where are you? Who told you were naked? What have you done?’
When Cain, in an angry jealousy, killed his brother Able, God appeared to Him and asked, ‘Cain, where is your brother? What have you done?’
When Saul the King of Israel disobeyed God and took the spoils of war and offered sacrifice to God, God send the Prophet Samuel to ask Saul, ‘What have you done?’
When the Prophet Isaiah saw God in a vision in the Temple and fell on his knees in repentance, he heard God asking, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’
I point this out to us for this reason that our God is a God who is always asking question and part of the image of God in us is that we ask questions. We ask question in order to discover truth. We ask them of ourselves and we ask them of others. When we fail to ask questions we end up making assumptions and usually those assumptions are wrong. And yet we sometimes make important and life changing decisions based upon assumptions. If our God who knows all things is always asking questions how much more ought we to learn the art of asking in order to discover and learn. I will teach more on that at another time.
Now back to Jonah. The question God asked of Jonah was, ‘Do you have any reason to be angry?’ What did that question mean to Jonah?

1. First of all, it was a challenge from God for Jonah to judge who was right – God or Jonah.

Why is it important for Jonah to answer that question – who was right, God or Jonah? For this reason, both God and Jonah are looking at the same situation and the very same circumstances, but seeing it from two different perspectives. God, who is all seeing, sees it from the perspective of eternity while Jonah who is finite sees it from the limited perspective of time, geography and personal preferences.
Whenever God asks that kind of question you and I must always remember that God is right and we are being invited to reaffirm that truth to ourselves. God is always right. I’ve already quoted Isaiah 55:8 – 9 several times in these messages on Jonah. Here is another text for us to receive and rest upon – Romans 11:34 – 35, ‘Who has known the mind of the lord? Or who has been His Counsellor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from Him and through him and to him are all things. To Him be glory forever and ever! Amen!’
The question of who is right, God or me, is one we often face and when we face it we are often amazed to discover how much of Jonah is really in us. We need to settle the question once for all in our hearts and mind – God is always right. Paul states this very clearly in Romans 3:4, ‘Let God be true and every man a liar.’ When we receive that as settled truth in our hearts then we do not become frustrated and angry and depressed because God doesn’t do things we way we do them and doesn’t always answer prayer the way we want Him to answer it.

2. What was Jonah’s response to God? 4:5.

Jonah did not think through God’s question to him. Instead he went on sulking and became even angrier, so he leaves the city of Nineveh and somewhere outside the city limits he built for himself a small shelter. In doing so Jonah made three errors.

A. He abandoned his mission.

He gave up – he quit. God did not tell him to leave Nineveh. He did it all on his own. He was a prophet. His job was to stay and instruct the people, but he didn’t. He gave up.
One of the ways in which some people react when God doesn’t do what they want is that they give up. I have seen missionaries abandon their mission when God didn’t do what they asked. I have seen students quit school because they didn’t get the grades they asked God for. I’ve seen parents give up on their children because God didn’t lead them into the career they wanted for them. I have seen couples give up on their marriages because God hadn’t brought one spouse to faith. And it goes on and on. People, many of them good Christians, give up and throw in the towel because they couldn’t understand the ways and movements of God.
Listen carefully, I am not saying that we should never change courses in life or that there are not times when we have to walk away from thing. But when we are involved in doing something we know to be the will of God we don’t walk away from it. There may be serious difficulties with our circumstances but we need to find out from scripture through prayer what it is that God is asking of us and hold on to it for dear life.
The second error Jonah made was:

B. he built a private retreat.

He made a little shelter for himself. It was his way of saying, I am not going to become involved. God had used Jonah to bring grace to the city; surely there was some one in Nineveh who would have provided grace for Jonah in terms of a place to stay. But Jonah was not interested. Instead he built his own little private retreat outside the city and away from the people. Could it be that Jonah still secretly despised the people of Nineveh?
The danger and the direction that I have seen in many Evangelical churches including those I’ve pastured is this, that the church becomes a place of retreat. We use it to hide away from our neighbours and from our community. We are called upon, as Christians, to be involved with people and things which are happening in our community. It’s important to get into our schools and join some of the groups there which are working to improve the work of the school in the community – the PTA, Big Brothers, the Lunch Program and so on. It’s important to get into other organizations in the community and help – the Chamber of Commerce, the Lion’s club, the Library, etc. You could join the Coffee Club at Coffee Time at 10:30 in the mornings and be a Christian presence there. You can be the Christian presence there that will make a difference in whether or not people ever see Christ alive in others. Do use your attendance at worship on Sunday morning as an escape from rubbing elbow with the world. We need to out there with the world. We are a part of that world and we become the presence of Jesus to them.
The third error that Jonah made was this:

C. Jonah became a spectator.

In the beginning of the crusade he was at the very centre and all eyes were on him. Now he is on the outside looking in. Christians can become that way too. We sit at home, watch the news, read the newspapers and we see all that is happening. If we like it we are happy. If we don’t we criticise. We are fans at a baseball game. We cheer when our side is winning and we complain when its losing, but we are never involved. We are spectators.
Here is a challenge. Think about it. Pray about it. Take action. Over the next week watch the news and read your local papers. Ask God to show you one thing that is happening in your community that is contributing positively to the people around you and then seek to be involved – just one thing. Commit yourself to being a presence for God in that group and see how God can use you.
We have looked at God’s challenge to Jonah as to who was right – Jonah or God; and we have looked at Jonah’s response. He simple walked away, quit his mission and built himself a private retreat where he became a spectator instead of a player. The last thing I want us to look at is:

3. God’s gracious Illustration to Jonah.

First of all God caused a ‘broad leafed plant to grow up over Jonah to give him shade from the sun. The RSV says it was ‘a castor plant.’ How appropriate! What Jonah needed was a dose of castor oil.
Whatever the plant was it made Jonah very happy. Why? Because, at last, it seemed that God was doing something good for Jonah and not just for the people of Nineveh.
But the next day God caused a worm to chew and destroy the plant and to make things even worse the sun was hotter than ever that day, so hot that Jonah almost passed out. Again Jonah wanted to die.
Here is what’s happening. At first Jonah was angry at God for something huge, the conversion of a whole city. Now Jonah is angry at God for something small and petty, the withering of a tiny plant. And again God asks the question, ‘Jonah, do you have the right to be angry about the vine.’ Jonah answers honestly, “I do…I am angry enough to die.”
How much of Jonah is in us? Would you want to live your life in that way? Would you want to spend the rest of your life being angry over petty, insignificant things?
The application if far greater than that and we are going to take a final look at the book next Sunday, But for today consider these things:

• When you face questionable issues in your life, who is going to be right, you or God.

Are you prepared to trust God even when you don’t understand the why, when, how and what of the issue?

• How are you involved in your community today?

Is there something you can be doing to reach out to help and be the presence of Christ to people around you? Or are you going to spend your life just being a spectator?

• Are you a person who gets angry every time something doesn’t suit you?

Anger is energy and if energy isn’t channelled right it becomes wasted energy. Here’s my suggestion.

Turn your anger into positive energy by becoming involved in doing rather than merely reacting. Become Christ’s presence to a needy world.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Anger, Compassion, Jonah

Jonah Part 6

July 5, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

The Grace of God – Jonah 4:1 – 11.

‘There is an old Hasidic tale about a woman whose name was Anna Kebbitch. She was a complainer. All day long she complained:
“I have so little money, my clothes are like old rags.”
“My health is so bad, my back feels like the walls of Jericho.”
“I must walk so far to draw water, my feet are like watermelons.”
“My house is so small, I can barely move in it.”
“My children visit me so little that they hardly know me.”
One day, Anna Kebbitch woke up with an itch on her nose. All day long her nose itched. She went into town to visit the Rabbi. When the Rabbi saw Anna, he asked her, “How are you, Anna?”
Anna replied, “I have so little money, my clothes are like old rags, my health is so bad, my back feels like the walls of Jericho. I must walk so far to draw water, my feet are like watermelons. My house is so small, I can barely move in it. My children visit me so little that they hardly know me. And now I have this itch on my nose and it plagues me so. Tell me Rabbi, what does it mean?”
The Rabbi said, “Anna, your itch is the Kebbitch Itch – the ‘complainer’s itch,’ Its meaning is this: However you consider yourself, so shall it be.”
The next morning, Anna woke up and her nose was still itching. She could barely move. Her back had turned to stone like the walls of Jericho. When she looked about her she noticed that her house had shrunk until her arms stuck out the windows and her legs hung out the front door. She could not move in it. On the end of her legs were two large watermelons. Her clothes had turned to old rags. When her son and daughter came walking by, Anna called out to them, but they continued walking on, wagging their heads – they didn’t know her.
In despair Anna remembered the meaning of the Kebbitch Itch: However you consider yourself, so shall you be. What does this mean?
Anna began to think: You know, I do have money enough to live on and more. Henceforth, I will give out of my abundance to those who are not so well off. My health is not so bad. Actually, for someone my age, I feel quite well. I’m glad I have such a nice house to live in. It’s not large, but it’s comfortable and quite warm. I really don’t mind my walk to draw water. I love to smell the flowers along the path. And my children – I’m so proud that they have become independent and are now able to take care of themselves.
Miraculously, while Anna was saying all these things, her situation returned to normal – and her outlook on life changed forever. When the Rabbis tell Anna’s story, they end with this statement: May your noses itch forever.’

The Book of Jonah brings us the story of the Prophet Jonah, the reluctant prophet who ran away from the call of God to preach a very solemn message to the city of Nineveh.

What Jonah experienced as God came down and spoke to him is what every preacher would like to experience. Everyone of us would love for God to come down and tell us face to face where He wants us to go, to whom we should preach and what we should say, but that is not the normal experience of the preacher. Many times we have to struggle and as it were, wrestle with God in prayer to get His word for the upcoming Sunday. Not so with Jonah. The call came to him in a face to face encounter with God.
Now, if you follow the story carefully you will soon discover that it is not so much about Jonah as it is about God. What is it about His nature that God wants us to know and understand from this book? Jonah sums it up for us in 4:2, ‘I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love…’ That is a summary of what God wants us to know about Him in this book.

Three times in this book God demonstrated His grace and compassion:

Jonah 1:15, God showed grace and compassion to the sailors;
Jonah 2:2, God showed grace and compassion to Jonah;
Jonah 3:10, God showed grace and compassion to the Ninevites.
This is the picture you find throughout the book and it should be a cause for rejoicing, but it is not. Rather than rejoicing Jonah is angry. Jonah had seen the grace of God displayed in a most unusual way. He saw the kind of revival that you and I long to see today. He got a foretaste of Pentecost, yet he is angry. How can that be? Why is he angry? Why the contradiction?
Before I try to answer that question I want you to notice something unusual here. In 4:1 Jonah is angry. In 4:2 he prays. Is that what you normally do when you are angry? Of course not. Usually we want to stand up and fight back. Jonah, of course, knows that you don’t fight with god. There is just no chance of winning. So Jonah did what we all need to do when we get angry – pray. Talk to God about it and get your answers from him.
Now then, what was the problem with Jonah?

1. Jonah had obeyed God by doing what God wanted him to do, but God had not done what Jonah wanted God to do.

Jonah had come to the conclusion that if he obeyed God then God would automatically do what he desired and what he desired was that God would punish the Ninevites for their cruelty and wickedness against other nations. But God wasn’t about to do that, at least, not at this time. Jonah needed to learn what the prophet Isaiah had learned. In Isaiah 55:8 – 9 we read these words that God sent us through Isaiah: ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways’ declares the lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’
Jonah needed to learn that. Somehow he thought he had God figured out ant that God would act in a predictable way. He wanted God in a box, not a God who was sovereign and unpredictable.
It reminds me of an incident on the mission field many years ago when a missionary family ran out of money. They had been taught to trust God for their needs so they got together as a family and prayed that God would send them the money they needed for food and other things. Then, having prayed, they sat on the porch and waited in excitement for the postman to deliver the mail. The postman came but there was no mail from home and no money. Had god forgotten them? No, for to their surprise one of the native families from their little church brought them a basket of food from their garden which kept them until their regular support came a few days later from headquarters.
You and I must never put God in a box. God is not predictable. He is too creative to be predictable. He is always doing something new and breaking away from what we call the norm. Tennyson was right when he wrote,
‘The old order changeth and God fulfills Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’
Don’t ever think that God has let you down or forgotten you because He didn’t give you what you asked for.
The second thing Jonah tried to do was this:

2. Jonah tried to justify his anger, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of God.

He argues in 4:2 that this was the reason he didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place. In other words he is saying that he was right in the first place. He had a legitimate reason for running away. This is a complete turn around from when he was in the belly of the fish. In the belly of the fish he thought his life was over and he had no argument with God. God was right and he was wrong and God was justified in punishing him. That was his position. But now he says that he was right in the first place.
We see this over and over in so many human situations. Quite often, when things do not turn out the way we expected them to, we try to justify our disobedience. We decide that, if we obey God, this is what the appropriate outcome should be and when it doesn’t happen we are confused.
Here is what I have learned through the years. God has given to ever person coming into this world a beautiful gift. It is the gift of choice, free choice. It’s a gift we have until the day we die. It is a gift we all exercise within the boundaries of our human nature. But we don’t all exercise it alike and the result is often this, that one bad choice cancels out the result of a good choice.
We see this many times in our children. We bring them up according to the teaching of the word of God. We teach them values based on biblical principles and so on. But when they come of age they make their own choices and there is nothing we can do about except to pray. But God doesn’t take back the gift of choice because we pray and often they choose to do their own thing.
So, don’t get angry with God because thing haven’t worked out the way you expected them to. Rather learn to say with humility and brokenness, “Lord, not my will but thine be done.”
Now here is the third thing about Jonah’s response.

3. Jonah tries to turn God against God.

Jonah complains about God’s action by quoting God’s own words to him – Psalm 103:8, 86:5, 15, Exodus 34:6 – 7. So here is his argument, ‘God, here is what you have said over and over again, that you are merciful, kind, compassionate and forgiving; so why did you send me to Nineveh in the first place to preach doom and destruction when you knew full well that you were going to do the opposite?’ In other words Jonah is saying that he, Jonah is the consistent one, not God.
Now that is an awful prospect because we find some frightening parallels in the Bible. We find Satan in the Garden of Eden saying to Eve, “Did God really say that you should eat from that tree? Maybe he did because he knew you would become like him when you eat,” (my paraphrase). And the result was the fall into sin by the human race.
We find Satan in Matthew 4:6 quoting scripture to Jesus in the Temptation to persuade him to do his own thing apart from the Father’s will Fortunately Jesus didn’t fall for it.
And sometimes people will search the scriptures for all kinds of references to justify some action they want to take which is completely out of the orb of God’s will. As Christians we must learn the great principles of Scripture, most of which are repeated several times in different texts and we must be careful to read them in context and apply them properly to daily life. And we must avoid at all cost the temptation to turn biblical principles into legalistic rules for life.
Finally we find one frightening things happening to Jonah>

4. Jonah asked God to take his life – v.3.

Jonah had tried this before when he asked the sailors to throw him overboard – 1:12. But at that time he was in a state of disobedience and unhappy. Now, having obeyed God, he is still unhappy and would rather die.
Why? Is it possible that we can obey God while our heart is still unwilling and that our obedience is really no better than our disobedience? If God asks you to do something for him and you do it with a disobedience heart you are no better than the person who refuses to do it altogether. Its kind of like the little boy who was told by his mother to stand in the corner for half-an-hour because of his disobedience. He looked at his mother from the corner and said, “I might be standing up on the outside but I am sitting down on the inside.” Unwilling obedience is still disobedience.
Here is another question for you. Is it possible that we can experience the overwhelming power and blessing of God and yet long to be somewhere else – or better, nowhere? That is precisely what Jonah felt. God had blessed his ministry in a mighty way in the city of Nineveh. At no time in Palestine did he ever have that many converts. Nevertheless Jonah didn’t want to be there.

Closing: In closing let me try and sum up what I’ve been trying to teach this morning.

• Don’t put God in a box. Don’t expect that because you have obeyed God you can make demands of Him. He knows what is best for you and you need to recognize that and rest in it.

• It is never right to be angry with God. God does what he does because he sees the beginning from the end. We only see a small segment of life but He sees everything, therefore only He knows what is right.

• Be careful not to turn principles of faith into legal rules for life. Learn to work out those principles in a practical way for yourself without forcing them on others.

• Learn to obey God with a willing heart. You can only do this when you know deep down in your heart that all things work together for good to those who love god and are called according to His purpose.’

Jonah was not the first to give up on god and he won’t be the last, but God was not willing to give up on Jonah. God persevered with Jonah and Jonah found himself caught up between his own self-will and the perseverance of God. And the more he pushed against God’s strong hand, the more God pressed against him. And, in the end, God would make Jonah a symbol of His call upon your life and mine.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Compassion, God is not predictable, Grace of God, reluctant prophet

Jonah Part 5

July 5, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

Street preacher – Marks of Spiritual Awakening – Jonah 3:1 – 10.

Have you ever seen a street preacher? I have. In fact I started my ministry in the early 1960’s as a street preacher.
The Salvation Army also started its ministry by going to the streets and I can recall as a young boy attending many Salvation Army street meetings.
Jonah the prophet went from being a settled preacher in the town of Gath Hepher in Northern Palestine to a street preacher in the great city of Nineveh.
The city of Nineveh awoke one morning to find a Jewish preacher walking up and down its streets declaring, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” And the amazing thing was this that no one questioned the truth of his message. They accepted it immediately. Why?
Some have suggested that some Ninevites may have seen Jonah as he was vomited up on the shores by the great fish that had swallowed him, and had reported it to the people in the city, so they knew this was a miracle from God. Other suggests that the digestive acids in the belly of the fish had bleached Jonah’s skin to an albino white and this sight may have turned their hearts toward Jonah. Ultimately it was God who was at work behind the scenes carrying out His work of grace towards these needy people in that city. The people of the city gave a radical response to the message of Jonah such as was never again experienced in any place. How did this come about? We are going to look at two things this morning.

1. What happened to Jonah – 3:1 – 3a?

In chapter1we learned about the disobedience of Jonah. In chapter 2 we see the repentance and renewal of Jonah. Jonah had come to a place where he stopped running away from God and totally cast himself upon the mercy of God. As a result of this God brought him three things.

A. God brought him life out of death – 2:10.

By all accounts, living in the belly of a fish for three days was death. Everything happening there was like death itself – the darkness, the suffering both physical and mental, and the hopelessness all looked like death. And as far as Jonah was concerned God had banished him from His presence which is the worst aspect of death.
But then the fish vomited Jonah unto the beach and it was like resurrection. He could see the light again. The turbulence of his under water experience was over. He could again walk and talk and eat like a normal man. He was resurrected.
Jesus talked about it in Luke 11:30, “For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation.” And again in Matthew 12:40, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
The sign of Jonah was distinctly his resurrection from his watery grave to which God had consigned him. It told the people of Nineveh that God was very much alive and that what he had done for Jonah He would do for them.
To the Jews of Jesus’ day and to all of us today, the ‘sign of Jonah’ was reissued in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
But the story has an even greater application for us as believers in Jesus Christ today. If the world of people among whom we live is going to see Jesus Christ alive in us today, it will only happen as we too learn this principle of dying to self and living in the power of the risen Christ. You find this principle explained by Jesus Himself in John 12:24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Jesus says that if we are going bear fruit for Him, that is, if we are going to influence people to come to Christ and live for Christ, we have first got to learn to die to ourselves and put Christ first in everything. But this old self doesn’t want to die; it wants to please itself, get its own needs met, and do its own thing.
How do we die to ourselves? We have to come by faith to God’s throne of Grace, and place ourselves totally before the Lord and ask Him to take this old flesh, this thing that is always saying “Me first,” and crucify it, that is, put it to death and reckon it dead – Galatians 2:20. And when that happens the world will see and know men and women, young people and children, who are living in the power of the risen Christ.
God brought Jonah life out of death and:

B. God brought Jonah renewed Conviction of his Call – 3:1 – 2.

It appears that God was pleased with Jonah’s confession in chapter 2 and there was reconciliation. But there was more than that. The real proof that Jonah had come to the end of himself was not the words he spoke or even what he felt in his heart. The real proof was his willingness to follow his God in obedience.
And the real proof that you and I have died to ourselves is not what we say in our testimonies, or whether or not we speak in tongues and prophesy, but whether or not we are willing to obey God in everything.
But please notice, the word of the Lord came to Jonah ‘a second time.’ This call was not to test Jonah but was given as a token of the love and grace of God upon His life. God says, as it were, to Jonah, “Jonah, I am still willing to trust you again, even though you have rebelled and ran away from me; I want you to know that I forgive you and I will restore you and use you if you are completed submitted to me.”
As I said last Sunday, Nineveh had not changed but Jonah had. He was not just willing to obey God. He was willing to die for God.
I don’t think there is any greater joy in the Christian life than to have God bring us back from the edge of defeat and failure and renew us and use us again in His service.

So much then for what happened to Jonah. Let us now look at:

2. What Happened to Nineveh – 3:3 – 10?

Here we see an entire city turning to faith in God. But how did it all happen? What were the underlying principles that brought about this response?

A. There was the spoken word – 3:4 – 5.

Jonah spoke the word and ‘they believed God.’ Even though they worshipped many idols which they called gods, yet they believed this to be the word of the one true and living God.
But did you notice the principle in verses 4 & 5. In verse 4 they heard Jonah and in verse 5 they believed God. You know it doesn’t really mater whether or not you believe me; what matters is do you believe the word of God? And if the word that I speak in this gathering is truly the word of the living God, then this is all that matters, that you believe it to be God’s word to you.
Here are some words from God – Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9 – 10. Do you believe them to be the word of God? Then act upon them.

B. There was Inward Conviction – 3:5b.

They were deeply convicted about their past life of wickedness; they felt sorrow for what they had done and they were desperate to turn from it. So they called a fast to pray and demonstrate their feelings to God.
We see very little of this kind of reaction to the Word of God today and yet, this is really what we need most. Christians and non-Christians alike need to experience the convicting power of the Word of God borne to us by the Spirit of God and we need to feel deep conviction.

C. There was Outward Repentance – 3:6ff.

The repentance was led by the king himself.

(1) He heard the word – Romans 10:14 – 17.

(2) He arose from his throne – he did not use his position as king to excuse himself from responding.

(3) He laid aside his robe – the outward symbol of his glory. We cannot flaunt our glory before the living God.

(4) He covered himself with sackcloth and ashes – this was admitting his bankruptcy.

(5) He fasted – he was desperate for help.

(6) He called upon God – this was expressing faith.

Closing:

In the sovereign purposes of God there was a revival in Nineveh, and the instrument of that revival was the man Jonah. He was very much a man like you and me – he was not perfect in his obedience to God. Like you and me he had elements of remaining sin in his life, sin that clung tightly to him.
But something happened to Jonah. Jonah died to himself and out of that self-death God raised up a new man, a man short of compassion but full of power, and used him to turn Nineveh upside down for God.
We, that is, you and I, stand in need of such a revival today. All of these little towns and villages along the Talbot River need a revival such as we saw in Nineveh. And I can see very little hope for these places if God doesn’t move in a very special way among them.
But before God will move among them He has to move among us bringing us to the end of ourselves, renewing our first love within us and giving us a heart for people. He has to move among us and make us a people of prayer and a people of compassion.
Revival comes when the church is awakened to the needs of men and women who do not know the Lord. Would you take a moment to reflect upon your own heart? Do you have any passion at all for the lost? Do you have any concern for the lost position of men and women? Are you praying for unbelievers? And do you pray for the Jonah’s who travel the world sharing the faith of Jesus Christ with others?

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Jonah, Renewal, spiritual awakening, street preacher

May 30 – Jonah Part 4 – Steps to Spiritual Renewal

June 9, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

Steps to Spiritual Renewal –Jonah chapter 2.

Several years ago Ruby and I were visiting relative in Whitby, Ontario when one of my nephews introduced me to a new computer game called ‘Flight Simulator.’ In this simulated air flight you chose an airplane and you could fly it to any of over 200 major airports in the world.
While the airplane was something he built for himself from supplies in the program, the airports were actually pictures of the real airports taken vial satellite and downloaded each day into the program.
When asked what airline I’d like to go by I naturally said ‘Air Canada.’ When asked where I would like to go, I naturally said Jamaica. So off we went flying an Air Canada plane into Jamaica. As we approached the airport he focused in on a nearby beach where a new hotel was being built. He pointed out a huge crane parked close to the unfinished building and said, “That wasn’t there yesterday.”
After landing at Kingston airport we decided to fly to Montego Bay and he chose a route that took the plane right over the house where Ruby grew up as a child. We could see the house clearly and all the familiar things we knew over the years Ruby and I had gone back there.
Finally we got to Montego Bay and he had to bring the plane down low over the sea to get to the runway. As he was coming in to land the wheels caught a low fence which could hardly be seen in the pictures and the plane tipped over and crashed on the landing strip. There were plane parts all over the airfield and a fire burning on the fusillade.
My nephew looked and me and said, “Don’t worry Uncle, it will put itself back together and we can start all over again.”

Don’t you wish life was like that? Don’t you wish that when life comes crashing down for us all we had to do was click the ‘Start Over’ button and life would somehow gather up all the pieces, put them back together and start over afresh.
But the truth is, life doesn’t work that way. We can’t put it back together for ourselves, so what can we do? We can call out to the One who can do it. As Christians we all have a ‘Start Over’ button and when we go to Him He is the One who picks up the pieces and with amazing wisdom and skill He puts us back together and back on the flight.
Over the last three weeks we have been looking at the life of a man named Jonah. Jonah was on a flight but it was a flight away from God – Chapter 1:3 – Jonah ran from the presence of the Lord. But Jonah didn’t get far when his world came crashing down around him. He found himself a passage by ship to Tarshish but he never made it. A storm at sea threatened to destroy the ship and the only way the sailors could save the ship and themselves was to throw Jonah overboard with everything else they threw out of the ship.
Jonah expected to die, perhaps by drowning, but he was even more shocked when he was swallowed up alive by a large fish. Instead of dying immediately he found himself been burned and bleached by the digestive acids in the stomach of the fish and living in total darkness. For three days he waited for death but death never came and finally it occurred to him that it was the Lord’s doing. It was the nearest thing to Hell that a man could ever experience in life.
Finally Jonah did the only sensible thing left for him to do. He cried out to God for help and God began to take pick up the pieces and put him back on the right path.
What I want us to observe today are the steps that Jonah took to get back on the right path, for you see, when life crashes around us, even though we have no power to put ourselves back together, we have a responsibility to do certain things to get the ear of the Sovereign God who does have the power to do so. Jonah took those steps and you and I can too. So let’s look together at:

Steps to Spiritual Renewal.

1. Calling Upon the Lord – 2:2.

The very first thing that Jonah does here is to call upon the Lord – he prayed to his God. It is really a very simply principle that works for people everywhere whenever life falls apart for us – pray to the Lord. But we tend to forget it. We want a more complicated pathway, something in which we have the major part and God is just there to give us a little extra push when we need it. There are two things I want us to notice in these two verses.

A. Notice the difference between a person ‘in grace’ and a person ‘outside of grace.’

By that I mean a person who has a relationship to God and one who doesn’t. Jonah had a relationship with God. He knew God and understood the heart and mind of God. But he allowed his fears to drive him away from God and from the will of God. So, when God stops Jonah in his wrong pathway and makes a fish swallow him alive, Jonah does not complain to God or curse God. Jonah humbles himself and calls to the Lord.
A person who knows God through Jesus Christ wants to call upon God when he is in trouble. A person who doesn’t know God complains about how God isn’t doing anything to help him in trouble.

B. Note, the first basic step for finding spiritual renewal is calling upon God.

James writes about this in James 5:13, ‘Is any of you in trouble? He should pray…’ This is what Jonah did. He was in trouble and he prayed. He could have given up and simple stayed there and die, but he knew that death would not end it all. He did what he knew to be right – he prayed.

2. Coming to the Throne of Grace – 2:3 – 4.

Whenever we come to seek God’s help out of trouble it is to a Throne of Grace we come. Hebrews 4:16 says, ‘Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in times of need.’ Jonah may not have had that verse in his time but he understood the principle. It is not to the Cross that we go for the Cross is in the past. It is to the throne where Jesus Christ is alive and reigning as the Lamb and from which all the benefits of the Cross are dispensed.
Now Jonah gives us some clues as to how we should come.

A. Recognize the real cause of the problem.

In Jonah’s case the real cause was his running away from God. This situation was not the sailor’s fault or the misfortune of falling in a spot where a big hungry fish just happened to be swimming. It wasn’t a case of the wrong man in the wrong place. Jonah recognized the hand of God and he admitted it. And there are times in the lives of Christians who are disobeying God when He will allow misfortune to overtake us and we need to recognize His hand at work. In fact, in every difficult situation we need to ask ourselves, ‘What is God trying to teach me here?’ Sometimes we have to ask that question of God Himself, “God, what are you trying to tell me?” Find out the primary cause of a problem.

B. Be concerned not just about the physical problems but about the spiritual.

In one sense Jonah was concerned about the physical. He has been ‘hurled into the deep’ and currents are swirling around him. That certainly is cause for concern. But his concern goes far beyond that. It is spiritual in nature for, note in verse 4, he felt he had been banished from the sight of God. That was of far more importance and significance to Jonah for, while he may not be able to escape the raging sea, he can do something about his banishment. What can he do?

C. Look to the place of Redemption

– v.4. Back there in Jerusalem was a Temple and in that place was a sacrificial altar where lambs were slain for the forgiveness of sin. He would not be able to tell what direction Jerusalem was in but he would look with the eyes of faith to that Temple and the place of sacrifice, the place of redemption. And when you and i find ourselves in that place where life crashes for us and the waters of distress and trials are swirling around us, there is a place and a person we can look to by faith. That place is the throne of God and that person is the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. And He can rescue and redeem us all at the same time.

In the move towards spiritual renewal, step one is calling upon the Lord; step two is coming to the throne of grace. Step three is:

3. Comprehending the Goodness of God – 2:5 – 7.

Jonah had been in the belly of the fish for three days. During that time he was in total darkness. He had time to reflect upon this terrifying experience and here is what he found:
4a. His sin banished him from God’s eyes;
7b. His God brought him in – ‘my prayer rose up to you…’
6a. His sin cast him down…
6b. His God brought him up…
Jonah had stopped running and now he is thinking and reflecting on what is really true about God. And he is discovering that every bad thing that has ever happened to him was his own fault and every good thing came from God.
It’s always that way with us, isn’t it? What has God ever done us that we should run away from Him? Yet the Bible says, ‘All we like sheep have gone away. We have turned everyone to his own way,’ (Isaiah 53:6a). And when we accept that truth, that is when we begin to comprehend how much God loves us and how much He has done for us. We must comprehend the goodness of God.
And finally, step four.

4. Consecrating yourself to the Will of God – 2:8 – 9.

You will notice two things about Jonah’s thinking here.

A. He is beginning to think with Compassion again

–v.8. He begins to see again the terrible plight of pagan and ungodly people. By turning to dumb idols reject the grace of God. What’s to become of them? If someone doesn’t share the message of grace with them they will die in their sins and face the pure judgment of God. Jonah was feeling a bit of this judgment himself and he didn’t want anyone else to experience this.
In the old days we used to speak of this as ‘a passion for souls.’ And we used to pray that God would give us a passion for souls. A passion for souls was when you didn’t want to see anyone die in their sin and would do anything to see them place their faith in Jesus Christ. Sadly it is one of the lost experiences with this generation of Christians.

B. He Renews his Vows even though he thinks he is going to die –v.9

He thinks he is going to die but, with whatever time he had left, he would renew his vows to God. In him prayer he says, as it were, ‘Lord, if I ever get out of this I will worship you, sacrifice to you, and fulfill the vows I have made to you.
And then he says this, ‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ It was not the right of Jonah to pick and choose who receives salvation. It was only his privilege to proclaim it. And it is not your right or mine to pick and choose who should receive this great salvation. It is our privilege to take it into all the world.

Closing:

I prepared this message for those of us who have found ourselves running away from God or perhaps have lost our passion for the things of God. It was never meant to be an easy message, but it was meant to invite you to come and renew your spiritual passion. The steps that Jonah took are the same steps you and I need to take towards renewal. But like Jonah you may discover this:

a. Jonah’s circumstances had not changed but he had.

He was still in the belly of the fish but he was no longer running from God. He was home – home in the will of God.

b. If there was grace for the pagans of Jonah’s time, then there was grace enough for Jonah as well.

He looked to the place of redemption and found renewal. And you and I can discover spiritual renewal in the grace of God today.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Attitude Change, Compassion, Grace, Jonah, Redemption, Renewal

May 23, 2010 Jonah 3 – Man Overboard

May 26, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

Man Overboard – Jonah 1:11 – 2:4.

‘A few centuries before Christ, Alexander the Great conquered almost all of the known world with his military strength, cleverness, and diplomacy. One day Alexander and a small company of soldiers approached a strongly defended, walled city. Alexander, standing outside the walls, raised his voice, demanding to see the king. The king, approaching the battlements above the invading army, agreed to hear Alexander’s demands.
“Surrender to me immediately,” commanded Alexander.
The king laughed. “Why should I surrender to you? He called down. “We have you far outnumbered. You are no threat to us!”
Alexander was ready to answer the challenge. “Allow me to demonstrate why you should surrender,” he replied. Alexander ordered his men to line up in a single file and start marching. He marched them straight toward a sheer cliff that dropped hundreds of feet to the rocks below.
The king and his soldiers watched in shocked disbelief as, one by one, Alexander’s soldiers marched without hesitation right off the cliff to their deaths. After ten soldiers had died, Alexander ordered the rest of his men to stop and return to his side.
The king and his soldiers surrendered on the spot to Alexander the Great.’
(From ‘Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks.’)
The king realized that nothing would stop the eventual victory of men actual willing to give their lives for their leader. The problem with Jonah the Prophet was this that he was not willing to give his life for the God he served. Instead he ran away from God. But God was not about to let him off the hook anymore than he is going to let you and I go our own way when we disobey Him and try to run away from Him.
As we review the story of Jonah this week you will need to remind yourself about three things resulting from Jonah’s disobedience.

The path of disobedience always leads downward.

Notice what happens to Jonah once he decides to disobey God. He goes down to Joppa (v.3). Then he finds and ship and heads out for Tarshish. Then we find him down below deck (v.5). But what happened next was something Jonah hadn’t counted on. You find it in verse 15 and 17. Jonah is down in the sea and down in the belly of a fish. I could give you several examples of young men and women who deliberately disobeyed God and ended up spiralling downward. Some ended up in jail; some ended up in poverty; some ended up in relationships which left them in a lifelong abusive situation; and some in addiction. Always the spiral was ‘down.’

The comfort of disobedience is only temporary.

For a while Jonah felt good. He was sure he had gotten away from God and even when a bad storm raged at sea Jonah didn’t even notice. Everyone else was in a panic but not Jonah. What was he doing? He was sound asleep – v. 5. But then, just as fast as he fell asleep he was awakened to disaster. The ship was about to sink. Jonah never saw it coming. That again is the way of disobedience. As one man said to me, “I knew it was wrong. I was away from home and my family and I had a one night stand. I didn’t think I would get aids.” Another said, “I didn’t think she would get pregnant and now I’m stuck with a loveless marriage.” The comfort of disobedience is only temporary.

The recognition of disobedience brings grace.

Look at Jonah’s confession in verse 12. He admits his disobedience but he doesn’t admit it to God. He admits it to the sailors. He is hoping they will throw him into the sea and end it all for him. It is not a full confession but it was the start and it was enough for God to turn to him in grace – v. 17. Note the words ‘God provided a great fish…’ That was the first sign of God’s grace at work. God could not forget Jonah because he ran away from him, anymore than you and I could forget our children who disobey us.

Well now, let’s get to the meat of the study for today. Here is the question I want to try and answer in this study:

How did God’s Grace work itself out in Jonah’s life?

The answer to that lies in the response of Jonah to this rather precarious situation in which he finds himself. He is in the belly of huge fish, probably been burned by all the stomach acids found in that fish and suffering from the worst sea-sickness a person could ever experience. How did he respond?

1. He Accepted with Reservation the Consequences of his Actions – v. 12.

A. He Admits his guilt.

In fact he does so first to the sailors and then, from inside the fish, to God. Look at 2:2 – ‘You hurled me into the deep into the very heart of the seas.’ Chapter 2 is the picture of a man repenting. We will take a closer look at that next week. But there is Jonah and he is admitting that he caused his own demise and God punished him.
We live in a time when people do not want to accept that God does meet out punishment to the disobedient. But the Bible is full of illustrations in which God punished those who were deliberately disobedient to Him. In the Old Testament we have the story of David who committed adultery and in the New Testament we have the story of Ananias and Saphirra, a husband and wife who lied to God. This is a biblical principle which hold true for us today as it did for them then and we need to be aware of it.

B. He Places himself in the hands of the sailors – v.12.

He thought by doing so he could get away from God, but it was the wrong thing to do. The punishment of man never reduces the punishment of God. I sometimes hear people say, “I’ve accepted my punishment and done my time. Why doesn’t God leave me alone?’ Unfortunately that is not the way it works. God does not accept the punishment of men as the price for our disobedience. Only when we turn to the grace of Christ can we find forgiveness from God.

C. He does not complain or try to bargain with God.

He knows he is guilty and that he has no defence at all. We sometimes complain to others, “Why is God doing this to me?’ Well, if it is God who is doing it, it is because we deserve it. Sometime we try to bargain with God. We say, “God, if you’ll get me out of this situation this is what I’ll do for you,” but God is not asking us to decide what is to be done for Him. He is asking us to obey. It is not the big things we want to do that counts before God, but the little things he calls us to do – little things like loving our spouses, teaching and training our children in godliness, respecting our neighbours, helping the poor, and so on.

2. He Affirms God’s Grace towards the Pagans – 1:12b.

A. He still believed in God’s grace.

He said that if they threw him into the sea it would become calm again. That was an affirmation of the grace of God toward people who did not even believe in Him. They worshipped their own gods but that didn’t mean that the true and living God didn’t care for them. Of course He does and He always will. That is why He calls missionaries and send them overseas. We do well to support those who take the Gospel and the love of Jesus to people in other countries. Whether they appreciate it or not is not the motive for supporting missionaries. The motive is the grace and the love of God.

B. He felt no grace toward himself.

I find this to be interesting because we see the same thing today. We sometimes see the Church willing to receive and accept anyone from the outside who comes confessing sin and professing faith in Christ, but at the same time it can be harsh to the faithful who fall into sin. We need to learn again what the Prodigal’s father taught his two sons, that grace is for those who stray and for those who remain mostly faithful. It’s for all people and all are invited to receive it.

C. He Expected God to act in grace towards the Pagans.

He said very definitely that the sea would become calm again. You will discover later in the story that this was a real problem for Jonah. While he acknowledged God’s grace toward the pagans, he didn’t want it for Nineveh (4:2).Jonah thought that the Ninevites were so wicked that God should show them no grace. Jonah needed to learn that God’s grace is for all people and there is no one so wicked that he is beyond the reach of grace. Grace, the unmerited favour of God, is free to all who will gladly and humbly receive it.

3. He Admits his Distress of Soul – 2:1 – 4.

A. Note what he says about himself – 2:1 – 2.

Note how he piles phrase upon phrase – in my distress…I called for help..currents swirled around me…breakers swept over me…I have been banished. Clearly this is a man who is deeply convicted inside. He is in turmoil and riding the currents under water is not helping. He wanted to die and he should have died but here he was for three days living helplessly in the utter darkness of a fish’s belly. It brought him to his senses.

B. He began to see Sin as God sees Sin.

Sin is both an affront to the holiness of God as it is an offence against the Law of God. Jonah had done both. He had, as it were, shook his fist in the face of God and deliberately broke his law.

C. True Repentance begins when you and I see sin the way God see it – 1:3 – 4.

When that happens the only option left open to us is to cast ourselves upon the mercy of God and wait for His grace.

4. He Acknowledges the Anger of God and takes the blame – 2:3 – 4.

A. He sees himself as obnoxious to God.

He realizes that he had deeply offended God and God was justly angry with him. God is rightly angry with us when we know what is right and we go ahead and do what is wrong.

B. He does not question the right of God to punish him.

All he can say is that he deserves everything he had got and God was perfectly righteous in doing this to him. God, my friends, has the right to punish us when we sin. He doesn’t always do it, but it is His right.

C. He is not angry with God. He had no right to be.

Over and over again I hear people say, “God ahead and be angry with God; it okay to be.’ Well, I am here to tell you that this is not the biblical way. We have no right to be angry with God for anything. We can only be humble before Him and accept His wisdom in what He does. If we are angry with God it is because we don’t understand His perfect holiness and justice.

Closing:

In closing today, we see in Jonah a man who ran away from God but God did not run away from him and God did not let him get away with it. God goes after him and brings him to the end of himself and back into a place of usefulness.
And you who are listening or reading this message must learn this, that there is nothing to gain by running away from God. He loves you so much that he is not going to leave you alone. And what He really wants to do is to bring you back to a point of humility and obedience so that He can pour his

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Disobedience, Forgiveness, Grace, Jonah, Obedience, Running from God

May 16, 2010

May 18, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

Jonah 2.

# 2. ‘Preacher on the Run.’

Read- Jonah 1:3 – 12.

‘One of the worst train disasters in history occurred in the El Toro Tunnel in Leon, Spain, on January 3, 1944. Over five hundred people died.
The train was on of those long passenger trains with an engine on both ends. On this particular day, when the train went into the El Toro Tunnel, the engine on the front end stalled. When the engine stopped, the engineer on the back engine started up his engine to back the train out of the tunnel. At the same time, however, the front engineer managed to get the front engine started again and attempted to continue the journey. Neither engineer had any way of communicating with the other. Both engineers thought they simply needed more power. They continued to pull in both directions for several minutes. Hundreds of passengers on the train in the tunnel died of carbon monoxide poisoning because the train could not make up its mind which way to go.’
(From Hot Illustrations.)

Jonah the Prophet was like that engineer at the back of the train trying to take it in the opposite direction when he fled from the presence of God. Let’s take up the story where we left off the last time.

We have been looking at the story of Jonah the Prophet under the title ‘Forty Days to save a City.’ Forty days was the amount of time Jonah was give to preach the message to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria – Jonah 3:4.
In our study last week we saw Jonah as a ‘Man of Destiny,’ that is, a man whom God specially selected for a specific purpose in life; a man chosen for a mission to bring the message of God’s judgment to the city of Nineveh.
Like Jonah, we too have been called to a special purpose, a destiny. We are to bring the message of Jesus Christ to the doomed people of this world. But we too, like Jonah, find it difficult to break away from the safety and security of our comfortable congregations and move into the darkness and wickedness of the world around us and share the message of God’s love and mercy to them. Jonah has many applications to us. Today we are going to look at the ongoing story and what it says to us.

Chapter 1:3 begins with the statement, ‘But Jonah ran from the presence of the Lord.’

I think we can assume that Jonah was a man who was normally obedient to the Lord, but in this case he wasn’t. Somewhere in the experience of Jonah there was a place where Jonah would sense the presence of God and receive messages from God for his own life and for the people of Israel. That was the way in which Old Testament prophets functioned. Moses, for example, would feel God’s presence and hear Him speak whenever he entered the Tabernacle. Jonah had his place too.
On this particular occasion Jonah went to ‘his place’ and God spoke clearly and powerfully to Jonah, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its great wickedness has come before me.” And Jonah, instead of doing what God had commanded, ran from the presence of the Lord. Jonah is guilty of two sins here.

a. He refused to obey the word of the Lord, and

b. He rejected the presence of the Lord.

Unlike us today, Jonah did not have the Bible in his hand. There was no Bible to read except for some protected manuscripts of some Old Testament books kept in the Temple (when there was a Temple).

Where do we hear God today?

Technology has brought us the complete Bible in many ways today. For the last several hundred years since the Protestant Reformation the Bible has been the World’s Best Seller and continues to be. And if you and I want to truly hear the Word of God all we have to do is grab the book out of the library or bring it up on our computers, Ipods, Ipads, Iphones, etc., and read it. We can have it read to us if we wish.

But then, there is this other thing – ‘the presence of God.’

Where do we Feel God today?

Some of us feel it in church and that’s why we love going every Sunday. Some of us have our ‘secret places’ where we go to pray. Others of us like to move away from the busy areas of life and find solitude, and so on. But when we profess faith in Jesus Christ we all have our places where we feel and sense the presence of God.
But when we deliberately disobey God that is exactly the place we don’t want to be. We don’t want to hear His word and we don’t want to feel His presence. And so, like Jonah we run away from those places. We run away from anywhere where we are brought face to face with the truth that God wants us to hear and where there is prayer and a sense of God’s presence with us. Are you doing that today?

So then, the other thing we are told here is that ‘Jonah headed for Tarshish.’ He went down to the port of Joppa, and guess what? There just happens to be a ship going to Tarshish. Now, we do know where Joppa is for the town still exists today. We know nothing about Tarshish as it is not to be found on any ancient maps.
What I want us to see, however, is that a certain spiritual disintegration begins to take place in Jonah’s life once he disobeyed God and ran from His presence. It is the same kind of spiritual disintegration that will take place in your life and mine if we allow the same thing to happen to us. Follow me as we examine what happens at this point in Jonah’s life.

1. Jonah is being guided by Circumstances rather than by the Word Of God.

Once Jonah made up his mind to disobey God he found exactly what he wanted. He wanted a ship and he found a ship. That is the way life works. Whenever we are running away from God we begin to lose our spiritual perspective and all of a sudden things seem to fit into our lives which we once considered quite unacceptable and even downright horrible.
“But,” someone will ask, “doesn’t God lead us by circumstances?” And the answer is that He does, but there is a principle involved and it is this: God will not guide us by circumstances when we refuse to be guided by His word. When God’s will is clearly revealed in His written word and we consciously disobey it, we cannot expect the circumstances to come together for us. And the circumstances today that may seem favourable to you may be the very thing that is blocking the full blessing of God upon your life if you are disobeying His word and running from the place of prayer.
The next thing you will notice in the story here is that:

2. Jonah became Powerless in a time of Crisis – v. 4 – 5.

A storm had risen at sea and the ship was about to be destroyed. On that ship was a Prophet of God, but he had no word of hope for the captain or the crew. The truth is he didn’t even notice that there was a storm. He was fast asleep below the deck.
That is precisely what happens to us when we run away from God. We become powerless. Have you ever found yourself saying, “Well, I guess there isn’t really anything I can do here”? Listen, if you are a Christian there is always something you can do – read Romans 15:14. When we are hearing the word of God and sensing the presence of God, the competency is not of us; it’s of the Lord. And His word in us creates faith to do things we couldn’t do otherwise. So, let’s not throw in the towel and say there is nothing we can do. Those are the words of a defeated Christian who has allowed disobedience to dictate the terms of his or her life.

God will not give us His Power where we refuse His Presence.

Here is the next thing:

3. Jonah became Ashamed of who he was – v. 8 – 9.

Jonah had been discovered. The captain of the ship was a pagan and when all this storm and turmoil began he suspected that it had something to do with the stranger on the ship. So he sought out Jonah and began to question him:
• Who is responsible?
• What do you do?
• Where are you from?
• What is your country?
• Who are your people?
Five questions, and in one simple sentence Jonah answered four of the five questions – v.9. But did you notice which question was left unanswered? ‘What do you do?’ Jonah could no longer say, “I am a Prophet of Jehovah the one true and living God.” His witnessed had been silenced.
Here is the principle for you and me:

God will silence our Witness when we Shut-out His Will for us.

Conscious disobedience to God leads inevitably to a loss of ability to share one’s faith in Jesus Christ effectively with others around us.
And finally, please note that:

4. Jonah despaired of Future Service for God – v. 11 – 12.

Here is the sequence of principles so far in this chapter in Jonah’s life.

• Disobedience made Jonah take his eyes off the Lord.

• Following circumstances left him powerless in a time of crisis.

• When questioned he became ashamed of his calling.

• And now, he despairs at the thought of any future ministry.

Jonah was now sure that God had no future work for him and so he was ready to die.
I really believe you would have had to experience an overwhelming sense of God’s call and anointing and power in your life to understand what Jonah was going through. For him prophesying was not a profession in the way much preaching has become a profession today. For him, as it was for the prophets of Israel, prophesying was a mighty inner constraining call of the Spirit of God. It was, as Ezekiel said, ‘fire in my bones.’ Or, as Habakkuk said, ‘the oracle of God.’ Or, as Amos said, it was ‘the roar of the lion.’ Perhaps the Apostle Paul said it best in 1 Corinthians 9:16, ‘Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.’ It was a sad day in the life of Jonah when he felt that his ministry was over.
And I think it is a sad day in the life of a Christian when we think that God has nothing left for us to do or say; when we think that He can no longer use us in His service.
Here then is the principle:

God will use us again in spite of our disobedience, if we repent and return to Him.

Close:

I don’t know where you are in your relationship to God today, but I do know this – that, from time to time, you will find a little bit of Jonah in each of us. We all have those times when we turn away from God’s Word, God’s Will and God’s Presence.
The result of all that is that we no longer hear Him when He speaks to us therefore we turn to circumstances of life for our guidance and suddenly the ways of the world around us seem so convenient than hearing God speak to us. And when that happens, eventually we forget who we are, ‘Christians – Anointed Ones,’ and we begin to think that God can never use us again.
The happy ending is this, that you and I really can’t run from His Word or His Presence. If we are truly His children He will always be with us. He will follow us everywhere. As David said,
‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there?
Even there your hand will guide me,
Your right hand will hold me fast.
Psalm 139:7 -8.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Jonah, Ministry, relationship with God

May 9 2010 – Four Friends

May 11, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

True Friendship – Mark 2:1 – 12

We’re going to look today at true friendship.

1. Hindrances:

In this story we find that as Jesus was preaching there was such a huge crowd that a man in desperate need of seeing Jesus couldn’t get near Him.This man was paralyzed. This probably meant palsy – uncontrollable spasms.
The people we need to bring to Christ may be paralysed by drugs, alcohol, immorality and any kind of sin. Sometimes these people are not pleasant people to be around.  And when it comes to us bringing people in need to Jesus there are usually impediments or hindrances of some kind.

2. Inventive Solutions

In this story the crowd was the first big hindrance. One of the friends came up with a radical idea. Let’s get him up onto the roof above this crowd. It seems that none of the friends argued or disagreed with this plan but they went ahead and worked together to carry out their plan.

3. Hard Work

It would involve a lot of hard work to get him up on the roof to begin with. Most houses in the east had outside stairs so they might have struggled up those stairs with him. Or perhaps they pulled him up by ropes on his bed along a side of the roof. Either ways it was tricky, hard work.
But, when they got him on the roof, there was another hindrance. The roof itself. They had to remove tiles to make an opening. Luke 5:19 a parallel passage mentions these tiles. All of this effort represents work, dirty hands, danger, dust, ridicule.

4. Opposition

Probably the people who had come ‘properly’ into the home were not happy having dirt and dust showering down on them, nor a man being lowered down right in front of Jesus, the preferred spot that they had managed to be in! Others may oppose our inventive, costly solutions to these friendships.
For us we’re probably not going to be taking up roof tiles, but to be involved in bringing people to Jesus there is going to be some hard work, much prayer and probably some inconveniences.
Roof tiles might mean visiting someone in prison, helping some kid who hasn’t got a Dad, taking a meal to someone who needs some help.
It might mean we have to get rid of some personal ‘roof tiles’ – busyness, shyness, awkwardness, laziness. To have that faith and love to win souls, any method is good. We always need to be thinking outside the box to find creative ways to bring the spiritually paralysed to Christ.

5. Cost

When working with people who have not yet come to Jesus – there will be a cost. That roof had to be repaired. For us it may cost time, a day’s pay, helping, befriending with no agenda.
The world is inventive, Let’s let faith be inventive. Let’s always leave room for the paralysed. If we can’t get them to Jesus by ordinary means we have to be creative.

6. Rewards

Verse 5 -When Jesus saw THEIR FAITH he said to the paralytic – ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’
I can’t emphasize enough how important our part is when God calls us to be part of people’s lives.

Personally I remember quite a while ago when we were trying to reach out to young people in Stouffville.  We had prayed and were to go out and try to engage people in conversation trusting the Lord to enable us to have a chance to share Jesus.  A girl named Sue was walking along the main street when she passed a tough looking young fellow and kept on walking.  She felt really compelled to turn around and go back to try to talk to this guy – so she went back.  That fellow, Ted came to know Jesus about a week later, thanks to her turning back to talk to him.
Our prayers are very, very important. God hears them. Don’t lose hope or get discouraged.
Verse 6 – These religious people probably knew the man, and knew him well from his begging on the streets. Probably counselled him, taken his offering, probably one about whom Jesus said you won’t lift a finger to help or make their burden lighter. They were THINKING ‘who can forgive sins but God alone?’ They were totally negative about what Jesus could do. As Christians, we need to keep positive about Christ’s power to change lives.
Verse 8 – Jesus asked, ‘Why are you thinking these things?’
To the paralytic he said, ‘Get up take your mat and walk?’ So Jesus has just verified to these religious leaders who he was!
Their friendship for the paralytic meant HIS healing. They got nothing solid from all that they did, except the satisfaction of bringing a friend to Jesus – and what an intangible reward that is in itself!
Be inventive bringing those in need to Christ.
Be willing to be inconvenienced.
Be sympathetic.
Be cooperative.
Be persistent.

(Note:  Due to Pastor Neville being ill, a lay speaker, Gary Paisley shared this at Talbot Creek.)

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Friendship, Opposition, persistance

May 2, 2010 – Forty Days to Save a Nation

May 2, 2010 By Elenor Leave a Comment

(A study on evangelism from the book of Jonah).

I still recall with great clarity the time in my life when God called me to ministry. I had only been a Christian for a few months when I began to sense that God was calling me to be an evangelist, but it was the last thing I wanted to be. I wanted to be a doctor and I was saving up my money so that I could go to university and become a doctor. But I had gotten involved with ‘Child Evangelism Fellowship’ and was helping to conduct back-yard Bible clubs for little children. I received great blessings from these and was especially excited when some little child would give his heart to Jesus that I could hardly sleep at night. The first time I led a child to Christ I was so happy that I could not sleep. I went for a long walk that night just praising and thanking God for the privilege. I thought I could do this all my life.
Then one day a Canadian missionary working in Haiti came to speak at our church in Jamaica. Her name was Mildred Warner and she was from Kitchener. She spoke of the needs in Haiti and challenged us to pray for Haiti and support the work in Haiti. I was touched. I got me a big map of Haiti, tacked it to my wall and began to pray for Haiti. I began to think that God wanted me to be a missionary to Haiti but that was not his plan.
Several months later I read the book ‘Shadow of the Almighty,’ telling the story of Jim Elliot and the five missionaries who were martyred in Ecuador when they tried to reach a stone-age tribe called the Aucas. The sense that God was calling me to evangelism and mission became even stronger. After completing the book I was having my quiet time one morning and I had prayed that God would show me what He wanted me to do. That morning the little devotional book I was reading centered its message on one verse, 1st Corinthians 9:16. Let me read that for you from the KJV as I read it then some 50 years ago:

‘For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is me if I preach not the gospel!’

After reading those words I knelt by me bed and surrendered myself to the will of God and the work of evangelism.
I don’t think there is anything in life more uplifting and more important than knowing what your purpose in life is – knowing why you were born into this world and knowing that there is something I stand for that can change the world. For me that something is proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like the Olympians who went to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, you find yourself gripped with a passion, not merely for a medal to hang around your neck, but a passion to make a difference. That’s what it means to have a sense of destiny.
The man whose life we are going to look at over the next few weeks was such a man. His name was Jonah and we are going to look at three aspects of his life today – Who he was, What he was called to do, and How he responded. But before we get into these three things, let me say something about the features of this book.

a. This is not a story about a big fish.

The story of the fish is fascinating and causes all kinds of interesting arguments among friends, but that is not what the book is all about. This is a book about the sovereignty of God in a man’s life and in the life of a nation. Jonah was a man who understood God in one way but who, through experience, came to discover the true nature and character of God.

b. This is a story about God’s love for lost people.

The people of Nineveh were some of the most wicked people of their time yet God in mercy and love reached out to them and brought many of them to faith in Him.

c. This is a story about the Church and every individual Christian.

We are called to involvement in sharing the Gospel with the world – sometimes to good people and sometimes to bad people – that is our mission. We are called to lay aside our reluctance and disobedience and fulfill the Lord’s commission to ‘go into all the world and preach the Gospel.’

d. This is a story about human weakness and inadequacy.

We all know what the commission is but we all feel inadequate to do the task. Jonah teaches us that our adequacy is not in ourselves but in the One who called us and sent us into the world.
So then, with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at Jonah.

1. Who is Jonah?

Read – Jonah 1:1. Look with me for a moment at 2nd kings 14:25. here Jonah is called God’s ‘servant.’ Now that term ‘servant’ is frequently used in the Old Testament as a technical term to describe someone who was specifically set apart by God for a unique purpose (Cp. Isaiah 52:13; 53:11; Amos 3:7).
Jonah was a man who had heard a clear call from God to proclaim His message and who had been specially empowered to carryout this mission. According to 2nd Kings 14:24 Jonah lived in an evil day. He was to preach God’s message to an evil generation. His call and his empowerment gave him a sense of destiny.
One of the most important thing for a Christian today is to have a sense of destiny, a sense of purpose. We live in a generation when people are purpose driven. That is perhaps why Rick Warren’s two books, ‘The Purpose Driven Life’ and ‘The Purpose Driven Church’ has had such an impact upon the Church around the world.
Looking back at the recent Winter Olympics in Vancouver, I recall athletes talking about their sense of destiny in relation to winning medal for their country. Sometimes people mistake ‘fame’ for a ‘sense of destiny,’ but fame is of little importance in the eyes of God.
Destiny has to do with what we stand for and what we do with what we stand for. In other words, the big question that every Christian needs to face is, ‘Why in the world am I here?’ Our usefulness in this world is directly related to our understanding to our purpose in life. We are most effective in what we do when we understand that we are doing exactly what God has called us to do.
Francis of Assisi was once asked what he would do if he were to learn that Christ was returning to earth tomorrow. He replied that he would do exactly what he was doing now. He had a sense that he was doing exactly what God had called him to do and that is all that was expected of him. That is having a sense of purpose and living it out.
This brings me to my next point.

2. What was Jonah called to do?

Jonah was directed by God to preach in Nineveh. The situation in Nineveh was historically well known. Nineveh was the capital city of the mighty Assyrian Empire. In fact it was the last capital of Assyria. It was situated in what is today called Iraq. It existed for 4500 years before Christ. It was destroyed and rebuilt many times and the last person to rebuild it was the famous Assyrian warrior Sennacherib. The population at the time of Jonah was estimated at 170,000 persons. To this city Jonah was called to go and preach. Note three things about this call.

a. It was absolutely clear – ‘Go to Nineveh.’

There was to be no doubt in Jonah’s mind as to where God was sending him. It was to the capital of the empire, not to the outskirts or to the little villages but to the capital city.

b. It was amazingly challenging – ‘the great city.’

Sending Jonah to preach in Nineveh was like sending someone today to plant a church in Tokyo or in Paris. It was challenging. Doing work in the inner city is never easy. Cities all have their own cultures and even more so in the inner city. Cities are usually full of crime and other threats to life, so it is hard work and this is what Jonah was been sent to do.

c. It was arrestingly frightful – ‘preach against it.’

Jonah’s message was not to be an easy one or a nice one. It was to be a message that was harsh – see Jonah 3:2 – 4. Such a message would upset people and as we will see later, one people you didn’t want to upset were the Assyrians.
This bring me to the third thing today:

3. How did Jonah respond?

‘Jonah ran away from the Lord and fled…v.3. Jonah obviously had a problem with the call.

a. It was not an intellectual problem for the call was absolutely clear.

Jonah had been told exactly where to go and what to do. Sometimes when we don’t understand what we are to do, we disobey out of ignorance, but that is not very often. Jonah knew and understood his call.

b. The problem was that God’s will clashed with Jonah’s will.

Jonah knew he had been called of God to preach and he had founded a little congregation on the outskirts of Israel not far from the seaport town of Joppa. He was comfortable preaching God’s message to this small group of people who were receiving it well. Now God calls him to the most difficult challenge of his life – God to Nineveh; preach against it. And Jonah simply runs away. This was not what he had in mind when he first answered the call and he is not about to commit suicide. Jonah had his own plans to fulfill when God stepped in and changed it all, and Jonah opted for his own plans.
What do you do with God’s will when God steps in and points you to a different pathway? If we want the continued blessing of God in our lives and we want to be useful and successful for God, we have to be willing to say, “Lord, not my will but your will be done.”
It is not just in the area of been called to preach that we face these decisions. Sometimes we face them in relationships like, who should I marry, should I accept this job, should I do what my friends are doing, should I spend this money, should I move to another city, should confront my friend on his lifestyle? And it goes on and on and on. In all of these things the important question is, what does God want me to do and am I willing to do it.
We had a term for that in the old days. We called it ‘full surrender.’ We used to sing in church ‘All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live.’ But we rebel and run the other way primarily because God’s will clashes with our will and we do not trust Him to see us through to the end.

4. Why did Jonah run away?

Look at Jonah 4:2. Nineveh was the capital of an enemy empire. They hated the Jews and not only harassed them but was extremely cruel to them and to all their enemies. Let me read for you a little historical insight into the wickedness of the Assyrians.
‘As long as a town resisted the besieging Assyrians, all the inhabitant who fell into their hands were subjected to the most cruel tortures; they were cut to pieces, or impaled alive on stakes just in front of the lines so the besieged should enjoy full view of the sufferings of their comrades. Even during the course of a short siege this line of stakes would be prolonged till it formed a bloody fence between the two armies. When a town surrendered many people were thrown from the tops of the towers, or their ears and noses cut off, or their hands and feet amputated, or they and their children were roasted over a slow fire, or skinned alive, or decapitated and their heads piled in great pyramids.’
You can be sure that Jonah had seen some of these atrocities and knew exactly what the Ninevites were like. Yet, in the back of his mind was this fact, that God was a God of mercy and might indeed show grace to the Assyrians. If Jonah went into Nineveh and preached and God caused a great revival, what would become of Jonah? What would happen to his reputation as a prophet? Jonah would become known as ‘The Traitor prophet.’ Was God asking Jonah to sacrifice his reputation for this evil empire, for these ‘gentile dogs?’ As far as Jonah was concerned they deserved neither mercy nor grace from God. God might save them but not at Jonah’s expense.
The desire to maintain a reputation has always been a problem for many of God’s people. Think of the Christian who sits and listens to a dirty joke and laughs at it because he doesn’t want others to think of him as a wet blanket. Or the person indulges in heavy drinking with his friends because she doesn’t want them to think she is a Christian fanatic. Or the person who never invites his neighbour to church because he doesn’t want them to think he makes too much of religion. Each person is trying to preserve a part of a reputation which is the least part of one’s life. And in so doing we often neglect to carry out the purpose of God for our lives.
There is one more thing I want you to observe in this passage. Verse 3 says, ‘Jonah ran away from the Lord…’ In the KJV it says, ‘Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord…’ There is a slight change in meaning here but an important one. What the passage is really saying is that Jonah fled from the place where God was present, the place where His presence was felt. God is present everywhere but His presence is not always felt everywhere.
Where do we feel the presence of God? We feel it primarily in two places. We feel it in the place of prayer and in the place of worship. When we set aside time to pray and seek God and we find ourselves a ‘secret place’ to talk to Him, it is there we often experience His ‘felt’ presence. When we come to group worship with open hearts and minds to praise God it is there we feel His presence. Never neglect the place of prayer or the place of worship.

Lessons:

I have given you many lessons from these opening verses in the book of Jonah. I just want to re-emphasize three of these.

a. Seek to discover God’s purpose for your life and give yourself to it passionately.

b. Give yourself to obedience now. Past privilege and past fruitfulness can never substitute for present obedience.

c. Watch your heart for there is a little bit of Jonah in each of us.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Big Fish, God's Will, Jonah, Surrender
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