Jonah the Reluctant Prophet

Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn with me in the book of Matthew

in the New Testament, Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

I'm going to be preaching in a moment in a series in the Minor Prophets,

and this week we are in the book of Jonah.

But I want to share with you first Matthew chapter 12, verse 39 through 41.

Matthew 12:39–41

Matthew 12, 39 through 41. Matthew 12, 39 through 41.

Christ himself is speaking, and he says, But he answered and said unto them,

An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall be no

sign given it but the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly,

so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation,

and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

And behold, a greater than Jonah is here. Now turn with me, please,

in the Old Testament to the book of Jonah.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, major prophets. And you come to the minor

prophets and then to the man called Jonah, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah.

You have heard messages of this minor prophet, probably the only one you have

of all the minor prophets.

I preached on him myself from this pulpit on a couple of occasions.

God has given me some new insight for this hour that I want to share with you about Jonah.

There will be a lot of feelings when you hear the word Jonah.

Immediately you think of the squalling of the big fish, the belly of the whale.

It's more than the story, though, of a man running from his God.

It's more than the story of the big fish that swallowed Jonah.

It is deep down inside the story of Jonah, as in no Old Testament book,

there is the heartbeat of God.

In the book of Jonah, you feel he has great love for people.

In the book of Jonah, you sense God cares deeply.

And so from this portion of God's word this morning, I want to share with you

what he's laid on my heart.

Very simply, not original, but four things. Write them down.

Number one, chapter one, Jonah and the storm.

Jonah, chapter one, Jonah and the storm. Chapter two, Jonah and the fish.

Jonah and the fish. Chapter 3 Jonah and the City.

And chapter 4.4, Jonah and the Lord.

Let me pray for you, please. My Heavenly Father, on this Sunday morning,

we do not believe we're here by happenstance or circumstance or coincidence.

We believe we're here for a divine appointment with God.

We believe that we're in this service on this December Sunday morning of 1982

because you have something to say to us, each one of us individually.

You have something from your word today that is prophetic and powerful for this hour.

So we pray you'll take the book of Jonah and make it live before our very eyes

as we feel the heartbeat of God.

For a hurting world. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.

Amen. Jonah chapter 1 verse 1 through 4 point number 1. Jonah and the storm.

Jonah 1:1–4

And now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai saying arise

and go to Nineveh that great city and cry against it for the wickedness has come up before me.

But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went

down to Joppa and he found a ship going to Tarshish and he paid the fare thereon

and went down to go unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

It's interesting in verse 3, seemingly he's in the will of God.

Everything falls right in place. The devil can work out circumstances too.

You check it by the Spirit of God. Verse 4, but the Lord sent out a great wind

unto the sea and there was a mighty storm in the sea and so the ship was like to be broken.

The same chapter please, verse 11. The intermediate verses tell about what happened

during that storm But now verse 11, then the sailor said unto him,

what shall we do unto thee that the sea may be calmer unto us?

For the sea was angry and was tempestuous.

And he said unto them, take me up and cast me forth into the sea so that the

sea shall be calmer unto you.

For I know that for my sake, this great storm has come upon you.

Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not

for the sea was angry and was tempestuous against them.

Wherefore, they cried unto the Lord and said, we beseech thee,

O Lord, we beseech thee, Let us not perish for this man's life,

and lay not upon us his innocent blood. For thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased you.

So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from

its raging. What a scene that must have been.

Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows.

Jonah in the storm. Would you look please with me at verses 2 and 3?

You are at either one of two places this morning. You are on your way to Nineveh.

That is in the will of God. God said to Jonah, you go to Nineveh.

And he went. He minded God. He was obedient.

You are either on your way to Nineveh in the will of God, or you are in number

three, verse number three.

You are on your way to Tarshish, which is out of the will of God.

That's one of only two locations you could be in.

I've done so. So you take a pencil and look, please, at Nineveh,

and I would draw an arrow pointing to the right because that's the way Nineveh goes.

And I would take an arrow and draw above the word Tarshish an arrow to the left.

That's the way Tarshish goes.

One is directly opposite geographically, one direction this way,

one is the other, totally opposite from each other.

One Nineveh, the will of God, one Tarshish out of the will of God.

And so you are one of those two places this morning.

If you're running away from God, it's not running away from people or somebody

else's fault or circumstances or situation.

You're running from one thing and one thing only, and that is a person, the person of God.

Look in Jonah 1, verse 3. Three times this expression occurs in this portion of God's Word.

Jonah 1:3

Chapter 1, verse 3, He fleed to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

You see it in the first part of the verse.

In the last part of verse 3, you see it again. He flew to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

In verse 10, you see it once again. For the men knew that he fled from the presence

of the Lord. But three times, God said, you're running, but you're not running from a circumstance.

You're not running from a situation. You're running from me.

Ultimately, every one of us deal one-on-one with God.

We want to blame it on somebody else. We want to say it's this or that,

but we're dealing with God. That's who we have to deal with.

I first met him in the 1960s when he began to rise at the prominence of his career.

And he is what I feel one of the greatest prophets on the scene today.

I think there are only a handful of them, and I do not believe a lot of the

television evangelists are the great prophets that some people acknowledge them to be.

But this man is. I believe he, along with James Robinson, Jerry Falwell,

Billy Graham, and this man, David Wilkerson, I believe is one of the prophets of today.

As you know the story of his life, it's very public now. Now,

15 million copies of his book, The Cross and the Switchblade.

He's at a movie made of his life, played by Pat Boone, the actor.

He has had prominence. And when he speaks, the evangelical world listens.

At the height of his career, his wife had three major surgeries, two for major cancers.

And his daughter recently had another major cancer surgery. Everything crushing

in on him. His wife and he were at each other's all the time.

At front now, they were in good shape, but they were tearing each other apart behind the scenes.

David said, I was due to go on a preaching tour of the West Coast.

And so when we got there, we were to have a banquet that night. I was to speak.

And my wife and I, just before, he and Gwen's written a book called In His Strength,

Gwen Wilkerson, if you've never read it, you should do so.

And they were just tearing at each other, just vicious that very night.

David said he went down to the banquet table. They served their roast beef and

their little cup of fruit.

And he said, I pat it in my pocket. In my pocket, I had thousands of dollars

that I was going to leave and run away.

So he said, I excuse myself, and I left that banqueting house.

I left that hotel. I went down to the bus station. He said, my plans were to go to Mexico.

There is not a person in this building or listening by tape today who cannot empathize with that.

We have all felt at one time or another, I just want to run away.

The kids are too much. The house is too much. My marriage is too much.

My job is too much. School is too much. I just got to run away.

I want to get out of here and leave. We've all felt that.

Jonah, this prophet of God, ran away. David walked into this man of God. They ran away.

David said, I went to the window to buy my ticket, and I was getting ready to

leave. and I couldn't buy it.

I went back over and sat down and God said, where are you going, son? I'm leaving.

I can't take it anymore. In a runaway world, we have people turning their back

on everybody and quitting and running away.

See, they're not running from a circumstance or running from God.

The presence of God. And he said, David, you come on back and let me love you.

You rest and I'll take care of you.

David said, I went back and I sat down beside my wife and I leaned over and

kissed her on her cheek and said, I'm sorry, honey.

And I got up to that pulpit and I preached a message on Psalm 55,

Psalms 55:6

verse 6. And I've used that text in this pulpit here.

Oh, that I had wings like a dove, David the psalmist said, then I would fly

away. And he said, I got up and I said, oh, God, help me not to fly away.

You see, we all want to run, sinner or saint. There are times in our life we want to run away.

And David said, I want it so desperately to leave. So when Jonah tried to run, God sent a storm.

It's found in Jonah chapter 1, verse 4 and 5. And so the Lord sent a great wind

Jonah 1:4

into the sea, and there was a mighty storm in the sea.

Interesting, please, if you know it with me, in verse 2, there is the great city. You see it?

And in verse 4, there's a great wind.

And in chapter 1, verse 17, there's a great fish. Our God is great.

Whenever there's a great problem, our God always has a great answer.

Verse 4, and so there was a great storm. And the Bible says there was a mightiness

and the ship was like to be broken.

Verse 5, and so the mariners, the sailors were afraid and cried every man unto

his God and cast forth into the wares, into the ship, into the sea and to lighten the load.

But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, into the hole of the ship,

and he lay and was fast asleep.

When I read this portion of God's Word, I could not understand how Jonah could

go down into the hole of the ship and go to sleep, running from God,

out of the will of God, disobedient to God, leaving the sin of Nineveh to die.

How in the world could he sleep?

And so I thought of another storm in the Word of God, and keep Jonah one marked,

and turn with me, please, to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 4.

Mark 4 · chapter mention

And another storm, another man, whose name begins with J, who also slept in a storm.

Mark chapter 4, verse 35. Now, I'm struggling with this. How could Jonah sleep?

Mark 4:35

Being out of the will of God, how could Jonah do this?

Mark chapter 4, verse 35.

Mark 4:35

And the same day when the evening was come, they said unto them,

Let us pass, Jesus said, over unto the other side. And so they sent away the

multitude, and they took the Lord in the boat.

There were also other little boats, and there arose a great storm of wind,

and the waves beat unto the ship, and so that it was now full.

And he, the Lord Jesus, was in the back part of the boat, asleep on a pillow.

And they awake him and said to him, Master, don't you care that we perish?

And he arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still.

And they said, What manner of man in this that even the wind and the sea obey

him? Now you watch carefully, please.

I could not understand how Jesus could sleep so calmly.

Jonah seemingly could sleep so calmly. There had to be a contradiction someplace

in my mind as I worked through the scriptures.

And then I remembered something that I had read and heard criminologists,

psychologists, and sociologists tell us that men in prison or women in prison,

if they're allowed to, will sleep 16 to 18 to 20 hours a day.

They will sleep 16 to 20 hours a day. And they say, psychologists in the study

have said, it is simply a sleep of escape.

I don't want to face what my life is, so I'll sleep. Listen carefully so I can

bring it down to your world.

You don't want to get up in the morning. Everybody has those kind of mornings once in a while.

But if it's a continual process, I want to stay in this bed,

I want to pull the cover over my head.

I want the world to go away, make the world go away. The country singer sings about.

I want not to get up. I don't even want to face it. You are on the extreme edge of severe depression.

Because one of the sure signs of depression is you don't want to get out of

that bed and you don't want to face the world. So you sleep the sleep of escape.

What was the difference between Jesus? The difference was Jesus was sleeping the sleep of security.

There's all the difference in the world. Jonah's disobedience caused the storm.

Christ's obedience cured the storm. You understand the difference? See the distinction.

There's all the difference in the world. I have a friend who was 39 years of

age, and when he was born, he was born of an illegitimate birth.

His mother first tried to have him aborted, but that was in the days when we

were civil and humane and we're not insane as we are today and the doctor refused to abort the baby.

So she had the baby and put an ad in the paper and wanted to sell the baby.

And she couldn't do that. And so she had the baby and her house was a revolving

door of man after man after man. You do not need to elaborate on it.

And the little boy grew up poverty stricken and hurting and broken.

His real daddy came back and was beating his mother and he got a 30-06 six and

leveled it on him and said if you eat so much as move a finger I'll blow you

away and he would have had.

He went on in the later years in his teen years and a Baptist preacher and his

wife took a liking to him and took him to the home and he said before I was

in that new home he said I slept like a tamale.

I would find myself rolled up in the sheet the next morning.

And he said the first morning after being in my new home where

I was tucked in and I was kissed and I was loved

and I was held and I was caressed and cared for the

night he said i went to sleep in one position i woke up in

the next day in the very same position what made

the difference he slept the sleep of security in the loving arms of somebody

who cared that's the difference between a jonah who's out of the will of god

who tosses and turns in the sleep of escape and a man or woman of god who sleeps

the sleep of security because he belongs to the king and no matter what storm

life brings i can stand it.

This man today is a great preacher of the gospel.

Storms will come to every lie. Sin or a saint, you're going to have storms.

They came to Jonah disobedient. They came to Jesus obedient.

Storms will come. They're a part of a lie.

Verse 8 is what people are going to be seeing in your life. Jonah chapter 1 verse 8.

Jonah 1:8

Then they said to him, Tell us, we pray thee, whose cause this evil has come upon us.

Now they ask him a series of questions that when you go through storms,

Christian, everybody wants to know. and here they are. What do you do?

Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you? You hear this please?

You're either following the Lord Jesus Christ or you're following the prince

and power of darkness, Satan.

And when the storms come, people are going to watch your life to see who you

are, whose father you have, who is your father, whose people do you belong to?

They want to ask some question to you Christian when you

get broken and bleeding and when you stand beside a hospital bed and you tell

somebody they got cancer and everybody turns their eyes of inspection upon you

because we're always being washed who's your father.

What are you, Christian? What do you do? I glorify God.

Believer, even the awful word of cancer cannot rip from you in the storms of

life the loving protection of God.

But the world stands in verse 8. Who are you?

And the non-believer has nowhere to turn and he lays broken and bleeding in

a storm in the hole of the ship. And in verse 12, Jonah is even suicidal because he has a death wish.

Pick me up. Throw me into the sea. I want to get out of here.

But in the storms of life, in the storms of life, our God is drawing us up short.

Do you see what's happening to America today?

Do you see what's happening to the world today? I'm convinced with all of my

heart that in the latter days before the soon returning of Christ,

God is sending a storm upon America. He's sending a storm upon the world.

And in the same context, he's sending the whale not to hurt, but to swallow to heal.

The storms of life. And the disciples were so frightened when they saw Jesus walking on the water.

And one man has so well said, the same storm that brought the fear is the same

storm that brought the Christ.

It is in the storms of life that I see him. When I run away from him,

I'm hurt. When I run with him, I'm healed.

That is Jonah and the storm the second one is Jonah and the fish.

Jonah chapter 1 verse 17 really ought to be in Jonah chapter 2.

Jonah 1:17 Jonah 2 · chapter mention

I'll begin reading there. Jonah and the fish.

Chapter 1 verse 17. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

And so Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly.

And he said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord.

And he heard me out of the belly of hell I cried and you heard my voice.

For you've cast me into the deep in the midst of the sea and the

floods combust me about and all the billows and the

waves are passed over me i'm going to give you a bible study please when i have

time to do it now but i want you to look in verse 17 of chapter 1 it says now

the lord had prepared a great fish had prepared the lord had prepared or in

another version said the lord had provided four times that expression occurred

the lord has prepared or to prepare a great fish jonah 117,

The Lord prepared a great plant, Jonah 4, 6.

The Lord prepared a great worm, Jonah 4, 7.

And Jonah 4, 8, the Lord had prepared a wind. Four things that God prepares.

He prepares to save me, to shade me, to warn me, and to waken me.

So sometimes you've got time you can read it. The context of the miracle of

the fish is what usually is centered around Jonah. I'm convinced that I've made

a mistake as well as many others that seeing that as the main miracle.

It's not the main miracle, but it's there.

Was it possible that Jonah could be swallowed by a great fish and live in the belly of the whale?

I love the old saint who said that, who was picked on by an atheist,

an agnostic, and said to her, do you really mean to tell me you believe all

the Bible, that it's all the Word of God I do, she said.

Do you mean to tell me that you believe that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish? I do, she said.

Well, do you believe all of it? And you believe Jonah died, and when he died,

he went to heaven? I do, she said.

Well, he said, I want to ask you a question. When you die and go to heaven,

what if Jonah's not there?

And he said, if you get there, and if he is there, you ask him about the great

fish. But what if you die and get to heaven, and Jonah's not in heaven?

What are you going to do then? She said, well, then I guess you'll have to ask him.

It occurred at the turn of the century, and it's reported in the French journal,

Journal du De Paix of Paris, by Francis Fox, who's a scientific editor and a

well-known, renowned man of God. Not a religious theme.

Let me read it for you. The whale ship, the Star of the East,

was in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands.

The lookout sighted a large sperm whale three miles away.

Two boats were lowered, and in a short time, one of the harpooners was unable to spear the fish.

The second boat attacked the whale, but it was upset by the lash of the tail,

and the men thrown into the sea. One drowned, and another, James Bartley, disappeared.

The whale was killed, and in a few hours the great body was lying on the ship's

deck, and the crew was busy with axes and spades, removing the blubber that's

so profitable in that part of the world.

They worked all day and part of the night. Next day they attacked some tackle

to the stomach, which was hoisted on the deck.

The sailors were startled by spasmodic signs of life.

Inside the whale after they cut him open was the missing sailor james bartley,

he was double up and unconscious he was laid

on the deck and revived by a bath of seawater which brought him to his senses

during his sojourn in the whale's stomach bartley's skin which was exposed to

the action of the gastric juices of the whale's belly underwent a striking change

his face neck and hands were bleached to a deadly whiteness like the appearance of paper,

Bartley affirms that he would probably lived inside the house of flesh until

he starved, for he could breathe, and he only passed out from fright.

He went on to give his own account. He said, I was drawn along into the darkness

and found myself in a great place where the heat was intense.

In the dark, he said, I felled around for an exit and found only slimy walls around me.

When the awful truth rushed into my consciousness, I passed out later to be

revived upon the ship's deck.

Man, now I could give you a lot of accounts like that, but I couldn't convince

you one whit if you didn't believe it.

It is simply the truth that the Word of God says he was swallowed by a whale.

And to give credibility to the story, Jesus in one of the rare occasions quoted

a minor prophet and said, as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days,

so shall I be in the belly of the earth for three days to typify and signify my resurrection.

It is a true fact. He was swallowed by a fish and lived there for three days.

Now, I hope you believe it. If not, when we get to heaven, you can ask Jonah.

And if you don't make it, you ask him if he didn't.

Three things from this miracle. Please write it down. It's a sign of Christ's life.

The entombment in the whale, it's a sign of Christ's life.

The death, burial, resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Number two, it's a signal of God's love. Prepared in the midst of the storm was this great whale.

And number three, it's safety in God's plan.

It's a sign of Christ's life. It's a signal of God's love. And number three,

it's safety in God's plan.

For you see, in the midst of a storm, God is preparing a great fish to do something

for me I cannot do for myself.

I received a call about 10 days ago, 8 or 10 days ago, to go to the Riston County Jail.

And so the county officials had called me in and I went in and went into the

jail and the jailer showed me into the interrogation visiting room.

There was a young man and you don't need to know the rest of the story,

but simply when we we went through the amenities, we introduced ourselves.

He had called and asked me for me specifically and we talked.

And finally, he in the course of the conversation, he brought me up short.

He said, Pastor, and these lines, I think so speak to the man in the belly of

the whale in the storm of life.

He said, Pastor, I didn't call you to talk about my case.

I want to talk to you about my heart.

You hear that? In the storms of life, God's one sole purpose is to talk to you

about your heart, to talk to you about your life, to talk to you about where you are.

Are you running from God? Are you a modern day Jonah? Are you running away?

And if so, God will prepare a way to swallow you up.

I led the young man to Christ.

What a great story that comes out of that. In chapter 2, verse 6,

from the Septuagint, the original, the latter part of verse 6 should read thusly.

It's a beautiful rendition.

Oh, Lord, my God, let my ruined life be restored.

What a great truth. From the belly of the devil in hell I cried and God heard me.

From the depths of sin and degradation where it seems that God could not find

me, he reached down and got me.

And he said in Psalm 139, Though I make my bed in hell, God is there.

Though I send to heaven, God is there. No matter where I'm at,

God is there. In the storms of life, God finds me.

So he found him in that hour. And number three is Jonah and the city. Jonah and the city.

Jonah and the storm, Jonah and the fish, and Jonah and the city.

And I really personally believe, and I think it's very valuable people,

that this is really the key to the book of Jonah.

God's love for a great city. Jonah chapter 3 verse 1, And the word of the Lord

Jonah 3:1

came to Jonah the second time and said, Arise and go unto Jonah.

Oh, incidentally, in Jonah chapter 2 verse 10, the whale deposited him on the

Jonah 2:10

beach and he got the idea, You better listen to God.

Jonah chapter 3, verse 2, And arise and go to Jonah, that great city,

Jonah 3:2

and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

And now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

And Jonah began to enter to the city of day's journey, and he cried and said,

Yet forty days in Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And so the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth

from the greatest until the least of them.

I don't know what he preached, Can you imagine what kind of sermon that must

have been for 120,000 plus people to be saved?

120,000 plus people. I think there are some things you ought to note about this,

that this preacher, first of all, Jonah spoke with an accent.

He was from a foreign nation.

Most of you can identify with that, a preacher that has an accent.

He spoke with an accent. He was from a foreign nation.

Number two, he spoke with authority. But look at verse 2 of chapter 3.

You are preaching, Jonah, what I bid you to preach.

Jonah chapter 1, verse 1, now the word of the Lord.

Jonah 1:1

Jonah chapter 3, verse 1, now the word of the Lord.

Jonah 3:1

Jonah chapter 3, verse 3, now the word of the Lord. So he preached not only

Jonah 3:3

with an accent from a foreign nation as a missionary, but he preached with authority.

And number three, he preached with assurance.

For if the story of Bartley is true, and it is, then Jonah whole countenance

was turned pale white by being inside the whale of the belly.

And when he came into that city, can you imagine what a striking figure he must have made?

He spoke with an accent. He spoke with authority. He spoke with assurance.

I've been in the death of hell, and I came out again. I've got good news for you. You can too.

But the key to the book of Jonah is this.

God's great love for Nineveh, a wicked nation and a people.

Now, when Jonah preached to them, they turned back to God. Now,

there are three things I think everybody wants to do if they want to turn back

to God. Number one, they recognize their sin in verse 8.

But let it man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mildly to God.

God let them turn everyone from his evil way and from their violence.

Recognize their sin, verse 8. That's why the Bible says in the book of Romans,

Romans 3:23

chapter 3, verse 23, to all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

We need to recognize without Christ we're sinners.

Number two, they repented in sorrow, in verse 5.

So the people of Nineveh believed God, those two words are important,

and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, the greatest to the least.

They recognized their sin.

They repented in sorrow, number three. They received help from the Savior, in verse 10.

And so God saw their works that they turned from the evil way,

and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do to them.

A good Bible study for you sometime is Jonah 3, 8, 9, and 10.

Look at the word turn, turn or turn, and see what happened when they repented.

Now, I want you to give a little bit of sympathy for Jonah. You know the reason

Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh? Not that he didn't want to do the will of God.

But he did not want to go to Nineveh because Nineveh was the Nazis of their day.

Nineveh, which is now the capital of the modern-day nation, Syria,

were the communist terrorists of 770 B.C.

They were a vile, wicked people, and I only tell you part of it because I don't

want to shock your senses.

When they would destroy a town, they would cut off the hands,

the feet, the ears, and the nose of the captive, and they would throw them in

a pile and let the flies and the sun and everything just stay there until they

suffocated and died a whole but dead.

They burned the children at the stake. They filleted, cut them,

stripped them, the leaders of the day.

They were a vicious, vile, wicked people. And Jonah didn't care if they went

to hell because that's personally what he wanted to happen to them.

So Jonah said, I don't even want to go to them. I want you to feel,

please, what God feels for a wicked, hurting nation.

And all the time I preach for you, I'm a preacher who believes in using the illustrations of life.

But in all the times I preach for you, I don't think there's ever been an illustration.

This is one of the top five that's ever moved me like this one moved me.

Please listen carefully, for I want you to see what God does and how God loves.

Listen carefully to this. His name is Richard Wurmbrandt. He's the author of

the book, Tortured for Christ.

You've read it, many of you, I'm sure. Richard Wurmbrandt is a giant for God

who spent 14 years in eastern communist prisons behind the iron curtain.

He bears on his body the irons that have been burned into him,

the scars and the degradation of being behind cell in a communist nation. him.

For 14 years, he has suffered unbelievable every kind of torment you could imagine.

He is the modern counterpart of the Apostle Paul.

He was with James Kennedy in Coral Ridge, Florida.

And with James Kennedy in Coral Ridge, Florida, he was there to speak one Saturday

night, and as he was due to speak, as he was preaching there along that time,

and he was talking, he said, they were quoting his verse, rejoice with those

that rejoice, and weep with those that weep.

About the time, he said, I see a lot of rejoice in America, I don't see much weeping.

And here when a 15-year-old snot-nosed little teenage girl who giggled in typical

American fashion have no understanding of what spiritual matters are at all and begin to giggle.

Richard Wurmbrand turned to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

He said, young lady, when you were just a baby with 50-pound chains on my feet,

I prayed for you and all the youth of America.

This is a man who was crucified for four days, nailed to a cross that didn't even let him die.

He came down from the cross, put in a cell for months on end where he couldn't

lay down, he couldn't stand up. He said, the only way I knew I wasn't in hell

is that every few days there would be a little bit of water and bread stuck through a hole.

He said, the next day at the great church in Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

in Florida, Jim said, our group sang the song, How Great Thou Art.

It was a moving, masterful song. Richard Wurmbrand stood up to speak.

He said, that is a beautiful hymn, but it's not the most beautiful hymn that I've heard.

The most beautiful hymn that I ever heard, I heard in a communist Eastern European

country where there was a grate on each floor.

There was a big hole and surrounded with several iron cells and another hole

and another floor and several more iron cells, another hole,

another floor, and several more iron cells.

He said there on those prison floors, wafting from the dungeons and the isolation

booths below, I heard the greatest song that I'd ever heard.

He had undergone so much torture that he had forgotten the scriptures that he had learned.

He had forgotten every prayer that he knew. He had forgotten the Lord's Prayer.

And he could only get down to our Father. And he finally forgot that.

Where he finally could say to Father, here's what he said. Father,

I can't remember anything else. The drugs and the bleeding have done me in.

He said, all I can tell you now is listen to the beat of a loving heart.

He said, I want to sing for you that song. That was sung the most beautiful

song I've ever heard in all my life. He said, I don't have a good voice.

And he said, you might not like the words to the song.

But he said, let me sing for you now. And that tall, gray-haired,

body-scarred saint of God stood back from the pulpit.

And he said, the song goes like this. I heard it time and time again,

walking from the floors of the communist prison. Here it is.

Suffering saints paying the ultimate price to touch a wicked world.

In our complacent Christianity, this silliness that we live in,

this complacent conformity,

that we worry about the color of bathroom wall or what the carpet looks like

or what I'm going to do because I don't have enough of this or enough of that.

In our silliness that we worry and from the depths of the bowels of hell there's

a hurting humanity and we laugh and we don't care anymore.

And a song that moves the heart of God is this.

Jonah, I love wicked Nineveh.

You want to go the other way because you're afraid to face the challenge and commitment of Christ.

But I love a dying world. I love a dying world.

Do you hear the heartbeat of God in the book of Jonah?

And so number four is very simple, Jonah and the Lord. In chapter four,

you see a conversation between Jonah and the master.

And when it's all said and done in a series of minor miracles in Jonah 4,

6, 7, and 8, you see a series of minor miracles that occur there,

but ultimately the reason behind it is God is saying, Jonah, are you running?

Jonah, where are you going? Jonah, what are you doing? Let me pray for you,

please. Father, this morning.

In a complacent, comfortable world where so many of us are like Jonah,

don't rock the boat, Father.

Let me go on in the way that I'm going. Let me go on in the way that I am.

Don't bother me no more. I don't care about a hurting world.

I don't care about the tortures behind the Iron Curtain.

I don't care about lost people screaming lost in eternity.

I've got my little world to live in.

Father you are going to bring some storms on some lives of

some jonah who's are out of the will of god this morning

i pray you help each one of us to hear

your voice pastor i have been a jonah in my life i've been so caught up in things

of the world that i'm out of the will of god and i'm running the other way god

spoke to my heart this morning has spoken in days past pastor would you pray

for me please I'm a Jonah out of the will of God running from God,

heads are bowed eyes are closed no one disturbing service would you slip your

hand quickly in the air please in the balcony lower levels yes yes yes others yes,

pray for me pastor I am a Jonah out of the will of God.

Would you take your red hymn books, please, and turn to number 287.

Number 287. God's question to Jonah is, will you go, Jonah?

God said go, and Jonah said no, and God brought a woe.

Stand with me, please. As we sing number 287, if you're a Jonah out of the will

of God, the oil is open to you this morning.

If you're a Christian, maybe you're not out of the will of God.

Maybe you're sensing the call of God on your life. You're no longer going to

be that complacent, comfortable Christian, but you're going to be that man or

woman, that young person of God. You're going to give it all to the Master.

However, he's speaking to you this morning. Would you hear the heartbeat of

God and Jonah as he calls you?

You come as we sing number 287, Needle and Alder of Prayer.

Let me pray for you, please. Heavenly Father, I thank you today for the way

the Holy Spirit has touched our lives.

I thank you that in a day of those who are not committed and those who are compromising,

you are speaking to us about a depth of commitment we've never made before.

From the voice of the minor prophets, you are saying to us today, Where are you, my child?

Are you on your way to Nineveh in the will of God? Are you on your way to Tarshish Al, the will of God?

Or do you find yourself in a storm, wrapped up in the circumstances of life, the whale's belly.

Father, this morning, I pray that every one of us will find a quiet place and

there in prayer, we'll say to the master, whatever you say, Lord,

I'll do, wherever you say, I'll go, whatever you want me to be, I'll be.

Please, Father, today, let the message of Jonas sink deep into our hearts in this hour.

In Christ's name, I pray. Amen. Thank you for sharing your Lord's Day with us.

God bless you. You're dismissed. If you ever need us, we're here. Thank you for coming.