The greater Jonah

I wasn't going to do this, but after this morning's meeting I

kind of have to who who knows what this is cheque book.

Who knows It's a cheque book, It's a cheque book.

And because Chris had a go at the English people this morning,

let me just read here in English, it's cheque book.

In Afrikaans, it's the cheque book for those you don't know.

Chris was telling all the English people that Psalms

begins with API. Don't know why the English

people don't say Psalms, but this is actually my dad's

chequebook. I'll ask him for it this week

and he says you'll have to go look for it.

The last cheque was written in in in 2012 and then the rest are

left. And let me explain what this is

because there's about 80% of you are completely lost in a world

where computers don't exist. How you pay someone is you would

order your cheque book from the bank comes with your serial

code, everything. It's literally a key to your

bank account. And then you would write in here

who you paying the amount, Rand value, sign it, date it, and you

would give it to the person and they can go to a bank and it's

basically like cash. They can draw the money out.

And there's such a thing as a blank cheque, which is quite a

ball of thing to do when you owe someone something, You just you,

you, you write their name, you sign it and you just give them

the blank cheque and you just say fill in the amount.

It's kind of like saying it doesn't matter how much you put

there. My bank account's good for it,

you know. And so if I had to take this

chequebook wistful, who had his birthday yesterday, Where are

you, buddy? Happy birthday.

Where are you? I know you're here.

So you're outside. He's left earlier.

He's left earlier, but if I had to go to Phil and say what do

you need? I've got my father's cheque

book. I can, I can write you a cheque.

What do you need? Good analogy.

What would Phil need to know about the world and my father to

know how much he could fill in on a blank cheque?

Beautiful. He would need to know how rich

is my dad because you can't take up more than this in the bank

account. And he's know how generous my

dad is if I'm carrying my father's cheque book.

So we're going to talk about Jonah a bit.

And I want to start out with just giving Jonah some

credibility because he takes a lot of Flack.

We kind of, we talk about him like he's this immature.

And in fact, at our life group, we call them the emo prophet

because he goes and sits outside the want to see the city

destroyed some metal. So let's just go through Jonah

quickly and give him some credibility.

Firstly, Jonah wrote the book of Jonah.

He's the only one that could have.

He's the only one in the belly of the whale.

There was no assistant there with him.

He wrote the book and he wrote it in such a way to teach us

something. So let me explain it this way.

While I was a young engineer and I was in a car with the director

of the company we had, we were heading to Limpopo, couple hour

drive to go price a job on a mine.

And during the drive, this director, his name is Ian,

fantastic guy, was telling me stories about when he was a

youngster, he was my age. I had as many years of work

experience as he had years to retirement.

And so he's telling the story about the situation.

And then this happened and then this was his response.

That wasn't the right response. What he should have done was

this. And he was telling me all these

things. And as I'm driving along, I'm

getting a sense that Ian wasn't a great engineer when he was a

youngster. And about 80% of the way to the

mine, the penny dropped. He's not telling me these

stories so that I know who he is.

He's telling me these stories so that I can see who I am.

Not a great engineer. And so Jonah's not writing the

story for his own credibility. He's writing the story for our

futures. See, that's why Jonah wrote the

story. And it's a prophetic book.

And so I want to explain what a prophetic book is because some

people confuse prophetic books with fortune telling.

A prophetic book is God's heart to a specific people at a

specific time. It's not rubbing dice and

telling what the future is going to hold.

It's God's heart. And a part of that is God tells

people what their path looks like.

He says if you continue on this path, this is what you're going

to end up with. And so we can read it a bit

like, you know, it tells the future, but it's actually God

just saying this is the end of your path or this is what I have

for you and your future. I want to prepare you for it.

So that's what a prophetic book is.

But the weird thing about Jonah is that there's one line from

God in the whole book, 40 days, and then it will be overthrown.

That's it, the whole book. And it's a very short book.

It's 2 pages. It's not the greatest of books.

If you've been in this church and you're a member of this

church, you've probably read it a couple of times in the last

couple of weeks. It's literally you can read it

in 4 minutes if you, me or Clint, 10 Max.

We're slow readers, but it's a very short book.

Sorry, Clint. And so here's some other bits

and pieces of bits and pieces about it.

It's written in the structure that there's a mirror straight

down the mirror, chapter one, a mirror down the middle, chapter

one and two, chapter three and four.

Chapter one, God calls Jonah. Jonah rebels, he runs away.

Chapter 2. Jonah repents and he comes back

to God. Chapter 3.

God calls Nineveh chapter 4 didn't quite doesn't quite

mirror properly. Chapter four, kind of like the

story goes off it goes. It goes a bit goes a bit

strange. Let me add one more thing to

join the CV before we before we move on.

If you had to read and the bookmark fall out as I got you

Matthew 13, Jesus. You see, we, we compare many Old

Testament people to Jesus. So we all say David is a type of

Jesus or this person's a type of Jesus.

Jesus doesn't compare himself to anything but God.

He just says I'm the Son of Man, which was a reference to the

book of Daniel. He's basically saying I'm God.

But there are three times where he compares himself to something

in the Old Testament and he says I'm greater than that.

And if we read what those three are, it's the bookmark fell out.

We do this way. It's Matthew 12.

He compares himself to the temple.

So he says something greater than the temples here.

And to say to a Jew, something greater than the temple is here.

The temple is the representation of God's presence, his blessing

on Israel. If the temple standing, they're

good. If someone pulls it down, they

mourn for generations. The temple is like everything

about God's presence. And he says something greater

than the temple is here. He's basically saying Jesus is

greater than the temple in terms of presence.

It's like saying to a bull supporter something greater than

Loftus is here. It's like you really up there,

there's nothing greater, nothing greater than the temple.

The second thing he compares himself to is King Solomon.

So he says the queen of the South came up to seeking this

kings. It's the greatest king Israel

ever had, the richest, most powerful wise.

It's the biggest the Kingdom had ever gotten.

They had peace throughout the entire time that Solomon was

king. He says I am greater than

Solomon. And the third one, he says I am

greater than Jonah. And if you read it, you go

temple I get, Solomon I get. But why Jonah?

The guy that got swallowed by a fish?

Why him? Surely Elisha is greater.

Surely all these others, there's greater pictures in the Old

Testament. And I actually think there

isn't. And the reason I think there

isn't is because between Abraham and Jesus, not one person, not

one person was ever sent to preach repentance to a people

that weren't used. Only Jonah, the only prophet

ever sent outside of Israel. It's an incredible honor.

We, we think of Jonah as this guy that messed it up.

But actually Jonah is the guy that gave it the best shot he

could. It's a it's you know.

So let's get into Jonah chapter 3.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

If your Bibles are with you, please open to chapter 3.

I want to go through what it is that God asked Jonah to do

because Jonah was asked to do 2 things and he only ever did one,

and he's writing the book to warn us of the second thing.

So I'm leaving that with you for a little bit while we go through

it. So Jonah chapter 3, verse one,

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time saying

arise, go to Nineveh, the great city.

So firstly, it's the great city. It's not the evil city, it's not

the wicked city it is, but God's heart is.

It's a great city, this great city.

Go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it the

message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to

Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was exceedingly great.

Three days, journey in breath, 3 days.

And Jonah began to go into the into the city, a day's journey.

And he called out 40 days yet and Nineveh will be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh believe God.

They called the fast, they put on sackcloth from the greatest

of them to the least. So they repented, much to

Jonah's surprise. Jump forward to chapter 4.

And this displeased Jonah exceedingly.

So he's preached, they repented, and he's unhappy, He's angry,

and he actually does the right thing with his anger.

He prays, he goes to God with an anger.

And he was angry and he prayed to the Lord.

Lord, is this not what I said when I set out in my country?

Is that not why I made haste to flee to Tarshish?

For I knew that you were gracious God and merciful, slow

to anger and abounding in steadfast love, relenting from

disasters jumped to to verse 5. And Joyner went out the city and

sat east of the city and made a booth for himself.

He sat under the shade so he could see what would happen to

the city. So the order of events are he

goes to Nineveh, he preaches, as far as we can tell, he preaches

exactly what God asked them to preach.

They repent and then he checks, he leaves, gets angry, gets

angry with God. God starts to ask him a couple

of questions and he says I'm out, I'm leaving, I'm going out

the city. I'm just going to go watch to

see what happens on the outside. So let's go back to chapter 3.

Jump into a couple of lines here.

The instruction from God was go to Nineveh, the great city, and

call out against it. The message that I told you now,

if Roy was preaching, you would also I'll say if I say call out,

if Stephen was preaching, I'll say everyone go, but you preach,

but I'm preaching. So I look up that word call.

What does it mean? Your Bible might say preach out

against. So I'm like, what was the

instruction? What did God ask Jonah to do?

So I look it up and it is the only place in the entire Bible

that this word is used. The only place that's used in

this form go call to the city. So I dig a bit deeper and

there's a root to the word English.

You have the same way, sort of two words are kind of the same,

but with a similar root. And that root is found all over

the Bible. So this is unique, a unique

message, but the word is found elsewhere.

The first time it's found is in Genesis when God is creating

everything, since he creates light and dark and he calls the

one light and the other dark. And it's not just he names it,

he gives it a purpose, He gives it an identity, He gives it

something more than just a name. He gives it a future.

It's how people name their sons in the Bible.

So a good example of this and, and the second reference I want

to point out is the the 12th tribe of Israel, Benjamin, when

he was born as as his mother gave birth to him, his mother

was passing away. And so she turns to her son and

calls him Ben. And I, Ben, son of my sorrow,

basically saying your name for the rest of your life, you'll

say, hi, I'm Stephen. Hi.

I'm son of my sorrow. I killed my mom.

That's going to be his name. That's going to be what he

carries for his life. And his father, Israel says, no,

he will not be called Ben. And I, he'll be called Benjamin,

son of my right hand. And now there's a whole preacher

in there. But how does Israel know how to

do that? Well, he was born as Jacob, the

heel grabber, the snatcher, the cheat, the, the, the person that

tricked everyone out and he was renamed by God.

God says you will not be Jacob, you will be Israel.

You will be Israel. And so his son is born and he

knows actually his name is different.

His destiny is different. He will call him by a different

name. The third place in the Baba I

want to point it out is Jonah chapter 2 verses 2.

Jonah 2:2

I called out to the Lord out of my distress and he answered me.

So when God asks Jonah go out and call to the city of Nineveh,

he's saying go give them a new name, go give them a destiny, go

give them a new identity in the same way that you called out to

me in chapter 2GO call out to them.

In some places in the Bible, that word call is translated as

a read. Literally means that to sit and

read, hey Mitch, let's go line by line, bro.

Let's go bit by bit, line by line.

And so we think Jonah was asked to go and tell them what God

said. Go give them a piece of God's

mind. God was saying go to Nineveh and

sit with him. Go through it with him.

Call out to the message that I tell you.

It's not the message that's the the tensor.

That is not the message that I'm going to tell you.

Now take our paper and pen. I've got a message.

Send my note. It's not the message I'm going

to tell you. It's the message I'm telling you

the message that you received in chapter one and two when you

were in the belly of the whale. How I forgave you, how I

restored you, How I can hear you from the bottom of the ocean.

I can hear your voice. Go tell Nineveh.

I can hear them. I can hear their voice.

They are nowhere near the temple.

They're thousands of miles away that do not have any of the

patriarchs as their forefathers, that do not have the Bible.

They have nothing. Go tell them.

I can hear them the same message that I've told you.

So that is the message to Nineveh.

And I know a lot of people say this.

What he said to them was probably the worst.

Preach 40 days and then it will be overthrown.

But there's actually no evidence to say that.

That's not what God told him to say.

And the reason I say that is it's oddly specific. 40 days and

then it will be overthrown. Like if you were just going to

make something up, firstly, God will take you on about it.

And God never takes him on about what he what he said to, to to

Nineveh. And it's a very specific thing

to say. And now here's the thing about

prophetic books is that for Jonah, it was 40 days and then

it will be overthrown. But somehow over prophetic

books, God writes like a second story.

You see the the prophets playing chess, but God's playing like 3

dimensional chess. And actually if every single

book in the old Bible, in the Old Testament, if you go look,

it's about Jesus. So when you read 40 days and

then it will be overthrown, you should know 40 days refers to

Jesus 40 days in the desert. And he was completely Jesus.

His identity was set so that he could begin his ministry.

He died and 40 days later he ascended into heaven.

That wasn't for him. That 40 days was for his

disciples. 40 days, they had just witnessed Jesus come back

to life that in, in theological terms, they'd just been saved,

like literally just been saved. 40 days, He has to prepare them

and then he ascends into heaven. 40 days and Nineveh will be

overthrown. You see, Jonah was thinking 5040

days and this place is going to blow up, but God was saying 40

days and I'll rewrite them who they are, I'll change their

identity, I'll completely change their future.

And what does Jonah do? They repent and he gets angry.

Now some people think Jonah getting angry, he shouldn't have

gotten angry. And actually I don't think

that's true. Many people get angry with God

in the Bible and God takes them on, but he never disciplines him

for the anger. He disciplines them for their

actions afterwards. There's a guy in this church

that you know, certain decisions were being taken in his family

by another member of the family that was ripping the family

apart. And as a young man you could see

he was angry. And my advice to him was be

angry, but take it to God. Take your anger there.

Take your frustration there. He can answer and He will answer

and he can deal with it. And so maybe you, like Jonah,

are angry with God and maybe it's because of what God is

doing. Can I challenge you?

Take it to him. He will answer.

Are you disappointed? Take it to him.

He can answer you and He will answer you.

He's not upset by your disappointment.

He's not. He's not personally hurt by your

anger, but he is the only place that you can find those answers

from. So he takes his anger to God and

God answers him, says do you do well to be angry?

And Jonah says nothing. He just leaves.

He checks out. And that is the second thing

that Jonah never did. He never stayed.

He never stayed for long enough for God to complete the 40 days

within the arts. In preparing for this, I was

actually thinking it's clear God wanted Jonah to stay at that

point. How long I don't know.

But maybe when God said to Jonah arise and go to Nineveh, maybe

it was like he said to Abraham arise and go and Abraham never

came back. Maybe the first prophet ever

sent to preach repentance to a nation that was not Israel.

What he was actually saying is go to Nineveh and don't come

back. Go stay there.

Go read with them. Go teach them.

Go give them a new identity. Stick there for long enough for

their destinies to change. See, Jonah wrote the book of

Jonah. He tells us all, you know, this

is what he's going through. And I actually think, yeah, I

think he only includes that one line from God because there's

another version of the book of Jonah.

You see, if you read chapters 1-2 and three, I think we all,

at the end of our lives will sit down and write a version of

chapters 1-2 and three. At some point, we're all going

to be swallowed by a whale. Life's going to go the wrong

way. Whether by our choices or

someone else, something's going to going to grab a hold of us.

And then God will grab a hold of us and we'll write chapter 2.

God will reveal to us who he is. He will answer our prayers and

he will use that. He'll send us chapter 3.

Somehow he'll send us out. But I think there's a different

chapter 4 that Jonah regrets that he never got to write.

Go read Isaiah, it's like 70 chapters.

Go read many of these Old Testament prophets.

It's chapter after chapter after chapter of God's heart to those

people at that time. And Jonah can only write down

one line because as soon as he got to the point where God was

like, now we're going to start to show my heart to the

Ninevites. He chucked, he left.

You see, we think the book of Jonah is an encouragement for us

to be a better person than Jonah.

The truth is, Jonah was the best chance men ever had.

There was nothing greater than the temple other than Jesus.

There was nothing greater than King Solomon other than Jesus.

There's nothing greater than Jonah to reach people other than

Jesus. We think if I become a kinder

person, if I become a better person, I become a nicer person.

I smile more. I encourage people more.

Those are all good things. But actually, Jonah, we, we sort

of downplayed Jonah as if he'd just gotten it right.

Actually, this is my credit card.

It's not as fancy as this. But what Jonah did is he got to

Nineveh and he swiped his card and it went through once and he

swiped it again and the bank account is empty.

There was nothing left for Jonah.

He had preached once and they repented and I don't know what

happened, but it's just like there was nothing left.

There was nothing left for Jonah, but God was actually

writing a blank cheque to Nineveh.

He was actually saying Jonah in my name to Nineveh.

Data designed, go fill in the amount.

What does Nineveh need? What do they need?

Would you sit with them? Would you walk with them?

Would you read with them? Would you would you change their

destiny? What do they need?

And he was trying to swipe his own credit card.

I think what what really got through to me on this was Kai

and Sam up here when they shared a couple of weeks ago.

And if you weren't here, you know, I don't want to tell their

story for them. But there's a point when they're

telling the story. And Sam is sort of going through

it. And I realized there was a point

that marriage was over. It was done, it was dead.

And if she at that point had said it's over, it's done, it's

dead, let's move on. Not a single person in this room

would have tried to put any shame on her.

There was. It was.

And I think Jonah could have written the story in a very

different way if he had sat down and written and he could have

said, well, you know, performing miracles.

He did preach, the whole city was saved, everyone repented.

He could have gone back to Israel as a hero, and he might

have actually gone back as a hero.

But he writes it in a way to show us that actually there's

something a bit more that even though God, even though we will

within our rights sometimes stand on something and say,

well, you know, if this is the reasonable approach, reasonably,

we're done here. There's no other way.

There's no other way forward. But if we want to write a

chapter 4 and 5:00 and 6:00 and 7:00 and 8:00 and 9:00 and 10:00

and keep going about God's love to people in a specific place,

what Jonah tells us is that we need, we need something more

than what we have. We need something way bigger.

You see, Jonah, when it got real, the city was repenting.

And in my mind, it's still, it's still, still none of that.

It's not like, it's not like they've become great people.

They're probably still, they haven't got rid of the pigs yet.

You know, they're not Jews. There's no Sabbath.

There's everything about Nineveh is exactly the same.

They're just repenting. And there was probably something

in there that made him angry and he left.

He went outside the city to see what would have happened.

Jesus stayed in the city on the night he was betrayed, all his

disciples ran away and he stayed.

He was taken back into the city. He was tried in the city.

We we don't have the resources. We don't have the bank account

of grace and of love. And we'll get to a point where

we realize actually we don't have what it takes.

Being nice is not going to be it.

The gospel needs to come out in what I say and what I do.

I've gone and reread chapter 2, but I would encourage you reread

it again with the eyes of the of the Ninevites.

When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my

prayers came into His holy temple.

Imagine the Ninevites had realized that actually they've

repented. But even when it goes badly

after that, my prayers still go into His temple.

You read all those things and you realize that actually Jonah

needed to show them Jesus. He used to sit with them and

show them who Jesus was. We've got that opportunity.

We can show Jesus. Not that we're nicer people.

Being friendly is not going to help, but actually there's going

to come a point where we've written chapter one, two, and

three. Let the grace of God be the

thing that you draw on. Let that be the check that you

write. Let that be the thing that you

give.