The Book of Jonah

We're beginning a new sermon series today in the book of Jonah.

If you've brought your Bible, you may want to make your way there in the Old Testament.

If you'd like a sermon outline or to borrow Bible, the rushers would be happy to help you out.

If you know me, you know when I do a sermon series I'm going to take my time, and the reason is it's so rich I don't want to just peruse through this.

There's so much here.

It's amazing, and one of the amazing things we're going to see and talk about is God's grace that we just sung about.

We're just going to try to orient ourselves today to the book of Jonah, get the big picture in mind, and then we'll jump in and really dig in.

Let me read just the first three verses of Jonah, chapter 1.

Jonah 1 · chapter mention

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitah, saying Rise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

Whenever you study a book of the Bible, it's really important to know things about it, to understand it, the context, the background and so on.

And, most importantly, when you study a book of the Bible, in every single book of the Bible there's something we learn about God and how the Scripture points us to Jesus Christ.

I say that because Jesus was trying to help his disciples understand the scriptures in this way.

In Luke, chapter 24, 25 to 27, after his resurrection, he actually up braided them for their unbelief and he said to them O foolish men Slow of heart to believe, mark that you know where belief begins in our hearts.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

Slow to trust, slow of heart to believe in all the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?

Then, beginning with Moses, meaning Genesis, with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.

If you don't see Jesus, you haven't studied it well.

So let's begin by talking about some of the things we need to know about the story of Jonah.

I know many of you are familiar with the story of Jonah, some favorite Sunday school Biblical story Repeated again and again.

You remember that most people are familiar with the story that Jonah was swallowed by a whale or a gigantic fish and Unfortunately that's one reason many people don't believe the story of Jonah is true.

Some people think the story of Jonah is a whale of a tail, not the tail of a whale.

I Hope to convince you of otherwise by the end of this study.

I Believe Jonah is giving us a firsthand account of what actually happened to him.

Why do I believe the story of Jonah is true?

Let me give you start out with three basic reasons.

First of all, we know that the prophet Jonah was a real person From a real place.

He's mentioned first in the historical book of the Old Testament and second Kings.

God called him to be a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel during the wicked, idolatrous reign of Jeroboam the second.

If you remember, at that time, israel, the nation, was split into two kingdoms, one in the north, one in the south, israel in the north, ten tribes, judah in the south, two tribes, judah and Benjamin, and the northern kingdom where Jonah was preaching.

He served under Jeroboam the second, who reigned about 793 to 753 BC, and the events Jonah talks about here, scholars think probably around 760 BC.

Let me read a bit from second Kings 14 to get the historical context of Jonah being a real person in it, from a real place, speaking to real people 7 Kings 14, 23 in verse 25.

In the 15th year of Emma's eye, the son of Joe ash, king of Judah in the south.

Jeroboam, the son of Joe ash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria.

He reigned 41 years.

He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the sea of Araba.

According to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke through his servant, jonah, the son of Amity, the prophet who was of Gath helper, jonah, the son of Amitai, was born in Gath, heifer, a real place.

We also know that the other cities mentioned in Jonah Nineveh, joppa, tartarus were real places also here.

This is a Syria and here's Israel.

So Jonah starts out somewhere up here with King Jeroboam and once he heard the Lord tell him I want you to go several hundred miles to this city great, big, huge city and I want you to preach against it.

Jonah says I don't think so.

He's going to go down here and then he's going to get on a boat and head there.

There's a lot we need to talk about.

The city of Nineveh was a real place.

It wasn't Narnia or Oz At the time.

Nineveh was a huge city in Assyria and it would eventually become its capital.

We've got historical and archaeological records of this place for millennia.

It has an ancient history.

Genesis 10, verse 11, tells us that it was founded by the guy named Nimrod.

Genesis 10:11

He was the great grandson of Noah, and Nineveh was located near Mosul in modern day Iraq.

First reason real people, real places.

It's in the historical record.

Second reason I believe Jonah's truth is because Jonah was a prophet prophet of Yahweh, and everything written by the prophets is true and inspired from God Deuteronomy 18, 18, and 19,.

In telling Moses that they need to trust God's prophets and they leave here, he says I'm going to and I think ultimately, speaking of Messiah, the Lord said to Moses I'll raise up a prophet from among their countrymen, like you, I'll put my words in his mouth.

He shall speak to them all that I command him and it shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which you shall speak in my name, I myself will require to them.

There's a whole theology about the Word of God comes into the ministry of prophets.

He did not let their words fall to the ground.

They spoke with the authority from God himself.

Hebrews 111 tells us in the New Testament that God spoke in many and various ways through his prophets.

In the Old Testament he spoke audibly to some prophets, like he did Moses in Exodus 3.

He spoke in writing like he did at Sinai, gave them the Ten Commandments all written out for him, and he spoke to them in visions and dreams, which is probably how Jonah received his message from God.

I assume Jonah was also a contemporary of the prophets Amos and Hosea, but the story, the book of Jonah, is unique.

It stands apart from all the other prophets.

Jonah's story is about Jonah's relationship to God and his Word.

It's his own testimony of his tragic journey with God on his mission to preach to Nineveh.

I really believe through Jonah's encounters with God here, I think God wants us to learn a lot about our relationship with God and use it as a kind of paradigm.

Where do I see myself in this story?

Third reason I believe Jonah is choose because Jesus referred to him several times.

Jesus, the Son of God, referred to him as a historical person who preached to real people several times.

An interesting thing about the book of Jonah is it's just filled with surprises all over the place.

I mean you don't expect this at all A prophet running from God's presence.

I mean it just starts there and it builds surprise after surprise all the way to the end, things you don't expect from a prophet, things you don't expect from God, things you don't expect from pagans.

It's all here, lots of surprises we're in store for.

So what's the point of Jonah's story?

What are we supposed to learn?

What's the message of Jonah?

Well, the story of Jonah, like I said, it's not just about whales and storms and the Ninevites.

The story of Jonah really is about the relationship between Jonah and God.

It's going to have a bearing on our relationship if we listen to the teaching, the lessons coming from his testimony.

I want you to see this, though, because Jonah is writing this in a way that we he doesn't want us to miss this point.

It's about him, his relationship to God, and also his relationship to others who don't know God.

So we see a really clear symmetry in the book unfold.

If you've never read it.

The story chapter one, two, three, four.

Chapter one and two, first section.

Three and four, second section.

God's word coming to Jonah.

Jonah's response two halves Jonah, one, one.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai, saying rise, go to Nineveh, the great city.

Cry against it.

The wickedness has come up before me.

Jonah, one, three.

But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Go through chapter two.

We start again.

Chapter three, verse one.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah second time Rise, go to Nineveh, the great city, for claim to it the proclamation I'm going to give you Jonah, three, three.

So this time Jonah rose and went to Nineveh.

I wonder what happened in between that.

So there's two equal halves really, both.

We see we could divide it even further.

Chapter one and two we see this progression Yahweh's encounter starts with Yahweh's encounter with Jonah, jonah's encounter with the Gentiles on the ship and then Yahweh's encounter with Jonah.

Chapter three and four see the same progression Yahweh's encounter with Jonah, jonah's encounter with Gentiles, and then we finish with Yahweh's encounter with Jonah.

Again, the story of Jonah really is about letting us see Jonah's heart in contrast to God's compassionate heart.

The message of Jonah is about human sin and rebellion and about God's mercy and grace.

The message of Jonah is about God's love for individuals and God's love for the nations.

The message and lessons of Jonah are something every believer, I'm convinced, needs to know and to learn, because it doesn't come automatically to us.

I'm going to make a case.

There's a lot of Jonah in us as believers.

Jonah was a believer, but when you come down to it, what's going to stand out?

Strikingly so?

Two striking truths about God.

First, god is sovereign overall, you can run Good luck.

And second, god is Savior.

Of all, those two truths I'm telling you work together in tandem in the book of Jonah and in our lives.

God will interrupt your life to send you on a brand new mission you haven't even thought of for him.

And you know what else?

God will move heaven and earth to extend his unfathomable grace to individuals who don't know him and to those who are out of fellowship with him.

He's going to move heaven and earth.

You can count on it.

This will be my shortest message in the book of Jonah.

There's a lot to learn from this story.

In a sense, as I said earlier, there's a little Jonah in all of us.

In some ways, we will see ourselves in Jonah's story.

We're not going to want to, but we're there, hopefully not by being swallowed by a fish, but by coming to grips with God's love and grace.

You see, we may know and worship the Lord as Jonah did for years.

We may be serving the Lord as we know, as he's called us to in our little enclave and join what he has for us.

But you know what?

Like Jonah, our lives may not always be in sync with the Lord.

That's what Jonah is going to learn.

Jonah wants us to know that God comes for us.

He will move heaven and earth to make himself known and real to us, to show us things about himself that we've not seen before.

Of course, several hundred years later, god did more than that.

He didn't just move heaven and earth.

He left heaven and came down to earth to save us from our sins.

Jesus died on the cross to exact God's judgment for the sins we've committed, and he made it possible for us now to receive the gift of eternal life.

When we believe in Jesus, the Son of God is our Savior.

Let's pray, father.

Thank you today for Jonah, your servant, who left us a personal testimony of both his sin and your grace.

Thank you that he really serves as a sign pointing us to the Lord, jesus Christ, who, like Jonah, was buried and raised again to bring life to those who don't know you, thank you that your son, jesus, died for our sins and gives us eternal life.

Thank you, we've heard the message of the gospel and are able to know you personally as our Savior.

Help us now to live as your obedient servants for Jesus' sake, to give the gospel message of hope to those who don't know you.

Just like Jonah was called to do, I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.