01 | Jonah: An Introduction

Ps. Steven R. Martins, founding pastor at Sevilla Chapel in St. Catharines, walks us through a literary and historical introduction to the book of Jonah and an exposition of Jonah 1:1-10.

Transcript

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The sermon series on the Book of Jonah by founding pastor Stephen R. Martins is brought to you by Sevilla Chapel.

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Well, grace and be studio, brothers and sisters. If you're visiting us for the first time or you're joining us online, welcome to Sevilla Chapel. My name is Stephen Martins, and I have the privilege of serving on the pastoral staff here at the church. If you were with us last week, you will have noticed that with the end of our four-year study of the gospel according to Matthew, our dear Pastor Lawrence began a new series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And we're going to be doing something a bit different than what we've done before, in that both Pastor Lawrence and I will actually be delivering distinct sermon series. So whenever Pastor Lawrence is here at the pulpit to exposit the Word of God, he'll bring us through the letter of the Ephesians. I, on the other hand, will be starting a new short series on the book of Jonah. And if you're wondering why we decided to take this very approach and why we decided to go this particular route, well, there's actually a twofold reason to that. First, the book of Jonah occasions us to speak on the missional vision of our church. And for a church in its infancy such as ours, a series that is particularly with a missional focus is in fact most appropriate. It's important for us to be reminded of our mission as a local body of believers. I was once told by a dear friend in ministry that when it comes to casting a vision for the future of the church for the local body of believers, the church can often be referred to as a leaky vessel, a leaky vessel. And what he means by that is that whatever vision has been cast can gradually over time be forgotten unless you're continually pressing on the issue, continually pouring into that vessel. And it's not unique to the church. If you think about it, if you're familiar with it, the same tendency can be observed in many organizations and businesses today. And it's what we what many experts would call the missional drift. You start with the mission statement, you know what you're all about. Ten years down the line, you've drifted away from the mission, unless you continue to pour in that same vision that you began with from the beginning. So while I address the missional vision of the church through a faithful exposition of the book of Jonah, Pastor Lawrence will be addressing the life of the church through a faithful exposition of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And in this way we actually complement each other well. There's an inward focus and there's an outward focus. The second reason is that by committing to preaching the whole counsel of God, we're going to be able to hear and reflect on God's work from both the Old and New Testament contexts. You know, it can be quite common for churches to focus their attention on New Testament writings, because they're often easier to preach on than the Old Testament. You think about preaching through Kings or Chronicles or Ecclesiastes, and then you compare that to preaching through the Gospels or one of Paul's pastoral letters. Now, of course, there are some New Testament texts that are quite difficult to exposit and to preach on, such as Romans and Hebrews and Revelation, those are being an exception, of course, but generally that's the norm. The New Testament is easier to preach from. But we cannot unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament. There is, in fact, a bountiful treasure to be found in the Old, especially since we have the light of the New. We can see the Old Testament from the eyes of the New Testament and be able to see things that the Old Testament Israel believers did not understand then and there. Now, before we dive into the first chapter of Jonah, I want to mention a few things concerning its literary and historical context because you can't just jump into an ancient text such as this and assume you know everything. You need to know the ins and outs, you need to know the general literary and historical context. So when you first hear the title Jonah, admittedly, especially if you've grown up in the church, you might immediately think of the children's Bible stories of a prophet being swallowed up by a giant fish and then spat out. And much like what's happened with the Ark of Noah in the early chapters of Genesis, the biblical narrative is often reduced to an almost simplistic fairy tale-like story, so that immediately brings to mind a childish portrait. Oh, it's a children's story. It's like a children's fairy tale story, except it's the word of God, so it's not quite, but that's what we tend to have is caricature in our minds. With our late culture's emphasis on reason, what it considers to be unreasonable or unlikely, is often caricatured beyond recognition. And there are some commentators, for example, who believe that the story of Jonah is more mythical and allegorical than historical, though they would not deny him as a historical prophetic figure. Well, I hope to rectify that by rooting the book of Jonah in real history and not denying anything fantastical on the grounds that the scriptures are the infallible, inerrant, and inspired Word of God. First, then a few words concerning the title and the author of the book. Jonah is the fifth book of the twelve minor prophets in the Old Testament, what the Jews referred to as the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. And as you might have guessed, the book takes its name from the principal figure of the narrative, Jonah, the son of Amitai. Now, nothing is really known of Amittai, but the mention of the father's name makes clear that this Jonah is, in fact, a real historical figure and would have been recognized by his community. People would have renowned him. Yes, he's Jonah, the son of Amitai. As for who wrote the book of Jonah, well, it's assumed that it was either written by Jonah himself or perhaps by some scribe shortly after the recorded events of this narrative. So sometime in the 8th century BC before Christ. Further cementing Jonah, the son of Amitai, as a historic figure, and hence why these most liberal of scholars would not even dare to suggest that he's an entirely mythical character. Jonah is also mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament, although only once. And we find mention of him in 2 Kings 14, 23 to 25. And I'm going to read that text just so we can understand in what context Jonah was serving in. Because the book of Jonah doesn't give that context. And thankfully, 2 Kings does. And the text of 2 Kings 14, 23 to 25 says as follows. It says, In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned 41 years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Libohamoth as far as the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, the son of Amitai, the prophet who was from Gath Hephar. So here then we have mention of Jonah, son of Amitai, in the context of a prophet. That's the context we have here. And according to the text in 2 Kings, we understand that Jonah served as a prophet during the reign of King Jeroboam II, who reigned over the northern kingdom of Israel. And as a prophet of God, he had prophesied in the king's favor that he would win a battle against his enemies and restore his kingdom territories toward the northern borders. These were territories that had been lost since the time of King Solomon. And according to what had been prophesied, King Jeroboam II did in fact extend the borders beyond his kingdom, beyond the frontier of Syria. However, something interesting takes place shortly after the king's victory. The Lord raises up another prophet, not Jonah, but the prophet Amos to speak against the king. And the words of most relevance are found in Amos chapter 6, verses 13 to 14. I'll read this to you just so you understand the picture. It says, You who rejoice in Lodabar, who say, Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves? For behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, declares the Lord the God of hosts. And they shall oppress you from Lebuhamak to the brook of the Arabah. So to translate that for you, to put that in Laban's terms, because of the king's wickedness, King Jerome II, for Jerome, Jeroboam II was in fact a cruel and evil king. He was a tyrant who boasted in his own strength, the Lord would take away the territories that he had gained. What King Jeroboam II had won, he would lose. Now with this information, we understand the time of Jonah's prophetic ministry as being during the reign of Jeroboam II, and that the prophet Amos was also operating under the power of the Spirit of God as well in that context. So Amos, by the way, is another minor prophet that we may turn to in the months ahead. There's a lot to glean there. For now, we're going to keep our attention on Jonah. But these were two contemporary prophets, two ministries that were on that were also taking place. Now, turning back to Jonah, Jonah is unique. The book of Jonah, that is, when you compare it to the rest of the minor prophets. If you were to open all the minor prophets, there's about 12 of them. Jonah's unique because the focus in all the minor prophets has primarily been on the word of the Lord towards God's people. That's what it's about. It's about God's word to God's people. And it's delivered by these prophets whom God has raised, these minor prophets. But Jonah's different in that the focus is on the central figure, on Jonah, the son of Amitai. The book is then about the prophets, more so than about the word of the Lord. Nonetheless, the book itself is God's word to his people, and it speaks to us, as we shall see. But the focus is on this central figure. What I found most fascinating, particularly about the book of Jonah, and I'm sure that you'll find that as well, is that the genre of the narrative is also quite distinctive. It's not like most Bible stories, where you sort of also anticipate a particular ending and you know it's going to end on a good mark. You have a rebellious prophet in this story, you have pagan sailors who repent, you have a powerful, murderous, and pagan king who humbles himself, you even have the beasts of the field which are in mourning over the sin of the great city of Nineveh. In the midst of all this is Jonah, the son of Amitta. You have, in other words, from the very beginning to the very end, a historical figure placed in extreme circumstances, and with both witty humor and irony, we discern a critique of his shortcomings and his character flaws. So this, dear brothers and sisters, is what we might actually call biblical satire. But this isn't some fictional or poetic satire, it's historical. And with that context, we can now begin to address the text. We begin with Jonah chapter 1, verses 1 to 3. It reads, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Jobah and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with him to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord. The book of Jonah begins with a command from the Lord. The Spirit of God spoke to Jonah and told him to arise and go to Nineveh, which is called a great city. And what was Jonah to do? To call out against it. In other words, to announce God's judgment, to declare God's coming judgment. For their crimes could no longer go without punishment. God's justice would not be stayed. Now, before we go any further, a brief note concerning Nineveh, because we ought to also understand the context of Nineveh. Nineveh was one of the capitals of the Assyrian Empire. And at the height of the Assyrian Empire, it was actually one of the greatest cities of the known world. In reference to today's maps, Nineveh was situated in what is now northern Iraq. In terms of size and scope, Nineveh was surrounded by a brick wall about 12 kilometers long and had 15 different gates, five of which have been excavated today. And these gates were guarded by gigantic stone bowls, which was typical of this period's Assyrian architecture. Now Nineveh is first mentioned in the book of Genesis, in which it said that the pagan king Nimrod went out from the land of Shinar, and if you're if that appears familiar to you, that is the site of the Tower of Babel, to the land which would be Assyria in order to build Nineveh, among other cities like Rehaboth and Kala. So Nimrod is the founder of Nineveh. And in order to understand the blood-soaked ways of Nineveh, reliefs found in Senicarib's palace, who was the king of Assyria from the year 705 to 681 BC, depict the siege and capture of Lakish, which was a fortified, a very strategic and important fortified city southwest of Jerusalem. And in these archaeological reliefs that they found, they find exhibited their archers and battering rams on the attack. There's people fleeing from the city gate with bundles on their backs. There's three naked men impaled on poles. Sinecarib's account found on the prisons, both held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and also one at the British Museum, states that in relation to King Hezekiah of Jerusalem, it states, he did not submit to my yoke. Again, this is Senicarib. I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts, and to countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered them. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird trapped in a cage. Now, this took place about 60 to 80 years after the events of Jonah. But it serves to show the arrogance of the Assyrians. And while we read of God's compassion toward Nineveh in the book of Jonah, God's judgment would later visit this great city according to the prophetic words of Nahum and Zephaniah. It would be destroyed by a coalition of Babylonians and Medes and Scythians. In fact, so great was the devastation that the city was absolutely laid to waste and forgotten. Now, to put this into perspective, Jonah had been instructed to go to a central, densely populous city of God's enemies, of the enemies of God's people, the Assyrians. And as the prophet Nahab puts it later, Nineveh was known as the bloody city, all full of lies and robbery. It was the city in which blood flowed through the streets. Assyrian royal inscriptions actually boast of mass slaughter, impalement of victims on stakes, flaying enemies alive, even piling up heads as trophies, kind of reminiscent of theologists would later discover of the Aztecs in Mesoamerica. Nineveh, as a central focal point of the Assyrian Empire, had a well-established reputation in the ancient Near East for extreme brutality, violence, and arrogant oppression. They enslaved populations, they crushed nations, and as they would do to Israel in the year 722 BC, they would crush them and exact heavy tribute. Now, why would Jonah go to Nineveh? We know the answer to that question because God had told them to do so. But if Jonah went and declared God's judgment upon the great city, and by some unlikely event the great city were to turn from their sin and find mercy in God, would God not later use Nineveh and the Assyrians and their empire to judge God's people, to judge his people, to destroy Israel, to bring his people away into exile, all as a result, of course, of his people's covenant infidelity, of their sin, of their continuous sin and disregard for God's law and righteousness. You see, Jonah could see that far ahead. He knew the pieces on the table. He knew the chess pieces and what the next moves were going to be. And this was clearly because the Spirit had illuminated his thinking. Here I am, part of a covenant people. God's people have strayed, we're committing sin, we're breaking God's law, we're guilty of religious syncretism, we're worshiping other idols, we're doing all sorts of evil things. God is going to judge us, and who's in a position to judge us? The Assyrian Empire. And God wants to go to Nineveh, whom He's going to destroy, and God might spare them and use them to destroy God's people. You see, Assyria was an evil nation deserving of God's judgment. There's no denying that. And God's judgment would come at its appointed time. But in the meantime, Assyria was God's tool that he would use to visit judgment upon his people. Why would Jonah agree to that? He knew. He knew the plague. He knew what was going to happen, and he didn't want any part in it. We know the answer, of course. Why would Jonah agree to that? Why he should agree to that? He should agree to that because God is God. And who are we to refuse him? Who are we to refuse the sovereign creator of the universe? You might think that Jonah would have run willingly to Nineveh, perhaps even with glee, that he was going to pronounce judgment upon the great city. And he would have been saying, Yeah, this is what you deserve. You evil men, the judgment's coming. I'm so happy about it. You would have thought he would have said something on those lines. Because they were enemies of God's people, and they had made them suffer, and their suffering would soon increase. But Jonah didn't do that, and Jonah didn't have that sort of attitude. And this is because Jonah knew very well the heart of God. He knew the character of God. And so he despised the word of the Lord. Because he knew that God would be merciful if there was repentance. He knew that the Lord had love for his enemies. And he would shower his mercies if he so will. Either God will send another prophet, for God is God, and he has many prophets, or he simply will not go. Because if there's no wording of judgment, then there would be no opportunity for repentance and mercy. What he must do then is run away. That must have been how he arrived at that point in his thinking, and that's exactly what Jonah did according to the text. You see, instead of traveling roughly 800 kilometers northeast of Palestine to Nineveh, Jonah instead went to Jopa, the nearest seaport. And there he bordered a merchant ship for Tarshish, a place considered the edge of the known world at the time. Tarshish, for those wondering, was likely a Phoenician city or Phoenician port in Spain, which was about 3,200 kilometers due west. Now, what's ironic is that Jonah actually thinks that he could run away from God. I find that quite ironic. It's humorous. As a prophet of God, he knows that he cannot outrun God. But what happens here is that because he's in disobedience, he slips into thinking and operating as the pagans do, and that is henotheistically. And I'm going to explain what that means. The pagans of his time believed that their gods were over certain geographic areas. This is what we called henotheism. The gods of Babylon operated in Babylon, the gods of Egypt operated in Egypt, and the gods of Assyria operated in Assyria. And so you wouldn't expect an Egyptian god to operate in Babylon, for example, and so on. That was just the pagan way of thinking. They believed that these gods operated in certain geographic areas. And here, Jonah thinks that God may somehow be also following that sort of same way, that sort of same parameters. So for just a moment, Jonah thinks that by leaving For Tarshish, going to the port of Spain, to the Phoenician port, he would be outside the geographic operations of the God of Israel, of Yahweh. But Jonah's going to contradict himself later in the text, as we're going to see. But just for a moment, look at verse 3. Verse 3 in particular makes a very strong emphasis on the contrast we see from verse 1 to verse 2. We see the command of the Lord in verse 1, and then we see Jonah's deliberate disobedience in verse 2. And then follows verses 4 to 6, which reads, But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so the ship threatened to break up. And then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to light it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. There's a little bit of humor that I mentioned there. So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish. I find it most fascinating that a storm breaks out in such epic proportions that everyone aboard, pagans who do not know the Lord, discerns a divine hand in it. And Jonah is nowhere to be seen on deck. The tempest is so powerful and so violent that there's an actual, genuine fear among seasoned sailors and merchants that the ship is going to break apart under the winds and the waves. The wooden beams and the outfitting of the vessel, if you think about these wooden ships, they would have been making these really loud noises as they were under stress. You would have been hearing the bending, perhaps even snapping. And you knew that at any moment this ship was going to give way. So the first thought they had was to throw cargo overboard in order to lessen the load, lessen the weight, and therefore lessen the stress on the structure of the ship. Now, clearly, they realized that they needed help. Because they threw cargo overboard and it didn't really make much of a difference. They were still very genuinely in concern that this was going to be their end. They needed to do something, but it was outside of their control. They realized that the help they needed was something that was going to dramatically improve their situation, and they were powerless to do so. So this is why the captain sought out Jonah. He must have gone to all the sailors and said, pray to your gods. And he would have been really wondering, wait a minute, where's this guest who's come on board, who's paid his way up onto the ship to go to Tarshish? I don't see him anywhere. He's downstairs. How could he be downstairs? What is he doing downstairs? And they find out he's sleeping. How can he be sleeping in conditions like these? So the captain seeks out Jonah. Because Jonah, again, was not a common traveler. He was not a merchant. He was not known for traveling these far distances, and he would have been an unfamiliar face. And already was very suspicious that he was sleeping soundly while everyone else was in panic. You know, it doesn't take very much for a man to wake up to his senses. A mere life-ending experience, maybe, you know, extreme turbulence on a plane, and suddenly your mind and your heart is awakened to your own mortality and the need to set your feet on the right path. But that's not the case with Jonah. Jonah hardened his heart so that he wouldn't care whether the ship tore apart. He didn't even care about the pagans on board. He didn't care if they all perished. He was actually at peace with that. And perhaps his sleep was a resignation to whatever judgment the Lord was going to visit upon him for his disobedience. You might just wonder, this is a prophet of God? But God is not done with Jonah. God is very persistent with Jonah. Jonah is brought up to the deck by this pagan captain, and he's asked to pray to his God. He's told by a pagan, an unbeliever, for him to pray to his God. It would be like someone, an unbeliever today, saying, Things are very dire. I'm not a Christian. You are. Please pray to your God. So the situation is dire here. And all the other sailors there are praying to their pagan gods. Now look at verses 7 to 10. And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. And then they said to him, Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. If you're not familiar with the expression casting of lots, it's akin to casting a die today. Since they had not received any response to their short prayer meeting, they discerned that someone had done something to have angered the divine. And clearly there was something unnatural about the storm, perhaps its unusual intensity or its appearance, or its timing in a season where such storms should not be possible. Something gave it away. And they wanted to find the cause, the culprit, so they cast lots. Now, the casting of lots was widely used actually in the ancient Near East, which is why you'll see it mentioned in Scripture. And sometimes you might think, well, maybe it's only exclusive to the Jews. But no, as that was actually quite common amongst the other cultures. They were likely painted or colored stones or pebbles that were tossed. And when the stones were tossed or when they were thrown, if two dark sides landed up, the usual interpretation was no. And if the two light sides landed upwards, that usually meant yes. And if it was a light and a dark side, that meant throw it again. Now bear in mind that the disciples of Jesus in the book of Acts cast lots to determine who would replace the twelfth disciple, Judas Iscariot. And after casting lots, Matthias was chosen. See, on this occasion, the sailors cast lots to deal with each other. They probably went from sailor to sailor, and they cast their lots, and they were waiting for the colors to reveal the guilty person. Nope, nope, nope, nope, you're not it. And they must have tried with one another and saw the dark sides up, which meant no. And then they would have kept trying and trying until they arrived at Jonah. Oh, and maybe they maybe there was more than one one set of loss, you never know. Maybe multiple sailors probably do the same thing. Well, it's not a this can't be a coincidence. Jonah, everything says, yes, you're the culprit here. So they kept trying. Jonah was found the culprit, according to the text. Now, before you question this whole method of casting lots, because if you think about it, okay, I have a pair of dye, and I'm gonna want to find out whether you did this or not. No, we we don't use dye, we don't use casting of lots today. We have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, but back in those times it was used. And so this casting of lots, you might think it was given to chance. Well, really, there's no such thing as chance. Proverbs chapter 16, verse 33 says, the lost is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. You see, God is a control of all things, He's sovereign, and nothing comes to pass that is not of the Lord's will. Chance is nothing but man's ignorance of God's workings in the world. Man's ignorance of God's providential workings. Can you imagine the drama of this moment? As the lot found Jonah guilty, all eyes would have fallen on him. And then follow all the questions, the interrogations. What is his occupation? He is a prophet of God, the true God, because there are no other gods. Where does he come from? From the land of Israel. What is his country? He's an Israelite, a member of God's covenant people. And of what people is he? He is of the people of God. And the answer Jonah gives them is the contradiction mentioned before. Jonah thought he could run away from God. He thought like a pagan. Well, God is he operates there in Israel. I'm going to go as far as Tarshish, and I'm not going to hear from God because I'm not there. But then he says, I'm a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. You're fleeing God by sea, and God made the sea. You see the humor and the irony here again. He thought he could flee from the Lord by sea when God made the sea. And what happens when he arrives at Tarshish? Is not Tarshish on land? Did God not also create the land, the dry land? And since he had told them that he was fleeing from the Lord, the sailors were all deathly afraid. And they exclaimed to him, What is this that you have done? In other words, you put our lives at risk. You're running from God and inviting God's judgment, and you decide to lump us in with you. The fact that he also refers to himself as a Hebrew instead of the term Israelite meant that these pagan sailors would have instantly recognized, having learned and learned of the stories of a God had delivered the Hebrews from Egypt, that the God of the Hebrews should be feared. That's as far as we'll go with the biblical text for now. We'll continue the next Sunday, the night here at the pulpit preaching. But already we can discern the contrast, the irony, the humor of a command and then the subsequent disobedience. God told them to go and Jonah fled. God wanted to take this command seriously, and Jonah slept. God makes it no secret that he is everywhere, that nothing can be hidden from him, and Jonah tries to flee his presence. You might say, Well, that's tragic and sad. How is that humorous? I find it humorous because God does not give up with him. And Jonah thinks that he can escape and get his own way, and God will not let him. God will not allow it. Now you are most certainly allowed to ask as you read the story of Jonah up to this point, and a part of my language, but what stupidity is this? We're talking about the prophet of God who knows God well, who knows his sovereignty, who knows he's created everything, and it's literally like he's been stricken with a disease of idiocy and thinking, well, I'm gonna think like a pagan and do like a pagan and sail like a pagan, and then when he's finally caught, he admits, I'm a prophet of God, I'm a Hebrew, and I believe in the Lord, God who created the heavens and the earth. Jonah has been duplicitous, has been deceitful, has been rebellious. We have seen this. And yet there have been and are times when we ourselves are wallowing in the same idiocy as Jonah. If you're an unbeliever, God calls you to repent of your sin and to entrust your whole life to Him, to surrender, and in Him you will have life. Do not think that you can run from God. Do not think you can hide from God. Nothing can be hidden from God. You could be in a mine shaft deep in the earth, in the ground, and God still sees you. You could be up in a plane several thousands of kilometers in the air, God still sees you. You could be in the International Space Station, God still sees you. The message that God gave Jonah to deliver to Nineveh is the same message that we're given to give unto the world. Repent of your sin, for judgment is coming. Don't be like Jonah, who knew better than an unbeliever. Obey the word of the Lord and turn to him. Furthermore, there may certainly be many areas in our lives for those of us who are in Christ, which we have not yet surrendered unto the Lord. And I've mentioned this before, and I mentioned again because it is quite frankly part of our struggle here in this fallen world. Each person knows the sins that they struggle with. Each person knows that perhaps it's a lack of self-control, perhaps it's unbridled anger, perhaps it's the passions of the flesh or the negligence of the human heart and mind. What vices bind you? What sins do you struggle with? What do you wrestle with and what keeps you up at night? What sinful habits ail you? And what does the word of God command? To walk in the way of truth, to walk uprightly before our God, to not wallow in our sin. As believers in Christ, we are to obey, not to disobey. We are to walk in the light, not to hide our sin in the dark, thinking foolishly that we could somehow deceive God. And there are, in fact, times when we behave like unbelievers, thinking that because others do not see, God sees us not either. No, the exclamation comes to mind. What is this that you've done? What sin have you hesitated or refused to lay down? It's remarkable that this question comes from these pagan sailors, and it's these pagan sailors who convict Jonah of his sin. And it's the sailors who confront him over his sin and who call him to repent before God. Wow, how the tables have turned in Jonah's case, and this is one of the reasons why I most uh enjoy reading through Jonah. It's just unexpected events and unexpected reactions from unexpected people. But here we have the Word of God calling us to walk in the light, calling us to walk in truth. What sin have we hesitated or refused to lay down? What have we not done? What must we do? We are to mortify the flesh in order that sin may not reign in us, but rather the Spirit may live and reign according to the will of our God. And lastly, as we reflect here on the life of Jonah, has God not sent us to go out and proclaim his gospel truth? Have we done so? Or have we run away like Jonah has? We've received the command, the great commission in Matthew 28, 18 to 20. But sometimes, when it comes to sharing the gospel, when it comes to discipling, when it comes to going that extra mile and getting that the gospel message to people who have not heard and who do not believe, sometimes we run away to work and say that we're too busy. Sometimes we run away to family and social gatherings and say that we don't have the time. Now, I'm not speaking, of course, of neglecting our responsibilities because everyone has a task at hand to fulfill. Everyone has to be faithful as spouses, as parents, as workers, as students, and so on. But may our responsibilities may not be our excuse for our disobedience. May we find ways to be faithful without neglecting what God has entrusted us with. Jonah surely must have excused himself, thinking, I am of the people of God, and I will not function against God's people. But he was wrong in doing so, in trying to excuse himself. And in this case, here, in terms of the Great Commission, we are to go out into the world and proclaim this gospel message. So as we look at this text in Jonah chapter 1, verses 1 to 10, we see who Jonah is, and we say, we don't want to be like him. And I believe that is why Jonah is there in amongst the minor prophets. Even towards the end of the book, we will say to ourselves, I don't want to be like him. And that's the purpose. It's to show us how we ought not to be as God's people. May we be instead quick to obey, quick to proclaim the truth, quick to stand for righteousness, to call out sin, and to call the lost to repentance. In Christ our God, there is life. Let us not be judged. Let us pray. Lord Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your word. We thank you for the depths, Lord God, but also it's just a wondrous uh diversity of genre that we find in it, because we recognize that this is your inspired word, but it was also written by men. Your Holy Spirit worked through men to put together this great revelation you've given unto us. And because it is so, it becomes so beautifully adorned with all these literary devices and genres and so forth. And Lord, we we can appreciate that. And we see the beauty of the art that you've given unto us. And Lord, as we look at Jonah, we see that this is so beautifully put together, it communicates a very powerful message to your people. That we are to be obedient, that we are to love our enemies as you love them, Lord, that we are to go out and to proclaim the good news, that we are to in all things be obedient. Obedient not only in the call to go out and to proclaim this good news and to be missionally involved and engaged as a church and as as individual believers, but also to be obedient in our own personal lives. For you also speak towards our inward lives. You also speak to how we live, how we live as husbands and fathers, how we live as our how many of our women live, Lord, as wives and mothers, how we live as co-workers, employers, employees in many different contexts. Lord, you have called us to live entirely and wholeheartedly for you, not certain sections of our lives. Forgive us, Lord, if we continue to fall and to drift into this world's way of thinking of separating certain things as sacred and secular, rather help us to live our lives for you in every single aspect, even when we're in the midst of unbelievers. And so we pray, Lord Jesus, may your Holy Spirit strengthen us to walk in obedience and to be a bold witness of the truth, to go out like Paul did amongst the Gentile world preaching your gospel. May we do the same here today, and may our faith not be lessened and discouraged as a result of what we see in the world today, but rather may we see what we see today, as what Paul saw when he saw the Roman Empire, when he saw all these different cultures and these different followed ways of thinking and living, and say to ourselves, What an opportunity to bring this gospel hope to people who do not know. Help us, Lord Jesus, not only to be strengthened in heart, but also in mind and in our vision and in our mission. May you be glorified, Lord Jesus Christ. In your we pray.

unknown 42:08

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

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