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Skin Deep
Jonah 2:1-2:10
Today we get to
one of the most disturbing parts of the Bible. Last week I told you that
the book of Jonah was an exciting book, but this week we see that it is
also very controversial. In Jonah 1:17 we read And the Lord appointed a
great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish
three days and three nights.
And while anyone in here who has ever read Moby Dick, or saw the movie
Jaws can believe that someone can be eaten by a whale or great fish it
is the next 10 verses that have given us trouble. So I did a quick
search on Google and found over 20 websites that tell how this could be
possible and dozens of stories where this had happened.
You know when I was a small boy and I heard this story I believed that
the same God who created the world from nothing in 6 days could appoint
a fish big enough to swallow a man and keep him alive for three days.
After all in the movie Pinocchio, Gepetto spent time in a whale so why
couldn’t Jonah? I never worried about these details, and today we are
not going to spend any time talking about it either since it would
detract from our discussion of evangelism.
If you were here last week you will remember that we talked about the
reason that Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh. It is found in Chapter 4
verses 1 – 2 but Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He
prayed to the LORD: "Please, LORD, isn't this what I said while I was
still in my own country? That's why I fled toward Tarshish in the first
place. I knew that You are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to
become angry, rich in faithful love, and One who relents from [sending]
disaster.
Jonah didn’t want to go because he didn't want those people to be saved.
As we get to the Second Chapter I want you to focus on Jonah’s words.
Open your bibles and if you didn’t bring one the text can be found in
your Bulletin. I need you to read along with me and let’ see what Jonah
really says.
Read text (Jonah 2:1-10)
Over the past week as I looked at this passage I came away with two very
different feelings. One time I would read the passage and think that God
had gotten through to Jonah and then the next time I would read it I
wasn’t so sure. As of Friday I was still scratching my head trying to
see if Jonah was repentant or if he was not. With that being said I
decided on Friday to give you both parts. We will look at first the
repentant side of the story then we will sing a song and I will come and
give you the unrepentant side and offer the invitation.
Repentance
Now in the water Jonah finally repents and just as God deals with us
today He graciously gives Jonah a new beginning. Jonah deserved to die
in the waters but when he woke up inside the fish, he realized that God
had spared him. It was the goodness of God that brought him to
repentance, and that same goodness brings us to repentance.
First we see that He prayed for God's help
"Then Jonah prayed"
I am sure that Jonah prayed a very common prayer. You see he didn’t pray
to God out of thanksgiving but out of distress. And I don’t believe that
a prayer of distress is a bad thing, it’s better to pray from distress
than to not pray at all. I don’t always approach the throne of God with
pure and holy motives. Like too many people today, Jonah saw the will of
God as something to turn to in an emergency, not something to live by
every day of one's life.
But what we need to notice here is that he prayed. Jonah was going
through what the sailors went through during the storm: he felt he was
lost. I believe that it's good for God's people to remember what it's
like to be lost and without hope. It is so easy to grow hardened toward
sinners and lose our compassion fur the lost. When was the last time you
felt lost? When was the last time you understood the panic that is in
the lives of those in the world. God dropped Jonah into the ocean as a
way of reminding him of the needs of those lost around him. He was
reminding him of what the people of Nineveh were going through in their
sinful condition: they were helpless and hope¬less.
But not only did Jonah pray God heard that cry for help.
Next we see that Jonah accepted God's discipline
Jonah prays God You hurled me into the deep ... all Your waves and
breakers swept over me"
It seems that Jonah understands that it was God was disciplining him not
the sailors and that he deserved it. When we face discipline we have
several options as to how we are going to respond.
We can despise God's discipline and fight;
We can be discouraged and faint;
We can resist disci¬pline and invite stronger discipline, possibly even
death
Or we can submit to the Father and mature in faith and love.
Discipline is to the Christian what exercise and train¬ing are to the
athlete; it enables us to run the race with endurance and reach the
assigned goal. The fact that God disciplined Jonah is proof that he was
truly a child of God, since God disciplines only His own chil¬dren.
Finally he yielded to God's will
Jonah finally admits that there were idols in his life that robbed him
of the blessing of God. Now remember that an idol is anything that takes
the affection and obedience away from God that rightfully belongs only
to Him.
One such idol was Jonah's intense patriotism. He was so concerned for
the safety and prosperity of his own nation that he refused to be God's
messenger to their enemies, the Assyrians.
Jonah closes his prayer by uttering some solemn vows to the Lord, vows
that he really intended to keep. Jonah promised to worship God in the
temple with sac¬rifices and songs of thanksgiving. He doesn't tell us
what other promises he made to the Lord, but one of them surely was, "I
will go to Nineveh and declare Your message if You give me another
chance."
Jonah couldn't save himself, and nobody on earth could save him. The
only chance he had for Salvation is the one who appointed the great
fish.
Jonah 2:9 we read "salvation is of the Lord!". This is a quotation from
Psalms 3:8 and it is the central theme of the book. It is also the
central theme of the Bible.
Let’s sing a song and get ready for the other side of the story.
___________________________________________________________
I told you that this week I struggled with this passage and decided to
give you a look at my thoughts on both sides. We started looking at the
repentant heart of Jonah and now I want to the other side, or the
unrepentant heart.
First we need to understand that we are just like Jonah, saved through
the Grace of God.
Now Jonah decided to pray. Have you noticed yet that this is the first
prayer we hear uttered from the mouth of Jonah. We believe that he wrote
the book about his experience and the evangelistic effort he was called
to. But in all of the action of the first chapter, he does not pray.
Maybe he forgot to pray, there was a lot going on. He was called by God
to go and take the gospel to the enemy of his people, and out of hatred,
he ran. Had to find a boat going far away, He had to pack for the trip,
I mean there was lot going on and he was busy. I don’t believe that
there is a single person in here that has not been so busy that you have
forgotten to do something important.
So maybe we can justify that he was busy, but how do we justify that
when he was asked to pray to his God by the Captain of the ship and the
sailors He didn’t. And then he is there while the Pagans lifted up their
voice to God but we don’t read of any prayer that Jonah uttered. So
maybe it was not that he forgot to pray, maybe he refused to pray.
I believe that Jonah didn’t pray was because he was mad at God. He knew
that if he used his gifts to preach the message with power, conviction,
and clarity, that God would open the hearts of those in Nineveh, they
would repent and God would save them from destruction. And he didn't
want them saved.
Those people had conquered Jonah's country. They had carted off
thousands of his fellow citizens and made them slaves. They were a
brutal, ruthless race of warriors. So when God showed some interest in
saving them from their sins, Jonah was incensed. He didn't want God to
save them. He wanted God to destroy them. He didn't want those people
saved. And he didn’t want to talk to God about it.
But now we get to chapter 2 we see Jonah thrown overboard and in the
belly of a whale, before he finally decides to pray. Now before you
think that I am to hard on Jonah I have to admit that I am guilty of
that as well. Sometimes God has to drive me to my knees before I will
approach His throne. So Jonah prays but it is not a very repentant
prayer. Did you notice how he prayed?
First, his prayer is Selfish
In his prayer he says I, my, or me 26 times. Now maybe that’s normal
when you feel that your life is coming to an end. But how many times
have we been guilty of presenting God with a Christmas list of the
things that we want.
Sometimes we use God just for that reason. He is a cosmic Santa Clause
that we present requests to and if we find our name on the nice list
then we will get what we want. We must be real careful here. I know that
Paul says in his letter to the Philippians that we are to make our
requests known to God, but if we look at that verse in context we will
see that that those requests are for the glory of God and His kingdom
through the life of a believer, not some wish list we have compiled.
We must understand that God does not bless us because of our
faithfulness and He does not turn a deaf ear because of our failings.
God desires to draw everyone of to Him and by drawing us to Him we
should desire to be faithful.
Next we see that Jonah assigns blame.
In verse three we read “You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart
of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and
breakers swept over me.”
This has been one of my struggles over the past week. Could Jonah really
believe that he was innocent and sinless in his choices up to this
point? Who was the one really responsible for Jonah’s problems? All it
takes is a quick look at the map to see that if Jonah had headed to
Nineveh like he was told to he would have never need to catch a boat.
But it sounds like Jonah is blaming God for the problems, like for no
reason at all, God picked him up and hurled him into the sea.
So as I read this week I began to wonder why Jonah would take the
approach that he does with God? And then I began to wonder if He had an
inflated opinion of himself since he was a prophet of God. I am pretty
sure that as an Israelite, he believed that he was better than the Pagan
sailors and the Gentiles, like the Assyrians. The Israelites knew they
were the chosen people. Blessed and protected by the one true God. That
could make them a little arrogant. It would be easy to have a superior
attitude when God is on your side.
And Jonah was not just an Israelite but he was also a prophet. A man who
heard the very voice of God and who God used to share His message with
the people. If he was flesh and blood like we are that I am sure that
had to make him feel pretty special, and he could easily have felt that
he was some how better than the other Israelites.
One of the greatest struggles that we face in this life has to do with
our own self worth. In my life in the Lord’s Church I have know brothers
and sisters in the church who have had a superior attitude because they
were saved. And sadly I have struggled with this as well.
Sometimes we feel that since we are saved and we have been chosen by God
that we are somehow better than all those people that live around here.
You know we have something they don’t, and we have it because we are
really good people. If that is your mentality then you have forgotten
where you came from.
Too many in the body of Christ have a superior attitude that lets us be
stubborn and unmoved by other people’s conditions and needs. We can be
arrogant about the promises we have received and even resentful if
someone beneath us accidentally finds the things we believe. I need you
to understand this morning about superficial spirituality. How deep does
your love and commitment to God and His church run? Or is your
spirituality only skin deep?
I am beginning to believe that reason that the Church is not more
evangelistic is because we feel a little like Jonah. We feel very
important, and separate from the world out there and it has become our
little secret. You see we have a relationship with God and that makes us
special. We have the right sign out front of the building and that make
us better than other people, and we refuse to give that up.
If we were truly to share what we know about Christ and how He can save
us from our sins then everyone would know our little secret and we
wouldn’t be so special. Maybe that’s why Jonah didn’t want to go to
those people and maybe that why we don’t want to go as well.
Regardless of whether you believe that Jonah was fully repentant or if
you believe that he still had a long way to go, one thing is true, he
was now free to do the will of God. And that could be said for our lives
as well, we are also free to do the will of God.
Today if you need to come to the Lord, Maybe you are stuck in the middle
of a storm, or maybe you are in the belly of a wale at this time. If you
are in distress please allow this family to pray on your behalf.
If you do not feel free to do the will of God allow us to bear your
burden today.
If you have refused to follow the will of God and tell others about your
Messiah because you are being selfish with Him, or you are not willing
to let those people in, then bring that to Christ today. Whatever your
need let’s take it to the Cross.
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