Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 15, 2015 | Route 66 - Jonah

Transcript

November 15, 2015 | Route 66 - Jonah · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi kids.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: How you doing today?
0:05
SPEAKER_00: No PowerPoint.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to use a Bible.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Just you mean the Bible this morning.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh I didn't even have a message in front of me, so hey, we're getting out early today, baby.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: That's just preacher talk.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Dream on.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: So we're in a journey through the Bible called Route 66, 32nd book, one less than halfway through.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we won't get to the next book until January.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: We're taking it, we got Thanksgiving, we got Christmas, we got special stuff coming up the next six weeks or so.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: So Micah uh will hit us in January.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: So we get Jonah uh this morning, and what a book.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: By the way, it's what was in the news.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Jonah, the prophet, was in the news this uh summer.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh his his uh tomb got blown up.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can I watched it at this last week on uh YouTube.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Tomb, uh traditional tomb.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, I'm sure he wasn't buried there.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: But as much as he hated Nineveh, you'd think he'd have lived there for the rest of his life.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's where a traditional tomb was.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: A Christian church had been built over it, and then in I think 13, 1400, the uh Muslims took it over because Jonah's a saint to them too.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: He's in the Quran.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Built a mosque over it, but ISIS doesn't like the veneration of saints.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: So they caused a lot of people in the large city of Mosul, uh, Iraq to sob, to cry, uh, losing their greatest uh old mosque this summer, as they just blew it up.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's how it was in the news.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh and um I'd like you to grab your study sheet as well as a Bible.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: If you need a Bible, grab the one in the pew front ahead of you, even if it is the New International Version.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm using the Holman Christian Standard today.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: So um the summary, welcome to one of the strangest books in the Bible.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: In just 48 verses, we have a drama that is both absurd and comic.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Who can help but laugh at cattle dressed in sackcloth?
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Honest.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: If you look it up in chapter 3, verse 8, all the animals dressed in sackcloth.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: It says all the animals.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: I I gotta tell you though, I don't believe they got the cats.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can see maybe getting the dogs and the cows.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Good luck getting the cats, you know.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: They they, you know, you call dogs, they come to you, you call cats, they take a number and get back with you on time.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's hero, a prophet by the name of Jonah bin Amitai, bin meaning son, is a disgrace to his name and his profession.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: His name, Jonah, means dove, Jonah, that most innocent and kind of birds, but Jonah is the very opposite.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: He's aggressive and he's selfish and he's heartless.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Pagan sailors have far more compassion than he does, chapter one.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: A pagan king is a far better preacher of repentance in chapter three.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Fish, plants, worms, and wind are far more obedient to God than this prophet.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: And so by the end of this hilarious tale, the man of God has not only been gulped and disgorged by a giant fish, but humbled by a tiny worm.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And yet, who was a more successful prophet in all of the Bible?
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Every pagan Jonah meets, repents.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: But incredibly, this only catapults our crazy prophet into deeper depression.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: What a contrast the pouting Jonah makes with his less successful Old Testament comrades, the greatest prophet Isaiah, for example.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Here am I, Lord, send me.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Jonah, I'd rather die.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Sunday school teacher of junior highs, which tells you a lot about their courage right there, you know, had talked about Jonah in class, come to the end and says, okay, what lesson do we learn from this wonderful story?
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Jonah and the monster fish.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: Finally, kid raises his hand.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Always travel by air, you know.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I, you know.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: But there is an incredible message in this book.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: I know we get caught up with the great fish.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: We should get caught up with the great God of this book.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: But this book answers one of the questions that nags at us in life.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And that question is, how does God feel about how does God respond to backsliders?
4:41
SPEAKER_00: And how does he respond to his enemies?
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Like ISIS, you know.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: How does what does he feel about them?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: When we have a new people church, we we hold classes.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those classes we give a little questionnaire, it's sort of the it's starting, it's a question, where are you on your spiritual journey?
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Good question for all of us to ask ourselves.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: We give them options, you know, are you an agnostic, don't really believe in God, just checking things out?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Or are you a seeker?
5:11
SPEAKER_00: You kind of wonder, you're not there yet, but you're interested.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Are you a new Christian, you believer, and you don't know anything?
5:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's why you're here at TBC.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Are you a long-distance Christian?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: You you're pretty sure you're a child of God, but you're far away, you know, you've wandered away from Him.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Or are you actually a, you know, like a devoted follower, true blue, feel really close to Christ?
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing is that one of those categories has a lot more check marks than any of the others.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: We have people in all of those categories who visit our church and who come to our church and want to be in our church, which is great.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: But by far the greatest category is that next last category, the long distance people say, you know what, I'm pretty sure that I'm a Christian, you know, trusted Christ when I was at camp and I was little or whatever, didn't haven't gone to church for quite a while.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: So I just don't feel very close to God right now.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: I bet if I ask you, you know, where are you in your spiritual pilgrimage?
6:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing a lot of you would say the same thing.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: You'd say, in the words of that old song, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave, the God I love.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And you've and you've left.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Some of you may have, may, as you look back, go, I didn't just wander, I ran the other way from God.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Like sheep, I went astray, turned to my own way.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: So this book answers remarkably, answers the question, how does how does God respond to people like that, who are far from him?
6:42
SPEAKER_00: But it also answers the question of how about people who are his total enemies, you know, who are clear on the other end of the spectrum, you know, who defy him.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: So let's read through this book.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: I'll read, there's 48 verses, I'll read quite a few of them, and I'll chat about them, and we'll find the answer to that question.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: The book starts the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Remember, dove, so that's be the first sort of chuckle among the Hebrew listeners.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it, because their wickedness has confronted me.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 is the call of Jonah has three commands.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: NIV squashes that unfortunately into two.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Command number one, get up, command number two, go, command number three, preach, call, cry, speak.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: The most common word for speak in Hebrew.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: And immediately you think, you think, you know what?
7:32
SPEAKER_00: That's the same call I got.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, did you know that is the great commission in the New Testament?
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, remember?
7:37
SPEAKER_00: Get up off your couch, stop playing, you know, stop watching TV or whatever, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's really what he's saying.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: This is this book's totally unique.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: This is the greatest missions book in the Old Testament, if not the Bible.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: The only book where a prophet is told not to go to Judah, not to go to God's people.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: He's told to go far away, it's far away from here to Indianapolis, to hike 500 miles and to preach to the worst evil empire there is, Nineveh.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: The place where the Tower of Babel was built, like 2,000 years before.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: It's always been an anti-God kind of a place.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: This city is just horrific, Nineveh.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: It's the major city of Assyria, which is the most powerful uh uh place in the world right now.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: This city hasn't been defeated for 1,500 years.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Wall's 90 feet high, super thick, with skulls all over.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: They like to boast about their cruelty, so they keep the skulls of the people they've they've captured.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: They impale people on spirits.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: They love to boast about their violence, a little bit like ISIS, which puts out a new video every week, intentionally, it's last week.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: I watched them all, I watch the videos.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody has to.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: If 2,000 children shot.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Or 200, 200, uh, they're standing there shooting 200 children.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: It's horrible, it's horrific.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: So Nineveh, horrific.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Boasting about their cruelty, their social injustice, evil empire.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: If there ever wasn't, by the way, we know in history, in 50 years, they're gonna come and actually destroy the 10 northern tribes.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: So it's so, you know, um, it's no really surprise that Jonah doesn't want to go.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: God, it's a second.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: All the other prophets get to get a call to go to Jerusalem, you know, some area.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Go to God's people and tell them to come back.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: You're telling me I have to travel to the worst place in the absolute world and calling them to repent.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to go there.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Can you can you imagine if you, can you imagine, or if your if your child said, you know, dad, I've I've gotten a call to uh go share the gospel in Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Pakistan.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, they name a country where you know that 98% of the people in that country jumped up and down and cheered during 9-11.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: They're going to a country where over 75% of the people today support ISIS.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: No, they're not part of the 15% of Muslim radicals in the world who are killing, you know, really, but but they're part of the rest who support it.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: And God tells you you're supposed to go and share Christ with them when you would rather see them six feet under?
10:25
SPEAKER_00: So have a little bit of sympathy for Jonah when he.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: However, Jonah got up.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Good, good.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: God said to get up.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Hey, nice job.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Got up to, oops, to flee to Tarshish from the Lord's presence.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: He went down to Joppa found a ship going to Tarshish.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: That's west.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: That's like taking a ship to Seattle, though that would be a lot slower.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Um he paid the fare and he went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord's presence.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Talking about disobedience.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Get up.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll get up.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Go.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: I'll go.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: And share the gospel with them.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Nah, not gonna do that.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Not gonna do that.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna head the opposite direction.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord hurled a violent wind on the sea.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Big mistake.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: You can run, but you can't hide.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: And such a violent storm arose on the sea, the ship threatened to break apart.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his God, threw the ship's cargo into the sea to lighten the load.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: These, I'm sure these were not rookie sailors.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: They'd sailed, I'm guessing, for years.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: They knew that the Mediterranean Sea is a place where you have cyclones and hurricanes and where the waves get, you know, 20 feet high, and where they're, you know, and and they'd heard of ships going down, but they'd survived.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: These sailors were survivors, they were experienced, they'd told the stories, but this was different.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Did anybody see a perfect storm, the perfect storm back in about the year 2000?
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think of that sort of a picture.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: That was a, by the way, uh a movie about uh the Andrea Gale, a commercial fishing ship that went down all lives lost in 1991.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: That's why in 2000 we lost a couple of our greatest actors, Mark Wahlberg, George Clooney.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, they went down with a ship.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: So um, but it was horrific.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: It's just so sad.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: But but uh so I pictured that kind of a storm, waves, except the waves are 40 feet tall this time.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And they're going 90 miles an hour, and it's like a battering ram at the ship, and the sailors are going, wow, hold it.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: This seems personal.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: This seems personal.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Those waves just keep rising up and coming right at us, and real soon the they're going, this doesn't even seem natural.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: This seems supernatural.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: So they're afraid and they start crying out to their gods.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you know, forget anything but hanging on and praying.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And so they throw the ship's cargo in the sea.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Jonah, here comes another laugh line, had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel and stretched out and fallen to deep sleep.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Really?
13:10
SPEAKER_00: You can sleep during this.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: He can fall asleep on a, you know.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Ship that's going up and down the sideways.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: So the captain approaches him and said, What are you doing, sound asleep?
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Get up, call to your God.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this God will consider us, we won't perish.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Had to be a nightmare, Jonah, when Jonah is woken up, and the first words he hears are the same verbs that God had used.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Get up and preach, or call out to your God.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: Same words.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, God's got me.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: But it's the captain.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: The sailors, you hear this conversation among the sailors up on board.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's cast lots, then we'll know who's to blame for the trouble we're in.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: That's like a game of chance, like dice or something.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: And and but God is in charge, book of Proverbs, of games of chance.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: So they cast lots, and the lot singled out Jonah.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: They said to him, Tell us who's to blame.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: What's your business?
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Where are you from?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Where's your country?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: What people are you from?
14:11
SPEAKER_00: And he answered them, like a good preacher would, like a good prophet, like a good seminary professor.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I am a Hebrew.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: I worship Yahweh, the God of the heavens, who made the sea and the dry land.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Who made the who made the what?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Who made the sea and the stop, stop, hold it, Jonah, just a second.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Who made the what?
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Who made the sea?
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Second.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: You're running from God on the sea, but you're running from God, the God of the sea, on the sea.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Is there a synapse breakdown or something?
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Is there a disconnect between your theology and your brains or your logic or something?
14:49
SPEAKER_00: But you know you see this sometimes.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: You need to have people who preach cream and live skim milk, you might say, who somehow don't make the connection.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah doesn't, does that?
14:59
SPEAKER_00: It's just crazy.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: But of course, they, this is the men, they're afraid and they go, What's this you've done?
15:07
SPEAKER_00: And they say to him, verse 11, What should we do to calm the sea that's against us?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: For the sea's getting worse and worse.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: And he answered them strangely, I think, pick me up and throw me into the sea so it may quiet down for I run to blame.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I kind of think that if he'd said to them, turn around the ship and go head east toward Tarshish.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: I I think God, you know, stopped the storm or something.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever known somebody who would rather die than turn back to God?
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I think when I'm reading those books by atheists and stuff like that, you know, Doc and so, the kind of thing.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Even if every all the evidence of the world was right there, I think that C.S.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Lewis once said there are really only two people kinds of people in the world.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: He said there are people who say to God, Thy will be done.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And then there are those to whom God will say in the end, Thy will be done.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: And he will cast them out from his presence forever, because that's what they want.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: They would rather die, they'd rather go anywhere than submit to God.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And Jonah, amazingly, seems to prefer death to obeying God.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: So I think remarkable, remarkable story.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: And so they say, he says, pick me up, but they're too good.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: They're too nice.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to kill them.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: And so they go, verse 13, they're rowing really hard to get back to dry land.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Hmm, not gonna work, Bush.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: But they couldn't.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Sea was raging more and more.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: So they called out to the Lord, please, Lord, we're about to kill this guy, but don't let us perish.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Don't please don't look at us as murderers, for you, Yahweh.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: So they're praying.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: But I think we're gonna see them in heaven.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: It's just remarkable.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: For then they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea as he stopped its raging, and then they feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows, almost technical lines in the Old Testament for what God's people do.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it gonna be cool to see these sailors in heaven?
17:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, look at the movie.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Would you guys look at the perfect storm movie and tell us?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Anything like that?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so we're gonna have just really an interesting time.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: So there, Jonah is really successful.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: By the way, isn't it obvious you can't judge the true success of a preacher or prophet by the results?
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's headed that way as fast as he can, and yet they still trust God because of what he said.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord appointed a grapefish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah's in the fish three days and three nights.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: What do we learn from this?
17:39
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we learn from chapter one about backsliders?
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you can learn three really practical things.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: And one is that uh when um when you go your own way, you have to pay the you have to pay the cost, you have to pay the bill.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Strange line in verse three to me is that Jonah went down and he bought a ticket.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: It says he paid the fare.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, why would you include that?
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Wants us to know that when you go your own way, you pay the fare.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, Paul heads the same direction on a boat, he doesn't have to pay anything, he's going to Rome.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Some years ago I had a really close friend here, Topeka, not here now.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Small business owner, stopped coming to church, and he's a friend.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I couldn't understand it.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: See him once in a while, so I call him.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: What is the deal?
18:38
SPEAKER_00: I said, Can we get it together for lunch?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: So we get together for lunch.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: So I said, Hey, buddy, friend, this is me.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
18:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I like you.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And he said, He hangs his head.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm embarrassed.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm too embarrassed to come to church.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm too embarrassed to tell my kids what I've done, but they're gonna find out.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Seven years ago, he said I decided to stop paying taxes.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: I thought, I'm a small company.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: They'll overlook me.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: I need the money for other things.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Just stop paying taxes.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And I got away with it.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: I thought.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Third year, fourth year.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Six months ago, they wrote me a letter.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: They called me in.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: With interest in everything else, basically, they own my business, they own my house.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: They're talking about throwing me in jail.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm totally ruined.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: So sad.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, we tried to think, tried to help them with ways where he could get out from underneath part of it because the government will show mercy if you get some legal help.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: But but I mean, I just thought, wow, when you go your own way, you know, wow, the cost is so much higher than you think it is.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: Travel agency ran an ad, get away from it all, three thousand dollars.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Get away from part of it, one thousand dollars.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Jonah wanted to get away from it all, so he paid the three thousand dollars, he paid the bill.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Second thing, by the way, you learn is if you're wandering away, going the other way from God, for going your own way, so you not only pay your own way, you never get where you want to go.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: Jonah never got to Tarshish, at most halfway.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Never got a refund.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Never got a refund.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: That bugs me, you know, as a physical type of a cheap type of person.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Never got a refund.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Didn't even get there.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Paul in the New Testament, he got to Rome.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Jacobed Moses' mother, she got what she wanted.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Remember Moses' mother?
20:38
SPEAKER_00: What she wanted most?
20:40
SPEAKER_00: God gave her a little baby boy, Moses.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: Good thing and a bad thing.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: The good thing is she had a baby boy.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Moses, he's so cute.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: You find out later, he really was.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful baby.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: But Pharaoh, there in Egypt, had said, we're killing all the boy babies, want them all dead.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Has soldiers out roaming around.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: She hides them in the home because she wants, more than anything else, she wants to raise this boy Joshua.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: One month, two months, three months.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden his cries are so loud, she knows they're gonna catch him.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, she submits to God.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: God basically says, You need to give him up to me.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: I'll take care of him.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: She had a little basket, a little ark.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Puts the baby in the basket, tells daughter Miriam to take it out to the Nile River.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Miriam puts in the Nile River and the bull rushes and just hides up at the top of the hill to watch and wait.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's daughter comes.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Remember the story?
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's daughter comes, comes down there, she's bathing, and whoa, what is that?
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And her her maids say, uh, Hebrew, and a boy.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: No, Pharaoh's daughter says, that is a beautiful baby.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna raise that baby.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna raise that baby in the palace.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I need somebody wet nurse this baby.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: This baby needs mother's milk.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: About that time, Miriam's wandering down.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: What did you find?
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Baby.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do with the baby?
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Gonna kill it?
22:05
SPEAKER_00: No.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: No, Pharaoh's daughter says, but I need a wet nurse for the baby.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Hey, hey, how about if I find one for you?
22:13
SPEAKER_00: That'd be great, Pharaoh's daughter says.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: She runs home, Mom! Pharaoh's daughter, and so forth.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: She needs a wet nurse for the baby.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: So here comes Jacob Ed and so forth.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And there's there's Pharaoh's daughter, and Pharaoh's daughter says, Here, I need you to take care of this baby at your home for the next few years till the baby's weaned, and then I'll I'll take him and we'll raise him at the palace.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And get this.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: And I will pay your wages.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: You see, when you go your own way, you pay your way, and you never get where you want to go.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Jockeback got exactly everything that she wanted when you go God's way.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: You get what you want, and he pays your wages.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: But the third thing you notice, if you're wandering away from God, is not only is it costly and don't get where you want to go, you end up with your ladder leaning against the wrong wall, or like the businessman who came into my office said, I've made more money than I ever expected I would 20 years ago, but it hasn't made me happy.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: The other thing you find out is you go down, down, down, down.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the themes in Jonah.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: You gotta take a yellow highlighter sometime and go through this book and highlight the ups and the downs, you know, in this book.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: It's really, really kind of funny because that's one of the themes of this book, a little bit like what Jerry Seinfeld said about kids.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: He says, kids don't say wait, they say wait up.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Hey, wait up.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Because when you're little, your life is up.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: The future is up.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Everything you want is up.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Hold up, shut up.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: I'll clean up, let me stay up.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Parents, of course, he said, are just the opposite.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Everything is down.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Just calm down, slow down, come down here, sit down, put that down.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, in Jonah, down is not good, and up is good.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Up is good.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: And you find at the beginning of this book, God says to Jonah, get up.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Captain comes down into the belly of the ship, says, Get up, up.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2, verse 3, verse 6.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: But you find what Jonah does is he goes down.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, it says he goes down to Joppa.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, it says he goes down into the ship.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, it says he goes down into the hold of the ship.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 says he lays down.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: And then we find out later in the story that he goes down into the sea and he goes down into the belly of the fish, down chapter 2, verse 6, to the very bottom of things.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: You see, when you go your own way, though you're singing the Jefferson song, moving on up, you're positive you're going up.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: You ask Jonah, are you going down?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm going up, baby.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm going up.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: People say that.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: They think they're moving up.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: The fact is they're going down, down, down, down, down.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: So what happens is, having gone down, he finds himself in the belly of this fish, and he prays to the Lord chapter 2, from inside the fish.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's one of the most beautiful prayers.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: From inside the fish.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Like Spurgeon started his sermon on this passage by saying, how do you say, the strangest place to play to pray in the world.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: But it's the most beautiful prayer.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: It is a psalm, and it's a ripoff of a lot of the psalms from the Psalter.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: And it's interestingly enough, appropriate enough, it's a ripoff of all the lines about the sea and seaweed and depths and stuff like that, which were meant by David metaphorically, but they're literal for Jonah.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: Notice this.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I called to the Lord in my distress.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: I cried for help in the belly of Sheol.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, literally.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: You threw me into the depths.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Yep, verse 3.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Into the heart of the seas, and the current overcame me.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Borrowing from Psalm 42.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: All your breakers and your billows swept over me.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Literally.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: But I said, I've been banished from your sight.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, the waters engulfed me up to the neck, the watery depths overcame me.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: Seaweed was wrapped around my head.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Don't you hate it when the seaweed wraps around your head?
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I hate that.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: I sank to the foundations of the mountains.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: The earth with its prison bars closed behind me forever.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: And then he says in the end of verse 7, as my life was fading away, I remembered Yahweh.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: My prayer came to you, to your holy temple.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, salvation is from the Lord.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord commanded the fish and had vomited Jonah onto dry land.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: What is this?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: These first two chapters tell us about backsliders, tells us that in discipline, God will allow people who go away from him to hit bottom.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: He will allow them to pay their own way.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: He will allow them never to get fully satisfied where they want to go.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: But the second point is that the moment they turn, he's been waiting all along, the moment you turn to God and call out to him in repentance, in that moment, his compassion floods over you.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: He welcomes you back with open arms.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: That's chapters one and two, amen?
27:30
SPEAKER_00: And then you get to chapters three and four.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: This is now, these are now the total enemies of God.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: These are the Ninevehes.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, thank God, that he's the God of the second chance.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach the message that I tell you.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: So Jonah got up and he went to Nineveh according to the Lord's command.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Now Nineveh was an extremely large city.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was one of the largest in the world that day.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Three-day walk.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: It had 600,000 people, about 60 miles across, including the suburbs.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Jonah set out, verse 4, on the first day of his walk in the city, and proclaimed, in 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Really?
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Really?
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's the best gospel message you can give.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Five words in Hebrew.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: You guys are dead meat.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: That's basically it.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: You guys are dead meat.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, wow.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: The men of Nineveh believed in God.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, here's another proof that it's no reflection on you if God works something fantastic.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a reflection on God.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: They believe in God, they proclaimed a fast, and they dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest to the least, including the king of Nineveh, took off his royal robe, but on sackcloth, sat in ashes, issued a decree.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got to wear sackcloth, including the animals, cats, dogs, and so forth.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: And who knows God may relent, he may turn, verse 9.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: God saw their actions, verse 10, so he relented from the disaster he threatened and he didn't do it.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Hard to believe, though, isn't it?
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's even harder to believe than the fish.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's that's liberal critics will say that.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: This is even harder to believe than the fish story.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: The greatest city in the world, pagan city.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: City, you know, didn't worship Yahweh at all, they convert.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, I think one of the clues to explaining that is the word Jesus, something Jesus said in the New Testament.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: In Luke, he said Jonah was a sign to Nineveh.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Matthew says he's a sign to us of the three days resurrection, you know, and so forth.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' death and resurrection.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: And third, and Luke says, and Jonah was a sign to Nineveh.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: What kind of a sign would he be to Nineveh?
29:46
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden you start thinking, you go, oh, the name Nineveh means fish town.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: The archaeologist who dug Nineveh, Henry Laird, discovered there were that their patron God, carved all over their walls of their city, was like a mermaid, Nanshi.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: She, beautiful face of a person, hands of a person, feet of a person, body of a fish.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: And the myth of Nanshi, their patron saying, which they believed was that this mermaid, fish, God, had swum out of the sea, come, rescued them for barbarism, and shared truth and light and intelligence, shared with them a message of truth.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, you could also throw in here the fact that Jonah is preaching to them in the mid-700s.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: We know that from 2 Kings, at which time there were a couple of events.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: A great solar eclipse in 763 BC, a great earthquake, which caused much of the Near East to fall on their knees and think that it was the end of the world.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Those things could have happened at the same time.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: But I'm picturing that one morning Ninevanelli wakes up, prays to Nanshi the fish god, dresses, and she's walking out of the gate of the city, she turns in sacrifices to Nancy the fish god.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: She walks through the gates and she sees carved on the gate doors Nancy the fish god.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: She's going out to glean in the field, she sees a group of people coming toward her.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: In the middle, this guy with a scraggly beard with seaweed, bleached totally white.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: So what's happened when they've found there's been a couple of people that have survived getting swallowed by sperm whales, large fish, a little boy, but they're bleached twite after the two days in there from the stomach acid.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: So he's bleached twite.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: And people are yelling he just came out of the ocean.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: He just flew out of the ocean.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: This is Nancy's, you know, who knows, consort, husband, whatever.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: And and here he comes.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: So he is a sign in his very it reminds me, by the way, that it's uh Gary, I'm sorry, Gary Larson Farside.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: This is how shallow I am at times.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Of guy standing at his front door, long beard, covered with slime, tripping wet.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Door opens, it's his wife.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: She says to him, Great.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: You're three days late, Jonah.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: You're covered in slime, you're soaking wet.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: What story do you expect me to swallow this time?
32:42
SPEAKER_00: So well, here he is.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Here's Jonah covered with slime, and he goes into the town, and everybody is ready to believe anything he says.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You're going to be destroyed.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: And so spirit moves, everybody repents, including the king, and then you have this remarkable, I mean, just it's just astounding.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Remarkable statement.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah, chapter 4, one's greatly displeased, and he became furious and prayed, Lord, isn't this what I said when I was still in Israel?
33:12
SPEAKER_00: That's why I fled.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: The other way in the first place.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: I knew that you're a merciful and compassionate God.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Just a second, Jonah, those aren't good things.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Slow to become angry, rich in faithful love.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: I hate that about you.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: And one who relents from sinning disaster.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Those are the five great benevolent attributes of God, by the way, which you find repeated starting in Exodus 34, 6.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: The greatest five attributes of God that we all love, except for Jonah, he hates them because it means that basically ISIS, Jeffrey Dahmer, all those people that we really don't want in heaven.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: The Nazis, remember Cory Tin Boom?
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Later on, after she meets up, recognizes the Nazi soldier who'd forced them all to strip and mock them and so forth, and now he's converted to Christ.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: She sees him in church later and he puts out his hand.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: She didn't shake it.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: It took her going home and repenting because sometimes there are people, you know, where a heart is not as big as God's heart.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: We're not sure that we want God to be loving and compassionate to some people.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: It's just tar.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: A couple was sitting over here one day, came up to me.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, moved to Colorado.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: He'd been an elder in our church.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: A granddaughter, age 21, brutally raped and murdered in Colorado.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: And he's crying as he tells me.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: This has just happened a month or so before.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: He's crying as he tells me.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: It was hard, but their whole family had decided to show the murderer compassion and love him, visit him in prison.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: That's worked out very well, by the way.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: In prison, the guys come to Christ.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: But how do you do that?
35:07
SPEAKER_00: You do that if you have a heart as wide as the world.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah doesn't.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: Jonah doesn't.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: Jonah climbs underneath the shade, God made a tree grow over him, so he had shade in the hot sun.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: He sits there and he waits for God to come around to his way of thinking, which is to destroy the people that are worth destroying.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: And God blasts the shade tree and then sends the sun really hot, which makes Jonah even madder because God's up in heaven waiting for him and for you and for me to come around to his way, not of thinking, but of loving, to come around to his way of loving to realize it.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Realize that his heart is as big as the world.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: And the whole world is in his heart.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: And then no matter who you are, whether you're just wandering away from him, or whether you're living in Nineveh, you know, he's waiting for you to come home.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: So here's the question again.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Where are you in your spiritual journey?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Are you on a ship heading the other way?
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Are you far from God?
36:15
SPEAKER_00: Would like to be closer, maybe?
36:17
SPEAKER_00: Are you perhaps a citizen of Nineveh?
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Not even sure you've ever become a child of God.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: Quick story from Brazil where I just was.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: True story.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Matthew, six-year-old Huffman.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Little son of missionaries, spiked a fever one day, just got worse and worse.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And when he cried out to his parents, I can't see, I can't see, they threw him in the car desperate, started racing to the hospital.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: He's like almost passed out in the back seat, keeps reaching up.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Mom keeps putting putting reaching, pushing his hand down from the front seat, keeps reaching up, holding his hand out, and finally she says, Honey, what are you doing?
36:56
SPEAKER_00: He says, He says, I'm reaching for Jesus' hand.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And they take him to the hospital and he falls into a coma and he dies of bacterial meningitis.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: You might say that that little boy hadn't lived long, but he had discovered one truth that God wants us all to know that when you're completely down and out, and when everything is utterly dark and you just feel so far away from life, God's waiting for you to reach out for him, God's simply hoping that you will turn back to him, whether you're just wandering away, child of God, backslider, or whether you're actually a citizen of another country.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: There's an old hymn that goes softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: See on the portals, he's waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Come home, come home.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: You who are weary, come home.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Calling, oh sinner, come home.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Bow with me in prayer.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: I pray, dear Lord, for folks who are somewhere away, considering now from this story, turning back.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would, by your love and your compassion, your grace, that you would lure them back and seduce them back to yourself.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: They'd look at you and say, It's really not worth staying away.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: It's too costly.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm not getting where I want to go.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm going down.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Lord, bring them back.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: Draw them to yourself this morning by your grace and mercy.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: Show them, let them sense how much you love them.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name we pray.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Amen.