The John 3:16 Of The Old Testament - [Jonah 1:1-3]

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Some of my best opportunities for evangelism are found in planes. It reminds me of the story of the
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Christian man. He loved to travel in airplanes and he would have his Bible right there and sit it on the little table, little pull -down shelf, tray table.
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He started reading his Bible and the guy next to him said, you don't believe all that stuff in the Bible now, do you?
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Well, yes, a matter of fact, I do believe it. Yeah, but what about that guy that was swallowed by that great big fish?
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Well, I believe that. It's in the Bible. His name's Jonah. Well, how do you suppose he survived those three days in the fish?
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How did he live? Well, the Christian man said, I don't really know. I guess when
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I get to heaven, I'll ask him. Well, what if he's not in heaven?
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The Christian man said, well, I guess then you can ask him. Turn your
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Bible to the book of Jonah, please. If you can't find it, it's right after Obadiah. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah.
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So you can find the big prophets, the major prophets you can get here. I always think H -J -A,
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Hosea, Joel, Amos, and then O -J, Obadiah, Jonah. Today we start our series in the book of Jonah.
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And I have to tell you, I've been amped up all week to teach it because this book is a great book.
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You think you know it and then you dive down deeply and you just think the riches of God, the goodness of God.
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You get some of the nuggets and you see it in context and you start saying after a while, God sovereignly saves people.
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God sovereignly saves sinful people, wicked people like the
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Ninevites. God loves Gentiles. God saves through preaching.
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God saves through preaching a message about judgment. God's sovereign over everything.
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Gourds, fish, human souls, eternal salvation. You start diving into the book of Jonah, no pun intended, and you say to yourself, how great is our
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God. You're going to say the Lord is great. Only God could do these kind of things.
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God is a great God. Now, most prophecies, most prophetic books, both major prophets, the
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Jeremiah's and the Daniel's and the Ezekiel's and the Isaiah's, those as well as the minor prophets, and they're not minor in message, just they don't have as many chapters and verses.
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Mostly they're talking about not the men, the prophet Isaiah, but about his message.
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Jeremiah is more about the message of Jeremiah, not Jeremiah. Yet here it's an odd one because this really tells us about the life of the prophet more than what he says.
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More than his prophecies, it's the message about this man. But he's not really the focus.
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The fish isn't the focus. It's who the Lord is, and that's what we're going to see over the next seven, eight weeks or so, translation, 14 weeks, seven or eight weeks.
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J. Vernon McGee, the fish here is not the hero of the story, neither is it its villain.
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The book isn't even about a fish. The fish is among the props and does not occupy the star's dressing room.
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Let us distinguish between the essentials and the incidentals. The incidentals are the fish, gourd, east wind, boat, and Nineveh.
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The essentials are Yahweh and Jonah. How does God deal with men?
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How does he save? Is he willing to save? Does he have compassion to save? So what
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I love about Jonah, it's not just for kids. We default to, well, the Noah's Ark stories, that's for kids.
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That's for murals above the little crib. Jonah too is for kids.
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Did you know even the Muslims believe Jonah? He's called in Arabic the one of the whale.
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The Koran says, so also was Jonah among those sent by us when he ran away like a slave from captivity to the ship fully laden.
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He agreed to cast lots and he was condemned. Then the big fish did swallow him and he had done acts worthy of blame.
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Had it not been that he repented and glorified Allah, he would certainly have remained inside the fish till the day of resurrection.
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It's not just for children. It's certainly not for Muslims. Oh, by the way, on a side note, we don't really think he was buried there, but what we thought was at least by tradition,
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Jonah's tomb on July 24th of this year, ISIS did what to it?
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Put a bunch of explosives in the tomb and blew the whole thing up because they didn't want any kind of idolatry going on there.
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The Jews read Jonah every year in Hebrew on Yom Kippur, but Jonah's for Christians.
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Jonah's for you. God changes people as you read the word. God changes people amazingly as it's preached to you.
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First Thessalonians 2, 13 says God's word performs its work in those who, what believe as you study the character of God and how he deals with people, you will be changed.
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So I am thankful we're into Jonah. And one of the main reasons I've picked this book is because I know we need a good lesson reminder on the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of God and salvation, the saving nature of God.
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And it will all lead us into a regular diet of pulpit exhortation on evangelism.
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God loves to save sinners. And that's what we're going to talk about very often.
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So let's go to chapter one. And we're only going to get through the first few verses today because of some set up and setting and stuff like that.
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But let me give you two outlines for chapter one, both stolen from other expositors.
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First one, weirsby came up with a second one, Lewis Johnson came up with, but I like both of them so much that I'll just tell you these outlines and then we'll go into the first three verses.
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The command of God go. This is weirsby. The action of the minister. No, the hand of God blow and the action of the
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Mariners throw. That's a good chapter. One outline, go, no blow, throw.
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It's just like preaching class. As Lewis Johnson's is much more serious.
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Three points. Jonah chickens out. Jonah sacks out. Jonah bails out.
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Let's take a look at the command of God. Go found in verses one and two. And before I even read anything,
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I want you to know ahead of time, this book is full of surprises. You might have read it so often you'd forget these surprises, but it's just laden with surprises to get your attention to get you to lock in and then to pull you in.
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There's something about surprises that get your adrenaline up and going and connected. Yesterday I'm sitting outside on a chair, getting some sun and have my laptop in my lap.
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My dog's in front of me laying on the, on the lawn and all of a sudden I see her out of the corner of my eye and she gets up and she's pointing.
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And she's slowly doing this. I'm going to go kill a chipmunk or a rabbit or a squirrel or something.
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And then out of nowhere, she tears off, but it's not a chipmunk. It's not a rabbit and it's not a squirrel.
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It's some kind of demonic. Um, I don't know what it was.
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It was like a beaver, but maybe without a tail. So it's a muskrat, a coy poo, a nutria something, but it was demonically going after my dog.
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And now the scurrying, the fighting, the biting, the blood's flying everywhere. I run over to try to extract my dog, but I don't want to get bit by the rabidly demon possessed beaver teeth thing.
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And I'm like over there. I see all it going on and my heart is pumping and it just caught me by surprise.
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But I thought what the surprise does. It gets me all in. I'm all in. I'm all ready to go thinking clearly ready to go.
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And that's what happens with this book. What happened with the dog? I don't know. I think she's still fighting. Not sure.
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Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city.
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Call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. I mean, don't you think it'd be kind of like a character analysis?
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Once upon a time, let's develop the character. Let's develop Jonah. Let's talk about Nineveh a little bit and the climate.
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I mean, you just get pushed right in. Other prophetic books don't really do this. First Samuel does this.
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Ruth does this. Judges does this. But the prophets don't really do this. You are just immediately locked in where you go, okay, if I sit and think for a second, it's just coming at me.
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Now it came to pass. What do you mean now it came to pass? What happened before this? What do you mean now? If this is later and this is now, what do you mean?
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The word of the Lord came to Jonah. The word of Yahweh. See all the capitals?
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The word of the covenant -keeping God of Israel came to Jonah. Eighty -five times that exact phrase is used in the
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Bible. Eighty -five times. It's a precise designation. Always introducing the reader to the divine word and presenting the author as historical.
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Presenting the author, the recipient of these words, as historical and the author.
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So God is historical. Jonah is historical. And that's important because most people, when they go to Jonah, especially in our day and age, they say, you know what, this isn't like a real fish.
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Let's see, it's a myth. And you know, have you ever heard of Robinson Crusoe? Ever heard of Gulliver?
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I think he traveled a lot. Andromeda, he was rescued by a sea monster.
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It's kind of that, you know, story. Did you know Arian, the musician, was thrown into the sea by sailors and some dolphins came and took him to the shore?
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It's just one more story like that. It's just a fable. Hercules, according to Homer in the
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Iliad, sprang into the jaws of a sea monster, was in its belly for three days while he was off to try to save the heroine.
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It's just kind of a made -up myth. That's all. And this book is ridiculed.
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It is lambasted. It is attacked. Why? Because it talks about the saving nature of God.
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It talks about supernatural things. It talks about salvation and sin and judgment.
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And when you read this in the text, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, you can know it's from God, it's to a man, it's historical.
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Now some try to water it down, not so much as the liberals, but they try to say, hey, it's an allegory.
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Jonah equals Israel. The sea, Gentiles. The fish,
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Babylonian captivity, keeping Jonah there, captive. But then you have to make up what the regurgitation is.
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Oh, that's the return during Ezra's time. It's an allegory, trying to make things up.
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One man said, it shocks me, a liberal scholar, we sin against the intention of the author and the
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Holy Spirit, when we willfully interpret the book as real history. Come on,
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Jonah means dove. Amittai, son of Amittai, means truth, where we get the word, amen.
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He's the dove of truth, and the dove of truth comes in and kind of teaches us a lesson. But when you read this, normally, plainly, you would say, seems to me that it's a story about God and a man.
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So much so, that the account says, presents itself as history.
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Did you know in 2 Kings chapter 14, it says this of Jonah, first talking about a king, then discussing
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Jonah, he restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath, as far as the sea of Erebah, according to the word of the
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Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke through his servant, Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gathepher.
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There's a real Jonah, who's the son of a real man, who lived up by Nazareth, north of Nazareth by the sea of Galilee.
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He's a real guy. That's how scripture portrays him. But keeping your finger in Jonah, please go to Matthew chapter 12, and we're just not quite into the message that Jonah has yet, but I want to make sure you understand what kind of book this is, and let's make sure we understand
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Jonah as Jesus would, that is a literal story about a real fish, a real land, a real group of Ninevites, etc.
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Jonah is talked about by Jesus. Now, I have a little rule in my mind. Here's my rule in my mind that I'd like you to have as well.
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Mike, make sure you have the same view of the Old Testament that Jesus does.
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The Lord of the church looks at the Old Testament a certain way. I want to look at it that way as well.
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And when Jesus thinks something's true, I want to think it's true because I'm a follower of Christ.
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I'm a Christian. And here Jesus affirms the literal Jonah. Matthew 12, 38.
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Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. I mean, they've already seen plenty of signs.
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You want to see something in the stars or the moon or the sun or what? Let me show you a sign. I'll show you a sign from Scripture.
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Here's the sign, the Bible. But he answered and said to them, Matthew 12, 39, An evil, adulterous generation craves for a sign.
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And yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah, the prophet.
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For just as, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the mythical sea monster, wait a second, sorry, of the sea monster, so shall the
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Son of Man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth. Now you false teachers aren't repenting, but verse 41,
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The men of Nineveh shall stand up to this generation at the judgment and shall condemn it because they repented.
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You guys aren't. They repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
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Friends, if you have an allegorical Jonah, you have an allegorical Jesus and you have an allegorical solution to your real problem and that is sin and judgment day.
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Isn't it amazing that when Jesus talked about the Old Testament, He picked the things that were the most supernaturally outrageous.
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Adam, Eve, Noah, Lot, Sodom, Gomorrah, He picked the most supernatural and here, mark it well, it should be your prayer and as you read the
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Old Testament, Lord, my view of the Old Testament should be Jesus' view. It's inerrant, it's infallible, it's
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God breathed, it's good for me, it represents God rightly. What could
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Jesus have said in Matthew chapter 12? By the way, you know what? This kind of Maccabean deal got away from me, an intertestamental period between Malachi and Matthew and all kinds of stories, fish stories started going, all kinds of around and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and pretty soon now people think really it's
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Jonah who was swallowed by a real fish. Let me just correct that and tell you the real story. And Jesus had to have done that if this was really anything but what it said it was.
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In other words, Jesus didn't do it so he affirmed it. All right, let's go back to Jonah. So what we're doing here is we're going through the book of Jonah, we're going to take it as it is.
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I think it takes more faith to make up what Jonah is than just take it in a normal, natural, plain way.
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And isn't that the way it works with supernatural events? You can read William Barclay in How Did Everybody Drown when they were going across the
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Red Sea. Well, it was only six inches of water deep and they just walked across on a sandbar. It takes more faith to believe that.
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And it takes more faith to believe, bad faith, to believe this is just some kind of myth. Back to verse 1.
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The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, and now
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God begins to reveal himself. We're not told if it's a dream, it's a vision, it's an inner voice.
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It's just assumed here comes the word of God and God of the universe speaks. Isn't that amazing?
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Stop there for a second. Psalm 19. What does nature do? It reveals, it pours forth, it shows, it proclaims that God is a great creating
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God. He shows himself. But also God shows himself specifically by speaking through his word.
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Now what's one of my fun things to do in life? I collect idols from across the world. Little wooden idols, stone idols.
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When I can't afford many shekels or something, then I buy the plastic ones.
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But anyway, they're all at my house and they're all laying face down. That's a different narrative.
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We'll go through another time. You know, there's a common denominator to all these fake gods.
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Somebody made them. I can touch them. I can see them. Some of them are from funky places.
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I can smell them. But they don't talk. The idols, the false gods, you can see them, taste them, touch them.
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They don't talk. And on the other side, there's a
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God that's showing himself to be the real God on top of Sinai. There's a
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God who you can't see, but he talks. The God who reveals himself talks.
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Condescending love. God speaks. This invisible God and this word comes to Jonah.
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What's he say? Arise. Three commands here. Can you find them? Arise. Go to Nineveh, that great city.
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Call out against it. Arise, go preach. For their evil has come up before me. It's gotten so bad now up in Nineveh, I've got to step in.
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It's like, God, as I've finally had enough, there's an urgency, there's an authority, and now it's time to deal with it.
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Jonah, go to Nineveh. If you traveled 15 miles a day, it'd take you about a month.
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And if this is Israel right here, you'd have to go up there to Iraq, cross the
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Euphrates, up towards the Tigris, and there's a city there called Nineveh. Go that way, it'll take you about a month.
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And I want you to go up and I want you to preach to that great city. These people there are wicked, they're superstitious, they worship false gods, they are prideful.
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You can read Isaiah 10, we'll do it another day. They are so arrogant, so full of idolatry, it's time to call them to repent.
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So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go up there and tell them, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
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It's a message of love. Now here, it's interesting. What's the message? It's of repentance.
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Do you see where the message is? Look at chapter 3, verse 1.
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Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. Call it against the message I tell you.
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It's just almost exactly the same as our verse. So Jonah arose, went to Nineveh, according to the word of the
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Lord. Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. And he called out in verse 4,
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Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. That's the message. You've got forty days before this house of Achard crumbles spiritually.
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Forty days. That's your message. Forty days or you'll perish. And you'll perish. I've got a question.
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A very practical question. When you preach the gospel to people, when you have a desire for them to have their sins forgiven and be in a right relationship with their
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Creator and Judge, and you want them to have Christ as Savior, is it uncouth?
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Is it boorish? Is it wrong to talk about judgment? Is it wrong to talk about hell?
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Is it wrong to talk about repentance? Should we talk about love? I'm not saying we shouldn't. God shows
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His love in a conspicuous manner, Romans 5. And for God so loved the world, we're going to look at that verse in a second.
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But is it ever okay to preach about sin and judgment and consider your soul? Would you ever say to anyone, have you ever said to anyone, is it a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living
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God? Or is that just kind of the way we don't want to evangelize? Did you know that the first lie in all the
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Bible, the first lie in all history, was a lie about judgment?
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You're not going to die. You will surely not die. You're not going to be judged. Friends, when we preach the gospel, there should be everything in us that wants to tell us about the good news of God's reconciliation.
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But friends, you've got to talk about the bad news, don't you? Why do you need a
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Savior if there's no bad news? Divine judgment. Give them the message of divine judgment.
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Now, I did some research about the four spiritual laws because I often refer to them, and I'll say this at the very beginning.
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There are a lot of Bible verses that go along with those four spiritual laws, and guess what? Aren't you glad God blesses
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His Word? People get saved through the
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Scriptures, and God has used these four spiritual laws because there's a lot of Bible in them.
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And so Bill Bright, campus crusade, said, you know, there are laws in the universe, gravity, and there are spiritual laws as well.
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Let's go for some of these spiritual laws. And these are the four spiritual laws. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
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Two, man is sinful and separated from God. Three, Jesus Christ is
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God's only provision for man's sin. Four, you must individually receive
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Jesus as Savior and Lord. But the most fascinating thing about all this is did you know when
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Bill Bright first wrote the four spiritual laws, he put number two as number one. That is, he put man's sinfulness and his separation from God as number one.
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Bill Bright's book says, so in account, originally our first law emphasized man's sin.
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But the Lord impressed me to emphasize God's love. This change was made just before we went to press.
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I had done my final editing and I had left my wife, Vanette, and the girls, my daughters, to finish the typing.
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As I had been traveling a great deal, it was quite late, I went upstairs to bed. In fact, I was just at the point of going to sleep when suddenly there came to me as clear as a bell to my conscience that, in fact, there was something wrong about starting the four spiritual laws on a negative note of man's sinfulness.
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I felt that few people would say no to Christ if they truly understood how much he loves them and how great is his concern for them.
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Bill said, so I got out of bed, went to the head of the stairs and called down to Vanette and the girls to revise the presentation so the first law would be
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God loves you. Instead of, you're a sinner. Thus, the four spiritual laws started on a positive note.
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Some time later, though, one of his daughters said to him, quote, I was so distressed over your change in the presentation that I wept last night.
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I was afraid that you were beginning to dilute the gospel and that you were no longer faithful to the
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Lord because you placed such strong emphasis on the love of God rather than on man's sin.
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And she went on to say in retrospect, I don't think I was right. But friends, what's my point? I hear a lot of bad press from the world and some evangelical churches and liberal churches, no hellfire, no brimstone, keep it positive, don't preach like that.
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But I have really yet to come across outside of some Westboro crazy Baptist people, where are the hellfire preachers today?
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Where are the judgment preachers today? I think we've listened to that cacophony for so long, down with judgment, just affirm the love of God.
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Friends, we're going to look at it in just a second. I want to affirm the love of God. Matter of fact, that's one of the stories of Jonah, that God does love
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Ninevites, that God is patient, that God is gracious. Notice that, do you see it in verse 2 of chapter 4?
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He prayed to the Lord and said, Jonah 4, 2, and he's displeased exceedingly, Lord, I said this,
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I told you this when I was in my own country. That's why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew, God, I knew that you're a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
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God, you send me over here to preach and I knew you were going to save him. How could you? Because you're so gracious and merciful.
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Friends, I'm not saying don't ever talk about grace and don't ever talk about love because you've got to talk about them.
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But, is there a way you can preach the gospel without talking about sin and death and hell and consider your soul?
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Does God save through a negative message? What's the answer? I hope you say, yes, if that's part of the message because Nineveh repented.
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Nineveh repented. Would you ever say this if you had an evangelistic crusade and everybody drove a long way to get to the place and you said to the people, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
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Would you ever say that? They all went out to John the Baptist. That was the message. How does
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James talk to unbelievers? Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded.
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Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
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How does James talk to rich people who aren't saved and they're trusting in their riches? Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
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Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth -eaten. You've lived on the earth in luxury and self -indulgence.
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You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. What I want as we see the book of Jonah, stemming from a compassionate, gracious God who loves sinners, from the same
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God who sends His Son to seek and save those that are lost. The message from the loving
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God must include, if in fact it doesn't start off with, the bad news of sin because otherwise you don't know you need a
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Savior. May it never be when we evangelize BBC. How would you like to have your marriage fixed?
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Let me tell you about Jesus. How would you like to make more money? Let me tell you about Jesus. How would you like to have family relationships that are better?
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Let me tell you about Jesus. Friends, what do you do when you meet somebody who's an unbeliever and they have a good marriage and they have good health and they have good relationships and their kids are nice and they are involved in social activities and civil activities and they're not crooks according to the law?
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What do you tell them? For Jonah, what did he have to tell
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Nineveh? Chapter 1, verse 2, Go preach to them.
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God saves through preaching. Did you know Jonah is called the John 3, 16 of the
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Old Testament? Why? Why would Jonah be called the John 3, 16 of the
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Testament? So far, all this kind of judgment and sin and hell stuff has kind of made me not think about it like that so much.
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Well, let's turn our Bibles to John chapter 3 for a second and find out. And the answer is going to be that God loves to save people and He loves to save people who aren't
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Israelites. God loves Gentiles. Anybody here a Gentile? Anybody here have a background?
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Somebody raise their hand. Yeah. Anybody here ungodly, sinful, vile, not part of the people of God?
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And the answer is yes. And so what Jonah does is he goes, I know I'm going to go preach this message to them.
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God saves through preaching. But they're a bunch of pagan Gentiles. By the way, if I go, when
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God uses Nineveh and the Assyrians to chasten Israel, I'd rather have them be not strong through repentance.
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I'd rather have them be weak through punishment. If I go there, I know God is just like you,
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Lord, to save these kind of people. And I don't want them saved. I don't like that. They're not like me.
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They're not like us. And they're these other people. And look at what John 3 ,16 says.
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It is often taken, John 3 ,16, as some kind of verse for God loving each and every person.
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It's often used for earth day people, God loving the world, earth day. You know,
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Santa Cruz crunchy, nutty people, Santa Cruz slugs. By the way, if you ever name your university the slugs, something's wrong.
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University of California at Santa Cruz, what's your nickname? Nothing. I mean, we think Redskins has some bad connotations.
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How about slugs? That's not just politically incorrect. That's just incorrect. That's really bad.
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Slugs. Remember, here comes Jesus. And way back in Abraham's day in chapter 12 of Genesis, 15, 17, 21, 22, the plan to save wasn't just for Israelites.
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Matter of fact, Abraham wasn't even a Jew when he got saved. He was a moon worshipping pagan and he gets saved.
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And the plan has always been a wide plan. A plan not just for the Israelites.
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A plan where Jesus would come and he'd save centurions. He'd save people that weren't part of the
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Jewish culture or race. It's like Psalm 117. Let the nations praise
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God. And here, John 3, 16, let's go back up to verse 14.
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And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man must be lifted up. Verse 15, that everyone believing, is the
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Greek, that everyone believing in Him may have eternal life. Verse 16,
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I'll read it to you in the original. For God loved in this manner, for God loved the world in this manner, that He gave
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His only begotten Son that everyone believing in Him should not perish but have life eternal.
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How does God love the world? What is the world? Is it the globe? Is it the evil world system? It's God loves people that aren't just Jews.
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Aren't you glad? That's why it's called the John 3, 16 of the Bible. That is Jonah because let's go save sinners like the
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Assyrian Ninevites. Let's go rescue them. Isn't that so unlike me?
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If there was a bunch of people who were my enemies, nationally, and they were all after me,
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I'd say, God, judge them. God, get them. God, smash them.
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I might even pray in a precatory psalm, smash their teeth. The next generation of children, don't let them come to bear because we want them weak.
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And here God does not leave the fallen human race to perish alone without a remedy.
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He saves sinners. And by the way, if you go to John 4, who does this woman, what does she think the word world means?
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Who is the world? If God so loves the world, He gives a son, what does it mean?
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What do you mean world? Our default is to each and every person who was ever born. That has nothing to do with it.
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Verse 16 of John 4. I'm going to call John 3 and 4 the equivalent to Jonah.
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Verse 16 of John 4. Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here.
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The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said, You're right in saying I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one you're with now isn't your husband.
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What you said is true. Maybe the most understated line in all the
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Bible. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive you are a prophet. Verse 25.
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The woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming back who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all these things.
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And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am. Verse 39.
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Many Samaritans. Oh yeah. Samaritans, they're worse than the Assyrians. Samaritans, half -breed.
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Not just a non -Jew Assyrian Ninevite. These people are like mingled with their blood.
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These people are just, you know. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.
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He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days.
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And many more believed his word or because of his word. They said to the woman, it's no longer because of what you said that we believe for we have heard ourselves and we know this is indeed the
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Savior of the what? World. The Savior of the globe.
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The Savior of each and every person. No, not just Jews but Gentiles. The message back in Jonah is
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God's love for his people that he's created includes Israelites and Gentiles.
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I can put it to you this way if you want a preaching application. When was the last time you obeyed
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Ephesians chapter 2 verse 11, the first command in all of Ephesians?
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In light of who Jesus is, in light of the Father's election, the Son's redemption, the Spirit's sealing, in light of the praise that goes to this great
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in light of who you are in Christ, here's the first thing that you want to do that you must do in light of all that.
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And what's the first thing and when was the last time you did it? Here's the imperative,
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Ephesians 2 verse 11. I'll use the Eben Droth amplified translation. Steve, you don't have to write this down.
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It's not inerrant. Never ever forget that you used to be a
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Gentile but God saved you anyway because of who he is. That's Ephesians 2 verse 11, the first imperative.
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Remember that you were a Gentile, that you used to be a pagan. If it wasn't for God, I would be in England worshipping a tree.
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You'd be in India worshipping a stone. Or you would worship something else, some kind of money, music, sex.
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It doesn't matter. It's just worship. I'll never forget the time I came home from India and I was over in India for a while and I remember getting off the plane.
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I get off the plane and I just felt weird. I felt like I'm oppressed. There's like so many false gods everywhere.
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I couldn't tell you any other way except the subjective feel. It was just like, this is weird.
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And by the way, I'm not talking about being in Bombay. I'm talking about when I stepped off the plane at Logan. Because what we do with our idols here is a little more sophisticated than what they do there.
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But here we're idol worshipping people. We used to be Gentiles and God said, you're my child anyway. That's the book of Jonah.
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Well, let's turn back to Jonah. I guess we've got to finish. I don't really want to finish, so I'm not. Sunday first service, you have to finish when you're done.
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I have to go through a little bit more. Jonah.
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Maybe one of my all -time favorite things is when I'm hearing preaching and it's from the text and out of the text and I think, man, that time went by so fast.
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Just went by fast because you're engaged and you see what's going on and it just flows. It says in chapter 1, go preach to these
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Ninevites in verse 2. I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that the
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Assyrian people were some of the most wicked people you could ever come up with and you should think of Nazis on steroids.
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You should think this way. When you go into a city, just like the Nazis did in Poland, kill all the clergy, kill all the educators, kill all the people at the top and then they would bring in the
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Nazi troops. Here's what the Assyrians did. Kill all the clergy, kill all the educators, kill all the people at the top and by the way, we can't leave our forces there in the city that we've taken over.
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So what we can do is leave our mark. So let's fillet the people, fillet them alive.
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Let's take their skin off while they're still alive. Let's pull out all the leader's tongues that we didn't kill.
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Let's put people up on sticks, impale them.
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One man said, pyramids of human heads mark the path of the conqueror. Children burnt alive and reserved for a worse fate.
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Men impaled, flayed alive, blinded, deprived of hands and feet, ears and noses. Women and children carried into slavery.
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The city plundered. Those kind of people, God says to Jonah, I want you to go preach a message to them.
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Go preach a message to them and they're going to get saved. It's amazing that God justifies the ungodly.
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Verse 3, we've got to finish here. Verse 3. Okay, before I read verse 3, is there anybody in your life who you think is past saving?
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Who's too wicked? Is there anybody in your family that seems to be too much of a black sheep and they could never be saved?
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They're too far gone. They're too far long gone. I think you should think of the
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Assyrians. Here at Jonah 1 .3, Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish.
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There's a lot of verbs in the original Hebrew that make you just feel like it's going fast. It says in chapter 4,
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I made haste to flee, and he's got this feeling of running downhill, running downhill, pell -mell.
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From the presence of the Lord, he went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the
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Lord. What? Jonah's the prophet. I want you to go preach.
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No, I'm out of here. See you later. You want me to go that direction? I'm going this direction. No, I won't.
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I mean, I kind of get the Moses deal. God goes to Moses. I want you to preach to Pharaoh.
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Be my spokesperson. You know, I can't really talk so well. I'm not really that eloquent. I can't talk so good.
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You know, please no. Send someone else. But this isn't that. This is not
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Moses saying to the Lord, could you please send someone else? This is the prophet saying, I won't go.
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No, I'm not going. And you say, this is a dumb prophet. This is a stupid prophet.
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This is the wrong way prophet. Doesn't he know you can't escape from the presence of the Lord? Doesn't it say two times?
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Presence of the Lord. Presence of the Lord. He did not take Pradeep's IBS class on systematic theology. Omni, all, present, everywhere.
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God's present everywhere. He's forgotten that. Of course, a northern prophet would do that. I'd expect that out of all the northern prophets.
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Does a prophet come out of Galilee? No. Friends, Jonah knew about the omnipresence of God.
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It says in verse nine, doesn't it? The God who made the sea and the dry land. If you make it, you control it.
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Jonah knows the Psalms. He knows Psalm 139. He wrote a Psalm Jonah did in Psalm 2.
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I mean, Jonah chapter 2. This is technical language. Elisha, come to my presence and stand, the
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Lord says, and I'm going to give you a task. Okay, here's the task. Go do it. Elisha, come into my presence and stand.
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I give you a task. You go do it. This is technical language where the minister says, the prophet says, the man acting as priest liaison says,
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I don't want to do it. I'm fleeing from my charge. I'm fleeing from my duty. You give me the baton.
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Here's the minister's job. And I say, I quit. I say, I'm like a pastor. Every pastor, every decent pastor, at least every
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Monday morning does the same thing. I quit. I should count up all the times I quit on Monday.
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I quit. Every pastor quits on Monday. That's why you shouldn't call pastors on Monday unless there's emergency. And they want to quit even all the more.
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I want to quit on Mondays because I think, I'm not only dealing with sinful people. I'm not doing a Herculean task that I can't do.
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I'm not inadequate for these things, but I'm also sinful too. It's just like, Lord, I quit. But here's the prophet.
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This is what he's doing. I resign. He's not saying, God's not in Spain. He's not way there.
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I'm not going to go that direction. I'm going to go that direction, 2 ,000 miles away. And God's not there.
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Jonah is not saying that. Jonah's saying, you know what, Lord? I know if I go there, you're going to save those people.
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And when I have an altar call, every head bowed, every eye closed, no one looking around, they're all going to raise their hand. Every one of them is going to raise their hand.
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They're all going to come to the front. Every single one of them. I don't want to do that. Down to Joppa he goes.
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Down to Tarshish. Down into the boat. Down, down, down, down. I've got to run.
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Isaiah sees God, holy, holy, holy, lifted up, and he is undone. And he gets the message, go preach, people won't listen.
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Aye, aye, sir. Jonah gets the message, there's a bunch of people going to get saved. A bunch of people, you know my character, you know my nature, you know how
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I like to save people. Go preach so they will be saved. I'm out of here. I quit. I quit. I quit ministry.
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I'm running the wrong way. You should look on a map. Nineveh, Tarshish. When I was a kid,
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I loved the Green Bay Packers, and I hated the Detroit Lions. I hated the Chicago Bears, and I ultimately hated the
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Minnesota Vikings, those purple people eaters. I hated the fearsome foursome, because they were fearsome.
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I'll never forget that account where October 25th, 1964, San Francisco 49ers are playing the
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Minnesota Vikings, and Jim Marshall, the defensive lineman, recovers a fumble, and he picks it up, and he runs 66 yards the opposite way, throws the ball in celebration, only to give the
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Niners a two -point safety. The wrong way. Jonah, go preach.
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And Jonah knew, God saves through preaching. And if you want to have them saved, you pick somebody else.
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Jonah knows the sovereignty of God. He knows all those appointed to eternal life will believe. He would know the fact of Acts 13, 48.
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And so he's like, but I'm not going to be the vehicle for you, God. You pick somebody else. And God doesn't need
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Jonah. And God doesn't need people in ministry. He's happy to do it on His own, or He's happy to do it to someone else.
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But I have to say, publicly before you, and I want you to get it as well, it is a wonderful thing to be used of God in gospel ministry.
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God's going to do what He wants. But to be used by God, even as frail and sinful,
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God uses sinful, frail people as His messengers, as His vessels. But what do we do instead?
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We buy into satanic providence. Hey, I went down to Tarshish.
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I mean, I went down to the ocean. Where are you going? The opposite way.
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Hey, that's an open door. God just gave me an open door to go. How much is it? That's exactly how much
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I got in my pocket. One said, when a person decides to run from the Lord, Satan always provides complete transportation.
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But God had already said, go that way. Paul was discouraged, and Jesus shows up and says, do not be afraid any longer,
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Acts 18, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I'm with you. No one will attack you in order to harm you.
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I have many people in this city. I've got a bunch of people who aren't believers yet, but they're elect. Preach to them, and I'll save them.
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Can you imagine? The Ninevites of all people. There's a lot of elect people there.
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They might all be elect. Go preach so God's fame can be shown forth. Jonah. And we'll have to find out next week how he got there.
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Let's pray. Father, I praise you that you work through sinful people for your plan.
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I praise you that you save sinners. I can't think of the Assyrians.
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They weren't asking for a profit. They weren't wanting deliverance. They wanted their own sin, and yet you saved them and gave them mercy and grace in spite of who they were.
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You initiated salvation. Even Jonah would know that in the belly of the fish. Salvation belongs to the
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Lord. And, Father, for our church, for Bethlehem Bible Church, I would pray that you would give us a love for really wicked people.
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I pray that you would give us the mind and the resolution to tell these wicked people about sin and the
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Savior. God saves sinners through Jesus Christ's life and death, confirmed by the resurrection. And, Father, that you would undergird our church so that we don't bail out of ministry.
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We don't quit, whether it's our ministry here or any place else. Change our church in the middle of the book of Jonah, the