Taught In A Strange College (Part 1)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr.

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Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

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Ever ask the question, why do we preach the Bible at Bethlehem Bible Church? Why is Bible preaching important?

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Well, I could probably give you lots of reasons. If we don't preach the Bible, then we preach about ourselves, maybe psychology, maybe book reviews, and so the best thing to do is to preach the

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Word. Why do we preach the Bible? Because the Bible says, preach the Word in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and doctrine.

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We also preach the Bible because it's good for you to know who God is. Where else can you find out about the holiness of God?

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What can you find out about the love of God? How can you know the details of Christ Jesus and His salvation?

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The Bible reveals the answers to all of life's major questions. I was on a plane this week, a few planes this week, and I flew from Memphis to Atlanta, then

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Atlanta to Manchester on Ebola Air. It was a nice flight. I sat next to a guy from Atlanta to Manchester, and we talked for about two and a half hours, and we talked about nothing but the

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Bible and nothing but salvation. I said, before I got saved, before I studied the

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Bible, I didn't know why I existed, what the purpose of life was, what happens when you die.

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How do you get to heaven? I didn't know the answer to one of those questions. And I said, it's not because of me, but because of the

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Holy Spirit and His Word. I said, I know the answer to every one of those questions. What about you?

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Are you going to go to heaven? Well, he didn't know the answer. So we talked for quite a while, and we discussed a few things.

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And then at the very end, he said, you know what? This world is so chaotic, so crazy, so full of confusion.

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Who knows how the thing will end? And I literally pointed at him. We were friends by now.

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Great guy. I said, I know exactly how it ends.

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And he said, I knew you'd say that. I mean, the depth and the riches of Scripture.

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We just have it all. What's so good about verse -by -verse teaching? I mean, I've watched enough Fox News in the last week to just make anybody crazy.

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And I tell you what it will do. It'll make you afraid. You can't even go out of the house. I mean, it is so bad out there.

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And I think, you know what? What do I need instead? I need to be washed by the Scriptures. I need to think biblically.

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I need to look through the world of my health issues, my job issues, my children issues.

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I certainly don't have any wife issues. That's not an issue. But I need to see everything through the lens of Scripture.

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How does God see history? How am I to see myself? How am I to see everyone else?

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And how do I see God? So let's take our Bibles and open it up to the book of Jonah, because that book helps us do that very thing.

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How do I see the world through God's perspective? And you're going to see in the book of Jonah the sovereignty of God, the supremacy of God, the love of God, the grace of God, the holiness of God.

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Everything about the book of Jonah just preaches, to use the song we just sang, how great is our

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God. And we need to walk by faith and not by sight. We need to walk by trusting

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God, not by Fox News. I don't care if you watch news or not, but I'm telling you, if you watch 20 hours of news per week and you read your

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Bible 15 minutes a week, there's going to be a problem. So we're going to go through Jonah chapter 2 today, verses 1 through 10.

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Thomas John Carlyle wrote, I was so obsessed with what was going on inside the whale that I miss seeing the drama inside Jonah.

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And you're going to see today, there's going to be a flicker of his repentance. There's going to be a little flash of his partial repentance found in the belly of the fish.

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And these are going to be great verses because they will answer lots of theological questions.

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Now, you know, chapter 1, if I'll use Wiersbe's outline again, it was go, remember,

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God tells Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites of all people. And Jonah said no, because Jonah knew that God was gracious and compassionate and full of kindness and long suffering.

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And he knew that through the preaching of the word, these Ninevites would get saved and then they would be blessed by God because they would respond correctly to God.

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They'd be strengthened and then God would use a strengthened Ninevite nation, a Syrian nation to chasten

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Israel. So Jonah said no, go, no. And then God caused the storm, remember, blow.

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And then finally, the mariners, the salts, the sea salts threw him out.

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And it says in chapter 1, verse 17, and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

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Now, let me read to you chapter 2 in its entirety. And before I do, though, notice if you have a text in front of you, even if it's an electronic text.

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There should be lots of white space on the left column and on the right column. You should ask yourself the question, why is chapter 1's formatting in my

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English Bible? Why is chapter 3's formatting? Why is chapter 4's formatting different than chapter 2?

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The answer is chapters 1, 3 and 4 are a story. It's a narrative. And chapter 2 is poetry.

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This is poetry. This is a praise psalm, an individual psalm of deliverance.

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And as you read this, as you hear it read to you out loud, you should start saying to yourself, you know what?

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There's a flicker of Psalm 120 in there. There's a little echo of Psalm 42 in there.

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That kind of sounds like Psalm 69. Jonah has learned the psalms and they're coming out of him at this time where God has his attention.

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Let's go to Psalm of Jonah found in Jonah chapter 2.

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Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish saying, I called out to the

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Lord out of my distress and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried and you heard my voice.

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For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the flood surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me.

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Then I said, I'm driven away from your sight. Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple.

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The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains.

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I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought up my life from the pit.

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Oh, Lord, my God, when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple.

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Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you what

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I avowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. And the

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Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

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Friends, before we go any farther, just tuck it in your mind that the

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Psalms give us the deepest, the richest, most comforting things in all the

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Bible. You show me someone in a trial and I'll show you someone that's driven like a magnet to another magnet to the book of Psalms.

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And you can identify with the Psalms as David pours out his heart before God. Because there's an issue.

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There's an enemy. There's a situation. And one of the things about the book of Psalms, it just helps us so much.

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I think Jonah was a man steeped in the Psalms. And when he had to go call out to God, that just came out of him.

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That's why many people I don't do it every day. I read the Bible every day, but I don't always read five

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Psalms a day. But if there's 150 Psalms and there's 30 days in a month, how many

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Psalms should you read per day if you want to get through them all five per day? And do you notice,

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Jonah doesn't say when he's in the belly of the fish, I called out and I began to quote

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Nietzsche. I'm in a tight spot and I'll call out and I'll quote

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Sartre and I'll quote Bultmann and I'll quote Camus and I'll quote Osteen and I'll quote

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Rick Warren. Those are the people I'll quote. He was so full of the

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Psalms like a sponge. You squeeze it and then drop it in the water, filled up and it was an overflow out of his heart with the

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Psalms. It says in verse one, then

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Jonah prayed to the Lord is God from the belly of the fish. And he begins to pour out his heart before the

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Lord. He has his attention. The Lord has his attention. Notice, to the

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Lord his God, to Yahweh his God, offering prayer in the belly of the fish and God still hears it there.

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Yes, because God's omnipresent. You say, how long was he in the belly of the fish before he prayed?

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We don't know, have no idea. And then it says in verse two, here's what he prays.

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Now, some people don't think this Psalm could be in the Bible, this Psalm of Jonah, because there can't be a fish that can swallow a man.

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And so the liberals can't have a real belly of a real fish with a real Jonah in it because they can't have a real Jesus being resurrected from the dead,

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Matthew 12. But he's in there and he cries out to this merciful God. Look at verse two.

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I called out to Yahweh, this covenant keeping personal God. Out of my distress, he answered me out of the belly of Sheol, I cried and you heard my voice.

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Now, don't miss this. Here's what's going to be happening inside the belly of the fish. Jonah is going to experience the mercy of God.

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Jonah is going to experience the grace of God. Jonah is going to experience the kindness of God. Jonah is going to experience the patience of God, firsthand experience.

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So then he's going to get a little taste of how good God's mercy is, because he's going to be on a mission to tell other people, the

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Ninevites, about the mercy, grace and compassion of God. Jonah comes to his theological senses and says,

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I called out to the Lord out of my distress. The word is to bind up. The word is to constrict.

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The word is you're in a tight spot. There's nowhere to move. Sound like a belly to you. I don't know about you, but I hate claustrophobic,

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I hate closed spaces. I'm about as claustrophobic as you get. That's why I pushed the kids always under the bed and laid there and blocked them so they could have the same problems their dad did.

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Like if I go to Six Flags and they lock that thing in on you so you can't breathe and you're on the ride and everything.

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I hate that. And here Jonah is down there constricted, bound. It's word like an anaconda is wrapped around you, because it's a tight spot.

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And he calls out to God from the depths of Sheol. Do you notice the text? From the belly of Sheol.

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Now Sheol could mean death, Sheol could mean hell. And this could be literal.

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Some people make this, Jonah had to die in the belly of the fish so he could be resurrected, because it's similar to Jesus, he dies and is resurrected,

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Matthew chapter 12. But Jonah's an example, and everything doesn't have to be a perfect, symmetrical, one -to -one correspondence.

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And so Jonah most likely, it's figurative language of, I'm at death's door. I'm as good as dead.

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If you were in the belly of the fish, you'd be saying to yourself, I'm a goner. I'm dead.

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And with poetic language, with a psalm of Jonah, that's what he was saying.

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But he knows even in the belly of the fish, down in the water, God hears him.

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He's actually calling out to the Lord out of his distress. I think he knows. I've been chastened by God. I've been disciplined by God.

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And it's my fault, it's not God's fault. And I am calling out that God would mercifully deliver me.

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Even though I earned it, even though I caused all this. Punishment is not punishment when it's a believer, it's chastisement.

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And so Jonah says, I'm as good as dead, but God hears me. Psalm 88 says,

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I'm afflicted with all your breakers. Jonah, at the theological end of his rope, says,

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God, basically, thy will be done. Whatever you want to do. Now, psalms were meant to be sung.

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I don't know if he sang it. It says in verse 2, the first word in verse 2, saying. But maybe he sang it.

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I don't know. I even sound good in a shower. And Jonah probably even sounds good if he's singing in the belly of the whale.

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Good acoustics down there. True or false?

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In my affliction, I will seek you early, Lord. Isn't that a psalm?

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Isn't it amazing? Life just goes so well. You're on cruise control. Everything seems to be going well at work, at home.

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For ladies, often, it's work at home is the same place. And you're just cruising along. And all of a sudden, you're kind of like you're forgetting the

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Lord. You know, you ever drive a car? And you know, they tell you in driving school, I don't know, every four seconds, look at the one mirror, then look at the other mirror.

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You're constantly looking around and making sure you see everything. Instead of looking at the mirror of God's word, you don't look as often.

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You don't think about him as often. And then there's trouble. And then what happens? I need your help.

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We move to verses three and following. Jonah's going to have a little flashback, a little recollection, kind of a little recall.

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He's in the belly of the fish now, but he's going to recall what was going on between him getting thrown out of the boat, the ship, to when he got swallowed up.

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What was it like? Because he did not get thrown from the ship into the mouth of the fish.

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One man called this the watery horror and God's gracious deliverance.

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Verse three, for you cast me into the deep. Wait a second, stop right there. I thought it was the mariners who cast him in the deep.

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I thought it was one, two, three, heave ho, keel hole. I thought they were the ones throwing him.

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But he knows the sovereignty of God. It's not the mariners. It's not the sea salts. It's not the people on the boat.

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This is God's doing. For you cast me, look at the text, into the deep, into the hearts of the seas.

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You can imagine. I don't know what the water was like, but the flood surrounding me, all your waves and billows passed over me.

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It's engulfing me is the NAS. This is just like Job.

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Satan comes and afflicts him. His three friends come and afflict him with words.

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And Job says, you know what? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I know

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God's sovereign over these people. This is like David. David realized the same thing in 2

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Samuel 16. Other people were after him, but I know God's sovereign over all that. He is not blaming the sailors.

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Verse four. Oh, just let me stop there for a second. He is not blaming the sailors.

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And if you have trials in life, if you have troubles in life, when you have these difficult times in life, remember, if there's a complaint against people, if there's a complaint against situations, if there's a complaint about how you didn't get this thing done right to you, the ultimate complaint is not toward the person.

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The ultimate complaint is the sovereign hand of God. God, you shouldn't have put me in this situation.

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You've got enough power to keep me out of this trouble. You've got enough kindness to kind of keep me out of this, but you put me here.

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And at least now Jonah has come to his theological senses. Repentance is good. Even if it's a little late, repentance is still welcomed by God.

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God, I know you did this to me. You're the one. I'm just going to pour my heart out to you.

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I can't hide from you. And then I said, I'm driven away, verse four, from your sight.

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Yet I shall look again, see the flicker of hope upon your holy temple. I'm driven from your sight.

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NES, I'm expelled from your sight. What do you mean? God now can't see him.

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I guess it's like x -ray trying to go through lead. That the fish's stomach is like lead and God has these x -ray laser -like eyes and they can't go through the lead.

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God can't see what's going on there. You've got me out of your sight. Is that what he's saying? Well, this is a poem. Of course he's not saying that.

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Now, my dad, and I won't blame my dad, I'll blame me. When I was really bad, he would say to me,

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Michael, get out of my sight. What do you mean, get out of my sight?

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What does that mean? Well, for my dad, it meant get literally out of my sight or you're going to get whacked. That's what that meant.

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The three of us kids, we all said, I call the seat behind dad's seat in the car. Why do you want to sit behind dad?

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Because dad can't hit back there. My poor brother, he was the littlest,

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Pat, nine years younger. Marcy, she didn't really get any kind of whacking or anything. But when my dad couldn't hit me, he took it out on my brother and he would grab my brother's hair and just pull.

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And then, I don't know, I guess that's a new kind of discipline. And so, then my brother, he'd be going like this for the rest of the trip, just like this, hair coming out.

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Get out of my sight meant literally get out of my sight. But what's the whole idea? What you're doing right now does not put you in my good favor.

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You're not on my good side right about now. It's not, well, I can't see you. God sees everything, but it's the language of favorable regard.

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And when God says to the prophet, go preach and you say no, get out of my sight kind of thing is the language.

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And it says in the text, I shall look again upon your holy temple. It could be, I'll see

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Jerusalem again, that place where the divine presence is specially manifested. Or it might be, I'm going to get to heaven one day,

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I'll see heaven. Either one, he has the hope of the Lord in him. He's coming to his theological senses.

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This reminds me of our Lord Jesus. Hundreds of years later when he said, him that comes unto me,

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I will in no wise what, cast out. Verse five,

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I can feel the water when he's outside the ship and not inside the stomach.

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The water's closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head.

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I think he's in the belly of the fish now. Nice turban,

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Jonah, seaweed turban. At the roots of the mountains, he's going deep down.

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I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever, yet you brought up my life from the pit, oh

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Lord, my God. You know what this is like?

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This is like the opposite of birthing. Now, I don't know for sure, but the language tends to be like this.

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When you're born out of your mother's womb, you go through a very confined, narrow space. A space that's so small that you get forced through it.

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And one of the things that evolution has come up with, by the way, I don't know how many billions of years it took for evolution, which is not a thing to figure this out, but that's beside the point.

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It's when you come out of the birth canal, your lungs get all the water, the amniotic fluid, pressed out because you're squeezed through this narrow spot.

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And now it's like birth, except the opposite kind of birth, where, who knows, Jonah's lungs could be full of water, he could be on the way down, you know, blub, blub, blub, down he goes, and now the fish comes and rescues him, and through the throat, through the gullet, through the stomach, he's squeezed in, that's the language, and probably the water gets squozen out of his lungs.

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Is that a word? You Florida orange juice people would know. I'm going to die, near death, and then now

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I'm rescued. I wonder what it was like, kids, the slimy inside of a stomach, slippery, and I'm going to use a word now that I've never used in my 17 years of preaching at Bethlehem Bible Church, snotty, weird, phlegmy, that's what it was.

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See, now you're all awake. You can edit that out of the tape, Ben, if you'd like. Although that never happens.

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Last Saturday I was talking to Wesley Blackstone and we were cleaning things, and I found in my study a cassette tape.

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Remember what those are, cassette tapes? And it said, Mike Avendroth, with the writing of Wesley Blackstone, and every time

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I said, take that out of the tape on a Sunday night, which was very often back in those days, he didn't take it out of the...

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he took it out of the tape and put it on a different tape and he gave me a collage of 30 minutes of my bloopers.

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So I don't trust people. The heart's desperately wicked, deceitful above all else. I don't even know if I can trust

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Ben, let alone Blackstone. The acid, the bleached out face, restricted area, what you cannot think about is like Pinocchio in Geppetto.

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Is that his name? Geppettio. Ja? Edit that out of the tape.

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Like, little fire, roasting marshmallows, hanging out, you know, in the belly of the fish there with Pinocchio.

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That's not what's going on. It's smashed in, it's tight, it's like death, it's like being buried alive.

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Verse 7, when my life was fainting away, it's never too late to repent.

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I remembered Yahweh. And my prayer came to you.

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No longer out of your sight anymore. Get out of my sight. My prayer came to you into your holy temple.

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I remembered, Lord, you're faithful. I remembered you're kind. I remembered you're merciful. What I didn't like about you towards the

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Ninevites, I kind of liked towards me, thank you, confidently approaching

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God. I don't care if you're in a lunar rover. I don't care if you're in the bathyscope. Your prayers are heard by God.

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And then he praises God. See it in verse 8. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

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Well, what's he doing here? He's comparing. He's using contrast as a good teacher.

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I trust in the living God. I don't trust in the dead gods, the idol gods.

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Those mariners, when I first met them, they're all crying out to their God. It didn't do any good. I'm trusting in the real

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God. And so by comparison, he says, God is not an idol. He's not a God who doesn't hear.

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Psalm 115, Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

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They have mouths, but they don't speak. Eyes, but they don't see. Ears, they don't hear.

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Noses, but don't smell. Hands, but don't feel. Feet, but don't walk. And they do not make a sound in their throat.

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They don't talk. Those who make them will become like them. So do all who trust in them.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.