The Book Of Jonah

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All right, here's what we're gonna do tonight. I'm going to read the entire book of Jonah, which isn't that long.
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Esther, when we do this in a couple months, it's a little longer. But I'm gonna read from the ESV, the entire book of Jonah.
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I'll try to read it interpretively, not dryly. Then I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand and I'll call on you and then you tell me, this is a lesson that I see that I can learn about God.
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I can learn about how he interacts with men and women. This is something I've learned about the
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Bible, God, or anything else that comes to your mind, a lesson learned. And then after I listen to you, then
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I'll tell you some of the lessons that I've listed and I'll kind of preach that way, lessons
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I've learned from the book of Jonah, lessons that you should learn as well. So as I'm reading, think to yourself, what would be a good lesson to teach myself and to teach others from the book of Jonah?
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I hope you read the Bible that way, especially if you're gonna teach kids. What are we gonna learn here in the book of Jonah?
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So I'm gonna read from the ESV, all the book of Jonah, then I'm gonna call on you. So you might wanna ask, write down a couple of comments or something like that as we go.
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It's important, I believe, at our church to get big panoramic views because we are very, very atomistic at times.
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First Corinthians chapter three, one to four, takes two weeks to get through it and we're down there, rightfully so, in the earth of the text.
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But sometimes it's important to see the panoramic view. And so when you can read through books of the Bible, maybe this vacation, read through all of Galatians at one sitting, read through all of Romans at one sitting, read through all of Esther at one sitting, and I think you'll find much profit for that.
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I like it that we have eye touches here. Now that's not an eye touch, iPad. Turn that over so I can see. Is that the
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ESV? Wow, we've got dog altar calls and iPads.
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This is an amazing thing. I'm so glad in light of both of those things, I'm so glad I fly out of here in two days.
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The book of Jonah, chapter one. Now the word of the
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Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, call out against it for their evil has come up before me.
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But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down a job and found a ship going to Tarshish.
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So he paid the fare, went on board to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the
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Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea.
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And there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid and each cried out to his
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God. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.
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So the captain came and said to him, what do you mean you sleeper? Arise, call out to your
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God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.
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They said to one another, come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.
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So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
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Then they said to him, tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us.
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What is your occupation and where do you come from? What is your country and of what people are you? And he said to them,
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I'm a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.
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Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the
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Lord because he had told them. Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?
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For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea.
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Then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.
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Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
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Therefore they called out to the Lord. Oh Lord, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood.
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For you, oh Lord, have done as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea and the sea ceased from its raging.
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Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
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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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Chapter two, you should see in your ESV Bible different indentations.
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Verse one, 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.
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All your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight.
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Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life.
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The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.
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Yet you brought up my life from the pits, oh Lord my God. When my life was fainting away,
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I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
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But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay.
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Salvation belongs to the Lord. And the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited
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Jonah out upon the dry land. Chapter three. Then the word of the
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Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city and call out against it the message that I tell you.
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So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city.
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Three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey.
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And he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed
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God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.
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The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.
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And he issued a proclamation and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles.
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Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God.
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Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows
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God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way,
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God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them. And he did not do it. Chapter four.
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But it displeased Jonah exceedingly. And he was angry.
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And he prayed to the Lord and said, oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?
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That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. For I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.
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Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me for it is better for me to die than to live.
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And the Lord said, do you do well to be angry? Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there.
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He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city. Now the
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Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.
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So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when the dawn came up the next day,
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God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose,
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God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
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And he asked that he might die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant?
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And he said, yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. And the
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Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.
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And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120 ,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle?
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Is that not a great book? Is it not great to hear read? Is the ending not wild?
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Who ends a book like that? When I was younger,
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I would read a chapter of scripture and then I would tape it while I was reading it and then
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I would play it in the car to hear my voice because then I heard my own voice and I could memorize scripture better that way.
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Well, tonight what we're going to do is this. I'm gonna ask you now, if you've got a truth that is gleaned from this, derived from this, an implication from the book of Jonah, this would be a good lesson to learn.
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What is God trying to teach us? What would you do if you're teaching Sunday school and you read the book of Jonah and said, now class,
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I'd like to teach you about this. All those are fair and so I'm gonna hear from you first.
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By the way, how long did that take me to read? About 10 minutes? Eight minutes, something like that? Wasn't very long at all.
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And so tell me what would be a good lesson derived from the book of Jonah? Steve.
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Okay. Lesson from the congregation, your sin will find you out. Is that a biblical principle?
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Absolutely, good. I didn't have that one, but I should have. All right, Brian. All right, good lesson.
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I didn't have that one, but I like that. Matter of fact, I'm not gonna study anymore for sermons. I'm gonna read a large passage and then
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I'll ask you for ideas and then I'll preach them. How's that? It's a dialogue. We don't want those kind of monological preaching styles.
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That's excellent. It's better to obey the first time. Good. What's another one?
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Bruce. The word of God is so powerful that can even change one of the most powerful people in all the world, the king.
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Good, Carol. God doesn't care for pity parties.
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He was pitying, if the party was for pitying the right things, he would care. But when you have pity parties for the wrong thing, that would not be good.
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Excellent, Steve. The fear of the
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Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Good, that all starts there. There's some debate on where those old salty seamen saved, but they began to understand who
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God was and what the fear of the Lord meant. Okay, excellent, Steve. This better be good since you're the pastor.
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You've been trained at the master's seminary. Okay, the heart of man plans his ways, but the
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Lord establishes his steps. I believe you are exactly right.
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Excellent, all right, Vida. Salvation is of the Lord. You will hear that sermon, not audibly, but you can read it if you pull up that sermon from Charles Spurgeon, you'll be very, very encouraged.
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Salvation is of the Lord, it's from God. Here, temporally, yes, but then we realize spiritually as well that salvation and deliverance is from God.
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Look at these hands, this is excellent. We're gonna get everybody, I'm gonna start here and work my way over, Andrew. Okay, this is the word of the
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Lord, and that's going to affect our interpretation. Is it a parable? Is it a satire? Is it an allegory?
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That's gonna be part of my discussion tonight. Here is the word of the Lord, and that is gonna be an important hermeneutical fact, good.
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By the way, just as a side note, I'm very, very pleased that so far nobody has come up with some kind of corny, dumb answer, because I know you're learning and growing.
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Now, there's still plenty of time, and I'm a patient man, but this is what we do.
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I'm doing this tonight because it's a little bit different, but I, and I wanna teach through Jonah because I really love the book of Jonah.
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Jesus loved the book of Jonah, and I wanna like what Jesus liked, but I think this is important when you read through the scripture, before you run and get 15 commentaries, and before you run and need to get some kind of Greek concordance, you can read the passage and ask yourself the question, what can
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I learn about God and how he deals with sinful people from this passage? What is
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God trying to tell me? So I'm very encouraged. Okay, Brian, and you'll see
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God as the main actor, the overriding actor. He is the one who's sovereign, and he appoints and he hurls.
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Isn't that good? Even when it comes to rain, you'll see from the texts in the Bible, it doesn't often say, and it rained.
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We always say that, you know, it's raining outside. When the text talks about rain, the Bible text, it usually says
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God sent the rain. God is now sending the rain. And here too, it wasn't just some kind of coinkydink.
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God hurled that tempest. Yes. Well, fashion,
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I mean, humanly speaking, that sounds -
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Excellent. It should not make us be presumptuous, but it should encourage us that if we make a mistake out of ignorance, a sin, we do something wrong,
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God's will is still going to be done, right? We should do our very, very best not to sin.
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But if we sin, instead of having a conniption fit about it, we should repent, ask for forgiveness, and say, my sin will not thwart the almighty work of God.
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I like that. By the way, I'm sorry, I've just got to preach here just for a minute. You know I'm going to make a big point when
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I lean over like this. This is my style. If you read current events, and if you listen to 96 .9,
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if you read Real Clear Politics, and if you read Politico, and if you read all these kinds of political things going on, if you understand what
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Kagan, is that her name? The new potential appointee for the Supreme Court. If you believe that she is in, that you don't want her to be the
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Supreme Court, I don't know how I would live if I would just study current events, and think that God doesn't reign over every one of these.
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No matter who's appointed, God's will will be done. No matter what political party, God's salvation redemption plan will be accomplished, you will be glorified, and God's plan will not be deterred by who's in the
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White House, or who's in Congress. And I'm glad for that. Otherwise, I don't know what I would do. Jania. Excellent.
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Okay, what was your first point? Yes, oh yeah, the restoration of a sinner.
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Isn't that good? God could have just done what to Jonah? You're going to disobey the first time? Fire. Sodom and Gomorrah kind of fire.
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And then God restored that prophet. And then secondly, we'll talk a little bit about Christ being in,
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Christ using this exact passage in Matthew chapter 12, to talk about his own death and burial, and then resurrection.
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So it does make me think of that too. Okay, good.
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Well, you know what? It's not on my list, but I'll just add this right now. No matter where you are, God hears your prayers.
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I think God is omnipresent, isn't he? No matter what place you're in, God hears your prayers.
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All right, I said I would call on everybody. I guess I, it was just a figure of speech.
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I'm not literal. Deb, that's right.
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There's nowhere you can go. That's exactly right. You can't run. All right, working my way over.
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Simon, he knew that.
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And I'm going to get ahead of myself, but just to give you a little teaser. Israel was not in a good state at the time.
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So now God is sending Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites, and they're going to repent when
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Israel is recalcitrant, when they're hardened, when they're obstinate, when they're disobeying.
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And you're going to send me over there, and I know what you're going to do, God. They're going to believe, and they're going to repent. And then how are we going to look as the chosen nation,
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Israel? All right, yes, Tim. Okay, great point.
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Do you think that appointment was just at the time? God's got his flow chart. If then, I'll almost check.
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Let's see, what could I do? Big fish over there. Here, it's appointed. And matter of fact, the word is not created.
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This is not, he could have created a brand new fish that would have been a day old, but would have looked 300 years old for a whale.
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But he appointed that particular fish, and I think the appointment was in eternity past. All right, good.
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I'm having a great time. We won't do this every week, but this has been fun so far. I'm still waiting for somebody to just give me an answer that I have to say, well,
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I'll correct that. Peter, yes. Peter, help me out. Obey or face the consequences, that's right.
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Sometimes parents are too lazy to follow up with chastening. They're too afraid.
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They're too busy. But I think God sees what we do, and he loves us enough that we need to do the right thing.
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Or else. All right, Vida. Is there some area in my life where I'm asleep?
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All right, that's good. All right, Barbara. Okay, I like it.
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Excellent. Mark. I couldn't have said it better.
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God does not sympathize with unrighteous anger. Frank. Okay, I like it.
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If I put it in a technical sense, once you're a child of God, you're always a child of God.
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That is to say, there's two different kinds of forgiveness. One is judicial before the judge.
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If you stand forgiven, then he's always gonna forgive you parentally, right? We can still sin against God.
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I could sin against my parents if they were alive, but they would never kick me out of the family. And so here, Jonah is a called man, redeemed, justified, and God is not gonna unsave him because of his sin.
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All right, just a few more. Dave. Excellent.
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All right. Couple more. Erickson. Excellent. Hebrews chapter 12 talks about that.
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What I like to say to my kids is, does daddy discipline anybody else on the block? No, he doesn't discipline any other kids on the block.
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I only discipline you. Why? Well, I have a general love for the people in the block, but I have a special kind of love for you.
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And they're probably thinking, yeah, dad, we were feeling really special right about now. Wow, that's special.
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All right. Let's go over here to these ladies. Joni. Good, you watch what's happening with these unbelievers.
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They had so much more passion, sorry, compassion than Jonah did initially.
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They find out that Jonah's the problem. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land. They should have just said, you're out of here.
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You're jettisoned into the ocean. Yet for the sake of Jonah, they're gonna try to help him. And that was not
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Jonah's initial attitude towards the Ninevites at all. Good. Some special love gonna go on over there.
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Yes, Dottie. Nothing can be hidden from God, including our thoughts.
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That's good. That reminds me of Psalm 139 that God knows our thoughts, what, from afar.
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Good. Candace, great to see you. And that's a struggle, especially as we grow in Christ over the years.
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For me, this is my job. I'm a professional in the outside world, a professional minister.
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And sometimes I can do the right thing even though my heart's not in it. And you have that constant fight of, I want my heart to match what
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I'm doing. And Lord, this is not just some kind of job. This is an opportunity to serve. So I want my heart right so I can minister properly.
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And if I struggle with that, I'm sure you do too. You say, well, I'm going to go down to Worcester and evangelize.
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You can have your heart not right and still go do it because you've been trained. I know to talk about substitutionary atonement.
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Jesus is raised from the dead. And that's why, by the way, the church is so valuable to each other.
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And for those who are married, we can examine ourselves and we can be examined by those in the church and our spouses.
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And that's an excellent point. Okay. Yes, Anitra? You're stealing this one.
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Okay, yes. Just because you have a piece about something, it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
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That's actually in my notes. I thought I already talked about that this morning, but that's okay. Sometimes we can have a piece about things and it's a good thing to do, but that's not the reason why we should or shouldn't do some things based on our feelings.
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Excellent. All right, one more, Carol. Okay, two. Sin affects those around us.
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Isn't that amazing? Sin permeates. And you can see why it was talked about as leaven in the
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Old and New Testament. It does what leaven does. It permeates, it saturates something. And that's why it's so important to deal with sin in a local church.
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Dave? I like to use that.
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And that's gonna be my point number one, is that same topic. Okay, before I get to it,
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I see one other hand. Okay, Peter? He's like,
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I just wanna be called on mom. What was that again I was gonna say? While you're thinking, I'm gonna call on Mr. Bartlett. Okay.
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Good, suicide isn't the answer. I always feel sad when I think unbelievers and they wanna commit suicide and they think there'll be a release and they won't be in pain anymore.
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And then I think how much horrible, it would be so much more horrible than they would imagine.
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Okay, Peter, last, okay. Kathy. Cindy, what am
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I doing? Sorry, I'm just gonna blame it on old age. I'm 50 after all and I get the AARP now.
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Sorry, Cindy. Okay, good.
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And we can talk about that a little bit more tonight. Some people will say, see, God does really change his mind. And certainly from the human perspective, it seemed as if God changed his mind.
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Even though we know he never changes, here out of compassion God says, you're not gonna do it and so I will relent.
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King James says actually there, he repents. And so the same word relent or repent can be used.
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I think relent helps us a little bit more because there's nothing God has to repent of, right? But if the word is changing his mind, he relents.
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So that's excellent to see the compassion of God. All right, lastly, Peter, excuse me for calling you the wrong name.
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God can use our humiliation as a lesson to unbelievers. Did your mom tell you that? Or you just made that up on your own?
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The whole time I thought you were at church, you just drew army characters. You mean you're really listening?
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That is an excellent answer. I'm proud of you. I said to Peter a while ago, I said, Peter, one of these days, if you grow into a young man of God, then
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I'm gonna have you on the radio station and you're gonna be a guest on No Compromise Radio. So let's make sure we honor the
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Lord by honoring the son and walking wisely. So I'm gonna keep my promise if you keep yours.
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All right? All right, that is excellent. Let me give you a few of the lessons that I'd like to talk about tonight.
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We had many of them. Isn't that encouraging? You should read Esther and then write down some lessons that you learned out of Esther.
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Some of these books are so helpful. The first one I'd like to give tonight is lesson number one.
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Jonah needs to be read straightforwardly no matter what the implications are or might be.
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Right along with what Pastor Dave said. We are going to read this like it's meant to be read no matter what the outcome might be.
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And if the text talks about fish and swallowing, that's exactly what we're going to do. This is one of the most ridiculed books by liberals.
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And they think if they can get rid of this book, then the whole house of cards fall. And actually they're right, because we're gonna see just a moment that Jesus himself believes this book to be taken literally.
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And if Jesus is wrong, then Christianity is wrong.
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I read some stories about how the pagans ridiculed this. How could you believe Jonah's deliverance by a fish?
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That sounds like Andromeda rescued by a sea monster. That sounds like Hercules who came out of the jaws of a sea monster.
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That sounds like some kind of fable. There's a story about Arian, the musician, thrown into the sea by sailors and carried safe to shore on a dolphin.
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That's kind of what that sounds like. There are four main approaches to interpret this book.
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You don't have to write this down, by the way. If you ever email me and say, send me your notes, I'd be glad to do it. There's the mythological approach.
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This is kind of Gulliver's travels, kind of Hercules. It's a myth.
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It's very common. Number two, which is more common, the allegorical approach. Jonah is really
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Israel. The sea is the Gentiles. The fish is Babylonian captivity.
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The regurgitation is the return during Ezra's time. See how that works? By the way, if the pastors get up and preach and then you go, wow,
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I never saw that myself. I've read Jonah a hundred times. I never knew Jonah was Israel. I never knew the regurgitation was the return during Ezra's time.
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How could you ever get that? Nine times out of a 10. He just made it up. I'm trying to teach you a passage so you go home and read it and you go,
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I can see right where that was discovered. Listen to what
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Julius Bewer said. And this is the international critical commentary, but I wonder about those three words put together.
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Surely Jonah is not the record of actual historical events, nor was it ever intended as such.
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Listen to this. It is a sin against the author to treat as literal prose what he intended as poetry.
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His story is thus a story with a moral, a parable, a prose poem like the story of the
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Good Samaritan. That is amazing to me. George Adam Smith said the same thing.
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We sin against the intention of the author and the Holy Spirit which inspired him when we willfully interpret the book as real history.
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Now I have a little wager that I could wage.
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If you hand this to somebody who's never read the Bible before, let's say there were such thing as a Martian.
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Let's say there was somebody over in Australia that had never read the Bible. And you said, could you just please read that?
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What would you say this author is trying to say? And how many times do you think they would say, it sounds like to me that this was a prophet who didn't wanna obey and he got swallowed by a fish and spit up on land.
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Wouldn't you come up with that? Of course you would. Just the plain natural reading. The third way to read it is a satire.
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Holman Bible Dictionary actually calls it that. Holman is fairly liberal. And then lastly, the literal historical approach.
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Turn your Bible to 2 Kings please. 2 Kings chapter 14. We're not gonna stay there very long, but I want you to know that outside of Jonah, Jonah is discussed.
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Outside of Jonah, we have some information. 2 Kings chapter 14, because I want to try to firmly convince you that this is a historical account, that it really did happen just like the text says.
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There's no hint in here that it's some kind of parable or allegorical. When you read it straight up, that's exactly what you find.
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And if you go to 2 Kings chapter 14 verse 23, let me read you through verse 29 and ask yourself the question, does this help me understand
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Jonah as literal? In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria and he reigned 41 years.
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And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made
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Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebohamath as far as the Sea of Arabah, according to the word of the
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Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant, Jonah, and we've even got his father's name, the son of Amittai, sound familiar?
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The prophet who was from Gath -Hephur. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left bond or free, and there was none to help
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Israel. Sound like a historical account? Yes, but what seals it to me is turn to Matthew chapter 12,
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Matthew chapter 12, and Jesus reads this as grammatically, historically proper.
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Literally, he would read it, Matthew chapter 12. And I think I wanna make sure I read the
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Bible as our Lord would, Matthew chapter 12, verse 38.
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Jesus testifies to the literal account of Jonah. Now, we're just diving into the chapter, but that's okay, verse 38.
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Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.
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We'd like to have some kind of sign up in the sky, some kind of sun, moon, stars, comet.
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We want some kind of big sign, prove it. And what does Jesus do instead?
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You want a sign? I'll give you a sign. Open up your Bibles. I'll give you a sign right from the
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Bible. Teacher, we wanna see a sign from you, verse 39. But he answered them. Can you imagine being on the receiving end of this scathing rebuke?
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An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet
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Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the
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Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
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You nation Israel are adulterous. You want signs. You won't accept the Messiah.
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There's only one sign I'm going to give you. And he uses language of the day.
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Three days and three nights does not necessarily mean 72 hours, it just means a portion of three separate days.
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Verse 41, the men of Nineveh, can you imagine? Look at verse 41, don't stop reading there.
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He's still talking about the Ninevites. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.
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It's like the Ninevites are going to say, Israel, you're sinful. You are hardened heart people.
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Hardened, how do I say that? I'm having a hard time with words today. Your heart is hard and Ninevite people, their hearts were soft.
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There was a revival there. There's no revival here. If you have an allegorical
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Jonah, you have an allegorical Jesus. And then you have an allegorical solution to your sin problem, which is made up.
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Let me just try to push it a little bit because I like to do that. If you don't believe Jonah was a real prophet and you don't believe the account of Jonah in the
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Bible, I wonder how you could call yourself a Christian. Because the Christ you say you believe in and you accept
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His word as true says that this is a real account and real history. Number two, number two, the second lesson.
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The second lesson that I'd like to teach tonight is that God loves more than just Israel, but He loves the world.
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He loves not just the Jews, but the world. This book, the book of Jonah, let's go back to Jonah, is called something very fascinatingly.
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It is called the John 3 .16 of the Old Testament. The John 3 .16
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of the Old Testament. For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
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Let's find out about this love that God has, not just for the Jews, but for Gentiles as well.
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The same kind of idea where in John chapter four, the woman at the well runs back to the men there and she says to these men that Jesus didn't just die for the
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Jews, He's the Savior of the what? The world, not just Israel. And if you take a look at what's going on here,
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I think it's interesting to walk through how the God of the Hebrews has concern for non -Hebrews.
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Jonah chapter one, verse two, arise, He's got three commands there, right? Arise, one, two, go to Nineveh, that great city, three, call out against it for their evil has come up before me.
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I would like you to go with urgency. I need you to go there. The distance is a long distance away.
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According to my study, it would take more than a month to get there. Go back to that great city.
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Why was He dispatched? What's the text say? For their wickedness has come up before me.
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It's getting so bad, God says, it's time for me to get involved. They're superstitious, they're wicked, they're cruel.
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They did all kinds of idol worship. You can study sometime about how they worshiped Ishtar. They were proud, they were arrogant.
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And He's going to go deal with their wickedness, but He's also going to deal with Israel's wickedness. How bad was this city?
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How bad was this country? I think I've given you some of these things before. You wanna know how the
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Assyrian armies were cruel? Quote, some of the victims were held down while one of the band of torturers who are portrayed upon the monuments, gloating fiendishly over their fearful work, inserts his hand into the victim's mouth, grips his tongue and wrenches it out by its roots.
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In another spot, pegs are driven into the ground. To these, another victim's wrists are fixed with cords.
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His ankles are similarly made fast and the man is stretched out, unable to move a muscle.
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The executioner then applies himself to his task. If you're queasy, you plug your ears here.
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The executioner begins at the accustomed spot. Sharp knife makes its incision.
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The skin is raised inch by inch until the man is flayed alive. These skins are then stretched out upon the city walls, are otherwise disposed of so as to terrify the people and leave behind long enduring impressions of Assyrian vengeance.
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Wilmington Bible commentary also says, pyramids of human heads mark the path of the conqueror.
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Boys and girls were burnt alive of the reserve, a reserve for a worse fate. Men were impaled, flayed alive.
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Blinded or deprived of their hands and feet or their ears and noses while the women and children were carried into slavery, end quote.
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The only thing I can think of that's close is what if God talked to me today and said,
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Mike, I'd like you to go to Iran, to Tehran, and I want you to go in the middle of town square and start preaching that Muhammad is a false
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God and Jesus is the only true God. I'd make sure my will was set.
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That's exactly what I would do. But God is so good, he's so good, he even sent in preachers.
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Look at chapter three, verse three. He loves these Gentiles. Yes, I believe there's different kinds of love, a love for his bride and a love more in general, but there's a love of the creator.
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We believe that God loves his people that he's created and he loves especially with a redemptive love, a love that Jesus would die for kind of love.
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Here we have Jonah 3 .3. What's Jonah 3 .3 say? So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the
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Lord. This is the grace and goodness of God sending a preacher.
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Verse four, it's a very interesting message. He called out over and over and over, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
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It will be complete and thorough destruction. Now by the way, we've jumped ahead.
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What would you think a man would look like who had been in the belly of a fish for three days?
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What effect does gastric juice have upon a man's face? Many have said, pardon me?
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Burn it. It's kind of this white kind of gross looking thing. Can you imagine this guy coming into your city who's just got this,
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I guess when I was a kid, we'd call it a grody face, grody to the max face, maybe we would say in the valley.
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Here, three days of this kind of acid. I mean, I'm sorry to say it, but it probably is some kind of, like Michael Jackson used some kind of acid to make his face white.
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It just, that's what acid does. It makes your face white, this pale kind of, who knows,
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I'm sure he was an olive skin man, and now he's got this weird kind of white face. 40 days and 40 nights.
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This is the grace of preaching. What's the outcome? Verse five, the people of Nineveh what?
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Believe God. NES says believed in God, but the text says believed God. And it went everywhere, all classes, all kinds of people.
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They start putting on sackcloth. This is the greatness of God in spite of the man who looks like he's got acid face.
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And then it goes right to the top. One of you said that. Verse six, straight to the top. When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.
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When you set in ashes, it means I'm despairing and I'm helpless. What happens?
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I knew that you were kind. Do you see where we have the issue in chapter four?
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Look at chapter four. This is the God who loves not just the Jews, but he loves Gentiles. The Messiah came to die for not just Jews, but Gentiles as well.
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Oh Lord, is this not what I've said when I was in my country? I knew that you are a what? A gracious God. Mark this, only used of God.
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He's gracious. What's the second thing? And merciful. In the Old Testament, only used of God.
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Only God is this gracious. Only God is this compassionate. Slow to anger. We see that even in Jonah.
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And abounding in steadfast love. True or false? God would just as soon as forgive as he would destroy.
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At least here, that seems to be truth. He is not like Jonah.
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I don't care about the heathen. Let them burn. Jonathan Swift said this, it's scathing.
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We are God's chosen few. All others will be damned. There is no place in heaven for you.
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We can't have heaven crammed. Look at verse 10.
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You've got to have some pity in you, God says. You pitied the plant. You had compassion on the plant.
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You know what that word is in Hebrew? You have enough compassion that you'll have a little tear come out of your eye.
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It was my plant. Crying about the plant. You had compassion on a plant. Who has compassion on a plant?
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I don't know about you, but did you just raise your hand, Erickson? You have compassion on plants? Okay, I thought he raised his hand.
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I was gonna say, we've got some kind of Hindu thing going on here. There's a little project that the kids had and they were to grow beans and some with light and some with red light, some downstairs in shade.
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One of the plants was left over. And it's sitting up on the windowsill. And after a while,
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Kim and the kids are gone. The thing is just like wilted. So I don't think it was compassion, but I thought, you know what?
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I'll give it a little water. Is that compassion? But I don't think
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I'm gonna go out there and plant it. I'll come back and see if Bernard gave it more water and planted it.
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But I just, he had compassion on the plant. You're upset that you lost a plant.
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This is a good object lesson. It's okay.
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The object lesson is this, verse 11, chapter four. And should I not pity Nineveh, the great city, which there are more 120 ,000 people who do not know the right hand from their left and also much cattle?
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Now, the 120 ,000, you have two options. Option one, who doesn't know their left hand from their right hand?
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Raise your hand. Raise your right hand. Kids. So maybe there's 600 ,000 in the city and 120 ,000 kids who don't know which hand is left or right.
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We'd always say to our family, you write with your right, except it didn't quite work with Haley because she writes with her left.
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You write with your right hand. So it could be kids, but most of the people don't think there were 600 ,000 people in that city.
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It was a great city, but they don't think it was that many. Most scholars think this would be people who are older, who spiritually did not know their left hand from their right hand.
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120 ,000 adults as undiscerning as children. And look at how kind God is.
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You wanna see how kind He is? And much cattle. Forget the plant and even much cattle.
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And then the curtain goes down. What a weird way to end a book. I'd love to know what
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Jonah said after that. I'd love to have kind of a warm fuzzy and everything turned out good.
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Happily ever after. Why is this not a parable?
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Because there's no moral to the story. Because it is a story. Compassion on people that aren't
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Jewish. Number three, you know what? I'm pretty much run out of time. I'm gonna just give you these fast.
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If I can do 15 points this morning, I can give you these fast. Number three, to teach that salvation is from God. As Vita said earlier,
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Jonah 2 .9. Colossians 3 said, He made us alive together with Him.
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God saves us. Get this right and you've got everything. God saves you because He loves you.
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God did not save you because you believed. You're saved through faith, but you're saved because God loved you.
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What your belief, your belief is not causing God to save you. His love caused Him to save you and you responded with belief.
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That's why Ephesians 2 .8 .9, it says you are saved through faith. It does not say you are saved what?
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Because of faith. You're saved through faith, but not because of faith. Salvation is from the
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Lord. Number four, I put on here to teach against the arrogance of spiritual pride.
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Jonah 4, do you have good reason to be angry? He had no good reason to be angry.
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Number six, the sovereignty of God. I can't believe we didn't get this. I guess somebody did say the sovereignty of God.
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God hurled a great wind. He hurled a great storm. If you want to do a word study, the best word to study here in the book of Jonah is the word great, gadol.
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Everything's great. A great wind, a great city, a great storm, greatly feared, great fish, greatly displeased, greatly happy.
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God is the one controlling all these things and He sent them just perfectly. How about the lots?
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And the lot fell on Jonah. Let's see, what else do
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I have? I think that's probably about all I need. I have all these notes today. Oh, number six, whatever the number is, five.
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What number am I on? I'm on seven? Okay, seven's a perfect number.
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All right, six, an implication is that I must believe in supernatural miracles.
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They picked up Jonah, threw him in the sea, and the sea stopped raging. I'd say that's a miracle.
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Seven miracles that I could find. God caused a violent storm, had the lot fall on Jonah, calmed the sea when
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Jonah was thrown overboard, commanded the fish to swallow Jonah, had the fish transport him safely, had the fish throw
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Jonah up on dry land, and maybe the greatest miracle of all, one said, is how he melted the disobedient prophet's heart.
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And then lastly, for Anitra's sake, watch out for open -door theology and God -led -me theology, and I have a piece about it because Jonah had a piece about going down to Joppa.
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He found a ship to go down to Tarshish, so he went down in the boat, and he just slept away, all doing the wrong thing.
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You can feel good about doing the wrong thing, so don't trust yourself. Oh, one last one.
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I can't forget this one. Trials increase your prayer life. Chapter two, trials increase your prayer life.
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Here's my assignment for you this summer. Read Esther out loud at one sitting. Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, it's been a joy tonight to look at your word. We are thankful that we are saved by one greater than Jonah, Jesus Christ.
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Help us to have the view that Jesus did of Jonah, the supernatural story.
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It's not a story, it's a fact, but written to us so that we can learn about you and how you're sovereign, how you're good, how you love people, not just the
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Jews. And we're thankful for that because I don't know, I could be wrong, but almost everyone here tonight is a
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Gentile, so we thank you that you would love those who were not Israelites.
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And Father, I pray that you'd give us opportunities to speak well of your word and to rehearse your good pleasure as to how you save people.