American Church of Jonah — E.A. Johnston

America's National Disobedience and God's Withdrawn Favor

I look around today at this sin-sick nation of ours, and it grieves my heart how far this once great republic has fallen, a nation who once did great things for God, and God did great things for it. Through the outpouring of His grace and revival and spiritual awakenings, America has turned her back on God, and not only that, she's legislated God right out of our land.

It's a nation that stands in direct opposition to God and the Word of God. Listen to me, friends. God will not tolerate disobedience in a nation. He will remove His favor from that nation and allow it to be covered in a moral cesspool of filth and a bloodbath of violence.

Just pick up a newspaper and read it, and you see what I am speaking of. As God will not tolerate disobedience in a nation, He will also not tolerate disobedience in His people, the church. I believe, friends, that the number one sin in the church of America today is disobedience, disobedience to Almighty God and to His holiness, to His holy character, to His holy Word.

God will bring a judgment upon His strained people. All you have to do, if you don't believe me, is to read the Old Testament to see how God dealt with the disobedient Jews who turned their backs on Him and served their idols.

And God today will judge His strained people through remedial judgments from Him. And one of those judgments upon the church in America today is the withdrawn presence of God. Let me ask you, friends, when was the last time you experienced the power of God in a meeting?

Jonah's Call to Preach Against Nineveh

It breaks my heart to think about it. I want you to turn in your Bibles today, friends, to the book of Jonah. As we look at a disobedient prophet of God and how God dealt with him, you can turn in your Bibles there now.

Turn to the book of Jonah. I want to draw out some striking similarities between old Jonah and the church in America today. The title of my message today, friends, is The American Church of Jonah. Let me begin by reading in verse 1.

And it is my prayer that the Spirit of Almighty God will attend the reading of His holy Word. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

I will pause there. Here is God Almighty giving a divine call to His prophet to go and preach a mighty sermon of doom as a warning to the great wicked city of Nineveh. But what does old Jonah do? He turns his back on God and God's call, and goes his own way in comfort, in disobedience and neglected duty.

Look at verse 3. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Jonah as a Saved but Disobedient Servant

I will stop there. I recall a sermon by Rolf Barnard on Jonah, and in that sermon Rolf Barnard took the stance that Jonah was an unsaved man when he received this call from God to go to Nineveh and preach to it, and that it was after Jonah ended up in the belly of the whale that he repented and got saved.

And once he was saved, he went and preached God's message to that wicked city of Nineveh. And Barnard said his reason and first theory was that a truly saved person would not be disobedient to God. Well forgive me, Brother Barnard, I tend to disagree with you on that point.

Look at King David, and his great willful disobedience and adultery and murder. No, I believe old Jonah was a saved man, but a disobedient one. And God brings a great affliction upon his servant to straighten him out, and to get his attention.

You see, friends, our text in chapter 2 and verse 1 states,. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly, and said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me.

In the midst of Jonah's affliction, he turned in repentance back to God. And once Jonah was rightly aligned to God's will, and obedient to God's voice, then God was able to work wonders through Jonah to save an entire city.

Obedience Is Better Than Religious Performance

But Jonah did what the church in America will not do, and that is repent. Oh, we will throw a big party for God on Sunday, and make a loud noise for him in our worship, and clap our hands and stomp our feet, and give some of our time and money to his cause, and call it religion, then go our own way, and when it's over, we live our lives for our good and our pleasure, and sit on the throne of our lives and rule there, until next Sunday rolls around and we go back and work ourselves up again to make a joyful noise to the Lord.

But my Bible says, to obey is better than sacrifice. But the trouble is, there are few churches in America today living in obedience to God and his word. You see, friends, how God views disobedience in his people is far different than how we view it in ourselves.

We feel that if we avoid some flagrant sin, and tithe, and read our Bible a little during the week, and pray a little, that we are fine with God. But God sees disobedience in his people in far more grievous ways than we can see ourselves.

Watering Down the Message of God

Church can be disobedient to God by the very message it preaches, or refuses to preach. In chapter three of our book in Jonah, we read,. And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it a watered-down message of love.

Is that what God said? No. Rather, he states, Preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. In other words, the full counsel of God, hot from the heart of a holy God. But how can we preachers preach a message like that if our own lives are in disobedience to God?

How can we preachers preach about a burning hell and a future judgment for all mankind if the chairman of the deacons is sitting on the front row, wagging his bony finger at us while we preach, and we worry that he'll move his membership and his big bank account with him?

So we water it down a little. We talk about the love of God, because folks like soothing messages that make them feel good on Sunday mornings, and we want to keep everybody happy, right? That's how you get a church to grow.

But God sees disobedience in his pulpits on Sunday mornings because we fear the good deacons more than we fear God himself. So we are disobedient in what we preach. And we've compromised the message to make it more palatable to sinful man, and that's complete disobedience to God in that.

Self-Reliance Instead of Dependence on God

But as a church body, we can think ourselves fine with God, and even pat ourselves on the back as we brag about our recent mission trips and our giving. But if we are relying on money and manpower to get the job done, rather than God and holy ghost power, then we're just fooling ourselves, because God is grieved by a people who operate on self-reliance more than utter dependence upon him.

Prayerless Churches and the House of God

And when Jesus took a whip cord and chased out the money changers in the temple, he scolded them and corrected them in how they viewed the house of God. He said, my house shall be called a house of prayer.

But most churches today stand in direct disobedience to God because we are prayerless churches. We discontinued the weekly prayer meeting and replaced it with divorce recovery groups and yoga classes.

But how can we call ourselves a church if the carpet in our sanctuaries are not wet with the tears of broken-hearted saints crying out to God for the sins of the land and the salvation of souls? Yet we call ourselves a church and think we're fine in the eyes of God.

Forgotten Discipleship, Holiness, and Witness

And how can we call ourselves Christians if our lives are disobedient to the very God we claim to follow? Discipleship is a forgotten doctrine, holiness is a taboo subject, and witnessing a forgotten duty.

How many people have we reached this week with the gospel of the Son of God? We stand in direct disobedience to God. You see, friends, old Jonah was disobedient both to the call to go preach God's message and he was in disobedience by going his own way because it was more comfortable to him.

And the churches today lack influence with society because we sit upon comfortable pillows of conformity and compromise. God has withdrawn himself from among us because of our gross disobedience to Him.

Sacrificial Giving and the Cost of Following Christ

And when we give our money to God, we give what we can afford to give and keep the rest for ourselves and not trust Him for tomorrow. We look in our wallet and see what's in there that we can afford to give without it hurting us too much.

But the Son of God held nothing back on Calvary. He gave His all. How can we hold anything back from Him? We hoard our money and waste our time and live our lives unto ourselves and call it religion. Meanwhile, the world perishes and souls drop into a burning hell every single minute.

But it shouldn't bother us too bad as long as we can have our favorite candy bar and our beloved television programming. The American Church of Girona grieves a holy God and society crumbles all around us while we play church on Sunday morning.

Examining Prayer, Giving, and Self-Indulgence

Let us ask ourselves the following questions, friends. Is our prayer life as it should be? Do we have a sacrificial time of prayer where we meet God and experience Him and are transformed by Him? Or are we just going through the motions?

Are we laying hold of the horns in the altar of glory and making God's ear turn in our direction? Or do our prayers rise no further than the ceiling because of our self-indulgence and sins? Do we give our money sacrificially or keep it mainly for our own amusement and enjoyments?

An Illustration of Sacrificial Giving

I want to give you an example that I feel typifies the American Church and how she gives as compared to, say, a third-world country church like the African Church. I was in a hard place financially years ago and needed money for my family in a desperate way.

I made the need known to two individuals, two men I knew. Both were pastors, one from America and one in Africa. The American pastor heard my great need and looked in his wallet and sent me fifty dollars.

I know he had a lot more than that to give, but he gave me fifty dollars. The African pastor called me from Africa and said he and his wife had spent days in prayer over this and wanted to give me his entire inheritance from his deceased mother, which came to five hundred dollars.

And in Africa, five hundred dollars is a year's income to many. Then he hung up the phone, and later that night called me back and said he and his wife had prayed to God on their knees all day and felt God calling them to give more.

He said that his mother's funeral expense was five hundred dollars, and he'd saved that much up for her burial through the years. Now his mother was dead and needed to be buried. This dear African brother said, my wife and I are sending you this five hundred dollars in addition to the other five hundred dollars, and we will trust God to bury my mother.

And he hung up the phone. In a few days I received a check for a thousand dollars. The American pastor gave me fifty dollars, because that's how we give in this country. We give based on what we can spare.

The Africans give on what they can sacrifice. And the God of my Bible is a God who delights in sacrifice, because he sacrificed his only begotten son on a cruel cross for sin, and Jesus sacrificed his blood for my sins and for your sins, friends.

Yet we can live with ourselves and live in disobedience to God's best for us and be fine with it, because we're more concerned about our comfort and safety and security, just like Jonah was as he fleed from the presence of the Almighty.

Repentance as the Church's Necessary Response

What God taught me through that lesson and given years ago was that when we give to God, we only give him only part of us, whether it's our money or our time or even our professed love to him. We give him only a part.

The church in America gives him only a part, a small part, a compromised part, and the American church of Jonah refuses to do the one thing needed, and that is to repent and return to the living God of our Bibles.

Nineveh's Repentance and America's Warning

The entire city of Nineveh reformed themselves and sat in sackcloth and ashes to avoid the coming calamity upon them and their city. God spared Nineveh. The question is, will God spare America? Let us pray.