Lessons about God from Jonah (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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I don't know how to act today. It's not raining outside, so I thought I was in Seattle, but then I realized

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I was in Massachusetts. Not raining today, so I am happy. The Bible is very clear that in corporate worship, 1

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Timothy chapter four says that the scriptures are to be read. You're to give attention if you're a pastor or an elder to the public reading of scripture, and I think that's kind of a lost art these days, a lost science, because we're on to bigger and better things.

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We've got to play video clips of The Matrix or whatever new show is out. I don't know, maybe there's True Grit. True Grit, you know, skits now, or we have to play a part of True Grit where he's sacrificial and he loves and he's determined.

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I have no idea, but we have lost public scripture reading, and those that do public scripture reading,

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I'm happy for that, but many times people do not read large sections of scripture. It's a verse here and a verse there, here a verse, there a verse, but I would like to have things read in context, and for us at Bethlehem Bible Church, what we do is we pick a book of the

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Bible on Sunday morning and we just read it chapter by chapter by chapter, so we've just finished the book of Mark, and so week one, we read all of Mark one.

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Week two, all of Mark two. When you get in chapters 14 and 15 and maybe 70 verses in a chapter, you still read all of those.

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We stand, if you're able to stand, you stand with us for the public proclamation of God's word.

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No comments in between interpretive reading, yes, but that is it, and then a pastoral prayer.

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So I'm wondering, the church that you attend, is there a healthy dose of public scripture reading?

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Some churches read Old Testament, they have Old Testament readings and New Testament readings, and I've played around with that a little bit.

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Luther didn't do that because of, he didn't like Old Testament law, and so he didn't like Old Testament reading.

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I think that was erroneous, but what I'd like to do today is practice what I preach, and that is

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I'm going to read the book of Jonah today. Four chapters, I've read it for public scripture reading before, four easy chapters, even children can get that, and then we'll have at the end of my reading some principles, some truths, some implications that we can glean about God and man and sin and redemption,

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God's attributes, why man needs a savior, et cetera, and so we'll read the book of Jonah.

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Ah, you won't read, I will read, and then we'll talk about some truths in the book of Jonah.

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Okay, so are you ready? Jonah, this is the ESV, by the way, Jonah one, two, three, and four, let's see, 17 verses in chapter one, 10 verses in chapter two.

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Chapter three, we have, I can't read, 10 verses, and then in chapter four, we have 11 verses.

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So see, that's not very many verses, so don't switch the channel. Don't switch over to some sports talk.

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You don't need any sports talks right now. Here we go, the book of Jonah. 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, and 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 to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare and 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, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.

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Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God. They hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

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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, oh, 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. And they said one to 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. What is your occupation, and where do you come from?

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What is your country, and of what people are you? And he said to them, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear

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Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this that you have done?

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For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh because he had told them. Then he said to them, 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 harder to get back to the 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, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you,

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O 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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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, 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, yet I shall again look 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 all 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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O 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 have vowed I will pay. 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. Then the word of the 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, three days' journey in breadth.

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Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

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And the people of Nineveh believed 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 through Nineveh. By the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything.

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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. But it displeased

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Jonah exceedingly. And he was angry, and he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what

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I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you were a gracious and merciful, slow, gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.

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Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life for me, for it is better for me to die than to live. And the

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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 could see what would become of the city. Now the

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Lord appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah so that it might be a 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 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, 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.

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But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, yes,

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I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. And the Lord said, you pitied the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in the 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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The Book of Jonah. Wasn't that interesting? Now, I don't know how long that took me to read it, but my guess was around seven to eight minutes.

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The Book of Jonah. And when you read the Book of Jonah out loud or you read it out loud or just read it to yourself, you'll see the

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Lord hurled, the Lord did, the Lord did such and such. You'll see those themes. The Lord sent a wind.

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The Lord sent the fish. You'll see those themes. You'll see exceedingly, exceedingly, exceedingly, exceedingly.

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And you'll see the whole flow, how good it is to read the scriptures, how good it is to listen to it.

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By the way, if you don't have the bible .is app for your Droid or for your iPhone or whatever else, what other kind of phones you have, you need to get that.

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Bible .is and you can get the Bible. It's either dramatized form or with no drama.

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I think I listened to the dramatized ESV. And sometimes the drama is a little hokey, but you get what you pay for now, don't you?

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And I love listening to the scriptures. I love listening to them being read, especially the

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Old Testament when the Hebrew language so often was this, it was meant to be listened to.

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And so if you just read it, you don't get the cadence. You don't see the themes and understand it like you could if you would read it.

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And so that's why I wanted to read the book of Jonah today because I want you to love the book of Jonah. And now after we've read the book of Jonah and you've heard it read, what are some implications or truths that we could learn about God, our man and his need of redemption?

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What can we learn about the covenant keeping God? When you read the Bible around your dinner table and you talk to your children, you talk to your wife, or maybe you're single and you read it for yourself.

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When you read the book of Micah, which follows Jonah, you ask yourself the question, what does this book teach me about God?

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How does God deal with sinful humanity? What are some attributes of God? How wicked are men?

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Could men ever save themselves without the redemption found in the great triune God? You ask yourself the questions.

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So then the focus is upon A, who is God? And B, if man can't save himself, then the focus is upon the

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God who can. And so the hero of the Old Testament, as many would say, including my old prof,

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Dave Duell, the hero of the Old Testament, the hero of all the Bible is not Daniel, it's not

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David, it's not Joseph. The hero is God. God is the hero.

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And you ought not to dare to be a Daniel. You ought to learn what does the Bible teach me about Daniel's great

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God? And so let's get some implications from the book of Jonah. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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And we want to be biblical and provocative and in that order to get you to think, to get you to read your

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Bibles. So the first implication, and they're in no particular order, is that Jonah needs to be read straightforwardly and no matter what the implications are.

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Here's what I'm after. Liberals hate this book. Liberals ridicule this book.

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They think it sounds hokey. They think it sounds impossible. And remember a liberal, even by definition, is someone who denies the supernatural.

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And so if you have no supernatural possibilities in your mind as a liberal, how can you get through the book of Jonah?

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Where Jonah is delivered by a fish. Infidels, they think this is a pagan fable.

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They think it's a heathen fable, like Andromeda rescued from the sea monster.

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They think it's like Arian, the musician thrown into the sea, carried safe to shore by dolphin.

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That's what they think. They think it's like Hercules who sprang into the jaws of a sea monster and was in its belly for three days.

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You, if you're an evangelical, need to read this book not like mythology.

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This is not Hercules. This is not Gulliver. This is not Robinson Crusoe. Furthermore, this book is not an allegory.

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Some people would say that Jonah is the real Israel. The sea would be the Gentile nations.

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The fish is Babylonian captivity. And when Jonah gets vomited out, that is the return of Israelites during Ezra's time.

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I mean, how can you get that? How can you get that from the book of Jonah? You can't get it unless you already have a system, unless you already have a theology that you want to impose on the text, that you want to do eisegesis, putting things into the text, versus exegesis, pulling things out of the text.

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If exposition opens up the text so you can see the author's intention, then the opposite of exposition is what?

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Imposition, imposing your theology on the text. And so when people do that, you need to run from that kind of teaching.

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Listen to what Julius Brewer said in the ICC Commentary Series. Some of the commentaries aren't bad, but this is a very liberal commentator.

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Here's what he said of the book of Jonah. Surely this is not the record of actual historical events, nor was it ever intended as such.

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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. It's a sin? 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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I have a question for you. If you gave this to a four -year -old, you gave this to a 40 -year -old, you gave this to a

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Martian, you gave this to someone who is from an island who'd never ever read the Bible, who didn't know anything about Jonah or anyone else, are there any markers here?

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When it comes to literature and literary devices, are there any markers? Are there any signals that this would be an allegory?

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Are there any indications that an allegory is coming? No, there's none of those.

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Allegories would include an explanation. Allegories are built on the natural order of things.

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Jonah's not. Allegories are very simple. They're easy to track. This is far from simple.

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Some people think this is a satirical parable intended to criticize and correct its readers' attitudes.

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That's actually in the Holman, I think it's in the Holman Bible Dictionary. I just wrote down Holman. That's pretty lame.

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So when it comes to Book of Jonah, you ought to say to yourself, this is a literal book.

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This is a historical book. Now it has a prayer in it. It has some poetic -like prayer there in chapter two.

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But this is the correct view. This isn't a book of actual history.

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Did you know that the early church believed it to be literal? Did you know that the Jews believed it to be literal?

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How about 2 Kings 14, verse 25, referring to Jonah as a real person, as a historical person, with his hometown given?

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By the way, when you look at Jonah 1, verse one, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, this doesn't sound like an allegory to me at all.

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This is straight up. 2 Kings 14, which he spoke through his servant

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Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was of Gathepher.

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H -E -P -H -E -R. That is very interesting, isn't it?

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Here's the way I solve the problem when I think of Jonah. And when I think of the Old Testament in general, the best place to start for the authenticity of the

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Bible, the canonicity of the Bible, is to ask this question. How did Jesus perceive the

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Old Testament? After all, if the church for the long, excuse me, if Israel for a long time and the

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Jewish people said, you know, this is real, this is literal, a literal fish, a literal

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Jonah, for a literal thousand years. Just kidding. If this is interpreted as literal, but it's allegorical, would not

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Jesus, the God -man, arrive upon the scene and then correct the people from their misunderstanding?

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Of course. But he didn't do that at all. Jesus actually used in Matthew chapter 12 the story of Jonah to confirm a truth about him.

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He's not going to use an allegorical truth to confirm a real truth about him. He'll use a literal truth to confirm a literal truth about him.

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Now listen to this great account of Jonah in Matthew chapter 12.

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You could also look it up in Luke 11 as well, but let's do Matthew 12. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him saying, teacher, we want to see a sign from you.

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We would like to see a sign maybe up in the stars, maybe with the moon, maybe fly up there, maybe have

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Jupiter align itself with Mars, maybe have the sun go out, maybe have the moon do circles around Saturn.

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We want some spectacular astronomical sign. Well, what's Jesus going to do?

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He's going to go right back to scripture. He'll give them a sign, all right, as John MacArthur would imply. Matthew 12, 39.

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But he answered and said to them, an evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign. Ouch!

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An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign. And yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah, the allegorical prophet.

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Oh, sorry, that's not in the NAS. That's sign of Jonah, the prophet. Can you imagine you are committing spiritual adultery with all the whores of Israel, that is to say with these false idols, and you want a sign?

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I bet you want a sign. Evil people want signs, but you're not going to get a sign except for the sign of Jonah, the prophet.

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For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, we're not talking about three full days, 72 hours.

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That's not how the figure of speech is used by Jewish people. That's not what it means in Hebrew. It could mean any portion of three days.

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And that's exactly what happened with Jesus. Part of Friday, all of Saturday, part of Sunday. That would be three days and three nights.

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Reckoning part of the day as to be the whole day. That's just language. That's just a literary device.

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For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

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That's going to be the sign. That's going to be the sign, the death of the Messiah, but then he's going to be raised from the dead.

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Verse 41, the men of Nineveh, chapter 12 of Matthew, shall stand up with this generation at the judgment and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

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And behold, something greater than Jonah is here. Jesus is saying here, the

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Ninevites had a desire to repent. They had soft hearts. They had willing hearts. These Gentiles, these

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Gentiles, they repented. And now Israel, you have hard hearts. You had hard hearts.

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This revival that happened in the middle of Nineveh through the preaching of Jonah showed just how great

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God was. And it showed the receptivity of the hearts of the Gentiles in contrast to the hard -hearted, calloused hearts of the

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Israelites who won a sign. Here's the bottom line when it comes to looking at the book of Jonah.

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If you have an allegorical Jonah, you have an allegorical Christ. Similarly, when you look at Genesis 1, 2, and 3, allegorical creation, allegorical

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Adam, allegorical last Adam, Jesus. It's all tied together. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

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You have to be consistent. If you have an allegorical Jonah, you have an allegorical Jesus, and you have an allegorical solution to your real, actual, literal sin problem.

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And you are gonna die in your sins. You need a literal Jonah and a literal Jesus and a literal savior to your literal, actual, real sin problem.

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John 10, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish and no one will snatch them from my hand.

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If you don't believe in Jonah, I have to ask myself the question, then Jesus believed in Jonah.

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He knew the story of Jonah. He knew the account of Jonah, and therefore you don't believe in Jesus if you don't believe what he said.

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I believe in Jesus for all that salvation stuff, but he was really wrong when it came to the account of the historical

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Jonah. No, you can't have that option. So if you don't believe in a literal Jonah, you better check your

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Christianity because your savior that you call your savior, he believes in the literal book of Jonah with a literal

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Jonah who literally went for 40 days and preached, said in 40 days,

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Nineveh will be overthrown. So today on No Compromise Radio, we've talked about Jonah.

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I read the book of Jonah and said, public scripture reading is great. And then we wanted to talk about some implications from the book of Jonah.

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And of course, I only have 24 and a half minutes. So that is not a whole lot of time. I end with J.

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Vernon McGee, we'll do part two next week. The fish here is not the hero of the story, neither is it its villain. The book is not even about a fish.

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The fish is among the props and does not occupy the star's dressing room. Let us distinguish between the essentials and the incidentals.

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Incidentals are the fish, the gourd, the east wind, the boat and Nineveh. The essentials are

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Yahweh and Jonah, God and man. Pick up the book of Jonah today and read.

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This is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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

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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 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.