[This sermon is contributed by Hal Seed of New Song Church in Oceanside, California and of www.PastorMentor.com. Hal is the author of numerous books including The God Questions and The Bible Questions. If you are interested in The Bible Questions Church-wide Campaign, please visit and watch Hal’s video at www.PastorMentor.com.]
Jonah: Responding to God’s Greatness
The Book of Jonah, pt. 1
Jonah 1
www.halseed.com
(Author’s note: Sentences and phrases in all caps were made into powerpoint slides. If you’d like a copy of these slides, contact Hal@newsongchurch.com. This is the first of a four part series.)
Good morning everybody!
For these next four weeks, we are going on an adventure together. This past fall, my Small Group stumbled onto the book of Jonah and what we found there was so good, I wanted to walk you through our discoveries as well. So…
FIND A BIBLE AND TURN TO THE BOOK OF JONAH. Jonah is the section of the Bible called, “The Minor Prophets.” You can find it on p. 916. Or, if you’re a little more adventurous, you can thumb through the Minor Prophets and find it by memorizing their order. The order of the Minor Prophets goes, “HOJO A OJO MINA HAZE HAZE MA.”
Say that with me, and everybody will think we’re speaking a foreign language: Hojo A Ojo, Mina, HaZe, Haze Ma. We get that from putting together the first syllables of each of the minor prophets: “HOSEA, JOAL, AMOS, OBADIAH, JONAH, MICAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, ZEPHANIAH, HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, MALACHI.” - Israel’s twelve minor prophets, all with major messages.
If you want to just memorize how to get to Jonah, just memorize this part:
“HOJO A OJO,” Jonah is the fifth minor prophet: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah: Hojo A Ojo.
He’s the only rebellious prophet in the bunch, and the most succinct preacher to ever live. With a scant eight word prophecy in English (five words in the original Hebrew), Jonah sparked what is arguably the most fruitful revival in all of history as the entire metropolitan area of ancient Nineveh repented. Jonah’s entire sermon to these people is FORTY MORE DAYS AND NINEVEH WILL BE DESTROYED. – JONAH 3:4.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so look at the text. What we’re about to read is one of the most famous stories in all of history. Not just Bible history. Stop anyone in a Wal-Mart parking lot and ask if they’ve ever heard of the story of Jonah and the Whale, and what do you think they’ll say? – “Yes.”
The irony is, the book of Jonah isn’t about a whale. I’ll show you that a little later. And it’s not actually about Jonah. I’ll explain that in a minute.
For now, follow along as I read you the story of Jonah and the Great Fish. (read Jonah 1:1-17).
Are you ready to do some learning with me today?
My plan is to give you information on the weekends that you won’t be getting from the book , so if you picked up an advanced copy this week, you’ll still want to take notes today.
THE BACKSTORY
Were it not for 2 Kings 14:25, we would have no background on Jonah. Only is one O.T. verse outside of his own book mentions him. 1. JONAH WAS FROM GATH HEPHER. Gath Hepher means “the winepress of the well,” so apparently there was a winepress near a well in Jonah’s hometown, which is located just five miles southwest of Jesus’ home town of Nazareth. You can visit his shrine there today.
(PICTURE OF GATH HEPHER:)
Gath Hepher from southeast
Jonah is one of less than a handful of prophets to come out of Northern Israel. Almost all of Israel’s prophets, except Jonah and Jesus and a few others, come from southern Israel.
2 Kings 14:15 tells us that...
2. JONAH LIVED DURING THE REIGH OF JEROBOAM II of Northern Israel. It was a time of prosperity for the Northern Israelites. The empire of Assyria (which is modern day Iran) to their northeast was in a mild decline so the Israelites felt relatively safe, for a change. The Assyrians, whose capital was Nineveh, were legendary for their cruelty. Jonah and his people hated them.
If you understand that Assyria is modern day Iran, you can see how contemporary this story is. It’s about a Jew who fears Iranians because of their potential to attack and destroy the Jewish homeland.
It’s also the story of a God who loves Iranians.
3. JONAH’S STORY TAKES PLACE AROUND 760 BC.
In 721 BC, 39 years later, Northern Israel is overrun and conquered by the Assyrians.
But God, who created all peoples, loved them, just as He loves the Iranians today. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, so He calls His prophet and says, “Jonah, go to Nineveh and preach to them.”
Jonah recognizes God’s voice. He’s heard Him before. He’s responded to God before. According to 2 Kings 14, Jonah had prophesied Jeroboam’s success in reclaiming territory that had been lost in previous generations.
Jonah knows God’s voice. He’s spoken for Him before. He doesn’t want to speak for Him now.
So how does Jonah respond to God? He runs. He runs, not toward God or His assignment, but away from Him.
2 centuries earlier, King David had written a psalm that asked, “O LORD… WHERE CAN I GO FROM YOUR SPIRIT? WHERE CAN I FLEE FROM YOUR PRESENCE? IF I GO UP TO THE HEAVENS, YOU ARE THERE; IF I MAKE MY BED IN THE DEPTHS, YOU ARE THERE. IF I RISE ON THE WINGS OF THE DAWN, IF I SETTLE ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE SEA, EVEN THERE YOUR HAND WILL GUIDE ME…” PSALM 139:7--10
But apparently, Jonah doesn’t believe that. He doesn’t believe that God is omnipresent – or, maybe he’s just so deadest against preaching to the Ninevehites that he doesn’t care. Instead of saying, “Yes Lord,” – or even, “No Lord,” Jonah doesn’t say anything, he just runs.
Have you ever run from God?
4. NINEVEH IS EAST OF ISRAEL, JONAH RAN WEST. He runs down to the western seacoast and boards a ship sailing for Tarshish. Tarshish is modern day Spain. It’s the farthest point west in the then-known world.
MAP:
If this is the Assyrian Empire. Here’s Israel (show with laser), and here’s Tarshish. Which is why Jonah is known as the rebellious prophet. He’s the prophet who ran.
He boards a boat bound for Tarshish, most likely owned and operated by people from the nation immediately to Israel’s north, a people known as the Phoenicians. In a twist of irony, the pagan Phoenicians responded better to God than the prophet Jonah. 5. THE SAILORS RESPONDED TO GOD BETTER THAN JONAH DID. At the end of chapter one, they offered sacrifices to Him and made vows to serve Him.
The Phoenicians were a polytheistic people. You’ll read about them in days 2 and 3 of this week’s reading. The book we’ll be studying is laid out with five short readings on each chapter of the book of Jonah. I laid it out so you can spend 5-10 minutes, usually not more than that, five days a week reading about Jonah, one day discussing this week’s chapter with your Small Group, and one day hearing a sermon on the chapter. Week 1 chapters 2 and 3 are all about the Phoenicians and what they believed.
They believed not in many gods. When the winds started rising, they believed a god was responsible – maybe the god of the sea, or the god of the wind, or the god of the sky. Until they quizzed Jonah and heard him say, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land,” (Jonah 1:9), it had not occurred to them that they were encountering the One True Living God. The fact that there could be One True Living God may have never occurred to them. But when it did, they bowed, offering Him their possessions and their lives.
The chapter closes with an unrepentant Jonah stewing inside the stomach of a great fish.
6. JONAH WAS SWALLOWED BY A GREAT FISH. The creature might have been a whale, but the text says, “great fish.” A whale is a mammal, fish are an entirely different class of animals.
Modern scholars speculate the swallow-er may have been a whale shark, which is the largest fish alive today. PICTURE OF A WHALE SHARK
Whale sharks are the only fish of their class. They can get up to 46 feet in length, though sightings 100 years ago had them as big as 65 feet.
Here’s a picture of a whale shark’s mouth:
Its stomach is plenty big to house a human, and they are usually harmless to us. They come up to tourist boats and divers out of curiosity. They’re not afraid of us, and they don’t eat us. They eat plankton and small fish and swim at a three mile an hour average.
Another theory is that the fish was perhaps a sea-going dinosaur that is now extinct. Whatever swallowed Jonah was specially bred and led by God to do so. There are documented reports of people being swallowed by fish or whales and living, but this wasn’t just a natural phenomenon, this was a miracle.
Once in a while you’ll hear a Bible teacher say that the fish that swallowed Jonah deposited him on the shores of Nineveh. The problem with that is, Nineveh is 400+ miles up the Tigris river, so it’s not near the shore, and since there was no Suez Canal in Jonah’s day, the fish would have had to swallow Jonah and then swim all the way around the continent of Africa, into the Persian Gulf and up the Tigris, about 14,000 miles, in the space of 72 hours. Most scholars believe that Jonah was in the belly of the fish a night and a day and a night, or 36 hours, like Jesus was in the tomb. The Hebrew idiom “3 days and 3 nights,” allows for parts of a day. But even if the fish had a full 72 hours, it would have had to average 200 miles an hour on a full stomach just to make such a journey.
Jonah was deposited on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, most likely near where his ship set sail, or maybe a little north, in the land of Phoenicia, but that’s part of next week’s story. MAP:
7. THE BOOK OF JONAH ISN’T ABOUT JONAH.
The book of Jonah is about God, specifically about His twin characteristics of greatness and grace. Jonah is up for best supporting actor, but he’s not the hero, God is.
The book begins with God telling Jonah to go and ends with God telling Jonah that He cares for people. The book is about God.
The city where my children were born is called, “Longmont,” Colorado. It’s called that because it sits on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, with an incredible view of Long’s Peak. From 1987 to 1991, every day I would drive home westward to my family with a view of this incredible 14,000 foot, snow-capped mountain. Picture of Long’s Peak
The mall just south of our home was named, “Twin Peaks Mall” because Long’s Peak had a sister mountain called, “Mount Meeker.” Together these two are known throughout the Rocky Mountain region as “The Twin Peaks.” The Twin Peaks are one of the most awe-inspiring portions of God’s creation. They dominate the landscape around them and beckon people to journey to them and explore them. Pictures of Twin Peaks
As we begin our exploration of the book of Jonah, I’d like to suggest to you that the book of Jonah is about the Twin Peaks of God’s character. At His core, God has two characteristics that make Him awe-inspiring and beckon to us to journey to Him and get to know Him. These characteristics are His greatness and His grace. 8. THE BOOK OF JONAH IS ABOUT RESPONDING TO GOD’S GREATNESS AND GRACE.
God’s greatness is all over Jonah chapter 1. It begins with God directing Jonah to “Go to the GREAT city of Nineveh.” Jonah 1:1 It ends with Jonah being swallowed by a GREAT fish. God can command Jonah because He IS great. He watches over the entire world and when one place needs the help of another, God is great enough to make it happen. God can command a fish to swallow Jonah because God made the fish and has the ability to grow the fish large enough to handle Jonah. God is great enough to speak the fish’s language, great enough to get it near Jonah, great enough to get it to swallow something it would never normally eat – in that way, God is greater than my mother, who could never get me to eat what I wouldn’t normally eat.
So chapter one begins with God’s greatness and ends with God’s greatness. In the middle of the chapter, God generates a GREAT wind, which causes GREAT waves, and a GREAT fear comes upon the sailors. If you have your own Bible, I’d encourage you to go through this entire book and underline every time you see the word, “great.”
Underneath all this greatness is God’s grace. You won’t find the word used, but you’ll find the action taking place. We’ll see it most clearly in chapters 3 and 4 as God has grace on Jonah, grace that gives him a second chance. Then, He has grace on the Ninevites, as He forgives them when they repent. And in chapter four, He has grace again on Jonah, a strong-willed, but perhaps not overly-intelligent prophet who loves that God has been gracious to him, but hates that He’s been gracious to the Ninevehites.
God’s grace begins the book. It’s because He is a gracious God that He calls Jonah to warn the Ninevites. He wants to give them a chance to respond to His grace. It’s because of God’s grace that Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh. In chapter four, when the Ninevites are sparred, Jonah say, “SEE! This is why I didn’t want to preach to them. I knew you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” – And I didn’t want you to relent. I wanted you to destroy the Ninevites.
Friends, isn’t that exactly why you love God? Because He’s been gracious to you?
The purpose of our time together for these four weeks is to help us discover how to authentically and meaningfully respond to this great and gracious God.
So, HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO GOD’S GREATNESS?
In chapter 1, day 1, I suggest a few things:
1. YOU DO WHAT HE ASKS.
The best way to respond to a good and loving parent is to do what they ask. The best way to respond to a great and gracious God is to do what He asks. We did that in part this morning when we celebrated communion. Jesus said, “DO this in remembrance of me.” You did that today. There may be a few more “do this” es you want to respond to as you think about them throughout the day.
A second way you can respond to a great God is
2. YOU WORSHIP HIM.
You did that today too, when you sang to Him. For most of us, the highest form of worship doesn’t involve air flowing out our vocal cords, but rather, money flowing out of our wallets, because when we worship God with our tithes and offerings, we’re putting a tangible value on our love for Him. We traded our time: a portion of our lives, to get that money, so in a very real way, when we give God a portion of our money, we’re actually giving Him a portion of our lives.
A third way you can respond to a great God is
3. YOU CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE.
The sailor’s did that. Jonah 1:16 says, “They made vows to Him.” Every once in a while, I’ll make a vow to God when I know I need some divine motivation to help me do what I know I should do: “Lord, I vow to go to the gym at least 15 times this month.”
The Bible says, IT IS BETTER NOT TO VOW THAN TO MAKE A VOW AND NOT FULFILL IT. – ECCLESIASTES 5:5
Sometimes I’ll make a vow about NOT doing something, “Lord, I vow not to eat anything after 10 p.m. this month.” That way I know it’s not just a bad thing to eat after that time, it’s a sin.
– One word about vows, if ever you make one, unless it’s a marriage vow, be sure and put a time limit on it. You can renew the vow, but you can’t rescind one. So I suggest you make vows for a day, a week, or a month, and only make ones you can fulfill with God’s help.
Is there some part of your lifestyle you’d like to change as a result of God’s greatness today?
I listed these three responses at the end of day 1, chapter 1, so I’d like to suggest three more for you today that aren’t in the book. These you can only get live. I’d like to suggest that if you really want to respond to a great God,
4. YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT HIM.
2 PETER 3:18 says, “GROW IN THE GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR…”
Reading this book (hold up Bible) and this book (hold up Jonah: Responding to God in All the Right Ways) will help you learn about Him. I hope you’ll read all four chapters of this (Bible) and all twenty chapters of this (Jonah: Responding…).
One more suggestion. A very appropriate way to respond to God’s greatness is
5. YOU GET TO KNOW HIS PEOPLE.
I hope, at least for the month of February, you’ll join a Small Group and get to know a few other members of the church while we’re studying this together. Not only will your learning be deeper because it will be augmented by the observations of others, but it will be more fun as well.
And we’re making it very easy to join a Small Group, simply write, “CALL ME ABOUT A JONAH SMALL GROUP” in the comment section of your Welcome Card, and someone from our staff will call within 24 hours to discuss which group might be best for you.
One more suggestion: you can respond to God’s greatness by trusting Him with whatever is troubling you.
6. YOU TRUST HIM WITH WHATEVER IS TROUBLING YOU.
Anybody having anything trouble you these days?
It’s probably part of God’s sense of humor that I went on a whale-watching trip this week, the week we start learning about Jonah.
PICTURE OF WHALE TALE
I’ve been on whale-watching tours only twice in my life.
The first time was over 20 year ago, the second was last week. Twenty years ago, Lori and I were living in Colorado. We’d been attending graduate school and were flat broke. But, on a visit to my family in Santa Barbara, we decided to splurge and take the half-day whale boat out of Santa Barbara harbor.
I practically grew up in that harbor. As a little guy, I took sailing lessons there. The swimming pool where I trained as a teen is located in the harbor’s parking lot. The family of Dave Smith, one of my swimming buddies, had a 36-foot Sloop docked in the Marina. We’d take the boat out on weekends and sail it across to Catalina once or twice a year. So, as Lori and I ponied up our fare and climbed on board, I was confident and anticipating showing Lori a really good time. PICTURE OF BOAT IN HARBOR
The crew cast off, we motored out into the harbor. Lori and I were standing on the upper deck as we passed the breakwater. All of a sudden, something began to happen to me. My head started to feel funny, and my stomach started to play tricks on me. We decided to move to the lower deck, even though we wouldn’t be able to see as far from there.
My stomach and head didn’t feel any better there, but the Captain promised that we were going to see whales soon, so I stuck it out for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 2 hours because I wanted to show Lori a good time. I had never experienced seasickness before. I thought my head was going to implode and my insides were going to explode. Finally, with my head on fire and my bowels on hurricane-watch, I excused myself, left Lori on deck, went below deck and found a table in the galley, curled up on its bench, and went to sleep – which is the only cure for seasickness.
After we docked, Lori had her film developed and I got to see several wonderful pictures of whales up-close to our boat. I never saw them live, like Jonah, I was asleep in the bottom of the boat.
I had never experienced seasickness before that day. But I’ve had it for the last twenty years. Right up until last week. As you know, last weekend I went on a cruise with and courtesy of our LAF group. We boarded the boat on Saturday, and by Saturday night, I was starting to develop that old whale-watching feeling. There’s something every frustrating about being on the water, because you can’t control the water, it controls you. When a swell comes up, the boat tilts, then the swell goes down, and the boat tilts the other direction. For twenty years, I’ve been fighting the boat every time it tilts.
Last Saturday night, I decided not to fight it anymore. I decided that the water could do whatever it wanted to do, and I wouldn’t worry about it, I’d just go with the flow. And that cured my seasickness.
Here’s what made me decide to go with the flow.
ROMANS 8:28 – WE KNOW THT IN ALL THINGS GOD WORKS FO RTHE GOOD OF THOSE WHO LOVE HIM…
At the end of 2006, Lori and I were hit from behind by another car. Our car got dinged, and Lori got minorly hurt. I had a choice. I could get ticked off at the girl who hit us, or I could believe that God would make good come from it. So we submitted our insurance claims, our own Mike Kastrup treated Lori’s injuries, and several months later, our car was fixed, Mike was paid, and the insurance company even compensated Lori a few hundred dollars for her pain.
On a Saturday night in January of ’07, our garage was broken into. Lori’s purse was stolen from her car, I lost a few tools, and Bryan’s car suffered about $1000 worth of damage. Instead of panicking, we all decided to come to church and fulfill our responsibilities for the day. Between services, Lori called and cancelled our credit cards, which were rapidly accruing charges as our assailant went on a shopping spree. We had a choice, we could choose to get mad, or we could trust God and go with the flow.
We decided to do the later. The break-in cost us some money, but today, our assailant is behind bars, and we have learned what it feels like to be victimized – which we count as a good thing, because we can now relate to so many people who have been violated in one way or another.
In March of ’07, I bumped a car at a stoplight because of my own stupidity. Fortunately, I did no damage to the other vehicle, but initial estimates were that my 14 year old Camry would need $2000 worth of work.
So I took it to get a second opinion. The second opinion suggested I go the junk yard. The guy at the junkyard suggested I go to Tijuana. In Tijuana, I not only got the entire problem fixed, but the rest of my paint-job touched up for $350. And, I had an enjoyable day for cross-cultural experiences.
My year went pretty much like that. And it was one of my best years ever. It even cured my seasickness, because now, instead of fighting my circumstances and fighting what God wants to do through them, I have decided to trust Him. I go with the flow. When circumstance rock left, I rock left. When they rock right, I rock right. No more seasickness.
What about you? What is it that’s troubling you today that you can’t fix, prevent or cure on your own?
JONAH 1:16 says, “AT THIS THE MEN GREATLY FEARED THE LORD, AND THEY OFFERED A SACRIFICE TO THE LORD AND MADE VOWS TO HIM.”
Friends, during these next three weeks, we are going to discover that all of life is about responding to a great and gracious God. We can respond by
- doing what He asks,
- by worshiping Him,
- by changing patterns that are hurting us or others,
- by learning about Him,
- by getting to know His people,
- and by trusting Him with our troubles.
Or, like Jonah, we can
- get up and run,
- create a lot of waves,
- get a lot of people scared,
- get ourselves thrown overboard,
- and get swallowed by a big fish that we never saw coming.
Which do you choose?
Let me pray with you as we prepare to give our offering.
So Father, You are a Great and Gracious God. We’re down here on shipboard right now and because of who You are, many of us are going to give You and offering right now. Some of us are going to make some vows today. We’re going to go with the flow and trust You today. Most of us are going to learn some more things about You from these books this week, and most of us are going to get to know some of our brothers and sisters better this month. Some of us are close to getting seasick. Would You help us to trust You and go with the flow? Some of us feel like we’ve been thrown overboard, would You send a fish to rescue us? Preferably one with a big stomach that can swim us to shore real fast?
You are a great God. You are a gracious God. And we worship You now with our gifts.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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(Hal can be reached at HalSeedBooks.com.)
