Running Away from God's Will

Jonah

     Tonight we're gonna depart from our study of the Book of Hebrews, and if you have your Bibles, I'd like to ask you to turn to the 96th Psalm.  Psalm 96...One of the great missionary Psalms in all of the Psaltery is the 96th Psalm, and I only wanna read this to you as an introduction to our study tonight.  "O sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth.  Sing unto the Lord, bless His name; show forth His salvation from day to day.  Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.  For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.  For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.  Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.  Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the peoples; give unto the Lord glory and strength.  Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts.  O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; fear before Him, all the earth.  Say among the nations that the Lord reigneth; the world also shall be established, that it shall not be moved; He shall judge the peoples righteously.  Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof.  Let the fields be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the forest rejoice before the Lord.  For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth; He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth."  There is a tremendous exhortation to us to carry the message of God's salvation to the ends of the earth. 

     Now turn in your Bible to the Book of Jonah, and tonight I'm not gonna really preach to you.  I'm just gonna kinda wander through Jonah with you and see what it is that we can learn about missionary service from the world's worst missionary, Jonah.  You know, as I was just kind of thinking in my mind, "What text could I pick out to speak on a missionary theme, as the Mission Board invited me to do, and I thought about all of the times that I heard a missionary; and usually when you hear a missionary, you can pretty well guess what his text is gonna be before he even begins; because there are some very favorite missionary texts that always seem to be used by missionaries. 

     One in very common usage is John 4:35, "Say not ye, 'There are yet four months and then cometh harvest'?  Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.'"  There are other texts that are used frequently in missionary messages.  In Matthew, I'm thinking of chapter 9 verse 37, "Then saith He unto His disciples, 'The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.  Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.'"  Other texts along the same line, Matthew 24:14, "And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come," speaking of the Tribulation and the missionary effort there; and then perhaps the classic one that is most frequently used whenever missionaries speak, Matthew 28:19, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."  We could go from there to Matthew 13:10.  We could go to Luke 24:47, Acts 1:8, "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth."  We could listen to the Apostle Paul, who said, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."

     There are many texts that we could consider that are positives, that really positively lay out missionary effort; but we also learn by contrast; and so as we come to the Book of Jonah, first of all we're gonna see, I think, basically, all those things that a missionary shouldn't be and a few good things scattered in.  We've been studying in our Sunday night studies through the Book of Hebrews the...the all-star team of faith.  We've been studying the great heroes of faith.  Well, here's one guy that never made it.  He does not appear in the 11th chapter of Hebrews.  I doubt whether he was even under consideration when they were narrowing it down. 

     In Old Testament days, God had designed Israel to be His missionary people.  God had designed Israel and had given them their orders, and their orders were simply to communicate the truth of God to all people.  In 1 Chronicles 16:23, the Bible says, "Sing unto the Lord, all the earth; show forth from day to day His salvation.  Declare His glory among the heathen, His marvelous among all nations."  There was no problem discerning what their task was.  It was obvious.  In Psalm 18:49, and the Psalms were very familiar, and they would have recited them, if not sung them frequently.  Psalm 18:49 says, "Therefore I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the heathen and sing praises unto Thy name."  The Psalm which we just read, 96 verse 3, gives a direct command, "Declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all people.  Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth," and God Himself said to the Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 43:21, "This people have I formed for Myself.  They will show forth My praise."  God all the way along had designed Israel to be a missionary nation. 

     In Deuteronomy 4:5 and 6, we read this, "Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land to which ye go to possess it.  Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations who shall hear these statutes, and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'"  And so Israel was to speak and to live so that they, in effect, were a missionary nation.  They were God's communicating vehicle to the world.

     Now, out of Israel, in addition to the general responsibility of every Jew and Israel collectively, was the specific responsibility of certain individuals.  God had called certain individuals to be prophets.  They were separated from out of Israel for a very unique and special missionary ministry.  And, as in the church today, I think that is very much a parallel.  In the church, we are all called upon to be witnesses; and yet God raises up within the church certain gifted men given back to the body who are responsible for preaching and teaching and so forth; and from them come many of the missionaries. 

     Now, each of these prophets whom God chose had special directions and special ministries which were given them from on High.  Frequently, the prophets were concerned mostly with shaping up Israel; and that was not just an end in itself.  That was a means to an end, because a shaped-up Israel would be able to accomplish what they were designed to accomplish, and that was as missionaries to reach the world with the truth of God; and so, ultimately, even the shaping up of Israel had a missionary purpose.  So God chose these men, first of all, to warn Israel to bring about righteous revival in Israel that Israel might begin to be what God designed her to be, and therefore people might see the truth in them. 

     But beyond that, God also called some very specific men in the Bible to be missionaries, to reach out.  For example, Abraham may be considered the first missionary in a...in a sense, because Genesis 20 verse 7, and also I think it's Psalm 105 about verse 15, says that Abraham was to be a prophet to his neighbors.  So he had a very, very obvious missionary injunction.  Moses, for example, was a transmitter of God's truth to a heathen people in Egypt.  Elijah was a transmitter of God's truth to Ahab and Jezebel.  Elisha was another transmitter of God's truth on a missionary basis when he bore the truth of God to a Syrian leper by the name of Naaman. 

     Then on top of these, you have the...the literary prophets, those whom we read in the New Test...in the Old Testament; and there were several of them who were commissioned to communicate messages to heathen people.  First of all, Isaiah in Isaiah 13 clear through chapter 27, Isaiah is communicating a message to the heathen.  Then Jeremiah chapter 46 through 51, Jeremiah does the very same thing.  He speaks to Egypt, Philistia, Phoenicia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Syria, Kedar, Hazor, Elam, and I think Babylon; and so he's busy being a missionary.  Then comes Ezekiel.  Ezekiel spent, well, chapter 25 through about chapter 32, I guess, speaking to foreign nations, Tyre, Sidon, particularly, and then Egypt.  Then you have Daniel, and Daniel was God's missionary to Babylon during the captivity.  Then you have Obadiah.  Obadiah was God's missionary with a message of doom for Edom.  Then Nahum came along, and Nahum did what Jonah did.  He pronounced judgment on Nineveh.  Then you had Zephaniah, and Zephaniah was giving a message to unrepentant Gentiles, as well.

     So you have a list of men, literary prophets, another list of men raised up who didn't necessarily write anything, although Moses, of course, did, who were commissioned, not only for the warning of Israel on the purification of the nation, but also for extending the truth of God to other nations.  Now, the amazing thing about this is that I doubt whether if we asked you to recite the story of Zephaniah, anybody could stand up and rattle it off; and I doubt whether you'd do very well with the story of Obadiah either, or even Nahum for that matter.  In fact, those little books are kinda tough, you know, and we don't really know a whole lot about 'em; but there's one missionary prophet that we know a lot about; and the strange part of it is he's the whole bunch that was the one who was unfaithful; but it's amazing how he left his imprint on history.  His name is Jonah.

     Jonah we call the reluctant missionary.  He was disobedient, selfish, sinful, had a lousy disposition.  He was totally prejudiced; and yet God saw fit to use him.  Now that gives great hope to many of us.  In fact, Jonah was such a lousy prophet, and, incidentally, he was from Galilee, and it was interesting in John chapter 7 verse 52 that he was such a lousy prophet that when Jesus supposedly presented Himself as a prophet from Galilee, the people said, "Oh, come on, there's never been a prophet out of Galilee.  Those are the same people that studied the Old Testament, but Jonah was sorta the forgotten prophet.  There was a prophet from Galilee.  They just forgot him, because he was such a poor one.  They probably didn't care to claim him.

     Now, the record of Jonah is not just the biography of a lousy missionary.  He does have some redeeming virtues, and God has placed it here for our edification; and the point I think that He wants to make is how God can recover such a person.  Not only that, underlying that subject here is the tremendous contrast between Israel, now watch this, Israel's unconcern for the lost and God's total concern for the lost; and I think that makes the message very contemporary, because I think God faces something like that in the church today.  He is totally concerned for the lost and, for the most part, the church is very superficially, if at all, concerned. 

     Now, the story divides very equally.  The first two chapters would fit a simple outline:  Go, no, woe.  The second two chapters:  Go, yes, bless; and that's how Jonah works out; but I'm not gonna use that outline.  I'm gonna use one that's just a little bit more direct.  Let's first of all just divide the book into two parts, and we're just gonna kinda go through it a little bit and see what God will show us; but the first part is the first missionary call.  I wanna wrap this up with a personal testimony at the very end.  I can identify with Jonah.  So as I studied Jonah this week, I...I just couldn't help but think, "That is me.  I am Jonah."  As you go through this, don't burst out at some point when your mind allows you to make that comparison; but, anyway, this so fits me. 

     Now, to begin with, we have the first missionary call; and we'll take several points under that.  In the first missionary call of chapters 1 and 2, there was, to begin with, a commission.  The first missionary call in a general sense included a commission.  Verse 1, "Now the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying."  Now here's Jonah going about his prophetic business, and God breaks into his life.  Now, we don't know very much about Jonah.  He's only mentioned one other place in the Bible.  That's in 2 Kings chapter 14 verse 25, and all it says is that he was a prophet from Gathhepher, which is up in Galilee, and that he was a prophet in the northern kingdom Israel during the time of Jeroboam II, which would put his prophecy about between the years of 800 BC and 750 BC, somewhere around there.  That's about all we know about him.  But, anyway, he's busy about whatever prophets are busy about, and God invades him with this very, very specific opportunity.  His ma...his name means dove, a messenger of peace, Jonah.  Jewish tradition is interesting, because Jewish tradition says that he is the son of the widow of Zeraphath, who was raised from the dead, that that son is Jonah.  We don't know whether that's true or not, but it's an interesting possibility. 

     Now, at the time of Jonah, Israel was in fear of a growing giant to the east.  The great Assyrian power was growing.  It was on the ascendancy, and it was a fearful thing; and though there was some great progress going on in Israel, and there were some good things happening, there was always this lurking fear of Nineveh and the growing power of the east; and that's exactly where God wants Jonah to go.  Verse 2, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me."  Now Assyria, as I said, was a very great growing power.  The city Nineveh was built by Nimrod.  It was a city of 600,000.  In fact, it was a three-day journey from one end of the city to the other.  The inner wall was eight miles in circumference.  The outer wall was something like 60 miles, and it took Jonah three days, apparently, to get from one end of it to the other.  It was located on the east bank of the Tigris River, there in the Fertile Crescent area that perhaps is familiar to you.  It was extremely advanced culturally, one of the greatest cities in the world; but its people were corrupt.  It's people were proud, and it was sinking in corruption.  Nahum, the prophet, who also spoke against Nineveh, called it a bloody city.  Said it was full of fraud, lies, robberies, sensuousness, violence, witchcraft, and idolatry; and their soldiers were famous for their brutality and their cruelty.

     Now, God had gotten a whiff of this wickedness, it says in verse 2, and God wanted a prophet to go and preach a message of judgment to Nineveh.  Now, the other prophets whom I mentioned to you that were of a missionary character, for the most part never gave their messages on the soil of the country to whom they spoke.  They spoke from where they were in Israel against those countries, and the word would have to filter back.  Technically, Jonah was the first missionary who was commissioned, not only speak against a foreign nation, but to go to that nation and speak to their face against them; and this was the command.  Well, that'd shake anybody up, to go to the enemy like that who was so formidable.  One lonely, poor prophet faced that kinda thing; but there was more to it in Jonah's mind than that as we shall see. 

     Notice the command is very simple.  The commission comes in three words - arise, now that does indicate a little bit that Jonah probably wasn't really active at this moment.  "Get up Jonah," is the first thing He says.  I don't know what Jonah's been doing, but it doesn't sound too good.  "Go to Nineveh and cry against it."  Three words:  arise, go, cry.  Now that's a sufficient missionary commission if ever I've heard one.  Arise, go, cry, and cry is a common word for preach.  In fact, the second time the commission comes around, it's the same thing:  arise, go, cry, only it's translated preach in the authorized version. 

     Now, Jonah is to be sent to Nineveh, and I think God has many purposes in this.  First of all, of course, is the...the redemption that comes to the Ninevites who repent and believe; but I think God wanted to do it also to shame Israel; and I think He wanted to shame Israel on two counts.  No. 1, Israel had failed to repent.  Now watch this, Israel had failed to repent at the multiplied preaching of many prophets.  You hear that?  God had sent prophet after prophet to Israel.  They had failed to repent.  When Jonah finally got to Nineveh, one prophet, and the whole city repented, and that was shaming to Israel.  

     The second thing that God wanted to use to shame Israel was the fact that Israel had failed to be a missionary to Nineveh.  Israel had failed to carry its commission out to reach the nations, and God wanted to show them how right this nation was by having one lonely prophet go in,