Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you're able to remain standing,
please do. If not, feel free
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to have a seat and let's turn
our attention to the book of Jonah Chapter
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One. JOANAH'S A tiny book.
It's easy to miss if you're using the
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black bibles from the cart. It's
on page seven hundred and seventy four Jonah
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chapter one. This is God's true
word. Let's give our attention to it
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now. The word of the Lord
came to Jonah, the son of Amy
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Tai, saying arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and call
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out against it, for their evil
has come up before me. But Jonah
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rose to flee to tarshish from the
presence of the Lord. He went down
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to JOPPA and found a ship going
to tarshish, so he paid the fare
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and went on board to go with
them to Tarshish, away from the presence
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of the Lord. But the Lord
hurled a great wind upon the sea and
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there was a mighty tempest upon the
sea, so that the ship threatened to
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break up. Then the mariners were
afraid and each cried out to his God
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and they hurled the cargo that was
in the ship into the sea to lighten
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it for them. But Jonah had
gone down into the inner part of the
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ship and had laid down and was
fast asleep. So the captain came and
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said to him, what do you
mean, you're sleeper? Arise, call
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out to your God. Perhaps the
God odd will give us a thought,
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give a thought to us, that
we may not perish. And they said
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to one another, come, let
us cast lots that we may know on
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whose account this evil has come upon
us. So they cast lots and the
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lot fell on Jonah, and they
said to him, tell us on whose
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account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation and where do
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you come from? What is your
country and of what people are you?
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And he said to them, I
am a Hebrew and I fear Yah Way,
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the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made the sea in the
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dry land. Then the men were
exceedingly afraid and said to him, what
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is this that you have done,
for the men knew that he was fleeing
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from the presence of the Lord,
because he had told them. Then they
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said to him, what shall we
do to you that the sea may quiet
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down for us? For the sea
grew more and more tepestious. He said
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to them, pick me up hurl
me into the sea, then the sea
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will quiet down for you, for
I know it is because of me that
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this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to
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get back to dry land, but
they could not, for the sea grew
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more and more to pestio US against
them. Therefore, they called out to
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Yah way, to the Lord.
Oh Lord, let us not perish for
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this man's life and lay not on
US innocent blood. For you, oh
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Lord, have done as it pleased
you. So they picked up Jonah and
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hurled him into the sea, and
the sea ceased from its raging. Then
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the men feared the Lord exceedingly and
they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and
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made vows. The Lord a point
to the great fish to swallow up Jonah,
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and Jonah was in the belly of
the fish. Three days and three
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nights since the reading of God's word, may He bless it to us.
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Please be seated when you come across
something that rings true to you. When
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I fought, when I happens to
me, I often find that it's often
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multilayered. There's a lot of different
way reason which it applies, in which
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ways in which it could be understood
and useful in our lives. And that's
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because the truth is you might imagine
a big system. You have these particular
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points of truth all over the place, but they all connect to one another,
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and so when you find one and
one way, you find them all,
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because they're all linked in one way
or another. So when you come
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to a story like Jonah, a
true story in which God himself is not
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just telling US something from history to
entertain us, something he did that's amazing,
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but is communicating to us something that
is valuable and useful for our lives,
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we shouldn't be surprised that it's multilayered, that there's lots and lots of
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different lessons that we can draw from
this, things that we can know about
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God, things that we can know
about ourselves and our world that we can
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apply to our lives, things that
we ought to that ought to change our
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thinking, change the way we act, change how we feel about things.
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And so when you come to Jonah, Chapter One and ask what this story
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is about, you might come to
a number of different legitimate conclusions. Is
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this story about God's ability, for
example, to use chance and luck?
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Can Lots to reveal and accomplish his
will. Yeah, if you actually go
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look at the catechism, one of
the things that's forbidden in the third commandment
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that we considered earlier was this act
of lots. They're trying to use divination
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in a way to figure out their
problem, something that the Lord forbids.
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And yet the Lord is able to
use this act of the men to a
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drive Jonah forward to honesty. An
amazing thing, something worth contemplating. Maybe
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this story is about taking responsibility for
your actions. Right, Jonah is fleeing
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from the presence of the Lord.
He decides to go another way. He's
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told to go to Nineveh. He
goes to tarshish. Maybe the story is
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about Jonah finally a looking his sin
and saying, all right, it's me,
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I'm willing to suffer the consequences.
Or maybe this story is about the
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value of human life. The way
that the sailors are doing everything that they
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can to avoid hurling Jonah into the
sea, despite his express permission, despite
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the reasonableness of it. They strive. It says they were exceedingly afraid of
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the sea, but they nevertheless verse
thirteen road hard to get back to dry
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land. They're pushing there, pushing
there pushing. They've already thrown their cargo
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overboard, they've already used divination and
other things. They've already tried to talk
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to Jonah and figure thing out.
Their figure things out. This is their
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last resort and they can't make it. And even when they throw Jonah into
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the sea, they're not happy about
this right. They value these, these
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unbelieving non Israelite Pagan sailors that are
worshiping other gods and all kinds of other
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things. They have enough sense of
God's law in them, by the very
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fact of being made in his image
and living in his world, that they
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do not want to put Jonah to
death and they fear this God of Jonah's
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right. They not only try to
avoid the situation, before they realize they
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can't, but before they hurl them
into the sea, in verse fourteen,
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they call out to the Lord and
they call out to him in the very
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name that Jonah uses, Yahway or
Jehovah. They're not talking about a god
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in general anymore, call out to
your God or the Gods, but to
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this God, the God of Abraham, by God of Isaac, the God
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of Jacob. This is who the
sailors are praying to now. Oh Yeah,
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way, let us not perish for
this man's life. They are begging
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on him, begging him lay not
on US innocent blood for you, oh
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Yah way, have done as it
pleased you. They are submitting to his
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will. That's how they're perceiving it. They're saying, this tempest has come
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upon us, these problems have come
upon us because of this man and your
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pursuit of him, and we see
no other way out of this other than
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to throw him overboard. Please,
please, don't hold US accountable for this
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tough situation. Lots of lessons in
that, but one of them is that
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they certainly valued this man's life,
despite the fact that he was their problem.
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So they picked up Jonah and hurled
him into the sea and the plan
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worked ceased from raging. But they
don't sort of wipe their brow and go
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on, go off to worshiping other
gods. Instead, it says they feared
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Yah way exceedingly, that same word
that was used, of the sea,
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and they offered a sacrifice to him
and made vows to him. Presumably,
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we will do these things for you
because you have done this thing for us.
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The amazing thing I think we could
go on. What other a lessons
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are there here? I think you
should go on. You should think about
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this story as you go home,
as you reflect on it this week,
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as you talk about it. What
other lessons are there here to teach us?
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In addition to the ones I've brought
before you this morning, I want
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to bring one more. I want
you to understand this sense of togetherness in
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both the good and the bad.
I want to explain what I mean by
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that. Jonah and these men on
this boat faced a similar fate. They
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were in the boat together. You
know, this is a idiom that we
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use here. It's happening to them
literally right there on the same boat.
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Means that they all have the same
fate, so to speak. If the
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boat survives, they all live.
If the boat sinks, they all they
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all die. Our sins affect one
another. Our sins affect one another,
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and this is what's happening here with
Jonah as he is in the boat now.
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You remember that it began as sort
of an isolated event, just Jonah
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and the Lord, Jonah's refusal to
obey this thing, but very quickly he's
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bringing other people in along with him. He decides on this plan, he
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decides to move forward and and it
fails. But something, something happens along
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the way. A God intervenes,
he sends this tempest, he creates this
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turn of events and eventually he calms
down the sea. Was Their plan successful?
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was there a plan to throw Jonah
overboard successful? Well, from the
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sailor's perspective, yes, and no. On the one hand, the sea
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is calm and they're all alive.
On the other hand they are afraid.
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Did the plan work? And we're
not exactly told what happens after this.
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They sort of just sail off into
the into the story, and we're left
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sort of wondering, in a way, what about from Jonah's part? Was
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Jonah's plan successful? Well, I
guess in a way he got what he
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wanted. He didn't have to go
to an INNOVA, he was thrown overboard.
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But and of course, in another
way not so much because, as
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we will read in chapter two,
he comes to see that he doesn't want
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to die and he will call out
to the Lord for Salvation. But the
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most important question when we think about
the successfulness of this plan is God's perspective.
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God's perspective did it. Did God
get what he wanted in the answer
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there is is yes, and that's
a good thing, because when God gets
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what he wants, which he always
does, it ultimately benefits us, and
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that's what happens here. That's something, another way to think about the togetherness
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of these these events. Again,
Jonah goes out as an individual in his
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own sin, but ends up impacting
and affecting all of these other people.
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Buy At these ship people, these
mariners, but more than that, the
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sailors and Jonah are all used by
the Lord to affect people that they would
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never know. You, me and
God works like this. In the life
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of humans we like to ask,
what's your plan? What are you doing?
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And when we maybe figure out just
the tiniest sliver of it, there's
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a whole host of other things that
are involved. God does this thing here
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in this time and this history,
but in the context of all that he
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reveals all kinds of things to all
of us. These lessons that were learning,
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these things that he's teaching us,
are being taught to US people thousands
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and thousands of years later. That
togetherness in which we're connected is is important
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thing to remember in life. But
what are the ways in which the story
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benefits us. Well, we can
think about the contrasts of the story Jonah
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and the these Pagan sailors, or
Jonah and the sea. This this lesson
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about fear. So many people don't
fear God at all. They even find
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the fear of the Lord Repugnant.
But this story, these events, the
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actions of the sailor's, the actions
of a Jonah, they teach us to
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fear the Lord. They teach us
who he is. How can you read
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this story, how can you hear
this story and then think of God lightly?
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How can you walk away from God
sending tempests and Pagan sailors calling out
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to him and in fear and all
of the rest, God knowing every event
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and mind and of our minds and
our thoughts, and then walk away and
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saying, yeah, I think I'll
do what I want anyway. That's like
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watching somebody get pulled over on the
freeway for speeding and then you just zoom
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passed and then you watch the next
person get posh all over, the next
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person get pulled over, the next
person I called over, and you just
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ume and you see a bunch of
cop cars all lined up on the street,
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all of them with your lay our
guns pointed at you and use it
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doesn't make sense right, but this
is what we do. We hear a
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story like this about Jonah, we
hear about the mighty works of the Lord
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and we right into our sins.
Where is the fear of the Lord?
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It bewilders me about my own sin
and the ways that I do this.
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How can I hear a story like
this? How can I preach a story
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like this and then be impatient with
my children to speak sinfully, when I
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know God hears everything and sees everything? How can I doubt God hates my
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sin and my rebellion when he's made
that so perfectly clear? It's bewildering.
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It shows us the darkness of Sin. It shows us the whole that sins
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out has on us and how much
we need him. Some people will say,
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Hey, don't talk about this fear
of the Lord and God's judgments and
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all that, because God loves you. You don't need to fear him now
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because these sins that you're worried about
he's forgiven. What do you think about
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that, honestly, do you think
you should fear the Lord or not?
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Well, of course we ought to
agree that God forgives our sins. When
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we trust and put our faith in
him, of course we should agree that
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our relationship with him changes dramatically so
that we are no longer in terror before
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him, fearing the Judgment Day,
because in Christ, as I said earlier
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in the service, judgments has already
come. I am not in terror because
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of God's judgment on me. But
should that make me fear him less?
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Does the fact that God's power and
love coming into the world to rescue me,
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even as it rescued Jonah from death? Should that make me, or
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Jonah or you think, oh well, then God must be no big deal
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anymore. As much as I know
that God loves me with an everlasting love,
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that he's granted me any Turtle Kingdom
through Jesus Christ and on the cross
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that he's wrapped me up, and
in the arms of a body of believers
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who are walking together with me and
following the savior, all of these amazing,
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powerful, life changing things of God, should that make me think lightly
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of him? No, God's salvation
and judgment is I'm sorry, God's power
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in judgments is evident, but so
is his power in salvation and causing the
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fish to come and causing Jonah to
be kept and causing him to be spit
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out and reborn in another way,
to go forward in obedience. That's power,
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to a lovely power, a wonderful
power, but something that should cause
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us to fear God, to stand
in awe before him. It shouldn't make
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us fear him less, but more. How do you feel about God?
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Do you feel his weightiness in your
life? If not, then you're missing
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the lesson of Jonah. You're not
connected to the story. If you don't
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feel the weightiness of God, of
his name, of his works, these
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things in your life, then it
doesn't matter what kind of lip service that
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you give to his sovereignty or his
power, the way, the things that
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you say, the theology that you
confess, if practically that's not the way
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you live. Well, how do
you fix a weak practical theology? How
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do you fix a situation where you
all find yourself thinking lightly of God,
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not fearing him as you want?
Well, the answer is that you you
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grow through faith in the power of
him who comes and it was given us
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His grace. We can't deep down, dig down deeper into our own darkness
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and find light. You can't go
back further into into the cave and hope
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that you're going to somehow find the
end. No, you have to you
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have to receive the the gift that
God gives to you, the light that
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comes to you, the life that
comes to us in Jesus. We have
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to find our hope in God,
and Jonah has not yet found that.
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Jonah consigns himself to death. Throw
me into the sea. I guess we'll
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just end at all. But when
he calls out to the Lord, this
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is a chapter two, verse one. I called out to the Lord in
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my distress and he answered me.
When Jonah was not going to cling to
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his sins anymore, but cling to
the Lord, salvation appeared and it was
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always there. You don't have to
wait, I heard recently. You don't
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have to wait to get to the
the bottom floor before getting off the elevator
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right. God Is there. He's
offering himself to us, and that's what
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this story tells us. It reminds
us of these truths and these things.
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It points out our hardness, it
points out our blindness, the evil of
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it, the sharedness of it,
the consequences we share together, the way
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that in Adam, in our humanity, the ship is just broken apart already.
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We're all lying dead, floating around
in the water. There's no hope
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in that unless we receive the resurrection
of God. Well, in order to
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understand that and some of these things
that I've been saying so far, you've
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got a wide in your field of
vision beyond Jonah one, because Jonah one
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is in a context not only of
Jonah but in the whole Bible. You've
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got to go and open up to
the gospels themselves, where we learn about
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Jesus, who speaks of himself explicitly
as a prophet greater than Jonah, as
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one who has come to do something
similar to Jonah but better than Jonah.
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He's similar to Jonah in that he, like Jonah, suffer first. He,
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like Jonah, goes down for three
days and three nights into suffering,
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Jonah into the belly of the fish, Jesus into the belly of the earth,
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or into the earth. God sends
this New Prophet into the world.
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In Jesus, he adds human nature
to His divine nature and in that way
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we are he is a prophet like
Jonah, but he speaks a better word.
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This book of Jonah is preparing us
for Jesus who is to come,
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Jesus who comes and preaches this word
that is less like Jonah and in some
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ways more like like another boat story
in the Bible, like Noah, in
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Jesus, when we come aboard the
boat, we are lifted up above the
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judgment waters. We ride high above
the mountains of the Earth and above judgment,
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because of him, being found in
him, being saved in him.
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Jesus says he's like Jonah, because
Jonah had to suffer in order to bring
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about and end of suffering. But
there's a difference. Unlike Jonah, Jesus
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was a true prophet and he didn't
die because of his sins. He died
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because of our sins. He descends
down, down, down, not in
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disobedience away from the presence of the
Lord, but in our disobedience, taking
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on the weight of our sins and
our judgment, and that means that in
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our togetherness with him, we also
rise with him. God's servants and God's
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people have proved themselves, like Jonah, over and over and over, of
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being incapable of doing what God requires
or being in him and with him as
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God desires, even when the word
is clear, even when the message is
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clear. We flee from the presence
of the Lord and in disobedience, we
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continually plunge ourselves into an ocean of
Sin and judgment. So how is a
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mission of grace and peace possible,
of hope to the world, this mission
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that Jonah is supposed to be on? It can only be accomplished by God
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sending another Prophet, by God sending
Jesus Christ, who goes on this mission
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to the world to bring grace,
to bring hope, to bring peace,
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and he does it not simply by
proclaiming the message, but by becoming the
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message. It wouldn't just take a
prophet, but the very son of God
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to come and die and live again, and in that we have the amazing
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power of God which should cause us
to fear. When Jesus hung on a
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cross and died, we read that
the earth itself trembled, that the sky
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went black, that the temple curtain
tore into it was a terrifying time as
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judgment, as the judgment of God, came down upon sins, and it
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will be again a terrifying time when
the judgment of the Lord comes, when
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Jesus Christ returns. But not,
brothers and sisters, for you. You
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will fear him and his awesome power. You will wonder at as might as
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you see Jesus riding on the clouds
accompanied by the host of Heaven, a
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myriad of angels. You won't see
that on that day and think Oh cool,
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you will, I don't know,
praise God, throw yourself at his
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feet, worship him, rise up
and resurrected bodies. The trumpets of the
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angels will be blasting that new eavans
and the new earth will be revealed as
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they stars in the Sky Melt and
and the planets descend and the world changes.
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It will be the most amazing thing
you have ever seen. But you
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will be caught up in the power
and reverence and awe and fear. But
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but in all of that will be
joy and love and peace and satisfaction,
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knowing that you belong to it,
you are a part of it, as
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one of God's chosen ones, as
a child of light, as one who
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is lifted up in a new and
resurrected body, not to die, not
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to be separated to him, from
him, but to live in him and
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with him forever. When we wide
in our SK are, when we widen
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the field of view, and Jonah
one. This is what the Lord teaches
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us. He shows us that the
judgment and the salvation that we have here
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is proclaimed in Jesus. Know Him, trust him, and you will find
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life in him. Let's pray
