"The Most Successful Missionary" Jonah 1-4
- One of our missionaries, David Bliss, gave an update on ministry and also preached this message on September 17, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
Foreign, Which is in Southeast Europe, just north of Greece. I am also we, we engage mostly in discipleship ministry there, Bible teaching, and then I’m also on the division leadership team for the Europe division, which means I oversee several different ministries across Europe. In fact, I. One of the ministries I’m responsible for supervising is Athens, which is home to one of another supported missionary from this church, Larry and Jill Couch. So, and we both agree that this church, of all of our supporting churches, has the best view out the windows.
I really don’t know how any pastor ever gets heard speaking here in the fall. So today I’m going to be preaching on the most successful missionary that I’m ever aware of. And his name is Jonah. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Jonah, I’ll start by giving you a little background. Jonah is the fifth of 12 minor prophets found in the Old Testament.
Now they’re called minor prophets. Typically, people think of them as minor prophets because the books are shorter, although that’s not totally true. The minor prophet, Hosea, his book is actually longer than the major prophet book, Lamentations. Generally speaking, minor prophets can be covered in just one sermon, whereas a major prophet, you might need a whole sermon series. Also, minor prophets tend to address specific situations and specific questions.
For example, just before Jonah, there’s the Book of Obadiah. Obadiah is a prophecy against the nation of Edom, who are the descendants of Esau, Jacob’s oldest or Jacob’s brother, and Isaac’s oldest son. So very, very specific situation there. The Book of Jonah, along with its counterpart Nahum, just a few pages over, they both deal with the city of Nineveh. By the way, here’s a fun fact.
There are only two books in the Bible that end on a question, and both of them are the two minor prophets that are addressed at Nineveh. So it’s kind of interesting. Most people don’t know too much about the minor prophets, and I think this is mostly because they don’t make for good Sunday school stories. Most of them are written in poetical form instead of prose, so they’re not really stories. The two notable examples to this are Jonah and Hosea.
Jonah, of course, makes a great story for Sunday school because of the big fish. Hosea, on the other hand, makes a great soap opera and is not really a great Sunday school story. But I recommend reading it because it’s in your Bible. Anyway, if you’re not sure why it’s a great soap opera. Now you have homework.
Now imagine that everyone here has heard at least part of the story of Jonah. So I’d like to start by addressing the elephant in the room, or the fish, as it were. In fact, it’s interesting for those of you who like to watch Avengers movies. The very first Avengers movie, Iron man, talks about Jonah and the fish right before he goes into a giant space whale and blows it up from the inside. That is not what the story of Jonah is about, but it’s well known.
People always think of the fish. By the way, I love this picture of the fish, because in my mind, yeah, if we don’t know what the fish looks like, why can’t it be a goldfish? I think that that’s how it should look.
And I have two brief points about the fish. First of all, the fish is not the main point of the story. There are 48 verses in the entire book of Jonah, and three of them actually talk about the fish. So the fish isn’t the main story. Second of all, some of you might be wondering about the scientific feasibility of a person being swallowed by a giant fish staying underwater for three days and not dying.
And this is really good questions. Keep asking good questions like that. However, if the science of this is holding you up, let me address some concerns. First of all, just because we don’t understand something or don’t believe it to be scientifically possible doesn’t mean it cannot be done. For example, 700 years ago, people knew as a scientific fact it is impossible to.
To sail around the world because they thought it’s a big disc and you’d fall off at the end. Now we know it’s a spheroid, and we can do that, but they knew scientifically that’s not possible. On December 8, 1903, the New York Times published an article about the scientific impossibility of powered flight. Nine days later, two bicycle repairmen pulled it off in North Carolina. So what we know to be scientifically impossible could very quickly turn around to be possible.
Eighty years ago, we knew for a fact you cannot have people go to the moon. And yet now we have 12 people have done it. And at the turn of the century, we knew that it was scientifically impossible to detect gravity waves. And then in 2015, in a breakthrough that I’m sure we all remember, some scientists did that. Okay, nobody remembers that, but it’s still really cool that they did.
So let’s. Let’s be careful when we make claims about what’s scientifically possible, because we’re just beginning to understand the universe. But if this still doesn’t Satisfy you? Let me remind you, we are talking about the God who spoke the universe into existence. We’re talking about the God who, as we sang about this morning, turned a sea into a highway.
About the God who multiple times throughout the Bible has resurrected dead people. We’re talking about a God who has performed miracles, not just miracles recorded in the Bible, but throughout all of human history.
So at this I would say if you have a problem with the fish, it’s not really a problem with the fish. So much I would suggest is a problem with the idea that we have a God who interacts with creation. Your problem would be with the existence of miracles at all. And that’s about all I’m going to say on the subject, because that’s not what I’m preaching on today. What I’m preaching on is Jonah.
So let’s start with our story. Our story begins in Jonah, chapter one. Good place to start a book at the beginning. Jonah, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.
Now this, we have a picture here of exactly what Nineveh looked like. This is exactly what Nineveh looked like according to a 19th century painter. So, you know, since it was painted thousands of years after the book of Jonah, it’s got to be accurate.
The capital of Assyria is Nineveh. At the time of Jonah, it was the most powerful nation on earth and it was a very, very evil place. There is an entire book of the Bible written about just how evil it was. The book of Nahum. And that Bible ends with this rhetorical question.
Who has not felt your endless cruelty? That’s a pretty strong way to put it. The whole world has felt the cruelty of this city. Additionally, Assyria was the ancient enemy of Israel and Judea. Assyria invaded Israel and 10 of the 12 tribes were dispersed.
And then they replaced those dispersed people with Samaritans who then intermingled with the Israelites and created the half breed Samaritans. And it was no doubt these people, the Samaritans, were looked down on by the Jewish people for centuries. And no doubt Jesus was ruffling feathers when he gave his parable of the good. So Samaritan. So Israel and Assyria were enemies.
And as such, Hebrews generally would have hated Assyrians and really, really hated Nineveh. And Jonah was no exception. He hated them so much that when God commanded him to go to Nineveh. He got on a boat sailing to the Spanish city of Tarshish, which is on the other side of the Mediterranean. Tarshish at the time would have been considered the other side of the world.
It would be like if someone commanded you to go and preach the gospel in Washington, and you said, I really don’t want to do that. And so I’m going to sail to Tonga, the nation in the South Pacific that most of us haven’t heard of. It’s about as far away as you can get. See, Jonah, Jonah wanted to go so far away that he couldn’t even fall asleep on the back of a donkey cart and wake up in Nineveh. He wanted to be so far away that there was no way he would ever be in Nineveh.
That’s how much he wanted to not obey God. Now, when I heard this story in Sunday school as a kid, I was told Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he was afraid of them. And there was probably truth to that. They were very cruel and evil people. But as we’ll find out later in the book, that’s not really.
That’s not really the main motivator for Jonah’s disobedience. So Jonah books passage with some men from Joppa. Now, the Joppians were. Were sailors, and they were very, very used to sailing on the sea. And yet something was about to happen that would make even these hardened men of the sea quake in fear.
A massive storm hit, and the sailors were so afraid that they began to throw cargo overboard. And what was Jonah doing this time? He was asleep. He was sleeping below decks. So the sailors came and woke him up, and they implored him to call on his God to.
To stop the storm. You see, at the time, most people believed in not a God, but a pantheon of gods. There were different gods for different countries, kind of like you might have different sports teams for different states. You also would have gods of specific things, like different elements or nature, things like that. There are gods everywhere.
So they said to Jonah, pray for your God. Maybe your God will be the one who will save us. But prayers didn’t do it. The storm didn’t stop. And so the sailors came up with another plan.
They said, let’s cast lots and figure out which God, which one of us the gods are angry at. And so they cast lots. It’s kind of like rolling dice to figure out who. Who was the one who. Who was the guy.
Now, Jonah should have spoke up at this point. He should have said before they cast lots. I’m the guy. I’m the reason the storm has come. Because he had to have known God was sending the storm because of his disobedience.
But instead he thought, well, maybe the lot will fall on some other unlucky fellow and I’ll get off the hook. But they didn’t. The lot fell on Jonah. And so the sailors asked him for an explanation. And Jonah said in chapter one, verse nine, I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
Now, the sailors would have been downright terrified. Remember, they believed in many gods. Well, Jonah has just explained to them. He worshiped the God who made everything. He worshipped the God of gods.
He worshiped the one true God. He worshiped the supreme God. Now, apparently he had already told them that he was fleeing from God, but they didn’t really care. They took his money and glad they were going to take him to Tarshish. But now they find out it’s no ordinary God.
It’s the guy who made everything. This storm came from the ultimate deity. So if they were afraid of the storm, now they’d be petrified of the God who made the storm. So they asked Jonah, what should we do? And Jonah now, what he should have said is, I’m in disobedience to God.
Turn the ship around and go back to Joppa. I need to get to Nineveh. But instead he said something else. Because Jonah, remember, he really didn’t want to go to Nineveh. He said, pick me up and throw me in the sea.
So it appears that Jonah would rather die than go to Nineveh, rather die than obey the Lord. The sailors, they didn’t want to comply with Jonah’s request. Remember, they just. They just recognize. I mean, they would recognize that if you throw someone in the sea, that’s tantamount to murder.
And they really don’t want to murder a guy who serves the supreme God. That doesn’t really look good. So they did everything they could to save themselves. They tried to row toward the shore, but they couldn’t make any headway. And finally, they prayed to God, asking for forgiveness for what they were about to do.
And they threw Jonah into the sea. And immediately the storm became calm. Now, you might remember earlier I said that there’s a number of things in the story that defy. Defy laws of nature. Well, here’s number one.
A storm that’s so terrible that it has experienced fishermen terrified. It instantly stops the sailors. They’d seen nothing like it. And they worshiped God. Now it’s interesting that even while fleeing God in a brazen act of disobedience, Jonah still ends up leading people to believe in him.
He’s a successful prophet, very good at what he does. Even when he’s not trying, he leads people to God. So chapter one ends with a big fish coming and swallowing Jonah. And Jonah spends three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. Notice he is still refusing to repent and obey God.
He still does not want to go to Nineveh. He would rather be slowly digested by a giant fish than go to Nineveh. Jonah doesn’t do anything half hearted. He’s kind of intense. But finally Jonah’s had enough.
And beginning in chapter two, verse two, he prays. In my distress I called to the Lord and he answered me from the deep. In the realm of the dead I called for help in, and you listened to me. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas. And the currents swirled about me.
All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I’ve been banished from your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me.
Seaweed was wrapped around my head. The roots of the mountains to the roots of the mountains I sank down. But the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, O Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to your holy temple.
Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. I will say, salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah on dry land. Thus ends chapter two.
Chapter three opens much like chapter one did. The Lord again commands Jonah to go to Nineveh. And this time Jonah obeys. He’s had a change of heart. Three days in a fish stomach will do that to a guy.
Chapter three. In chapter three, verse three, we get a little more information about Nineveh. Apparently it’s such a big city that it takes three days to really give it a good visit. Jonah starts out on day one with a simple proclamation. 40 more days and Nineveh will be overturned.
Great message. Pure condemnation. No possibility of repentance or forgiveness. No grace in the presentation. Just a simple statement.
Judgment’s at hand. There’s no way out. Nineveh, you’re all going to die.
So what would your response be if you were walking around, say, downtown Madison, and you come across a guy who says, In 40 more days, Madison will be destroyed? I don’t know about you, but I think this guy’s nuts. I’d probably not listen to him. And I would probably steer my children away from the strange man who smelled like fish.
So this was day one of Jonah’s ministry in Nineveh. We never hear about what happened on days two or three because day one was so dramatic. Everyone repents. Everyone from the greatest to the least, turns to God. The king himself, the most powerful man in the world, took off his royal robes and put on a sackcloth and sat in the dust in repentance.
He issued a proclamation that we can read in chapter 3, verse 7. By the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let any man, beast, herd or flock taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.
Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish. Now, we don’t know exactly how many people there were in Nineveh, but there were undoubtedly hundreds of thousands, if not more. We know from the end of the story that there were over 120,000 people who did not know their right hand from the left. So?
So that would mean children, infants.
So that’s the number of infants and toddlers in the city. We can only imagine that there was a much larger population throughout the whole city. So one day, hundreds of thousands of hardened evil people turn to God. This is undoubtedly the greatest missionary endeavor in the history of the world. Everyone in the city saved from God’s wrath in one day.
Jonah has just become the most successful missionary in the history of the world. Billy Graham never did that. D.L. moody never did that. Paul never did that.
None of them accomplished something of this scale in such a short time. Hundreds of thousands saved. Can you imagine what Jonah was thinking? Well, we don’t have to imagine because chapter three ends with the salvation of the city. But chapter four starts with Jonah pouting.
In fact, chapter four, verse one tells us he’s angry. And in verse two, we read, why in Jonah’s prayer to the Lord, isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is why I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I know that you are gracious and a compassionate God, slow to Anger abounding in love, A God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.
So this was Jonah’s motivation for everything that happened in chapter one. He was not afraid of the Ninevites. He wanted them to go die. He wanted God’s wrath to be poured out on them. And he wanted them wiped off the face of the earth because he hated them.
And now he is so angry that God had mercy on them. And God responds in verse four with a simple question. Is it right for you to be angry? Jonah doesn’t respond to this question. Instead, he goes east of the city and makes himself a shelter.
He’s going to sit there and watch, because who knows, maybe God will destroy the city anyway. And God provided a vine for Jonah to give him some shade, and it grew up over his head and gave him shade. It’s real nice. By the way, for those keeping track, I think this is the third miracle in the book of Jonah. Number one is the storm.
Number two is the fish. And number three is this vine that pops up overnight. That seems pretty miraculous to me. So Jonah loved his vine. It made him comfortable, made him very happy.
But it wasn’t going to last. The next day, God sent a worm that chewed through the vine and caused it to wither. You might say this is miracle number four, because that worm killed that vine quickly. I once heard a pastor refer to it as a kung fu worm the way it chopped the vine down. So it was obviously, it was a pretty aggressive worm to be able to cut through a vine like that.
So with a dead vine to protect his head, the sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to feel faint. And he began to complain that it would be better for him to die than to live. Now think about that. Jonah has just experienced this greatest ministry victory of all time. His lives have been changed.
Lives have been saved. Not only is Jonah upset at the fact that his enemies have turned to the Lord and abandoned their evil ways and were spared great wrath, he’s now upset that the vine that made him feel good is dead, and so he’s stuck sitting out in the hot sun.
Of course, there’s nothing to suggest that Jonah has to stay in the sun. I mean, perhaps one of the newly converted citizens of Nineveh would welcome them into his home. Maybe he’s, you know, maybe there was some other option. But instead, Jonah just sat there pouting over his dead vine. At this point, God has another little conversation with Jonah in verse nine, he says, but God said to Jonah, is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
Now note this is a slightly modified version of the question that he just asked him. First, God asked if Jonah was right to be angry that Nineveh had survived. Now he’s asking if Jonah had a right to be angry that the plant died. See, Jonah is very angry about the plant dying. And he’s very angry that hundreds of thousands of people in Nineveh are living.
And this time, Jonah gives God an answer. He said, it is, I am so angry, I wish I were dead. But the Lord said, you’ve been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow, it sprang up overnight and it died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell the right hand from their left, and also many animals? And the story ends there.
That’s the end of the book. The obvious answer to God’s rhetorical question is, yes, we should care about this city that has all these children and animals. However, we have no indication that Jonah ever got it. Now, it’s possible he got it. It’s possible Jonah was the one who wrote the book of Jonah.
But that’s not how the story ends. The story ends with Jonah, the most successful missionary of all time, sitting under a dead vine, pouting.
So what can we learn from this story? Number one, obey God when he gives you instructions. Think of all the trouble Jonah could have saved himself if he had just gone to Nineveh in the first place.
There would have been no storm. There would have been no three days in a fish’s stomach. In fact, the whole first half of the book could have been completely cut out. Those first two chapters wouldn’t even need them. And besides, Jonah couldn’t even succeed in disobeying the Lord if he wanted to.
God kept turning him around because God loved Jonah and God wanted to correct him. Proverbs 3, 11, 12 reads, My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father, a son he delights in. God loved Jonah, and that’s why he didn’t just let him die at sea. I mean, surely God could have found another prophet to go. But God loved Jonah.
Number two, all success in ministry, all success from ministry success to success in gardening, comes from the Lord and is a gift from him. Jonah disobeyed God and he ran away. God used that disobedience to reach a boatload of sailors. And success in ministry came despite Jonah’s disobedience. Jonah gave a half hearted message in Nineveh.
And yet, despite his terrible presentation, God reached the whole city and transformed their hearts. Jonah didn’t have anything to shelter his head. And yet God provided a vine. All success comes from the Lord because He’s sovereign and we need to prayerfully seek his will for our endeavors. I called this story the most successful missionary.
All that success came from the Lord. In fact, it came not because of Jonah, but in spite of Him. Number three. God deeply loves people and wants to redeem them. In John chapter 12, verse 40, Jesus compares himself with Jonah.
He said, just as Jonah was buried for three days in the sea, so he would be buried for three days in the earth. And in both cases, the outcome was redemption. In Jonah’s case, salvation came to the entire city of Nineveh. And in Jesus case, salvation came to the entire world, to all of us.
God cared about and loved each of the sailors on the boat with Jonah. God cared about and loved each of the people in Nineveh. He even cared about and loved each of the animals in Nineveh. And God cares about and loves us and everyone we come in contact with. He loved us to the point that he sent his son to die for our sins and conquer sin and death through his resurrection.
And we should love others too, so obey God. Success comes from the Lord. God loves people and wants to redeem them. And fourth, God is also interested in transforming the lives of those who follow him.
Jonah knew God and he talked to God. He even clearly knew God’s heart. In fact, it was because he knew how gracious and loving and forgiving God was that he didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place. Jonah knew God, but he hated those around him. He would rather have seen Nineveh burn along with all the children and babies and animals than to see those people come to repentance.
Jonah clearly had a thing or two to learn, and so do we. But graciously. God does not abandon us to our sinful attitudes and behavior. God went to great lengths to teach Jonah how much he cares for others. And God wanted Jonah to know that people have value and he loves them and redeems them.
And God goes to great lengths to love us and redeem us and transform us into his likeness. God was not done with Jonah even at the end of the Book. And he’s not done with us either. He disciplines those he loves. Hebrews 12:7 says that he tells us or tells us that when we face discipline, he’s treating us as sons.
And if we believe in Jesus, then according to John, chapter one, verse 12, we are his children. So let God transform your hearts. Do you want to end up like Jonah, sitting in the hot sun with an even hotter heart? Or will you let God transform you into the children that he has redeemed you to be? Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you that you love us. Thank you that you have redeemed us. And thank you that you don’t leave us in our sin. Thank you for the members of this church, and thank you for this church, that you love each of us. And thank you for the prayers and support that they provided to Sasha and us in our ministry over the years.
And thank you that every day you’re drawing us closer to you. We pray that we would not disobey, but that we would walk in obedience to you and recognize that any success in life, any success in ministry comes because of your work in us. In Jesus name, amen.