Jonah: Prideful Disobedience Sermon 1 PART 1

by Bill Klapwyk
(Hamilton, Montana, USA)

We are a Non-Denominational Church.

This is the first sermon in the 4 sermon series "Jonah: The World's Worst Disciple"

Bill Klapwyk

Attention Getter:

We all have certain hot button issues that we are passionate about.

We tend to get angry about those things and even have certain types of feelings for people associated with those issues.

Introduction:

When we look at the many things happening in our society today, we tend to get angry. We feel like society is directly attacking Christianity.

Transition:

How would we handle God calling us to witness to those associated with one of those hot button issues? We want to witness to the poor, widows, orphans, and those in need, right? Not so much when it comes to anyone associated with any hot button topic.

The problem is we find ourselves facing that dilemma right now. It’s a similar dilemma that Jonah found himself facing around 2800 years ago.

Read Jonah 1:1–16

We can become better disciples by looking at three truths:
1.God Cares About All of Creation
2.God’s Call isn’t Optional
3.Secular Society Sometimes Has Better Moral Integrity Than We Do.

God Cares About All of Creation

So many people have this idea that God created everything and is just sitting back unconcerned about His creation. We see in verse two that God knows everything that is happening in creation.

Read Jonah 1:2

There’s some important background information that we must know about Nineveh. Just a generation before Jonah, the Assyrians, conquered much of Israel’s land and oppressed Israel. So, Jonah, a prophet of God is called to go witness to a gentile nation that he would obviously have great disdain.

And we have historical evidence from archaeological digs that show how brutal and ruthless they were.
The Assyrians would rip people’s lips off for talking against the state. They would flay anyone who rebelled against them or refused to surrender to them. They are considered by some historians as the most ruthless nation in history.

We complain and call our secular society hostile to God and God’s people. Can you imagine how Jonah must have felt?
God’s calling him to go preach to Nineveh because God’s concerned about their wickedness.
The Hebrew word used here Ra’ means bad, evil, wicked as in ethically, morally evil.

I can imagine Jonah has no desire to go there. He has two reasons for not wanting to go there. First, he’s probably afraid to go there. He’s probably thinking “if I go there and start calling them out on their behavior, they’re going to kill me.”

And second, why would he want to go tell them God is angry with them, they were horrible oppressors that he would despise.

The same might be said of us. How much do we despise certain people? There are some people I think we would rather not see come to Christ. But we must remember God loves all people and Paul tells us in 1 Tim 2:3-6

Read 1 Timothy 2:3–6

God desires all people be saved. When we decide we don’t want to follow God’s call we are actually exhibiting the same prideful disobedience we see in Jonah. Which leads us to our second point.

God’s Call isn’t Optional

When God calls us to do something it’s not optional. We have a tendency to think that if I don’t do it then God will just get someone else to accomplish what He wants.
That clearly isn’t the case according to Jonah. He tried running from God and not going to Nineveh. We see the usual pattern God calls a prophet and the prophet gets up and goes. But Jonah instead of going where God wants, Nineveh, he gets up and goes in the opposite direction.

Nineveh was East of Jonah’s location and Tarshish was considered the most Westward point of the world at the time. Jonah was trying to flee as far away from Nineveh as he could. But God’s call isn’t optional.

He sets a storm on the sea that causes Phoenician sailors to pray to their gods. They were some of the best sailors in the world at the time and if their praying to their gods for help, you know the storm is bad. They eventually resort to throwing a man overboard in desperation to save the ship and themselves.

Jonah was sleeping down inside the ship and had to be roused by the ship master. His disobedience removed him so far from God’s presence that he couldn’t even be roused by God’s storm.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where God is calling you to something and you run from it? Has He ever done anything in your life to make you do it anyway?

I know I’ve been in that kind of situation more than once. And God always wins. How could we expect any different outcome? God is sovereign over all things and we think we could overcome that?

We can however remove ourselves from God’s presence so far that we no longer hear His voice.

When we do that, just like Jonah, God has to resort to drastic measures to get our attention. For me that was an accident that turned my life upside down. And in my time of disobedience, how many people’s lives could have been affected for God?

Can God use us in our disobedience? Of course He can. We see in Jonah where the Phoenician sailors gave sacrifices to God after the storm died down. But we have no indication as to whether that was a true conversion or just a sacrifice to another God of many gods they believed in.

I know God has used me in my disobedience, but I also know the blessings are not there, or at least they’re not the same. Because we have a disobedient heart and we even tend to not appreciate God’s work in our lives.

If we get back to any one of those hot button topics we might even think they don’t deserve God’s grace. And that leads us to our third point.