I was working in the ad building at BJ, the Dean of the School of Fine Arts came in, Dr. Gustafson, and we have some of his hymns, the music, a couple at least in our hymnal. Tall, very gracious man, imposing figure. I had known him somewhat previously, but he was looking for another one of the workers that was an accomplished pianist that was some university function or something they needed a pianist for with somewhat short notice. And he came by to see if he was there. I said, no, he's not here. I said, I can play the right hand to when I survey. And he looked at me and smiled. Don't call us, we'll call you. So anyway, I'm glad we have multiple pianists to call upon, and we thank you for all of your ministry to us. I want you to turn tonight, if you would, to the Prophet Jonah, continuing our studies in the Minor Prophets. I was looking through my notes, and we did a series through the Minor Prophets a long time ago. almost as long ago as we celebrated in our anniversary banquet last month. It was an early study. We visited Jonah again as a series. To me, it doesn't seem quite as long, but it was 18 years ago. I'm going to ask, I don't know, some of these young people if they remember that series. But what I intend to do with Jonah at this time We'll perhaps parallel that series very closely because this is one of the prophets that I think it's worthy for us to pause and tarry for a while. I mentioned last time that we looked at the little prophecy of Obadiah, one chapter. that as we come to these minor prophets, the prevailing theme is rebuke of the nation of Israel itself for its apostasy, calling them back to the covenant, calling them back to their God. But as we saw last time, that wasn't the whole of their ministry. And Obadiah's book is given to give a prophecy against Edom, against the ungodly. Well, Jonah is a prophecy that, well, it speaks of others. It speaks of a Gentile capital, as we'll find. But I think in more ways than any else, it speaks to us. And so I want to tarry in Jonah a little while. Let's read together tonight chapter one. Now the word of the Lord came into Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa. He found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. The Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his God, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him, what meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God. If so be that God will think upon us that we perish not. And they said, everyone to his fellow come. Let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil has come upon us. What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? What is thy country, and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am in Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, what shall we do unto thee that the sea may be calm unto us? For the sea wrought and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, take me up and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you. for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore, they cried unto the Lord and said, we beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea and the sea ceased from her raging. And the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. We'll end our reading. We trust again the Lord to bless the reading of a familiar portion of his word. Let's bow our heads together. Our Heavenly Father, we rejoice tonight to sing your praises with your people. And we come asking, as we come to the close of this Sabbath together, that you will give us pause to hear again a portion of your word Lord, that you might take it up by your spirit and speak to the different needs that we each bring. And give us grace to preach and grace to hear. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. When we come tonight to this little prophecy of Jonah, we could, I guess, say perhaps in many ways Jonah's the most familiar of all the minor prophets. I think the reason for that is, at least for those of us that were brought up in church, Jonah is an easy story to tell and keep the attention of children. I mean, it's a remarkable story indeed. A man thrown into the sea and swallowed by a great fish, and yet he lives and tells the story. Well, that'll get the attention of children. It's a story that, well, it has great application for children. Jonah was a prophet. God gave him a job to do. Jonah refused to do the job, and he got punished for it. What better story could you give for a child? Obedience. Obedience is the way to happiness, all of these things. It may be that some of these lessons of the story that are on the surface of it would be good lessons for adults as well. Well, there's no fault in having the story be familiar to children. There's no fault. There's certainly every advantage to a story having something in it so striking that it grasps our attention. But Jonah is a book that is far more about the mere question of disobedience of this prophet and the remarkable story of a man swallowed by a great fish. Jonah is a book that searches our hearts. I have mentioned more than once in the pulpit that the Lord broke an airplane once for me to read Hugh Martin's commentary on Jonah. If I could elaborate on that story for just a moment, It was the first time I think I had gone to our church in Vancouver. In those days, somewhat still today, you scope for the best price you can find. And I had a flight from Charlotte to Seattle, Tiedemont Airlines. Man, we miss them. But they had one plane, a 737, every day from Charlotte to Seattle, refueled, loaded up, came back home. Somebody drove the three hours down to pick me up from the church. On the return trip, one of the laymen in the church was taking me back. That was an interesting journey for a lot of other reasons. I had grown up a Baptist. I'd never been around a Pato Baptist that was more dogmatic in his views of baptism than Baptists were, but that's its own story. But when we got to the Seattle airport, the line was almost out the door for the Piedmont counter. Something was wrong, and the plane hadn't come. and they were rebooking everybody. I got through the line, got rebooked through San Francisco, then Atlanta, then Charlotte, and then home to having done an all-nighter, come straight into the pulpit. But for 10 hours, I sat in Seattle. For the couple of hours in the airport in San Francisco, the cross-continental flight through the night, all I had was a Bible and Hugh Martin on Jonah. And as I began to read Hugh Martin, my heart was smitten. A book I thought I knew, a heart I thought I knew. And well, there's a message in Jonah for us all. Jonah is a book really about the sovereignty of God. We have that giant phrase in the midst of this prophecy. Salvation is of the Lord. And I had certain thoughts about what God was going to do in our ministry. We were a year perhaps into the ministry at that point. And nothing that I had expected to happen was happening. Different things were happening to be sure. And as I read through this prophecy, Jonah's a man who had a heart for God, a burden for the people of God, and some ideas about what God was going to do, what God was going to use him to do, and dare we say some thoughts about what God ought to do, and when God chose to do something different. It almost ruined him. Jonah is, it's a word I say for us. If you look at the book, it is remarkable in a lot of ways. Commentators speak of it even for its literary style. The nature of the book and its parallelisms. If you look at the four chapters, there's a sequence in the story. In chapter one, the prophets call to do a task, but he's disobedient. In chapter 2, he's in the belly of the fish. There's prayer. He'd probably pray if we had been swallowed by a whale too. Prayer and confession. We come to chapter 3. The call of God is reissued verbatim, virtually to Jonah. This time he obeys, instead of disobeys. And then we come to chapter 4, and we find prayer again. But this time, not a prayer of confession. Amazingly, a prayer of complaint. And so it captures the attention of scholars for all of those literary reasons as well. Jonah's a prophet that figures quite prominently in the New Testament scriptures. Christ references Jonah on multiple occasions. He references Jonah with regard to himself. He says a greater than Jonah is here. Jonah has a theme, I think, that perhaps often gets overlooked in the story about the great fish. So I want in these weeks to try and examine, again, this remarkable prophecy. Coming this evening really just to give some background, doctrinal and historical background, really, to the book. Jonah was a minister in contemporary times with Amos and Joel, Isaiah. He ministered probably about halfway between the severance of the 10 tribes under Jeroboam, so Solomon's son, and the season in which the tribes were overturned by Assyria in 722. So he's ministering in the middle of the history of the northern kingdom. He comes right on the heels, really, of the ministry of Elisha. Elijah and Elisha, prophets of fire and brimstone. They preached mightily. God used them to work miraculous deeds. It's one of those few windows in the scripture of the extraordinary operations of the Spirit of God through His people. So Jonah was probably schooled. in the school of the prophets and had seen thunderous preaching in the previous generation and perhaps was willing and able and desirous to do the same. But interestingly, that's not what God called Jonah to do. We only have two records in scripture of the ministry of Jonah and of his sermons. If you look back in 2 Kings chapter 14, we'll not turn it up, but it's recorded there that God gave Jonah to preach a message to Jeroboam II with regard to prosperity in Israel. That they would reclaim lands that they'd long ago lost by their enemies. And so this restoration, this season of prosperity, it said, which God had spoken through the word of Jonah, the son of Amittai. And then we have his book, which is, well, his five-word sermon to Nineveh and Assyria. And I've always felt it was remarkable what God asked Jonah to do, to preach a message of earthly prosperity to a nation that is on the verge of chastening from the hand of God. And then he preached to the Ninevites a message of judgment, chastening to Gentile people that were on the verge of revival. And so God indeed called him to preach some remarkable Messages. And I suggest perhaps messages that he was surprised and perhaps a little uncomfortable preaching. It didn't fit with what he expected. It didn't fit with what others had been called to preach and what he thought he would be called in line to do himself. Sin was rampant in Israel. Pentateuch was ignored, but what God had put forth in the books of Moses was quite relevant to the people of those times. He had spoken about days in which if they entered into apostasy, he would scatter them abroad among the heathen. And that's what Jonah's contemporaries and even those that came after would preach. That's what would occur. But Jonah wasn't called to preach that to his people. He was called to do something different. If you look at what God called Jonah to do in going to Nineveh, in many ways, Jonah's ministry was to be a harbinger, could we not say, of the whole New Testament season. When God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, beyond that when God intervened in Nineveh, and sent repentance and changed hearts to the Ninevites, His judgment was turned away. And so revival came to Nineveh, while Israel was still ever deepening in her apostasy. In some ways, what had happened, or what God called Jonah to be in the middle of happening, was a provocation of Israel. A provocation of them to jealousy. Turn back with me, if you would, to the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 32. And remember, Deuteronomy is that sermon. The whole book is really a sermon. that God gave through Moses to the people just before their entering into the land. Deuteronomy 32. Let's begin in verse 15. But Yeshua waxed fat and kicked. Thou art waxed and fat. Thou art grown thick. Thou art covered with fatness. Then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods. With abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God. To gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. of the rock that begat thee, thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end shall be, for they are a very forward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They provoke me to anger with their vanities. And I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." Remarkable in this song of Moses, really the prophecy of Israel's history. What happened? in these days in which Elijah and Elisha, Jonah's contemporaries, prophesied. Israel had followed the ways of the heathen. To them, their god was their national god. The other nations had their gods. And they began to forsake even the ways of their god and peer into the ways of the other nations. They incorporated their other nations' sins. Ahab has remarked that it was almost as if it had become a light thing for him merely to walk in the apostasy of Jeroboam, his forerunner. Now he embraced the sins of the heathen that surrounded him. And the way the Lord phrases it in Deuteronomy, the way it has worked and is working out even now in history, Israel provoked God to jealousy by following those things which are no gods. God said, I'm going to provoke you to jealousy by calling to myself a people which are not a people. We've seen something of that in Hosea, but that reference Paul borrows in Romans. That reference to Israel so far gone in its sin that they were not a people. They were brought back. But what a picture. God in this midway point, if you will, in the history of the nation, does a thing. A real thing. It's a microcosm of the whole New Testament Scriptures. He goes to bless a Gentile city. the capital of Assyria, the leading nation and city in the Gentile world at the time, the forerunner to the great empires we read of in Daniel. And he visits them with mercy and blessing and salvation, testifying to his own people, provoking them to jealousy through a people which were not a people. Well, isn't that what we find in the New Testament Scriptures? What will we read in the next chapters? I'm again amazed at the conjunction of our studies. Romans 10-11 or 9-11. God is provoking Israel to jealousy through His visiting and blessing the Gentiles to call out of them who are not a people, a people for His name. This should have been a happy task for Jonah. It should have been an awakening reality for Israel. I was very tempted tonight to bring Hugh Martin and just read you page after page his eloquent use of the language and his fervent understanding of the gospel. But just working through and perhaps imagine some eloquence on top of these words. But Israel in her seasons of blessing, in her seasons of reviving and spiritual understanding, was mindful that her position was one of sheer grace. Israel didn't deserve to be blessed. God had said in the days of the Exodus, I didn't choose you because you were better than any other people, that you were more numerous than any other people. You were the least of people. I chose you because I chose you. I loved you because I loved you. And when Israel understood that her standing was one of grace, there was no barrier or hindrance to Gentiles being accepted and received on the same terms. But when Israel moved into a position of apostasy, of self-righteousness, The Gentiles became lesser people than themselves. And they turned grace and privilege into pride and boastfulness. Here's a season where God is beginning a work to challenge and provoke Israel to jealousy. It's interesting that as God would glorify himself in this mercy to Nineveh, God doesn't use jealousy the way that we use jealousy. He's not just teasing Nineveh. He's not just teasing Gentiles today to flirt with us for a little while to get Israel's attention. And then Israel finally wakes up and says, we better get back to God. And then he just throws us away. No, his wooings and his movings among the Ninevites and among us Gentiles today are quite real. He will use the blessing of Gentiles to provoke Israel to jealousy. We'll see in chapter 11 of the glorious day in which Israel's received again. But we won't be cast off. The church will just be all the more full in those days. So Jonah is a book, it's a ministry, it's a prophecy of grace. And Jonah was a good man, a prophet of God, who had a heart for the things of God, but he struggled letting grace completely capture him. God called him to be his instrument in taking a message to Nineveh. Even from what he was told, a message of judgment. But we'll learn later in the book that he knew there was something else going on. And what smote me that long day and longer night in the plane, having Hugh Martin preach to my soul. There was nothing really wrong with what Jonah wanted God to do. which obviously was bless and change Israel. What was wrong is Jonah's unwillingness to let God be God. To let God do what he wanted to do. To trust God with the outcome. And I think perhaps among the best of us with the most desires for his kingdom, we can get off track there ourselves. So I trust in the next weeks as we look at the history, the ministry and message and the outworkings of Jonah, the Lord might humble and prepare us to better serve and pray and minister in the perplexing days in which we live too. Let's bow our heads together. Heavenly Father, we thank you tonight that in your word you don't merely record as mere human works do the good pieces of the lives of heroes. Lord, you deal honestly with us, and you challenge us, and we pray that you might do that very thing as we consider something of this wayward prophet. Lord, bless us tonight. Help us as we go to our homes, to our varied occupations. Give us grace to shine as lights in the midst of this crooked and perverse generation. We pray it all in Jesus' worthy name. Amen.