When God's Word Finds You

Transcript

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[0:00] Thank you, Marianne, for that reading. So now we go to our time for our sermon. We're beginning a new series on Jonah, just three weeks. It could have been longer, but I think we'll cover it. We'll get there. And what a great book. What an interesting book. And I think Victoria was pointing to something earlier, which is it sounds like a children's story, and we have whales and big fish and things like that, and it just sounds kind of magical and amazing. And there's a lot more to it. There's this huge word of redemption in it. There's this huge word of God sending power into the world. There's this sense that you cannot really escape from God. You cannot hide from Him, and that God wants good things for all people, not just His chosen people. And so there's just a lot going on in Jonah, and we're going to unpack some of it. We're not going to get to all of it in three weeks, but some of the highlights. And I remember now that we preached through Jonah. I haven't checked exactly. It was about four or five years ago, but I'm pretty confident that all the things that we're going to say here are going to actually be different than the things we said a while back, because as I understand it, when you go to the scripture, there's so much depth there that every

[1:12] passage of scripture that I've ever encountered, I think you could actually preach seven sermons out of. And the trick is not to preach all seven at once. You just have to do one at a time. So we're going to do one. The theme, larger theme of this whole series, and you've maybe seen it on some of the graphics that have come out in the email, is, should I not be concerned? And that's a quotation from the very last verse of this whole book, where God is saying to Jonah, shouldn't I be concerned about the city of Nineveh, which has 120,000 people in it who don't know their left hand from their right? Those are children, people who don't know good from evil. Should I not be concerned about other people in other parts of the world that don't know me yet? That are doing something wrong, that need to hear both my justice and my mercy. They need to hear my words spoken into them. And so the theme really is that God pulls us out of our safe and little areas, and he asks us to enter into a larger world and engage with a larger world. And so some of the themes that we saw in 1 Corinthians are kind of repeating in this book, which is kind of amazing. It's kind of great, is that God calls us to be engaged with the world, both the,

[2:27] the church and the world. And so we're going to be engaged with the world, and we're going to be engaged with the world. And so we're going to be engaged with the world. And so we're going to be trouble. And trials and sadness of the world. So that when people are broken in other parts of the world, we feel it because we're one body with them. But that God's heart beats for other people, even people who we might consider our enemies. And that's one of the themes we'll also see is that Jonah probably didn't want to go to Nineveh because he didn't like the Assyrians. He probably hated them. And we'll get into some of that later. In fact, I'm going to talk about that right now. So just a little bit of background. on the geopolitical scene of the time, Nineveh was the capital of what we know now as the Assyrian Empire. And it was a large empire. It covered a vast amount of land. It had thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people in it. And the Assyrians were the ones who destroyed and overtook the northern kingdom of what we call Israel. Israel used to be just Israel, then it divided into Israel and Judah, which is the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, which is always a little bit confusing. So when people say Israel, you have to say, is this before the

[3:31] split or after the split? Before the split, the whole thing was Israel. After the split, the northern part was Israel and the lower part was Judah, where Jerusalem was located. So those two divided countries that divided up, they were invaded by two different empires. And this gets a little confusing. So the northern kingdom was invaded by the Assyrians and the southern kingdom was invaded by the Babylonians. And so the southern kingdom was taken off into captivity into Babylon, from which then they returned later on. The northern kingdom was invaded by Assyria and they didn't survive in quite the same way that the southern kingdom survived. So the Assyrians did kind of maybe a more thorough job of destroying their culture and their national identity. And this is why one of the reasons why the Assyrians were hated is they would conquer countries and they would kind of forcibly relocate people everywhere so that they wouldn't sort of start up any troubles anymore. The interesting thing is that they almost are the same empire, though, the Babylonians and the Assyrians. The Babylonians were the southern part. Babylon was in the southern part of the Assyrian empire. And at a certain point in between these two invasions of Israel and Judah, the

[4:50] Babylonians revolted against the Assyrians and deposed them. And then they themselves became the rulers of that whole empire. So the Assyrian empire sort of then became the Babylonian empire. Although almost all the cities were the same, a lot of the languages were the same, a lot of the people were the same. It's just the center of power shifted from Nineveh in the north to Babylon in the south. So that's the Assyrian empire. Now, if you look through the literature that we have, the prophets, you'll hear a lot of the prophets very angry at Assyria. They have terrible things to say about Assyria. And the Assyrians acted very poorly. They were very bloody. They were very dangerous. They killed a lot of people. And that's how empires were and are, is when they take over a place to keep the peace, they just put down any kind of resistance. And they do that in a very bloody way, to make an example. The Romans did that. It happens over and over again. So the Assyrians were not loved. And Jonah had no love. So the Assyrians were not loved. And Jonah had no love. And Jonah had no love. And Jonah had no love. So that's the Assyrians. And we'll talk about some of the places coming up pretty soon. But Jonah was

[6:05] the court prophet of King Jeroboam II in the northern kingdom. So Jonah was from the northern kingdom. And the northern kingdom was threatened by Assyria. So he had no love for it. So we have a reference to Jonah, not just in the book of Jonah, but also in 2 Kings, he's mentioned as being the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. And so he was the court prophet of King Jeroboam II. about three miles from there. And so we were very close to Jonah's birthplace when we went on our

[7:02] trip to Israel. And Jonah, we have this book about him. And so we kind of get more. It's really great, you know, to get more of the personality of one of the prophets is an exciting thing. Now, again, I'm just going to go over through some of the places that we're going to read about as we read our first chapter. One is Nineveh. And I've mentioned that before. It's about 500 miles by air as the crow flies, as we say, from where Jonah is. So it'd be a long way to walk, but not impassable. You could get, you could join a caravan. You could get there in a matter of weeks.

[7:41] Definitely possible to get there. Definitely there were roads to get there. The problem wasn't his ability to get there. It was entirely something else. But Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. If there were 120,000 children in Nineveh, it means the overall population of the city could have been 500,000. A very large city for that time. We're talking about 12, 1300 BC, right? No, I'm sorry. That's not right. 600 BC or so. So the world was not that populous back then. Big cities were big, but not that big. Instead, Jonah goes to a town called Joppa to get on a boat. That's the modern day Joppa. It's right next to Tel Aviv. If you fly to Israel, you'll land right there. So you'll be very close to this port that he got on a ship. And the place that he flees to is always a question mark. We call it, it's called Tarshish. And there's some conjecture about where that place really is. It could be in Spain. It could be another word for Tarsus, which is where Paul grew up. But that's actually very close. It's just in the upper right hand corner of the Mediterranean Sea. So that wasn't very far away. But since we can't identify it, we have this Old Testament theologian named Klaus Westermann. He said, kind of famously, Tarshish is always just beyond where we can figure out where it is. So it kind of just functions in a great way. It functions in the sense that we can't figure out where it is. Really works for the story because he's going somewhere where we can't even find him. And so he thinks maybe God can't find him. And that's one of the themes that we'll see is that God actually can't find him.

[9:20] And that's one of the themes that we'll see is that God actually does find him. So with all that, I'm going to read our reading. And I'm reading from the New Revised Standard Version today. And I think that's the one that got printed in the bulletin as well. So let's go to Jonah chapter 1. I'll be reading just the first 16 verses and we'll save verse 17 for next week. Jonah 1.

[9:51] For their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid his fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

[10:13] But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea, that the ship threatened to sink. The ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, the sailors, and each cried to his God. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps the God will spare you. He said, The sailors said to one another, So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? And now the first time that Jonah actually speaks, he says, I am a Hebrew. He replied, I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

[11:30] Then the men were even more afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so. Then they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.

[12:02] Nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord, Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood. For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you. So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea seized from its raging.

[12:34] Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, Amen.

[12:55] Well, that's exciting. It's an exciting story. There's a lot of action, a lot of movement. They don't spend a lot of time in any one place. So there's a lot going on here. But what I want to do next, actually, and let's try to get to that next scene. Can you do that, Nathan?

[13:13] All right. So this is fun today. We're going to actually do a little bit of reading in Hebrew. Did you know that was going to happen today? You didn't. That's so exciting. Now you can see here, and if I could point, but the problem is if I could point in front of it, I would. But that's impossible. I don't know how to do that.

[13:30] But you can see on the screen, it's just the first verse of what I just read in the New Revised Standard Version. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai, saying, and then the next thing we say, of course, is go at once to Nineveh. And what I thought we could do today, is learn how to say this in Hebrew. Because it sounds awesome in Hebrew, but also there's something going on here. And I want to talk about this. Is if you look at, well, I'm going to talk first about the word of the Lord. Okay.

[14:06] This is how the book starts. And in fact, it's almost as if it were saying once upon a time. This is like how about five or six other prophetic books start. The word of the Lord came. To so-and-so. The word of the Lord came to so-and-so. And it's the exact same phrase. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah. And it's a way of starting a story. It's a way of saying that there's a narrative. It's a way of saying that God is about to give some instruction. And so some kind of obedience or action is now required right afterwards. But the word that we start with, and if you look at, you might have to look a little closely at the screen, is the challenge for us is the word order in English is different than the word order in Hebrew. And so you see those Hebrew words on your screen. And in fact, Hebrew is read from right to left. And we read from left to right. And so a person speaking Hebrew would never read it like this. They would rearrange everything. There are tiny numbers. And I have a copy here because I can't see very clearly. But there are numbers next to each Hebrew word. And you'll see that the Hebrew and the English do start with the same word. Now, which we can pronounce zva or wa. But then you have to skip over from word and lord and you get to came.

[15:29] And that's pronounced yehi. I like to think of it as like yee-haw, like it's exciting that God sent his word, but you just say it as yehi. And so when you have va yehi, it came to be or it came to pass. Or if we want to make it a little more, kind of fun for us, like a story. Once upon a time, this is how a story starts. But it's kind of more like, it's more kind of, more than just a fairy tale, more than just a story. It's this moment where God breaks through from the vast expanse of the universe and breaks into one person's life. It came to be, it happened that God broke through in this moment and found one individual, va yehi. It came to be, once upon a time, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. So let's go to the next word because we're going to have, here's, I'm going to give it away now. I'm going to ask the kids and any adults, the adults don't do this, but I'm going to ask the kids to memorize this first verse, it's very short, in both Hebrew and English. We're going to up the stakes now. And if they can say them both, you don't have to be able to read Hebrew. You just have to read the alliteration or the, what's called the transliteration, how we pronounce it. If you can say it in Hebrew and English next week on Zoom during the worship service,

[16:52] we'll give you another box of candy or something else. We have to find some other kind of prize, maybe we'll see. So, now is va, yehi, came. And then if you see the numbers, the word for word is debar or devar. The word, now the word, va yeha debar. And then the number four, you'll see under there it says YHWH, which is the name of God. And so we might pronounce this as Yahweh, which means I am who I am. But when people, especially people from Israel or people in the Jewish faith read it, they don't say Yahweh because that's too holy to say. So they'll actually say Adonai, which means the Lord. And so they kind of, it's too holy to say God's name. So we could say it as Adonai. That's not a problem. They just do the same thing that they do. But really, if you really wanted to be strictly pronouncing, you would say Yahweh.

[17:53] Now the word of the Lord, Yahweh. And now we have just basically a preposition, two. Number five, el. And then the order pretty much goes the same. El Yonah, Jonah's name is Yonah. Ben means son. It's very easy. So if you have a son, you don't name him Ben, but he is your Ben. So your son is your Ben.

[18:20] And then who is he the son of? He's the son of somebody named Amittai. And so that number eight is just a proper name, just like number six is. And then there's sort of a participle here, which has two words saying l'mor. Okay. So if we were to put this all together, it would sound like this. And the, you know, the great thing kids is you can go back, on YouTube and come to this exact moment. And you can listen to me saying this, but, and I might be making a few mistakes, but you can just listen to how I say this. And then if you can practice that, plus look at, you know, this stuff and I'll send it home, transliterated so it's easy to pronounce. But this is what it would sound like a little bit. If a Hebrew person were to read this, I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, but this is what it would sound like. It would sound like this.

[19:11] Vayehi dabar Adonai, El Eona ben Amitai l'mor. The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amitai. Literally it was, it came to be, or once upon a time that the word of Adonai Yahweh to Jonah the son of Amitai came saying. Now, what did he say? Well, we'll get that.

[19:38] But before we do that, I want you to think that the word, of the Lord came to Jonah. The word came to Jonah. It broke through from the vast expanse of the universe into this individual person in this individual place and this individual time. And one of the themes I also want us to develop all along here is to be asking ourselves before we go any further, think about when or if the word once upon a time, Vayehi, has the word come to you?

[20:17] Has the word come to you? Did the Lord speak to you? And I think, of course, one of the themes we want to develop is that when we receive that Lord, we certainly want to be more obedient than Jonah was. Certainly we want to be more obedient than Jonah was and to operate out of better motives than Jonah operated out of. He stands as a negative example of what not to do in the scripture. But yet he does come through in some great ways. Has the word of the Lord come to you? And if it hasn't, that you can identify if it hasn't, then I would say it hasn't yet. But yet it may. Maybe it's because you're young or maybe because you feel like there's this distance between you and God that hasn't been overcome. Both of those things I think can change. And we can talk about that. But if the word has come to you, what did it say? Be asking yourselves that. If you want to put it in the chat, you can. Whatever the Lord said to you, it was a word out of the universe, once upon a time, came to you. Write it down. Absolutely. We want to share that as testimony with everybody else. And then when it comes to time to look at the chat log, people can take a look at that. I'll tell you that it has happened a few times to me. And it really feels like a holy moment.

[21:37] You're not going to miss it when it happens. It's not going to be something that you'll be confused about, like, did that actually happen? No, you'll know. It's ominous and it's amazing. And in my experience, it always calls for some action on the part of the person who receives that word. And there was a time I heard it and I changed my profession. And I quit being an engineer and I enrolled in the seminary. Like, it was in that moment I could sense it. And that word actually came through somebody else, but it was really, it was the word of the Lord. So don't discount that when you speak to other people, the Lord may be speaking through you to them. And it was just the right moment, the right time, the right place. And I heard the voice and I said, I love what I'm doing as an engineer. It's a great job. I have great friends. I have great coworkers.

[22:26] I need to stop making money and start spending money on my education and develop even more debt, you know. But it all paid off. It's all good, God. So I called for action. I quit. I moved to Minnesota. I, uh, I, uh, I used to have a Mustang convertible that's long gone. I sold or gave away all my possessions except for two boxes, two small boxes that I mailed ahead to the seminary. And everything else fit in the convertible Mustang, which wasn't, didn't have not, did not have a lot of room in it at all. I started over a whole new life and it was the best decision I made.

[23:02] There was a time I heard the word of the Lord and all doubts were removed from me that were before me about which path to take in a confusing time of life in ministry. This is later on in my life where I was confused about where I should go, what I should do, how I should approach some difficult situations that were going on. And the word came clearly and it came in a moment of solitude. It came in a moment of silence. It didn't come. This time it didn't come through another person. It came through, uh, just being attentive and listening and being in a posture of, of receiving. And, and I did, I did receive it. And there was then no, there was no confusion. And I knew exactly what, um, I needed to do.

[23:49] So I want you to be thinking about this book in those terms too. I don't want this just to be a literary study or a history study or a linguistic study. As fun as those things are, uh, we can change the slide now. I just realized we can change the slide back to just, then you can see the stained glass window. That's nice. Um, I don't want it. I do want it to be authentic. I want it to be authentic. I want it to be authentic. I want it to be authentic. challenges both in church life, in civic life, in health life, in sort of the world's life. I think now is the time. Anxiety has its place. We're going to be anxious about it, but also this is a time to be listening to what the Lord will say, what word will he send, and what action will he ask us to take? What do we need to do next? So let's be thinking about that as we look at this series. Now, I want to give you a quick spoiler alert for Jonah, okay? God's word tells him that he is concerned for the city of Nineveh. God is concerned for Nineveh for a variety of reasons, partly because it's the capital of Assyria, and Assyria is a wretched, horrible empire that survives on violence. And so, of course, God is angry about it, but the story is going to reveal

[25:31] that God is actually merciful and gracious and just. And so, God's justice and his anger at the conduct of the Assyrian empire is not going to be taken over, is only going to be taken over by his mercy and his grace. And so, God can operate out of both of those realms, and I think that's the challenge for us as humans, is to operate both out of justice and mercy at the same time as God does. God is much better at that than we are. Now, the story, so the story reveals something about God, but it really reveals a lot about justice. God is much better at that than we are. Now, the story, so the story reveals something about God, but it really reveals a lot about justice. God is much better at that than we are. He was somebody from the preferred religious establishment. He was from God's chosen people. He was in the court of King Jeroboam II, so he had some privilege. He had some things going for him. And he ends up meeting all these people outside the preferred religious establishment, pagan people. And the interesting thing is we're going to see in just a minute that all these other people end up looking a lot better than Jonah, which is crazy. Knowing what he knows, having spoken for the Lord in the royal court,

[26:42] knowing what he knows about the scriptures, knowing what he knows about the Lord, he should have been a shining light to these people, but yet instead, these people outshine him in all sorts of ways. I'm talking about the people on the boat with him, and eventually the people of Nineveh actually turn. So what does God say? What does God say to Jonah? And we know this. He says, It came to be that the word of Yahweh, or Adonai, to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it. So you have a word from the Lord that they're doing something wrong. Cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. So what is God saying to Jonah? He's saying, Go. Go. Get up out of your chair, put on your shoes, put on your cloak, pack a bag with snacks, food, get your wallet, start walking. The only way to get to Nineveh is to walk. There's no boats there. It's not a seaport. It's landlocked. Get going. Go and do what, though? Well, you have to address their wickedness. You have to call them out on what they're doing, because it's, wrong.

[28:07] And go ahead and take a look at your Bible now, if you have a chance, or if you want to look at the bulletin with the verse numbers. I want to go through this story relatively quickly. And there's a few things that may be familiar, but I think we're going to draw out some things that are new for us. So the first thing we notice is, of course, Jonah disobeys. He goes to Tarshish. Klaus Westerman called it the place just beyond where people can find it. But we know that the psalmist, tells us that we cannot even cross the sea to hide from God's presence. God will always find us no matter where we go. And that shouldn't be a scary thing. That should be a great thing. Where can I go to escape your spirit? If I travel across the furthest reaches of the sea, even there, you will find me. So, you know, Jonah should have been reading his psalm book that he might have had in his pocket and said, this is a lost cause. I really cannot hide from him. I want you to notice if you read through this, and as I was reading, I tried to make a little bit of emphasis. on it, that there's this sort of repetition of words. So there's, it's almost poetic that Jonah goes down several times. And each time he goes down, he's going further away from God. So he

[29:16] goes down to Joppa from the northern kingdom. He goes down. Then he goes down into the ship. When he's in the ship, the storm starts. What do you do when a storm starts? Instead of helping these other guys throw things overboard, he goes down into the hold of the ship and takes a nap, which is interesting. And then eventually when he's thrown overboard, he goes down and down and down into the ocean. And there's this constant movement, both away from God and down, down, down into this place where he, he is making himself less and less and less because of his disobedience. He keeps moving further from God, moving down. It's a, it's a word picture. And the scriptures operate like this. Often there's this word picture. That the person who wrote this book, and if it was Jonah, then it was Jonah. If the person who wrote this book used these word pictures and this repetition of word phrases to, to, to almost build a staircase here. And as you're telling the story, you're also seeing the staircase in your mind and is visualizing this whole story. So it's because, you know, they didn't have movies or TV or things like that. They couldn't, they could only rely on the richness of the literary word to paint these massive,

[30:33] and, and wonderful pictures. So he goes down and down, down. And if you want to look through Jonah yourself, you'll find other places where words are repeated. You'll find patterns of parallels or mirroring. It's called chiasm. And all of chapter one is a chiasm that centers around verse nine. I'll leave that as a exercise at home for people like Natalie, because she loves that stuff. So that's, that's, you can look for that yourself. I'm not going to spend the time on it this morning. Then I want you to notice, that there are these sailors with him. And as I said, they came out looking much better than Jonah. The first thing they do when the, when the storm comes is they pray to their own gods. They pray to their own pagan gods, since they don't know any better. And one of the, one of the Hebrew, one of the Jewish scholars who commented on this book, it was thought that there were 70 nations in the world. There's more than 70 nations in this world. There's well over, you know, you know how many, there's more, 180 or so. But they thought, there were 70 nations in the world. And so the Jewish scholar, even though it doesn't say this in Jonah, thought that there were 70 sailors on this ship and each one was praying to the God of their

[31:44] own nation. And so all of the world's pagan gods were represented on the ship. Now it doesn't say that, but I like the word image. I like the idea that they had here is that, that all of these false gods are unable to stop the storm. But the true God whom we call the Lord, Yahweh or Adonai, if you want to say it that way, only the Lord is able to stop the storm. And so the sailors start off praying to their own God. That does not avail them at all. They start throwing things overboard. That doesn't help either, right? And then they draw lots and they realize that Jonah is the one that, or Jonah says, you should throw me overboard, you know, and they don't want to hurt him. So they look good because they don't want to, they don't want to be guilty of his blood. They think he might yet, be innocent. So then they even try harder. They try to row back to the shore, even though they know Jonah is the problem here and that by throwing him overboard, they might save themselves. And if, even if there weren't 70 people, say there were 20 people and the 20 people said, if we sacrifice this one person and we all live, or if we do nothing and we, all of us die, even from a utilitarian point of view, it kind of makes sense to sacrifice the one person,

[32:59] but they don't do that. They throw back to the shore and then the storm gets worse. It's almost as if God is saying, I love that you're trying to be selfless like this and spare this man's life, but that's not how this is going to play out. You have to throw him overboard. I have a plan for him that's different from this and I need to show you something. And so that's what God does.

[33:25] And so they finally, they consent to throw him overboard. But what's interesting is now they start praying, not to their own gods, but to the Lord. And if you look in the Bible passage there, you'll find the word Lord is capital L and sometimes it's lowercase, lower caps, but it's still all uppercase O-R-D. That's whenever you see that, that's in the Bible where the word Yahweh or Adonai is, it's Lord. That's the true name of God. There's these other names for God. And so you have gods in this story, you have God or gods with lowercase. Those are the pagan gods. And those words would sometimes be El.

[34:03] And that's a more generic God, a pagan God. So they stop praying to their pagan gods and they start praying to Yahweh, to the Lord. And once they do that and they throw him overboard, the Lord, God, calms the storm. And it says they fear God greatly in that moment. And I think it is because they're terrified. There's this storm. There's this actual fear because their lives are in danger. But then it's later on, it says, Then they learn to fear the Lord. And that's that other kind of fear that we see very often in the Bible, which doesn't mean you're terrified, although you probably should be on some level, but it means you have this deep reverence and respect and you're awestruck at the power and wonder of the Lord. It's that other kind of fear of the Lord that they develop. And that's the kind of fear of the Lord that Jonah should have had. See, that's the interesting thing. God speaks not with words, but he speaks to them by calming the storm. And they are in this moment of fear and awe and reverence of the Lord. And that's how Jonah should have been. When ha-yehi, dabar Adonai, when the word of the Lord came to him, he should have had that moment like these sailors had in this moment. And yet he ran away. That's what Jonah should have had.

[35:31] What happens next is these men, have already converted to Judaism, basically, right? Because if you look at the end, it says, they make sacrifices to the Lord and they make vows. It doesn't say what they vow to, but it's pretty clear that they vow to follow the Lord, Yahweh, only. That they've given up their pagan gods because those gods didn't save them, but the Lord did. So here we have pagans, people whom the prophets of Israel often have negative things to say, about showing themselves far more responsive and far more obedient to the Lord, whom they just met. Jonah's had a lifetime to get this right. And these people just met the Lord and they're getting it right. And so now you might even be wondering to yourself, could this be foreshadowing a little bit? The way these sailors, these pagans respond to the Lord, could this be foreshadowing what will happen later in the book when the people of Nineveh, hear the word of the Lord? How will they respond? Will they respond as well to it? And the spoiler alert is, yes, of course they will. And that's what makes Jonah so angry later on. Okay. So the people of Nineveh also, who are pagans, are going to turn completely around and show themselves to be decent people.

[36:55] So in all of this, and I think I've said some of this before, is that we might want to draw a little bit of a line here. And I think that's what we're going to do. So we're going to draw a little bit of a line here. And I think that's what we're going to draw a little bit of a line here. So we're going to draw a little bit of a parallel to our time, where there are so many things going on in the world that the Lord is angry about. The wickedness of this world has come before the Lord and he has a word to speak against it.

[37:19] And I sometimes think I see people who aren't in the church responding to it better than people who are in the church. And it's kind of like Jonah and these sailors, or Jonah and the people of Nineveh. And I scratch my head at that, and I probably would have to point my finger at myself about that too, is that why is the church so far behind on issues of race, on issues of equality, on issues of sexism, on issues of sexual assault and things like that? The world is ahead of us. And it shouldn't be because we have the word of the Lord that speaks to us about how we should treat each other. And yet we're behind. And it breaks my heart. And so I'm hoping as part of this that, the word that we receive will be a word to act and to get ahead of the world, at least, or at least to catch up. I think that may be, but I don't want to, if the Lord says something else to you at the end of these three weeks, by all means go with that. But I feel like that's what the Lord has been saying to me more in murmurings and whisperings over the last year or two. Why is the church behind the world on so many issues? Why is Jonah behind? Why is Jonah behind these sailors? Why is Jonah behind Nineveh? Why do these other people respond so well to the word of the Lord, but the chosen people run away?

[38:46] Why? We'll find out. We'll have to think about it. We're almost done, but I want us to think again a little bit about Jonah. And really, there's this question that really is hanging over this whole book, and it never truly gets answered until chapter four, which is the question of why is Jonah behind the world? Which is, Victoria is going to preach, and I'm going to steal a little bit of her thunder. I'm sorry, but you'll work around it. Is why didn't Jonah go in the first place? How hard is it to get up and start walking? It's just as much work to go down to the ship and go somewhere else as it is to go to Nineveh and proclaim the word of the Lord. So why didn't he go?

[39:25] Well, we find out in chapter four that Jonah is actually worried that God will be merciful to the people that he hates. Which is terrible. You know, like, how could we limit God's mercy to somebody else? That's, that's, I can't imagine. I mean, I can imagine it, and I can't imagine. And I think we can all imagine it. He doesn't want good things to happen for other people. It's easier to keep people at a distance if, if they're far away, and I don't mix with them, and something terrible happens to them, then that's just fine. But if I'm entering into their struggles and their troubles in a constructive way, if I'm engaged with other people, if I see them as part of one big body, and they feel pain, do we not all feel pain? If they rejoice, should we not all rejoice with them? If we have that connection with other people, it would break our heart to think that they might get hurt, or that they have been hurt, or shot, or wounded, or anything.

[40:26] At one point, Jonah even, when in chapter four again, or not chapter four, but later in the book says, he goes and he finds a nice hill to sit on. It's like the best seats. It's like, it's like having a widescreen TV, actually. A hill from which he can sit and watch fire rain down on Nineveh. He wants a front row seat to the destruction. And then when God doesn't do it, he's angry, right? He really wants to see this place burned down. He wants good seats for the show. And so a lot of things get revealed about Jonah, right? He's disobedient. He's possibly racist, or at least he's a nationalist. He favors his own nation over another nation. Now in a little bit in his defense, the Assyrians were terrible, and they had done terrible things. And we're going to do even more terrible things to his own country. But God, we know what Jesus says. He hadn't said it yet, but we are to love our enemies and pray for them. And that teaching wasn't absent from the Old Testament either.

[41:29] Jonah wasn't merciful. He wasn't concerned for other people. He had lost that wonder and awe at Hadavar, Adonai, the word of the Lord, that had already come to him. So Jonah's a mess. I really hope that Jonah did write this book and not somebody else, because it would have shown that he had truly grown through this. You grow so much that you could put down in writing all the mistakes that you made previously. If you hadn't grown, you wouldn't have been able to do this. You would not put all that stuff down. So I hope part of the salvation, part of the redemption, part of the mercy that comes out of this is for Jonah himself, that he learned something when God was merciful to Nineveh.

[42:15] And finally, this is the last, pretty much the last thing I'll say. This story, and we're still just introducing this book, this story reveals a lot about God. His word comes to us. We can't get away from him. People are eager to believe in him. People believe in him and turn to him. God has this amazing power. He displays his power and people turn to him. He is concerned and he's merciful and he's just all at the same time. He holds all those things together in a great tension. He hates the sin of Assyria, but he loves the sinners that live in its capital city. And the book ends with the line, which is the theme and the name of our series. If you look at it at the very end of chapter four, God says, And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals. God even cares about the animals, which I love. The ones who don't know their right from their left are the same ones as maybe you've had underfoot in your house. And I have one still who doesn't quite know left from right, but you know what I mean. They're children, the littlest children. Innocent. They don't know left from right or right from wrong.

[43:34] Yet. Is God going to destroy that city? He's concerned about that city and the children in it and even the animals in it. God cares about the distant country. God cares about even the oppressors. God sends his word of judgment and mercy to them through his prophet. And his prophet finally will see, eventually, after he grows a bit, will finally go and speak to them.

[44:03] That's coming up in future weeks. But I want you to start thinking now. We have three weeks. But start thinking now. Once upon a time, the word of the Lord will come to you. Vayehi, Dabad, Adonai, El. And put your name here. You could even memorize it that way, too. The word of the Lord will come to you. To you. And the word of the Lord comes with an expectation of some kind of action. Go and enter the suffering of your enemy. Bring them to be repentance. Care for them. Be obedient. That's what God said to Jonah.

[44:46] But pay attention in these next three weeks and beyond. What is the Lord saying to you? What is his word into your life? What is the action that he asks you to take? Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word.

[45:05] And not just this word on the paper, the text that we could read and close and put away if we wanted to. But Lord, we thank you for your living word that speaks into our lives, sometimes through other people.

[45:20] Sometimes in the still small voice. Sometimes in murmurs and whispers. But then in great clarity. Lord, my fervent prayer is in these next weeks and beyond. We would all, in one way or another, pray for you. Father, hear your word for us. And act upon the things you tell us to do. And we ask it in Jesus' name.