At the church where I serve we gather together as a
community of faith to create the space where people can explore faith, grow in
their faith, and experience genuine and authentic community. And as part of our
time together, we examine the message and teachings of the letters that make up
the Bible. What is so fascinating about the letters that make up the Bible is
that they are timeless and timely.
On the one hand, the message of the letters that make up the
Bible are timeless. The truths contained in these letters transcend time. At
the same time, the message of the letters that make up the Bible are timely.
The truths contained in these letters speak to the times and circumstances that
we experience in life. However, while we often talk about the reality that the
letters that make up the Bible are timeless and timely, there are some parts of
the Bible that we spend more time in than others.
For example, most people like to spend time reading the four
accounts of Jesus life in the Bible, which are referred to as the gospels. Many
people spend time reading from the wisdom that comes from the book of Proverbs.
Many people spend time in the book of Psalms as a source of comfort and
encouragement. Many people spend time in the letters that were written by the
Apostle Paul for doctrine and theology.
Yet, for the vast majority of people, there is a section of
the letters that make up the Bible that most people spend very little time in.
I know for me personally, I never really spend much time in this section of the
Bible until I went to study to be a pastor. And that section that people spend
little time is in the middle of the Bible and is called the prophets.
However, when we fail to spend time in these letters, we
miss a part of the picture of the story of God and God’s activity in the world.
When we fail to spend time in these letters, we miss out on gaining a fuller
understanding of who we are, who God is, and how God engages and enters into
our story.
So for the next several weeks, at the church where I serve, we
are going to spend our time together in a sermon series entitled when God
speaks. During this series, we are going to spend our time together looking at
these letters that we often have a tendency to skip over. During this series,
we are going to discover, who wrote these letters that we have a tendency to
skip over. We are going to discover who these letters that
we have a tendency to skip over were written to.
We are going to discover what these letters that we have a
tendency to skip over reveal about who we are. We are going to discover what
these letters that we have a tendency to skip over reveal about the nature of
God and God’s activity in history. And as we go through this series, our hope
and prayer is that God would move by the power of the Holy Spirit in our heads,
hearts and hands so that we understand and embrace the timeless and timely
truths that these letters that we often skip over have for our lives.
Now before we jump into the first of these letters, we first
need to understand a few things about the prophets. In the letters that make up
the Old Testament of the Bible, a prophet was either called a prophet or a
seer. A prophet was a spokesman and messenger for God who was responsible to
proclaim God’s message to a specific audience.
A descriptive title that was used to describe the role of a
prophet was the term watchman. A watchman, in ancient times, was a person who
was stationed on the walls of a city to keep watch over a city. A watchman had
two duties and responsibilities. The watchman was
responsible to see and interpret what he saw outside the walls of the city and
then call out to others what he saw outside the walls of the city. And the
watchman was responsible to see and interpret what he saw inside the walls of
the city and then call out to others what he saw inside the walls of the city.
Similarly, a prophet was responsible to proclaim for God
what God saw and interpreted was happening outside the people of God. And a
prophet was responsible to proclaim for God what God saw and interpreted was
happening inside with the people of God. And as we will discover during this
series, being a prophet was a lonely, dangerous, exciting, emotionally draining position that often
positioned the prophet closest to God.
Now with that background in mind, I would like for us to launch this
series by looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of
the Bible called the book of Jonah. We are starting with the book of Jonah
because during this series we are going to read these letters chronologically,
which is not necessarily the order that they are found in the Bible, where they
are organized by size. So let’s look at the man and the message of the
Book of Jonah.
Now Jonah, the man, lived around 760 years before Jesus came
to earth. In addition to the book of Jonah, Jonah is also mentioned in 2 Kings
14:25 and was a member of the nation of Israel during the reign of King
Jeroboam II. And as such, Jonah was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom. As a
prophet, Jonah was God’s spokesperson who was used by God to see and to
proclaim His message to His people.
So let’s jump into this letter that is found in the Old
Testament of our Bibles, because it is in the events that surround Jonah’s life
that we will discover a timeless truth about the nature and character of God
that has the potential to powerfully impact how we engage others. So let’s look
together beginning in Jonah 1:1-3:
The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai
saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their
wickedness has come up before Me." But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish
from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was
going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to
Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
Now imagine yourself as Jonah for a moment. You
receive a message and command from God to go do your job as a prophet. But
instead of responding to God’s command with obedience, you choose to head for
Tarshish. Now a natural question that arises here is “Well Dave, why would
Jonah choose Tarshish? To better understand why Jonah chose Tarshish, we need
to understand what a map of the known world at Jonah’s time would have looked
like. On the right hand side of such a map, you would see Joppa, which is where
Jonah boarded the ship. Then on the left hand side of the map, if you could go
as far as you could go o n the map, you would see the city of Tarshish, which
is in modern day Spain.
So in essence, Jonah basically said “Where is the
farthest place that I can go to get away from God”. AHA!! Tarshish, I’ll head
there. Now another question that could arise here is “why would Jonah think
that he could run away from the Lord? Has Jonah lost his mind?” I mean we all
know that there is no place that we can go to hide from God, don’t we?
Have you ever felt like running from God? Maybe you
are trying to run away from God. I know that there have been times when I have
wanted to run from God. I have had my “Jonah experiences”, so to speak. Maybe
you are trying to run from God because of some area of selfishness or rebellion
that is in your life.
Maybe like Jonah, you are running from God because
you trying to avoid being used by God in a way that impacts others for Him at
home, work or as part of a ministry team. Maybe God has laid something on your
heart that you are not dealing with but are running from.
Well, Jonah buys his ticket for a cruise from God
and heads aboard. And it is at this point that God begins to teach Jonah a
lesson about His character and calling. If you have been around church for any
length of time, you probably know the story.
Tomorrow, we will begin to look at the story
together…
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