Your Notes

From Ancient Prophets, Modern Messages
Jonah, about so much more than a fish
•	Almost everyone has heard of him and the story of him being swallowed by a fish—though some take it as just a fictional story.
•	THAT IS NOT THE APPROACH WE WILL TAKE because—Jesus viewed Jonah as a true event when He said,
•	He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matt. 12:39-40)
•	Not only did Jesus verify the story as a true one, but he used it to illustrate his death and resurrection.
•	We will look at the story as a true retelling of events with significant lessons for us to learn from them which will include….
Modern messages—answers to these questions and their application to us
•	#1 What do we do about bad people, or when 
people treat us badly? What does God expect from us as His followers?
•	#2 What about people who haven’t heard the gospel if Jesus is the only way to God?
•	#3 What is our responsibility to those we introduce to the Christian life?
Where it takes place—real history in real places
•	Geography plays a BIG part in this one and upcoming books, concerning both God’s people and their enemies.
•	The nation was divided after Solomon, about 930 BC (because of his sins) into…
•	The Southern Kingdom of Judah with its capital—Jerusalem. Kings, varied good and evil, but God’s promise to keep intact David’s dynastic line was kept until Jesus was born.
•	The Northern Kingdom of Israel, eventual capital—Samaria. Kings, always evil, not one dynastic line, constant fighting, does not last an independent nation after Assyrian defeat.
•	Jonah appears about 170 years after the nation splits.
Larger World Powers of the time, then and beyond, keep in mind as we go through the prophets
•	Egypt—a foe, but sometimes an ally and often a temptation, throughout all the histories and both Testaments (many spiritual analogies as Egypt is often a symbol of the thing we turn to when we don’t trust God).
•	Assyria—a brutal nation; conquered Israel and surrounding areas (green shows their ultimate expansion at height when Jonah lived), eventually conquered by….
•	Babylon—who then conquered Judah and held people captive for 70 years.
•	Media/Persia conquers Babylon and allows the Jews to return to the land.
•	The entire area later conquered by Alexander the Great during the time between the Old and New Testaments.
•	After he dies, the land is split between his generals and local rulers, lots of war, and shifting powers until the rise of ROME, and that takes us into the New Testament.
The setting of Jonah
•	It was a prosperous time (details of this in other prophets) in Israel, listen carefully to the overview of it—
•	2 Kings 4: 23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. . . . 
•	25 He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea in accordance with the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.  
Did you catch that? 
Many people miss Jonah’s life prior to the fish story
•	But it’s so important—
•	The political setting of Israel where Jonah was raised was wealthy, prosperous, and in the midst of victorious military expansion.
•	And Jonah was a highly successful prophet of the military victories in Israel under Jeroboam II. He spoke good news from God to probably a very grateful people.
•	But these military victories didn’t destroy the truly threatening military power of that time.
•	That power was Assyria, an incredibly rich, opulent nation to the north of Israel.
•	Not only were they rich and self-indulgent…..
They were
•	Bent on conquest, carried out with—
•	Extreme power & cruelty.
•	They record images of torture, cutting off hands and feet, impaling, stacks of heads of victims.
Lachish reliefs (carvings in gypsum wall panels) from the palace—all around a sort of waiting room in his palace
What we learn about Assyrians from the Lachish reliefs
•	On these panels we learn a lot about them—the importance of war, and hunting—how incredibly cruel they were—beheadings, skinning alive, impaling, torture—not only did they do it, but they were proud of it.
From the position of a popular prophet of deliverance
•	Jonah was called to preach God’s salvation to a hated enemy.
•	To a people who were known for impaling alive people, skinning people alive, piling up the heads of enemies.
•	Instead of rejoicing that God could show mercy to even the Assyrians, he ran in the other direction.
•	His intended destination was 3,000 miles away.
Back to Jonah—who didn’t see the big picture
•	He wanted to decide how he was to serve God 
•	He did not want to follow God to do a difficult job.
•	Maybe he thought he’d been seen as a traitor.
•	Most definitely he didn’t want to preach salvation and mercy to Israel’s threatening enemies.
•	HOWEVER…..Choosing to go his own way did not go well.
•	It never will for us either—we might think it is easier not to obey God,  it never is—might as well just do what He says.
A huge storm hits, as it always will…..
•	And his shipmates know it’s from God.
•	After questioning, Jonah admits his sin.
•	The crew throws him overboard & the sea calms.
•	Jonah is swallowed by a great fish.
•	Not the end of him.
•	Sometimes drastic measures are needed to calm us down; to get us to listen to God, to focus or return to our calling. (getting sick, losing our job, a tragedy, etc.)
•	Apparently, that is what Jonah needed.
Jonah repents from inside the fish
•	His prayer:
•	Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD." 
•	And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Jonah 2:9,10
Lesson application: sin robs us of the love, kindness, blessings, looking more closely at Jonah 2:8
•	From the previous verse, more on “Grace”, Hebrew: checed, also translated “kindness, love, mercy, ” that is what we forfeit when we don’t follow God.
•	Here is how various translations put it:
•	Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. Jonah 2:8, NIV
•	Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love., ESV
•	Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies, NLR 
•	Those who worship hollow gods, god-frauds, walk away from their only true love, MSG
A related passage is Deut. 7:12, where checed is part of the covenant
•	Moses tells God’s people (remember this is what they were promised and agreed to)—
•	If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, (checed) as he swore to your ancestors.
•	The point is that God wants the best for us and obeying Him is the best for us, even if it doesn’t feel or seem like it—not only would the people of Nineveh be better off, but Jonah would have been also. 
•	When we disobey God, it is often because we think something else is better.
•	But it never is—at least not long-term. Short term relief from pain is never worth it the long-term results, the checed, living in the mercy of pleasing God.
If we OBEY and do what we know God wants us to do…
•	We need to keep doing it, practice “a long obedience in the same direction.”
•	Circumstances may or may not change, but joy and peace can flood our lives in the midst of challenges if we focus on obeying God.
•	Hopefully, none of us will have to be swallowed by a fish to learn that love, mercy, grace, and an obedient walk with God are what we were made for.
•	Quote to consider, “Maybe if we spent less time fighting God’s plan, we’d have more energy for the battles that really matter.” (from www.particularlycalled.com). 
•	And finally, Jonah presses ahead to do what he was called to do.	
Jonah obeys, he preaches, and a great revival follows
•	When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened. Jonah 3:10
•	How did Jonah respond? Did he praise God for the miracle of changed hearts in this great & evil city? Did he rejoice that destruction was averted?
•	Jonah 4: But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
And Jonah goes outside the city to pout
•	A plant spouts up to shade him, then it dies, and he is even more upset about the plant dying than the fate of the people.
•	God’s response to Jonah:
•	 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” Jonah 4
•	Consider how we all desire mercy from God but often are unhappy when God grants it to others.
•	That does not please our Lord—didn’t then, doesn’t now.
What happens in the intervening years
•	We know nothing more about Jonah.
•	Nor of any follow up, in terms of spiritual instruction in Nineveh after their big revival.
•	The nation, as a whole, seemingly quickly reverted to their evil ways.
•	At the same time, prophets are being sent to Israel, calling them to repent, they don’t listen, and so…. 
•	Only about 30 years later— 
•	Assyria brutally conquers Israel, carries them off to captivity.
•	And yet, (my thought only, but I think a valid one) imagine the surprise of some captives to meet followers of Jehovah God in Nineveh after the horror of being conquered.
MODERN MESSAGES—
Answering the initial questions and three lessons from Jonah
#1 What about really bad people?
•	Remember God loves them and is more merciful than we can imagine and we shouldn’t give up on them either.
•	Anyone can repent and God gives second (and many more) chances.
•	Our response should be to NEVER give up on anyone. NEVER stop praying.
•	I imagine people who knew the thief crucified with Jesus were surprised to see him in heaven. 
•	I imagine few in Israel knew what Jonah did, and many were surprised when around 30 years later they met believers of Jehovah God when Assyria did conquer them, and they were exiled to Nineveh—what stories they had to tell! (“30 years ago, this really weird prophet told us about Jehovah.”)
#2 What about people who haven’t heard the gospel if Jesus is the only way to God?
•	First……how do you know they haven’t heard? So much more going on than what we are told. Then and now.
•	Though the Old Testament focuses on the story of the children of Israel, there are also pictures here and there about how God was active in the lives of other people and nations who were not the “chosen people.” 
•	A reminder that Israel is chosen in that they were to proclaim His message, not “chosen” as the only ones to be saved.
•	As we see in the book of Job (see those lessons), Job was not a Jew and yet the one out of all humanity at that God chose to point out to Satan as a godly man.
•	And we see another story here in the book of Jonah, about a very unlikely group of people God sent him to, the people of Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria.
•	Remember—we know there is only ONE source of salvation, by grace through faith, but we have no idea ALL THE WAYS God is sharing that message with the world—the book of Jonah gives us one more view of this.
#3 New believers need follow up for their salvation to make a lasting difference
•	God’s way of life is not automatic after salvation.
•	In some ways the Ninevites were the original examples of what happens when one only accepts, “cheap grace.”
•	Cheap grace is an acceptance of the gift of God’s salvation without any further growth as a disciple.
•	But it is very hard for growth as a believer to happen without God’s Word or teaching, and I can’t help but wonder. . . .
What if Jonah had stayed to teach, to follow up, to help them learn about God?
•	As a prophet and one raised in a Jewish setting, he most likely would have had all of the first 5 books of the Bible memorized.
•	He would have most likely been familiar with how people were trained in the Jewish faith.
•	The people listened to him, responded, and he had favor with the leadership—he had the knowledge and the audience.
•	Again, we ask, what if he had stayed and taught?
•	But we don’t know because Jonah bailed out, he simply walked away.
•	And 30 years later his nation was brutally conquered.
•	It didn’t end there—Israel was never restored, people from various nations were sent to repopulate Israel, resulting in the Samaritan mixture of peoples and the hatred it caused through the centuries.
We shouldn’t make the same mistake!
•	When people turn to God, they need follow up, they need instruction in the Christian faith.
•	It isn’t enough to condemn people or to get them to make an emotional response to become a believer in Jesus. 
•	They need to learn the basics of the Christian life after they make a decision to accept Jesus as Savior.
•	We must get serious about “Fully fulfilling the Great Commission” where Jesus said to “teach them everything I’ve commanded you.”
•	They need to read God’s word and learn the basics of the Christian life.
•	Maybe we need it also—here is a review—
Two Resources from Bible805, available on Amazon.com
Final challenges
•	We all have a Nineveh—those we resent, fear, hate, or are angry with. 
•	We all are Jonah—we want to run away; we don’t want to do the tasks he called us to.
•	Hopefully, we’ve learned from Jonah and what happens when we try to fight God.
•	We won’t win.
•	We might as well be obedient, no matter how difficult it might be.
•	Step-by-step.
Thankfully, in our obedience we have a better example than Jonah
•	Our Lord Jesus.
•	Jesus didn’t quit in his work, and we shouldn’t either. 
•	He kept preaching, challenging, healing and loving those he called for 3 years, no matter how many times they doubted Him and failed in his expectations for them.
•	And finally, He died for the sins of his rebellious, unthankful creation.
•	He finished the job God called him to do and our salvation is the extraordinary result of it.
•	As Heb 12 tells us, “for the joy set before Him, He endured.”
•	We have that same joy ahead of us and not only that—
The risen Jesus can help us finish our work
•	Not only can He help us, but we desperately need his help and He WILL help us.
•	Hopefully, it won’t take getting swallowed by a big fish to get us to finish our work or to obey Him, but regardless of our circumstances—
•	We need Jesus to be kind to mean people, to trust God in difficult challenges, to be obedient in all situations and to do the work He calls us to do, in other words, to be His disciple, His apprentice, His representative to our world.
•	And He will help, as He reminds us in this final verse for us to remember in Phil. 1:6 the God who started this great work in you will keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

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