-Transcript-
00:25 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:29 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Thank you for joining me.
00:36 Hopefully you’re having a wonderful day and a wonderful week. I’m so glad you’re here with me today as we dive into God’s Word. And I’ve been blessed by this study, and I know you will be too.
00:45 We are looking at the book of Jonah. We’re in the second part of a five-part series, looking at the whole book of Jonah. And we are in what we’ll call act one of the book of Jonah, which is chapter one.
01:00 And we’re looking at the book of Jonah through the lens of having a healthy fear of God. And last episode here, we talked about that idea of what it means to fear God, that it’s a very deep subject.
01:15 It’s not just like, oh, I fear the storm coming, so I’m going to go take cover and hide from it.
01:27 Right? It’s not that. It’s our duty to fear God. It’s the beginning of wisdom.
01:32 It’s a literal fear, but it’s also a reverential fear. We’re actually made safe by fearing God, which is one of the ironic aspects of fearing God or the poetic aspects of fearing God, is that when we fear God, we have nothing else or anyone else to fear. We’re, again, made wise by fearing God.
01:50 There’s so much good stuff about fearing God, and yet many don’t. And I’ve made the point, the delineation here on this episode, I believe, well, on last episode, that the idea is that you can be saved.
02:02 I believe you can believe on the Lord and then not fear Him and live your life not fearing Him.
02:07 And that’s in the wisdom of God and how that all happens. But I believe that there’s those out there that actually have been saved that don’t properly fear God. And one of those characters in the Bible is Jonah.
02:21 So let’s get into Jonah 1, and then we’re going to talk about some lessons we can learn about Jonah not having a proper fear of God in chapter 1. Jonah 1, verse 1.
02:30 Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amati, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.
02:39 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.
02:47 And 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.
02:57 But 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.
03:06 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.
03:18 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?
03:27 Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.
03:43 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 is upon us. What is thine occupation? And whence comest thou?
04:00 And what is thy country? And of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.
04:09 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.
04:18 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.
04:35 For I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rode hard to bring it to land. But they could not, for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.
04:51 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.
05:03 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.
05:12 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows.
05:19 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. All right, so let’s unpack this a little bit.
05:29 I just read Jonah chapter one, the whole chapter, amen. We see a lot in here that Jonah was defiant, he didn’t fear God, and danger ensues.
05:47 So we see at the beginning of chapter one, God is asking Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach to that great city that they needed to repent of their sin or it was going to be destroyed. In showing a lack of fear of God, Jonah does not go to Nineveh.
06:00 He goes and runs away. I talked about briefly this episode, and more in detail last episode, about the depths of fearing God, like the dimensions of it, I should say, all the different ways that fearing God, how it all works.
06:16 And one of them is our duty, and as Ecclesiastes 12:13 says, it’s our duty to fear God and keep His commandments.
06:21 The beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction, so it’s our duty, it’s the beginning of wisdom,
06:31 it’s a literal fear, and fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
06:39 That’s Matthew 10:28, it’s reverential, it’s reverencing God.Psalm 33:8, let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him, and remain safe by fearing God,
06:48 Proverbs 14:26, in the fear of the Lord is strong confidence, and His children shall have a place of refuge.
06:55 So by Jonah ignoring God, we see these examples in the inverse. He’s not following his duty, and danger ensues. He’s not acting wise, he’s acting foolish, and danger ensues.
07:08 He’s not literally fearing God for his life, and he gets all the way into the belly of a whale where he could easily die. He’s not reverencing God, okay, he’s obviously not.
07:27 You know who’s reverencing God? Those people on the ship that were sacrificing and believing in God, and loving God because they got him off the ship and the waters calmed, but he wasn’t, he was in the belly of the whale.
07:31 And he was not made safe by fearing God because he didn’t fear God, and so now he’s in danger. And I’m telling you, when I came up with these one, two, three, four, five examples, five, the number of grace by the way, five examples of what fearing God is all about, and these are not, this is not all of them, there’s many examples.
07:47 I came up with these examples, I had not applied them to Jonah yet, and so when you go and apply them to Jonah, it just rings home so true that there are consequences when we don’t fear God, and we’re seeing those consequences in the book of Jonah in chapter one.
07:58 And by the way, I don’t want to make Jonah out to be some, you know, lost idiot. He was close to God. God spoke to him directly.
08:08 By the way, that’s a compliment, amen. He has real estate in God’s word, amen. God miraculously saved him from death, amen.
08:16 There’s so many examples of how Jonah is a mighty man of God in a lot of ways, because he does end up fearing God, but that’s for a later episode. So I don’t want to put Jonah under the bus, but I do want us to understand that fearing God is so important and critical because it has consequences, right?
08:31 What happens? He ends up in danger. And then I love, I love this example here in Jonah chapter one, man, they’re looking and they’re saying, what are we going to do with this guy, okay?
08:44 How can we do it? You know, verse 13, you know, what are we going to do? Verse 13 says, nevertheless, the men rode hard to bring it to land, but they could not for the sea was sea wrought.
08:53 And the word temp, temp as to us, temp to us or temp to us, whatever, butchering that word means stormy. Okay. So it’s a horrible storm and they can’t row.
09:05 But the world, instead of throwing him off the boat, like he told them to do, like God wanted them to do, the world aligned with him. And so we see that when we don’t fear God, oftentimes the world will then align with us.
09:17 And so our lack of fear of God is now compounded or made worse by the fact that the world is going to hop in and try to apply their worldly point of view.
09:25 And you could see the world thinking of the storm and the water saying, this man will never live if we throw him over.
09:31 So they’re saying, we don’t want to lose anyone. We’re just going to row harder.
09:36 You know, they just rode harder. And what was the result? Nothing good. They couldn’t do anything.
09:41 The storm only was pacified when God had what he wanted, which was his man in the belly of the whale. Right. And so we see that the world oftentimes will align with us when we don’t fear God.
09:46 And that’s not a good thing. But many people will take comfort in that. You know, there’s a great passage, though they join hand in hand, and I’m going to have to look it up, even though I’m running short on time.
09:58 I’ve got to look this one up. Proverbs 11:21, though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished, but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.
10:10 That is just an amazing verse and it’s a critical verse because it shows us that even though hand in hand, even though groups and many groups will come up against God and will come up against those that go up against God, they’ll come alongside those people.
10:26 That means nothing to God. They will not go unpunished. They will be judged.
10:32 Every man will be judged for how they lived on this earth. The consequences were grave for this lack of fear. And you saw the consequences for Jonah.
10:41 I’m sure he thought he’d be dead when he was pushed over the ship, when he’s cast over the ship. Interesting that he couldn’t just jump, too. That’s a whole deep thing, too.
10:50 Why couldn’t Jonah just say, don’t worry about it, guys, I’ll take it into my hands. He needed them to throw him off, which again, I guess was an act of faith on their part. And then they were praising God after they did it because the storm ceased.
10:59 But what are the consequences for us when we don’t fear God? I mean, think about that. The book of Jonah, is it not a warning to modern day Christians that are living against God’s holy sovereign will?
11:10 You know, if I get an inkling that I have gone off track in what God wants me to do, I beg and plead with God to help me understand how to get back on track because I fear God. He is a mighty God.
11:31 The Bible says it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Amen. He is so strong and powerful.
11:38 You read in both the Old Testament and the New, how God’s judgment and wrath and fury is something that no man would ever want to face. That’s the God that I serve. And therefore, I fear him and I use that fear.
11:55 God uses that fear as a way to kind of set the compass correctly on the path he wants me to travel. And I hope that that rings true for you today, that when you kind of get off track, you have enough fear and reverence for God that you are pleading with the Lord to get you back on track.
12:11 And whatever it is that God doesn’t want you yoked up in, you’re shedding that as quick as those sailors were shedding those things on the boat and getting them overboard.
12:18 You need to get rid of anything in your life that is not what God wants you to have in your life. And you need to focus on that mighty, awesome, powerful God that gives you breath.
12:25 Because you could be so far off, and I’ve heard preachers talk about this, that they’ll be Christians, people that are absolutely saved, they know they’re saved, the Holy Spirit lived within them, and they’re convicted by the Holy Spirit that they’re not living right for God, and yet they don’t change.
12:51 What does God do? Sometimes he takes them home early. Sometimes he cuts their life short. And the Bible’s full of that.
13:00 You read about God is near the righteous. God hears the prayers of the righteous. But we also read a lot about the inverse, probably more about the inverse, that God is far from the wicked, that the wicked’s lives will be shortened, amen.
13:18 I kept thinking of caught short, but shortened. The wicked’s lives will be shortened, that they’ll fall into judgment, amen. You know, if we’re saved, we are a representative of Christ.
13:29 We are to live as Christ would have us to live. We’re not going to be perfect, but God has given us access to the throne room so that we can go to him in prayer. The Bible says to pray without ceasing.
13:41 We are to continue to pray to God and to seek his will so that we can fear him enough that we’re doing this on an ongoing basis. We are fearing God enough that we are seeking his will. And so we don’t end up in a situation like Jonah ended up in.
14:00 Think about this. If Jonah had just listened to God and gone to Nineveh, would he ever have been in such a horrible situation on that boat? No. Do you see? So if we just listen to God, we could spare ourselves a lot of heartache and agony.
14:12 Now, in the next episode, we’re going to look at how Jonah was humbled and how he feared God sufficiently and how success quickly follows that healthy fear of God.
14:22 So tune in next time as we get to more great truths from God’s holy word. I thank you for listening today.
14:27 Take care. God bless and amen.