-Transcript-
00:25 Amen, Glory to God, Welcome to the program, Welcome to the cafe.
00:30 My name is Pastor Clark Covington and you are listening to KJV Cafe, and I thank you for tuning in. God bless you for tuning in. Amen.
00:38 I hope and pray you get a blessing from this episode. Here we are in the fifth part of a five-part series, and don’t worry if you haven’t heard the other episodes, you’ll still get this, on Fearing God and the Book of Jonah.
00:52 You know, Jonah is a small book and there’s a lot of lessons that can be learned.
00:57 It’s a very rich book. There’s a lot of parallels to Jesus Christ in the casting of lots to figure out what was going on on the ship in the storm, to the raising up on the third day from the belly of the whale, and Jonah’s in the whale talking like it’s hell in the depths of earth. There’s a lot of parallels.
01:16 But one thing that is not parallel is that Jonah for a time was rebellious. No one can say he wasn’t because God clearly in chapter one commands him to go do something and he doesn’t do it to his detriment.
01:28 Then he gets right with God and he does it, and then in the end he’s angry again and somewhat lacking that fear of God that he had in chapter two and three.
01:40 And so it’s a fascinating book, and I kind of put it into three acts. Act one is the defiant Jonah. Act two is chapter two and three where he is fearing God properly.
01:52 I call it the preacher Jonah comes out, he does what God calls him to do. And then act three, which is chapter four, is a kind of begrudging Jonah. And it’s very fascinating.
02:04 And again, if you ever wonder if the Bible is a literal word of God, look no further than a book like Jonah, because any Hollywood story would not end like this.
02:14 You know, any melodramatic story would not end like this. You know, when you look at storytelling, there’s like the narrative arc or the dramatic arc.
02:22 You know, I took I was a politics major in college, but I took a bunch of theater classes. I almost had a theater minor and I found it fascinating. I wasn’t in any place or anything, but I found it just as really neat.
02:30 I didn’t know anything about it. My grandma had been into it, so I wanted to know more about it. They teach you about storytelling, the dramatic arc and all these things.
02:39 And literally, if you don’t know this, you know, these modern day movies, especially think of like kids’ movies and stuff, they literally follow a formula.
02:47 They’ll always have like the main character and then they’ll have like the buddy character and then they’ll have the wise character and then they’ll have the evil character. They have everything plotted out.
02:54 But here in the book of Jonah, what we see is that the complexity of man to both act right with God and not act right with God and all of these things. And so we see, again, just a beautiful scripture that teaches us so much about the consequences of fearing God.
03:10 And to put it very simply, to kind of recap from the very beginning, our first episode here now to our fifth, when we fear God, good things happen.
03:18 And when we don’t fear God, bad things happen. When we fear God, good things happen. When we don’t fear God, bad things happen.
03:29 And we can in fact, believe in God. I believe this. We can believe in God and not fear him.
03:36 There’s many Christians today that I believe truly do believe in God, but they don’t fear him enough to hearken or listen to him. Because if they did, they would be living as God wanted them to live. And here’s Jonah, a man of God.
03:48 God’s communicating directly with Jonah and Jonah ends up in the belly of the whale because he didn’t fear God sufficiently.
03:57 And it’s not a fear like, Oh, I’m afraid of, you know, I’m afraid of snakes and there’s a snake in the room and you run out the door. It’s not that kind of fear.
04:03 There’s a lot of depth to it. There’s probably a thousand aspects to fearing God, but a few of the highlights would be it’s our duty. Ecclesiastes 12:13 tells us it’s our duty to fear God.
04:13 It’s the beginning of wisdom. We cannot be wise. We cannot have the foundation to be wise until we fear God.
04:18 That’s Proverbs 1:7. It is a literal fear as Matthew 10:28 points out. We are to literally fear God and we are to fear his power to send us to hell or not. It’s also a reverential fear, that reverence towards God.
04:30 Psalm 33:8, that we are to be in awe of him. And ironically, or poetically, however you want to say, we’re made safe by fearing God.
04:39 You know, where in the world can you be fear something and then end up being made safe by having that fear of that thing? I guess you could, but nowhere like fearing God.
04:50 Proverbs 14:26, and the fear of the Lord is strong confidence and his children shall have a place of refuge, which again brings me back to the opening point that we are safe.
05:00 Good things happen when we fear God appropriately. And we can see through the person of Jonah in the true historical story of Jonah that this happened.
05:11 And I can get into detail. Some people read Jonah and they think that that couldn’t happen. Look it up.
05:16 There literally been people that have been in the belly of large fish. Okay. And they’ve lived.
05:20 So look it up. It’s actually possible. I believe God allowed that to happen in modern day for those doubters to be put quiet for this particular scripture.
05:28 Okay. So we’ve gone through the defiant Jonah. He doesn’t fear God and danger ensues, right? We’ve gone through in past episodes, the idea that Jonah’s humble and he fears God sufficiently and success occurs.
05:42 And now we’re going to look at this last part here. Act three of three acts or episode five of five episodes or chapter four of four chapters, however you want to look at it. Amen.
05:55 We’re going to look at Jonah lacking that reverential fear of God and being rebuked by God. And so we’ll start here in chapter four. It’s a short chapter, chapter four, verse one, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly.
06:08 And he was very angry and he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee. O Lord was not this my saying when I was yet in my country.
06:16 Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish for I knew that thou art a gracious God, a merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and repentance, repentance, the of evil.
06:28 Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee my life from me for it is better for me to die than to live. Then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry?
06:41 So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the East side of the city and there made him a booth and sat under it in the shadow till he might see what would become of the city and the Lord.
06:53 God prepared a gourd and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief.
07:00 So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd, but God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day and it smoked the gourd that it withered.
07:08 And it came to pass when the sun did arise that God prepared a vehement East wind and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and wished in himself to die and said, it is better for me to die than to live.
07:21 And God said to Jonah, doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death.
07:28 Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd for which thou hast not labored. Neither made it, made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in the night and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand and also much cattle. Okay.
07:54 So let’s just try to tackle this as best we can in the bit of time we have here. What was Jonah so displeased by it? You know, it’s funny. Chapter four starts with Jonah being very displeased.
08:04 Well, let’s look at the end of chapter three, because as I understand it, chapters are kind of modern day implementations in the Bible and the kind of original manuscripts didn’t have chapters.
08:14 So Jonah three ends with, and God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. This is they being Nineveh and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not.
08:26 So we see what displeased Jonah exceedingly and made him so angry, this is very angry, was that God didn’t destroy Nineveh. Remember he built a booth up there to watch and see what God was going to do.
08:37 And it destroyed, it made him angry that God didn’t destroy Nineveh.
08:43 Well, think about this. Why on earth would Jonah be angry? I mean, God commissioned Jonah to go to Nineveh and Jonah then doesn’t fear the Lord properly, runs from God, ends up in the belly of the whale, ends up nearly dying, ends up nearly taking lives with him from those sailors on the ship,
08:59 the Marine folks. Why on earth would he be mad that when God tells him again and spares his life and tells him, go do this, and he does it and God works a miracle and that whole wicked city repents, which is no small thing.
09:13 As I said, I believe in the last episode, imagine going into the abortion clinic, the casino, you know, imagine going into all of these, going into the liquor store, telling these people you need to repent, you know, you’re living sinful lives.
09:23 Imagine going into the adult club, imagine going into the drug dealer’s house and saying, God’s going to tear this whole city down in 40 days. Imagine what they would do.
09:31 They would laugh you to scorn. Isn’t that what they did in Sodom and Gomorrah? The sons, the son-in-law, the sons-in-law of Lot, right?
09:41 Lot’s daughter’s husbands. He said, yeah, um, look, this place is about to get burned down.
09:46 You guys need to come with us. We’re leaving. The angels and I were going, the family, and they laughed him.
09:52 They thought he was kidding. They said, you’re kidding us because they were so proud and so sad in their sin. And yet Nineveh, God works a miracle and they actually repent.
10:00 They put on sackcloth and ashes. They publicly repent before this great city. It’s a miracle.
10:05 And Jonah’s angry. Now I had to look, do some research on this too. Cause I was like, well, I don’t understand, but here’s what I do understand.
10:11 Number one, if you’re angry with God, then you don’t properly reference him, right? You have to fear God enough to have that humility where you say, you know what, God, even if I don’t fully understand what you’re doing, you’re God, you’re sovereign.
10:25 I love you. I respect you help me to understand, right? That’s the humble way rather than saying I’m angry.
10:34 I want to die. Jonah, I believe was angry from what I read because selfishly he wanted to be right. See, he would look like a false prophet because the city was not burnt down.
10:43 The city was not taken down by God. He didn’t want to look that like a false prophet. Now nowhere in the book of Jonah does that.
10:50 And is there any implication that anyone called him that or believe that? But the question for us begs, are we willing to look foolish for God’s sake? Are we willing for those that we’ve called out to get right with God?
11:03 Are we willing, if they really do get right with God, for people to come to us and say, ha, see, you know, they, they did it and you were, you were wrong and so forth, and you’re a fool and you’re a whatever, right?
11:13 Are we willing to look foolish for God’s sake? Jonah wasn’t, uh, he looked upon Nineveh as the enemy of the Jews. Remember he was a Hebrew. He didn’t want his enemy saved.
11:22 And so do you want your enemy saved? Are you willing to preach to your enemy what God would have you to preach? And to share the gospel of Christ with your enemy and to live that out in your life and in your conduct with your enemy?
11:34 Are you willing to pray for your enemies? Are you willing to love those that despitefully use you and hate you?
11:42 Uh, not put yourself in abusive situations, but to pray for them and pray for their salvation sincerely, not desiring that any should perish like God is. Like God desires. He doesn’t desire any for, to perish.
11:52 Uh, Jonah would rather die than suffer through a world with this city alive and well, he didn’t want to see them alive and well, are we again, willing to see those that are living in sin converted and celebrate that mercy of God?
12:00 I mean, look at the character of God in this light. His mercy is so great, even to those that didn’t deserve it. And think about this.
12:13 Jonah admits this. He says, look in verse four, he says this, uh, you know, uh, excuse me, chapterfour, verse two, and he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was this not my saying when I was yet in my country?
12:27 So before he ever left Jonah saying, I was saying this, therefore I fled before a Tarshish for, I knew this is what Jonah was saying. Thou art a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger of great kindness and repent of evil to do to people because you’re so merciful and kind and loving.
12:45 And so Jonah was angry at God for that mercy that he applied to those people. Even though Jonah himself has received the same mercy. Think about it.
12:54 God could have taken Jonah’s life before he ever left to get on that boat. God could have certainly taken his life on that boat. God could have taken the men’s life on that boat.
13:00 God could have taken that job that Jonah had and given it to someone else to do. But in God’s great mercy, he allowed Jonah to do this and allowed Jonah to do a miraculous work and allowed Jonah to live.
13:13 And in his great mercy, he had conversed with him and spoke to him.
13:18 We’re not owed anything by God. And do we, are we able to, to, to, to subsequently understand as we read his word, that the merciful God of that time is the merciful God of today,
13:30 the long suffering God of that time is the long suffering God of today, even to Jonah who offended the creator both prior to and after the very act he was called to do.
13:40 Yet God allowed him to play this great part in prolonging the city of Nineveh and presumably those that are getting saved.
13:46 So we are to fear God now before he puts you through a Jonah experience or puts me through a Jonah experience.
13:55 We need to fear God now so we can avoid that Jonah could have avoided it and we should too. Fear, fearing God leads to obedience and faithfulness, which leads to success in doing God’s will.
14:02 We cannot be obedient and faithful until we fear him. That’s the beginning of all wisdom. And we can’t be successful until we have this obedience and faithfulness that we need.
14:09 And fearing God is beyond being afraid of God. It’s a reverence towards him. It’s a love towards him.
14:17 It’s something that we need to commit to for our entire lives. Are you willing to commit to fearing God for your entire life? You should, we all should. Let’s do that today.
14:25 I thank you so much for listening. Tune in next time. Take care. God bless. Amen.