The Minor Prophets Series / Jonah: Part 1

[Music] the book of jonah we'll be looking at the book of jonah today and it starts off a whole series that we're going to do on the minor prophets so let's pray father in yeshua's name we ask that you open your word to us all and that your heart your discernment your ways would be with us as we glorify yeshua together we ask this in yeshua's name amen it says in second kings 14 verse 23 in the 15th year of amaziah the son of joash king of judah jeroboam the son of joash king of israel became king and samaria and he reigned 41 years he did evil in the sight of the lord he did not depart from all the sins of jeroboam the son of navat which he made israel's sin he restored the border of israel from the entrance of hamad as far as the sea of the arab according to the word of the lord the god of israel which he spoke through his servant jonah the son of amitai the prophet who was from god hether it's a fascinating thing in this passage that a prophecy which we know nothing about from any other source was given by jonah and even the town that he came from got heffer and was given to an evil king but look what it says in verse 26 here of second kings 14 for the lord saw the affliction of israel which was very bitter for there was neither bond nor free nor there was any helper for israel and the lord did not say that he would blot out the name of israel from under heaven but he saved them by the hand of jeroboam the son of joash this is a strange thing and we're going to be looking at some strange things in this book jeroboam ii was king of israel throughout the the life and ministry of jonah and he was not such a good man he was actually the fourth generation from jihu or jehu and jehu had been given an offer an invitation by god to actually step in and establish a dynasty in the north by destroying baal and baal worship but he did not turn his heart fully over to god and as a result even though there was a promise that your sons of the fourth generation will sit on the throne of israel and in second kings 10 he turned away and as a result his son and his grandson and finally his great-grandson jeroboam ii still turned away and followed these sins and that brings us to the beginning of the book of jonah jonah is living right in the middle of the reign of jeroboam ii so let's take a look now at this story of the prophet who is called from the north he's actually from a little town called gather or the olive press or wine press of heifer up in the area of zebulun because it says to us in joshua 19 that jonah lived in the tribal allotment of zebulun so he was a zebulonite and that's where god called him it's an area really really really close to nazareth many years ago in 1980 uh my wife rachel and i went looking for god khafir i wanted to find it it's a small little arab village today called mashhad and no jews there and they don't know about jonah and so we didn't find too much at the time but that's where he was from and so that's where our story starts if we look here we can see it's right in the middle not far just a little bit north of the big jezreel valley which is going to be important to us in some of the later prophets there's a little town called yaffia right over here just to the right of it is where nazareth is today it was a very small town in those days and again here's another look at it to see halfway between the sea of galilee and the mediterranean so that's where jonah was from he was a hometown boy and what happened is god calls him so let's look at this together the word of the lord came to jonah the son of amitai saying arise and go to nineveh the great city and cry out against it for their wickedness has come up before me when i was in seminary we actually studied the whole book of jonah for like six months and it's a hugely intricate book as far as literary things are it's a lot of word plays a lot of poetry a lot of comparisons like the word arise is like four or five times and it's significant in the book or or go up is again also three times go down also has great significance there's a lot of word plays here if you love literature uh it's really worth looking at the book of john a little more carefully so god calls him a jewish guy in zebulun territory not far from where nazareth one day would be maybe two kilometers away from nazareth something like that and sends him to nineveh now nineveh is a superpower of those days and god is sending him there with a message to cry about the spiritual condition of that people now there's a whole lot unsaid here because later on we'll see that jonah says didn't i tell you back when you called me about some things we'll find out what those are later but right now we don't understand it god calls jonah to go east toward iraq and instead he goes west or at least southwest it says jonah rose up to flee to tarshish so we need to now try to understand what's going on tarshish was a phoenician trading colony about as far away as you could go from israel the phoenicians were people who were from ham and they kind of settled in trading posts along the side of the coast of israel from up near lebanon syria all the way down you can see biblos burritos or berut sidon tyre akko andor they kind of had that coast where they had trading posts set up and their job was to trade with the locals and then make money through through industry and so they had these boats this is kind of a mock-up of what these boats would have looked like um you could put all kinds of things underground you know like amphorae of olive oil and wine and various goods and some of these boats have even been discovered sunk and off the coast of caesarea lately so jonah would have gotten onto a boat something like this and you notice that the phoenicians had a huge network of trading going all across the mediterranean and so he wanted to go from joppa which is down on the bottom right all the way up to the area here where it says cadiz today in spain if we look at a little more we can see how they would have had to move through sicily and then carthage probably hannibal and then they would end up here in a place called tarshish or in latin words tartasos greek and latin and that's right near the rock of gibraltar so he's interested in getting as far away as he can in this calling here these are the uh you can see the kind of um uh greenish uh uh circles those would be the phoenician trading colonies and then the greeks also who were different people had a few colonies over there as well but that's where he was going to go here are our pictures of phoenician boats of traders and you can see they're carrying timber because the cedars of lebanon they lived in lebanon as well and and actually they helped bring those hiram was solomon's friend and he brought cedars of lebanon and boats like this down from lebanon down to the bay of jaffa and then from there up to the temple pictures of that in greater detail so the phoenicians this is kind of what they looked like when they were had a good day glass blown pictures of them they also did beautiful ivory carvings as well the phoenicians were well known for these things these are all from then they also had of course their gods so here is baal the god of the thunderstorm the god of fertility now in the canaanite and hamidic and phoenician pantheon there were various gods who dealt with thunder you had reshef but you also had ba'al and baal means lord in israel today uh when a woman refers to her husband often she'll call him baal in other words my lord now you don't do that so much in the western world today but in hebrew it's still you say ba ali and um again some of the beautiful glass uh blowing stuff that they did uh these are for for kind of nard or perfume that they had some of the beautiful art that they did these are real people when we're looking at this book we want to see the real people we want to see real jews we want to see real phoenicians we want to see real assyrians so again pictures of their boats that jonah would have been in something like that you can see they had horses heads usually under boats mosaics after jonah of what their boats would have looked like something like this so jonah would have been on a boat something like this and it says here that he he found a ship which was going to tarshish in verse 3. he paid the fear and he went down into it to go with him to tarshish from the presence of the lord he wasn't just taking a trip on a salem boat but he was running away from the presence of god and this whole issue of god saying i want you to do something and the prophets saying i don't want to do that this is so human again sometimes we think of prophets who say certain events are going to happen on certain days and maybe they do happen on those days maybe they don't happen on those days but we kind of look at these people as as power players but god says no they're just human beings and if i give them a message they're going to respond in human ways very professor carson talked about the prophetic being when god puts his thoughts and we express it in our own words and so jonah was expressing his response to the prophetic message which was i'm not going to do it and the reason why he's not going to do it we don't really get to until uh basically the fourth chapter of this book here but we're going to walk through that so he's going away from the presence of the lord and it says the lord and again every time we see the word lord this is the way we say it here in english but in hebrew it's yod hey vavava yahweh it's the personal name of god interesting god said i want you to call me by my personal name everybody kind of tries to stay away from that except the cults so here it says yahweh hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so the ship was about to break up so professional sailors now in verse 5 are are just totally scared they think they're going to die and it says every man cried to his god and again there's something going on here that's really part of the whole theme of the book people are crying out to their gods and there's all kinds of different gods involved here like ashtoret or where we get the word easter from that comes from lebanon as well you've got um baal certainly you've got reshape you've got all kinds of gods there and everyone's crying out to their god and none of it's doing any good so what happens is they're throwing cargo out of the boat to make it lighter because they're afraid the boat is gonna sink from that weight and it says but jonah had gone down below into the hold of the ship laying down and fallen sound asleep if there's anybody here who should not be sleeping well it's him and so there's a bit of a humor here that joan is actually the only one and the cause of the problem but he's sleeping soundly so his conscience was not bothering him at this point but they were going crazy so in verse six it says the captain approached him and said how is it that you're sleeping and here is this this theme of the book right here get up call on your god perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish now that theme is repeated about two or three times throughout this book is god concerned about man and women do we call on him so that we will not perish and there's a perhaps involved could it be that if we do repent god will stay his hand and we won't perish and we're going to see that theme here we're going to see it in nineveh and we're going to see it then later with jonah and it's the key to the book here in verse 6. so each man says to his maid come let's cast lots those uh so that we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us so they cast lots and lots fell on jonah some of us you know we're not into lots you know there was abraham and there was lot we choose abraham we don't choose lot but the point here is this is a picture of a of an acadian or a syrian lot you can see the cuneiform writing on it people would throw this to determine and you would say well that's primitive but i want to i want to challenge you to consider a few things in the scripture here the word uh goral is the word used here in hebrew poor is the word used in the book of esther so the feast of purim means lots and the whole concept behind it is that god works in the lots look what it says in in esther chapter 3 verse 7 in the first month which is the month nisan so that's using the hebrew calendar today you know we've got people saying the first month is tishrei but that's babylonian calendar but the biblical calendar the first month was actually called aviv like tel aviv but here in esther they're already using babylonian names esther 3 7 in the first month which is the month nisan in the 12th year of king akhashvirosh if you don't understand the words i'm saying it in the hebrew but of course it's originally in persian which is something like artachia but i don't speak persian too well so the poor that is the lot was cast before haman from day to day and from month to month until the 12th month that is the month of dar haman was consulting astrologers what's the best day to kill all the jews right so they were saying we have to figure out what day is the best now i know there's some believers who think that we should be choosing months and days into certain days which are good for prayer and certain days and my advice to you if you don't want to be in haman's department stay away from that because that's not a biblical issue but look what it says in in esther 9 24 for haman the son of hamadatta the agagite the adversary of all the jews had schemed against the jews to destroy them and had cast poor that is the lot to disturb them and to destroy them therefore the jews call these days purim after the name poor so this whole issue of throwing lots became the name of the feast that we celebrate how god has saved us out of the jewish people from those who want to destroy us so this issue of lots is not just a neutral issue here okay look what it says in acts chapter 1. these are apostles now therefore it's necessary verse 21 that the men of the men who've accompanied us all the time that the lord yeshua went in and out among us beginning with the immersion of yochanan or john until the day that he was taken up from us one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection so they put forward two men joseph called balsaba who was also called jostus that's a latin name and mathias and they prayed and they said you lord who know the hearts of all men show us which one of these two you've chosen to occupy this ministry and apostleship from whom judas turned aside to go to his own place so they saying god would you show us and how is god going to show them and they drew lots in verse 26 for them in the lot fell to matthias and he was added to the 11 apostles so the 12th apostle is chosen by lot god can use lots and they had no problem in terms of their faith doing lots now i'm not encouraging you to gamble i'm not encouraging you to play dice uh i always lose when they do those things but look what it says in proverbs 18 18 the the cast lot puts an end to strife and it decides even between mighty people or how about this proverbs 16 verse 33 the lot is cast into the lap but its every decision is from yahweh this kind of expounds expands rather our understanding of what god can do that he can use things that we would not necessarily turn to actually the whole book is dealing with god using nineveh and we wouldn't think god would turn to nineveh to teach us anything here another passage if you want to look at later is isaiah 34 verse 16 and 17. so they cast lots they figure out it's jonah the guy who's been hiding from them and then they said to him in verse 8 so tell us now on whose account has this calamity struck us what do you do for a living what's your occupation and where do you come from what is your country and from what people are you oi such questions they're asking and jonah is called to testify now you may say he's not in such a good position to testify he's running from god he's a prophet but he's on his day off and so he doesn't really want to be held accountable for who he is where he's coming from and uh he has to stand up in front of sailors who are not known to be such religious people and and they're going wild they're they're at the end of themselves because they're about to die they feel and they're saying okay tell us maybe we'll find out something from who you are your country maybe you know maybe there's some kind of explanation for this now he knows the explanation so now he has to give public testimony of his faith when he's not doing well again it's kind of funny because you would think hey jews are supposed to give praise to god that's what our name means yehudi the one who gives praise to god it says right the people who have i have chosen for myself they're going to tell forth my praises so this is the calling on the jewish people it's part of the romans 11 28 and 29 calling the gifts that god's given to israel and the calling on israel is irrevocable and even though jonah is not doing well he's called upon to make a confession so what does he do here he says i am a hebrew interesting how he uses that term and i fear yahweh god of heaven who made the sea that's where we're having our problems and the dry land in other words yes i'm i i follow the god who's causing the problems right now he's connected to me then the men became extremely frightened of verse 10 they said to him how can you do this for the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of yahweh because he had told them so there's other things it says in verse 10 it said and they're saying we are in deep yogurt because of you you're supposed to be serving your god and you're getting us all in trouble we could die here because of what you're doing here how could you do this to us this is uh it's a guilt trip yeah but it's true and they said to him what should we do to you that the sea may become for us for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy so the tension is getting higher and higher here oy so they're asking jonah for spiritual advice and here he is saying you know i'm trying to keep as low a profile we say in hebrew try to get my head as low as possible so that whatever gets shot over the boughs is not not going to hit me and basically what he's saying is i'm the reason for the season i'm the one who is the source of all your problems here now imagine being jonah the main thing is not to go to nineveh maybe they'll throw you off you'll die and it'll be a good day but god has other plans and so he's depressed he's angry whatever's going on we'll find out not yet so he said to them pick me up and throw me into the sea now he didn't have revelation about what was going to happen okay he he didn't say okay i've got this figured out i've read the book he is the book then the sea will become calm for you for i know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you however the men didn't want to do that they said that's killing him if god is involved then killing a person who is supposed to be like a pastor a preacher an apostle a prophet maybe that wouldn't look so good on our on our curriculum vitae what should we we're not going to kill him so the men rode desperately to return to land but they could not for the sea became even stormier against them and then they called on yahweh there's a huge huge irony and humor here the whole idea is are we going to call on yahweh lest we be destroyed that's nineveh's issue that's jonah's issue and i bet you that's even our issue we're talking about the world being shaken now through coronavirus we're talking about nations like in asia raising up their heads we're talking about america having riots in the streets a lot of things are shaking and people are saying are we going to get destroyed here is our economy going to collapse what's going to happen here so these questions that they're asking here are are our questions too so they called on yahweh this is what jonah should have been doing but who's doing it a bunch of crusty sailors old salts are calling upon yahweh by name the god of israel and they said we earnestly pray o yahweh do not let us perish on account of this man's life and do not put innocent blood on us for you o yahweh have done as you pleased right so it's interesting here there's three points that they're saying they call on his name they say we don't want to cause a loss of life and we and they say you are sovereign you do whatever you want and we recognize that so let's say that again you're yahweh you're a covenant god we recognize that we don't want to destroy a life we don't want loss of life and three we know that you can do whatever you want it's interesting that sometimes a bar room for confession by a bunch of sailors has more power in it than some of the religious confessions that can be given on a sunday morning in a church so something really heavy and spiritual is going on on the deck of this phoenician boat to the accompaniment of wind and rain and all this shaking so they picked up jonah in verse 15 threw him into the sea and the sea stopped its raging do they see what's happening it's like supernatural do we remember something else of like a big storm and somebody does something and instantly the sea god stopped certainly that was with yeshua wasn't it so the shock what did they say who is this man what are they saying here who is this god so the gentiles real sailors come with a confession they would not brought to that confession apart from shaking if you'd like the cross but they come to this confession here whereas jonah is flying through the air and lands with a plop in the water so let's see what's happening here he falls into the water and it says here and yahweh oh wait a second then the men feared yahweh greatly and they offered a sacrifice to yahweh and made vows fascinating they offered a sacrifice to does god hear the prayers of those who are not believers 100 and what if they worship him will he accept that well he did here that's not making light of the gospel just saying god looks far beyond our membership in a group and he looks at her heart and he wants her heart to be drawn close to yeshua and to the gospel and so here it says they feared god they offered a sacrifice and they made vows and that theme is going to be repeated a little bit later because it's central both to what jonah says and what nineveh says a little bit later on and so it's interesting they fear the god of the jews they fear the jewish prophet and so they worshiped the lord so they have an understanding developing of god's hand on the jewish people here and yahweh appointed a great fish to swallow jonah and jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights so let's look for a second a little bit at this great fish this is a picture of a real whale he can't swallow people because he has a kind of teeth in the front it's like a like a screen that screens out only the smallest fish the plankton but these are big these these whales you can see compared to an elephant or a human being these are big nearly a hundred feet and uh here's a picture from national geographic of a person actually skin diver filming a whale so these are now this is of course a mock-up here but you get the picture uh this whale swallows him and as he gets swallowed in the well three days and three nights that's a long time now i have a friend who says jonah died in the whale and he was raised after three days and three nights the text doesn't exactly say that says he was in the whale for three days and three nights and of course later yeshua uses that example and he says this is kind of like what i'm going to be doing in matthew 12 verse 40 and matthew 16 verse 4 he talks about his crucifixion and burial is kind of like the sign of jonah to the jewish people so all of a sudden this issue of jonah takes on a messianic meaning here so jonah is in this big fish it doesn't say whale but the biggest fish that we know are whales and it says in in jonah chapter 2 then jonah prayed to yahweh his god all of a sudden they've got a good relationship from the stomach of the fish and look what he says i called out of my distress to yahweh and he answered me i cried for help from the depths of shaol and you heard my voice okay and then he says for you had cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas this term we're going to look at in just a second because micah in chapter 7 talks about the same term and and right at the time of the feast of trumpets or what's called rosh hashanah there's a ceremony based on micah 7 which we'll look at when we get to micah talking about throwing our sins into the water just like god promises to throw israel's sins into the depths of the water so deep that no one will be able to find them so he says here you cast me into the deep into the hearts of the seas and the current engulfed me your breakers all of them and your billows passed over me and i said i've been expelled from your sight nevertheless i will look again toward your holy temple so here he is he's inside the belly of a big fish i'm sure there's a lot of other small little fish there a little bit of seaweed maybe it probably does not smell as good as the temple with the incense you know and he's saying i am here and all of a sudden i go back to jerusalem and i remember the sacrifices i remember the labor i remember the incense altar i'm back with you right there even though i'm stuck in the middle of nowhere i'm being called to to turn to you and he says water encompassed me in verse 5 to the point of death the great deep engulfed me weeds were wrapped around my head i guess that's not my imagination here and i descended to the roots of the mountains the earth with his bars was around me forever so he's saying i'm in the worst way i disobeyed you i was a bad testimony prophetic but a very bad testimony and i just about died i thought that's what going to happen and you have other purposes for me and now you put me in the belly of a fish and you take me right down to the bottom of the sea there was a television program many years ago called voyage to the bottom of the sea this is what he's saying here literally and he says you know you look at me and you don't blink it's a famous line that uh bono of you two says that when god walks into a room even when there's all kinds of sin going on he looks right into the eyes of everybody he doesn't even blink and this is what god does here with jonah he doesn't even blink he looks right into him here and he says but you have brought up my life from the pit o yahweh my god while i was fainting away i remembered yahweh and my prayer came to you into your holy temple those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness again what's going on in nineveh idol worship what's going on with the phoenicians idol worship and he's saying yeah i got it straight you know they're involved in idol worship they have forgotten their faithfulness to god and who's saying this a guy who's in the bottom of the sea because he had forgotten his faithfulness for god then he makes his confession and it's the same confession that the sailors made just a few minutes ago he says but i will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving and that which i have vowed i will pay yeshua yahweh salvation is from the lord and so here he is making this this confession here the same confession that the sailors made when they were rescued from death and this is quite quite dramatic what's going on here isn't it jonah runs away from god and he has an argument which will find out what it was about he goes undercover like the mossad of the prophetic ministry and all of a sudden uh god uncovers and exposes him he has to testify to pagans they have more fear of god than he does he gets pointed out the spotlight falls on him he gets thrown in the water thinking he's gonna die and boom part two the fish big fish grabs him prepared by god for this day we don't know about him we don't know his name we don't know where he lives maybe it was a woman fish we don't know and therefore he's hiding he's about to die and he makes this confession god i didn't do it right i am a sinner and for some strange reason you had mercy on me so that i would not be lost perhaps god will have mercy on me so that i will not be lost so here you have jonah walking out the message that god's going to have him deliver in nineveh he actually experiences it personally and and then he makes this confession and and it's sung in in songs in hebrew from this passage you know i will sacrifice to you a sacrifice of praise and i will call upon your name messianic jews sing that verse in in hebrew in israel today it's a really strong confession of faith and so it says here at the end then yahweh commanded the fish and it vomited jonah up onto the dry land so you would think well that's the end of the story but it's actually just the beginning because now jonah has to get to nineveh nineveh is in assyria that's in the middle of iraq he's in the mediterranean it's a bit of a ways to get from here to there so we're gonna take a break for just a second and when we come back we're gonna see how did jonah make it from somewhere on the coast of syria lebanon all the way into the center of iraq to complete his calling and what did the lord have in mind to show both him and the assyrians and us as well

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Length: 39min 38sec (2378 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020