Where is Your Identity — Jonah 1-4

0:00 Good morning. I was gonna take a page out of Chris's book from last week and say how nervous I am, but with the experience difference, it's not very applicable. That being said, I'm gonna open in a word of prayer. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for this day and for this time that we have to come together and remember you this morning and to hear more from your word this afternoon. Pray that you would guide my words and that the words that I speak that are not from you would be forgotten.

0:25 Pray that you would help my words to be edifying to those who hear them and that it would speak into their lives. We pray this in your name. Amen. So today, we're doing a book overview of the character of Jonah, some of the life lessons that we can learn from him, and a little bit about him. So I'm gonna start off by doing a little overview of the book itself and the character himself.

0:48 So the story of Jonah was supposed to have taken place roughly around eighth century BC. And this was right around the time that Hosea, Amos, Micah and Isaiah were all prophesying in Israel. This is an unusual book for the prophets because it is mostly narrative instead of being the prophetic discourse from God through his prophet to his people. A lot of people are skeptical of this book because of the whale and the story. They think that it might be more allegory than literal truth, but we know as it is part of the word of God that it is literal truth that we can learn from and study.

1:25 This is also the only instance of one of the prophets being sent to a heathen people. All the other prophets were sent to minister to the children of Israel, but Jonah was sent to minister to Nineveh. Speaking of the city of Nineveh, Nineveh was first mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 10. It had been around for a couple thousand years before Jonah went to minister to it. Classical writers say that it was the biggest city in the world at the time.

1:53 It was supposed to be about 60 miles in circumference and have about a million people that live there. Jonah is also the only recorded instance of a prophet directly disobeying God, contradicting his orders and doing the opposite, which is kind of fair. But I mean, look at some of the other requests that the prophets were made. Mean, Ezekiel, I feel like he could have some room to not want to obey God, but yet he was faithful and obeyed. An interesting thing about the book of Jonah is that the book is perfectly symmetrical between the first half and the second half.

2:27 The first seven verses of chapter one are God's first command to Jonah and his response. And the first seven verses of chapter three are God's second command to Jonah and Jonah's second response. And chapters two, one through 10 are Jonah's words to God and God's response. And four, one through 11 are Jonah's words to God and God's response. A little historical context for Israel at this time is that this was the time when Jeroboam was king, and Israel was the most powerful it had been since the reign of Solomon.

2:59 And Jonah was the prophet who was foretelling the greatness of Israel at this time. He was the one who was like, Israel's going to be great. We're going to be successful right now. He was the good times prophet in Israel. The other prophets at the time, like Hosea and Amos, were a bit more doom and gloom.

3:16 Not as favorable with the people, talking about Israel's destruction, how they're going to be overthrown, all these other different things. So when God came to Jonah and said, Hey, your worst enemy is Assyria. I'm going to destroy them, but I want you to go minister to them. You could probably think about how Jonah was thinking in his head, hey, if I don't go, nobody's going to tell them. They're not going to hear.

3:40 God's going to wipe them out and Israel's going be saved even longer. Like, that makes sense to me. And so that could be one of the reasons that Jonah decided to book it in the opposite direction to Tarshish. He was also from Gath Heifer, which is one of the northernmost cities of Israel. And if this is Samaria, this is his city, Assyria is like right here.

4:02 So he would have been one of the first cities attacked his hometown if Assyria came and invaded Israel again. This book is often used as a fun narrative story time for children, and I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Jonah growing up. But it also handles a lot of other heavier issues like depression, prejudice, anger, and disobedience. And we're going to talk about some of these issues today. I was going to read the book, but that was going to take too long and I didn't want to be boring.

4:52 And he thought of the furthest place in the world that he could go, which was Tarshish, which is about 2,500 miles away in what is modern day Spain. And so Jonah hops in a boat and gets ready to go there. But God's word is, his commands are to be obeyed. And so he intervenes and he sends a storm on the ship that Jonah was on. And the sailors did their best.

5:13 They tried very valiantly to save Jonah, but God had a purpose. And so they couldn't and they cast lots. The lots fell on Jonah for the troublemaker. And they said, What should we do? And Jonah says, Throw me into the sea.

5:27 So they threw Jonah into the sea. And at this time, a whale that God had prepared came and swallowed Jonah. And I know you're not supposed to cause division in the church, but I'm a big whale I'm a whale crowd person. I'm not a big fish person, so we can kind of split the people up here based on how they fall into that crowd. But it was a whale.

5:48 Not a big fish. And after it had swallowed Jonah, Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. And I don't know about you, but I think I could get just about anybody to reminisce about what they've been doing wrong in their lives. I certainly would be thinking about my actions. And so Jonah's thinking about it and he realizes how much he's disobeyed God.

6:11 So chapter two is a recording of God's... Or Jonah's prayer to God while he's in the belly of the whale. He repents. He realizes his disobedience. And God accepts that and has the whale spit Jonah out.

6:24 And chapter three opens up with God's second command. He says, Jonah, go to Nineveh and preach against it. And Jonah still somewhat reluctantly decides to go. It's a 500 mile walk from the coastline to about where Nineveh would have been. But he makes it there.

6:37 He starts preaching and lo and behold, the terrible city of Assyria, one of the most cruel places in the world, evil, vile and disgusting things that they would do, repents from their ways and says, God is Lord and we should not be doing what we're doing. And the whole city, from the king of Nineveh down to his lowest subjects, repent in sackcloth and ashes for the remaining of the forty days. Jonah was not happy about this. He was not happy at all. So he goes outside the city.

7:06 And I guess Jonah was a little bit of an optimist because he's like, maybe if I sit here long enough, God will still destroy it. But God did not destroy it. And God still had a lesson to teach Jonah. And so while Jonah's just sitting there watching and waiting and hoping, God sends a plant to provide shade for Jonah. And Jonah appreciated the shade because I'm sure Nineveh in the desert was pretty hot during the day.

7:31 And, he was very grateful. And then the next day, though, God sent a worm to destroy the plant. No more shade. Jonah was, again, very angry. Very, very angry.

7:41 And God also sent an east wind to make it even worse, really just compounding the issues in Jonah's life. And it was at this point that God started to use that object lesson of the plant to show his authority as God and his rightness in his actions as opposed to what Jonah thought was right in regards to having compassion on these people. Because Jonah had compassion on this plant for which he did nothing. God created everybody and there was a million people in this city. So how much more of a right does God have to have And compassion on these that's kind of the general story of Jonah in a nutshell instead of reading it.

8:49 And God is not necessarily physically visible in our life, so it's easy to associate this. And you can see this priority in Jonah's life when in chapters, or verses eight and nine of chapter one, the sailors asked Jonah his purpose, place and race and what he was doing there on the ship. And the first thing he says to them, he says, I am a Hebrew. Then he says, I am also a prophet of God. And we see where he was tying his identity to his life as a Hebrew and his time as the good times prophet in Israel and their national security during this time.

9:23 And this is a problem because if you tie your identity to something that is not stable, to something that can falter, to something that can go away because we know that Samaria was destroyed in the next little bit of time, that it is easy to become defensive, it is easy to become angry, is it easy to become resentful, Because you are constantly trying to prove yourself to that identity. You are trying to measure up. You're saying, Am I good enough? Am I the best sports fan for this team? Is there somebody else out there more?

9:51 It's like, Am I the best at this? And there's all these human metrics and standards that we try to use to show that our identity is valuable and that it's tied to this thing. But it always fails because the things of this world will fail. But when we tie our identity to God, we know that it will not fail because it is not a being good enough. We are just with him.

10:12 There is no partial having an identity with God. You are his, and you are a child of his, and nothing can separate you from this. And there's no condemnation when you are in Christ Jesus. It says this in Romans eight:one. It says, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

10:35 So here we see that in the world, it's easy to get your identity tied up in something else. And there's condemnations that come in these insecurities. But with God, when you are tied up in Christ, your identity is in Christ. There is therefore now no condemnation. And we can see the effect that this had on Jonah's ministry.

10:51 When he went to preach to the destruction of Nineveh, he said, It shall be overthrown. He was still hoping as he was preaching. He was not expecting them to repent, and he was hoping that God would still destroy them. Jonah felt angry and thought that God had been too kind to the people of Nineveh. He is an Israelite and a prophet, had a personal relationship with God and did not think that the Ninevites deserved this.

11:15 How could God extend his grace to the mortal enemies of the Israelites? He is angry with God and shows that the meaning in his life comes from a different source. Jonah's love for his country had replaced God in his life. We need to be critical in examining our own lives and making sure that the parts of our life do not replace God as the priority and as the thing that we want to be identifying with. We see that in chapter four as well that Jonah was willing to see a million people die in exchange for a little bit more security for his country because of his misplaced identity.

11:56 C. S. Lewis says that love of country can become a demon when it becomes a god. And Jonah was trying to use big G God to serve his real god, which was his misplaced identity. And how we get rid of these idols or things that we value in our life is only through the radical acceptance of the grace of God in our hearts.

12:15 We can't do it on our own. It is only through the grace of God and putting our identity in something else that we can replace these priorities in our life. And it's kind of a start, or we can see a little bit of a contrast here also between Jonah and Jesus and what an important thing that identity is and their actions that they had because Jonah was not willing to suffer potential suffering and death by ministering to the, Ninevites. They could have destroyed him and killed him for his actions. And he was not willing to suffer that to see and was willing to actually disobey God directly rather than see these souls saved.

12:52 But Jesus' identity was so entwined with the Father that when he was asked to sacrifice his life for the sake of the world, that he willingly went through the death on the cross to save us. I want to read, Galatians two twenty. It says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live, I live in the flesh by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

13:43 Jonah tries both when he runs away because he zealously wants to support his nation and then wickedness when he becomes self righteous and angry at God's decision to spare Nineveh. He did not understand that everyone was a sinner deserving of death, and he assumed that he, as an Israelite, as God's chosen people, was deserving of special privileges. He asked this question, or... And this is a question that gets asked a lot today. How can God be merciful to an evil people and still be just and faithful?

14:13 And you hear this a lot in the world today because a lot of people try to put God in a box. And we heard from Mason earlier this summer that you cannot in fact put God in a box. They, in this new age, like to think of God as an all loving being. And they ignore his other attributes and characteristics because, yes, he is all loving. And we are incredibly grateful for that.

14:33 But he's also perfectly holy. He can't be around sin. He's just. He's righteous. All these other different facets of his character that we cannot fully understand as humans.

14:43 Because if we can fully understand our God, then he is not God. So these characteristics of God are unknowable to us, but we can trust him, who he is, and trust that he has the best interests at heart. And we can see some of the irony in this book because the whole time Jonah is saying, Oh, we as the Hebrews, the Israelites, are God's chosen people, we're better. But throughout the whole book, the pagan people that Jonah's witnessing to consistently act better than him throughout the whole book. In chapter one, we see the captain rebuke Jonah for doing nothing and chastising him for not fulfilling his role.

15:22 In the same way, the world can be a rebuke to the church for not fulfilling their role. God called us in Matthew to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. We're supposed to be a ministry to those around us. And if we are not doing this, then the world can often act as a rebuke to us so that we can be a light to our community. So this is something we should consider.

15:43 But even at the end of all this, the courageous acts of the sailors in chapter one, we still see in chapter two that Jonah was harboring some resentment. He still had the superiority complex because he gave his whole prayer of repentance. And then the very last, one of the very last verses he gives in chapter two, verses eight, it says, Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy. So he's saying all these things about how he's repenting. And it's good.

16:13 It's a good prayer. But then he slips in that little verse. He says, but those who worship idols forsake everything. But we can see Jonah was blinded because he was only thinking of literal idols that the people of Nineveh were worshiping, these false gods, so to speak. But there was idols in Jonah's own life that he was worshiping separate from this.

17:00 Jonah put his racial identity first. And because of this, it led to prejudice in his life, not wanting to minister to these people, not wanting to save them, thinking that his people of Israel was superior to them. And prejudice does not just have to be racial, but it translates to other aspects of our life as well. Jesus had to handle this issue again in the New Testament with the story of the Good Samaritan asking, Who is our neighbor? It tells the story of Jewish rabbi who was traveling to Jericho and he was mugged during this time.

17:32 And Jesus tells about a couple people that come along that should have saved him, that should have been willing to help their countrymen, their friend, their compatriot. But none of these people did. And the one who did come by and save him was the Samaritan who took the time to take this man to an inn. He cared for him. He gave up of his time, his energy, his money, his resources.

17:55 He left an open tab at the inn and said, Hey, anything that this person needs, bill it to me and I will come back and take care of this. So we can see, even in the New Testament, that this is an issue that we still need to deal with and struggle with. But thankfully, in Christ, all other identities have been replaced and combined into one in our identity in Christ. And it says this in Galatians three twenty six and twenty nine. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

18:26 For as many as you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

18:40 What a blessing that we have this unity in Christ and we can have this wholeness together in Christ Jesus. Moving on to the next point. What do we do in our life when we hit rock bottom? Chapter one opens up with a very interesting verbal or written analogy where it consciously mentions Jonah going down, down, down. Jonah went down to Joppa.

19:06 Then he went down to the boat. Then he went down into the lowest part of it. Then he went down into the sea. Then the whale swallowed him, and he went down to the very moorings of the mountains. We'd see this idea of Jonah going lower and lower and lower.

19:21 And it was only at this point where he hit the literal rock bottom that he decided to turn to God and ask for repentance. But Jonah needed this experience. He needed this humbling. He needed this change of perspective for himself to turn to God. John Newton said that suffering now prevents greater troubles later.

19:43 And we see that sometimes, though these troubles in Jonah's life were self inflicted, that God does send troubles into our own lives or trials that we can use. And it talks about this in James one two-four, where it says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. God doesn't just send trials in our life though because it goes on to say later on in the book in verses sixteen and seventeen that every good and perfect thing is from above and comes down from the Father of glory with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. And what a blessing this is.

20:24 God wants to give us good things in life. Jesus said in Matthew seven:nine through 11, Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask of him? Jonah hits rock bottom again later in the story.

20:51 This time, though, instead of God being the one to bring him there through external circumstances, Jonah brings himself there. He wanted so badly for Nineveh to be destroyed. And when God spared it, he was in despair. He was at the point where he wanted to die. God asked him multiple times, Is it ready, right for you to be angry?

21:10 And Jonah said, Yes, even unto death. Jonah's in the ultimate pit of despair at this point. But it's a case of misplaced identity. It's because he had assigned his values in his life to something that could falter, to something that could fail him. It's because he didn't have his identity tied up in Christ and he had attached his self worth to something other than God.

21:32 And again, the things of this world will constantly disappoint us, but we serve a God who never disappoints. And it's a God who's loving and so patient because in verse four, God approaches Jonah with an almost incomprehensible level of patience. He asked him the very therapy style question, Is it right for you to be angry? Even unto death, Jonah says. And this follows one of my favorite couple verses in the Bible because to us it sounds so silly almost.

22:36 And instead he says, God, kill me. And we see how we need to make sure we have our identity placed in the right place because these words of hope can easily become words of despair if we are not trusting in the right thing. And this is the time when Jonah, or God uses the plant to try to witness to Jonah again saying, Jonah, here's the plant. I have compassion on it. You have compassion on it.

23:00 How much more should I have on these people? And God asked Jonah again, Is it right for you to be angry? And Jonah says again, Yes, it is. But in this point, God was not just destroying the physical plant of comfort in his life. He was also destroying the spiritual plant of comfort in his life that was his self righteousness, his national pride, his identity as a Hebrew before God, or putting that before God, and all these other different things.

23:26 I'm not saying that this is always the case, but when we have depression or anger in our life or resentment, it is important to find the root of the issue and take it to Christ to make sure that it is not a case of misplaced identity or priorities and making sure that it is something that we can look at and fix. And the last point I want to talk about is a little bit of comparison between Jesus and Jonah and the compassion of God and the gospel. So in chapter one, verses 12, Jonah asked to be thrown into the sea. This is one of the first actions that Jonah takes that shows that he does have that good character of a prophet of God in him because he's acting out of substitutionary love. We can assume that when Jonah said this, he did not think that God would send a whale to swallow him and preserve him.

24:13 He thought that he was going to his death in an effort to save these sailors. And it's the same kind of substitutionary love that Jesus exhibited in the New Testament when he died on the cross to save us. We also see this comparison of spending three days and three nights in the tomb. And Jesus referenced this himself in Matthew twelve thirty nine through 41 before he died, where he said, But he answered and said to them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

24:51 The men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And indeed, a greater than Jonah is here. It's also interesting to see how God can use just about anything to advance the gospel Because we see Jo... Jonah was running away from God because he didn't want to witness to pagans. But in chapter one, we see that the pagan sailors were saved because of Jonah's actions.

25:18 So God can use any situation. And it's interesting to note that these sailors were truly saved because a lot of times when people are in these life and death circumstances, they offer up rash promises and vows saying, God, if you save me from this terrible situation, I'll repent to you. And these promises under duress are not often as binding. And oftentimes when they're out of the situation of danger, they forget their commitments that they made and they back out of it. But the sailors, it was after the danger had passed and they were back in the calm waters that they took these vows, feared the Lord and offered sacrifices to him.

25:53 We also see God's sovereignty and power demonstrated in a bunch of different aspects of the story. We see how he sent the storm. He controlled the lots that selected Jonah as the problem person on the boat. And an interesting aside note to this is that the last instances we see of lots being used in the Bible is in Acts chapter one at the selection of Matthias as the replacement apostle. And it's because in Acts chapter two, God gives the Holy Spirit down...

26:22 Upon the church to give them wisdom and guidance in their decisions. We also see how he sent the whale. He caused the whale to spit Jonah up. He made a plant. He sent a worm, and he sent an east wind.

26:34 All those things that we see God's power being exhibited in the store... Story in all his sovereignty. Another interesting coincidence we see about sharing of the gospel is when God told Jonah to go to witness to the pagans, he went to Joppa to run away. And then in the New Testament, we see it was at Joppa that Peter was told by God to go witness to the Gentiles. And I think my favorite part of the whole book is wrapped up in verses ten and eleven of chapter four.

27:03 And I'm going to read those real quick. But the Lord said, you have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, the great city in which more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock? The word for pity or compassion that God uses here, it means to have your heart broken, to grieve, or to weep over something. This shows how thoroughly God cares for us.

27:36 If these people had died, God would have grieved in his heart. He was attached to them. They were people that he had feelings for. His compassion knows no limits and we see this throughout the Old Testament. We see how he was willing to save God, Sodom and Gomorrah, these wicked cities for the sake of but 10 righteous.

27:54 And we see how this evil city of Nineveh, he was willing to save for their repentance. True compassion means that the sadness of their condition makes us sad. And we can see that the destruction in Nineveh would have saddened the Lord. And one of the coolest aspects of this is that we experience love and compassion incidentally. It happens based on the things around us.

28:17 But God, based on his very nature, did not have to feel this way about us. He chose to feel this way about us. He chose to have compassion on us and he chose to love us. There's nothing that we did. No reason that he should have done this.

28:31 It is only because of his nature as God that he chose to have compassion on us. And we can be incredibly grateful for this. I was gonna go on a whole little thing, and I'm gonna read John three sixteen for us. And it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And it made me really happy when mister Morris read this in the first meeting because I was gonna go on a whole little thing about how we don't talk about this verse enough.

28:58 I know we all hear it. It's like the first bible verse we memorized. I remember memorizing it in Sparks at Awana. And everybody here pretty much knows it. We're all familiar with it.

29:08 You can talk to people who aren't saved, never read their bible, and a lot of them are still familiar with this verse. And it's so powerful because just in the words, for God so loved the world, just a conscious decision from him to love us so much that he gave his only begotten son, the thing that was most precious to him that we did not deserve. And the city of Nineveh did not deserve it at all. They were ignorant of God's love. They were ignorant of his compassion.

29:34 And we see how God makes the comment of the left hand and the right hand, talking about these young people, a 120,000 of them who don't know this difference. But it's also a reference to Nineveh's spiritual ignorance as well. How this great city had no idea of the character of God. They were ignorant of this. And ignorance is no excuse, but God still had compassion on these people and sent them Jonah so they could hear about the word of God.

30:00 And we can just see how stark the contrast is between Jonah and Nineveh and Jesus at Jerusalem. We see in the gospels that Jesus wept over a city that he knew would reject him. And Jonah was watching the city that accepted him and waiting for it to be destroyed while he was angry with God. We see how Jonah went outside of the city to see his destruction, and Jesus went into the city to be its salvation. Jonah did not want to warn them and was waiting and hoping for their downfall, whereas Jesus prayed to the Father and asked him to forgive them because they know not what they are doing and he wanted them to be saved.

30:40 We don't know Jonah's final answer to God and his final commendation that God gives in verse 11, but we can infer by the existence of this book that Jonah did have a change of heart. He understood the error of his ways and God's message and lesson to get through to him. We can see how Jonah had his identities out of place and his characters was misaligned and God was able to speak to him. And we have the book of Jonah that we can learn from Jonah's life. So the question I want to ask yourself as we close is, where is our identity?

31:12 What is our value in life? What is our purpose? Because much like Jonah, we have received a command to go and witness. We have received the Great Commission from God to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Are we running away to Tarshish, trying to avoid this command that God has given us?

31:29 Are we angry or depressed or resentful by having to follow God's command in our life? Are we not listening to him? Because if our identity is aligned with God, then sharing the gospel and obeying his commands will result in love, compassion, and a better understanding of the grace of God. Let's close in prayer. Dear heavenly father, we thank you so much for the grace that you've given us and the life lessons that we have been able to learn from the characters in the Bible through Jonah and Elijah and all the others that are to come.

32:01 We thank you for the compassion that you have on us and the love with which you we were evil and deserving of every punishment that you can imagine. But we have a gift of your son, and we can identify with him and be your children forever. We thank you for this and pray in your name. Amen.