SERIES: Jonah: God’s Heart for the City
TEXT: Jonah 3:1-5
MESSAGE: “When God Calls”
“What’s your calling?”
“We have to define calling…the way I define it and see it in Scripture… calling, in it’s simplest definition is, ‘what does God want me to do with the talents He has invested in me.’ So if I look at calling from a very creative perspective, God as this great Creator; 7.4 Billion people and counting, does He have the capacity to invest unique clumps of talent in each person? Yes, calling is for everyone, it’s not just for a few. How many people go to their grave and actually discover it? That’s a very small percentage.” — Pete Richardson
Q: What if God called you to invest yourself in this city?
TEXT: Jonah 3:1-5
“We know nothing about the moment in Jonah’s life when he rubbed his eyes and stretched out his hand to make sure that he really was on dry land. The previous thirty-six hours must have seemed like an eternity to him. The nightmare encounter with the storm, and the contacts with the sailors — they would seem so vivid in his memory, and yet his own experience of God’s power since then had been so profound, so life shattering, they must have seemed like the events of a previous year. He was certainly a wiser, and hopefully, a better man than he had been merely hours before. To this changed man ‘The Word of the LORD came…the second time.” — Sinclair Ferguson
What can we learn about God’s call from today’s text? God sent his gracious Call: (1. For Jonah 2. For the City 3. For Spiritual Awakening)
1. For Jonah (v. 1-2)
“Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”
“The text simply points out that God spoke to Jonah again. There is no mention of reproach for the prophet’s former disobedience. The Lord simply repeated his command. While Jonah had taken quite a detour since the first command, God’s will remained steadfast.” — Billy K. Smith and Franklin Page
“Although God’s word came to Jonah a second time…examples in Scripture show that not everyone has a second chance to do what God has commanded (cf. Gen 3; Num 20:12; 1 Kgs 13:26). However, this text should bring thanksgiving to the heart of every believer who has been given another opportunity to do what God requires. This text, more than anything else, points to God’s sovereignty and his insistence upon the accomplishment of his will.” — Billy K. Smith and Franklin Page
2. For the City (v. 3-4)
“So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
“The church has to be everywhere there are people but the people are moving into the city faster than the church. If you love what God loves, you will love the city…We should sacrificially lay our lives out for the people in (the) city. People should see that we care about them, that we love them.” – Tim Keller
“Jonah was not really fitted to be the evangelist to the Ninevites. He had no comprehension of their condition, nor had he any true sympathy for them…(Jonah) needed to be broken, melted, moulded, and filled with the love of God for the lost before he would be of any use to God in this field of service. Broken and contrite-hearted Jonah was precisely the kind of man God could use in Nineveh.” – Sinclair Ferguson
3. For Spiritual Awakening (v. 5)
“And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.”
The results here show that human effort is not what changes the hearts of the Ninevites or anyone else. Instead, they demonstrate that believers, as stewards of the gospel, should be faithful to saying what God says and leave the results to God. — Eric Redmond
Collin Hansen says, “When all hope seemed lost, God moved. The world never escapes the reach of his sovereign care.”
TAKEAWAYS: What can we learn from this?
* God is more for you being like Jesus than you are (Character)
“In order to realize the worth of the anchor, we need to feel the stress of the storm.” – Corrie Ten Boom
* God is more for our city than we are (Compassion)
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” — C. S. Lewis
John 1:14;16-17 — “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth….16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”