Remember the message yesterday: I Kings 20:1-30: The same God that did incredible things at camp this past week is the same God that we serve here in Port Charlotte, at Suncoast Baptist Church! Stay faithful! He will reward you!
Jonah 1:1-10
1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.
3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; 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.
4 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.
5 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. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.
6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.
7 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. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
8 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? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?
9 And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.
10 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.
This is such a great story in many ways. I think because we grow up hearing this story we often discount it to simply a "children's story", but the truth is, there is nothing childish about this story. As we read from verse one, we see that God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh to tell the people to get right with God. However Jonah has his own plans. Whether it be rebellion, fear, or a lack of faith, Jonah does not obey God; In fact, Jonah goes in the opposite direction from Gods will.
I think it is Ironic that Jonah was scared to obey God, but he felt ok in a fierce storm out of the presence of God. I think we are like that many times: God will tell us to witness to someone, or to go down to the alter and pray, or God will tell us that we need to stand up for truth, and instead of obeying Him, we cower down and ignore the Holy Spirit.
Well, God has great ways of getting our attention as He did in the life of Jonah...
God sent this fierce storm that was likely o "break the ship" (vs. 4) So what did the men on the ship do? They turned to their god's. However their god's had no authority over the waves of the sea. When they found Jonah would you believe that He was sleeping through this mess?? (vs. 5)
The men on the boat wake up Jonah and then they all decide to cast lots... that is an old way of choosing straws? Do you know what that is? Basically it is a form of chance that men used to find out who's fault this was... The best way you can understand it is like this: These men played scissors, paper, rock to find out who was running from God.
When Jonah loses, they ask him, who are you and what are you doing here? Jonah tells them: I am a messenger from God, but I am running from God right now...
The men on the ship get very scared, because they see the power of God and they realize that they do not want to be on the opposing team of God.
I think that there are several lessons in this passage, but the few that jump out at me the most are the fact that when God tells me to do something: I must DO IT!!!! I should just obey the first time that God tells me to! Second, I think think it is wonderful that we have such an incredible God that He can even be glorified through our mistakes. Jonah chose to disobey, but God still received the glory whevenever Jonah told the men that He was running from God. They feared God.
We must obey God and be a testimony of His greatness Daily!!!!!!!!!
16 comments:
Something I always realize from this passage is that sometime or another, we run away from God. In Jonah's time you could not just scedule a time to leave to a specific place. You probably had to wait mounths to get a ship. And Satan will be more than happy to help you run away, and in Jonah's case, find a ship at the spare of the moment.
As of this very second threre are no comments but i doubt ill be first to comment; happens everytime. :P
Hmm, this passage seems to be perfectly timed its pretty applicable right now.
Well were probably thinking 'why would Jonas do that? Didnt he know he was digging himself a hole?' when really we do the same all the time.
When we ignore something God has put in our hearts to do, its a sin, and here we are demonstrated that there are consequences for it. God was chasing Jonas about his wrong decision and He sometimes does it with us too, often with conviction in my cases.
Through a lot of rough stuff im going through i can feel God telling me that it will be fine if i just keep doing things for Him and for Him to be my focus; not my problems.
Unfortunately im not exactly practicing that perfectly but it keeps popping up at all the right times so im taking the signs that i should act on it.
i just realized something about this passage- why would jonah run and try to hide from God? i would think jonah would know that God always was always w/ him and new everything. not only that but the sailors were questioning God it sounded lkike to me. clearly they weren't christians or else they would only be praying to our God. i gtg. see ya.
this passage shows us that running from God isnt the answer. all He wants us to do is His will in payment of the great sacrifices He has made for us though we have sinned unto his name.Jonah runs from God because ,rightfully so, he is afraid of the wrath of God but if we just do everything to the glory of god we wont have to face his mighty wrath and i suppose Jonah hadnt realized that yet because he probly would have gone to nineveh like god had requested in his vision.i have no idea what jonah was thinking though, there is nothing i wouldnt give to get a vision like that from god...i mean WOW. just to feel that kind of connection would renew any kind of lack of faithfulness to Gods word and it would really make you want to live for him and him alone.jonah must have been some kind of faithless stubborn, selfish person,i mean not only did he not answer gods calling but he also didnt even try to make things right when the ship was going down.he simply slept through all the commotion.that was alot of problems all resting on his shoulders because it wasnt only his life he had to worry about but also the lives of so many others.i think the most simple and rewarding and glorifying solution would have been to just listen to our amazing god for we are nothing on our own.
Sorry I didn't make it last night. I was going to take a short nap, but it ended up being longer than I expected.
I've heard this story many times, but everytime something new stick out to me. This time it was the fact that Jonah was the one with the short stick. I don't believe that that was out of chance. God is in control and He planned that.
See ya'll Wednesday, (:
The first thing that I noticed from this passage is that sin always has a cost! While we are reading we see that Jonah chose to disobey the Lord, as a result he decided to go in the exact opposite direction that he should have gone. In order to do this, he had to pay for a ships passage. That cost him.
Another thing that I noticed was the selfishness of Jonah. He knew that he was disobeying the Lord, but he didn't care. As a result, he put all of those that were in the boat with him in jeopardy.
Another thing that I never noticed before was the affect that it had on the mariners with him. If he had been a strong testimony he could have been highly effective, but instead he was sleeping. Many Christians are like this. We are "asleep" and not paying attention to the lost around us.
From this passage, I am really reminded of the patience and mery of our Lord and Savior.
Jonah was probably scared to go to Nineveh because it was a huge city and it was known for it's violence. He was probably intimidated by the reputation the city came to have and feared that if he rebuked them of their sin that they would kill him. He also had a little issue with God wanting this wicked gentile city saved from His judgement. Jonah wanted them to see God's judgement for all there wickedness.
When Jonah fled, he got on a ship bound for Tarshish, which was said in that day to be on the edge of the earth. As far west as you could possibly go. He was set on seeing how far away from God he could get. He soon came to realize that he cannot escape the all seeing eyes of God. The storm was terrifying to all the other sailors and Jonah was down in the ship trying to sleep off the guilt for disobeying God, only to wake up and see that God was there and if he didn't do something that everyone would perish.
All the other sailors tried everything they knew to stay alive, got rid of cargo, prepared the ship for the worse, and prayed to THEIR gods for protection. When they saw that their gods wouldn't be protecting them, they woke Jonah up to see if his God could calm the storm.
We cannot run from God!! When God calls us to do something, we need to do it right away and with a good attitude! We need to learn from the life of Jonah and obey!
Ok Jonah is kinda weird that he would run away from God because he didnt want to go to Nenevah because the people were very violent and not very nice. If I were in Jonah's sandals or whatever I would trust God and let Him lead the way for me to go and tell the people of Nenevah about Him. I would be scared at first but God has His perfect will. And everything happens for a reason.
I have actually only heard bits and peices of this story.. but what really popped out at me is that you cant run from God, he is always there with you. && we need to always trust God no matter what.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hybgVC5PwGY&NR=1
HEY Pastor Lee type this in and watch this video of someone on the blob!
Its AWESOME!
its is so weird why jonah wouldnt obey god from the start. i dont know why he would flee from God. if he was smart he would have just done what God had asked at the begining. we all need to take Jonahs example and obey God from the start and dont wait till consequences come to change your mnd.
Ok so Jonah in his stupidness thinks he can run away God how stupid are you anyways he commanded Jonah to go to ninnevah and he decided to go to somewhere else and what we can learn about this is that we need to be open to where God where ever he wants us to go so when hes ready for us to go we are ready too.
Ok so Jonah in his stupidness thinks he can run away God how stupid are you anyways he commanded Jonah to go to ninnevah and he decided to go to somewhere else and what we can learn about this is that we need to be open to where God where ever he wants us to go so when hes ready for us to go we are ready too.
this starts out by jonah getting a message from God to go to a city but jonah doesn't want to go to this city so he decides to go as far away as possible from the city. so he gets on a boat and when he was on the boat a huge storm came and it was so big that it threatened the life of the people on the boat (wow thats a big storm). so this whole time jonah is sleaping on the boat (wow sleaping on the boat with a storm big enough to kill everyone on the boat, that's crazy), and the people on the boat wake him up and do something to see whose fault it is (which is all by chance because it is pretty much a game). so when they find out that it was jonahs fault they ask him why he would do something like this to a god that powerful. also by doing this the people on the boat fear God and accept God. that is so cool that by jonah not listening to God people still accepted Christ, even though we should still listen to God. so we need to listen to God even if we don't want to because He has a plan for us and by listening to God we show Godly character.
like NIKE says...JUST DO IT!!!
yea go figure the only man who wasnt prayin 2 his god was jonah...
so it woulda seemed 2 me kinda obvious that it musta been his fault...
basically this story just says do what God says &dont get caught up in ur sins or ull pay 4 it
What a fool Jonah is *sigh* I just hope that later in life after chapter 4 he understands what god wants to say to him. So like he doesn't feel like going to ninevah so he goes to tarshish thinking that god didn't already know that he was going there and that he can't see him while he's going there. so there's a storm sailors are scared and they chuck jonah overboard yay.
So lessons to learn today
1 don't run from god he knows what you are going to do before you do, and he sees all anyways.
2 do what god tells you to, it will bring happiness to your life.
Post a Comment