Introduction:

Greetings!

(FOR REFERENCE ONLY)

Jonah tried to run away from God in the opposite direction of Nineveh and headed by boat to Tarsish.
God sent a great storm upon the ship and the men decided Jonah was to blame so they threw him
overboard. As soon as they tossed Jonah in the water, the storm stopped.
God sent a big fish, some call it a whale, to swallow Jonah and to save him from drowning. While in the
belly of the big fish (whale), Jonah prayed to God for help, repented, and praised God. For three days
Jonah sat in the belly of the fish. Then, God had the big fish throw up Jonah onto the shores of Nineveh.
Jonah preached to Nineveh and warned them to repent before the city is destroyed in 40 days. The people
believed Jonah, turned from their wickedness, and God had mercy on them. Jonah now became angry and
bitter because God did not destroy the Ninevites who were Israels enemy! When Jonah sat to rest God
provided a vine to give him shade. The next day, God sent a worm to eat the vine. Jonah now sat in the
hot sun complaining and wanting to die. God called out to Jonah and scolded him for being so concerned
and worried about just a plant while God was concerned with the heart condition and lives of 120,000
people who lived in the city of Nineveh.

a. name top 3 animals that can sleep for a very long time.

- Sloth/Hippopotamus – 10 hrs/day
- Cats – 12 hrs/day
- Squirrels – 15 hrs/day
- Babies – 16 hrs/day
- Koalas – 22 hrs/day

b. name 1 creature that can hibernate for a very long period of time.
c. name the creature that served its purpose living under the soil.

The purpose of this animal before it dies, it will lay its eggs under the soil for 3 meters. It will
continue to do its job for 3 to 4 weeks before it dies. Then the eggs that it laid will grow and live for 13-
17 years and will rise above the ground and make its loudest sound and will continue its life cycle.

1. Have we ever wondered why are we living this life? Why we live in this earth? Why we are Adventist?
Why we are here in the church? Why, in this very moment, in this very hour we are spending our time
listening to a sermon we don’t know if we would feel blessed or not?
Have we ever questioned our purpose in this life?

2. Today we are going to study in the bible specifically, the prophet who served his purpose but he
doesn’t want to in the first place but ended up using his efforts and talents God wanted him to do.

We will study in the book of Jonah and we will read on the fourth chapter. (Read Chapter 4:1)
*it is important to know what stirred up this anger. 40 days and you will be destroyed. He is not planning
on saving Nineveh. He wants to happen things the opposite.
(Continue reading Chapter 4 and comment)

Chapter 4:2 – He’s complaining that God is so gracious, and merciful.

Chapter 4:3 – Not the first time in the book he wants to die, and not the last time.
Chapter 4:4 – God asked him a question but he didn’t answer.
Chapter 4:5 – the only time in the book he’s happy.
Chapter 4:6-8 -
Chapter 4:9 – it says in the Hebrew that he’s exceedingly angry. The passion that he said coming out
from the mouth of this man from the living God.
Chapter 4:10 – the book ended a question that every one of us should question for ourselves.

STORY:

I’m going to tell you a story. A very sensitive story. Real life story written by Simon Wiesenthal. Many
years ago, wrote a book about the trauma of the Holocaust happened during World War II. The book is
called “The Sunflower”.

How as a young man saw horribly his family, especially his mother taken away by the Nazi together with
the hundreds of other Jewish women and only to have her life taken into the hands of these murderers.
How he saw his own grandmother, murdered in the stairway of their own home. How he saw 89 of his
immediate relatives tortured and killed in the hands of the Nazi’s Regime. But then he tells this
horrifying and chilling story. He himself was taken into a concentration camp and his duty involved was
taking care of the hospital premises, when the nurse came to him and asked “Excuse me sir, are you a
Jew?” and he said “Yes.” The nurse said “I have somebody who wants to see you.”

She assured him to a hospital room and showed him to a man lying in bed bandaged from head to toe
except for an opening for his mouth, nose and ears. He asked Simon Wiesenthal to identify himself and
he really is a Jewish by the way he speaks. And he said, “Yes sir. I am.”

He said, “Listen. I have just a few minutes to live and I’m dying. I’m dying a very painful death physically
but even more is my death emotionally. The guilt within me is tearing me apart. I have been responsible
for killing hundreds of your people.”

And then he narrated the most recent episode which was very blood curdling and chilling to the bones
of Simon Wiesenthal.

He said “before I die sir, I want you to do me a favor. I am truly sorry. I am torn apart by guilt. I beg you,
would you please find it in your heart, in whatever way you can to forgive me. I don’t want to die with
this guilt in my hands and my heart. I want somebody from that nation to say to me that he personally
forgives me.”

Simon Wiesenthal says in his book that he thought about it to 30 to 45 seconds. But couldn’t bring into
his heart to pronounce “I forgive you” thinking all of the atrocities, he turned away and left the man in
his room silent and shut the door as he went out.
After many years, he began to think about whether he had done right or whether he had done wrong or
does he even have the chance or capability of forgiving that person. He wrote to 32 personages in the
whole world about what he had done and only 26 responded that what he had done was right. And only
6 out of 32 was saying what he had done was questionable that he should’ve forgiven the man as he
walked out his room. Fascinating Story!

Comment: *personal experience on how to forgive relating to what happened to Simon Wiesenthal.
Note: I’m only telling that story to put in the context. We must understand not some reluctant prophet
who wants to be on the run. This is a prophet whose passion run deep on behalf of his people. This is a
prophet where the memory is not faltering for him. This is a prophet who lives in a part of the world
where history never dies.

Kung titingnan natin ang nangyayari sa Marawi na puno ng digmaan, kung pagbabasehan natin ang
kasaysayan ng pilipinas tungkol sa mga taong ito. Kung hindi natin aalamin ang mga nangyayari sa mga
bagay bagay, magtatanong tayo! “anong ginagawa nyo sa sarili nating bayan? Pumapatay ng libong mga
tao na walang dahilan!!”

There was an enigmatic writer and theologian researcher who wrote in his book referring to the book of
Jonah. He said that the people of Nineveh that time were the most hating and the most hated people in
that particular timeline.

Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh because the Ninevites were ruthless to his people. Thousands of
his people were murdered by the Ninevites that in some literature there were pictures of skulls
arranged in pyramids. When the Ninevites invades the land of Jonah, they will take the intelligence
people and decapitate them and forms pyramids of skulls to tell them that the Ninevites have been
there. That’s the kind of trauma that is going on.

Written and as we can read on Jonah 4:1- 17 (Read) So as Jonah was told to go, he was told to go 500-
700 miles in the east and he doesn’t want to go. But he went and rode a boat. From Joppa, he went for
about 2000 miles west directly to Tarshish. He’s very reluctant not to go to Nineveh.

COMMENT: When you know something is right and we’re not living by that, we will never stand still and
we always need to have to move in the opposite direction. We always do things in our own will because
we’re not living in the will of God. We’re living by our sight and not by Faith. We always wanted what we
want not what God wants for us.
*comment and relate to experience

And as Jonah was sound asleep to run from his reality, the captain of the boat came to me and spoke to
him. (*Read Chapter 6-14 or state about the story that they already know it).

And by this we will arrive to three problems that always happen to us as Christians in this world.

1. Out of touch with our surroundings. (Out of TOUCH=Not aware of reality/ ignorant of events/
state of not knowing what is happening/ disconnected from reality
 Comment: 3 times in these 48 verses, 1328 words which many scholars refer to as a Minor
Prophet. 3 times in these 2 pages book God gives him a threefold imperative. ARISE, GO, and
CRY.

And that ARISE literally means WAKE UP! GET UP JONAH! He seems to love the horizontal position and
God is forever waking him up. “Get up Jonah. Go and Cry.”

ARISE, GO and CRY. Out of touch with his surroundings. Out of touch with the storm raging outside.
Jonah made a fundamental mistake and I hope can learn the lesson very importantly.

NOTE: try to tell the story of Ravi Zacharias about riding the aircraft

You can’t fall asleep when there’s a ravaging risk around you and the storm surround our lives.
Brothers and sisters there’s a storm around our country, our world, all over where we can see people.
And some of us are tending to sound asleep. Very sound and deep sleep. Out of touch with what is
really going on outside our world with closed doors in our lives and can be easily shut and we look
upon ourselves feeling how nice it is to be in our protected setting. In our comfort zones.

*tell stories about what’s happening in the Philippines

- a pregnant 19-year-old girl were murdered
- because of an understanding someone stabbed his friend.
- 4-year-old, 9 and 12 were raped by his own grandfather.
- 24 years old, going home from work were stabbed for not giving her bag when a thief was
trying to steal it.
- how our own countrymen could easily kill our people.
- a grandmother were left behind by her children because she’s too old and stinks
- a poor person can be mistaken as a snatcher.
- how a schoolgirl is being kidnapped in front of her parents.
- how some of our leaders and police officers are involved in the war on drugs and heroine.
- how a kid learn how to smoke and drink.
- how some of us thinks being wealthy is at advantage in terms of evangelism.
- when people disregard our own and favor only on what they could gain.
- when some of us thinks that going to church becomes a burden and load.
- how passion and sympathy we give to those people suffering in the internet and television but
could not help our own or our neighbors.
- how we label ourselves based on our stand in life and accomplishments.

- when we invite our brethren to be involved in the field and work of evangelism but we
ourselves couldn’t find in the area.

*all I can say, and how I wish these things aren’t real and not happening.

And that’s what is happening to Jonah, and he made a simple but catastrophic mistake. Jonah branded
the people of Nineveh as “Immoral”. Failing to recognize that immorality is always preceded by impiety.
People were immoral because they were first impious and not the other way around. Immorality in our
streets is because there is irreverence in our hearts before God.

Which means morality is merely symptomatic. And how we can solve it symptomatically? Is it by
changing the laws? No. we have to change our hearts of the individual and only God can is big enough
and worthy to do that.

2. Out of touch with his message. Not only Jonah is out of touch with his surroundings.
*it is possible for you and me to be in touch with the message of the sermon, or every sermon
without recognizing that we need to change and we need to improve ourselves for the
proclamation of the gospel and evangelistic works.
we should walk the talk and practice what we speak.

We can relate in the story in the Old Testament, II Kings 5:20. Where a man named Gehazi, is very close
to the prophet Elisha. Elisha is the one who looked up to God and asked God that he wants the double
portion of Elija’s spirit. And Gehazi was standing in one of the greatest miracle he’s going to perform. By
the name of Syrian soldier Naaman, Elisha told him to go down and dip into the river of Jordan seven
times.

And then when Naaman got healed, he asked Elisha of what do he owe him. But Elisha refused. And
Gehazi was all witnessing Elisha’s first greatest miracle. When Naaman and his soldiers went away,
Gehazi followed them and asked for their rewards. By the time he got back Elisha asked him where his
come from and he answered him nowhere in particular. So, the leprosy was given to him as his
punishment.

COMMENT: Gehazi had come to a point where he lived surrounded by truth without ever applying it in
his own life. He lived surrounded by truth without ever applying it in his own life.

- It is possible to attend CLC conferences, Revival meetings and never feel a call for revival
- It is possible to listen to evangelistic sermons; small group meetings a thousand times over and
never be evangelized in your own heart.
- It is possible on holiness, in faithfulness, and giving and commitment without making any
commitment in our lives.

*when we go out this church, we might think of what we’re going to eat. We will think of what we’re
going to do next week and our plans. We might also forget all the things you will hear. But I think, how
would this world be like if we take our FAITH seriously.

Os Guinness in 1974, speaking at the Lausanne Congress regarding encountering professional

evangelism, made this comment:

“Why is there such constant disparagement of the mind? Why so much appeal to the emotions? Why so
little content presupposed on which to decide? Why all the talk of “souls” and so little talk of whole
people? Why the obvious exploitation of the testimony of the famous? Why is it so often a case of the
most simplistic the message the most sophisticated the techniques? Why is there the need for always
being bigger and more successful? Why the creation of Christian “celebrities” and “one man
denominations”? Why the unconscious manipulations or the open fraudulence in public appeals for
money or in prayer letters?

...Part of our failure to get thinking people to take the Gospel seriously is born of a credibility gap. We
claim Christianity is true - a claim which is awesome by contemporary standards, but then we whittle
down our claims by the patent incongruity of our practices of the truth. The way we operate speaks
louder than what we say. Without the practice of truth, evangelism is in danger of becoming a giant
institutional mouth or as E.M. Forster dismissed it scornfully, “poor, talkative, little Christianity!”

C.S. Lewis wrote in his book:

“Do ye think so?” said the Teacher with a piercing glance. “It is nearer to such as you than ye think.
There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came
to care nothing for God Himself ... as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been
some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye
see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed
copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor?
It is the subtlest of all the snares.”

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love
of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say
about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—become
interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.’

Note: *share experience on how to help other people. But by starting to help yourself.

“Outside of the salvation of Jesus Christ there is no hope for either of me or you or this nation, it is faith
in Christ that’s going to change us as a people.

3. The only thing Jonah is in touch with is his own comfort.

It strikes me. There are invitations and reminders, to do our part as a servant as a steward. But then, we
think first if it will favor us or will gain something in that particular moment.
there are invitations to speak for midweek and vesper but we reject it because we have plans ahead and
we don’t want to do it because midweeks and vespers are boring.

*share more experiences.

COMMENT: we move naturally in the direction of our comfort, and God sometimes tells us to get out of
our comfort and move into arenas of discomfort.

React on how Jesus is far different from Jonah. Share some story of Kuya Francis.
Note: I don’t know where we are right now in this spiritual life. There’s a very long way but we can make
the first step. Are we willing to pray a prayer as meaningful as you’ve prayed than before? To believe
that in God’s mercy, He can use us in some of the toughest part of his work.

Luke 14: 25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If
anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and
children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my
disciple. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot
be my disciple....... 34 salt is good but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be
restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to
hear, let him hear.”

“And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our
eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
HEBREWS 12: 1-2 (NIV)