Sermon series

Today, I finished a sermon series on the Biblical book of Jonah. What a great story! So many learnings. To Jonah God says, "Go," but Jonah says "No," in fact Jonah runs away from God. We would never do that, would we? But, we do. We read the Bible and say, "I am not going to do that." Or, listen to a sermon and say, "Nope, not doing that." We too run away from God and it often takes the storms of life to get us back on track with God.

Jonah 2

We have been looking at the familiar story of Jonah and the big fish. It is funny how most think the big fish was a whale, probably because we think it is the only sea creature large enough to swallow Jonah whole and sustain his life. Others argue that it could not be a whale, because the scripture uses the word, "fish," and a whale is a mammal. The problem with both these views is that it removes the obvious; God is all powerful and can provide any environment he chooses to do his bidding. The word for “fish” is the Hebrew word, "dag," is usually translated as "Leviathan" which is used to refer to a large sea creature. We don’t know what kind of sea creature seized Jonah, but we know that something did, and that God sent it.

It seemed like Jonah was doomed. No sailor was about to retrieve him from the sea and risk the recreation of the crisis. Jonah thought he was about to die. By running from God, Jonah found himself in the greatest crisis of his life. However, God intervened. God caused the “Big fish” to swallow him. One important thing to note here is that God was in complete control of the situation. When we think that things are getting critical we often will remain oblivious to God’s sovereignty. I would imagine that if you were to tell Jonah at this moment that God was in control he would not quite agree.

Here’s a lesson for us today: God seeks to save and he may use means that are not very comfortable. When God places events in our path that are intended on turning us back toward Him, the experiences may not always be pleasant. More often than not, the difficult experiences are of our own making, and directly related to our rebellion. The best thing we can do is to surrender, which requires us to recognize God is god and we are not (Not an easy thing to do).

Where do we start? On our knees.