The Work of The Lord
Jonah 1:1-3
1 The
word of the Lord came to Jonah
the son of Amittai saying,
2 “Arise, go to
3 But
Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid
the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence
of the Lord.
Something tragic happens when the
Church turns in on itself; when its major objectives are good services with good music and good preaching, and numerical growth. Many so called “growing churches” are merely centers
for reprocessing saints. The reality
is this, the larger a church becomes the less evangelistically responsible
it needs to be in order to grow and the more paid staff does the work
that the membership should be doing. These issues threaten the future of
every congregation in
This section of the little book
of Jonah beckons us to address these
issues and assists us in calling NT
believers, especially leaders, to renewed efforts in at home evangelism and foreign
missions. Verse two spotlights
three important aspects of this issue.
Please excuse me as I rearrange the order in which God presents them to
Jonah.
- First,
we will consider The City.
- Second,
we will consider The Cause.
- Third,
we will consider The Command.
I. The City.
- In verse three (3) of Chapter Three (3), Jonah
indicates that it took three days to walk through the city.
- In verse eleven (11) of Chapter Four (4) we are told
that the city contained 120,000 small children; infants and toddlers. This suggests a total population of
somewhere between 450,000 to 600,000 souls.
Are you
aware that over one-half of the world’s population lives in urban centers?
- In
- By the year 2010, three (3) out of every four (4)
people on earth will live in cities.
We must
have a new vision of Christian missions and evangelism and it must place
tremendous emphasis on the cities of our world.
We must put aside our fears and self-interest, and invade these enemy
strongholds with the presence of God
and the proclamation of the Gospel.
I don’t want to bore you with
statistics, but are you aware that 39.7%
of the world’s 6.3 billion people--a
figure that translates into more than 2.5 billion people--have never had an
adequate Christian witness? Simply put, more than one-third of the world’s
population has never heard the Gospel for the first time. That, ladies and gentlemen, is sobering. Amercican churches are fighting over governmental
control of the congregation while 1/3 of the world has never heard the God’s
love. Something is drastically wrong
with that picture.
Modern, educated, economically
prosperous European countries such as
Many of the inhabitants of the
inner cities of
We don’t have to go to
- They
live next door to us.
- They
work with us.
- They were
born in
- They
wait on us in restaurants.
- They
give us technical support on the telephone.
- They
go to school with us and
- some
attend church with us.
TRANS: Like our world,
II. The Cause.
- idolatry,
- pride (cp.
Is. 10:5‑19; 36:18‑20),
- cruel oppression of the nations they had
conquered (2 Kings
- inhumane
warfare.
Although sin is an individual thing, here it is viewed in a
corporate or community setting. God has
in focus the sin of an entire city—“their wickedness.”
It isn’t one person that is in danger of God’s judgment, but a city of
450,000 to 600,000 souls.
Please
note with me that no one was praying for
·
If ever a city needed a word from God, this city
did.
·
If ever a city needed a prophetic visit,
·
If ever a city needed someone to sound an alarm,
We too
live in a wicked world that is on a collision course with the judgment of God. Our own nation is responsible for the
legalized murder of more than 32,000,000 babies since Roe v. Wade. Our cities
are filled with violence and immorality.
Someone
has suggested that the only thing that keeps the world from being consumed by
the judgment of God is the b
·
·
God, not Jonah,
initiated this prophetic mission because He has a heart for fallen man. The
trip to
·
Evangelism and
missions are not God’s response to the Church’s heart-cry for the lost.
Evangelism and missions are the Church’s response to God’s heart for the
lost.
·
We do not pray to stir
God’s heart toward the lost, but to get God’s heart for the lost.
This suggests that failure in
evangelism and missions is not God’s failure, but ours. We are surrounded by hundreds of people who
are headed for a Christless eternity, but are we close enough to God to see
their need and know His heart?
TRANS:
III. The Command.
Jonah was the first missionary and the only OT prophet sent
to a Gentile nation. The word of the
Lord that came to Jonah commanded him to…
- Arise! God’s first word to Jonah is a stirring word! The Hebrew term
translated “Arise” is “qum” and calls Jonah to rise up
from a reclining position. The
command to “Arise” suggests an end to inactivity and a preparation for
energetic participation.
- When
- It
was the term Pharaoh used when he commanded Moses and Aaron to leave
God calls Jonah from a posture of
inactivity, indifference and apathy, and commands him to prepare himself for
active involvement in God’s work. He is
to arise and remain on his feet.
- Go to
- Cry against it! Once in the place of appointed ministry
and in the midst of the people to whom God was sending him, he is to
proclaim the appointed message.
There is too much similarity
between this text and that of Mark
Mark
Matthew 28:19 – “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…”
The “Go” of Mark 16:15 and Matthew 28:19 have not been withdrawn. They contain as much imperative authority as
they did on the day in which Jesus spoke them.
Like Jonah…
- We have been called to arise and go to the entire
world for the purpose of proclaiming the death, burial and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
- We have been commissioned to disciple the nations.
- We have been given a divine mandate to proclaim
Jesus’ finished work to every tongue and tribe and clan in every…
o
jungle,
o
hamlet,
o
great city,
o
inner city community,
o
street corner,
o
country village, and
o
dung hill.
We have been commissioned to…”spread the tidings ‘round, wherever man is found, wherever
human hearts and human woes abound; [It is the privilege of ] … every Christian
tongue to proclaim the joyful sound: the Savior has come, the Savior has come!”
From the deserts of
If we are willing to take an
unbiased
For instance, if current trends continue, there will be 40 million AIDS orphans
worldwide by 2010. That’s only six years
from today. Who will care for them? A
survey by the Barna Research Group shows that only 3% of evangelical Christians said they "definitely" would help children who have been orphaned because
of AIDS.
One sign of hope comes
from a group of high school students
at
Citation: Ed Gilbreath, Christian Reader (Sep/Oct 2003), p. 6
Of
course, $72,000 and a schoolhouse is just a small dent in the massive epidemic
that is devastating the nations of
Conclusion
Our situation isn’t much
different than Jonah’s. The Cities of
America and the world are filled with people who are headed for a Christless
eternity. Millions are under the
judgment of God, but God has provided for their recovery. The problem isn’t sin, but ignorance of God’s provision for
sin. The work of the Church is to go and tell the World that God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him will not experience the wrath
of God, but have everlasting life.
While we’re busy having good services and swapping pews,
PW: Sir,
young lady, you can go back to a time when your heart burned for the lost of
our world. Your dreams were of you
preaching Jesus to dark skinned, brown eyed people. It was so real, you could take me back to the
very altar where you wept for people you did not know, but you were closer to
God then. Being a missionary wasn’t your
idea, it was God’s desire for your life.
Something’s happened to your dream; to your heart. An enemy has turned your head with promises
he cannot keep. Your desire to be a part
of this world has robbed you. God’s word
to you this morning is, “Arise, go, and
cry.”
© 2004, by