The Will and the Worker - Jonah 1:1-2

The book of Jonah has always fascinated me, and we’re going to be spending some time now looking into the life and the ministry of Jonah. It’s really unfortunate that when people mention the word Jonah, that the automatic response is "the whale" or "the great fish." The book of Jonah is not about Jonah and a fish; it’s about Jonah and God. Jonah is mentioned 18 times in the four brief chapters in the book of Jonah. The fish is mentioned only four times, and God is named at least 38 times in this book. The book of Jonah has to do with God and God’s servant. The emphasis is God’s worker and God’s will. Oh, that is so important to lay hold of that truth, because God is far more concerned about the worker than he is the work. If God wants to get some work done, all he has to do is speak, but he’s concerned about the worker. You see, we as God’s workers can disobey him, we can rebel against him, we can, we can turn away from his will and try to do things our own way, and God is so concerned about the worker.

I’ve always looked upon the book of Jonah as a love story. Jonah speaks to us about God’s love for a lost world. Jonah is really a missionary book. And so we’re going to be focusing on the book of Jonah and learning what God has to do with and what God has to say to one of his servants named Jonah. And we’re going to see how that God and Jonah get together to accomplish what God wants to accomplish. 

Now, there are four chapters in the book of Jonah, and I think it’s good for us when we study the Word of God to get the overview. I think it’s very, very helpful to see the total picture before we examine the individual verses and the individual words. In Chapter 1, God calls Jonah, Jonah rebels, the storm comes, and Jonah is cast into the waters and swallowed by the great fish. Chapter 1 we’re going to call resignation. Jonah resigned his commission. He fled from the presence of the Lord and said, "I will no longer be a prophet." That’s resignation, Chapter 1. 

In Chapter 2, from out of the inners of the great fish, Jonah prays, and he prays a prayer of confession, quoting from six different Psalms. He lays his heart bare before God, and God speaks to the fish, and the fish regurgitates Jonah on the dry land. And so, Chapter 2 we’re going to call repentance. Resignation, and then repentance. 

Now, in Chapter 3, God’s Word comes to Jonah the second time. Jonah obeys this time and goes to Nineveh and preaches the Word of God. And a wonderful, wonderful thing happens. The people repent, and there is a great revival. So Chapter 3 we’re going to call revival. 

Now, in Chapter 4, you’d think that Jonah would be happy about all of this. He has obeyed God finally. He has seen the city of Nineveh repent. You’d think that Jonah would be rejoicing, he’d be mingling with the people teaching them about the true God of the Jewish nation. But no. No, Jonah is sitting outside the city, very angry. An angry man, hoping that God will destroy the city. And there he has to meet with God. You’ll notice that Jonah Chapter 4 ends on a rather high note. It never does come down to tell us what happened. There ought to be a twelfth verse there that says, "And Jonah repented of his angry attitude and went and ministered to the people." But it doesn't say that. The book ends with God saying, "And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?" Period. Question mark. That’s it. 

But we have every reason to believe that Jonah did repent and that he learned his lesson. And so Chapter 4 we’re going to call rebellion. Here is the prophet outside the city rebelling against God. Now, why do we have these four chapters? Not just to give us the history of Jonah and God. There’s much more to it than that. You see, in each of these chapters, Jonah learns something about God. I have made this statement in various places; sometimes people have questioned me, but I believe it’s true. The purpose of our Bible study is not to study the Bible; it’s to get to know God better. Now, it is important to study the Bible, but I have met people in my ministry who know their Bibles but they don't know God. The purpose of the Word of God is to reveal the God of the Word. And the purpose of the experiences of life is for us to get to know God better. The last time you went through a storm, did you get to know God better? The last time there was some difficulty, did you get to know God better? The last time God used your ministry to help somebody else, did you get to know God better? 

What did Jonah learn about God? Well, he learned four very important lessons about God. In Chapter 1, he learned the lesson of God’s providence. God is in control of events. Either you cooperate with God and everything will work for you, or you rebel against God and everything will work against you. Make your choice. He learned the lesson of God’s providence in Chapter 1. He learned that God can control ships, he can control wind, he can even control dice that are being rolled there on the deck of the ship. He can control the waves, he can control the fish. The lesson of God’s providence. 

In Chapter 2, he learns the lesson of God’s pardon. He is a God who pardons. He is a merciful God. He is a God who will hear our confession and forgive us. You know, many times in our Christian lives, we disobey God, and then we find out how wrong we really were. And so we come to God and we ask God to forgive us and he does. And so in Chapter 2, Jonah learned the lesson of God’s pardon. God had to chasten him, but then finally he confessed his sins, Jonah did, and he was cleansed. 

Now in Chapter 3, he learns the lesson of God’s power. If the child of God will obey the will of God and share the Word of God, he’ll see the power of God go to work. Nineveh is the last city you ever would have expected to repent. It was a wicked city. They were a godless people. And yet Jonah got into that city and began to preach a message of judgment, and the people repented from the king down to the cattle in the fields. The animals even went into sackcloth and ashes. And Jonah learned the lesson of God’s power. You know, our trouble is we second-guess God. We can't see how God can accomplish what he wants to accomplish. And yet if we’ll just obey him, if we’ll just do what he wants us to do, he’ll take care of the rest. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." That’s what Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13, and it’s still true. He saw the lesson of God’s power, that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. 

Now the key chapter in the book of Jonah is Chapter 4. You see, if you and I were writing this book, we would have ended it at Jonah 3:10. After all, Jonah accomplished what he set out to accomplish; the city repented. That was it. But you see, there was something wrong with the worker. Oh, the work was done, the work was done, but the worker was not what he ought to be. And I say it again: God is more concerned about the worker than he is the work. It’s not enough for me just to preach sermons and write books and magazine articles and take care of my work. How do I do my work? Do I do my work from a loving heart? Doing the will of God from the heart, says Ephesians 6:6. And that’s exactly what Jonah did not do. 

In Chapter 4, Jonah had one more lesson to learn. He’d learned the lesson of God’s providence: you can't run away from God, he’s everywhere in control. He learned the lesson of God’s pardon: if you’ll run to God, he will forgive you. He learned the lesson of God’s power: if you’ll work with God, he will do amazing things. Now in Chapter 4, Jonah has to learn the lesson of God’s pity. God’s pity. The last thing God says here, he says, "Should I not spare Nineveh? Should I not have pity upon Nineveh?" The lesson of God’s pity. Here we have a man, Jonah, who preached a tremendous revival and he hated the people he was preaching to. He did not have the love of God in his heart. Jonah is sort of the elder brother of the Old Testament. He did his work, but he did it grudgingly and he did he did it not out of love, but out of fear. 

Now when you take all of these lessons and put them together, you learn one great lesson. It’s simply this: Jonah was wrongly related to the will of God. God’s will for Jonah was something that Jonah would not accept. And so in each of these chapters, we find Jonah relating differently to the will of God. You see, in Chapter 1, he was afraid of God’s will, so he ran away. Now, don't ever be afraid of God’s will. The will of God is the expression of the love of God for you. He was afraid of God’s will and so he resigned and he tried to run away. Now in Chapter 2, he wanted the will of God only in emergencies. Here he was in the inners of the great fish, and boy, this was an emergency! This was serious! Now in Chapter 3, he obeyed the will of God because he had to. God’s Word came to him a second time and said, "Get going!" And so Jonah went. He didn't want to go through another storm, he didn't want to go through another digestive experience in that great fish. He said, "I'll obey, I'll obey! You don't have to tell me again." And so he obeyed the will of God. He did it only because he was afraid. He had to do it. But you see in Chapter 4, he needs to learn the lesson that God’s will means God’s love. The lesson of God’s pity. Do you love the will of God? Do you see in the will of God the expression of the love of God? Psalm 33:11 says, "The counsel of the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations." The book of Jonah wants me to learn this great lesson: that the will of God is the greatest thing in all the world. Don't be afraid of it. Don't turn to God’s will just in emergencies. Don't obey it because you have to. Obey the will of God because you love the God who has revealed his will to you. That is the lesson we want to learn from the book of Jonah.

"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me." Jonah 1:1-2. The book of Jonah is a love story. God’s love for Jonah and God’s love for a lost world. Because God loved Jonah, he called him to be a part of this love story, and yet Jonah disobeyed God. There are four factors involved in this marvelous love story, and these four factors are given to us in Jonah 1:1-2. 

The first factor is God’s work. "Now" is the first word of this book. Actually, in the Hebrew Old Testament, it is the word "and." We don't begin books with the word "and" because "and" is a conjunction. It connects something and you don't start with "and." You might use "and" in the middle of a sentence or the middle of a paragraph. You might start a chapter in the middle of a book with "and," but you don't start a book with "and." And yet interestingly enough, there are 14 Old Testament books that begin with this little Hebrew letter that means "and." Why would God begin books with "and"? God is saying to us, "This book is a part of something that’s been going on before." What is God’s work? God’s work is winning a lost world to the Savior. 

Now, God’s work began back in Genesis 3. The first man and the first woman disobeyed God and sinned, and they ran and hid. Conscience makes cowards of us all. In fear, they ran from the fellowship of a loving God and they hid themselves. And God came seeking them, and God cried out, "Adam, where art thou?" It was not the voice of a policeman looking for a criminal; it was the voice of a brokenhearted father looking for a wayward child. That was the beginning of God’s work. God continued that work in the calling of Abraham. He said to Abraham, "Through you all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed." That was fulfilled, of course, in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He called the nation of Israel to be a blessing to the Gentile nations. God called the nation of Israel to be a light unto the Gentiles, Isaiah 42:6. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, "My Father has been working and I am working." We must work the works of Him that sent me while it is yet day. What is God’s work? God’s work is the work of winning a lost world to salvation. 

That’s why the church is here. God has not left us here for the purpose of just fighting battles or carrying burdens; God’s left us here to be a blessing. God’s left us here to use our hands and our feet, to use our lips and our eyes and our ears and all of our being to minister the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world. The first factor in this marvelous love story between Jonah and God and Jonah and a lost world is God’s work. Are you involved in God’s work? Are you praying for the lost? Are you praying for those who minister to the lost? Are you giving that people might come to know Christ? God’s great concern is for a lost world, and this is why we are here. 

Factor number one is God’s work. Factor number two in this love story is God’s Word. "Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah." You see, our God is a God who speaks. Throughout the book of Jonah, you’ll find that when God speaks, things happen. In verse four, God speaks to the wind and the wind begins to blow and there’s a mighty tempest on the sea. In verse 15, once again he speaks to the sea and to the wind and it ceases its raging. He’s a God who can speak to nature. He speaks to the great fish in Chapter 1 verse 17, and the fish swallows Jonah. He speaks to the fish again in Jonah 2:10 and the fish regurgitates Jonah. Our God is a God who can speak to the wind and to the waves and to the fish. He even speaks to a gourd in Chapter 4 of Jonah. He prepares the gourd and the gourd grows up and shelters Jonah, and then God speaks even to a lowly little worm in Jonah 4:7 and that worm causes the gourd to die. Then God speaks to another wind in Jonah 4:8 and this hot wind blows upon Jonah. Is it not interesting that God speaks to nature and nature obeys, God speaks to a man and the man disobeys? Everything in nature obeys God; even the stormy winds fulfill His Word. But when God speaks to man, man says, "Well, I don't think I'll obey," and Jonah decided to go in the opposite direction. 

God is speaking today. Hebrews 1:1-2, these verses remind us that God is speaking. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers through the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." God has spoken. Now what are you doing about the fact that God has spoken? That’s why the book of Hebrews emphasizes the Word of God. The purpose of our Bible study is not to study the Bible; it’s to get to know God better. Now, it is important to study the Bible, but I have met people in my ministry who know their Bibles but they don't know God. The purpose of the Word of God is to reveal the God of the Word. And the purpose of the experiences of life is for us to get to know God better. The last time you went through a storm, did you get to know God better? The last time there was some difficulty, did you get to know God better? The last time God used your ministry to help somebody else, did you get to know God better? But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s what Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3:18. Now it’s possible to grow in knowledge and not grow in grace. Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8:1 and said, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." It’s possible to have a great deal of Bible knowledge and yet nobody can live with you. And so the purpose of Bible study is not to study the Bible; it’s to get to know God better. 

Today while you hear His voice, harden not your heart. God’s Word is the second factor in this love story, and God’s work means getting out God’s Word to a lost world. Now what’s God saying to us today? Well, he says all authority in heaven and on earth is given unto me. Go! Get going! Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Repentance and remission of sins should be preached beginning at Jerusalem. As the Father hath sent me, so send I you. Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses unto me unto the uttermost part of the earth. He says to us, get going because the Word of God is what fulfills the work of God. God’s Word created everything, and God’s Word controls everything, and God’s Word is going to climax everything, and he has given that Word to us. God’s Word is able. We are not able. 2 Timothy 3:15 tells me the Word of God is able to save. My word is not able to save anybody, but God’s Word is. Acts 20:32 reminds me that God’s Word is able to build me up and give me an inheritance among those that are sanctified. Today while you hear His voice, harden not your heart. God’s Word is the second factor in this love story, and God’s work means getting out God’s Word to a lost world.