Jonah May 24/2023



Listen, if God can save you He can save anybody.  


If God can save you He can save anybody.  Can you think of anybody more difficult than yourself?  And you don't know whom God is going to save next, and it could be the person you are wanting to see converted seems so far from God.  Many times we give up because we think the task is so great; we say: 'It is too much.  But God can do it and when God tells us to do something we'd be better off to begin to obey at the beginning.

But we are told that Jonah had other thoughts.  Despite the fact Jonah was given the word of the Lord, despite the fact that God came to Jonah in such an intimate way, calling him by name, knowing his background, singling him out - such a favour God did Jonah - we are told that Jonah wanted to do other things: Jonah rebelled; Jonah disobeyed; Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord.  Jonah had other thoughts.


When Jonah rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord that might have been the end.  When Jonah paid the fare to go to Tarshish that could have been the end.  We might not have known that there was any more to the story and I would remind you that when you have disobeyed, when you have rebelled, when God has said one thing and you have done another, I want to remind you that that could have been the end of you.  God could have finished you off right there.  God was not obligated at all to keep on dealing with you.  God could have just struck you out.  But that was not the end of the story of Jonah.  God stayed with him: 'But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea', and we are going to examine what happened.

You have found that God was not finished with you.  You have gone your way but you have been miserable and you have been making it miserable for everybody else and you have been accusing others and blaming others.  Let us learn to accuse ourselves and thank God, in His mercy, that He sends out the great wind and that He prepares the fish and He brings us back.









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