Oakbrook Evangelical Free Church

Jonah – the Missionary Prophet
Called by God: The Meaning of Personal Calling, pt.1
Ed Riddick, November 29, 2009

This is about God’s call on Jonah’s life in the form of his command to go and preach to Nineveh.
In terms of calls this is
~ God’s secondary call on Jonah’s life – what he wants him to do
Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh to preach to those rotten, good-for-nothing haters of God and enemies of God’s people.
We will examine the secondary call of God on our lives.
We will talk about running from God.
We will the meaning of true Christian repentance when a Christian is running away from God.

~ But hear me!
The main message of this book is about the compassionate call of God to those who are away from Him and are lost.  The primary call of God is for individuals to hear His voice, to turn and come to Him as their Savior and Lord.

He is the One who sends people into the lives of those who do not know Him.  He is the One who calls people into a saving relationship with Him.

Introduction:
What is the most unique ride you had? 15 yrs old / Tidal Wave

I.          Background
Jonah = “dove”;  also referred to in 2 Kings 14:25 &  Ministry:          800-750 B.C. (Iron Age)
Contemporary of Hosea and Amos

The Book of Jonah is The story of a single prophetic mission
Much is compressed into a small space.
~ Just 48 verses like a “Zip” file.

~ It’s about a short-term missions trip and racism and ethnocentrism.
Jesus said that he was greater than Jonah, Matt 12:39-41

Matthew 12:39-41 “He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.”
Not only because his resurrection is greater than Jonah’s fish story
But because he embraces the mercy of God and extends it to all nations

II.         God’s Personal Call on Your Life
Jonah 1:1-2 “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

Jonah 4:11 “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

God’s compassion!
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

1 Timothy 2:3-4 “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

We dream of a pay raise. God dreams of raising the dead.
We avoid pain and seek peace.  God uses pain to bring peace.
We love what rusts.  He loves what endures.
We rejoice at our success.  He rejoices at our confessions.
We show our children athletic and entertainment stars
God points to the crucified carpenter with bloody lips and a torn side and says, “Come to Christ.”
He has a different agenda.  He lives on a different plane.
He is untainted by the atmosphere of sin, unbridled by the time line of history, unhindered by the weariness of the body.
What controls you doesn’t control Him.
What troubles you doesn’t trouble Him.
What fatigues you doesn’t fatigue Him.
Is an eagle disturbed by traffic?  No, he rises above it. Is the whale perturbed by a hurricane?  Of course not, he plunges beneath it.
How can God be everywhere at one time?  (Who says God is bound by a body?) How can God hear all our prayers at the same time?  Perhaps His ears are different.

Ps 19: 1-2 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.”

Every square yard of the sun is constantly emitting 130,000 horse power, or the equivalent of 450 eight cylinder auto engines and is yet only one star in the 200 billion stars of our Milky Way galaxy.

Our globe’s weight has been estimated at 6 sextillion tons ( a six with 21 zeros).  Yet, it is precisely tilted at 23 degrees.  It rotates at a speed of 1000 miles per hour; 25,000 miles per day; 9 million miles per year and yet we don’t fall off.

If God calls each star by name and He placed the stars in their sockets and suspends the sky like a curtain do you think it remotely possible that He cares about you and can guide you and protect you?

Psalm 8:4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Matthew 6:25-30 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life ? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

God sent Paul to the ancient city of Athens to speak to them
Acts 17:24-28 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven …he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”

At some point every one of us confronts the question: How do I find the central purpose of my life?

Who am I?  What is the meaning of life?

We all search for significance.  We want to make a difference.

From the time we are/were teenagers faced with the world of freedom beyond our family
To graduate students faced with a myriad of choices
To those of us in our early 30s faced with the demands of               jobs and marriage and beginning of families.

Etc.  Midlife, transitions, later years.

Personal purpose is not a matter of philosophy

It is not inherited
Deep down inside we all want to find a purpose bigger than ourselves. “The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; to find truth that is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”

To find the purpose for your life can only be found when you answer the call of your Creator on two levels:
~ First, to turn to Him in repentance and into a personal relationship with Him.   And
~ Second, to follow Him as you live life day by day.

The basic meaning of personal calling:

We call each other, to call our pets, we call out to God.
God calls you to personal faith and into a personal relationship with

Our primary calling is the Biblical truth that God calls us to Himself so clearly that our only choice is either to respond positively or negatively to His summons to come into a relationship with Him through personal faith in Jesus Christ.

To be sure the truth of personal calling comes into its fullest explanation in the NT
~ The assembly of God’s people “the church” is the community of the “called out ones” ecclesia.

Romans 8:28-30 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

But there are numerous examples both OT and NT and today
Adam and Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lot, Naaman, Moses, Pharaoh, the Aramian general, Naaman (2 Kings 5:1-18)

The disciples, Nicodemus, woman at the well,

“There is no merit in seeking or finding.  All of is grace.  We start out searching, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something but come to realize that we are found by Someone.

As the great Oxford scholar who called himself a lapsed atheist turned Christian said,

In his spiritual autobiography entitled Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes the days just prior to his coming first to faith in God and then to Christ…suddenly without warning ordinary everyday events triggered in him a memory, a desire, a sensation, a longing for something inexpressible and indefinable.

In a later essay “The Weight of Glory” Lewis described this intimations that stirred within him as a “desire for our own far-off country…the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

In the summer of 1929 C.S. Lewis’ search came to a climax.  He said that the Hound of Heaven, the great angler in the sky had tracked him down and closed in on him.

Lewis in his own words…page 15  The Call

I love this…

“What brings us home is not our discovery of the way home but the call of the Father who has been waiting there for us all along, whose presence along the way has marked the path and whose presence there makes home, home.”

Jesus made some promises…
Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Matthew 11:27-30 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.””

John 8:12 “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.””

You and I are responsible to respond!
We do not just respond to other people or to society or even internal things like our conscience or our genetic makeup.  At a deeper level we respond to the One who is behind the world and to life itself.  On that deeper level our lives are made up of a conversation between us and the Voice behind life itself.

At some point in your life Someone addresses you directly and personally.  Who is it?  It is God Himself who teaches you and calls you to faith in Christ and into a personal relationship with him.

John 6:35-40 “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty…All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away…this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.””

John 6:44-45 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”

Of highest importance is that we are called to Someone! We are called to become followers of Christ – by Cx, to Cx and for Cx

John 1:11-12 “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—”

Revelation 3:20 “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”