Discovering God’s Will in Obedience

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The book of Jonah, we’ve spent the last three weeks talking about the different aspects of God’s will. Because in this study, and I’ve called it Discovering God’s Will, we want to discover God’s will. And I won’t stand here this morning and tell you that in most cases I know what God’s perfect will is for you, for your specific situation in everything.

I don’t have time, or we don’t have time, for me to go through each and every one of you. and quite frankly, I’m not smart enough. What I’ve done last week was tell you some things that God says, this is my will, regardless, this is my will, this is what I want.

But in this study, I want us to learn not what the preacher says is God’s will for my life, but for us to learn how to discern for ourselves, how to find God’s will for ourselves. God’s will is not typically this mystical thing that we can’t know or can’t be sure about. God’s will is what He wants us to do and what He wants from us.

And as I’ve said before so many times, I get tired of hearing myself, of hearing me repeat myself, but some things are worth repeating, that God’s will is what He wants us to do. God’s will is what He wants to happen, and so it stands to reason that He’s going to tell us those things. Because God’s will is not, so many times, is not intuitive.

God’s will is a lot of times the opposite of what we would do on our own. And so it’s not likely that we’re going to stumble into God’s will. But we’ve talked about the three different aspects of God’s will and certain ones that, not that they’re not important, but that we really shouldn’t focus all of our time and energy on finding them.

And there’s one that we should. I’m going to give you a pop quiz real quick just to see how well you’ve been paying attention the last few weeks. If we’re talking about God’s will, that he says, okay, I’m going to allow you the choice and if you choose to disobey my best for you, and I’m going to let you disobey, but this is as far as you can go.

What aspect of God’s will is that? Permissive. Very good.

If God says you don’t have a choice at all, this is the way it’s going to be, this is what’s going to happen, what is that? God’s sovereign will. Very good.

And if God says you have the choice and this is what I would have you choose, this is my best for you, not necessarily what’s going to feel the best, but this is my best for you, what is that? God’s perfect will. I almost said no, that’s permissive.

No, you’re right. That’s perfect. That’s God’s perfect will.

The things that he would have us to choose that are his best for us. Now, which of the three should we really be focused on finding? Perfect.

Okay. I heard several things and none of them sounded like perfect. God’s perfect will is what we should spend our time and energy focused on.

Not that God’s sovereign will isn’t important, but it’s going to happen whether we know about it or not. And a lot of the times, He’s not going to tell us what it is. He may choose to reveal it to us, but it doesn’t matter because it’s God’s sovereign will it’s going to be accomplished.

To say we’re going to, before we do anything, we’re going to seek God’s sovereign will and we’re going to spend all this time determining it, is like saying that, God, I’m not going to move until I know how all this is going to play out. And so regardless of what else I know of your will, until I know exactly what you’re going to do and how all this is going to play out, until I know the end of the plan, I’m not going to make a move. And that’s not really obedience.

On the other hand, God’s permissive will is as far as He allows us to go in our wrong choices. And we can only choose and only choose wrong because He allows it, not because He causes it, but because he allows it. And to seek God’s permissive will is to say, now God, how much are you going to let me get away with?

And that’s a short-sighted idea of getting away with it because we don’t get away with anything. But how bad are you going to let me be? And that’s like a little kid pushing their limits with mom and dad.

What we want to focus on is seeking God’s perfect will. What is God’s best for us? Not what feels best, but what is God’s best for us?

What does the most to bring him glory? What does the most to conform us to what he wants us to be? to be righteous, Christ-following people.

What best suits that? That’s God’s perfect will for us. In these next few weeks, we’re going to talk about how to, some steps we need to take, and these may or may not be in order, but some steps we need to take in order to find out what God’s perfect will is for us.

It’s not necessarily a mystery. In some cases, we may have to look, and we may have to seek after it a little bit, but there are some places, as I told you last week, that God has said very clearly, this is my will. When the Bible says that God is not slack concerning His promises, but is long-suffering to usward, and merciful and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, it’s God’s perfect will that we would trust Christ, that we would repent and trust Christ and be saved.

That’s God’s perfect will. Is everybody going to do that? No.

Is everybody going to choose that? No. But that’s God’s perfect will.

That’s God’s best for us. God’s perfect will is our sanctification, that we would live a holy life. Is everybody going to choose that?

Obviously not. Is everybody going to pursue that? Obviously not.

But God’s perfect will is knowable. And we’re going to talk about some of the ways that it’s knowable. Today I want to talk about an example from the life of Jonah.

From the life of Jonah. And today we’re going to talk about discovering God’s will and obedience. And we’re not going to talk too much about the beginning of the story.

You probably have already heard the beginning of the story. It’s one of the more familiar stories of the Bible. Jonah and the whale, or Jonah and the great fish, as the Bible says.

In the first couple of chapters, we see Jonah, he’s a prophet, and he’s told by God to go to Nineveh, which was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were one of the pagan countries that oppressed the people of Israel. Eventually, they would be the ones who would take over the northern kingdom of Israel and take them into captivity.

We hear talk about the ten lost tribes of Israel. They’re not really lost. They were kind of assimilated into Assyria. Assyria was a nasty country.

I don’t mean filthy. They may have been that too. But they were nasty in the sense that they were mean, vicious, terrible people.

They were the Roman Empire of their day. And he was told, Jonah was told to go into Nineveh, their capital, one of the biggest cities in the ancient world. And he was told to go there and proclaim God’s word.

He was told to go there and pronounce God’s judgment on the city of Nineveh. When God commanded him to go and preach, we can already see that that’s God’s perfect will for Jonah, was that he go and preach in Nineveh. Well, Jonah decides to disobey and instead says, I’m going to go up to Joppa, which is a seaport in Israel, And I’m going to go to Joppa, and I’m going to get on a boat, and I’m going to go as far the other direction as I can.

Familiar with the story? He says, I’m going to go as far as I can. He gets on board a boat to Tarshish, which a lot of people think is in modern-day Spain.

So, at that point, they’re not even under the Romans yet. That end of the world, Spain is just barely on the edge of the radar as being part of the known world to them at that time. And he says, I’m going to get on this boat, and I’m going to go off to Tarshish.

He ran as far the other direction from God’s will as he possibly could go. And we know the rest of the story. There was a storm that night, and they wanted to throw somebody overboard because they were trying to placate the gods and all this.

And he said, it was me, and they throw him overboard. They throw him overboard. And we tend to think of being in the stomach of the great fish as a punishment from God, that God punished him by allowing him to be swallowed up.

However, I think God had other plans. Well, obviously, God had other plans for Jonah, and I think the fish was God’s provision to keep Jonah alive because he could have just wound up in the bottom of the Mediterranean and drowned and never been heard from again. Instead, he was swallowed up by this great fish until he learned his lesson, and he cries out to God in chapter 2.

And you can go and read the rest of it for yourself if you’d like. In chapter 2, he cries out to God. And very basically, if you boil chapter 2 down, he says, Okay, God, I’m willing to listen to what you want.

I’m willing to do what you want. It took Jonah to the point of being softened toward the will of God and more willing himself to do God’s will. And in the beginning of chapter 3, in the beginning of chapter 3, well, actually, let’s go back to chapter 2, verse 10.

It says, And the Lord spake unto the fish, at that point, Jonah says, I will pay that which I have vowed salvation is of the Lord. And the Lord spake unto the fish, verse 10, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. So at that point, this fish that we look at as God’s punishment, but really was God’s provision, this fish, as soon as Jonah was softened toward the things of God and willing to do God’s will, God spoke to the fish, and according to God’s sovereign will, because he said it and the fish did it, there was no choice, the fish spits Jonah out, and not just into the water, but up on the dry land.

It’s an incredible story. Chapter 3, verse 1 says, And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. This is the same thing he’s told him to do in chapter 1.

Two chapters later, God is repeating himself to Jonah. Now go to Nineveh and preach the things that I’ve told you to preach. So Jonah arose, verse 3, and went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey. People have argued about what that means. Some people think it means three days to get across it.

Some people think it means three days to get to it. I was taught growing up that Nineveh was right there, you know, when the fish spit him out, He was there at Nineveh, but Nineveh’s in modern-day Iraq, the northern part, the Kurdish part. So he wasn’t right there where the fish spit him up.

There was a three-day journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Whether it took him three days to get there or three days to get across Nineveh, the point is he obeyed God and went to Nineveh and walked through the city, crying out loud to the people of Nineveh, saying, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Now, the Bible records for us that God tells Jonah to go and preach what God says, and the Bible records that Jonah says 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.

We don’t know if God had other things for him to say and Jonah preached other things, but it does record that he says this. God may have included more in that message, and he may have included more in this message, but this is what’s recorded for us. Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Verse 5 says, and this is completely unexpected. We take for granted we know the rest of the story, you know, 3,000 years hindsight. But in this day and time when Jonah was doing this, this would have been completely unexpected what happens in verse 5.

So the people of Nineveh believed God. What would have been expected, the reason Jonah didn’t want to do this in the first place, was it was more than likely that the Ninevites were going to kill him. The Assyrians were bad people.

I mean, they were fierce, ferocious people. And here he’s going to go and tell them that the God of Israel, who they sneered at and looked down on, the God of Israel was going to overthrow their city? Well, the Ninevites would have just killed them for sport.

But it says, so the people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least of them. And if you don’t know what sackcloth is, the best way it was explained to me as a child was a potato sack, those burlap bags. They would put on clothes that were made of similar material to that.

You don’t put on clothes like that if you’re going to a party. You put on clothes like that if you have nothing else or if you want to be miserable. And folks, I believe these people felt so bad over their sins, were so broken over their sins, that they wanted to feel miserable, and they put on this sackcloth.

It’s something people did throughout the Old Testament. They put on sackcloth to show that they were mourning over something. It says, From the greatest of them, even to the least of them, everybody in Nineveh put on this sackcloth and proclaimed a fast. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth.

and sat in ashes. Even the king of Nineveh, one of the most powerful and influential rulers of the ancient world, was cut to his heart when he heard God’s word. And it says here that he laid aside his royal robes.

No longer was he the proud ruler, standing in his pride in the face of God, but he humbled himself just like everybody else in Nineveh, and he put on the sackcloth as well. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, Let neither man nor beast nor herd nor flock taste anything, nor let them not feed nor drink water. No person, no animal within his kingdom was to eat or drink.

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. He said, Instead of satisfying our own desires, we are going to focus this time on crying out to God. Yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands.

And who can tell if God will turn and repent? First of all, he says here, let’s turn and cry out to God. Let’s humble ourselves before God and cry out to Him.

And he says, who knows if maybe God will turn and repent. He did not even know at this time if their humility before God was going to be enough to be forgiven. He didn’t know if there was any chance that God would forgive them.

Folks, this is true, what we call contrition here, when we are so convicted over our sin that it doesn’t matter whether we’re going to be forgiven. It doesn’t matter whether we’re going to escape the consequences. We’re sorry for it just because it was wrong, and we know it was wrong.

This is some of the most genuine sorrow over sin that we see in the Bible. Who can tell if God will turn and repent? Maybe God will forgive us and turn away from His fierce anger that we perish not.

This word repent causes some trouble in understanding. The idea that God would repent. If God’s never wrong, how could God repent, according to the way we think of the word now?

See, the word has gotten mixed up in our language. The word repent, as it was originally used in English, did not mean the two things that we tend to think it means today, either to turn and do better, we use the phrase repent from your sins, or to feel sorry for your sins. The word repent didn’t mean those things.

And as the word has been redefined and people read verses in Scripture that deal with repentance, some bad ideas have arisen. Some things that say, folks, I believe repentance has a place in salvation. But according to the modern definition, people say, well, that means you have to turn from your sins and do the right thing.

And folks, to me, that sounds a lot like working for salvation. Repentance, according to the Bible, means to turn, but we added the from your sins part. The word repentance, I don’t know what the Hebrew word is, but the word used throughout the New Testament in the Greek is metanoeo.

And don’t be impressed, because I don’t know if I pronounced it right or not. But as far as the way it’s spelled, metanoeo is a two-part word that means to turn again in your mind, to think again. It means a change of mind.

And when we repent toward God, when it talks about it in the New Testament, about repentance toward God, it doesn’t mean that we turn and we’re suddenly able to do better on our own, that we come to God in faith and works, faith and being able to do better. It doesn’t even mean just sorrow. Although I think godly sorrow comes as a result of repentance, I think that doing better comes as a result of repentance.

But true repentance means a change in our thinking toward God. to think again towards God. Because we in our natural state think we can do it on our own.

We think we can be good enough. We think we don’t need a Savior. We think we don’t need to humble ourselves before God.

But when we’re repentant, our mind, our way of thinking toward God changes and we realize that we desperately need Him and His forgiveness. That’s what repentance is. To come to the realization that we do need God and to walk away from the old self-sufficient way of thinking that I’m good enough on my own.

And so when we see this word used here, If we think about it in terms that repent means to, you know, I’ve done wrong and I’m going to do better, well, that makes it look like God was fixing to do something wrong. If we say it means to be sorry, well, that means God changed his mind. It means that God was sorry because he did wrong things.

What this verse means is that God, his thoughts, not his, well, changing his thoughts toward them is different from changing his mind toward them. Because God, as he makes clear in chapter 4, intends to forgive those who come to him. His mind on the situation never changed, but when they turned from their sins, when they humbled themselves, when they repented, when they changed their minds, God changed his thoughts and said, I’m not going to destroy them now.

Not that God said, hmm, maybe I shouldn’t destroy them after all, but it was always God’s thought to pardon those who humbled themselves. when he sent Jonah. If God had simply written off the people of Nineveh, there wouldn’t have been a need to send Jonah there to tell them all these things.

But said, who can tell if God will turn and repent? Who can tell if God will change his thoughts toward the people of Nineveh and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not? And God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not.

And evil here doesn’t mean in the sense we think, moral evil. That God was going to do something wicked toward the people of Nineveh. Evil, in the King James English, a lot of times can mean the same as trouble or calamity.

That God changed his thoughts toward the people of Nineveh and decided not to bring them the trouble that he had intended if they persisted in their wicked ways. That’s what this passage means. That when they humbled themselves, God, in accordance with his perfect will, what God’s perfect will was for them to repent, as he points out in chapter 4, that God’s perfect will for the people of Nineveh was for them to turn their hearts toward Him.

And God changed His thoughts. Not that His will changed, but He changed His thoughts and said, Okay, in accordance with My will, now that they’ve humbled themselves, I’m going to turn away My wrath, and I’m not going to bring them the trouble that I said I would. Chapter 4, verse 1, it says, But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

Jonah sees this. He’s gone to Nineveh, and he’s preached, and he’s told the people, God will overthrow your city in 40 days. And he’s seen this revival break out in Nineveh, that the people have turned their hearts toward God, and God says, okay, I’m going to turn away my wrath.

And it displeased Jonah. He was angry. Jonah was ready for God to whoop up on the Ninevites.

He was very angry, and he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country. Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

So we see a little bit of a glimpse into Jonah’s mind here that not only is there the natural fear that the Assyrians might try to harm him, might try to kill him, but also he says, Okay, God, this is what I was afraid of, because I know you’re gracious. He’s seen it time and time again, folks, the fact that Israel was still there after all those years. Not to sound blasphemous, but if I was God, I would have destroyed them at the beginning of the book of Judges.

I would have just had enough. Thank goodness I’m not God, because the same goes for us. I would have destroyed myself a long time ago.

But the fact that God gave them chance after chance after chance after chance after chance to turn their hearts to them. Jonah knew very well that God was a gracious God. And he said, this is just what I was afraid of.

That if I came here to preach, there was a chance that they might turn away from their wickedness and turn toward you. All right, just go die now. that takes a lot of hate and bitterness to say, God, I’m so mad that they turned around and did the right thing and now you’re going to spare their lives.

I just wish I was dead. Wow. You’ve got to hate somebody pretty badly.

But it was, he knew there was a chance that they would turn. And he knew that if they turned, there was a good chance that God would be gracious to them. Folks, from our standpoint, this is still a miraculous thing that’s happened here, that these people would even hearken to God’s voice.

because the way things went in the ancient world, it would have been far more likely, if we were writing a story, making a story, it would have been far more likely that he would have been killed when he got into Nineveh and opened his mouth before word of God’s word ever got to the king, before any of this ever happened. But Jonah says, Jonah’s angry and said, God, I was afraid something like this might happen. See, Jonah hated the Assyrians, hated the Ninevites, probably with good reason.

I mean, not that there’s a good reason to hate, but we can understand why the Israelites would hate the Ninevites. They were one of these pagan countries that had oppressed them for years, that had mistreated them for years. He said, It’s better for me to die than to live.

Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? God asks him the question, Is this a good thing for you to be angry? Do you think this is how you should be acting, is a way to put what God asks him?

So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth and sat under it in the shadow until he might see what would become of the city. So Jonah picks up his toys and goes home. He walks out of the city and says, well, I’m just going to sit here and watch, and we’ll see what’s going to happen.

And the Lord God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. So Jonah has set up this little roadside stand, for lack of a better description, and says, I’m just going to sit here where I can see the city in the distance, and we’re going to watch, and we’re going to see how well the Ninevites can keep this up, and we’re going to see what God finally decides to do with them.

But you know, he’s out there in what’s now northern Iraq. It’s hot. It’s dry.

And it’s got to be pretty miserable just sitting there. And God, at this booth Jonah has made, God sends this gourd to grow. And I don’t know what kind.

It could be a giant pumpkin. I’ve always thought it was something like a yellow crookneck squash. But we don’t know.

It just says God grew him a gourd. And it came up over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his head. Gave Jonah some relief from the son, which he did not deserve, to deliver him from his own grief.

And it says, Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. He was very happy that God had done this. But when God prepared a worm, but God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.

So God creates this gourd, and Jonah’s all excited. Jonah didn’t deserve it. Jonah didn’t do anything to bring it about.

But he’s very excited that God has done this. Well, the next morning, God creates a worm to go in and kill this gourd, and so the gourd withers away. And it came to pass when the sun did arise that God prepared a vehement east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah.

So he’s got the sun beating down, and he’s got a harsh, hot wind from the east. And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, it is better for me to die than to live. He’s still having this pity party. Oh, I just should be dead.

Things are so bad. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death.

That takes some audacity right there. When God has asked him for the second time, in as many days, do you think you’re doing the right thing by being angry for him to finally speak up and say, yeah, God, I’m perfectly justified in being upset with you. Not something I would want to say to the God I had just been saying had the power to destroy Nineveh, had the power to create the sun that’s beating down on me, to create the gourd that gave me temporary relief and then killed the gourd the same day.

Not a God I would want to antagonize, and yet he says, yes, I do well to be angry. Thank you very much. Even unto death.

Basically, even if I die, I still have the right to be angry. Kind of sounds like a spoiled child here. Christian had me to watch Gone with the Wind with her last night.

And I’d read the book, I’d seen the movie years ago, and never really realized until last night what a spoiled brat Scarlett O’Hara came across as. And now I’m rereading the story of Jonah, and I can hear him saying these things in the tone of voice that she talks in and thinks, sounds like a spoiled child. Yes, even if I die, I have a right to be angry.

Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. He said this gourd that was just here for a day, it grew in a night, and it died in a night, and you had nothing to do with it being here, and you’re sad for this gourd. Verse 11, And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle.

Six score thousand persons. That means around 120,000 people. He said, Jonah, you’re so sad about this gourd that was here for one day, and you had nothing to do with.

And yet, you’re upset that I smote the gourd more than you are excited that I would show grace to 120,000 people. And he says, and all so much cattle. I don’t know why that’s funny to me, but that phrase has always struck me as funny.

God gives him this grand pronouncement, and by the way, the cows too. I can’t explain to you why I find that funny, but I do. But he says, Jonah, why do you care more about this gourd than you do about 120,000 of your fellow human beings?

You are more concerned that I show grace to the gourd and let it continue to grow than to show grace to. . .

You were mad. He was mad when God decided to show grace to 120,000 people. See, we see here that Jonah had his suspicions that God would do that, But when Jonah found out for sure what God’s will was for the Ninevites, what God’s perfect will was, he was upset.

He was upset. Now, how does this all apply to discovering God’s will? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Or glad I asked rhetorically for you. We see some things in the life of Jonah in this passage that I think apply to us as we try to discern God’s will. And I trust that most, if not all of you, have some interest in discerning God’s will.

Unless somebody dragged you here, it’s not likely that you’d be here if you just really didn’t care what God thought. Now, sometimes we have a desire to discern God’s will, maybe even some desire to do God’s will, but sometimes the desire is not strong enough. We want to know God’s will, and then we find out what it is, and we don’t like it.

Well, folks, Jonah found out what God’s will was in chapter 1 and didn’t like it. And it would be very easy if Jonah had gone to Tarshish or had gone to someplace else to say, Okay, God, now what’s your will for me? And we do that a lot, don’t we?

That we know very well the things that God has told us to do. God speaks to us sometimes in principles through the Bible and says, this is the way I want you to live. This is even how I want you to live in a certain situation.

And sometimes God impresses upon us other ways, things that we’re supposed to do in a specific situation, and we know what we’re supposed to do. We know what God’s will is, and it’s not the will we wanted to hear. And so we say, God, I’m going to disobey you for a little while, but then things get bad, and I’m going to come back to you, and then I want to know, God, what’s your will for me in this situation?

Folks, I think it’s very telling that when Jonah got spit up on the bank or on the shore, he was already sensitive to God’s word, wanting to know what God’s will was, I’m sure as we can see from chapter 2, the things that he says about God, about obeying what God tells him to do and all these things. It’s very telling to me that when he spit up on the shore and willing to do what God asks of him, God doesn’t say, okay, now that you’re here on the shore, go back down to Joppa and be a good boy. Live according to the law.

Do these things. Be nice to. .

. He doesn’t say that. And the first thing that we need to see from Jonah’s life is that God’s perfect will for Jonah didn’t change because Jonah had avoided his instructions.

God’s perfect will for Jonah had not changed. What we see in chapter 3, verse 1 and verse 2 are incredibly similar. It’s the same command and almost the same words t