Discovering God’s Will in Obedience

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Transcript:

Tonight we’re going to be in Jonah chapter 3. Jonah chapter 3. A few years ago I used to drive an old Ford Explorer that was given to me by my sister when it broke down one too many times and she said she couldn’t imagine why I’d want it but I could have it and so I took it and tried to rebuild it and it was old when I got it.

But I set about doing some repairs on it to get it running again and when I work on the car which I can’t work on the one I’ve got now. It’s too computerized. It just looks like a bunch of plastic in there.

But when I work on the. . .

Okay, I thought I was imagining things. That’s unusual. When I work on the car, I have to be very methodical and step-by-step because my big fear is I’m going to put everything back together and there are going to be extra parts left over and I won’t know where they came from. So I had to take everything apart step by step, put all the screws and bolts back in the parts they came off of, and then set them in a certain order.

And there was one day working on this Explorer that I was doing some repairs where I had to take the whole engine apart. I had a blown head gasket, which was not a fun thing to fix. I had to take the whole engine apart, and there were some parts of it that I was not as familiar with as I should have been, And so I had a manual that was telling me step by step what to do on this particular part.

And so I started taking it apart and I was following the directions. I was following the directions. And then felt like I knew what I was doing and just got carried away.

And started to, okay, I need to take this apart. I need to take this apart. I need to take this apart.

And pretty soon, I’m in the middle of this, I’m in the middle of the engine thinking to myself, I don’t know what I’m looking at. I don’t know what any of these parts are that I’m looking at. I don’t see where I am in the manual. And I had to go back and start putting parts back on in the order I’d taken them off until I got to the part where I had deviated from the instructions.

What was the last thing in the instruction book that I was told to do? Go back to that and start there. Lost about a day working on this project.

Because I got ahead of myself and ran ahead of the directions and forgot what I was even told to do. And so sometimes in life, it’s just like that. You’ve got to go back to the last thing you were actually told to do in the instructions and start from there.

Because we get to a point where we think, okay, God, what do you want me to do next? And God’s response is sort of, where do I want you to go from here? You’re not even supposed to be there.

You’re not even supposed to be where you are. You’re supposed to be over here, and then I’d give you the next direction. We’re going to look tonight at a story, a true story from God’s word of a man who found himself in this kind of situation.

I told you this morning that we would start tonight and then go next week and the week following that, Lord willing, looking at five areas where God’s word shows us how we can find God’s will for our lives or for a particular situation. And folks, most importantly of all of these, not that it’s really most important, but it’s got to come first, is the idea of obedience. And the reason I say that the idea of obedience has to come first is because God is not going to give us 15 steps down the road if we’re not obedient to the first step He’s told us.

God doesn’t typically give us new instructions and say, oh, well, you can just take this detour. I know you skipped what I told you to do over here, but you can just take this detour and go where I’m wanting you to go. No, a lot of times our problem is not that we can’t discern what God’s will is, a lot of times our problem is that we’ve discerned what God’s will was for us already and we’ve failed or refused to do it.

And Jonah found himself in this situation. You should, I would think most of you would be familiar with the story, but in chapters one and two, God told Jonah to go preach to the people of Nineveh, said, go tell them they have so many days to repent before I destroy their city. Well, Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh.

Nineveh was not good place, just like today, but for different reasons. Nineveh’s in the northern part of Iraq. We wouldn’t want to go there today because of ISIS.

Well, you know what? In Jonah’s day, the people of Nineveh had kind of a similar reputation. They were the most brutal people.

The Assyrian Empire was an incredibly brutal and incredibly cruel group of people, and Nineveh was their capital, sort of into the belly of the beast. And God is telling Jonah, go to the most cruel, wicked city in the known world and go tell them that they need to change their ways because God’s going to destroy their city. You know what? You might as well walk around Nineveh today dressed as Uncle Sam.

Let’s do that. I mean, it’d be just about as dangerous. And so he tells him, go do this.

And Jonah says, I’m not doing that. Jonah goes to the port city of Joppa on the Mediterranean coast and buys essentially a boat ticket to Tarshish, which is, I believe, to be in what’s now Spain. Beyond that, they really didn’t sail too far past the Straits of Gibraltar in that day.

So he has essentially bought a boat ticket as far away from where God is telling him to go as he possibly could. as far as he possibly could in the opposite direction. We know in the story that Jonah goes out on the ship, and they get out into the Mediterranean Sea, and they encounter a great storm that threatens to sink the ship.

Now, these people were very superstitious, and so they decided that one of their spirits or one of their gods was angry, and they just needed to figure out who they were angry with. So they cast lots, and even though this is a horrible way to try to discern God’s will, It just happened to work in this case where the lot fell on Jonah. And they looked at Jonah and said, what have you done?

What could you possibly have done to bring this evil on us? And Jonah says, well, I worship and serve the God of Israel, but I have not obeyed him. He told me to do something that I have not done, and he’s angry with me.

And so they throw Jonah over the side of the boat. Now, I’ve always tended, based on the way I was taught the story as a child, I’ve always tended to look on what happened next as a punishment. God sent a great fish, in the words of this book, sent a great fish to swallow Jonah up.

Now, we say that a lot of times as a whale. Was it a whale? Probably.

There aren’t a whole lot of animals in the water big enough to swallow him that wouldn’t have chewed him to pieces. So a whale works just as well as anything. but God sent a great fish, which was probably a whale, to swallow him.

And I’ve always looked on that as a punishment. But in a storm like that, where their ship is sinking and all, he’s out in the middle of the, he’s out in the middle of the sea. We’re not talking he’s out here on a lake or on a river where he could just swim to shore.

He would have in all likelihood have drowned had God not sent that great fish to swallow him up. And folks, it’s an example of God’s providence. number one, in sparing his life, and number two, saying, you’re not getting off that easily.

You’re going to Nineveh. And so God keeps him in the belly of this fish, this great fish, for three days and three nights until he gets back to the shore and the fish vomits him up, vomits him up on the shore. Now that’s significant too in knowing that the Assyrians worshipped fish.

They had a fish God. And so God sends his prophet to be spit up on the dry land out of a great fish. That’s going to be something that the Ninevites are going to take an immediate interest in.

And they’re going to hear what this man has to say. And so we pick up in chapter 3, right after he’s been spit out on the dry land. In chapter 3, verse 1 says, And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, the great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

So he spent three days and three nights inside the belly of this great fish. He’s been spit up on the dry land by it. You’ve got to imagine he’s a little bit dazed and in shock.

And God says to him immediately, I told you, go to Nineveh and tell them what I said. And the way it plays out in my mind, Jonah just says, okay, I’m going. So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.

Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey. And Jonah began to enter the city, a day’s journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Wow.

I mean, we read over that and we think, okay, he went in there and said this. Okay, there’s no First Amendment here. There’s no American ideal of I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

These people would have wanted him dead. He’s walking through their capital city saying, you repent, you vow down and repent to the God of one of these nations that you think is inferior, or he’s going to bring all of this down. And it says in verse 5, the people of Nineveh believed God.

I don’t know that that’s because Jonah was so convincing. It could have something to do with God sending him through a fish to get them to listen to him. And it could be, probably is, that God was already preparing the hearts of the people of Nineveh, and he just desired somebody to go and be the mouthpiece to bring his word to them.

You know, a lot of times we forget that it’s really not our job to argue anybody into heaven, or argue anybody, convince anybody, twist their arms into believing the gospel. God works on their hearts, and he just uses us to get the words out, and then he does what he does. So he goes to the city of Nineveh, and they repented.

Now, it’s interesting, there’s not really a historical record of this happening. And some people have said, well, this is not, this couldn’t have really happened, because if the entire nation had turned to God, if the entire nation had turned to the worship of the God of Israel, surely that would have been recorded in history. Well, as with so many things that happens, as with so many spiritual decisions that take place, we see from the scriptures this was fairly short-lived.

Yes, they heard the preaching and they went to the altar and they swore this time was going to be different, but pretty soon they got back in the real world and that fire that had been burning inside of them faded and they went back to their old ways. But for now, 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. So the leaders of Nineveh repented toward God, and the city followed.

For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him and covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed nor drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God.

Yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and not turn away from his fear, excuse me, and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not. Hey, there’s a lot wrong with Nineveh.

But verse 9 of chapter 3 is actually a good, I mean, it’s a good thing on their part. There’s no statement here from Jonah, at least as I understand it. Repent or I will destroy your city.

It sounds more like repent because I’m going to destroy your city. And the response from the king of Nineveh is we need to repent. Not because we’ve got a promise that we’re going to be spared.

Maybe God spares us, maybe he doesn’t. But we need to repent because it’s the right thing to do. And who knows, maybe he will spare us.

It reminds me a little bit of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The Lord will spare us. He will save us out of this fiery furnace.

But even if he does not, we still will not bow. There’s a statement here. There’s an inherent statement of, you know what?

Maybe God will spare us. Maybe he will not. But right is right.

And we leave it up to God. And God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. And God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them.

and he did it not. And so at least for a little bit there’s a change of heart and a change of mind among the people of Nineveh. Now we know later on that it doesn’t last because God sends the prophet Nahum later on to tell them your party is over.

And I’ve mentioned before the book of Nahum is one of the most vivid examples of the wrath of God that I see anywhere in scripture. It’s also one of the most vivid examples of the sheer power and might of God as it talks about his, the fierceness of his anger melting the mountains. I mean, that’s pretty significant.

And that was, that was dealt toward Nineveh because they had had an opportunity to repent. And they’d even started down this road of repentance. They had at least outwardly, and at least in a shallow way, had said, you know what, we need to consider what God’s telling us.

But then it was very short-lived went back to their old ways. Chapter 4 verse 1 says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry. That’s different.

I’ve never known a preacher to go and preach to people to repent and to turn to the Lord and then get angry when they do. This was driven. You know, Jonah didn’t want to go in the first place.

It’s not like Jonah had a burden for the people of Nineveh and said, yeah, I’ve got to do that. Jonah didn’t want to go in the first place. And it’s because really he’s looking at this from a national perspective of, I’m an Israelite and they’re Assyrians, I’m good and they’re bad, rather than it being from a God-given perspective.

These are people who are created in the image of God and who God wants to repent rather than be destroyed. And so Jonah, looking at it from the standpoint of, well, I’m an Israelite and I don’t like them, was angry when they repented. And he decides to pout.

And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I yet was 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. Hold on a minute.

Now he’s starting to sound like Adam and Eve. He’s trying to blame God for his disobedience. God, this is why I didn’t want to come to Nineveh in the first place.

because I knew that you’re good and I knew that you’re gracious and I knew that you’re merciful and God, this is just like you. I knew that if I came here, something like this would happen. I’d preach and you’d end up forgiving them.

Pretty gutsy, pretty gutsy approach to God. I didn’t want to obey you because I knew you’d pull some kind of stunt like this. And in verse three, therefore, Lord, take, I beseech thee my life from me for it is better for me to die than to live.

God, I knew you were going to do something like this, and now I just want to die. Pretty big temper tantrum. Then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry?

No. What right do you have to be angry, he says? And it’s sort of like in the book of Job, where they begin to question God, and God turns around and says, wait a minute, I’ve got some questions of my own.

Where were you when I created the earth? Where were you when I, and he lists off all the things he did. Where were you when I did this?

Where were you when I did that? Where were you when I decided this? I didn’t know we were co-equal in this thing.

I didn’t know that you were the fourth member of the Trinity. He does the same thing to Jonah and says, are you doing the right thing by being angry with me? See, we forget sometimes.

We get upset. I don’t know if upset’s the right word. We look at it differently when somebody who sins differently than we do seeks out the grace of God.

When we forget that it took that same grace to deal with our sins. Here Jonah’s angry at the mercy that God has shown the people of Nineveh. And angry because the Ninevites, the Assyrians, had treated his people so horribly.

But he’s angry that God has shown them grace and mercy because you know what? They don’t deserve it. And he forgets all along, wait a minute, I didn’t deserve it either.

Oh my goodness, how many times had Israel messed up? They didn’t deserve it either. You know, you can look at the history of the Assyrians and the Ninevites.

They did some really horrible things. But Israel had been messing up at this point for three or four thousand years. They had a long history of rejecting God, and yet he had shown them mercy.

He had shown them grace. 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. 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 exceedingly glad of the gourd. Here God is trying to teach him a lesson again. Jonah decides he’s going to go up and pout.

He’s going to take his toys and go home. He’s going to go sit in a booth and just wait and see what happens to Nineveh. Because you know what?

They’re not going to be able to keep this up. Eventually they’re going to go back to their old ways and God’s going to get them and I want to see that. And so he goes and, you know, God is gracious and merciful.

And even though Jonah’s having a little temper tantrum here, God lets this big plant grow up over him, this big gourd, so that it would block the sun. And Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. He was incredibly grateful for this mercy that God had shown him.

But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day the gourd that it withered. 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 that he fainted and wished in himself to die and said it is better for me to die than to live. And here he is again, here he is again with the temper tantrum.

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. I don’t care if I die, I have the right to be angry.

Then God then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd for which thou hast not labored, neither made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not spare Nineveh that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand and also much cattle. And what his statement is here is that that gourd was entirely God’s work.

It was entirely God’s handiwork. It was an expression of God’s grace to Jonah. He didn’t deserve it.

And you know what? It was a sad thing for Jonah when the gourd went away, but he didn’t deserve it in the first place. The fact that he had it at all was the grace of God.

He says, see here, I’m giving you grace that you’ve not earned or deserved. I’m giving to the people of Nineveh grace that they’ve not earned or deserved. He says, and you will sit here and you will mourn and you will weep and you will bellyache over a gourd, but you will not mourn and weep over the souls of these people in Nineveh.

And you know what? I think it leaves off for a reason right there in the book. I think that’s the end of it for a reason because I honestly can’t imagine that Jonah would have any response to God at that point.

When you’re confronted with that, you care more about stuff than about people. When you’re confronted with that and you realize it’s true and he had to know it was true, there’s the evidence right there in front of him, that dead gourd. You care more about stuff than people.

You’re really not seeing things from God’s perspective. And when you know it’s true, there’s nothing but conviction. There’s no response.

There’s no justification. There’s nothing there but conviction. And I see in here, ladies and gentlemen, that God had a will for Jonah to go to Nineveh because God had a will for the people of Nineveh to repent.

And I also see here that God had a will for Jonah to go to Nineveh because Jonah needed to learn some lessons. And Jonah could have tried to short-circuit the process, but God said, no, there are steps here that need to be taken for you to get where you need to be. We talked this morning about God’s perfect will, and in contrast to His sovereign will, things that God says, and there’s no choice, that just happens.

There are other times when God gives us a choice, He gives us a command, and we have the choice either to obey or to disobey. When we disobey, His permissive will comes in. Even when we disobey, He says, you can only go this far.

you can run amok a little bit but eventually the chain runs out sort of like the dog that is chained up in the yard and it’ll run after the mailman but eventually that chain he comes to the end of his uh his chain that that leash snaps back hey even when we run as far from god as we can get eventually we’re reined in there there are boundaries where god says okay that’s enough no further when we obey though god says this is what I want you to do this is what’s best for you this is what’s going to bring me the most glory this is what’s going to do the most good for you this is what you need to do and that’s God’s perfect will that’s what we need to be concerned with finding God’s permissive will is not something we want to mess with because it involves our disobedience and his sovereign will we have no choice in anyway so it’s those times when God says you have a choice in this matter a choice to be obedient or a choice to be disobedient that we need to find out what obedience is and do that And as I said at the beginning of this message, a lot of times our problem, we think that God’s will is so hard to find.

God, what do you want me to do today? What do you want me to do in this decision? God, where am I supposed to go to college?

God, where am I supposed to work? God, where am I supposed to live? You know, these questions start out when we’re teenagers, but they never really stop being questions in life that we need God’s will in.

The problem is not always that we can’t figure God’s will out. Sometimes the problem is that we know what God’s will is and we just don’t want to do it. And we say, God, I see where I want to be or where I think you want to get me, but you told me to do this here.

I don’t want to do that. I’m just going to go over here and do my own thing and then ask you what the next step is and hopefully you’ll still lead me in the right direction. If we can’t figure out what God’s will is, as we go through the steps that we’re going to talk about the next two weeks, and we study and we pray and we feel like I still don’t have a clear word from God, What am I supposed to do?

What decision am I supposed to make? Which direction am I supposed to go? And we feel like God just, he’s not giving me a clear answer.

I’m not getting any sense of direction from God. God’s will is just impossible to know. It may be, hear me on this, it may be that we already know what he’s asked us to do, what he’s told us to do, and we just don’t want to do it.

And so I would submit to you, first thing you need to do in trying to determine God’s will is be obedient in what you already know to do. Be obedient in what you already know to do. Is there something God has called you to do that you’ve not done?

And then go back and do it. If God told you a year ago, I want you to teach a Sunday school class. And folks, this is not just limited to things in church.

But I know some people are just like, I don’t want to teach. You can do anything to me. You can waterboard me.

I don’t want to get up in front of people and teach. God called you to teach a Sunday school class, and you’re saying, no, God, I don’t want to do that. No, that can’t possibly be right.

And over here in the rest of your personal life, you’re saying, God, I just wish I had some direction. I wish you’d tell me what to do. And all the time, God’s saying, I’ve already told you what your next step is, and you haven’t done it.

And I may have told you this before. I used to work in the grocery store when I was in high school, and I would always laugh when they would have the, I hated the tabloids, But they would have tabloids come out at the end of every year, and it would say, new Bible predictions or new Bible instructions or whatever for 2004. And I think, why would God possibly give us new instructions when we’ve done such a great job of obeying the last ones?

Shouldn’t we get those down before he gives us any more information? You know, God doesn’t always tell us 15 steps ahead. God didn’t explain to Jonah, hey, I want to teach you a message about grace.

I want to teach you a lesson about grace. God said, you go to Nineveh. Why, God, those people are horrible.

Like I said this morning, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Go to Nineveh. Well, God, I’ll just go to Tarshish and you can do what you want with me there.

No, I told you to go to Nineveh. And we see, if you read through chapters one and two, we see a point where Jonah is praying when he’s in the belly of the fish. And I’m not sure he knew where he was going in the belly of the fish or whether he was going to get out of there.

But he’s praying and he’s talking to God about feeling distant from God and God’s face being hidden from him. And he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but he senses, I’m just going to, I’m going to seek you again. I’m going to seek your direction again.

Okay. But God has already told you what you were supposed to do. You’re wanting to seek direction.

And maybe I’m being too hard on Jonah because we do this too. But until they write a book about me and put it in the Bible. That will never happen.

That’s just a joke. But until there’s a story about me in the Bible, then I’m going to do the same thing that I’m going to preach about Jonah. He’s saying, God, I’m going to seek your direction.

He talks about turning his face to God’s holy city, his holy temple. You know what? You’re seeking direction from God.

You’re seeking new direction from God because you wanted to ignore the last direction he gave you. And God just doesn’t let us do that. God typically doesn’t let us do that.

So God’s perfect will for Jonah, ladies and gentlemen, did not change just because he ignored his instructions. I want you to go to Nineveh. Well, I’m going to go to Tarshish instead.

I’m going to get in a storm and I’m going to get thrown overboard. I’m going to get eaten by a fish and I’m going to do. .

. Well, surely God, now you’ve got something different for me because I messed that plan up. No, I want you to go to Nineveh.

God was pretty consistent in what he told Jonah to do. No, go to Nineveh. and so for us we may be disobedient and think well that’s just all in the past I know God told me to do that but that’s just all in the past I’m going to try to what does he want me to do now what’s the last thing he told you to do when I first started pastoring I really just started filling in at a particular church and felt like they had an interim pastor at the time and I knew he was not, he was looking for, that was not where he felt called to be, but he was just filling in.

I felt like God was calling me there, but I just didn’t want to go. They had too many problems. It just was not a good situation. I didn’t want to go there.

And I kept telling God, no, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think I’m hearing you right. I don’t think I’m hearing you right.

And six months down the road, I’m saying, God, what do you want me to do? I know I’m supposed to be in ministry. What do you want me to do?

What do you want me to do? And I had gone and found myself a full-time job and all this stuff. I’m going to do this until you tell me what you want me to do.

And God wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace. And the message kept coming back the same. Go there.

God, I don’t want to go there. You don’t understand. I’m over here.

And what do you want me to do? Go there. My instructions to you have not changed.

I went there. And you know what? There was trouble, just like there always had been.

There were struggles, just like there always had been there. But I’ve always wondered if things might not have been different if I’d been obedient six months earlier. But God’s instructions to me did not change.

Even though I’m saying, well, it’s six months later, God, things are different there, things are different here. What do you want me to do now? His instructions didn’t change.

Go to Nineveh. God’s perfect will didn’t change for Jonah, just because he had avoided God’s instructions. And I’m here to tell you in most circumstances, I don’t believe God’s perfect will is going to change for you just because you’ve disobeyed in the past. What is the last thing he told you to do?

And are you doing it? Second of all, Jonah turned and obeyed God’s perfect will as he was commanded. This is what he needed to do all along.

I won’t say Jonah was perfect in this because Jonah still was hard-hearted. He sort of marched off to Nineveh at Bayonet Point, but he went. And sometimes we have to say, at least this is what I found to be the case.

Sometimes we have to say, God, I’m really not willing. Honestly, God knows our hearts. We might as well be honest with him about it.

God, I’m not willing to do what you ask me to do, but I’m willing to be made willing. Do you understand that distinction? I don’t want to go to Nineveh, but God, I’m open to you changing my heart about going to Nineveh.

Here I am. This is where I am right now. I don’t want to go, but I’ll go.

and I’m open to you changing my heart on the way. Now, I believe God eventually changed Jonah’s heart. I don’t see how God could have said that to me and me not falling apart into a puddle of repentance.

He went to Nineveh. He wasn’t perfect. His heart wasn’t in it, but he was obedient.

You know what? We hear all the time, should I do it if my heart’s not in 

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