08/12/2007        

Class: Proverbs 24:15-20 When disaster strikes…

Choruses:

Scripture reading: #687       

Vespers: Answer is: What DID Jesus do? Righteousness!

Wednesday evening class: Developing a Biblically consistent World-View.

"I called out in my distress..."    

Jonah 2

1. From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2. He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

3. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4. I said, `I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.'

5. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God.

7. "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. 8. "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

9. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD." 10. And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Jonah - the word means ‘dove.’ Jonah – a prophet actively ministering from about 800 – 750 B.C. Elisha was still alive and prophesying when Jonah began his ministry of the prophetic word.

We don’t know when Elisha died. We know there was a transition of focus in Israel to Amos and Hosea and Jonah…Amos and Hosea were crying out to the people of Israel that God was going to send them into exile beyond Damascus.

At the same time, God was sending, or trying to send, Jonah EAST of Damascus to Nineveh, the newest, and largest to date, enemy of Israel. Assyria!

But the message God wanted Jonah to deliver to this terrible enemy of Israel was this, ‘you are in imminent danger of divine judgment.’

Amos and Hosea are back in Israel saying, ‘God is going to bring the Assyrians (from Nineveh) as God’s judgment upon you!’ Jonah was to take a message at that time to Nineveh saying, ‘God is going to judge you, too, if you don’t repent and turn to him!’

Jonah knew that God would withhold judgment from any nation if they were to repent and turn to God. He didn’t want judgment withheld from Nineveh. They deserved whatever God was going to do to them, in Jonah’s opinion. So Jonah ran the opposite direction and tried to avoid the task of being the prophetic voice of God’s grace to people he didn’t like.

But they listened to Jonah and repented and the judgment was postponed. Judgment finally came to Nineveh in total destruction in 612 B.C. by the Babylonians…as they were on their way to ultimately dismantling Jerusalem.

But I’m way ahead to this story…

"In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me.”

·        In my distress…

·        Distress leads to discouragement.

·        Discouragement leads to being depressed.

·        Depression leads to despair.

Hope is the only real commodity that will interrupt the spiral from distress to despair.