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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is the first in a series on the Jonah Journals. The title is "When All Else Fails, Try Following the Directions." There is one thing which sets the prophecy of Jonah over against all of the other books of

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the prophets in the Old Testament, and that is this, that Jonah's book is more a record of his life than it is of his preaching. It is more the story of his adventure than it is a series of sermons that he preached. Today I ask you to begin with me a three-week study of the story of Jonah, and we start with volume

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one. "When All Else Fails, Try Following the Directions." Now we know nothing of Jonah. We don't know anything of his family, the town in which he was born, his educational background. We know nothing of significance about him, except this, he was called by God. Verse two says, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah." And that

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is a very great truth, that God calls individuals, and that he not only calls individuals, but he gives them gifts which are necessary if they are to be able to answer the call. I ask you this morning to examine yourself. Have you heard God's specific call to you? Have you discovered your special gifts from

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the Spirit? You know, each and every one of us is gifted. I would go so far as to say this, that I believe that there is something that each one of us can do that no one else in all the world can do. Permit me to repeat that. I believe that there is something which each and every one of us is called to do which no one

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else in the world can do. Across the state line over here in Ohio some years ago, there was a Presbyterian preacher by the name of Elias Compton, and he and his wife had two sons. Now, the school system there was virtually non-existent, and they knew that their boys were very bright boys, and using their love for

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their sons, and using their own fine minds, and dedicating themselves to the illuminating of the minds of their two sons, the Comptons ministered to their boys. One boy, Arthur Compton, went on to become a physicist, won the Nobel Prize, exploring what happens to x-rays when matter is scattered through their beams.

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The other son, Carl, was also a physicist, but he is not best known for his work in physics. He is known as the man who was the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948, the one who has given more credit than any other for making that school into the great institution which it is.

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Here's a mother and a father in a small town in Ohio, but they had something that they could give to their children, and a way of giving it that no one else could match, and out of this came great blessing. Is there some invention in you that you can share and which will brighten life for countless scores of

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people? Is there a song in your heart which you could write down that would lift the burden of those who are sad? Is there a child in your neighborhood who does not receive proper treatment at home, and who was ignored by many of the other children, but who for some reason takes a shine to you, and you had the

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opportunity to minister to that child and to form that child so that that child will grow up to be, well, who knows what he might be? Anything up to President of the United States. Is there a student in a Sunday school class that you teach that you could bring to the Lord Jesus? You know, Dwight L. Moody, the

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great evangelist, was won to Christ by his Sunday school teacher in the fifth grade, and his Sunday school teacher was a shoe salesman, but that man had exactly what it took to reach that boy, and he in turn went out and reached countless hundreds of thousands. Is there a word of praise that you can give because of your

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place or position in another person's life to encourage them and uplift them so that the despair which now besets them might be taken away? Are you in a position in business where you can do something that's going to bring jobs for thousands of people who are unemployed? Are you confined to your home so that

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your ministry is only one of prayer, and have you developed your skills at prayer until you have become a prayer warrior? And are you applying those skills, this communication you have with God, this unique gift that he has given you, are you applying it to things like the moral drift and the racial distress which go

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on within the boundaries of our country? Are you a hospital volunteer? Can you say a word to a grieving family? Or can you serve someone who is suffering in such a way that they are changed from one who is bitter into one who is filled with love? Are you the one that can give the blood? Are you the one who can donate the

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organ? We all, you see, have some place, some one, some thing that we can do, and no one else in the world can do what is opened as a possibility for us. Of course, it takes a sort of risk in doing this. There is a spiritual adventuring here, but Proverbs 25 is very clear. It says, "It is the glory of the Lord to conceal

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things, but it is our glory to search them out, to discover our gifts and our ministries, and to use them." Now Jonah's task, the one for which he was summoned by God, was to evangelize Nineveh. Now to do that, Jonah would have had to cross on foot a desert 750 miles wide, and he would have confronted then a city of

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approximately 120,000 souls, a city known for its evil and its wickedness and its arrogance, a city of people who looked down on all other people and who especially looked down upon the Jews. For Jonah, a Jew, to go and minister in such a place would be very similar to our sending some evangelist to preach the

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gospel in the center of downtown Moslem Baghdad. You say, "Well, that task is quite impossible." Of course it's impossible. Every great thing that we are called upon to do, every truly great thing, every God-driven thing that we are called to do is impossible for us alone, but God, when he gives his gift, also gives his presence,

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and what is impossible for us is possible for him. Even Jesus said in John 14, "The works that I do are done through me by my Father." Jonah did not see this. Instead of obeying the Lord, he went and got on a ship that was going in exactly the opposite direction from Nineveh. He headed for Tarshish. I don't

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know why. Perhaps he had failed in the past and was full of negative thinking. Maybe he thought the task impossible and forgot that God could make possible what we think is impossible. Maybe he thought he did not have the right gifts, thinking that he understood himself better than God did. Maybe he was prejudiced against

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the Ninevites. Maybe he was planning on going and permitted his friends to discourage him from taking up his ministry, but whatever it is, he denied God's direction. He denied his gift. He denied his call. He forgot that he did not belong to himself, that both by creation and by the eternal sacrifice of

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Jesus Christ, he was bought with a price. He belonged to God. But while Jonah refused God, God did not change his mind. You know, oft times when we desist, God persists. And there are reasons for that. The most important reason is that he loves us. God loved Jonah. Now the evidence for this is

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seen in the fact that he is about to rebuke Jonah and punish Jonah to bring Jonah into the proper relationship with him again. That's what the storm and what follows is going to do. When God loves us, he disciplines us. Any parent that truly loves her or his child is going to discipline that child for the child's

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own good. You know, there's a verse in Psalm 147 which says, "Who can stand before God's cold?" And what that means is this. Who can stand before God's cold shoulder? You see, when God turns a cold shoulder to someone, when he does not even bother to rebuke them or punish them, this means that he has given up on

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them. This means that they have turned against the ministry of the Holy Spirit so many times that God cannot reach them. Not because he does not want to, but because they do not want to hear from him. Sometimes people say to me, "Why is it that evil people prosper?" And one of the answers that I always give is this. Evil

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people prosper because God lets them do just what they want to do. They can become more mean, more cruel, more selfish than they were before, and he lets them go into that ever-deepening darkness because there's nothing he can do to reverse their course. But when there is something he can do, when someone still

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has within them that sensitivity to God which can respond to God, that person God punishes, and the punishment is a sign of his love. In Hebrews 12 we read, "Whom the Lord loves, he chastens," which means by inversion, if you are not chastened by God, then you must wonder if you are inside his love. Now God loves Jonah, and

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so he persists with him. There's another reason he persists with Jonah, and that is this, that God's plans affect all of the earth and all of history. Now specifically here we're dealing with the city of Nineveh where about a hundred twenty thousand people lived. But more generally than that, we need to

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understand that everything that we do, whether it is good or evil, everything that we do is going to impact on other people. If we are divorced or if we stay married, that's going to impact one way or the other, not just on ourselves, but on a lot of other people as well. If we are financially wise or financially

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foolish, that's going to impact on other people, whether we are indolent or industrious. This doesn't affect just us. This reaches out and affects other people as well. Whether our personality is one of sweetness or one of bitterness, this is going to touch the lives of many other individuals. Everything that we do

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is contagious, but only God can see how everything that we do is going to affect all of history, all of the human process on this earth. And it's precisely because God sees all of these implications that he will not let us go when we say no. And I think another reason that God persisted with Jonah was this. He had had

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many experiences in which much good was done by individuals who at first said no to him. Moses said no when he was asked to leave the children of Israel. Luther said no when it came to splitting the church. Washington said no when he was called upon to be president of the United States. John Wesley said no when

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he was invited to go to that prayer meeting at Aldersgate, which led to his conversion and the beginning of one of the greatest spiritual movements of all time. Abraham Lincoln said no when called upon to lead the country through its bloodiest days. Van Gogh said no to his painting because never in his life did

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he sell a single canvas. Dostoevsky said no to his writing because of his epilepsy. Robert Louis Stevens said no to his writing because of his tuberculosis. There are so many people who have said initially when called of God to do something they thought they couldn't do, no. But God persists and they

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come about and they do marvelous things. God is very patient, but his patience is not just sitting about twiddling his thumbs. His patience is very active. We see its activity in this story. First God sends a great storm on that ship. We're told about it in verse 3. In other words, he uses all of the forces of nature to

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begin to influence Jonah. And then in verse 5 we are told that the sailors who are pagans and who worship many false gods are fighting to save the ship. They do everything they knew know how to do in order to protect it and it accomplishes nothing. And the reason it accomplishes nothing, of course, is

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because God is not punishing those sailors. God is punishing Jonah. And that leads me to a very solemn thought. How much of the storm that is going on in the world today is not going on because of the world, but is going on because the Jonah's in this world, the Christians in this world, have failed to be obedient to

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God as they ought to be. It's recorded that the sailors, and this is in verse 7, draw lots to see which one of them has angered his particular God. And the lot falls upon Jonah. Now the casting of lots was specifically forbidden by Jonah's God. We are told in the Old Testament that we are not to cast lots. But you see, these

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sailors did not know that because no one had ever told them about God, the one true God. And how many times do you hear people complain about things that happen in the world and yet at the same time they have never done anything that was truly sacrificial in trying to change the world. Those sailors were like

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the world when it speaks to the church and says, "What is wrong with you? What have you done?" You remember how at the end of the Second World War, when Douglas MacArthur took over the leadership and the rulership in Japan, he made one request. He wrote to all the churches of America and said, "I need 50,000

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missionaries." And the church did not answer. And so China went communist and we had the Korean War and the Vietnam War and the tragedies of Cambodia and Laos and the trade wars that now are being waged across the Pacific. The church doesn't do what it ought to do. The Jonas in this world turn away. And so

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the whole world suffers. And the world finally gets to the place where it says to us, "Why don't you give the moral leadership you are to give? Why do you not demand the sacrifice that you are called upon to demand? Why is it that your spiritual counsel is not given with authority to the world, not only in

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terms of what you say, but also in terms of what you do?" And would God that the church would answer as Jonah did, because Jonah, when he was asked these questions, yielded to the will of God. He discovered that everything else was failing and so he should follow the directions. We're told in verse 12 that he repented of his

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sin, that he confessed it, and then that he offered his life to save the sailors. "Throw me into the sea," he said. "That's the only way you're going to stop the storm." That's very odd, isn't it? When confronted with this mission to go to Nineveh, where a hundred twenty thousand people lived, Jonah said, "No." He was ready

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for them to die in their sin and to be eternally separated from God. But now he confronts 12 or 15 sailors on a small boat of that time and period, and when they need help, he is willing to offer his very life. "Hurl me into the sea and you will be saved." The reason, of course, that he was not influenced by Nineveh

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and was influenced by the sailors is this. He was looking into the sailors' eyes. Nineveh was simply like a statistic in some column in the newspapers. And also, Jonah now had a new relationship with God. He was very sensitive to the guilt which had been his, and so to atone for that, he is willing to offer

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everything he has, even his very life. "Take me and throw me into the sea." The focus of his lens, you see, has changed. Now the sailors are very fearful. They've worshipped many gods before, but now they understand that this God of Jonah's is the one true God, for their gods cannot cause the sea to become tempestuous, and

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their God cannot calm the sea at his word and will. And so they're fearful, and they're afraid to lay hands upon Jonah. And so it says that they tried even harder to row that ship to the shore, but they couldn't get it there. And so finally, they cry out, and in the Hebrew it's very clear, they cry out to the one

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true God, to Jonah's God, and they say, "We are going to do what he tells us to do. If this is wrong, O Lord, do not let this innocent blood be on our hands." You see, what's happened to these sailors is, they have been moved by the sacrifice that Jonah is ready to make. In the New Testament, as you very well know, the word

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"martyr" and the word "witness" are the same word. So here is Jonah, ready to offer his very self as witness to his new relationship to the only God that is real, not just with his words, but with his walk. Jonah is saving the lives of these sailors, but he cannot, of course, save their souls. He cannot save their

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souls because there's no way in which he could reach into their past and atone for all of the things that had been part, all of the ugly things which had been part of their yesterdays, including their worship of false gods. He could save their lives physically, and he could lead them to pray to the one God, but there

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was no way in which he could atone for the burden of guilt which belonged to them as it belongs to every human being. That was impossible for Jonah. But remember, we said that when you are being obedient to God's call, the task is going to be impossible. It is made possible by the fact that God will do what we are

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unable to do. And when God offered his own son on the cross to die for the sake of the forgiveness, not only of those who lived then and since then, but also for the atoning gift for all those who had lived before him, when God snatched all those who believe out of yesterday and that today and all the

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tomorrows in which we now live and will go from beyond this time, when Christ snatched us out of death and into life, God was doing what Jonah was unable to do. Jonah and Christ, of course, were very different. Jonah disobeyed God, but Jesus never disobeyed God. But if Jonah's death could

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save the lives of those sailors, then how much more can the death of God's only begotten Son save all those for eternity who truly believe? In a sense, Jonah is a preview of the coming attraction, the sacrificial gift, and the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. And so the sailors picked him up and they hurled him into

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the sea and the waves ceased. And the Scriptures say that they had a prayer meeting on deck, praying out to that one God they had come to know. And so Journal 1 comes to its end, and it leaves us with three great lessons. First, that God has something for each of us to do that no one else can do, that he's given us

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the gifts to do it, and that where it becomes impossible for us, he will give the power that makes it possible through him. Second, we are taught here that if we reject God's will and there is in us any sensitivity to God at all, he will persist because he loves us, because he recognizes that what happens to us is

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going to impact on many others, and because he has often seen great good come out of his children who at first said no. And third, Volume 1 teaches us the great truth that all else fails. Therefore, we must follow God's directions. If we do not, then the somber sentences of the poet of long ago will

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apply to us. The saddest words of tongue or pen are surely these, "It might have been." But if we say yes to God's direction, then there is victory. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank thee that thou dost give us things to do in the building of

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thy kingdom, and we thank thee that thou dost give us the gifts necessary for the doing of them, and we repent before thee for the times we said no when we should have said yes, and we beg thee to have mercy upon us and to love us in spite of ourselves, and to inscribe into the very tablets of our hearts the

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solemn truth that everything else in the end will finally be in God's hands. But Jesus never disobeyed God. But if Jonah's death could save the lives of those sailors, then how much more can the death of God's only begotten Son save all those for eternity who truly believe? In a sense, Jonah is a preview of the coming attraction, the

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sacrificial gift, and the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. And so the sailors picked him up and they hurled him into the sea, and the waves ceased. And the scriptures say that they had a prayer meeting on deck, praying out to that one God they had come to know. And so Journal 1 comes to its end, and it leaves us with

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three great lessons. First, that God has something for each of us to do that no one else can do, that he's given us the gifts to do it, and that where it becomes impossible for us, he will give the power that makes it possible through him. Second, we are taught here that if we reject God's will, and there is in us any

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sensitivity to God at all, he will persist, because he loves us, because he recognizes that what happens to us is going to impact on many others, and because he has often seen great good come out of his children who at first said no. And third, Volume 1 teaches us the great truth that all else fails.

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Therefore, we must follow God's directions. If we do not, then the somber sentences of the poet of long ago will apply to us. The saddest words of tongue or pen are surely these, "It might have been." But if we say yes to God's direction, then there is victory.

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Let us pray. Our Father, we thank thee that thou dost give us things to do in the building of thy kingdom, and we thank thee that thou dost give us the gifts necessary for the doing of them. And we repent before thee for the times we've said no when we

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should have said yes, and we beg thee to have mercy upon us and to love us in spite of ourselves, and to inscribe into the very tablets of our hearts the solemn truth that everything else in the end will finally come to nothing. All that will prevail is that which is directed and willed by thee. Call us then,

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direct us then, make thy will known to us then, give us thy spirit for obedience sake, and may the world see and hear in us the truth that thou alone art God. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]