Jonah 3-4 - Outline

[Jim Watt]

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*Tel: 253-517-9195 - Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

March 16, 2013


 *SEP 26 - JONAH 3-4 - OBEDIENCE, COMPAINT AND REBUKE*


 *1. 3:1-2 (ESV) JONAH: RECOMISSIONED. “Then the word of the LORD came to
Jonah the second time, saying, 2 ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,
and call out against it the message that I tell you.’” *Your Kingdom
Father, is Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit! You
desired forthe people of Nineveh to experience this. For this You
commissioned Jonah
the second time. *Hallowed be your :name.*


 *2. 3:3-4 JONAH: PREACHES TO NINEVEH. “So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh,
according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great
city, three days’ journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city,
going a day’s journey. And he called out, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh
shall be overthrown!’” *Sometimes Father, we do Your will from a grudging
heart - even Your servants! O forgive us for such an ununited heart! * Your
:kingdom come!*


 *3. 3:5 (3:5-9) NINEVEH REPENTS. “And the people of Nineveh believed God.
They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to
the least of them.” *We marvel Father, at this city-repentance by a wicked
city! And we marvel too at this revelation of Your heart! In the light of
this, we can more easily see why we with our faith can so pray. *Your :will
be done, As in heaven, so on earth.*


 *4. 3:10. NINEVEH SPARED BY GOD. “When God saw what they did, how they
turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said
he would do to them, and he did not do it.” *How our works prove our faith!
O forgive us Father, for failing to comprehend Your forgiving heart. Give
us a heart like Your heart. Make us like David, people after Your heart. *Our
:daily :bread Give us this day.*


 *5. 4:2b (4:1-4) JONAH’S ANGER AND COMPLAINT. “That is why I made haste to
flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow
to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” *Ah,
here we hear Jonah: true testimony concerning You Father, even though he
did not approve. He had the spirit of James and John before Pentecost. But *we
know* what You are like! *And forgive us our :debts, As we also have
forgiven our :debtors.*


 *6. 4:5 (4:5-8) JONAH’S SORROW. “Jonah went out of the city and sat to the
east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the
shade, till he should see what would become of the city.” *O Father, our
hearts our sorrowful for Jonah’s hard sorrow. May we rather rejoice in Your
heart of mercy, compassion and forgiveness. *And bring us not into
temptation.*


 *7. 4:11 (4:9-11) JONAH’S LESSON. “And should not I pity Nineveh, that
great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know
their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” *We bless You for
Your last word, Father. We vindicate You and justify You. We choose to side
with Your way of doing things. *But deliver us from the evil one!*


 *NOTE**: 3:8-9 (3:5-9) NINEVEH’S KING: HIS DECREE. **“But let man and
beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let
everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9
Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that
we many not perish.” *Father, we marvel at the heart of this wicked,
heathen king! May it never be said that we have less faith and trust than
him!


 *C.H. Spurgeon Quotes: “Committees Waste Their Time”* - While committees
waste their time over resolutions, do something. While Societies and Unions
are making constitutions, let us win souls. Too often we discuss, and
discuss, and discuss, while Satan only laughs in his sleeve. It is time we
had done planning, and sought something to plan.


 *Our Psalm for the Day: 86:10-12 (86) GREAT IS YOUR STEADFAST LOVE! “For
you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. 11 Teach me your
way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.
12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will
glorify your name forever.” *Yes Father, by this confession, we *hallow
your :name!*


 *Title: “A Prayer of David.” *We have here one of the five Psalms entitled
Tephillahs, or prayers. This Psalm consists of praise as well as prayer,
but it is in all parts so directly addressed to God that it is most fitly
called “a prayer.” A prayer is none the less but all the more a prayer
because veins of praise run through it. This Psalm would seem to have been
specially known as David’s prayer; even as the Nineteenth is “the prayer of
Moses.” The name of God occurs very frequently in this Psalm. Sometimes it
is Jehovah, but more commonly Adonai, which it is believed by many learned
scholars was written by the Jewish transcribers instead of the sublimer
title, because their superstitious dread led them to do so: we, laboring
under no such tormenting fear, rejoice in Jehovah, our God. It is singular
that those who were so afraid of their God, that they dared not write His
name, had yet so little godly fear, that they dared to alter His Word.


 86:1. *Bow down Your ear, O Lord, hear me. *In condescension to my
littleness, and in pity to my weakness, “bow down Your ear, O Lord.” When
our prayers are lowly by reason of our humility, or feeble by reason of our
sickness, or without wing by reason of our despondency, the Lord will bow
down to them, the infinitely exalted Jehovah will have respect unto them. *For
I am poor and needy. *Of all the despicable sinners, those are the worst
who use the language of spiritual poverty while they think themselves to be
rich and increased with goods.


 86:2. *For I am holy: O You my God, save Your servant that trusts in
You. *Lest
any man should suppose that David trusted in his own holiness he
immediately declared his trust in the Lord, and begged to be saved as one
who was not holy in the sense of being perfect, but was even yet in need of
the very elements of salvation.


 86:4. *Unto You, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. *As the heliotrope looks to
the sun for its smile, so turn I my heart to You. You are as the brazen
serpent to my sick nature, and I lift up my soul’s eye to You, that I may
live. I know that the nearer I am to You the greater is my joy; therefore
be pleased to draw me nearer while I am laboring to draw near. It is not
easy to lift up a soul at all; it needs a strong shoulder at the wheel when
a heart sticks in the miry clay of despondency: it is less easy to lift a
soul up to the Lord, for the height is great as well as the weight
oppressive; but the Lord will take the will for the deed and come in with a
hand of Almighty grace to raise His poor servant out of the earth and up to
heaven.


 86:6. *Attend to the voice of my supplications. *Here are repetitions, but
not vain repetitions. When a child cries, it repeats the same note, but it
is equally in earnest every time, and so was it with the suppliant here.


 86:10. *You are God alone. *Alone were You God before Your creatures were;
alone in Godhead still are You now that You have given life to throngs of
beings; alone forever shall You be, for none can ever rival You. True
religion makes no compromises; it does not admit Baal or Dagon to be a god;
it is exclusive and monopolizing, claiming Jehovah nothing less than all.
The vaunted liberality of certain professors of modern thought is not to be
cultivated by believers in the truth. “Philosophic breadth: aims at
building a Pantheon and piles a Pandemonium; it is not for us to be be
helpers in such an evil work.


 86:12. *I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart. **When my
heart is one*, I will give you all of it. Praise should never be rendered
with less than all our heart, and soul, and strength, or it will be both
unreal and unacceptable.


 86:13. *And You have delivered my soul from the lowest hell. *There are
some alive now who can use this language unfeignedly, and he who pens these
lines most humbly confesses that he is one. Left to myself to indulge my
passions, to rush onward with my natural vehemence, and defy the Lord with
recklessness of levity, what a candidate for the lowest abyss should I have
made myself by this time. For me, there was but one alternative, great
mercy or the lowest hell. With my whole heart do I sing, “Great is Your
mercy towards me, and You have delivered by soul from the lowest hell.” *(From
“The Treasury of David” by C.H. Spurgeon, abridged by D.O. Fuller)*



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