The Reluctant Prophet Clover不情愿的先知三叶草.docxVIP

PAGE  PAGE 7 The Reluctant Prophet Sunday, July 7, 2013 10:30 AM Don’t get “fished” in! This morning we will be turning to perhaps the best-known book of the Minor Prophets, the prophet Jonah. If I was to go out in the streets this week and do a word association game with the general public, I wonder what they would say when I presented the word, “Jonah.” I would expect in most cases to hear the words, “whale, fish or perhaps storm.” But all of those words and any related phrases would not reflect the heart and theme of the book. It is not a book about a great big fish; it is a book about a great big God and of His intense love for a lost world. I have entitled the series, “The Reluctant Prophet” and that is certainly not a new name for any series from Jonah. However, we are going to dig and pray and get at what this book says to us here in the heart of the Valley in 2013. Let’s turn to the first three verses of Jonah. Text: Jonah 1:1-3 If I was to take a children’s book of the book of Jonah, it would serve to give us an outline of the plot of the book. We would see on a page, the problem of Jonah’s disobedience and that will be what we are dealing with today. We would turn the pages and encounter the storm, the dispatching of the fish and there might even be another page depicting Jonah’s reflection upon his situation and reconsidering of the mission to Nineveh. The next page, then, would be his expulsion from the belly of the fish, then his preaching, Nineveh’s repentance and then the revelation of Jonah’s selfish heart in contrast to the great big and loving heart of our Father, God. Today we begin with the words: The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”  The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1996 (electronic ed.) (Jon 1:1–2). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. For those of you who have a background in the bible, you would recognize th