Sunday morning service
This morning spoke at Singapore Charismatic church. This is the summary that the church leader recorded.
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Jonah, An Unwilling Missionary On The Run - God’s Agenda or mine?
It is not often one gets to listen to a sermon that is based on the book written by the speaker himself and the congregation had that privilege this morning.
The biblical reference was from Jonah 1:1-3.
Ps Rama based his sermon on 3 aspects: the historical perspective, the biblical narrative and the personal derivative. For this write-up my focus will be the personal derivative as I feel that would be most relevant to continue the work of Jesus.
However, under the historical perspective, Ps Rama shared that the place that God directed Jonah to go, Ninevah, is now known as Mosul. It was here in July 2015 that ISIS issued a decree to the 100000 Christians living there to leave or face death. For the first time in almost 2000 years, there were no Christians left in Mosul as a result. Those who chose to stay behind in the name of the Lord, perished.
Under the biblical narrative, the controversy raised is whether Jonah is a myth or a fact. What is important to note is that because of Jonah’s message, 120000 souls were added to God’s kingdom. This event, where Jonah preached, was known as the Nineveh Revival.
In Matt 12, Jesus Himself indirectly acknowledged Jonah as a great prophet when He made a reference to him in response to the people’s request for a sign of the Messiah. The biblical narrative also spoke of the heart of God, one that is sacred, compassionate and missionary minded.
The personal narrative would be most applicable to us in our walk with Jesus and here Ps Rama spoke on three aspects:
- Jonah’s indifference to God’s agenda
- Jonah being insensitive to God’s Compassion
- Jonah being impervious to His Obligation
That Jonah ran away to flee from obeying God is well captured in the Bible. In fact he not only did that but was even bold enough to show his anger against God’s compassion in Jonah 4:2.
Ps Rama’s felt that Jonah must have been the most misunderstood prophet in the Bible. Misunderstood in the sense that most of us who read the Book of Jonah must have judged him at face value for all the disobedience he had shown against God. Ps Rama shared that the main lesson from the Book of Jonah is the prophet himself laying bare his soul for all to see and at the same time acknowledging that his mistakes are not to be repeated by anyone keen to continue the work of Jesus.
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