THE BIG IDEA: To review men in the Bible that God called and used in His service to make Him great among men.
BIBLE FACT: God uses His own sovereignty to process and to call whom He wills into His employment to represent and to serve Him.
How God Chooses The Man
God calls the man (Divine invitation)
God breaks the man (Divine motivation)
God makes the man (Divine dedication)
God blesses the man (Divine inspiration)
God uses the man (Divine exaltation)
Lesson 3
Jonah: God’s Most Reluctant Repentant Leader
(Hearing God’s voice and making my repentance real)
The wise and sensible thing for a man to do is to repent. In the opening chapter of Robinson Crusoe Defoe relates how, in spite of the protest of his father and the tears and entreaties of his godly mother, he ran away from his home at York and went to sea. On his first voyage he was wrecked off Yarmouth and barely escaped with his life. He now saw the folly and the evil of the course he had taken, but was afraid and ashamed to go back to his home, lest some of his old companions should make sport of him. So, writes Defoe, men are not ashamed to sin, but are ashamed to repent; not ashamed to do that of which they ought to be ashamed, but ashamed to do that which is their only hope and rescue.—More Sermon Illustrations
- Jonah’s penitent activities
- Jonas’ penitentiary experience
- Jonah prays to God in his penitentiary; 2:1,2
- Jonah recognized that it was God that locked him in his penitentiary; v.3
- Jonah feels out of touch with God in his penitentiary; v.4
- Jonah repents in his penitentiary; vv.5-9
- Jonah released from his penitentiary; v10
- Jonah’s path as a penitent; 3:1,2
- Jonah accepts God’s assignment; vv.3,4
- A penitent preaches to other penitents; 5-10; Psalm 51:11-19