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The Sign Of Jonah
Episode #314
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(J) Well, Martha, we are driving and hoping that this is not going to have too much road noise. But we’re talking about the Jonah CD that you’re going to be giving out and giving away at Shulamite.com, and probably through Facebook and Twitter, and basically we’re going to give a hundred CD’ away and see where it goes. But I’m fascinated by what we’re seeing in the story of Jonah, and I questioned you this morning and I said, “What was it, what was transpiring at the time of Jonah? What was transpiring between the Israelites and the Assyrians? What had transpired to make a man of God dig his heels in and would rather die by the hands of God than to go and offer grace to this group of people?” And I just, there’s, there’s just more there. There’s more to the story that you have to look at the context. You have to go into the historic time-line to find out what had transpired. What was it? So, you came out, and I asked you that this morning, and you said that you had a scripture of what had transpired, and then it launched, and then I said, “We’ve gotta get the taping equipment.” So what was it, what was the scripture that you saw that brought a little bit of historic time-line?
(M) Well, let me introduce the tape first. I have always just sort of sloughed over the “sign of Jonah” that Jesus said He “would give no sign to the Pharisee’s but the sign of Jonah.” And in one passage, I think its Luke, it says that He said he would be in the belly of the earth three days and then resurrected. And I thought that was all Jonah stood for. But in the last few days the Lord has called me to go to Jonah, and He has shown me the most fantastic insight into the real meaning of the sign of Jonah, and I am just so excited about it. And when I finished we had a round-table discussion that was so rich. In fact I’ve gotta capture those insights; everyone had insights. And in my study of it I realized that the King of Nineveh; I found out he was the King of Assyria, and that that city, Nineveh, had been assigned as the capital for Assyria. And in the story I’ve always heard and considered that because Nineveh was such a fierce violent city that Jonah was afraid. It was not that at all because he tells the story in it. And he gives the reason to God of why he wouldn’t go. He did not want Nineveh to receive grace because of their violence. Well, and looking back on it I still ran across this, this morning, and I haven’t completely identified the time-line. I hope I’m right, but I stumbled on it in Isaiah ten. It starts out with the Lord saying in nine that He sent a word against Jacob and it would fall on Israel. And that, “The Lord raises the adversaries against Israel in that the people have not turned to God,” God was the One Who struck them, “nor did they inquire of God. So God cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed in one day.” Chapter ten goes on to say in verse five… Apparently, I will do some more study on this, but apparently God had sent Assyria and others to come against Israel and punish them in the hopes that they would turn to Him, and they didn’t turn when they should have. So He says in verse five of chapter ten, “Oh Assyria, the rod of My anger, the staff in their hands is My fury against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of My wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder.”
(J) And that’s when I, after you read that I said oh my goodness, Jonah didn’t know the sovereignty of God, that God was using the Assyrians to bring His wrath, so that He could bring His judgment, and He could bring His mercy. He was, they were a tool to discipline Israel; it was, they were, they were the rod.
(M) The whole story of Jonah is a picture of God’s sovereignty, and that’s what’s so fascinating about it. What Jonah didn’t believe was that God was God.
(J) Wow.
(M) And so he didn’t have any fear of just turning away and leaving the presence of the Lord. He didn’t have any fear of the God. Even to the end he didn’t seem to ‘get it’. And God spoke to him of His sovereignty over the vine that came up and shaded him, and then the worm. God sent the worm to eat the vine, and then He said to Jonah, “Do you have the right to be angry?” And Jonah said, “Yes.” (John and Martha laugh.) Because Jonah did not know that God is sovereign. And the whole thing is so amazing because he demonstrates what you do when you don’t know God is sovereign over every small detail, including from the storm, to the worm. And so he didn’t want, because of the brutality of Assyria, that God had sent His fury on Israel through Assyria, sovereignly. But, why? To get them to repent and turn to Him, and they would not. So then, another amazing thing is, and this is, this is really awesome. In verse twelve, “When the Lord has finished all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the King of Assyria, and the boastful look in his eyes. For he says by the strength of my hand I have done it; I have removed the boundaries, plundered treasures. My hand has found the wealth of the people’s. Shall the ax boast over him?” So He sends Assyria to Israel, and then He punishes Assyria for going. Now that is beyond, absolutely beyond human reasoning and logic. It defies everything that we, that we think we know and understand.
(J) Ok. And the reason why I think that this is so key and so poignant about this moment in time is that I feel like we’re experiencing that, and that we’re going into a season of God using sovereignly His tools in order to get His Church to turn. And that, so I mean, I just don’t think it’s a nice little story that you’ve decided to send a CD out on. I think that you have a real key here. And Christ Himself said, ‘the sign of Jonah’. It’s huge.
(M) Yeah, Jesus named Jonah eight times in the New Testament. And I never, I never got that this sign of Jonah… And what God showed me was what the real sign of Jonah means. And at the end of the tape I go into a call for intercession and other things. And when it finished I thought I want to give this CD away. And so we have one hundred copies of this CD that we will send free. But this is the addendum to it because this isn’t on the tape; the why Jonah was like he was is what the Lord is opening up now. But then something else happens. In verse twenty of Isaiah ten, “In that day the remnant of Israel”, and the survivors of God’s fury, “of the house of Jacob,” I added that, ‘survivors of His fury’, “will no more lean on him who struck them but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.” “A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the Mighty God.” And “Only a remnant of them will return, destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end as decreed in the midst of all the earth.” And then He says, “Therefore, O My people who dwell in Zion”, which is a spiritual position, Zion is. That position is significant because it’s the place where there’s no opposition to God. The people who live in Zion have reached that place because they have no resistance, opposition or unbelief to God. So He says, “Be not afraid of the Assyrian’s when they strike with the rod and lift with the staff, for in a very little while My fury will come to an end and My anger will be direct to their destruction. And the Lord will wield against them a whip.” “And in that day His burden” His burden, “will depart form your shoulder, and His yoke from your neck. And the yoke will be broken because of the fat.” That means, (she laughs), that means that the remnant that has no resistance to Zion will be so rich and satisfied in God that they will not be able to bear a yoke. But all through it it’s God’s sovereignty orchestrating everything. He knows always it’s only a remnant that will get the message. And the remnant goes to Zion, spiritually, in a position of ascendancy, and ruling, because they turned to God when the rest did not. And probably, I don’t know the entire history of this, but probably there were many killed. So one of the things I say on the tape is “We don’t understand Who God is.” We really don’t understand both sides of Him. The meaning of His wrath is His love. And the meaning of His destruction is to capture us. Isn’t that amazing?
(J) It’s phenomenal.
(M) How about the tape? Tell about how you felt about the tape and how everybody responded.
(J) Well, for us the CD of the month that you did was just rather shocking. Because you basically took the story that Christ put emphasis on, but you literally just exposed His emphasis and what He was saying, and peeled away just our looking at it as a story. You know, you went so much deeper, and you exploded this thing, and I’m excited about the revelation because I think the timing of it is so, so very key.
Announcement by John Enslow:
Recently Martha recorded a message about Jonah, which I feel was extremely relevant to our times. Supporter’s who heard this message live have provided the funds to send out the first one hundred copies free of charge. So as a gift we would like to invite you to visit shulamite.com and receive your copy today. You can find the disc entitled “The Sign Of Jonah” listed on the front page of shulamite.com. We hope you’re able to take advantage of this and enjoy the message. (A cheering crowd.)
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