Running Away from God's Will

Jonah

     Tonight we're gonna depart from our study of the Book of Hebrews, and if you have your Bibles, I'd like to ask you to turn to the 96th Psalm.  Psalm 96...One of the great missionary Psalms in all of the Psaltery is the 96th Psalm, and I only wanna read this to you as an introduction to our study tonight.  "O sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth.  Sing unto the Lord, bless His name; show forth His salvation from day to day.  Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.  For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.  For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.  Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.  Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the peoples; give unto the Lord glory and strength.  Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts.  O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; fear before Him, all the earth.  Say among the nations that the Lord reigneth; the world also shall be established, that it shall not be moved; He shall judge the peoples righteously.  Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof.  Let the fields be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the forest rejoice before the Lord.  For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth; He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth."  There is a tremendous exhortation to us to carry the message of God's salvation to the ends of the earth. 

     Now turn in your Bible to the Book of Jonah, and tonight I'm not gonna really preach to you.  I'm just gonna kinda wander through Jonah with you and see what it is that we can learn about missionary service from the world's worst missionary, Jonah.  You know, as I was just kind of thinking in my mind, "What text could I pick out to speak on a missionary theme, as the Mission Board invited me to do, and I thought about all of the times that I heard a missionary; and usually when you hear a missionary, you can pretty well guess what his text is gonna be before he even begins; because there are some very favorite missionary texts that always seem to be used by missionaries. 

     One in very common usage is John 4:35, "Say not ye, 'There are yet four months and then cometh harvest'?  Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.'"  There are other texts that are used frequently in missionary messages.  In Matthew, I'm thinking of chapter 9 verse 37, "Then saith He unto His disciples, 'The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.  Pray y