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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Carissa Vitorovic

Breaking the Silence

Heavenly Father, God, Lord, we again are so thankful for your Sabbath day, for this sanctuary of time that you have blessed us with.

And God, we come to you today because you are worthy.

We come to you today because of your grace, Lord.

And Father, we want to thank you for who you are and who you have shown yourself to be.

Father, not by might nor by power, but by your Spirit is my prayer.

You have just received a dream, a dream that you know was clearly sent by God.

You have received a calling to go and serve overseas as a missionary, called to enter the war-torn country of Syria.

No, not to minister to the sweet orphans there or to help in the efforts fighting terrorism or to work with the refugees.

No, God has in fact called you to go and work in the heart of an ISIS camp.

And it is there that you will preach an evangelistic series.

How many of you are signing up for this Advent Hope mission trip?

How will your country respond when you try to gain reentry?

Will they see you as a terrorist, a recruiter by chance.

Maybe you've seen the videos or maybe you've heard about them, the beheadings that are frequently experienced.

You see, this story, this dream, is actually quite similar to 1 that was given to a man named Jonah.

A story which we know, a man who was called to go to the heart of Nineveh and there to preach a story of redemption.

Now Nineveh, located today in Basel, Iraq, was the capital of the Assyrian kingdom.

Now if you don't know too much about the Assyrians, let me introduce you to who your neighbors would have been.

When you approach Nineveh, you are going to see a city that is a 3 days journey across.

Its walls are 40 feet thick and 60 feet high.

And there he is called to enter into this Assyrian capital.

In his book, Extreme Violence in the Visuals and Text of Antiquity by Martin Zimmerman, professor of ancient history in Munich, Zimmerman lists the Assyrians as being the masters of brutality.

Masters of brutality, slashing open the stomachs of opponents, hacking up their flesh, and displaying it as a trophy.

These are just a few of the barbaric acts which they frequently enacted.

In fact, when they would march captives across the desert, rather than using ropes or handcuffs of sorts, they chose to use a more sinister method.

The Assyrians would take something like a fish hook, and they would hook it into the rib of the captive, hooking it into the prisoner in front of them.

When you died, they would simply unhook you and kick you to the side.

Now, this is possibly a gruesome way to begin a Sabbath worship service, but my point here is we think about these old stories and we're like, Jonah, where was your faith?

These are not people you want to invite over for dinner.

And yet, these are the people that Jonah was called to serve.

And yet, as this story unfolds, we are going to find that strangely enough, it was not death, it was not torture, it was not estrangement from the country of his birth that Jonah feared most.

Rather, it was a fear that I believe all of us have experienced at 1 time or another, a fear that is far more relatable.

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Jonah.

We'll begin in Jonah chapter 3 and verse 5.

You're struggling to find it, I don't blame you.

I put a bookmark just so I wouldn't get stuck while I'm up here.

Jonah chapter 3 and we're going to begin in verse 5.

So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.

Then word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

Verse 7, and he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything.

Do not let them eat or even drink water, But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God.

Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.

Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away his fierce anger so that we may not perish.

Verse 10, then God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God relented from the disaster that He said he would bring upon them, but he did not do it.

In chapter 4 and verse 1, we read, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry.

In the New International Version, it translates it as, but to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry.

Here you see a gospel presentation given to the people of Nineveh.

They respond appropriately, their hearts are broken before this God who they likely had never heard of before.

They turn to him in sackcloth and ashes and repentance, even the king saying, don't eat, don't drink.

And the response given by Jonah, and he was angry.

Imagine with me that Mark Finley, a renowned Adventist evangelist, was to come to this area, to the Inland Empire area, or let's just say San Bernardino, and he was going to preach a citywide prophecy seminar.

All the flyers had gone out to the community.

All the Bible workers are going door to door.

And for 40 days and nights, there Mark Finley is, preaching his heart out.

At the end of the seminar, you go to Mark Finley and you begin to inquire, what were the results?

How did the people of San Bernardino respond?

And Mark Finley turns to you and he says, it was horrible.

Every single person in that city gave their life to Jesus Christ and every single person was converted, it was horrible.

Thankfully He wouldn't ever say that, but just by point of illustration here, you're thinking, how ludicrous is this?

You have an incredibly, overwhelmingly positive response.

Continuing, or in a moment, through the book of Jonah, we see this is exactly how he responded.

Just for background information, in Jonah chapter 1, Jonah again received this call from God to go to Nineveh as we have been exploring.

He then got on a boat and he headed for the southern part of Spain.

But after what you might call a whale of a time, Jonah is spit out on the beach and he finds himself traveling once again to Nineveh.

And that's where, of course, the story picks up in Daniel chapter 3.

After 40 days of boldly preaching this message to Nineveh in the heart of this enemy territory, Jonah goes to the hillside and he sits down and he waits to see the fireworks show.

But instead God does something that infuriates him.

God foils his plans once again by choosing instead to accept their repentance.

And, can you believe it, to forgive them.

Again we might initially attribute Jonah's anger to his damaged pride at a prophet who gives a prophecy, and yet it doesn't come true.

But we're going to find there is actually a deeper reason.

So he, speaking of Jonah, prayed to the Lord and said, Lord, was not this what I said to you when I was still in my country?

Therefore, I fled previously to Tarshish.

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Breaking the Silence

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