Dr. R.T. Kendall inaugurated his great ministry as the first American Pastor of the famous Westminster Chapel of London with an expository series of messages on the prophet Jonah. His stated reasons for doing so in 1978 still ring true in today.

1. Jonah is Strikingly Relevant to the Modern Church:

The Church is in retreat instead of advance. In a time of history that needs more than ever before a certain sound from the trumpet in battle, the church is not unified, she is not holy, and she is not practicing the presence of God. Like Jonah the modern church has been given:

·        A direction to go and is not going

·        A job to do and is not doing it

·        A message to preach and is not preaching it

·        A love to share and is not sharing it

2. Jonah is Strikingly Relevant to My Life:

            The simple truth is: I am Jonah. His life is my life. His disobedience is my disobedience. His failure is my failure and his inability to grasp the heart of God, is my inability to grasp the heart of God. It takes an honest appraisal to make this personal association with Jonah. If you don’t, then the message of this book is a cute little moral story and you miss its true powerful message.

            3. Jonah is Strikingly Revealing of the Heart of God:

            God is jealous that all of His creation gives Him the glory and worship that He alone deserves. We find this passionate “furious longing” in the Book of Jonah.

            It is amazing that we can find all of this in such a small book. Someone said it contains about 3300 English words in our translation. It takes only a short time to read and is divided up into four short chapters. Jonah is known as a minor prophet. This of course does not in any way indicate the importance of his message but usually the location and the brevity of the book. Of all of the prophets this book stands out the most because the others are collections of sermons and denouncements while this is a story.

·        Running with Jonah                                                               Jonah 1:1

·        The Folly of Man and the Sovereignty of God                    Jonah 1:1-3

·        A Mighty Storm is on the Way                                             Jonah 1:4-9

·        A Sleeping Saint in a Stormed Tossed World                  Jonah 1:9-16

·        The Power of a Second Opportunity                                   Jonah 3:1

·        The Deadly Danger of Missing the Heart of God             Jonah 4:1-10