ANNOUNCER: This is Grace in Focus. On this episode we conclude Bob Wilkin’s and David Renfro’s favorite five Old Testament books. Bob has his final turn. You probably won’t be surprised by them, but let’s see which ones they are. Thank you for joining us friend. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at faithalone.org. There you can access information about our Kamaiah, Idaho Regional Conference coming up July 19th through 23rd. Not a lot of time left, but you can still make it, and we’d love to have you. Get all the information you need at faithalone.org/events.

And now to close our week-long series on the five favorite Old Testament books, here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: All right, David, I think we’re going to finish our five favorite books. We got your five, which were what? 

DAVID: Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Micah, and Judges. 

BOB: Okay, and I gave three of mine so far, which were Genesis, 2 Samuel, and in agreement with you, Judges. And now I’ve got two more. Well, my other two books are Daniel and Jonah. So let me talk for a minute about Jonah, and then we can also talk about Daniel. 

I’m writing our commentary on Jonah in volume two of the Grace Old Testament commentary. And I’m glad I got the opportunity to do that because I really like Jonah. And it breaks down pretty nicely in the chapters one and two, are part one, chapters three and four, part two. So at the beginning of the book, you get this call. Now, he’s often called the reluctant prophet. And why is Jonah called the reluctant prophet.

DAVID: Because the Lord told him to go to Nineveh. And he went the other way. 

BOB: He goes to Tarshish. 

DAVID: Yeah. And it’s like at that time, of course, Nineveh was east of Israel. You know, so the Lord told him to go east. What he did was he hopped about there on the coast of Israel and went west. I mean, is that disobedience? I mean, just your insight into that.

BOB:  Yeah, my insight is that is definitely disobedience. And this is a prophet. I mean, God told him to do this. It was a commission. It would be like God saying to you, David, okay, what I want you to do is I want you to go to Austin. And I want you to speak before the assembly there, the state assembly. 

DAVID: Please don’t make me do this. 

BOB: And instead of going there, you head to Los Angeles. 

DAVID: No, I head to Argentina. 

BOB: Argentina, a completely different, yeah, that’s right. So what happens though in the first chapter is he’s on this ship and he’s asleep on the ship. And these sailors hit this horrendous storm, which God is sent to stop what Jonah’s doing. So they wake him up, which reminds me, by the way, of Jesus being in the boat and he’s asleep when a storm hits. And so Jonah may be a bit of a type of Christ here. 

But in any regard, they wake him up and they ask him what his job is and they find out he’s a prophet and they find out he is the prophet for the one true God, the God of Israel. It appears that these sailors may have come to faith. They certainly try very hard not to kill him, but they ultimately are told by Jonah. God has told me what you need to do. You need to throw me overboard and this storm will stop. So they throw an overboard and instantly the storm is stopped and they pray that God would not hold this against them because they didn’t want to do this. And God of course sends this great fish. We’re not told it’s a whale. We don’t know exactly what it was, but it is a great fish that swallows him and he’s in that fish for three days and Jesus actually refers to that, that as Jonah was three days in the belly of this great fish, social, the son of man be three days in the belly of the earth. In the center of the earth. So Jonah was definitely a type of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

And so then you have Jonah who goes down to like the coral, I mean, at the coral, but what do you call the plants that that grow up from the bottom of the ocean? Kelp, or other things. Anyway, he’s in the weeds so to speak. And at that point, God saves him and he has this great song about God saving him from the depths and, you know, that he’s cried to God from the belly of this fish. And so the fish actually takes him back where he was supposed to go and spits him out on land. 

DAVID: I would have loved to have seen that. 

BOB: And that fish must have gone really fast or God just moved it instantaneously.

DAVID:Can God do that? 

BOB: God can do that. Remember in Acts chapter 8, he takes Philip the evangelist and He moves him from where he is to where He wants him to go just like that. 

DAVID: Like the Star Trek, beam me up, Scotty. 

BOB: It’s like 25 miles if I remember right and he just instantly moved. 

DAVID: Yeah, the Lord does that, it’s amazing. 

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BOB: So now in chapters 3 and 4, Jonah gets to where he was supposed to go in the first place and he preaches “40 days and then comes destruction,” then comes the judgment. And against what Jonah wants, they all repent from the greatest to the least. It goes all the way to the king. Everybody puts on sackcloth and ashes, even the animals. You’ve got cows that have sackcloth and ashes on them and they’re all avoiding food and drink and they’re all crying out to God because they say, who knows God may relent? And Jonah, 3:10 is one of my favorite verses, “They turn from their wicked ways and so God relented from the disaster He said He was going to bring.” 

And then in chapter 4, God works on the reluctant prophet again because Jonah’s real ticked, he’s hoping they’re going to be destroyed but he realizes his hope of destruction is probably gone because they’ve repented. And so God shows mercy on them and then God raises up a plant to give him some shade, then God takes away the plant and Jonah gets ticked and he’s like, look, shouldn’t you have compassion on the people of this great city? I think doesn’t he say at the end of Jonah, there are 120,000 who don’t know their right hand from their left and the 120,000 who don’t know the right from the left doesn’t mean there are 120,000 simple-minded people. It means there are 120,000 children, small children that haven’t yet learned the difference between left and right. And so, by the way, this suggests that the city, which was a three-day walking journey, must have had a million or more people in it. 

DAVID: “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock?” BOB: Yeah, and by the way, God cares about animals. He doesn’t want to just destroy all the livestock. God cares about humans. He cares about animals. Well, my final book and I’m going to- 

DAVID: Well, let me do one observation on this. If I didn’t have this historical context of the 120,000, that couldn’t discern their right hand from their left, I’d swear this was talking about Texas drivers on the interstate. 

BOB: Yeah, that’s true. I grew up in Southern California and I can tell you it’s true in Southern California too. 

DAVID: Well, with all the Californians moving to Texas, guess where we learned it.

BOB: We got it from them now, yeah, exactly. All right, my last favorite book is Daniel. And I don’t have time to go into it, but some of my favorite sermons are there. You’ve got the three men, the fiery furnace, right? And the fourth man appears, which is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. You’ve got Daniel thrown into the lion’s den, which is one of my favorite stories and the lions don’t even touch him. And then as soon as Daniel’s delivered from the lion’s den, they throw in all the people who were opposing Daniel and trying to get him killed. And guess what happens? They get gobbled up. Because God had stopped the mouth of lions, which I think Hebrews chapter 11 says he stopped the mouth of lions, talking about that event. 

And then you’ve got all these prophetic examples. You know, you’ve got this great pillar with the head of gold and all the way down to the feet of clay. And it’s telling us about the four great empires ending with the Roman Empire. And ultimately looking to the fifth and final kingdom, the kingdom cut without hands, which is going to be the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. So you’ve got Jesus’ kingdom that’s prophesied in the book of Daniel. You’ve got, I mentioned before, Daniel 9:24-27, which is this great passage telling us ultimately about Daniel’s seventieth-seven, the Tribulation period. And there’s going to be a signing of a covenant. And then there’s going to be seven years of great, well, tribulation three and a half years of which are the Great Tribulation. 

And I love Daniel chapter 12, because Daniel 12 breaks it down into two halves, three and a half years and three and a half years. And then it talks about resurrection at the beginning of Daniel chapter 12, and it talks about some who are going to shine like the stars of heaven, which is eternal rewards for the faithful. And so Daniel is just a wonderful book. And I would highly encourage everybody to teach it in your Sunday school, teach it in your churches, because it’s a very powerful book, and it helps us understand the New Testament prophetic literature. 

DAVID: I think, you know, all the stuff that we’ve talked about in all these books, it stresses something that I see not stressed in churches today. And yet I’m stressing it at Victor Street. God’s sovereignty. It’s not taught very much. 

BOB: You don’t have to be a Calvinist to teach the sovereignty of God. We in the grace movement believe in the sovereignty of God. 

DAVID: Yeah. And if you don’t do that, then you’re ignoring a lot of the Old Testament and a lot of the New Testament. And, or thinking that it’s not valid today or blah, blah, blah, blah. But God’s absolute sovereignty over life and death, over all this. 

BOB: All right, I got two words for you. If I want to summarize the Old and New Testament, the two words are “Jesus rules.” It’s all about the fact that God is going to rule and reign. 

DAVID: It was there in the Old Testament. 

BOB: We’re going to talk about that in one of the upcoming shows. But in the meantime, we’re going to keep grace in focus. 

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Now, friend, we are just delighted that you have spent this week with us talking about the importance of the Old Testament. And now we wish you a very pleasant weekend. Hope you get some rest, and that you’ll be in attendance at a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church for some great fellowship and to grow in Christ. And we will look forward to seeing you back here again next week for more Grace in Focus.