How not to spot sin

It is fascinating reading Jonah to see how the prophet of God blatantly ignores God's call to him and in fact sets off in the opposite direction.  But what would you expect to happen next?  We expect God to stop him, to put people across his path who convict him, who challenge him we certainly don't expect him to get to Joppa and board a boat happily sailing for Tarshish.  Maybe we expect Jonah to be wracked with guilt or under intense conviction because he is deliberately disobeying God, but where do we find Jonah "Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep."  In fact Jonah is so sound asleep that the captain has to wake him to tell him about the storm and get him to pray.  No sleepless night for Jonah, no tossing and turning struggling with guilt about his actions.  Jonah deliberately ignored and disobeyed God's word to him and yet everything seemed normal, he felt fine.  That ought to warn us that how we feel about our life and the circumstances of our life are not always a good barometer of how we are dealing with sin in our life. 

Sometimes we can be comfortable with sin and remain unconvicted, so what is the remedy, how do we avoid that happening.  We must carefully and forensically examine our hearts in the light of the bible.  God has given us his word which his Spirit takes and applies to our hearts but we must walk in step with the spirit, we need to take time to expose our hearts to the Spirits prompting, convicting and moving.  We must not assume that I feel fine therefore everything is fine, and we must be continually questionning whether what we think is normal and ok is what God our loving heavenly Father says is best.

Thinking about application

Good application starts with good interpretation, once we have understood the meaning of the text then we can begin to think about how it applied to its original hearers, and then to us, it will also reflect the context of the book and the bible.

· What was the application for those to whom the book was written?


- What truths did it teach them about God?


 - How ought they to respond to that?


- What did it teach God’s people about their hearts and thinking?


- What direct application does it give concerning actions?


- Is it simply reporting or recommending actions?


· What is the same for us? What is different?


· What is the application for our Christian friends?


· What is the application for our church?


· What is the application for our unbelieving friends?

From your interpretation you will construct your main teaching point, whiich you should be able ro express in one sentence. 

From your thought about the application questions above it will help if you think about yourself and your group and construct a main sentence that expresses how the passage calls us to respond.  e.g. Gen 37 main teaching point is Sovereign grace of God in working to keep his word even through this flawed family. The main response it calls for is praise and a change in the way we judge God’s faithfulness – not by circumstance.  There are other subsidiary points of teaching e.g. – flawed fatherhood, boastful Joseph, divided family and there may be application from that. But actually they all serve to highlight all the more the main teaching and application point.

 Application Questions:

The questions will be designed to help people work through to the point of seeing the application for themselves and work it into their lives. Here are some helpful starters:

- The passage teaches us that... how does that conflict with the way society thinks?



- A friend says... how would you use this passage to answer them?



- If we grasp... what fruit would we expect to see?



- If we fail to... what thorns might we expect in our lives?



- So what?