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Introduction
In our lives as humans, there are some people that we encounter who are simply difficult to love.
For some this is a rival classmate or a co-worker, for others its someone who is full of themselves, for others its someone who supports a different team or country than we do.
We all have people who are difficult for us to get along with and love and we love to justify ourselves and the reason that we have for not getting along with these types of people.
Growing up in Ozark it was easy to do this with Nixa athletes and people in general.
We were arch rivals in everything.
We disliked them and always wanted to beat them and they felt the same way about us in Ozark!
You could say that we were enemies and Salem, by the sounds of things at the high school football field, has its fair share of rivals and enemies as well.
We have people that we don’t always like because we have differences - we think differently, we live differently, we act differently.
Now imagine the person or group that you don’t like for whatever reason is genuinely wicked and behaving in a way that God hates according to His Word.
Not only do you not like them because of where they’re from, but now you might feel justified in disliking them because they’re living in unrepentant sin against God and His Word!
This is the situation that Jonah finds himself in.
Jonah and the people of Israel hate the Assyrians.
The Assyrians are evil, wicked people.
They are mean people.
They are rivals to the Israelites.
It was easy for an Israelite to hate an Assyrian.
What’s so shocking in the book of Jonah, though, is that God calls Jonah to go to his enemies and call them to repent and get their act together!
Now, it can be hard for us as Christians to call a friend or family member whom we love dearly to get their life right with the Lord… can you imagine going to your most bitter enemy and telling them to straighten up?
Why on earth would you go and do this?
Why on earth are we supposed to go and take the good news of the Gospel to the ends of the earth and to make disciples of our neighbors and the nations?
Because that’s what God calls us to do! See, God commands us to share the Gospel and call others to repent because God has a world-wide plan… The God of the Bible isn’t just interested in one nation, He never has been!
He’s always had a worldwide message and a worldwide people.
Jonah was called by God to go and call people towards repentance.
This isn’t an “easy” thing by any means, as we’ve established.
Now if you add in the fact of “where” he was supposed to go and share this message you see all the more reason for him to be a little concerned and eventually to disobey.
As is the case today, though, whenever someone disobey’s there is a consequence.
Our passage tonight introduces us to the prophet Jonah and how he disobeys a direct command by God and experiences some consequences as a result.
As we begin this new study that will take us through the end of 2022, a couple quick things to keep in mind.
Contrary to what some might say, we believe that this is a true story as it is said to be in Scripture.
Jesus refers to this story in Matthew 12:40 in reference Jonah being in the belly of the fish for 3 days to His death and resurrection.
Not only do we believe that this is a true story, we see in this true story that we are able to relate to it.
While we haven’t been in the belly of a large fish, we have all rebelled against God’s Word and we have experienced His forgiveness and grace - as the people of Nineveh experience in this book.
You can’t out run God, regardless of how fast you are.
He will find you!
The Call of Jonah (1-2)
The opening few verses introduce us to 3 key things, who Jonah was, what God wanted him to do and what Jonah’s response was.
Let’s examine the first two by looking at Jonah’s call in verses 1-2.
The “word of the Lord” came to Jonah.
Before we look at anything further, we have to examine what this means.
We see references in the New Testament to the “word” being Jesus Christ.
John talks about this in John 1
Does this mean that the preincarnate Christ came to Jonah and told him this?
Perhaps, but scholars note that God relayed his message to prophets through a variety of ways.
He spoke through dreams, through a still small voice and sometimes through violent disasters like an earthquake.
The point here is simply that Jonah received a message from God that we see clearly in verse 2. But first, who is Jonah?
We see absolutely nothing about him in this opening section other than the fact that he is the son of Amittai.
Is this all there is to know about this mysterious prophet? 2 Kings 14:25 gives us more information
The king talked about in 2 Kings 14:25 is Jeroboam II, the king of Israel from 782-753 BC.
Jonah was alive and active during the reign of this king meaning that the events in this book took place in the first half of the 8th century, BC.
This also lets us see that Jonah was a contemporary of other prophets like Amos and Hosea.
Now that we know a little bit about this person, what did God call him to do? Go to Nineveh.
Nineveh was well known for its wickedness and torture of others.
Sargon II, the leader of the Assyrian army that conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, had a great grandson who tore off the lips and hands of his victims.
Another king flayed victims alive.
This was nothing new, this was their culture for literally thousands of years!
Nineveh was a mighty city and it was well known for its violence and wickedness.
Yet, God is aware of their wickedness.
Have you ever encountered someone who says that God doesn’t seem to care about what is going on in our world today?
I know that I’ve met people who say things like this.
They think that God is simply ignoring us and doesn’t care.
We know that God cares for and loves us.
We also know that God hates sin.
Jonah knew about the power of God.
He had experienced it.
God called him to simply go and share that this rebellious nation must repent.
This is a simple message, but we can definitely understand why Jonah might have been concerned, right?
We can feel concerned about sharing the Gospel message with others.
We can feel as though not qualified or even that we are afraid of possibly being persecuted for our faith!
These thoughts are fine, but friends we must not respond like Jonah did.
The Rebellion of Jonah (3)
Verse 3 tells us that Jonah did not deal with this call in a successful manner.
In fact, you could make the case that Jonah did the exact opposite thing that God called him to do.
Rather than going east towards Nineveh, he went west towards Tarshish.
He disobeyed and went south to Joppa, a southern seaport in Israel.
He was seeking to disobey God.
Why would Jonah do such a thing?
The answer given by the majority of scholars boils down to 1 thing: fear.
Jonah refused to go to Nineveh initially because of fear.
Have you ever refused to do something because you were afraid?
We can all think of examples of this! I’m reminded of the very first time I went cliff jumping with my friends on Table Rock Lake.
I was probably in 5th grade and we were out on the boat with some friends and we came to some cliffs and there were lots of people jumping to the lake below.
My friends who were used to this were extremely excited to climb up to the tallest point that people were jumping from.
Because there had been a little drought lately the water was down and this jump was close to 30 feet!
Because this was my first time doing something like this, I was not a big fan of jumping to the lake nearly 30 feet below me!
I was afraid.
I climbed down to a shorter cliff and jumped from that point.
I was afraid of something bad happening from this top cliff.
Either I would slip and land on the rocks or I would jump and land awkwardly on my head.
The difference, that we see in Jonah 4:2, is that Jonah was not afraid for his own safety.
He was afraid that the people of Nineveh would repent and not be punished.
Because Jonah did not want Nineveh to experience the chance of grace and forgiveness, he was willing to travel the opposite direction in order to “flee from the presence of the Lord.”
How foolish could Jonah be?
We know that we cannot flee the presence of the Lord because He see’s everything and He knows everything!
Jonah, the prophet of God, disobeyed God’s Word.
He hated this nation so much that he would do anything to keep the love and grace of God from them.
God cares about us, doesn’t he?
If we are called to be Christlike, what should we care about?
We should care about sharing the hope of the Gospel message with others!
This means that we tell other people about the importance of repenting and following God.
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