Jonah #1

Northside Church

Jonah #1

Jamey Mills

2/12/23

NORTHSIDE… my name is Jamey Mills, it’s always good to be with you guys.

Ill…

Forest Gump or…

A time when I ran away… bees, cops,

Old palestinian proverb… what happens to a sheep that runs away, they break its leg… and then the shepherd literally carries it wherever he goes… teaching the sheep to depend on him.

Today we are starting a brand new sermon series looking at the OT book of Jonah. (Picture).

Jonah is one of about 15 books that we sort of clump together as “the prophets”...

A prophet in a sense is sort of a messenger for God…

These books almost exclusively start something like this…

“The Word of the Lord came to” … in this case Jonah… and the idea is the prophet would take that God’s message to the intended people… in this case Nineveh…

Sometimes it was encouragement, sometimes it was direction, sometimes it was warning…

One of the things we realize… is that

The Word of the Lord is powerful.

… that it changes things… It has the power to change lives… even lives like yours and mine… you see that in Jonah…

2 Kings tells us that Jonah was alive during the reign of one of Israel's most godless kings… so all of this was probably somewhere around 765 or so BC.

At one point Jonah prophesied favorably about Jeroboam… Another prophet, Amos came and said that's not what God said at all… Amos ended up being right…

And so we come to Jonah with a little skepticism.

The main people involved in Jonah are… God, Jonah, these sailors, a fish, the wicked town of Nineveh, the king, and some cows… and the ONLY one… who acts the way you’d expect is God.

Jonah 1:1–3 NLT

The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish.

The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” 3 But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the LORD by sailing to Tarshish.

It says the word of the Lord came to Jonah…

Usually a prophetic book is largely about the message of the Lord and how the people responded… but Jonah is just all together different… it focuses on Jonah’s life… but it’s clearly intended to reveal something about God… and the heart He desires in us.

God tell’s Jonah to go and announce His judgment to Nineveh, because they are wicked people…

Typically, in a prophetic book what you see next is the prophet gets up and goes to deliver that message… it's sort of what they do.

But not Jonah…He did the get up part… but it says that he went in the opposite direction… and not just a little. (MAP SLIDE)

And not just a little bit.

Nin was 550 miles east of Israel.

Tarshis was 2500 miles west…

Jonah paid for a ticket to get as far away from where God was calling him as he could.

Jonah ran from God… but why?

Maybe It has a lot to do with where God was calling him…

Nineveh was an arch enemy of Israel… It was founded by a guy named “Nimrod”… laugh if you dare… Genesis tells us he was the first warrior on the earth… the man that they pretty much compared every other man too. Great grandson of Noah.

Nimrod built Nineveh… modern day Mosul Iraq. Incredibly affluent… right along the Tigris river.

It became the capital of the assyrian empire, and just a generation after this… the Assyrian’s came and demolished 10 of the 12 tribes and hauled most of them away…

The Ninevites were known as godless and cruel people… the most powerful and murderous people on the planet. They did awful things to those they captured…

And they went to great lengths to record it and make sure everyone knew… including us.

There are some incredible things that archeology has found there… catalogs of ancient documents, statues and artifacts…

Not sure if you remember… but this is the place where a lot of relics were destroyed by ISIS. There are all kinds of pictures of it online…

There are all sorts of relief’s and writings that have been found…

Incredibly sexually perverse… all kinds of statues and writing describe everything from gender stuff to sexual behavior that competes with what we see in our day.

The lucky captives were involved in incredibly cruel slave labor.

What was Nineveh like?

Tons of torture…

Publicly impaling their live captives. (SLIDE)

There are writings that talk about skinning them alive and hanging their skin on the walls for all to see

Pictures of fathers force to grind the bones of their family (SLIDE)

Dismembering them by force… (SLIDE)

Oftentimes… leaving one hand… so that the kind could shake their hand and look them in the eye as they died. (SLIDE)

Romans 1:30 talks about a people who were so sinful it was like they were inviting… trying to find new ways to sin…

So much of what we see in our culture is nothing new… in fact… if you watched the grammy’s last week (I did not) my understanding is… it sounds an awful lot like some of what we see in Nineveh.

Sometimes I think we look at the sin in our culture and don’t realize… so much of it is not new… Sin… the impact of sin… the brokenness of sin… the consequence of sin… isn’t new…

So… it's easy to understand why Jonah may have ran… why

Because of who they were… Israel’s enemy

Because of what they’d likely do to him… rolling in and saying… God’s judgment is coming.

He found a boat sailing in the opposite direction… and that’s incredibly easy to do in our day too. Even subconsciously… it's why intentionality is so incredibly important.

Which brings me to this question…

Are you running from God? In this story, Jonah… God’s prophet… someone who knew Him… was the one running from God and from what God called Him to do.

Are you? Running from putting Jesus first in your life because of what it might look like? What it might mean? What might need to change? What it might mean you need to give up?

One of the pastors I listened to said this…

There is no such thing as an uncalled Christian.

Every single christian has what's called a general calling…to Love God with all that we have… and to Love and serve others well… with God in mind… toward Him.

Keep in mind…

God may call you to go where you don’t want to go, to do what you don’t want to do, for a group you’d rather not do it for.

In the 1950’s a group of young missionaries spotted and made contact an Auca tribe… in Ecuador. Known to react violently to intruders… once they landed their plan and tried to make personal contact… all five young men were killed by the tribe.

If my memory is right… Two of the wife’s of the men that were killed later felt the call to go, live among, and preach the gospel to those who killed their husbands… Racheal Saint and Elezabeth Elliot…

This is a picture (SLIDE) of Mincaye and Rachel’s son Steve… Mincaye was the one who threw the spear that Killed Steve's father Nate. Mincaye became a believer… adopted Steve as his tribal son, and later baptized him. Steve and Mincaye traveled the world together teaching people… even his own tribe about Jesus.

God works powerfully through faithful people…

Jonah 1:4–12 NLT

But the Lord hurled a powerful wind over the sea, causing a violent storm that threatened to break the ship apart. Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. But all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold. So the captain went down after him. “How can you sleep at a time like this?” he shouted. “Get up and pray to your god! Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives.” Then the crew cast lots to see which of them had offended the gods and caused the terrible storm. When they did this, the lots identified Jonah as the culprit. “Why has this awful storm come down on us?” they demanded. “Who are you? What is your line of work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?” Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” The sailors were terrified when they heard this, for he had already told them he was running away from the Lord. “Oh, why did you do it?” they groaned. And since the storm was getting worse all the time, they asked him, “What should we do to you to stop this storm?” “Throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.”

4 But the LORD hurled a powerful wind over the sea, causing a violent storm that threatened to break the ship apart. 5 Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship.

But all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold. 6 So the captain went down after him. “How can you sleep at a time like this?” he shouted. “Get up and pray to your god! Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives.”

7 Then the crew cast lots to see which of them had offended the gods and caused the terrible storm. When they did this, the lots identified Jonah as the culprit. 8 “Why has this awful storm come down on us?” they demanded. “Who are you? What is your line of work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?”

9 Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”

10 The sailors were terrified when they heard this, for he had already told them he was running away from the LORD. “Oh, why did you do it?” they groaned. 11 And since the storm was getting worse all the time, they asked him, “What should we do to you to stop this storm?”

12 “Throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.”

Jonah was running from God…

And it says that God hurled… a powerful storm… it was so bad that these sailors began throwing cargo overboard… which likely meant… not only would they not get paid, but they’d have to pay to replace it… It tells us just how serious it was.

It says they prayed to their false gods… they went down and woke Jonah up to pray to God…

It says they cast lots… and it all came back to Jonah… this was his fault and so they hit him with all kinds of questions… who are you, where are you from, what do you do and why is this happening…

Jonah told Him… I worship God who made the land and sea… He’d already told them he was running from God…

And immediately they groaned… can you imagine hearing that… You are running from the God who made the sea… by… wait for it… wait for it… getting on a boat and heading out to sea?

And inside of that we learn such an important lesson….

You cannot outrun God… and trying doesn’t go well.

There are so many people that I love dearly… that are running from God and whose lives reflect some of the scars and pain that come from it.

Being honest about that… searching that out in your own life…

What am I holding back from God? Like saying… God, you can have all of me and influence all of me… but… _________.

Running from Him… from His truth, His leadership, His Lordship…. Living our lives on mission…

Sometimes God sends storms.

… He did for Jonah, to get his attention and he may do that for you too… to get your attention, redirect you, develop you, or even to bring discipline…

And if we learn to see that the right way, we begin to realize its the most gracious and loving thing God could ever do… what happens to Jonah in this story… at points sounds harsh and hard… but in all reality, it is exactly what he needed.

And we have lost sight of that in our culture… that not every storm/not all hardship is bad.

The sailors asked “What should we do to make this stop”?

And Jonah seems to own it… He seems to say it's all my fault… throw me in and your life will be saved…

Jonah… tells them to throw him in, suicidal almost… One author points out the possible selfish motivation, and it seems to fit with the conclusion of Jonah…

He’d rather die than go to Nineveh…

So in a sense, he was willing to put his blood and disobedience on their hands…

Jonah 1:13–16 NLT

Instead, the sailors rowed even harder to get the ship to the land. But the stormy sea was too violent for them, and they couldn’t make it. Then they cried out to the Lord, Jonah’s God. “O Lord,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin. And don’t hold us responsible for his death. O Lord, you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.” Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! The sailors were awestruck by the Lord’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.

13 Instead, the sailors rowed even harder to get the ship to the land. But the stormy sea was too violent for them, and they couldn’t make it. 14 Then they cried out to the LORD, Jonah’s God. “O LORD,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin. And don’t hold us responsible for his death. O LORD, you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.”

15 Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! 16 The sailors were awestruck by the LORD’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.

The book of Jonah is upside down. There are all these stereotyped characters that are doing exactly the opposite of what you’d expect…

God’s prophet runs.

These pegan sailors… seek God and turn and repent… even fight to save Jonah.

They buckled down and did all they could… staring death in the eye… they prayed out to God… not to hold this against them… the feeling you get is with heavy hearts they threw Jonah in…

And something crazy happened… the sea… and the wind… stood still.

Their reaction is exactly what you’d expect… if something like that were to happen.

God was at work…

Even though doubt, unfaithfulness, running, even in the face of the storm… God was at work.

It says that these pagan sailors… found God that day. Vowed to worship Him alone…

One more picture… that I thought was powerful.

This is a relief that was found that many scholars believe… depicts when Jonah came to Nineveh…

It helps us realize that these things are just stories… real people… with really sinful cultures… that are really far from God… really lived… and as you’ll see… God really does some powerful things among them.

This is a relief that was found that depicts when Jonah came to Nineveh.

Jonah ran from God… but why?

Why does anyone run from God?

Because we don’t know Him?

We don’t know the reality of His loving and gracious nature…

We haven’t come to realize that what He has FOR us… is far better than what we can manufacture on our own.

Fear

Which is connected to not knowing Him in some ways…

Fear of punishment. Fear of change. Fear of what it might mean. Fear of letting go of things. Fear of what people will say.

Because we do know Him

That's actually what it was for Jonah…As we read on… we realize that part of the reason Jonah ran from God was that He didn't want to live in a world where people who lived like and sinned like the Ninevites might find the grace of God. He literally thought they deserved Hell… and he was going to do his part to send them there and for a time… it made him out to be an enemy of God.

Are you running?

Another way to ask that question might be… what am I holding back from God? Like saying… God, you can have all of me and influence all of me… but… _________.

Running from Him… from His truth, His leadership, His Lordship…. Living our lives on mission…

Sometimes God sends storms… He did for Jonah, to get his attention and he may do that for you too… to get your attention, redirect you, develop you, or even to bring discipline…

And if we learn to see that the right way, we begin to realize its the most gracious and loving thing God could ever do… what happens to Jonah in this story… at points sounds harsh and hard… but in all reality, it is exactly what he needed.

And we have lost sight of that in our culture… that not every storm/not all hardship is bad.