Jonah 1
Notes
Transcript
Where are you running?
Where are you running?
Tonight we are going to begin our study on the book of Jonah. I am not sure exactly how long this will take us to go through but I will tell you it will be much shorter than the Matthew series I promise because the book is much shorter than Matthew. So the story of Jonah is one that many of us are likely familiar with or at least we think that we are. I would bet that very few of us really know the details of this story and understand the full context surrounding it and the lessons to be learned from it. Let’s start in Jonah chapter one verse one to begin.
Jonah 1:1–3 “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”
So this passage sets up some context for us first to let us know who the central players and locations are in this story. First we have Jonah and we know that he is the son of Amittai. This is to let us know his lineage and allowing us to know that Jonah is of Jewish descent so no surprise he is a member of the nation of Israel. Jonah is told by God to go to a place called Nineveh. Based on Jonahs immediate reaction to flee we can tell that Jonah does not want to go there and we are quick to judge him for his disobedience, but I want to really understand Jonah’s perspective here. Nineveh wasn’t like God calling Jonah to go on a mission to Texas. Nineveh was one of the major cities of the Assyrian empire. In the Old Testament the Assyrians were one of the major and habitual opponents of Israel and they were constantly at war until the Assyrians eventually win and capture them and take them out of their homeland. So already there is some bad blood because of constant wars but it is more than just that. The Assyrians were one of the cruelest and most vile empires to ever exist. Their values and actions stood in direct contradiction to God’s word with brutal methods of torture and execution and the sacrifice of infants to their false god. So not only were they political rivals to the Jews, they were evil. God just told Jonah to go into the center of evil and tell it to repent. That is a tough task and we can understand why Jonah decided to run. Many of us would have done the same thing had we been tasked with this. In fact we often do run from God and try to escape what He is commanding us to do. Every believer has a calling. Something that God wants us to do for Him so that His name will be glorified and we will get the joy of obedience. Are you obeying? That is what we need to think about through this study is are we obeying what God is commanding us to do? Are we running to God or away from Him?
We see also though not only did he ignore Gods command but he actively ran from it. Notice that God called Jonah to travel 550 miles to get to Nineveh and preach His word, Jonah opted to instead take a boat to Tarshish which was 2500 miles away. Nineveh was in modern day Iraq close to Israel and Tarshish was on the far western side of Spain. They did not even know that the Americas were here so as far as Jonah knew he was literally running to the ends of the earth to get away from God. You don’t have to turn there but we are going to look at a few verses that will let us know how this will work out for Jonah.
Psalm 139:7–12 “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” Even the night shall be light about me; Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”
At first this may seem overbearing and almost threatening. Like God is always right on your back so you better do right or else. In the first two verses here it seems almost like the author is saying how can I possibly get away from you God, but then we get the rest of the section and see that it is not a burden to have God with us everywhere we go, but it is a blessing. No matter where we are in life in the best of times and the worst God is right there with us always ready to provide guidance and direction when we are lost, light when we cannot see and hope when we are in despair He is always right there.
This is such a great promise for us to always have God’s guidance because of God’s perfect plan. When I say this I mean it is perfect in two ways. Number one it is perfectly good.
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
God is always there to guide us and what He is guiding us to is always good. It may not seem like it in the moment. I am not saying that if you follow the Lord you will never face hardships in fact you will face more hardships than your non christian friends but out of the two of you I promise if you are obedient to the Lord and follow His plan then at the end of the day you will be the one who rests easy knowing you have fulfilled your purpose and you are the one who will be given joy while your friend is left wondering how they can gain more pleasure and will forever be fighting a battle they cannot win.
God’s plan is also perfect in that it never fails.
Job 42:2 ““I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.”
This verse for some context is Job praying to God once he has realized who God is as the perfect and soveriegn king of all creation. So talking to God Job says that God can do everything. There is nothing that is too big of a challenge for God to accomplish. On top of that not only is He capable but God is inevitable meaning that He cannot be stopped. If God wills for something to be accomplished then there is nothing you me or any one or thing else can do to stop it. No power of earth heaven or hell can stand against the God that we serve. The God that is always right there extending His hand out to you to wait for you to take it and ask for His guidance and strength.
So let’s look back to Jonah and see how running from God worked out for him.
Jonah 1:4–5 “But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.”
So Jonah tries to run but he doesn’t get far before God sends a storm to stop him in his tracks. To save on some reading time I am going to just explain the next part of our story here to you. The storm is raging and the men are trying to figure out how they can get out of this all of them believing that some diety must be upset with one of them. Many people I think believe that Jonah was noble here and confessed that it was Him who God was mad at and that he was surrendering to God’s will here. That is not the case however. The men drew straws bassically and Jonah got the short straw meaning that all the men believed Jonah was the one who had angered a god. Then Jonah explains that he worships the one true God and that He was upset at Jonah for his disobedience. The men then ask what they can do to get God to calm the storm. Notice that Jonah could have been a rational and obedient human being here and say just take me back to port so I can do what God wants me to do but instead in the middle of a storm in the ocean he’s like yeah just toss me off right here. One he is too cowardly to jump out of the boat himself and two he would rather die in the ocean than obey God and go to Nineveh. At this point Jonah is quite possibly the worst prophet that God ever chose to use in the Old Testament. He is weak, disobedient, cowardly, and selfish.
So the men try to get out of the storm themselves but once they see that there is no use fighting it they pray and ask God not to hold the blood of Jonah against them and they toss Jonah out of the boat and the sea is calmed instantly and then we get this in verse fifteen.
Jonah 1:15–16 “So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows.”
Heres how we would have said that today, they became Christians. The men who witnessed this saw that the God of Israel was no joke and all became believers that day. As I said earlier God will not be stopped and either through your obedience or through your disobedience His name will be glorified it is just a matter of if you want to reap the benefits of serving the Lord or not. Through Jonah’s cowardice and disobedience the men on this boat came to know the Lord and through our disobedience God will use us as an example to help others see the right path. So do not think that in anyway you could hold God back even if you tried because His glory is inevitable. It is up to us though to choose today will I obey or will I run in fear? Will I stand firm or will I be a coward in the face of adversity.