JONAH - Running TO God

INTRO:

Sinking, sinking, sinking…no way out…all is dark…no idea what is going on…no end in sight… —— ever been there?

EXCERCISE (SOS IN A BOTTLE - fill it with 2-3 one word things that are about a dark or hard time that was out of your control that caused you distress, worry, or anxiety that you had to have God’s help to overcome)

It was complete darkness. Jonah had no idea it was only 3 day (we might say I could do it for 3 days…)

We don’t know what all is going on but we do know from chapter 2 that Jonah feels as far from God as you could possibly be.

Chapter 2 gets skipped over because it’s “just a prayer” and you skip to get to the story.

Good Bible Study Tip: DON’T SKIP A WORD. It’s ALL important and ALL relevant to our understanding in some way. Some skip the introduction to Pauls letters, and if you do that you fail to learn several things about the Church and God and Christians all in 1-2 sentences! Don’t skip and don’t skim.

The right attitude to approach reading the word: I KNOW NOTHING. Even if you’ve heard it or read it before. Read it as if it’s the FIRST time doing so, trying to answer every basic question you can as well as the big ones. That’s meditating on the word, that’s taking your time to dive deep.

Jonah 2 gets skipped except for verse 10 a lot. But this chapter is where we learn the most about relationship with God at once in Jonah. It’s packed with things we ought to know.

1:17

God didn’t just make a fish for this occasion, He appointed one to go get Jonah.

2 miracles/divine activities

Control of the fish

Surviving inside the fish

We don’t consider fish smart do we? Unless they stump us at the lake all day…

BUT, that dumb fish did perfectly what God told it to do. The man did not. OOF.

We were created with the ability to CHOOSE. It’s a privilege we abuse…

WE are the ones that get in our own way.

But we need to remember this: God never commands or ask something that isn’t for our own good. God will never ask of you anything that’s not good for you. God is the only one that can do that! Even a parent that loves you deeply makes mistakes…but God doesn’t.

V.1-2

V.1 –

He finally broke down and went before God. It took being in the belly of the fish to pray to God.

He didn’t pray when the storm came. He didn’t pray when he was sinking either… it was when he got as low as he could go.

Sometimes we only pray when we’re in trouble....

What does it take for you to go to God? What point do you have to hit in life before you hit your knees in prayer?

I’d hope that it would only take you wanting to talk to God. But does it take disappointment and hardship before you do?

We wouldn’t walk next to our earthly father all day and not talk to him. So we can’t walk with God all day and not talk to Him...

When you get rid of the FORMALITY of prayer, you can talk to your God about things that are of lesser significance.

Spiritual health does depend on how well you communicate with God, not just on the big and serious things, but communicating to God who you claim to know is with you all day about the little things throughout the day.

Jonah’s Prayer – “I was as far away from God as I could be, I was as far away from where God wants me as I could be; I have no hope, I was a dead man...”

He was helpless, but prayer broke through all the walls, it broke out of the water…prayer to God breaks through anything you think might stop it. We have a tremendous privilege to pray and communicate directly with God.

He cried out from SHEOL, the place of the dead. KJV translates this word Hell, but its not hell the place of punishment. He says I was dead as dead gets. I was at the literal end of my rope….

But here’s the thing, you may get to the end of your rope, but you’re never at the end of Hope…God hears our cries for distress. It’s never too late, it doesn’t matter how far from God you feel. It’s never too late to throw up a prayer to God. We realize at the end of our rope that our rope wasn’t doing us as much good as we thought. So God throws us a better one.

Realize we don’t have to wait until that point! Don’t wait to get so low that you have nothing else to do before you even consider praying! But know that you can always pray, and God always hears.

When you’ve upset someone before, you probably thought “They really don’t want to hear from me…I better give it a while…” and sometimes a while turns into never again…. And people are like that, where they don’t want to hear from us. BUT God isn’t that way!

Jonah might be tempted with the lie “I disobeyed so bad that God doesn’t want to hear from me, God won’t listen to me”. But get this, Jonah is in fact VERY guilty and God still hears him.

We think for some reason that “I need to get a few things in my life cleaned up before I go to Church or before I talk to God” — but honestly that’s a little silly! Thats like saying “I’m bleeding really bad and need to go to the ER…but first I need to get this bleeding to stop”. Doesn’t make since does it, that’s what the ER is for! And get this, you can’t clean your own life up before coming to God!

God takes you as you are and cleans you - so long as you’re willing and faithful that is. But God starts with you and where you’re at, and together you go from there.

DON’T listen to the lies that say to stay away from God…RUN TO GOD!

Him praying didn’t change his location right away. But through prayer the location of Jonah’s heart did change. That’s what matters. ANY situation in this world is temporary, the place my heart and soul are is what affects my eternity.

V.3

The sailors cast him over, but God had him sink further….

Love and mercy from God has spared his life in the sea. When somethign bad happens do we first question our relationship with God? Thats a terrible mistake. I shouldn’t question if God loves me or hates me. INSTEAD I should question what does God want me to learn from this situation. God is teaching Jonah! He’s going to learn a lot, and be reminded of a lot about God Himself.

James 1:2–4 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

We want to be mature! So we can’t go through life expecting nothing but easy breezy. Jonah is going to School, there is something he needed to learn.

Jonah considers himself a prisoner. Ephesians 3:1 “For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—”

As a prisoner, we do exactly what our keeper wants us to do.

2 Timothy 1:7–8 “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,”

Go ahead and step out of yourself he says! In God we find the ability to get out of fear and think and do according to what God says is right and the best.

V.4

You see the despair? I’m away from God, I can’t see God, God can’t see me….

What drove Jonah away? His own sin and his own pride. He was a hardcore patriot, he was a nationalist, he was someone who only cared about the Hebrews and absolutely DESPISED everyone else.

You’ve got to love the Church and souls more than you do nationalities and races.

He said he was driven away, he now realizes he didn’t just run and flee, but more than that his own hard heart drove him away.

Sometimes we say “God left me,” but we really exiled ourselves—like someone walking out into the rain empty handed and blaming the umbrella for not working.

YET — He is saying I ran away but now I want to go back…

I want to go back where worship of God is. Where the presence of God is. Where the truth of God is taught. Where the promises and people of God are!

Look is the Hebrew word nabat, which often is used in a way for spiritual reflection. Jonah is saying “though I’m physically away, I’m aligning my spirit back where the goodness of God is”.

V.5

“I was wrapped up and stuck”

Maybe he was wrapped up in the seaweed a bit, but that wasn’t exactly what Jonah was saying. In his prayer he is confessing to God what bad ways and things he’s been wrapped up in and stuck, he’s been stuck in his ways that are not God’s ways.

Psalm 69:1–3 “Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.”

What is the mire in your life, what is the clay that you’re sinking in, what is the seaweed that is wrapping you and suffocating you? What are you sending in that SOS bottle?….

God answers us and delivers us even from impossible circumstances!

V.6

Jonah’s Prayer – “I was as far away from God as I could be, I was as far away from where God wants me as I could be; I have no hope, I was a dead man...BUT GOD INTERVENED!”

(EXCERCISE — look at all these in the bottle that we’ve all dealt with...how’d you overcome? Write on the anchor advice and a bible verse that would help someone!)

God Often Answers Our Cries — BUT not always the way we want!

To Jonah’s prayer of salvation and willing service, God didn’t “beam” him out of the fish onto the doorstep of Nineveh.

Instead Jonah had to ride the fish taxi and be vomited on the beach.

Jonah doesn’t even know what’s going on or how many days he’d be in the fish! BUT Don’t disregard partially answered prayer. God can fully answer or not grant prayers, but sometimes he does it “partially”. He does it in the better way, or He works in the one best way not just the way we suggested to Him.

God LOVES to hear from you. IF you understand that, you will pray prayers of praise and thanksgiving REGARDLESS if they’re heard or not.

V.7

He was trying to forget God and the mission, but my circumstance and my state away from God is so bad it made me want to go back!

When those who are believers wander away from God, and they don’t listen to those that love them trying to bring them back, it is more than right or pray that they hit bottom so hard it knocks some spiritual sense into them and they are pushed to return to God.

That’s what happened to the prodigal son!

V.8

Vain idols = human inventions.

Hebrews 13:5–6 “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?””

Be content with what you have because you have me!

It’s not wrong to try to have more, there’s nothing wrong with having these other things in life, but DON’T let it become an idol you trust! You must remain content with what you got KNOWING that having more won’t fill some kind of void. Because if you don’t learn contentment without it, you won’t have contentment with it.

Jonah realized he had an idol…it was himself. An idol is anything you put above God or next to God. And Jonah realizes “I’ve got to get rid of this idol or else I can’t be in relationship with a faithful God.”

Do you think we put ourselves up above God? We as people do this often without realizing it. “I know God wants me to volunteer for this but….I know God wants me to be a giver but…I know God wants me to give my time, but…I know God says that’s a sin but…I know God wants me to give my life to Him and be baptized in order to become a Christian, but….” - and in those excuses we’ve made ourselves more important than God.

I’ve seen it a lot where people who do feel the need to be more actionable in faith and serve, but they kept saying, “I’ll get to it when things settle down.” And after year or years later, life doesn’t settle, and God had uses someone else. The lesson? Delayed obedience is disobedience. God’s will is going to be done. Wisdom says “GOD USE ME NOW!”

“Forsake their hope of steadfast love” —— Jonah now understands God’s mercy a LITTLE bit better. Not fully yet, but he’s learning. Before He despised God’s mercy because of God offering it to Nineveh. But Jonah is learning how much he actually needs it himself.

When people cling to idols that are man made inventions, they are walking away from the very thing they most need—the faithful, saving love of the one true God. Jonah is saying “When I ran, I wasn’t just being rebellious; I was cutting myself off from the covenant love I needed most.”

Acts 13:46 “And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.”

You and I will make the decision whether we’re worthy of eternal life. We don’t like the word worthy but it’s one God used. There is something to be done to be saved, and without obeying the Gospel we are judging ourselves unworthy even though God has given you the shot and the opportunity!

Jonah was what we might say a “selfish Christian”. Keeping the good news and benefits to himself and unwilling to share it.

V.9

It was a hard lesson but he learned it, and he thanks God for teaching Him it!

You ever thank God for the lessons he taught you the hard way? I’m thankful He was willing to still teach me. I’ve got a God who won’t give up on me, who will keep being patient with me.

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Jonah’s perspective before, and it will still be this way through the book as he learns, is “God, smoke em! They deserve it! Why do you wait!” Because God isn’t desiring to condemn without first giving you the chance to repent.

I ought to be so thankful for that! And it affects how I view the world around me. “God, why do you allow this to keep happening? When will you put a stop to it?” To which God says in the right time, in MY time.

It’s not wrong to pray for the judgment and justice of God. But I’ve got to first be willing to pray for them to receive the same mercy and grace I have too.

Jonah is conceding these things in prayer. Though Jonah is still reluctant about the people, he is saying I’m ready to go to Nineveh because you told me to go to Nineveh!

The Hard times are good for us if we learn what we need to from them.

“The same sun that melts butter hardens clay.” That means its not the sun, its not the circumstance - it’s what I decide I’m made of.

V.10

The Fish is still obeying God…wouldn’t call it a dumb fish since it obeys God.

Luke 19:39–40 “And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

Jonah ran from God, he’s run to God, and now that he’s back on the land Jonah will run with God to Nineveh.

If we use our circumstances properly, each one of them will teach us to run to God.

Jonah is correcting himself by running from idols and himself, and running to God instead.

God hears us. God can deliver us from “impossible circumstances”. God answers every prayer, sometimes not in the way we want though.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

If we skipped this chapter what would we have never learned?

Why do we often believe the lie that we need to “get our life together” before we approach God? What does that reveal about our view of grace and mercy?

Jonah felt “banished” from God’s sight (v.4), yet God was right there. How do our feelings sometimes distort spiritual reality?

What does “SPIRITUAL CLARITY” look like in the darkest storm or under the deepest waves of life?

(ANSWER: I know how it feels and seems, but this is what I KNOW is actually true)