Jonah: You Want Me To Do What?
Notes
Transcript
Big Idea: Don’t run from God, run to God.
Big Idea: Don’t run from God, run to God.
Intro
Intro
Ever had a moment when you knew what you where supposed to do, but you did something else?
Example with sleep — I stay up too late even though I know I shouldn’t.
Word
Word
Jonah chapter 1, if you’re there say word.
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:
Jonah is a prophet — prophets do what God tells them and they proclaim the truth of God to people, even if they don’t know it.
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
Nineveh: (Assyrain City)
Extreme cruelty towards captives
Sacrificing their children to pagan deities
Nailing defeated enemies to city walls
Dismemberment
Decapitation
Burning prisoners alive
These are people that according to the OT law are terrible people and need to be eliminated… not preached to.
Hold on God — this is dangerous. I think Jonah was overtaken by fear.
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
Tarshish - Ninevah = 2,000 miles
Jonah overtaken by fear and doubt ran 2k miles away from his calling.
Now lets not get too judgmental here. Jonah is just doing what we do…isn’t it true that we all
Run from God
Jonah was called and he was fearful for his life. He also didn’t want Ninevah to be saved, he was fine with them perishing.
The Assyrians are a super power at the time. They had been the aggressors in that region for sometime and no doubt they would threaten Israel soon.
Haven’t you experienced something like this before?
The Lord has been telling you to leave that relationship, but you are still hanging around?
The Lord has told you to stop playing family and get married and actually build a family.
The Lord has called you to serve in the church multiple times and each time you flee.
The Lord has told you stand up and act like a man and be there for your wife and to be present with your kids. But you flee to your hobby.
We’re just like Jonah, when the Lord call us to something that is hard or challenging we don’t always rise to it, instead we flee from it. And we’ll go to great lengths to do it.
And there is something else in this verse I want you to notice.
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
When you run from God it always costs you something.
Never fails running from God always costs you something. For Jonah it’s going to cost him everything.
For some of you running from your God ordained calling has cost you your family hasn’t it?
Your refusal to forgive has destroyed any hope of reconciliation with a person you deeply love.
You refuse to live generously and that’s caused others to ignore you in your time of need.
Running from God is never scott free it always comes with a price. Even if it’s just time lost. If I would hvae leaned into God’s calling earlier in my life.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
We see here that sometimes the Lord will send challenges in our life to get our attention. Noone loves that theology but it’s in the Word.
5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
They are scared and each begins to pray to their own gods, they look at Jonah and they’re like “dude, come on pray to your god too!”
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
They are looking for him to have a solution b/c he said that his God was the one who created everything. And they knew he was the one who made that God mad.
Again, remember, running from God always costs you something.
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
Jonah has realized that his decision to reject and disobey the Lord is affecting those around him. Not sure if you know this, this still happens today.
You decisions never affect just you, they always goes one layer beyond you, most often to those you care for the most.
Let’s be honest, some of us in this room need to get Jonah out of our boat. We’re sitting here and realizing that we didn’t cause this storm it’s ahppening b/c of who we’ve allowed in our boat.
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before.
14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.”
15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.
16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
They feel terrible and from what we can tell they came to believe in the Lord b/c of this storm and now Jonah has been thrown to his death — a death that he chose. He rejected the Lord and his response was to be thrown overboard, not to repent.
At first I found it very curious but then I thought about it… how many times have you avoided repenting of sin? How many times have you chosen to do something else besides repent?
Work harder.
Hide behind your image - we pretend everything’s fine — smile on Sunday, storm on the inside.
Justify. It’s not that bad. At least I’m not as abad at…
Blame others.
Give up — that’s what Jonah did.
Application
Application
Here’s the deal, all of this could have been avoided if Jonah simply ran to God not from him.
His response when the Lord called him to do something hard, scary or something he just didn’t like was to resist it. It was to run from God. And let tell you if you’ve been following Jesus for any length of time you will be asked to do something that falls into one of those 3 categories. It’s part of following. He’s going to call you to something you son’t want to do. And at that moment you have a choice.
Run from God or Run to God.
Run from God
resist the call
flee from the area he’s called you
make excuses
blame others
shift responsibility
justify it
Or when he calls you to something hard you can…
Run to God
Word — People — Prayer
Pray for strength to accomplish it
Pray for boldness
Talk with other Jesus followers
Read the Word — what does the Bible say about this?
Here’s some really good news, you can always run back to God.
Invitation.
