1. Rebel on the Run

Intro

Today - begin series cover most of the summer. Looking at one of my favorite OT books. Story of Jonah has captivated Bible readers and is very well known, especially by children. It’s a story, that I believe, will challenge our notions of who God is and his missional heart towards people who don’t know him.

If you know anything about the story of Jonah, you might be wondering whether or not it really happened. If it can be true? A man swallowed by a giant fish who survives the ordeal? The details are fantastic and hard for us modern people to swallow (pun intended). But we see right away that the story itself is set in the context of true historical events. The main character of the story, Jonah, really lived and was a prophet of Israel - I’ll come back to that in a moment. It mentions real cities like Nineveh, Joppa and Tarshish that were well-known places. Jesus himself, in , acknowledges Jonah’s ordeal in the belly of the fish.

But whether or not it really happened, we are faced with an even bigger question: why is this in the Bible? And what are we modern people supposed to get out of it?

Book of Jonah in a section of the Bible known as the Minor Prophets. They are called “minor” because the books are short and their stories & characters don’t play prominent roles in grand story of the Bible. But they are still significant. They still contain God’s word to His people.

Jonah fairly odd prophet because most of the prophetic books contain the words of the prophet. They contain, in other words, God’s message to His people through that particular prophet. But Jonah is a book all about the prophet. When God does speak, his words are directed primarily to Jonah.

It isn’t until 2:9 that we see what the point of the whole book is about. Jonah is praying in the belly of the great fish and finally comes to the point of declaring: “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” This is a book about the missional heart of God and his desire to rescue people from their evil ways. Salvation is a work of God from start to finish and it belongs to him and not us.

Deep down, all of us can think of individual people or people groups that we don’t think deserve to be saved. We can think of people we’d rather not have to reach out to. People who have committed great acts of evil that we believe should reap what they have sown.

Jonah reminds us that salvation is not up to us. That we do not get to decide who is in and who is out when it comes to God’s rescue. In fact, none of us has a relationship with God or deserves a relationship with God unless God has desired it to be so.

Through Jonah, we learn two things about ourselves — his story is meant to be a mirror that we hold up to see our own hearts and lives more clearly — he shows us two things about the insidiousness of our sin: 1) because of our sin, we’ll do whatever we can to love God without loving those God loves; and 2) because of our sin, we’ll do whatever we can to benefit from a relationship with him without having to listen to him.

But God doesn’t desire a casual friendship with you. He wants nothing less than for you to experience his wonderful presence. That’s what Jonah is all about. These are the things we’ll explore over the next several weeks as we look at this story. Today, I simply want to introduce Jonah to you, to set the stage for the story by looking at 1) Why God’s call is hard; 2) What’s at the heart of God’s call; and 3) How God’s call was fulfilled.

1. Why God’s Call is Hard

If we’re going to understand the story, we first have to understand something about the background of who Jonah was and the world he lived in.

So who was Jonah? No one knows when the book of Jonah was written, but we first meet him in during the reign of Jeroboam II who was a very wicked king of Israel. He reigned roughly from about 790-750 B.C.

2 Kings 14:23–25 ESV

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.

So Jonah is this prophet in Israel who gets a word from the Lord that Israel should expand and solidify it’s Northern border. Jonah was a key person in the strengthening of Israel. He had just prophesied something and it came to pass - the ultimate test of a prophet’s success. The point is that when we read

Jonah 1:1 ESV

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,

we recognize Jonah is already an established prophet. He’s already familiar with the voice of the Lord. And he has a track record for responding to it appropriately.

the border with Assyria which Nineveh was a city within.

Jonah 1:2 ESV

“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

Now, this border of Israel that was restored under Jeroboam II, was the southern border with Assyria which Nineveh was a city within.

This is Jonah’s call… and it’s a very difficult call. Because Nineveh was a city of the great Assyrian empire. Which just so happens to be the nation just to the North of Israel - that shared the newly restored border that Jeroboam II had restored. And now he is calling Jonah to cross it.

But the Assyrians were Israel’s greatest threat. They were famous for their cruelty and had an unquenchable thirst for conquest. They were conquering the nations all around Israel. And were well-known for their moral evil. They would eventually conquer Israel in the 720’s - roughly 30 years after Jeroboam II. God wants Jonah to go to Israel’s greatest enemy. They had an altogether different religion, different customs, different language than Jonah.

This would be like you or me getting a call from God and going to Iraq and finding the leaders of Isis and saying, “hey God is taking notice of your evil. Judgment is coming.” At best, they would laugh at me and ridicule me. But more likely, I wouldn’t get out of there alive.

God says “arise, go up to Nineveh” and this is where we see the first of many surprises in the story. Jonah does arise and go. But instead of going “up to Nineveh”, he goes “down” to Joppa.

Jonah 1:3 ESV

But Jonah rose 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, away from the presence of the Lord.

Look at the map. Joppa was a coastal city - the major seaport of the region. He pays the fare and hops on a boat to Tarshish. The exact location of Tarshish is uncertain but most scholars think it was in southern Spain. The next dot on the map is America. He wants to get as far away from Nineveh as he possibly can. More importantly he wants to get as far from God’s presence as he can.

Instead of going up to Nineveh he goes down to Joppa. Though Jonah’s geographical orientation is west, the author makes clear that his spiritual orientation is downward, moving in the direction of chaos and death… the contrast underscores the conflict that is brewing between God and Jonah. We quickly realize this isn’t a story so much about God and Nineveh as God and Jonah.

Jonah is such a great picture of us, isn’t he? This was an incredibly difficult calling. Go to people who are completely unlike you. Your national enemies in fact. Go and preach God’s judgment against them. Would we respond any differently?

But don’t miss the most important fact of the story thus far. Jonah had never rejected the word of the Lord before. Why now? Jonah rejected God’s word because it meant loving and going to a people that he didn’t want to. He had no problem before. No problem when he was called to minister to people that were like him - people that shared his race, his language, his preferences.

What about us? Are we rebels on the run like Jonah?

2. What’s at the Heart of God’s Call

Is our call any different? Some of you are thinking that if you just had a word from the Lord like Jonah, then you’d respond, that if God would just speak to you clearly, you’d listen. But here’s what the author of Hebrews says: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets (like Jonah), but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”

Hebrews 1:1–2 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

He now speaks by his Son, and what did Jesus call us to?

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What’s at the heart of God’s call? Jonah shows us that if we want to love God, we have to love what God loves. And God loves the nations. Like Jonah, we think that we can love God and take advantage of our relationship with him without loving who he loves. Without listening to him.

Rachel’s birthday

You see, to not love something she loves, is to not love her. With my guy friends, it isn’t a big deal if I do anything for their birthday. I was treating her as if she was merely a casual friendship, rather than my wife.

God had decided to love Nineveh. After all it was a great city - full of people made in his image. And Jonah decided that it wasn’t worth his time - it wasn’t worth his sacrifice.

Someone once said, “whenever you want to run from God, there’s always a ship available to take you away.” There’s always an excuse for us to avoid the call to make disciples of all nations. Not enough time. Not enough money. Too many other needs to respond to. But it’s most likely that we are simply afraid. We are afraid to leave what is familiar and go to what is unfamiliar. Who is God calling you to love? Who is calling you to go to?

3. How God’s Call Was Fulfilled

Jesus didn’t run away from God’s call. God’s call is for us to go - to leave our comfort… to leave our security… to risk our lives for the sake of those who aren’t like us… for those who aren’t our tribe… who aren’t our people. For most of us here, that doesn’t mean we have to move across the world. There are plenty of people right here in Missoula who aren’t like you. People who don’t share your religious beliefs. People who don’t share your socio-economic status. Even people who don’t share your color.

That’s exactly what Jesus did. He spent his life going to the outcasts… the broken… the ugly… the smelly… the defeated… the unlovable. What about us? Is our ministry focused on those who support our comfort? Who shore up our borders? Or is our ministry focused on crossing boundaries and social norms to bring people in?

In , Jesus is on his way to heal the daughter of a very important and influential man. The journey is interrupted when a woman who had been suffering for 12 years touched him. Jesus felt power leave him, and he turns to find out who touched him.

The customs of the day put a label on her: unclean. Her physical suffering was compounded by social and emotional suffering. She was an outcast. She had spent most of her life having people avoid her and so she tried to go unnoticed. But Jesus noticed her. Jesus entered into her suffering he wasn’t afraid of her. He wasn’t afraid of what others thought. The girl he was going to heal died while he was messing around with this woman.

Jesus went to all kinds of people that we’d rather not notice. People who smell bad, people who could only receive from him. People with needs beyond what we can meet. Jesus is the Greater Jonah. Who perfectly loved those that God wants to love.

All of us come into this world like Jonah. We run from God. We reject his Word. We spend our lives avoiding the very people God wants to show compassion to. And yet when Jesus heard the call of God to arise and go - put on flesh, become one of us and seek us out - he arose and came. Even though it meant he would be ridiculed and killed. We were Jesus’ Nineveh. And though he knew the cost, he came for us. We love because he first loved us.

Paul Yonggi Cho is pastor of the largest church in the world. Several years ago, as his ministry was becoming international, he told God, "I will go anywhere to preach the gospel except Japan." He hated the Japanese with gut-deep loathing because of what Japanese troops had done to the Korean people and to members of his own family during WWII. The Japanese were his Ninevites.

Through a combination of a prolonged inner struggle, several direct challenges from others, and finally an urgent and starkly worded invitation, Cho felt called by God to preach in Japan. He went, but he went with bitterness. The first speaking engagement was to a pastor's conference— of 1,000 Japanese pastors. Cho stood up to speak, and what came out of his mouth was this: "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." And then he broke and wept. He was both brimming and desolate with hatred.

At first one, then two, then all 1,000 pastors stood up. One by one they walked up to Cho, knelt at his feet and asked forgiveness for what they and their people had done to him and his people. As this went on, God changed Yonggi Cho. The Lord put a single message in his heart and mouth: "I love you. I love you. I love you."

Sometimes God calls us to do what we least want to do in order to reveal our heart— - to reveal what's REALLY in our heart. The story of Jonah is a story that confronts our deepest beliefs about the power and compassion of God. Do we really believe the blood of God is powerful? Can it heal the hatred between Koreans and Japanese? Can it heal the racial tensions that exist in our country right now? Can it make a Jew love a Ninevite?

God’s call is going to be costly. It will require you and me to sacrifice. But when we go to those that God wants to love, we will be going towards his presence, rather than away from it. As one person put it, “the road to Nineveh is hard, but it’s worth it.”

But Jesus Christ went first. He’s the reason we go. He’s the power we cling to. It’s his presence we seek.