Spiritual Apathy

Some of us are perpetually in the state of disengagement, right? It’s like 80% of your life, and you’re like, “Where did the last 3 months go?” I don’t know, whatever, keep on going. And that’s how some of us feel about our lives. That’s how many of us are in our spiritual lives as well. And so maybe you’ve been a Christian for a while. And maybe at one point you had kind of a sense of alertness, a wakefulness to your life and your connection with Jesus, and you know you felt like the scripture spoke to you or prayer was a meaningful practice for you. But at some point that just kind of fizzled, whatever, and you’re just kind of cruising, and totally say I’m a Christian who loves God, whatever. It’s fizzled. And you’re like, “Why did that happen? I don’t know why that happened.” There’s lots of reasons for it. Sometimes it’s seasons of life. You know, Eugene Peterson has this great line where he talks about the journey of following Jesus is like a long, obedient, in the same direction, a couple of book clubs around here reading that book this summer. It’s exactly what it’s like. And so not all of life is thrilling, and exciting, and yes of course, we get that. But there is something real that’s been lost when I don’t sense any kind of vitality in my connection with Jesus. And maybe some of you have never had that experience before. And so we might get there through seasons of life. We might also end up in that place because of decisions that we’ve made. They may be small decisions, maybe they’re bad, unwise decisions, maybe they’re bad moral decisions. We know they’re compromises, but how we justify these kinds of things, and then we find ourselves three months later down this road of decisions, and we’re like, “How did I get here? What happened in the last three months? And how am I doing this? How’d this happen?” And it’s not rocket science. There’s a slow process of decisions that landed you at a place of spiritual apathy, of being asleep at the wheel, and all of a sudden, things you never thought you would be, you’re thinking, you’re doing all of a sudden is part of your life now. How’d I get here? You’re asleep at the wheel. This is an experience we all have, and Jonah Chapter 1 really is like a portrait of spiritual apathy. It’s a portrait exploring why, and how, and what’s happening to us when we’re asleep at the wheels spiritually and a tragedy that that really is. It’s not uplifting necessarily, but it’s good for us here to hear. It’s like eating your vegetables. Asleep is the big image in Jonah Chapter 1.

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai..”

Two things to remember when you see LORD in all capital letters in the Old Testament, that’s the English Translators reminding you that in Hebrew, what’s there is not just the generic word, God, but the divine name, personal name, Yahweh, covenant God of Israel, this is going to be important as the story goes on. So, “The word of Yahweh that came to Jonah son of Amittai,” Jonah means dove son of Faithfulness. You’re supposed to laugh because he’s not an innocent dove, and he’s the least faithful character in this entire story. “The word of Yahweh came to Dove son of Faithfulness: Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” So God is surveying His world, He sees these horrible acts of oppression and injustice, and violence arising out of the capital city, Assyrian empire, and we’ll explore more of that in a couple of weeks here when he actually goes to Nineveh in chapter 3. God wants to send His messenger to confront, and name the injustice that’s happening, and what does God’s messenger do? What does the innocent dove do? He runs away from Yahweh, headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, he found a ship bound for that port after paying the fare, he went aboard, and he sailed through Tarshish to flee from Yahweh. As he flees to Tarshish, so he’s supposed to go east of Nineveh, instead he goes as far west as humanly possible in the ancient world, right? So Tarshish was on the edge of the known world there before you get to the Atlantic. So you’re supposed to chuckle. He’s going as far as you could possibly go from Nineveh at that time. First step he has to go to is to go south, Israel’s in the northern, little country there of Israel, he has to go south to Joppa, that’s a little detailed, that’s important, you’ll see in a second here. So he goes south to Joppa, hops on a boat to flee.

“So then Yahweh, He sent a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.”

The word threatened or some of you have, “the ship was about to break up,” in Hebrew, the ship is animated, it’s like a character in the story. So literally, and the shipped pondered, breaking up into pieces. It’s like the ship is actually thinking, “Should I stay together, should I stay apart? I don’t know, the storm’s pretty intense.” That’s the idea you’re supposed to chuckle. Our English translation’s kind of covered up a little but that the ship actually has a brain in this line. So the ship was pondering, breaking into pieces. And all the sailors, they were afraid, and each cried out to his own God. They even threw the cargo into the sea so they could lighten the ship. So Yahweh pursues His man with severe mercy. So you might think, “Oh, here’s the Old Testament God throwing lightning bolts at people,” or whatever, and so, no. Remember the bigger picture. God wants to send Jonah to speak to the Ninevites so that he can bring them to repentance so they can find forgiveness in life. It’s God’s mission to reach people and rescue them. That’s pursuing Jonah. This is a severe love. This is like the love of a parent chasing after their child who’s going to bring their own ruin if someone doesn’t intervene. That’s the image here. This is not the volatile, that’s a different God, it’s not the God of the Bible, the volatile, and perpetually ticked off God who’s just waiting to squash you. It’s a different God, it’s not the God of the Scriptures. And so this is the God of a fierce love who pursues His disobedient prophet and so, the sailors… Look at what the sailors are doing. I mean, are the sailors asleep? No. They’re wide awake, right? So they’re yelling, you can imagine they’re throwing their own livelihood over the side. They’re throwing their cargo, that’s a loss commission now, they’ve lost all their money because this is what they were carrying. And notice they’re awake and alert to what’s happening here. What are they doing? They’re afraid. They’re throwing cargo, but what else are they doing? They’re praying, aren’t they? To whom are they praying? All kinds of different Gods. Each to his own God. So first of all, they are alert enough to recognize, this isn’t a normal storm, and there are divine powers at work here. Now in their worldview, which is polytheistic world view, they believed in the existence of hundreds, thousands of Gods over all the different realms of life. So they do the shotgun approach to prayer, which is what you do when you’re a polytheist. You shout out many prayers to as many gods as you can. “You take that one,” “You take that one,” “Okay, Jimmy that one,” “Johnny, that one.” And hopefully we’ll hit the right one, right? Because we don’t know which one is angry with us. And that is the perpetual state you live in, in a polytheistic world view is you could offend any of the gods at any moment you don’t know. They might throw a lightning bolt at you, that’s very much of a polytheist world view. And so they’re like, whoa, okay, let’s just call in all of the gods and just see what happens then. But what was Jonah doing? So with all of this frenetic activity calling, praying, cargo overboard, oh afraid, yelling and so on. And in contrast, the prophet, man of God, what’s he doing? He’s asleep. Jonah had gone below deck where he laid down and fell into a deep sleep. And there’s a word play that’s kind of a little red thread through this first part of the chapter here that’s all about this language of Jonah going down, down, where did he go to get the Joppa? What did it say? He went down, he went south here. Actually you can just trace the language here in verse 3.

“He went down to Joppa,”

and then, some our translations have,

“..He went aboard the ship,”

literally in Hebrew says,

“..he went down to Joppa, he went down into the ship.”

Verse 5, “..he went below the deck into the depths of the ship, and there he went down, laid down in the deep.”

So here’s this image here for the prophet, man of God. The pagan sailors, they were very alert to—there’s a divine mysterious power at work. And where’s the religious man of God? He’s slowly descending into a state of literal and spiritual slumber. And this is a very powerful portrait that the author develops here with this repetition of down, down, down. He’s depicting Jonah’s—he’s depicting Jonah’s sin here as something that has led him to this kind of numb, dead-end, unaware state, asleep at the wheel.

Jonah’s sin is that God has given him a call to go participate in God’s story of His grace reaching more and more kinds of people, confronting humans in their oppression, and injustice, and wickedness and offering mercy and grace. And Jonah ran from that. And why did he run? Remember, he’s not afraid, he hates Ninevites, that’s why. And he knows that somehow Yahweh is going to find a way to bring them to repentance so that they will be forgiven and Jonah thinks that world is in a much better place with the Ninevites who area not forgiven and who gets annihilated or something. So Jonah thinks he knows better than God, and he acts accordingly. So that’s his failure, his sin. What his choice does is all of a sudden, it begins to make him descend into this stupor. It’s like his sin becomes like a sleep drug. It makes him last, it’s growing separation between him and God, and all of sudden, he’s in this scenario where there’s like havoc, and threats of danger, and death or whatever, and he’s just blissfully unaware of what’s going on in his own life.

But there’s much more going on, this is an image of his sin and what’s happening to him on the inside spiritually. And so, who suffers as result of Jonah’s spiritual apathy? How’s Jonah doing? He’s great. He’s sleeping like a baby; you know what I mean. Who’s suffering as a result of his bad decisions? Everyone around him, the sailors are. This is very insightful, I think. In other words, his sin is selfishness. He knows better than God and everyone else, and he acts accordingly. This has led him into a state where he is just totally unaware of the people around him even though he’s bringing ruin on them. Jonah has become this relational wrecking ball in the people’s lives all around him, and he’s so unaware and dulled by his apathy. He’s totally unselfaware that this is taking place. This is such a profound image, I think of the nature of sin and its consequences in our lives. This is only one story, one passage among many in the scriptures that highlight this. And we hear this as westerns, and we’re like, it’s kind of weird. And it’s because our view of morality is very individual-centered. And so we are raised in this culture that essentially says, “Your moral decisions and your moral compass is kind of, choose your own adventure but as long as you don’t hurt anybody and everybody’s consenting, then whatever. It’s morally permissible, “Let your conscience be your guide.” It’s kind of the way our culture operates here. And so what happens in Las Vegas, it stays there. What do you mean? It’s your private decision. It doesn’t involve anybody else. No one else can say that’s wrong for you. Because it’s what you want to do, nobody’s hurt, and so on. And so we have this very privatized, individualized, moral world view where if it’s right for, it’s right you, and so on.

And what the scriptures do, and you don’t even have to be religious to agree with this. What the scriptures do, and Jonah wanted, just exposes that. It’s just utterly naive and simplistic. The Bible’s account of human decisions and our moral decisions, and how they affect other people is very profound and sophisticated. And so you have to respond to our western culture and you have to say, you’re telling me that every moral decision that I make very moral decision Jonah is making in this story is the little brick, one little brick and a huge wall, and that wall is forming who you are as a person and your character. And you’re telling me that a thousand little moral decisions isn’t eventually going to form you into the kind of person who, if you’re making a thousand bad moral decisions, small moral compromises, eventually you will reach a thousand first decision that will spill over the banks of your own life and ruin somebody else’s. Are you with me? Like I said, it’s utterly naive to think that my own moral decisions just affect me. That’s so ridiculous. Our lives are so much more interconnected than that. And you can just see this. I think that the humor and irony of when sex scandals break the news of course in the Government, we have heard of the tales with the current president and one before him. And American culture is so silly about this because we’re bathed in sexual imagery and media more than any culture on the face of the planet. But we’re also really prudish at the same time because when our leaders have these affairs or sex scandals, we’re like, “Oh, I cant believe they would behave that way,” and they get totally lampooned in the public media, and so on. Are you actually surprised that someone makes these kinds of choices? Are we really surprised? Are you kidding me? How is everyone not making these decisions based on how we all grow up, you know what I’m saying. And so what Jonah wanted, and is trying to tell us, is that, Jonah’s decisions are not just his own decisions. And how does a person get to become a wrecking ball in the lives of other people is a thousand small compromises. And what was at first just a private decision between Jonah and his God, all of a sudden wreaks havoc in all of the lives of people, and he’s so checked out. He’s so self-absorbed, he’s not even aware that he’s a force of ruin in other people’s stories. Now, it’s the tragedy of falling asleep in the wheel spiritually and morally, it only gets only more intense in verse 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.”

So who has to go wake him up. The captain of this ship. This is a great moment in the story. So the captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up. Call on your God. I mean, maybe your God will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” Maybe Jonah’s God will notice them. Did you get it? Does Jonah’s God notice them? Very much so. In fact, the whole reason they’re in this mess is because Jonah’s God already notices them, right? And this ironic in so many ways because he’s a prophet. He has received and spoken the very word of Yahweh before, and yet he has to be reminded to do something as simple as pray. By whom? By this pagan, polytheistic sailor who doesn’t know Yahweh from anybody else. He’s like, “Well call in your God. We didn’t check on yours, and so let’s try your God.” And so as the sailors kind of rebuked to the prophet, man of God. Let’s keep going, verse 7, so then prayer’s not working, lightening the cargos, not working, this guy’s sleeping, and that didn’t work. So they said to each other, let’s cast lots to find out who’s responsible for this calamity. So casting it’s like ancient dice rolling, and in many cultures, and still today even in Ancient Israelite culture, it was a way of discerning the will of the gods, we prayed, threw the cargo overboard, what do we do? Just roll the dice. Right? Maybe there’s an unknown God and he’ll reveal his ways to us, and ironically it works, doesn’t it? Because they cast the lots and who wins the lottery? Wouldn’t you know it? Wouldn’t you know it? It fell on Jonah. You won the lottery or lost it, depending on your point of view. So they asked him, well they said, “Okay. Tell us. Tell us. Who is responsible for making all these trouble for us? I mean what kind of work do you do?” Which always struck me as funny, them asking about work he does. What does that have to do with anything. What do you do for a living? They’re so worked up here. Again, It’s this contrast you could almost picture him as like yawning, like sleepy, like “What? Sorry, what’s that? What?” They’re so alert and aware on what’s happening. “Who’s responsible for this? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? Where’s your country? From what people are you?” And he gives a dry, one-line answer. He says, “I’m a Hebrew,” so he gives his ethnic identity, okay, then answers one of their questions. And he says next, “I’m a Hebrew, and I worship Yahweh. You know, the God of heaven, He’s the one who made the sea and the dry land. I worship Yahweh the God of heaven. He’s the God who has power over the sea and who I’m running from on a boat.” Come on, come on! It’s a good one. It’s a good one, isn’t it? That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. So, there’s a few other things. Some of your English translations don’t have, “I worship Yahweh.” What do they read? “I fear Yahweh.” And so this is a Hebrew turn of phrase, familiar from the Book of Proverbs or wisdom literature. The fear of Yahweh. So it’s about this deep, reverence and awe, but also like a really healthy fear of someone that you’re accountable to. Not because you think you’re a jerk, but because you really, really respect them.