Consequences for running away

Introduction

What are some popular consequences for children whenever they disobey their parents? Perhaps being grounded or having something taken away from them. Maybe nowadays not being able to play their video games or having to do some extra work around the house. We know that there are consequences for actions and this isn’t a new concept. Sometimes, though, we question if the consequences is appropriate for the action? In the book of Jonah we see God call Jonah to go and tell people to repent of their wickedness. On the surface this doesn’t seem like anything difficult to do, right? How hard would it be to go and tell some people to straighten up and stop acting foolish? Actually that’s not a very comfortable thing to do, is it? We think about our lives as Christians and we realize that we have this same call! We are supposed to proclaim the Gospel message with the lost and call them to repent. Sadly, many of us struggle with this as well. It can be hard for us to share the Gospel sometimes for a variety of reasons. Maybe we don’t feel comfortable enough or maybe we’re timid. Maybe we don’t know how to answer someone’s questions and as a result of all these factors, we simply fail to do what we are called to do. We fail to share the Gospel.

Jonah was called by God to go and call people towards repentance. This isn’t an “easy” thing by any means, as we’ve established. Now if you add in the fact of “where” he was supposed to go and share this message you see all the more reason for him to be a little concerned and eventually to disobey. As is the case today, though, whenever someone disobey’s there is a consequence. Our passage tonight introduces us to the prophet Jonah and how he disobeys a direct command by God and experiences some consequences as a result.

As we begin this new study, a couple quick things to keep in mind.

Contrary to what some might say, we believe that this is a true story as it is said to be in Scripture. Jesus refers to this story in Matthew 12:40 in reference Jonah being in the belly of the fish for 3 days to His death and resurrection.

Not only do we believe that this is a true story, we see this story and we are able to relate to it. While we haven’t been in the belly of a large fish, we have all rebelled against God’s Word and we have experienced His forgiveness and grace - as the people of Nineveh experience in this book.

You can’t out run God, regardless of how fast you are. He will find you!

Jonah 1:1–6 NASB95

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” 3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. 4 The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. 5 Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep. 6 So the captain approached him and said, “How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”

The Call of Jonah (1-2)

The opening few verses introduce us to 3 key things, who Jonah was, what God wanted him to do and what Jonah’s response was. Let’s examine the first two by looking at Jonah’s call in verses 1-2. The “word of the Lord” came to Jonah. Before we look at anything further, we have to examine what this means. We see references in the New Testament to the “word” being Jesus Christ. John talks about this in John 1

John 1:14 NASB95

14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Does this mean that the preincarnate Christ came to Jonah and told him this? Perhaps, but scholars note that God relayed his message to prophets through a variety of ways. He spoke through dreams, through a still small voice and sometimes through violent disasters like an earthquake. The point here is simply that Jonah received a message from God that we see clearly in verse 2. But first, who is Jonah? We see absolutely nothing about him in this opening section other than the fact that he is the son of Amittai. Is this all there is to know about this mysterious prophet? 2 Kings 14:25 gives us more information

2 Kings 14:25 NASB95

25 He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.

The king talked about in 2 Kings 14:25 is Jeroboam II, the king of Israel from 782-753 BC. Jonah was alive and active during the reign of this king meaning that the events in this book took place in the first half of the 8th century, BC. This also lets us see that Jonah was a contemporary of other prophets like Amos and Hosea. Now that we know a little bit about this person, what did God call him to do? Go to Nineveh.

Nineveh was well known for its wickedness and torture of others. Sargon II, the leader of the Assyrian army that conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, had a great grandson who tore off the lips and hands of his victims. Another king flayed victims alive. This was nothing new, this was their culture for literally thousands of years! Nineveh was a mighty city and it was well known for its violence and wickedness. Yet, God is aware of their wickedness.

Have you ever encountered someone who says that God doesn’t seem to care about what is going on in our world today? I know that I’ve met people who say things like this. They think that God is simply ignoring us and doesn’t care. We know that God cares for and loves us. We also know that God hates sin. Jonah knew about the power of God. He had experienced it. God called him to simply go and share that this rebellious nation must repent. This is a simple message, but we can definitely understand why Jonah might have been concerned, right?

We can feel concerned about sharing the Gospel message with others. We can feel as though not qualified or even that we are afraid of possibly being persecuted for our faith! These thoughts are fine, but friends we must not respond like Jonah did.

The response of Jonah (3)

Verse 3 tells us that Jonah did not deal with this call in a successful manner. In fact, you could make the case that Jonah did the exact opposite thing that God called him to do. Rather than going east towards Nineveh, he went west towards Tarshish. He disobeyed and went south to Joppa, a southern seaport in Israel. He was seeking to disobey God. Why would Jonah do such a thing? The answer given by the majority of scholars boils down to 1 thing: fear. Jonah refused to go to Nineveh initially because of fear. Have you ever refused to do something because you were afraid? We can all think of examples of this! I’m reminded of the very first time I went cliff jumping with my friends on Table Rock Lake. I was probably in 5th grade and we were out on the boat with some friends and we came to some cliffs and there were lots of people jumping to the lake below. My friends who were used to this were extremely excited to climb up to the tallest point that people were jumping from. Because there had been a little drought lately the water was down and this jump was close to 30 feet! Because this was my first time doing something like this, I was not a big fan of jumping to the lake nearly 30 feet below me! I was afraid. I climbed down to a shorter cliff and jumped from that point.

I was afraid of something bad happening from this top cliff. Either I would slip and land on the rocks or I would jump and land awkwardly on my head. The difference, that we see in Jonah 4:2, is that Jonah was not afraid for his own safety. He was afraid that the people of Nineveh would repent and not be punished.

Because Jonah did not want Nineveh to experience the chance of grace and forgiveness, he was willing to travel the opposite direction in order to “flee from the presence of the Lord.” How foolish could Jonah be? We know that we cannot flee the presence of the Lord because He see’s everything and He knows everything! Jonah, the prophet of God, disobeyed God’s Word. He hated this nation so much that he would do anything to keep the love and grace of God from them.

God cares about us, doesn’t he? If we are called to be Christlike, what should we care about? We should care about sharing the hope of the Gospel message with others! This means that we tell other people about the importance of repenting and following God. Ask yourself, who do I need to share the Gospel message with? Where do I need to go in order to do this?

The response of God (4)

As we know, the story does not stop with Jonah’s disobedience. God is in control and God knows what Jonah is doing. I love what Billy Smith says in his commentary on this passage, “The plans of a sovereign God are not so easily thwarted by the stubborn will of a puny prophet.” Sometimes we think that we can fool God, don’t we? Maybe we don’t say those exact words but it’s what we think in our minds. Sinful disobedience is a serious issue! Eric Redmond says this, “God is prepared to break up this ship, drown Jonah, and let all of these idol-worshiping sailors perish, all in response to Jonah’s rebellious actions.” God hates sin because God is holy. Whenever there is sin, we should expect there to be righteous punishment.

Because of Jonah’s sin, God sends forth a great wind and a storm. The Mediterranean Sea was notorious for having severe storms especially in the winter months. These sailors likely were merchants who were pagans but they would have been experienced at sailing in this part of the world. They likely would have had experienced storms in the past but this storm was unique in that it was the Lord who sent this great storm in order to bring about His divine plan of bringing Jonah to Nineveh.

As we talked about this morning, sometimes God moves in mysterious ways to bring about His plans! This is one of those moments and it would have been avoided had Jonah simply gone to Nineveh immediately whenever the Lord called him to do so. Why do you think that we often react like Jonah whenever God calls us to do something?

The hopelessness of the crew (5-6)

Whenever you’re not a Christian and you deny the existence of God, you’re going up a creek without a paddle. You have no hope and no sense of direction. These men, who are experienced sailors, are terrified/afraid, they start to throw the cargo, their livelihood, overboard and they begin to pray to their various gods. Do we know another story kind of similar to this one where something happens and there are people acting crazy and praying to a false god? In 1 Kings 18 we see the story of the prophet Elijah going toe to toe with the prophets of Ba’al. These prophets danced for hours and they cut themselves hoping to wake their god up so that he would show up. Do you hear that same desperation here in Jonah from these sailors? I certainly do. We see in the book of Acts in chapter 27 that Paul was shipwrecked en route to Rome and they began to throw their cargo overboard in order to lighten the ship. This was the smart thing to do in such a crazy situation. They did the right thing, they were praying to their gods, yet nothing was happening! Friends, this is how it is for people in our world today! They can do the right thing and they can pray to whatever god they believe in but if it’s not the God of the Bible then they are without hope and they are praying to a god of their own creation!

I love the advice that one preacher gave years ago, “Pray like everything depends on prayer and work like everything depends upon work.” Why do many people wait until a crisis to start praying? This is true of all of us to an extent, isn’t it? Whenever we hit rock bottom or we find ourselves in a serious situation then we will pray and ask God for help but other times we are not as likely to ask God for help. Why are we this way? We, as humans, are sinners and part of being a sinner means that we often think that we know best. This was certainly the case for Jonah.

Verse 5 tells us that Jonah was asleep. He was taking a nap while this storm was wrecking havoc above. Scholars are divided about when Jonah went down to take a nap. Some speculate that he had been sleeping before the storm hit due to exhaustion due to running away from God. Others, though, say that Jonah was aware of the storm initially and sought to run away further and retreat to sleep. While all of these fellow sailors were praying to their false gods, Jonah knew the Living God and could have been sharing this hope with others. He had a great opportunity to evangelize yet he chose to sleep.

I love sleep, but we must not spiritually go to sleep while people around us are at risk of dying without Christ as Lord. We must pray to be alert and aware of the spiritual condition of those around us and that we would faithfully share our faith and hope with them in seasons of uncertainty. As 1 Thessalonians 5:6 shares with us

1 Thessalonians 5:6 NASB95

6 so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.

Let us be alert and let us share this good news with others, especially those who do not have any hope.

Conclusion

The story of Jonah is a popular one for many churchgoers. We all know this story and the biggest takeaway for many people is the ongoing debate focusing on the animal that swallowed Jonah. Some say it was a whale. Others say it was a fish. The story of Jonah and his running away from God and eventual going to Nineveh to call them to repent is an extremely timely message for us today. While we likely will not ever be swallowed by a fish, we do know that there are consequences associated with running away from what God is calling us to do. Nothing will satisfy us like doing what God is calling us to do in our lives.

My father felt a call to ministry as a teenager but he suppressed this call for years because of a bad experience with a pastor in Oklahoma City. After he married my mom and moved to Springfield, he began searching for a career he was passionate about. He trained to be an EMT for a while but he refused to give mouth to mouth to a live female in the final stage of his training, because of this he did not pass this training. He then began working at a local ice cream store in Springfield. He became the manager quickly and the store was having their highest sales quarter in history! One day, out of the blue, the owner called him to his office and told him that they were closing all the Springfield stores and that he didn’t have a job anymore. He kept on trying to find something else to put his time and effort into rather than doing what God had called him to do 6-7 years before! After this, he finally submitted to God’s calling and went to SBU to get a degree in ministry. Whenever he submitted to God’s plan, positive things started happening. FBC Springfield had a position they offered him. A member of FBC Springfield paid for his first year’s tuition.

I say all of this to say this: Whenever we follow God’s will and plan for our lives, things go so smoothly. Whenever we fight God’s plan for our lives, nothing we do will work out the way we think that it should.

We see this throughout the book of Jonah - our takeaway tonight should simply be to share the Gospel message with others (to share our hope), to go where God calls us to go and to share what Jesus has done -

2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB95

21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Our message to others should be to repent, trust in Jesus and live for Him.