Dissing God; A Paradigm Shift

Jonah 1:1-3 - 1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

Jonah 3:1-2 - 3:1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

Jonah 3:10 - 4:1 - 10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. 4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.

Today’s message title is “Dissing God”.

Often times we’re giving something to do that we simply don’t want to do. Whether the assignment comes from a parent, a teacher, an employer, someone in a position of authority or even God.

There are a few very popular stories in the Bible that even those who don’t go to church know about and Jonah and the whale, although the Bible says it was a big fish, is one of those stories.

But if I may, I’d like to look at the assignment Jonah received and the issue he had in fulfilling the assignment.

There are times when we don’t believe the assignment is actually coming from the place the messenger says it’s coming from. For instance when your sibling comes in and says Momma said you need to clean up the kitchen. Now if it’s not your turn to clean up the kitchen you may have doubts that momma actually told your sibling to deliver that message. They could just be trying to trick you into doing their chore.

But in this case, it’s clear, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai,” this message was from God. It was a message to his prophet and servant Jonah.

And the message was, “Go at once to Nineveh that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”

While it was not in the text we can surmise this wasn’t the first time God had spoken to Jonah and given him an assignment; and we can conclude that, from Jonah’s response. There was no shock, no fear, and no doubt on Jonah’s part that it was indeed God speaking to him.

Now Jonah’s response was a bit incredulous; Jonah dissed God

He disobeyed God.

He disagreed with God.

He was displeased with God.

What was different about this assignment was it was the only case of a prophet being sent to a heathen nation. The Children of Israel had prophets and they weren’t listening and following God’s instructions and warnings.

God’s people need to repent. We’ve gone far too long ignoring God, disregarding his commandments, failing to acknowledge that He is God, that it is He that has made us and not we ourselves. We need to wake up to the fact that we are not our own, we were bought with a price and that price was the blood of Jesus.

It’s time to shift, it’s time to stop dissing God.

Jonah disobeyed God. In verse 3 our test says, “But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”

God told Jonah to go east and he went west. Jonah tried to run from God. He paid his money, got on a boat going the exact opposite way God told him to go. We don’t have enough money and there is no place we can go, to hide from God. God is omnipresent—he is everywhere at the same time and when you belong to him there is no place you can go that he won’t be able to get to you.

Too many of us are looking for ships to take us in the opposite direction of where God has told us to go. We don’t like or don’t want to carry out the assignment he’s given us and so we disobey him. The problem with disobedience, is there’s a cost.

If you disobey your parents, depending on your household and your age, you may get a time out, you may get grounded or you may get a whooping.

If you disobey your employer, you may lose your job.

If you disobey your teacher, you may fail your class.

If you disobey authority, you may go to jail.

If you disobey God, you may end up in hell.

There’s a cost to disobedience.

God said go east, Jonah went west and quickly discovered his disobedience wasn’t just affecting him, it was affecting every man on the boat. Understand that your sin is not just about you, your sin can cause a generational curse in your own family.

David’s sin resulted in his family and kingdom ending up in shambles, you can read about it in 2 Samuel. But here, in this passage, the lives of all the men who were on the boat with Jonah were in danger from the storm God had created, yes God created the storm. Not every storm in your life is from Satan.

The men bailed water, they rowed, they prayed to their gods, all while Jonah laid sleeping, until they finally woke him up and told him to pray to his God to save their lives. They casts lots and discovered Jonah was the cause of their troubles. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to cast lots and discover who the trouble maker was? God has given some of us a spirit of discernment, trust it, use it.

So to save their lives, they prayed and threw Jonah overboard like he told them to and the storm ceased. God had made provision for Jonah, even in the midst of being tossed overboard. God had prepared a timeout for Jonah in the form of a big fish to come and swallow him and keep him safe. That fish was also transport to where he should have been going in the first place.

Jonah prayed in the midst of his trouble, from the belly of the fish he prayed and God heard and answered his prayer. He didn’t forget him, he didn’t leave him alone, but he did give him some time to reflect on what he had done. You know like when your parents would tell you, you just sit in your room and think about what you did. When you’re in the depths of your storm don’t forget to pray, God can still hear and answer your prayer.

There are times we must face ourselves and recognize we are not always right, we will make mistakes; we won’t be perfect in everything we do, but with God all things are possible. And we must remember we are imperfect beings on a perfect mission when we go as God sends us.

Aren’t you so glad we serve the God of another chance? He doesn’t throw us away after we mess up one or two or even three times. He keeps blessing us, he keeps giving us assignments, he keeps giving us opportunities.

Going east when God said go west could’ve been the end, but it wasn’t

Being thrown off a ship into the sea could’ve been the end — but it wasn’t.

Be swallowed by a big fish, could’ve been the end — but it wasn’t.

God gave Jonah another chance to make things right. He gave him another opportunity to complete his assignment. How many chances has God given you to complete your assignment? Hmm huh, don’t judge too hastily, too harshly or too haughtily, we all miss the mark, we all fall short, we all fall down and it’s not a game of ring around the rosy.

The fish had delivered Jonah to the place he should’ve been going all along, the Scripture says it vomited him out on the dry land, then God gave him his assignment again.

In Jonah 3:1-2 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

Not only did Jonah disobey God; he disagreed with God. Jonah did not like the people of Nineveh and he disagreed with what God wanted him to do. He did not want to preach to those people. They weren’t Hebrews, they weren’t part of the children of Israel, they weren’t God’s chosen people. Why should they receive the benefits of his God?

What does that sound like today? There are those who don’t think everyone is entitled to all rights and privileges this nation gives to its citizens, solely based on the color of their skin; even going so far as to separate light skinned Blacks from darker skinned Blacks as if that somehow makes a difference. And so the answer to why should they receive the benefits of his God? For the same reason, Black Lives Matter,

we are all God’s children,

Jesus died for us all,

to save us all,

to give everlasting life to us all,

to give access to heaven to us all.

So even though he disagreed, Jonah went to Nineveh and proclaimed the word of God, he delivered the message to the heathen and something amazing happened. “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” The people believed Jonah, they proclaimed a fast and everyone from the smallest to the greatest to include the king put on sack cloth and sat in ashes. The king even declared the animals would be a part of the fast. Six hundred thousand people repented and God changed his mind.

Sin sets you on a path that leads you away from God, but repentance can alter your course and set you back on the road to redemption, the road to everlasting life, the road to an eternity with Christ.

So Jonah was disobedient to God, he disagreed with God and now he was displeased with God, he didn’t like what God had done. Jonah 4:1 says, “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.”

Now imagine God’s prophet having the nerve to get angry with God for saving His people. But that’s what Jonah did; he wasn’t just displeased, he was angry with God. So much so he went and sat down on a hill and told God, and this is my translation, “See God, I knew you was gonna do this, you so patient and you are just waiting for people to repent so you can save them. Shoot, just kill me now, I’d be better off dead than to see these vile people get your mercy.”

There are those who would fight to keep certain people at a disadvantage, to keep them down, to keep them, “in their place” because to rise above them would just be unthinkable. People we need to wake up and recognize that we are all God’s people, that we must protect those being unjustly persecuted. We as a nation have to shift our way of thinking; we must have a paradigm shift.

A paradigm is way of doing something, a prototype or a pattern. People get into the habit of doing something a certain way and that is their paradigm. They believe it is supposed to be done that way and to do it differently is a major shift for them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that what they’re doing is right, it simply means it’s the way they’ve always done it. For some people, because it’s the way they’ve always done it, it’s the way their parents did it, it’s the way their grandparents did it, so it must be right.

But then something happens that rocks the very foundation of what they believe and they must make a decision,

- Will I continue on the path I’ve been on, even though I know it’s leading to a bad place, or will I change my course?

- Will I continue to believe what I was taught, even though I now know it’s not true or will I follow my own mind?

- Will I continue to follow what I’ve learned, even if I now know it’s wrong or will I make a conscious decision to do what’s right.

To change the way you think about the way something is done is called a paradigm shift. Change is not always easy. Change is not always wanted. And change is not always welcomed. Change comes at a price and it will sometimes involve someone giving up an advantage or at least they think they are.

Change sometimes takes time,

it sometimes takes persistence,

it sometimes takes marching in the streets,

it sometimes takes amending the law or writing new ones,

it sometimes takes enforcing the law equally among the citizen’s of the land, despite their position, or title, or how much money they have, or who they know or what they look like.

Our country is in the midst of a paradigm shift. There are people from all different places and venues and races and classes speaking out on the injustices plaguing the Black people of our nation.

People of all races are tired of the images that are coming across their TVs and through social media, of Blacks being gun down, choked out and suffering at the hands of bad police officers, White vigilantes, White Supremacists and anyone else who would either take or severely alter the life of a Black man simply because he is a Black man.

The United States of America desperately needs to undergo a paradigm shift and go in a different direction? Like Jonah

they have gone east when they should’ve gone west,

they went north when they should’ve gone south.

They have placed a stereotype on a group of people based completely on their skin color

and we’re saying it is enough.

America needs to stop blaming the ills and woes of this country on Blacks, Mexicans and other immigrants like there are no White criminals. Because the truth of the matter is without immigrants the United States would not be the country it is today.

And so America is undergoing a paradigm shift, there are things we’re seeing taking place that we hadn’t seen before. The atrocities are not new, their just being recorded and shown to the world, still. Unfortunately the name Jacob Blake has now been added to the already long list of Blacks who were wrongly shot by the police. In this incident he was shot seven times, at close range, in the back, in front of his three children and is now paralyzed from the waist down.

America needs a paradigm shift. We cannot continue to be perceived as a threat and police officers cannot continue to get away with murder by uttering the words I was in fear for my life, when the only threat was that the individual was Black.

As we get more information and, as we discover that what we’ve always believed because it’s what we’ve been taught is sometimes a lie, we must make a shift.

God shifted what he was going to do to the Ninevites, America needs to shift how it treats Black people. Stop dissing God and the people of God and allow yourself to experience a paradigm shift when it comes to all God’s children.

Jonah had to experience some things himself to appreciate that God loves all his children and that if the Children of Israel were not going to repent when he pointed out their wrongdoings through the prophets, he would embarrass them by showing his loving kindness to a group they felt was beneath them.

When Jesus came, we all became God’s chosen people. Jesus came to seek and save them that were lost, not just the Children of Israel, his chosen people of the Old Testament, and it’s not just the Whites who immigrated from Europe who deserve more or better just because they’re White. If you make that quality decision to invite Jesus into your heart and make him ruler of your life, you are saved and you have eternal life. When you take your last breath here it’s merely a shift into eternity. Where will you spend yours.