The Jonah In Us
Notes
Transcript
A little boy was riding his tricycle furiously around the block, over and over again. Finally, a policeman stopped him and asked, "What are you doing?" "'I’m running away," the boy said. The policeman asked, "Then why do you keep going around the block?" The boy answered, "Because my mom told me I'm not allowed to cross the street."
We chuckle at this example, however, we find that we also find that obedience will keep us close to God even in our times of struggle.
Have you ever run away whether as a kid or maybe from God?
Have you ever felt like God was asking you to go somewhere or do something and you just did not want to for whatever reason? I’ve heard many stories over the years of people who had a ministry calling and regret later in life running from that calling for years.
Over the next four weeks, we’ll spend time talking about the book of Jonah.
So what is the book of Jonah about? First let me tell you, it’s not about fish, for the great fish is mentioned only four times. Jonah is named eighteen times, but the Lord God is mentioned thirty-seven times! The book is about God and how he deals with people who want their own way and therefore refuse to obey his will. Surely Jonah knew that he could not run away from God.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If we ever attempt to hide from God, the consequences will most likely be painful.
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
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.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
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.”
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?”
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.”
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.
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
Teacher: It is physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it is a very large mammal its throat is very small.
Little girl: Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
The irritated teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
Little girl: When I get to Heaven I will ask Jonah.
Teacher: What if Jonah went to hell?
Little girl: Then you ask him.
We often think about the story of Jonah around the fish. The fish takes the center stage. As we talked a few moments ago, the story of Jonah is really a story about God himself and how he interacts with us as humans, even when we are not who he wants us to be.
The narrative is one that shows God calling and commissioning a prophet and the prophet not being so willing to follow through that divine call. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. The empire was not known as the most friendly. The city itself covered 1,850 square acres, or nearly three square miles. Now that doesn’t sound like a very big city to us today, however, think about the fact that this area was all covered by foot. It would take a significant amount of time to cover that entire area.
The city was something to see, but also may have caused fear. The city was surrounded by a double wall around the perimeter and had canals and parks. However, as we know from the account in Jonah 1, Tarshish was literally the opposite direction from Nineveh. Tarshish would be almost 2000 miles west in modern day Spain Turkey and Ninevah would be near Mosul in northern Iraq.
There are four things this morning that I think will help us understand the similarities in Jonah’s story and our own, or at least help us identify that we have the ability to be a Jonah in our own lives. The first is:
God will often ask you to do things you don’t WANT to do. (1:2)
Let’s look back at verse 2:
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
God calls Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites as their wickedness has come to his attention. The message that Jonah was to preach is one of condemnation. Now I do not know about you, but those are difficult messages to preach as they are not welcome. People do not like to hear messages that call them out, even today. However, God still calls people to preach the Word and speak prophetically today. Believe it or not, these types of messages are not well received today either.
Some of you may have a version of the Bible that says, “Arise, go to Nineveh.” That’s what the Hebrew literally says. The meaning is, “Jonah, get up and go to Nineveh now.”
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how just one sentence can change your life. You can be driving down the highway and get one phone call that changes your life forever. If it’s good news, your life changes one way. If it’s bad news, it changes in another way. Either way, your life can be turned upside down with just one phone call.
Life can turn on a dime. That’s what happened to Jonah when God when God spoke three little words:
“Go to Nineveh."
Note what Jonah was to do. Go to Nineveh and “preach against it.” This is not “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” It’s not “your best life now.” This is Bad News from Almighty God.
Go to Nineveh and preach against it! Their evil was like a dirty stench to the Lord. The time for judgment had come.
When God said Nineveh was wicked, he wasn’t kidding. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the most powerful empire in the world in that day. The Assyrians had a reputation for cruelty that is hard for us to fathom. Their specialty was brutality of a gross and disgusting kind. When their armies captured a city or a country, unspeakable atrocities would occur. Things like skinning people alive, decapitation, mutilation, ripping out the tongues, making a pyramid of human heads, piercing the chin with a rope and forcing prisoners to live in kennels like dogs. Ancient records from Assyria boast of this kind of cruelty as a badge of courage and power.
The Assyrians had no use for the Jews, and the Jews hated the Assyrians. Hated them for their bloodthirsty cruelty. Hated them for their idolatry. Hated them for their arrogance. For a Jewish man to be told by God to go preach to Nineveh was repugnant. As far as Jonah was concerned, Nineveh could go straight to hell. “Go ahead, Lord. Push the button. Open the trapdoor. Let ‘em fall straight down into the pit.” That’s how Jonah felt about Nineveh.
So where would Nineveh be in your life today?
Nineveh is whatever pulls you out of your comfort zone.
Nineveh is the place God calls where you don’t want to go.
Nineveh is the people who have hurt you deeply and God says, “Go and give them my message.”
Nineveh is danger. Nineveh is discomfort. Nineveh is whatever you hate that God loves deeply.
What do you do when God says, “Go to Nineveh,” and you hate those people? You need to think about that because sooner or later, that’s what he’s going to say.
You can always find a boat sailing in the wrong direction. (1:3)
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.
Literally, we see Jonah go in the opposite direction of where God was calling him to go. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the sea was known as a life-threatening venture in those days. So for Jonah to run away by sea was quite a bold move. Second, it is interesting to look at the “went down to Joppa.” Joppa certainly geographically was “down” to the seacoast, but he was also going down spiritually. This word down is used four times in this chapter and it is not a coincidence. It’s a statement about what happens when we disobey God’s call. Any time you run from God, you never go “up” you always go “down.”
So why did Jonah run? Why was he reluctant to go to Nineveh?
He just didn’t want to go.
He didn’t care about them. He didn’t love them the way we are called to love.
He didn’t think God should care about them.
H didn’t want to see them repent.
He didn’t want a God who loved people like that.
So I have to ask the question, why do we sometimes run from what God is calling us to finding a boat going in the opposite direction? I could probably make the same statements that we just made about Jonah. We really don’t want a God who loves like that sometimes and we certainly do not want to love like Jesus sometimes!
When we want to run from the Lord Satan is quite happy to provide the transportation!
Whenever we decide to disobey, we can always find an excuse. It’s easy to justify wrong-doing by cloaking it in religious language.
God may send a storm to grab your attention. (1:4-14)
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
The sea was considered life-threatening, so it probably wasn’t surprising to run into a storm. Imagine hearing the planks of the boat crack, how would you have reacted? However, this must have been a particularly bad storm to see this kind of panic. We see the sailors calling out to their gods and throwing over cargo trying to lighten the ship and keep it from sinking.
During all of this, we see Jonah below deck in a deep sleep, not even knowing what is happening! The captain awakens Jonah and calls him to rise and call out to his god. We then see the sailors cast lots to try to figure out who was the cause of this great storm and surprise, surprise, guess where the lot fell. On Jonah. Let’s pick up in verse 8.
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.)
Jonah had not been shy about sharing that he was running away from what God had called him to do. However, there is no record of anyone trying to stop him or get him to go the other way. Jonah doesn’t answer their questions, but answers with who his people are and the God which he worships. As the storm continues to grow worse, the sailors get more and more panicked. They finally ask what should we do?!?! I can almost hear them screaming out to Jonah. Let’s look at his response in verse 12.
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.”
Wow. That’s quite a drastic response. I can see why the sailors would be hesitant as it appeared like they would be killing him. However, it appears that Jonah remains calm throughout all of this. Maybe he was resigned to the fact that he knew he was now going to follow God’s call. Maybe he was scared to death not knowing what would happen once they threw him overboard. We don’t really know.
Sometimes God has to do something drastic to get our attention. Maybe it is allowing a storm into our lives. Sometimes I refer to this phenomena as God needing to hit me over the head with a 2x4 in order to get through to me.
Jonah’s worst nightmare was exactly what he needed. (1:15-17)
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.
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
We see something positive come out of this. The men on the boat feared the Lord after the storm calmed. We do not know for sure, but maybe this would have been the only encounter in their lives causing them to fear the Lord. God can even use our circumstances for good, even when we don’t do what we are supposed to. However, we must remember that Satan can work through circumstances too.
Satan has his ships, and he always has room on his ships. His ships always go where we want to go when we’re running from God. He can make disobedience look good by means of favorable circumstances.
As he gets ready to take a nap, Jonah may have thought, “Things are going so well for me. This must be God’s will.” But if he thought that, he was wrong. The Lord had already made his will clear. No set of favorable circumstances can override what God has clearly said. Down deep he knew God’s will. He just didn’t want to do it.
As we see at the end of the chapter, Jonah submits himself to what God is calling and has to trust that God knows best when he tells the sailors to throw him overboard. This had to be exactly the opposite of what Jonah was hoping for, maybe even his worst nightmare!
This is how life really works. Sin looks good for awhile. Jonah experienced the “pleasures of sin for a season.” If sin always brought immediate misery, it would be a lot less attractive to us. Stolen water may be sweet, but it leads you to the gates of hell.
The bitterness comes later.
The sadness comes later.
Sin is fun for a while. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Jonah is about to find that out the hard way.
As we close this morning, we need to realize that we can easily be Jonah in our own lives. In his mind, he had a legitimate reason for not wanting to preach to the Ninevites. But what about us? Have you had times when you knowingly disobeyed God’s direction and faced consequences? What did God use to get your attention?
While it is beneficial to look back and acknowledge those times that we disobeyed God’s direction, what about today? Is there something that God is asking you to do that you haven't done? Are you running from God just like Jonah did because you really don’t want God to love the way he does?
If this is the case, I urge you to repent and ask for God’s forgiveness right here and now as we pray this morning. Do not allow yourself to leave this place or stop watching this service without doing so. There is no better time than now to give yourself back to God completely and tell him you are willing to do what he is calling you to do. God is calling the church to new and unique ways of building his Kingdom in the here and now and he wants to do that through us, but we must be completely surrendered to him.