Running From God

Jonah 1:1-16. Now the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me." 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.

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise.

Call out to your God. Perhaps your God will give a thought to us that we may not perish." And they said to one another, "Come. Let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us." So they cast lots, and the lots fell on Jonah.

Then they said to him, "Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation, and where do you come from? What is your country, and of what people are you?" And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, "What is this that you have done?"

For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grows more and more tempestuous." He said to them, "Pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you.

For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you." Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore, they called out to the Lord, "Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for You, O Lord, have done as it pleased You." So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

This is the word of the Lord. Thank you. So I'm committing myself in some ways to do a series on the book of Jonah with you, because I was beginning that with Wishart Church, and I thought I could do that here, and then you know that I've gotta come at least another three times. So that's a bit of a guarantee as we get into the book. Now, just a bit of an introduction to where we are and what's happening here.

Now, if you know the Bible at all, you recognise there's a variety of styles of writing in the Bible. You've got narrative, there's poetry, there's wisdom literature, there's gospels, there's letters or epistles that are written to the churches, there's some apocalyptic writings, and it's what we find here in the book of Jonah: prophecy. Now, there are some sixteen books of prophecy in the Old Testament, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, the last book that we have in our Old Testament. Four of those books of prophets are called major prophets, and the rest of them are called minor prophets. Now, the major ones are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and the minor ones include Jonah that we've got here.

Now, the reason they're called minor prophets, it's not because they lack any significance. It's not because they're any less inspired. It's not because they're any less important. It's not an expression of the value of the book. It's simply an expression of the size of the book.

For example, if you compare the length of Ezekiel, that's forty-eight chapters, and the book of Jonah is forty-eight verses. So there's a comparison in size. That's why you can understand why Jonah is called a minor prophet: just forty-eight verses. But we call it a book of prophecy, but it's really only one prophecy because it's actually a book about God and Jonah. And it's the story of how God deals with Jonah.

And is there any better story in the Bible than the story of Jonah, really? To young children, it's this amazing story about a man and a big fish. To an unbeliever, it seems like nothing more than just a ridiculous story of some impossible event. But to a believer, as you read it, it's an account of a gracious, sovereign God dealing with a stubborn prophet, a God who is gracious and compassionate to Jonah.

A God who is gracious and compassionate to the very people who were the enemies of God at that time, and a God who is gracious and compassionate with you and with me. And so, as we come today, I don't know everyone's story. I don't know the story of you here. I don't know where you come from in life.

I don't know what sin struggles you might have or you had in the past. Maybe, you know, some form of addiction, or lying, adultery, divorce, crime—all those things. Maybe harbouring anger and bitterness. Maybe you consider yourself a good Christian all your life. But we all know that there are times in our life when our hearts are hardened towards God, when we're resistant to the things of God. And so, while I don't know your faith journey here, whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey, there is something that all of us can learn as we work our way through the book of Jonah.

And one of the things we're gonna pick up today is that you can't run from a sovereign God, and you can't outrun God's grace. So we're gonna pick that up as we learn these things from this chapter. So the first thing we pick up is that we can be just like Jonah. The account begins this way: the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai.

"Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." Now we've got some different versions. "Arise, go to Nineveh." It says there in the ESV. That's how the Hebrew literally reads.

The meaning is: Jonah, get up and go to Nineveh now. Go. And it's amazing then, isn't it, how one sentence can change your whole life? You know, just think about it. You're driving around somewhere at some time, and you get a phone call.

A phone call that changes your life forever in that moment. If it's good news, it changes your life in one way. If it's bad news, it changes in a different direction. Either way, our life can be turned upside down just with one simple phone call. Here, it's three simple words. Well, four, actually.

"Rise, go to Nineveh." But this is a word that's given to Jonah. So we have to say, well, who is Jonah? From two Kings 14, verse 25, we know that he's a prophet from Gath-Hepher. It's a town near Nazareth.

It's an area that later became known as Galilee. It makes Jonah one of the few prophets that come from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. After Solomon dies, the kingdom divides north and south. The Southern Kingdom is called Judah. The Northern Kingdom continues to be called Israel.

So Jonah is one of the few prophets from that Northern Kingdom of Israel, and he prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam the Second. You can pick that up in two Kings 14, about verse 25. So that's Jonah. What about Nineveh? Nineveh is a city located in Northern Iraq.

It's on the Tigris River, across from the modern-day city of Mosul. It was the capital city of the great Assyrian Empire, and Assyria was a constant threat to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, eventually destroying it. They not only overthrew the Northern Kingdom of Israel, they conquered much of Judah during the days of Hezekiah when he was king in Judah. This Assyrian empire was considered one of the most vicious empires in world history. When their armies captured a city, unspeakable atrocities would occur.

Things like skinning people alive, decapitation, mutilation. They would cut out the tongues of leaders of the city. They would make pyramids of human heads. The ancient records from Assyria boast of this kind of cruelty as a badge of honour, a sign of courage and of power. Assyria is this empire then that oppresses Israel and Judah regularly.

That was a dominant world power at the time, and the point is no one liked Assyria. Now, Jonah is told to go to Nineveh, the capital city of this cruel empire, and to warn them about God's coming wrath. Why? God, why are You sending me to the very people who are the enemies of us? Jonah is probably thinking, and we would too.

Why would God do this? The shorter answer is that He's a compassionate, gracious, loving God. And you see that will come out explicitly as you move into chapter four. But note that what Jonah's told to do, he's told to preach against it, to bring a word of God against it, to call out against them for their evil. So he's going there to preach against Nineveh.

So he's not going there with a saying, you know, "God loves you, and God has a wonderful plan for your life." He doesn't go to this city and say, "Look, God's got your interest at heart. It's your best life now." He's going to them with the bad news, the bad news from an almighty God, that God is bringing judgment against them.

So God says, "Go to them," and Jonah says, "No. Thank you." To understand Jonah's situation, Montgomery Boyce, in his commentary, he asks us to imagine the word of the Lord coming to a Jew who lived in New York during World War Two, telling them to go to Berlin to preach against Nazi Germany. Say, "Well, no. Thank you."

And we can imagine then some of the reasons that Jonah wants to evade this clear directive from God. Fear of the difficulties of having to go to this city and to bring that word. Fear of this unusual mission that God has given him to a pagan nation. Most of the time, the prophets just went to their own people. This is a pagan nation.

Concern about the severity of the message of judgment that he has to bring. But we find out later that the real reason is God's abounding love. Chapter four suggests that the reason Jonah disobeys God is that he's afraid that God intends to be gracious to these people, to this heathen nation of Nineveh. What God's asking him to do is dangerous, and Jonah has the right to feel afraid. But the deeper issue is that Jonah doesn't want the people of Nineveh to be saved.

He hates the Ninevites. He hates even more the idea that God cared for them. He didn't care for them, so why should God? Why should God care about them? They aren't worth saving.

So he doesn't want to bring a message from God to them. So if God's telling him to go, Jonah's real problem really is with God. God says, "Go," and Jonah says, "No," and he decides to run from the Lord. And having decided to rebel against God, Jonah moves quickly to run from God. Instead of going to Nineveh, he goes down to the port city of Joppa.

He boards a ship that's going to Tarshish in order to flee from the Lord. Flee from the Lord. Tarshish was the furthest known Western point at that time. So Jonah's hoping to put distance between himself and God. Once aboard, even if Jonah began to question what he was doing and where he was going, it's too late because the ship had sailed.

It's interesting that sin and disobedience will always take us further than we imagined we would go and probably faster than we ever intended. Here's the core problem: Jonah is being disobedient to God. Disobedient to God, sinning against God. We read the account of Jonah and his disobedience, and we wonder, "How could he do that?

How could he just get up and go? How come he doesn't care about the people of Nineveh? How could he disobey God? How could he run from God? How could he quit his job as a prophet and in rebellion run from God?"

But we can be just like Jonah in our disobedience. Our rebellion leads us to run from God. Jonah's called to go where he doesn't want to go and to do what he doesn't want to do. That's a tendency of our hearts from time to time as well. It's a human tendency.

We don't like what God says. We don't like what God calls us to do. We don't like how God calls us to live. We can run in the other direction. Like Jonah, we don't like what God has to do.

We refuse. We quit. We run from God. It's sad that when the word of God comes to us, we choose stubbornly, like Jonah, to reject it and to move in the other direction. Think about it.

You know? Whenever I sin, whenever I disobey God, I'm running from God. Whenever I say no to God and yes to sin, I'm running from God. Whenever I don't take God's word seriously, I'm running from God. Whenever I give in to fleeting temptations or desires, I'm running from God.

Whenever I fall into the path of the old self that we read in Colossians 3, I'm running from God. Whenever I choose not to read my Bible or pray for another day or week or month, I'm moving away from God. Whenever God's word challenges me on what I need to do or how to live, my rebellious response can be to go in the other direction and act just like Jonah. Jonah shows us that once we are resolved to sin against God, any of us can act in the most surprising ways. Jonah, in his rebellion against the Lord, looks like he acts quite irrationally.

He heads down to the Gentile city of Joppa. He keeps company with pagan sailors. He hands over what surely would have been a substantial amount of money so he could join this crew. He commits himself to that expenditure and to a voyage that would probably take over a year. He accepts the danger of sea travel. And the same thing can happen to us when we tread that path of sin and moving away from God.

It can be costly. It can lead us into unwholesome company. It entails risks and dangers that we ought not to desire. It can sometimes make us act like fools in the way we respond to people and things, and we think we can hide from God. But here's the good news in the story.

As Jonah quickly understands, you can't run from God. David understood that too, as he writes Psalm 139. He writes there in Psalm 139:7-10: "Where can I go from Your spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, You are there. If I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, it's what Jonah is trying to do—on the far side of the sea—even there, Your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast." David's expressing a truth that Jonah finds out, that we all know: it's impossible to get away from God.

It's played out in this account of Jonah. In verse 4, God sends this violent storm. The sailors are terrified. These are seasoned sailors, there's a storm that terrifies them, and I reckon I would be too. My dad was in the navy, in the Dutch navy, and he used to share stories of storms in the Atlantic Ocean when they're on their boats.

And he said the waves were so big that the ships would go through the waves rather than over them, like a submarine through the waves. And he said, "We're all hardened sailors, and we were terrified." You think these sailors are hardened on the Mediterranean, and the storms that come—this storm terrifies them. So they're so terrified, they begin to throw the cargo overboard. This is their livelihood, their income.

They're throwing it away, throwing out their profit, because they just want to survive. If they can dump this cargo and it gives them an increased chance of surviving, that's what they're gonna do. The money's useless if you're dead, so they figure, "Let's just get rid of that if we can survive this storm." And we need to know that God sends the storm. It didn't come about by chance.

God commands the storm. He's in charge of His creation. He's sovereign over His creation. He controls the wind and the waves. John Frame writes this about the sovereignty of God.

He writes, "The sovereignty of God is the same as the lordship of God. For God is sovereign over all creation. The major components of God's lordship are His control, authority, and covenantal presence." And he goes on to write, "God's sovereign control means that everything happens according to His plan and intention. Authority means that all His commands ought to be obeyed.

Presence means that we encounter God's control and authority in all our experiences so that we cannot escape from His justice or from His love." Jonah, under the sovereignty of God, can't escape God's justice or His love. But what's Jonah doing? What's Jonah doing while the sailors are throwing this precious cargo overboard? He's having a nap below.

He's in a deep sleep. He's asleep. Why note that? Why not just say he's down below, he's having a rest, or he's asleep? But it's a deep sleep. Why note that? What is the point? Perhaps he's exhausted from running from God, but what I think it tells us is that his conscience isn't pricked by his decision. He's at peace with his decision to disobey God and to run from God.

He's not tossing and turning with anxiety. He's not fearful of God. He's not hiding his disobedience. He's told the sailors that he's running from God. So he's in a deep sleep.

But you can't run from God forever. Sometimes you have to face your past. You have to face your sin. You have to face God. And Jonah's woken up by this anxious captain who calls out to Jonah to pray to his God.

The frightened sailors, we read, they cast lots. They find out which god is angry with them, and even God's in control of the casting of the lots, and Jonah is singled out. And it brings this admission from him in verse 9: "I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." He's making a true declaration.

He rightly declares that he worships the Lord, but at this point in his life, does he? If he truly did, why is he running from God? That doesn't look like worship. Disobedience is not worship. So what Jonah has in his head about God is not in his heart at that time.

So you see that his head and his heart don't match up. They're saying different things. What he says and how he acts are two different things. And there are times when we can be like that too. The things that we know, the things that we declare about God with our mind are not what's in our heart.

And our head and our heart and our life need to match. They need to be aligned. What we say about God has to match our heart and our emotions and our actions and our day-to-day lives. It's not what's happening with Jonah at this point in time. And the sailors, then, they hear who Jonah worships, and they're rightly terrified.

"What have we done? What have you done? What should we do?" And at this point, Jonah surrenders to God. He knows that the just judgment of God is what he deserves, and it's coming to him.

So he acknowledges that he's been running from God. He acknowledges that the judgment of God is on him. But it's really interesting to note that he doesn't actually repent of it. He just acknowledges it. He knows the truth that the wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23.

And so he doesn't want the sailors to suffer on account of his disobedience, and he tells them, "Throw me into the sea, and it will calm down." Jonah doesn't know that there's a big fish coming that will save him. He thinks under the judgment of God he's as good as dead, and he accepts that reality. But we know that this point in Jonah's life is not the end of the story. Even now, before we get to the big fish, something amazing is happening.

First, the sailors, they don't want to be responsible for killing a man, so they try and row back to shore, but we read that the storm gets worse. And they plead with God not to blame them, not to hold them accountable for the death of Jonah. They toss him into the sea. And suddenly the sea becomes calm. We read that the sailors greatly fear God.

They make sacrifices. They make vows. They repent. They come to know the God of Jonah—an incredible change in their life. And we see the same response in when Jesus calms the storm in Mark's gospel.

In Mark chapter 4, the disciples are in the boat with Jesus when the storm is calmed, and the terrified disciples ask one another, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him." The sailors are going, "Who is this? Who is this God of Jonah? The wind and the waves obey him." And God's mercy is on display.

He sends a storm to stop Jonah running. He sends a storm. He calms a storm so the sailors acknowledge God. And we haven't even got to Nineveh yet. God's great mercy is not always what we think.

It comes to us in different ways, in different shapes, in different sizes. Maybe a storm, a big fish. It may be physical, it may be emotional, but things that God uses to bring us back to Him, things that He uses to stop us running and hiding from Him. In the New Testament, God's great mercy comes to us in the shape of a cross and an empty tomb, an outpouring of the Spirit on all who believe. Through that, we can stop running, and we're brought back to God. God's grace and mercy—great mercy—comes in ways we don't expect.

You do what it takes to stop us running from Him. In this account, a storm and later a big fish, but even later, His only Son. We know the first part of Romans 6:23 is the wages of sin is death, but we have the second part as well: "But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Or this fact: that God demonstrates His own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Or Romans 10:9, "If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."

God's great mercy to Jonah was a big fish, which we'll be talking about next time. God's great mercy to us is in Jesus Christ. He stops us running and hiding by sending His Son. But, you know, we all have a tendency to run from God, but we can't outrun Him and His grace. And His mercy comes to us in different ways, most clearly through the cross and the empty tomb. So the question for each of us is: have we stopped running from God?

Have we stopped running? Have we stopped hiding from God? If not, you need to turn and look to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. But perhaps you're here today, and you're not deliberately running from God, but all of us can easily drift from God. Not some big sin, not some continued disobedience, big disobedience against God, but small decisions.

Small decisions we make that cause us to drift from God, to become distant from God. Maybe that's you—just drifting along in life. Let's come back to Jesus. Come back to the blessing of His mighty word. Come back to the blessing of Christian fellowship, to regular attendance with God's people in worship, to the wonderful resource of prayer, to make use of the resources God has given us to guard our hearts and minds.

Because Jonah, as a prophet of God, was likely a man of outstanding character and outward godliness, but he failed to tend to the affairs of his heart at this time. And in bitterness and hatred and resentment towards the Ninevites, who don't deserve God's grace, and ultimately his bitterness towards God, he disobeys and he runs. And we can fall into that trap too. God hasn't done for us what we expect. God is doing things that we don't think He should in our lives or the lives of those around us. In bitterness and resentment of God,

we may move away from Him, disobey, run. It could happen. The lesson of Jonah serves to warn us, to bring us back to the grace of God, to see the heart of God towards lost sons and daughters, because God doesn't give up on Jonah. And there can be a little bit of Jonah in each of us. That's why we need God's outrageous love and grace each and every day.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we acknowledge that we're pretty ready and willing to criticise the behaviour of people like Jonah, people who try to circumnavigate Your word in order to escape carrying out the call on the way they're meant to live. Forgive us, Lord, for that. Forgive us also for the times when we've turned a deaf ear to You or a blind eye to Your word. Help us to hear Your word and obey it, to hear the prompting of Your Spirit through Your word so that we live out the way You call us to live.

We want to build our lives on a strong and solid foundation so we can withstand the challenges that come our way. Lord, if we're drifting, open up to us again through the work of Your Spirit the truths that we find in You and Your word, the grace that is ours through Christ. And we're glad that Your grace is greater than our sin. So thank You that even when we're faithless, You remain faithful. Thank You for the forgiveness that is ours through the cross.

Help us to believe more deeply in Your outrageous grace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.