Dave Hentschel: Turn with me in your Bibles now to Jonah chapter one as we continue in this series running from Mercy.
Dave Hentschel: And as you're turning there in your own copy of the word, allow me to just start with this question.
Dave Hentschel: Has anybody in here like me ignored your GPS?
Dave Hentschel: You're in the car, you got your phone or your device, or maybe you still have one of those actual GPS devices, and you're thinking about obeying what that GPS is saying, but you're like, no, I know a I know a better way.
Dave Hentschel: Has anybody ever done this?
Dave Hentschel: I'm not the only one, right?
Dave Hentschel: So when you do that, if you have a device like me, what does your device say when you get off track?
Dave Hentschel: Redirecting, redirecting, recalculating, something like that, right?
Dave Hentschel: So uh recalculating, you're going, and then you continue to disobey.
Dave Hentschel: What what happens again?
Dave Hentschel: It repeats itself, right?
Dave Hentschel: Recalculating.
Dave Hentschel: It will continue to do this to the point where it kind of starts to feel a little bit annoying if you're like me.
Dave Hentschel: And as I'm thinking about this device and whether or not I want to listen to it, uh, I realize wait a minute, this this device, my phone, is not trying to punish me.
Dave Hentschel: Uh this device is not angry with me.
Dave Hentschel: Uh it's saying recalculating because it is trying to get me where I said I wanted to go.
Dave Hentschel: And I want to ask you a hard question related to that.
Dave Hentschel: Have you ever done that with God?
Dave Hentschel: Have you ever avoided what you knew God wanted you to do in your life?
Dave Hentschel: Have you ever known what God wanted and willingly, intentionally chose another route?
Dave Hentschel: I know I have.
Dave Hentschel: There was a time in my late teenage years that I did not want to go in God's direction at all.
Dave Hentschel: But I also know that really everything I love about my life right now is a result of me first resisting those plans that God had for my life, wanting to do my own plan instead, and God in his grace interrupting me, God in his grace disrupting me and completely redirecting me.
Dave Hentschel: And that recalculation, that redirection is something I thought at first.
Dave Hentschel: But it led me eventually to the marriage I now enjoy with my wife, to the children and family that we built together, the Bible college I went to, it led me to the seminary I went to, it led me to go into full-time ministry.
Dave Hentschel: And as I look back now about that resistance, and I think about that time, I think, wow, I had this idea of what my life was supposed to be.
Dave Hentschel: I had maybe this vision for my life, and I realized my vision was too small.
Dave Hentschel: God had a completely different vision for my life, but his mercy was greater than my resistance.
Dave Hentschel: And I am eternally grateful for that recalculation, that redirection.
Dave Hentschel: And now I get to be a part of what he's doing.
Dave Hentschel: And I'm thankful he kept driving.
Dave Hentschel: I say that because I know that this sermon today is true, not because I read it in the Bible.
Dave Hentschel: I know that today's sermon is true because I have lived this sermon in my own life.
Dave Hentschel: And so I wonder if anybody in here can relate to that, can relate to perhaps me and the story that I just told.
Dave Hentschel: Because Jonah chapter one is about that kind of story.
Dave Hentschel: It's about a guy who heard from God, and that same guy said, Nope, I got another route.
Dave Hentschel: That's what we're gonna talk about today.
Dave Hentschel: So, Jonah chapter one really is answering a question.
Dave Hentschel: And the question it's answering is, What happens when we run from God?
Dave Hentschel: What happens when we run from God?
Dave Hentschel: And I think really obviously what you're gonna see in this text is we learn three really important timeless principles.
Dave Hentschel: What happens when we run from God is that God disrupts our rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: What happens when we run from God is that God exposes what we're trying to hide.
Dave Hentschel: And what happens when we run from God is God calls us to surrender.
Dave Hentschel: So that's what we're gonna look at in our text today.
Dave Hentschel: If you have your Bible, uh, why don't we go ahead and read that text in full together, and then we will pray and look at the details.
Dave Hentschel: So if you're able, would you stand just in honor of God's word as we read this text in full, and then get the gist of it, and then we will come back and pick up the details together.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah chapter one, and I will be reading out of the ESV.
Dave Hentschel: Hear the word of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Emetai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.
Dave Hentschel: But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
Dave Hentschel: So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: 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.
Dave Hentschel: Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God.
Dave Hentschel: And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.
Dave Hentschel: But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship, and had lain down and was fast asleep.
Dave Hentschel: So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper?
Dave Hentschel: Arise, call out to your God.
Dave Hentschel: Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.
Dave Hentschel: And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.
Dave Hentschel: So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: 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?
Dave Hentschel: What is your country, and of what people are you?
Dave Hentschel: 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.
Dave Hentschel: Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, What is this that you have done?
Dave Hentschel: For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
Dave Hentschel: Then they said to him, What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?
Dave Hentschel: For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.
Dave Hentschel: 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.
Dave Hentschel: Nevertheless the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
Dave Hentschel: Therefore they called out to the Lord, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood.
Dave Hentschel: For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.
Dave Hentschel: So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea.
Dave Hentschel: And the sea ceased from its raging.
Dave Hentschel: Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
Dave Hentschel: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Dave Hentschel: The word of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: Father, thank you that you're a God who speaks, that you do not leave us to wander on our own, that you call us and lead us and invite us into your mission.
Dave Hentschel: As we open your word today, I would ask that you'd quiet distractions, soften our hearts, give us ears to hear what your spirit wants to say to your people.
Dave Hentschel: And Lord, if there's any place in our lives right now where we're resisting you, avoiding you, delaying obedience to you, or running in another direction altogether, would you please lovingly reveal that to us?
Dave Hentschel: Give us humility to receive your correction and give us courage to surrender and trust you again.
Dave Hentschel: Remind us all that your discipline is not your abandonment of us, but it is your mercy.
Dave Hentschel: You pursue your people because you love your people.
Dave Hentschel: So speak clearly through your word and magnify your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that he might change us through his spirit to walk in obedience with you.
Dave Hentschel: For we pray it all in his name.
Dave Hentschel: And everyone said, Amen.
Dave Hentschel: You may be seated.
Dave Hentschel: The structure of the book of Jonah really falls into two major scenes, which are completely parallel, scene one and scene two.
Dave Hentschel: Really, they are almost identical.
Dave Hentschel: Right now we're in scene one, and we will get to scene two at another week.
Dave Hentschel: But you see here that there are two stories that are meant to be read side by side with one another.
Dave Hentschel: We are right now in scene one.
Dave Hentschel: Two weeks ago, Pastor Bob did a great job kicking things off, and we were introduced for a moment to the main character of the book of Jonah, the person of Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: And we learn that Jonah received a word from God.
Dave Hentschel: Just to remind you of what verses one and three, one through three said, I'll put it up on the screen here.
Dave Hentschel: Notice verse one begins with that phrase: the word of the Lord came to Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: We have a God who speaks.
Dave Hentschel: We have a God who is not silent.
Dave Hentschel: We have a God who breaks the sound barrier.
Dave Hentschel: We have a God who spoke to Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: And brothers and sisters, we have a God who is still speaking today.
Dave Hentschel: Not necessarily through new direct revelation on the level of scripture, but we do have a God who still guides and who speaks by his spirit and who works personally in our lives through his word and through his people to direct us and to guide our hearts.
Dave Hentschel: And when he speaks, often it is about God wanting us to join him on his mission.
Dave Hentschel: Because really, God is the first missionary, and we are called to join him on that mission.
Dave Hentschel: So let me ask you a question.
Dave Hentschel: How many of you in here would like to hear from God in your life?
Dave Hentschel: Just a quick show of hands.
Dave Hentschel: Okay, that's probably most of us.
Dave Hentschel: You can put your hands down.
Dave Hentschel: I want to warn you a lot of times we want to hear from God, but when he speaks, he will often tell us something that we do not want to do.
Dave Hentschel: So be careful what you wish for.
Dave Hentschel: A lot of times we want to hear from God, and it feels to us like a major interruption.
Dave Hentschel: But that's the kind of life we have if we are following this God.
Dave Hentschel: It's like certain positions and certain careers out there that lend themselves to interruptions.
Dave Hentschel: Like if you're a physician or you're a doctor, let's say you're an OBGYN, your career is pretty much you signing up to get interrupted in your life.
Dave Hentschel: You don't know when that baby's gonna come, and so you're gonna get a call, you're on call, you have chosen a career, you have accepted a life that is gonna be a life of always being on call.
Dave Hentschel: In a little bit of a way like that, to be a Christian is to accept a life where you are always on call, where God has permission to interrupt you anytime, anywhere.
Dave Hentschel: Even if it feels like an interruption, this is God's privilege.
Dave Hentschel: So the word of the Lord came to Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: And in a similar way, at one point in your life or another, the word of the Lord may come to you.
Dave Hentschel: And when it comes, it might not be to do something that you want to do.
Dave Hentschel: Notice also in verse 2, just a review here, God says, Arise and go.
Dave Hentschel: In verse 3, it does say that Jonah arose, or he rose, it's the same Hebrew construction there, but he arises not to obey, he arises to flee.
Dave Hentschel: And so Jonah intentionally goes the opposite direction to Tarshish, as far away from Nineveh as he could possibly get.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah finds a ship, Jonah pays the fare, Jonah leaves, which leads to a very interesting point.
Dave Hentschel: Pastor Craig Groschel said it well.
Dave Hentschel: He said this if you want to run from God, the devil will always offer you a ride.
Dave Hentschel: If you want to run from God, you can always find some people sailing in the wrong direction.
Dave Hentschel: There will always be people who aren't following God.
Dave Hentschel: There will always be a boat waiting at the harbor for you.
Dave Hentschel: There will be people there going, hey, we were hoping you would come.
Dave Hentschel: You can tag right along with us.
Dave Hentschel: Watch out for that.
Dave Hentschel: Do not get in their boat.
Dave Hentschel: Now Jonah is disobeying God right here.
Dave Hentschel: And the reason why he's able to do that is he, like you and me, is rationalizing his sin.
Dave Hentschel: What does it mean to rationalize sin?
Dave Hentschel: When we rationalize sin, what that means is our mind is making an excuse for something our spirit knows is wrong.
Dave Hentschel: That's what rationalization really is.
Dave Hentschel: The reality is many of us do this.
Dave Hentschel: We rationalize our sin.
Dave Hentschel: We're prompted by God to serve somewhere or to be part of his effort or his mission, and we think, eh, I want to kind of get around that, or maybe I'll get to that some other time.
Dave Hentschel: And we delay obedience.
Dave Hentschel: Now there is another term for delayed obedience.
Dave Hentschel: Do you know what it is?
Dave Hentschel: It's disobedience.
Dave Hentschel: That's what that is.
Dave Hentschel: It is really just rationalizing my disobedience.
Dave Hentschel: Sometimes I say that because we make light of this and we don't think of it like it's so intentional.
Dave Hentschel: And sometimes even the way we talk about sin is almost like it happens on accident.
Dave Hentschel: Oh, that person fell into sin.
Dave Hentschel: Like they were walking down the road and there was a pothole and they accidentally fell into the pothole.
Dave Hentschel: But that's not really what sin is according to the scripture.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is much more intentional than that.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is like walking down the street and eyes wide open, jumping into the pothole, because I want to jump into the pothole.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is definitely intentional.
Dave Hentschel: And Jonah is definitely intentionally rejecting God right here.
Dave Hentschel: He is running from God.
Dave Hentschel: Now, do you think after he ran from God, his life got better or worse?
Dave Hentschel: Come on, talk to me, guys.
Dave Hentschel: So you're at the 11 o'clock service, you're awake.
Dave Hentschel: So better or worse?
Dave Hentschel: Okay, very good.
Dave Hentschel: When you run from God, do you think your life is gonna get better or worse?
Dave Hentschel: You're right, it's worse.
Dave Hentschel: Pastor Bob pointed this out, but I want to remind you again of a wordplay happening in the Hebrew.
Dave Hentschel: In chapter one, there's this word down.
Dave Hentschel: That word down gets repeated several times in the beginning of the book of Jonah on purpose.
Dave Hentschel: First, Jonah goes down to Joppa in verse 3, then he goes down into the inner part of the ship.
Dave Hentschel: We'll see that later on.
Dave Hentschel: And later on, when we get to chapter 2 next week, you're gonna see he goes all the way down to the bottom of the sea.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah, at the beginning of the book, is being called by God to go up, yet Jonah is running from God, and when he's running from God, his life is going down, down, down.
Dave Hentschel: That's what happens when you run from God.
Dave Hentschel: Your life goes down, down, down.
Dave Hentschel: Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Dave Hentschel: You've been there.
Dave Hentschel: You get called by God and you disobey thinking you can figure out a better plan than the omnipotent, omniscient, all-wise God of the universe.
Dave Hentschel: Thinking you can figure out a better plan than the omnipotent, omniscient, all wise God of the universe.
Dave Hentschel: I emphasize that because sin is at its heart so irrational.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is the height of foolishness.
Dave Hentschel: Someone once said it this way: all sin is temporary insanity.
Dave Hentschel: It doesn't make sense.
Dave Hentschel: This guy thinks he can get on a ship to flee from God.
Dave Hentschel: You can't do that.
Dave Hentschel: Sin doesn't really make mental cognitive sense.
Dave Hentschel: That's the foolishness of us in our rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is me thinking, I know better than God.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah wants to play hide and seek with the omnipresent God of the universe.
Dave Hentschel: But Psalm 139 says, Where can I flee from your presence?
Dave Hentschel: Answer.
Dave Hentschel: I can't.
Dave Hentschel: But yet, this is what Jonah is going to try to do.
Dave Hentschel: When I was a younger dad, my kids used to love to play hide and seek.
Dave Hentschel: And so I was the seeker, and when they were really young, it was super easy.
Dave Hentschel: They were terrible hiders.
Dave Hentschel: And so I had to kind of pretend just to make the game last a little longer.
Dave Hentschel: You count to 20 and 19, 20, ready or not, here I come.
Dave Hentschel: I come out, and like you're behind the curtain, your leg is sticking out from the dining room curtain.
Dave Hentschel: How can I even make this fun, right?
Dave Hentschel: So you kind of have to pretend you don't see them, and it's ridiculous.
Dave Hentschel: And like that, when I run and hide from God, this is yet how I appear to him.
Dave Hentschel: It's kind of ridiculous.
Dave Hentschel: I mean, Adam and Eve, they hid behind a bush.
Dave Hentschel: This is what we do as human beings.
Dave Hentschel: It doesn't make sense.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is insanity.
Dave Hentschel: So this is where Jonah is, hiding behind the dining room curtain with his leg sticking out.
Dave Hentschel: That's where we find him, which leads us to where we are today.
Dave Hentschel: So that was review.
Dave Hentschel: Point one when we run from God, God disrupts our rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: That's where we're going to pick it up this morning.
Dave Hentschel: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to get a little choppy.
Dave Hentschel: There's some spiritual turbulence up ahead.
Dave Hentschel: Verse 4.
Dave Hentschel: It says, But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea.
Dave Hentschel: Again, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.
Dave Hentschel: Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his God.
Dave Hentschel: And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.
Dave Hentschel: But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep.
Dave Hentschel: Notice a couple things in this passage on the screen.
Dave Hentschel: Notice here's these pagans who do not believe in Yahweh God.
Dave Hentschel: They are crying out to their own God, small g, because they are scared.
Dave Hentschel: And sometimes when we are scared, when we are frightened, we start to get a little spiritual.
Dave Hentschel: There's that saying there's no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.
Dave Hentschel: That's these guys right here.
Dave Hentschel: It's a big storm, they're scared, so they start all praying to their own individual God.
Dave Hentschel: Now they're in a crisis, but this crisis is not a crisis of their own making.
Dave Hentschel: This crisis is something they're finding themselves in because of someone else.
Dave Hentschel: Now I want to say this just briefly, but as an aside, sometimes you can face certain storms in your life, and it's not because of you, it's because you got the wrong person in your boat.
Dave Hentschel: Some of you ladies, you're in a relationship with Jonah right now, and you think that you're gonna be the one to conform this guy, but I'm telling you, you need to throw that boy off your boat.
Dave Hentschel: Some of us, we continue to invite people into our lives that pull us away from God, and we think it's compassion, but it's really compromise.
Dave Hentschel: Or some of you, you have Jonah on your social media feed, and you're interacting with Jonah all the time.
Dave Hentschel: You're around people or you're following people all day that are far from God and they're taking you down, down, down.
Dave Hentschel: See, 1 Corinthians 15 says, bad company corrupts good character.
Dave Hentschel: And your life is too short to waste it around company that you shouldn't be keeping that are taking you down.
Dave Hentschel: And the reason is because all sin is costly.
Dave Hentschel: I understand that God's grace is real, but this decision still costs Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: It cost him his money for the fare, it cost him his time, it's gonna about to cost him his safety, and it really is about to cost him his life as he's gonna get thrown off this ship in just a second.
Dave Hentschel: All sin is costly.
Dave Hentschel: Now, God forgives and God is merciful and God is gracious and God is loving, and all of that is true.
Dave Hentschel: Yes and amen.
Dave Hentschel: And also, sin is costly.
Dave Hentschel: It might cost you wasted time, wasted years that you can't get back, decisions you can't undo, things you wish you could go back, change, rearrange, do all over again, but you can't.
Dave Hentschel: Sin costs you.
Dave Hentschel: It could cost you your character, could cost you your reputation, could cost you your good name.
Dave Hentschel: There's that old expression, sin always takes you farther than you want to go, always keeps you longer than you want to stay, and always costs you more than you want to pay.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is costly.
Dave Hentschel: And then notice there's also a cost to others.
Dave Hentschel: I emphasize that because you never sin in a vacuum.
Dave Hentschel: We never sin in a vacuum.
Dave Hentschel: These sailors, these mariners, they were innocent.
Dave Hentschel: They hadn't done anything wrong.
Dave Hentschel: And they're stuck in this storm, not because of their own rebellion, they're stuck in this storm because of Jonah's rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: And it cost them.
Dave Hentschel: It cost them their cargo, they already chucked that off the side.
Dave Hentschel: It's costing them their ship that's getting broken apart.
Dave Hentschel: You see that right here?
Dave Hentschel: These sailors are suffering, not because of their own sin, but because of the rebellion of someone else in their boat.
Dave Hentschel: I mean, think about that.
Dave Hentschel: We never sin in a vacuum.
Dave Hentschel: Our sin costs ourselves and it costs others.
Dave Hentschel: How many little kids have paid the cost because of mommy's sin or daddy's sin?
Dave Hentschel: Sin always has a price, not just for you, for those around you.
Dave Hentschel: If we're rejecting God's mission, there's also the cost of others not hearing about God's grace because we're refusing to participate in his mission.
Dave Hentschel: Sin is always costly.
Dave Hentschel: Notice the other thing here.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah is running from God, he's disobeying, but where is he?
Dave Hentschel: He is asleep in the bottom of this ship.
Dave Hentschel: Now, in the bottom of a ship in the middle of a storm is not a place that's typically conducive toward having a good Sunday afternoon nap.
Dave Hentschel: And yet here he is.
Dave Hentschel: And that is really interesting because it tells us something about where this guy is spiritually, emotionally, physically.
Dave Hentschel: He has gotten really, really comfortable.
Dave Hentschel: That's a profoundly important point because you can get to the point where you're running from God and you're totally comfortable with that.
Dave Hentschel: You don't even realize how bad it's gotten.
Dave Hentschel: You've gotten totally complacent.
Dave Hentschel: You've become comfortable with compromise.
Dave Hentschel: This is where Jonah is.
Dave Hentschel: He doesn't even realize that he's going down, down, and down.
Dave Hentschel: Here's the good news, though.
Dave Hentschel: If you're a follower of God, if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, God will not allow you to remain comfortable in your rebellion against him.
Dave Hentschel: Following God is never comfortable.
Dave Hentschel: And so we have a God that will disrupt your comfortable plans.
Dave Hentschel: Notice it says in verse 4 that God sent a storm, it literally hurled a great wind.
Dave Hentschel: Look in your Own copy of the Bible, what does your Bible say?
Dave Hentschel: Does your Bible say that God allowed a wind?
Dave Hentschel: No.
Dave Hentschel: Does it say that God permitted a wind?
Dave Hentschel: No, it says that God sent this storm, doesn't it?
Dave Hentschel: Now, this is about to mess up some of your theology.
Dave Hentschel: Because right here, I need to tell you that not every bad thing in your life is there because Satan sent it your way.
Dave Hentschel: Right here, what we're learning in the scriptures is that some storms are there because God actually sent them.
Dave Hentschel: Sometimes God sends the storm, sometimes God allows the storm, and sometimes you actually bring the storm on yourself.
Dave Hentschel: I emphasize that because a lot of Christians that I know, whenever they face a trial in their life, they blame it on the devil.
Dave Hentschel: The enemy is attacking me.
Dave Hentschel: The devil took my job.
Dave Hentschel: No, you lost your job because you're late every day.
Dave Hentschel: The devil got me into debt.
Dave Hentschel: No, that was you and your credit card that got you into debt all by yourself.
Dave Hentschel: Yes, the devil is real, but he does not bring every storm.
Dave Hentschel: Sometimes we bring these storms on ourselves.
Dave Hentschel: This is Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: So God sends this storm, not like Thor with a lightning bolt, to destroy people with a sense of vindictiveness.
Dave Hentschel: This storm is actually a kindness of God to disrupt Jonah to get him back on track.
Dave Hentschel: So God comes in, disrupts his rebellion, and that can be something we experience in our lives.
Dave Hentschel: Sometimes we can experience this disruption, this interruption, and at the moment, perhaps in the moment, it might feel like God is abandoning you, but that disruption is actually not God's abandonment at all.
Dave Hentschel: It is God and his sovereign grace and his power and his love pursuing you, chasing you down, exposing your disobedience or your spiritual drift.
Dave Hentschel: Is there anything in your life right now that feels like a disruption from God but might have a deeper spiritual purpose?
Dave Hentschel: That's point one.
Dave Hentschel: When we run from God, he disrupts our rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: Number two, when we run from God, God exposes what we were trying to hide.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah's down in the lower part of the boat, remember, she's sleeping.
Dave Hentschel: But now Jonah's secret rebellion, which nobody knows about at this point, is about to be exposed and it's about to be public.
Dave Hentschel: So they're all in this storm and they're crying out to their gods, and then one guy, the captain, goes looking for Jonah to find him.
Dave Hentschel: Verse 6.
Dave Hentschel: So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper?
Dave Hentschel: Arise, call out to your God.
Dave Hentschel: Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.
Dave Hentschel: And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.
Dave Hentschel: So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: The lot fell on Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: Casting lots is an Old Testament concept that might seem kind of random.
Dave Hentschel: It was like rolling dice or like drawing straws.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah gets the short straw here.
Dave Hentschel: It might seem like happenstance, but yet the scripture is very clear that God is even in control of that.
Dave Hentschel: In your margin, just jot down Proverbs 16, 33.
Dave Hentschel: It says, the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: And so back in the Old Testament, this is the practice that they would sometimes engage in, and God Himself would show that He's completely sovereign and reigning over even the casting of the lot.
Dave Hentschel: And here, God exposes what Jonah was trying to hide.
Dave Hentschel: God's discipline often uncovers and exposes before it can ever restore.
Dave Hentschel: I think about the story of Chuck Coulson, who was engaged with President Nixon in the Watergate scandal, and how he was arrested and sent to prison and exposed for his illegal behavior.
Dave Hentschel: And it was there, after that exposure in prison, that Coulson was born again and he woke up to the good news of the gospel, and then God birthed in him the vision for breakpoint ministry and the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview and everything that it became.
Dave Hentschel: It all started because of that first exposure, which I'm sure was not very comfortable at the time, but yet this is what God had planned.
Dave Hentschel: Listen to this quote from Matt Chandler.
Dave Hentschel: He says this quote It is not cruel, unjust, or wicked of God to wound you in such a way that it knocks out from under you the props of self-reliance and puts your reliance completely on him.
Dave Hentschel: He goes on to say, It is not cruel of God at all to take from you what might lead into an eternity of sorrow, to give you sorrow now that leads to an eternity of ever-increasing joy.
Dave Hentschel: This is what our God is like.
Dave Hentschel: And so Jonah's being exposed, he's being found out, and the other mariners, the other sailors are not very happy with him at this point because he's got them involved with this whole fiasco.
Dave Hentschel: So let's continue the text with verse 8.
Dave Hentschel: It says this.
Dave Hentschel: Interesting.
Dave Hentschel: If you're a WNBA fan, this meme has gone viral all week.
Dave Hentschel: This is basically the same energy that the sailors have right here.
Dave Hentschel: They're just immediately pointing.
Dave Hentschel: There's no committee, there's no investigation, no follow-up questions, just it's you.
Dave Hentschel: And Jonah's like, all right, fair.
Dave Hentschel: But there's actually something sobering going on underneath of this little humorous meme here.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah's secret disobedience is not private anymore.
Dave Hentschel: Verse 9 continues the text and says, And he said to them, I am a Hebrew.
Dave Hentschel: I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
Dave Hentschel: He's in control of all this.
Dave Hentschel: Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done?
Dave Hentschel: For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them.
Dave Hentschel: It is the question that comes up in the scriptures where God is exposing his children after they have committed a sin.
Dave Hentschel: What is this that you have done?
Dave Hentschel: The second thing I want you to notice here is the interesting interplay with the concept of fear in this passage.
Dave Hentschel: First, you'll see in verse 10 that Jonah said, that the sailors say they're exceedingly afraid.
Dave Hentschel: But you notice back in verse 9, Jonah ironically also refers to the same concept of fear, claiming that he actually fears the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: The text is clear that that's the God Yahweh right there.
Dave Hentschel: So you have two instances of the same concept of fear, but they're different from each other.
Dave Hentschel: On the one hand, Jonah is confessing sound theology, but he's got his doctrinal statement all lined up in his mind, which is completely contradicting his actions in real life.
Dave Hentschel: The sailors, however, ironically, they actually have a true and certain fear of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: And here in this text, it's the pagans that are rebuking God's prophet with the appropriate kind of fear.
Dave Hentschel: This is kind of like that story in the New Testament where the Roman centurion has faith and he ends up having more faith than the people of Israel who are supposed to have faith in the first place.
Dave Hentschel: Here's Jonah saying he fears the Lord, but really it's the sailors who are actually appropriately fearing God.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah is claiming to fear and worship God, yet he's disobeying that same God.
Dave Hentschel: There's a gap.
Dave Hentschel: There's a gap in between his theological confession and his practical obedience.
Dave Hentschel: Do you see the gap there?
Dave Hentschel: That can happen.
Dave Hentschel: That can happen today.
Dave Hentschel: That can happen to me.
Dave Hentschel: I can say I worship Jesus, I can confess the right theology.
Dave Hentschel: I could come to church, you could come to church on Sunday morning and confess all the right stuff.
Dave Hentschel: And yet your life Monday through Saturday doesn't line up with that confession at all.
Dave Hentschel: There's a gap between what's being confessed and what's actually being lived out.
Dave Hentschel: Every few years we we read a headline that exposes that gap.
Dave Hentschel: There's a celebrity that thanks God at some award show, and we're like, oh wow, cool.
Dave Hentschel: They're calling themselves a Christian, but then we find out publicly they're also celebrating things that Jesus explicitly rejects, and there's this gap.
Dave Hentschel: We all notice the inconsistency when it's out there.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah is not written so that we might look at the inconsistency out there.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah is written not to be a window, but to be a mirror.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah was written to expose the people of God in Israel and how they had failed and rejected God and his mission for them.
Dave Hentschel: And Jonah is a microcosm of the entire nation.
Dave Hentschel: And so Jonah was written to be a mirror for the people of God to see themselves and how they were and expose the gap in their lives.
Dave Hentschel: And that's how we need to read it today.
Dave Hentschel: So can I ask you that question?
Dave Hentschel: Where is there a gap in your life between your confession and your actions?
Dave Hentschel: Some people think embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ is like getting life insurance.
Dave Hentschel: Hey, I'm covered, I signed the paper, now I can kind of like do whatever I want in my life, right?
Dave Hentschel: That's not the mindset of a true follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dave Hentschel: Jesus wants every area.
Dave Hentschel: He said, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, but don't do what I say?
Dave Hentschel: So maybe you say Jesus is Lord, but then every major decision that you make is made around your comfort or your money or your status or your convenience.
Dave Hentschel: Or maybe you say, I trust God, but yet your anxiety reveals that you're really trying to control everything yourself.
Dave Hentschel: Or maybe you say, hey, God's word is my authority, but when Scripture confronts something that you want, something suddenly you think, well, I'm the exception to that.
Dave Hentschel: That's the question being asked of Jonah and us here.
Dave Hentschel: What do you say you believe, and does my life really move in the same direction as my confession?
Dave Hentschel: If there's a gap, God in his mercy, though it's uncomfortable, will expose that gap.
Dave Hentschel: Is there anything right now in your life that God is wanting to expose?
Dave Hentschel: That's point two.
Dave Hentschel: When we run from God, God disrupts our rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: When we run from God, God exposes what we're trying to hide.
Dave Hentschel: And third, when we run from God, God calls us to surrender.
Dave Hentschel: Let's continue, but let me just warn you: this next section is really sad.
Dave Hentschel: Look at verse 11.
Dave Hentschel: Then they said to him, What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?
Dave Hentschel: For the sea grew more and more tempestuous, and 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.
Dave Hentschel: This is so, so heavy.
Dave Hentschel: Here's Jonah, a prophet, someone who is called by the God of heaven to serve him and to be on his mission, and yet here he is, and he doesn't care if he lives or if he dies in this moment.
Dave Hentschel: There may be somebody here today, God called you, and at one point you said yes.
Dave Hentschel: But then at some point you started running from that and you started doing your own thing, and you find yourself in a storm, and you got there to a place where you're ignoring God, and you end up in this terrible, terrible place.
Dave Hentschel: It's hopeless, you don't see a way out, you start looking to blame other people, maybe even blame God, but you know deep down it's your own fault.
Dave Hentschel: This is Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: The word of the Lord came to Jonah, verse one, but he went his own way.
Dave Hentschel: And now he's in utter despair.
Dave Hentschel: So sad.
Dave Hentschel: Back to the story, verse 13 continues and tells us, nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not.
Dave Hentschel: For the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
Dave Hentschel: Therefore they called out to the, what's that word?
Dave Hentschel: Lord, that is a change, that is a shift.
Dave Hentschel: They have now moved to a direction of looking to Jonah's God, Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Dave Hentschel: That's an intentional movement in Jonah chapter one.
Dave Hentschel: Don't miss it.
Dave Hentschel: Therefore they called out to Yahweh, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood.
Dave Hentschel: For you, O Lord, Yahweh, have done as it pleased you.
Dave Hentschel: These sailors are trying to do the right thing.
Dave Hentschel: But nothing that they have been trying is working.
Dave Hentschel: And so suddenly in verse 14, instead of them all crying out to their own gods, they start crying out to the one true God, Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God of Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: Their plea here reflects a shift in their spirit of pursuing a generic deity to now recognizing the specific God who had revealed himself to Jonah, the God of Israel.
Dave Hentschel: The sailors' acknowledgement of Yahweh here marks a significant moment of faith amidst their crisis, and they decide right here, they're gonna choose to surrender to Yahweh and do his will.
Dave Hentschel: And what do they do?
Dave Hentschel: Verse 15.
Dave Hentschel: So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.
Dave Hentschel: Whoa.
Dave Hentschel: Here we have this terrible storm, threatening to break the whole boat apart, crushing wind.
Dave Hentschel: It's pouring rain.
Dave Hentschel: And as soon as Jonah's hurled off, instantaneously the sea is as calm as glass.
Dave Hentschel: I wonder what these sailors were thinking in this moment.
Dave Hentschel: I wonder what was the reaction to this.
Dave Hentschel: Did you guys just see what I saw?
Dave Hentschel: Verse 16 tells us.
Dave Hentschel: Then the men feared the Lord Yahweh exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows.
Dave Hentschel: Their reaction is astonishing.
Dave Hentschel: Look carefully at it.
Dave Hentschel: Their reaction here is fear.
Dave Hentschel: Remember back in verse 10, they had feared the storm exceedingly.
Dave Hentschel: What's amazing to me here is that their reaction afterward is quite ironic because God stilling the storm does not alleviate their fears.
Dave Hentschel: It actually intensifies their fears.
Dave Hentschel: Because a storm is one thing.
Dave Hentschel: They had seen a storm before.
Dave Hentschel: They're mariners, they're sailors.
Dave Hentschel: What they had never seen before is that they are now in the presence of a God who's actually greater than the storm.
Dave Hentschel: They are now in the presence of a God who can command the storm and it obeys.
Dave Hentschel: Everything in the book of Jonah obeys when it hears the word of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: The storm obeys, the fish is gonna obey, this worm obeys.
Dave Hentschel: Every inanimate object in the book of Jonah hears the word of Yahweh and obeys immediately, except Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: God says, You will go do this, you will go do that to the fish, to the storm, to the worm, everywhere.
Dave Hentschel: And then God tells humankind to do something, and humankind goes, No.
Dave Hentschel: We are the only part of his creation that rebels when we hear his word.
Dave Hentschel: And yet these sailors are now getting a glimpse of the kind of authority that this Yahweh God has, and they are getting a glimpse that they had never seen before.
Dave Hentschel: These sailors are now having an encounter.
Dave Hentschel: Are you catching this?
Dave Hentschel: This moment of calm is spectacular.
Dave Hentschel: We have an amazing God, and these sailors just step back and go, any God that can do this is the God we want to know.
Dave Hentschel: Any God that can do this is the God we want to surrender our lives to.
Dave Hentschel: This is our God.
Dave Hentschel: Friends, if you don't know him, I want to tell you about this God because that's the whole reason why I'm here.
Dave Hentschel: That's why we're here to proclaim this God.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible says, our God is a refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible says, our God is a his name is a strong tower.
Dave Hentschel: The righteous run into it and they're safe.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible says, our God is the God who gives strength to the weary and uplifts the power of the weak.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible says our God is compassionate and gracious, abounding in steadfast love, who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Dave Hentschel: Our God is a generous God who meets all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Dave Hentschel: Our God says, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.
Dave Hentschel: A God like this is a God we want to know.
Dave Hentschel: A God like this is a God that we want to worship.
Dave Hentschel: A God like this is a good God, a God that we can trust, a God that we can obey, a God that's worthy of our love and our time and our worship and our fear and yes, our obedience.
Dave Hentschel: So the sailors have their moment and they bow their knee.
Dave Hentschel: And God uses even Jonah's rebellion to turn this group of mariners over to him.
Dave Hentschel: And this is the time when they get to know the one true God.
Dave Hentschel: But what about Jonah?
Dave Hentschel: Look at verse 17.
Dave Hentschel: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: Notice again the sovereignty of this God.
Dave Hentschel: Who sent the fish?
Dave Hentschel: God sent the fish.
Dave Hentschel: Remind me again, who oversees the casting of the lot?
Dave Hentschel: God, yeah.
Dave Hentschel: And remind me again, who sent that storm in verse 4?
Dave Hentschel: Yeah, God.
Dave Hentschel: God is completely sovereign.
Dave Hentschel: And God is the one who sends this fish.
Dave Hentschel: Now, is this fish God's justice?
Dave Hentschel: Or is this fish God's mercy?
Dave Hentschel: It's his mercy.
Dave Hentschel: Why?
Dave Hentschel: Because our God is not just concerned about his mission, he's also concerned about his missionary.
Dave Hentschel: And so God goes to get him there.
Dave Hentschel: And God doesn't do this to harm Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: This is not an angry God, but this is a gracious and compassionate and merciful God that we just sang about earlier, whose goodness is running after you all the days of your life.
Dave Hentschel: This fish is not a punishment.
Dave Hentschel: This fish is a rescue.
Dave Hentschel: God is disciplining Jonah because Jonah belongs to him.
Dave Hentschel: Hebrews chapter 12 says, if you're a true child of God, your heavenly father, the Lord disciplines the ones he loves.
Dave Hentschel: Friends, God's discipline is aimed at our repentance and our renewed obedience.
Dave Hentschel: But restoration begins when we stop negotiating with him and we start yielding to him.
Dave Hentschel: Discipline is God's grace.
Dave Hentschel: The great Tim Keller said it so well.
Dave Hentschel: I don't even want to change a word.
Dave Hentschel: I just want you to see this quote.
Dave Hentschel: Take this in.
Dave Hentschel: Grace is pursuing and intercepting self-destructive behavior.
Dave Hentschel: Grace is fierce love, dogged love, determined love, and it won't stop until it hurts you just enough to wake you up.
Dave Hentschel: That's the grace of our fierce, loving God.
Dave Hentschel: The whole reason we even talk about Jonah today is because of this grace.
Dave Hentschel: We talk about Jonah, not because Jonah sinned against God, but because God disciplined him and Jonah eventually turned back to him and surrendered to his grace.
Dave Hentschel: God pursued Jonah so that he would hear the call once again.
Dave Hentschel: And Jonah's story is not over.
Dave Hentschel: And if you've been running from God, neither is your story.
Dave Hentschel: That raises an even bigger question, right?
Dave Hentschel: How?
Dave Hentschel: Jonah's rebellious.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah has sinned against the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: How can a just and holy God discipline out of mercy instead of destroying his rebellious subjects in his justice?
Dave Hentschel: How is that even possible for God to be able to do this?
Dave Hentschel: See, the truth is Jonah was guilty.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah deserved to be thrown into the sea of God's judgment, so to speak.
Dave Hentschel: And just like that, I too have rebelled against the word of the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: I too deserve to be thrown into the sea of God's judgment.
Dave Hentschel: But instead of justice, even though I've run from God, we have a God who's able to send mercy, not destruction, because that's what God's discipline is it is mercy, not destruction.
Dave Hentschel: And the reason that's possible is because of the one that we call the true and greater Jonah.
Dave Hentschel: The true and greater Jonah is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dave Hentschel: The whole reason the Lord Jesus Christ came is because he was sent by his Father on mission.
Dave Hentschel: But unlike Jonah, he obeyed.
Dave Hentschel: And unlike Jonah, he didn't deserve to be cast into the sea of God's judgment.
Dave Hentschel: But the good news of the gospel is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and greater Jonah, threw himself willingly into the sea on Your behalf, into the storm of God's wrath, so that you and me, like these sailors, could be spared.
Dave Hentschel: And he would cast himself into the storm of the very wrath of God on our behalf.
Dave Hentschel: Jonah was disciplined for his own rebellion, but Jesus Christ did not enter judgment for his rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: It was for my rebellion and your rebellion.
Dave Hentschel: And because Jesus Christ willingly paid the price of God's justice on my behalf, on your behalf, now he is able to extend to us his mercy, not destruction.
Dave Hentschel: That is what God does.
Dave Hentschel: For these sailors, they were spared.
Dave Hentschel: For you and me, we can be spared as well.
Dave Hentschel: If you're someone who has never known God, like these sailors, I urge you, like them, to turn to him, to seek him, to cry out to him.
Dave Hentschel: This whole sermon series is about how we're supposed to be on mission for God, but before we can be on mission for God, if you haven't heard the gospel before, I need to tell you first this mission is first for you.
Dave Hentschel: I urge you to say yes to this God and surrender control to him.
Dave Hentschel: Jesus told a story about a prodigal son who also ran away from his father and spent all of the inheritance in loose and wild living.
Dave Hentschel: But then when he was sleeping with the pigs and eating with the pigs and eating the very pods that the pigs eat, one day it says that he came to his senses.
Dave Hentschel: And he came to his senses and said, I'll go back to my father's house and I'll be a slave in my father's house, and I'll ask my father to take me back as a servant.
Dave Hentschel: And the son gets up and starts going on his way back home.
Dave Hentschel: But before he can even get in, he sees his father running to him on the road.
Dave Hentschel: The father grabs him and hugs him and kisses him.
Dave Hentschel: It says, My son was lost and now he's found he was dead, but he's alive, and he puts a ring on his finger and a robe on his back and welcomes the boy home and says, Slay the fattened calf.
Dave Hentschel: My son is now back with us in the family.
Dave Hentschel: That's the kind of God that we have: a God who welcomes the prodigal back home.
Dave Hentschel: This is Jonah's story.
Dave Hentschel: This is my story.
Dave Hentschel: Is it your story?
Dave Hentschel: When we run from God, God does three things.
Dave Hentschel: He exposes what we're trying to hide, and he calls us to surrender.
Dave Hentschel: If you've strayed from God, I urge you to turn back to him.
Dave Hentschel: He is ready to receive you with open arms.
Dave Hentschel: The big idea of Jonah chapter one is this God lovingly disciplines his disobedient servants in order to bring them back to himself and put them back on mission.
Dave Hentschel: I'd like to invite the worship team to come, and as they do, let's ask ourselves some applicational questions about chapter one today.
Dave Hentschel: Is there anywhere in your life where the GPS says recalculating because you're choosing to not follow God's direction?
Dave Hentschel: Is there anywhere where you're resisting God and the mission that He sent you on?
Dave Hentschel: Is there any storms in your life that might be exposing something rather than trying to destroy you?
Dave Hentschel: What might that be that God's trying to expose?
Dave Hentschel: And what would surrendering to God's mission look like in your life?
Dave Hentschel: Maybe you're here today and you've been running, and I want to say this message is for you.
Dave Hentschel: Here's what you need to do: stop fighting God.
Dave Hentschel: Stop running from Him and surrender your life to Him.
Dave Hentschel: Amen.
Dave Hentschel: Can we spend a few moments in prayer before we respond in worship together?
Dave Hentschel: Would you just bow your heads and close your eyes with me?
Dave Hentschel: Oh Heavenly Father, thank you for your word.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you that even when I run, you pursue.
Dave Hentschel: Even when we run away, you pursue.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you that you're patient with us and merciful toward us.
Dave Hentschel: And you're going to commit to complete the work that you once began in us.
Dave Hentschel: And Lord, if there's anybody in here, a brother or sister of mine, who maybe feels like Jonah today, caught in a storm but tired of resisting and maybe weary from carrying their own plans, I pray today that today would be a moment of surrender.
Dave Hentschel: With every head bowed, every eye closed, would you just be willing to pray silently in your own heart, something like, God, would you show me any area where I'm rationalizing sin or running from you?
Dave Hentschel: Would you just take a moment in the quietness of your own heart and just ask God to show you any area where you might be running from him?
Dave Hentschel: Just go ahead and do that right now, just between you and the Lord.
Dave Hentschel: If there's some area where you're getting defensive and you want to push back, that's probably the area God wants to speak to you about.
Dave Hentschel: Just ask him to show you.
Dave Hentschel: God, would you show us where we're delaying obedience?
Dave Hentschel: Would you show us what we're trying to hide that's not pleasing to you?
Dave Hentschel: And then would you also remind us of the gospel?
Dave Hentschel: Remind us of the greater Jonah, where Jesus obeyed even though we failed, where he entered judgment so that we could receive mercy.
Dave Hentschel: Remind us of the good news, and then give us grace to trust you again, to follow you again, to say yes to whatever you call us to.
Dave Hentschel: Send us as a people who are no longer running, but walking with you and joining on your mission.
Dave Hentschel: Lord, we need you.
Dave Hentschel: Every hour we need you.
Dave Hentschel: We pray it in the strong name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Dave Hentschel: And everyone said,