Finding No Escape - Jonah 1

Join us as Pastor Tyler begins a new sermon series entitled, “Jonah: God’s Grace for the Undeserving" The first sermon in this series is: Finding No Escape - Jonah 1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Today, as as if you didn't notice, we're in the book of Jonah. And so if you have your Bibles, turn to the book of Jonah, Jonah chapter chapter one. And Lord willing, we will be in Jonah for the next four weeks. So this week and then the following three. And as we go through the book of Jonah, it's going to be a special delay. This is a very special book, and we're going to get into the details of that. But after Jonah, we're going to start a series in the book of Ecclesiastes for the summer. So about seven weeks in the book of Ecclesiastes, just highlighting important God moments throughout Ecclesiastes. And so if you want to get ahead on that, you can start reading through the book yourself, maybe jotting some notes down, things that stand out to you as we work our way through the book this coming summer. Here's a question I have for you. Have you ever experienced grace shock? And what I mean by that is where you maybe have been struggling with a certain sin, or you've sinned, and in your mind you have this hard time believing that there would be anyone who could forgive you. I think most of us can relate to that experience to some extent. And sometimes we go through these experiences, and the Lord works in our heart and in our life, and his grace works, and his strength works, and we muster up the humility and the strength to confess that to somebody. And in our minds we're thinking, man, they're going to blow up. It's just going to be a disaster. But what we experience is forgiveness. And we experience grace. We experience compassion. And in those moments, we're left with what I would describe as grace shock. And our minds thinking it's going to go one way, but then the grace of God intervenes. Well, the book of Jonah leaves us with grace shock. See, this book, it paints a vivid picture of Yahweh's gracious character toward lost sinners. It's really a small book in the Old Testament that's all about the gracious character of Yahweh. How this gracious character has no bounds, has no limits. His grace is extended to the vilest of offender. You see, when we come into a narrative book like this, there's a few things that I think it's also important for us to understand. First is that narrative is, if you didn't already know this, maybe you're new to this, but narrative is the largest genre in the whole Bible. And so that's saying something. If you just held up the epistles in the New Testament and we spent some time in some epistles this year, it's very small compared to the narrative of the Bible. God did that for a very specific reason. He did that for a God reason. He knows that as humanity we think and we operate in story. And so he chose a story to illustrate his grace, his kindness, his forgiveness, his compassion for us to understand more about his holiness and his character. He chose a story. And in the midst of that story, there's sprinkled, like I said, some of these epistles or these letters in the New Testament, there's sprinkled some poetry, but largely it's narrative. And as we're working through books like this that are narrative, it's important that we understand that we would understand the book a little differently than we would some poetry. Or a little differently than we would an epistle. It's not like going through the epistle of the Philippians. It's done by way of story. And so that means we also want to be careful in how we apply these narratives. See, as Philippians would give us a directive, sometimes the narratives, they don't really give us directives. But God leaves the story there for us to properly lean into the Holy Spirit to help us apply the Word of God and understand the Word of God that He wants us the way that He wants us to understand. Several weeks ago, we were privileged to have Dr. Dempster here, and he spoke a little bit about this. So if you weren't here for that or you're interested in hearing more, I encourage you to go back and listen to that sermon. We also have his Sunday school lesson, which he which he alluded to some of this as well. But you see, the story of Jonah is unique. It's possibly one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. And he was disgruntled about God bringing his grace, his compassion, his salvation to the Ninevites. And I believe in a big way, the book of Jonah isn't about Jonah. It's not about really even Nineveh. This is the Bible, really. The Bible and the book of Jonah, it's about God. It's about his character. It's about him revealing his character to humanity. And so as we go through this book, we just want to keep that in mind. This is about God, and he is telling us something about himself. See, Jonah in particular outlines God's grace for the undeserving with a sincere grace shock experience. We're going to see that in chapter three. We're going to see it even more in chapter four. And we get this idea that as God works through the story and he's orchestrating the events, he's revealing to us what it looks like for his grace to go towards an undeserving, disgruntled, angry prophet, Jonah. And we also see his grace extended for a wicked and undeserving people of Nineveh. So today's passage draws our attention to Jonah trying to escape from Yahweh and his grace. And despite his attempt, he finds no escape. Hence the title of today's sermon. And here's a question for us from today's passage. Are you on the run from God's grace? Are you on the run from God's grace? You could be like the prophet Jonah, who believed in God, had a relationship with God, on the run from God's grace. You could be like the Ninevites who are on the run from God's grace. And so we're going to look at two sentences here broken down in two different parts of in the way that we're doing the points this morning. So really four points this morning that elude and help us understand this story a little bit. So the first thing we see is this in verses one to three. There are a lot of reasons to say no to God and run. There's a lot of reasons we come up with to say no to God and run. We can think of some really good reasons. Ultimately, we're left with the question like, are they really that good? Is there really any good reason to say no to God? You see, Jonah is a prophetic narrative. And his refusal to be an oracle for God is unique because the other prophets don't do this. His refusal to be an oracle of God sets him apart from the rest of the prophets. And so the story begins in verses 1 to 3. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Emittai, or of Amethai. Get up, God says, Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because their evil has come up before me. Jonah got up and went to Nineveh. No, that's not what it says. Jonah got up and he fled to Tarshish. From the Lord's presence, and that's an important phrase. He fled ultimately from the Lord's presence. Just remember that. He's running from the presence of God. He's not running from ultimately Nineveh. He's running from God. And that's important. So he got up, flee to Tarshish from the presence, from the Lord's presence, or from Yahweh's presence. And just as a side note, whenever the Old Testament you see Lord capitalized like that every every word, the Hebrew word is Yahweh. And sometimes pronounced Adonai. But here he's fleeing to Tarshish from Yahweh's presence. He went down to Joppa and he found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the Lord's presence. There it is again. From the Lord's presence. You know, there's a lot of good reasons we can come up with to say no to God, and we're pretty good at it. We kind of get it, if you think about it, from Jonah's perspective. If you know who the Ninevehes were, you would know that the Ninevehes were not a pleasant people. Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria. And if you know anything about Assyria and Israel, you know that the Assyrians were brutal towards the Israelites. They did things to the Israelites that would make the wickedness of our day blush. That's how wicked these people were. Assyria at one point laid siege to the northern kingdom of Israel, enslaved, pillaged, killed, tortured. And scripture tells us one of the practices that the Assyrians had was once they would attack and they would lay pillage and they would kind of take over an area, they would take slaves for themselves. And they would lead the slaves by, they'd put rings in their noses or rings through their lips. And there's some f there's some legend out there too. I've heard in my studies that they uh they would also use hooks that would come up ip through the jaw, and then they would attach people by the rope and they would parade them into probably Nineveh, because that was their capital city. Hey, look who we caught. Look who we have just conquered. And so Amos 4 talks about this, 2 Chronicles 33 talks about this. But it's interesting, in Kings, in 2 Kings 19, and Isaiah 37, God says that he's gonna put rings and hooks into the Assyrians. So the events of Jonah are believed to have taken place somewhere after this siege. And so you can see why going to Nineveh was not on Jonah's top 100 even things to do. And you can see why going to Nineveh was not on his eager to minister to list. He had a good reason. Assyria was evil. And in his mind, their evil didn't deserve redemption. It didn't even deserve, they didn't even deserve to hear about redemption. But listen, this is this is I think important for us too because we also can be masters of excuses when it comes to saying no to God. People won't like me. Perhaps even Jonah, he facing pressure from his people. You know, don't do it. Assyrians, they're they're terrible. Perhaps too, we feel the same kind of pressure from others, and that dictates our choices before God rather than the Holy Spirit and the Word of God working through us. Whatever it might be, we can come up with some pretty good excuses to not obey God. What is it that God is calling you to do that you've been saying no to? You've been resisting his grace. Saying no to God means we're running from true grace. And that's what, again, to emphasize here, he was running from the Lord's presence. Twice it says this. He's running from God's grace, compassion, and his mercy. And we see him bring this out in Jonah chapter 4. He's like, Lord, I didn't want to go to Nineveh. I knew you'd be compassionate, I knew you'd be gracious, I knew you'd save them. And so I'm I'm really angry. So we understand. Jonah understands with God and in his presence is mercy, compassion, and grace. This is the reason why he was running, resisting the grace of God. The second thing is this, Louisi. You see, um, there are a lot of good reasons to say no to God and run, but God pursues us to get our attention. We see this in verses four to five. God pursues us to get our attention. You know, if someone ran away from us the way Jonah ran away from God, I'm not sure that we would be so eager to go after them. Jonah ran in the opposite direction. I mean, there he's not hiding anything. He's like, Nineveh, that way, I'm going this way. Complete opposite direction. And he gets on this boat, he pays the fare, as the pastor says, to get away from God's presence. Again, it's to get away from God's presence. And look what happens in verse 4. But the Lord, but, so Jonah's in the boat, but here we go. But the Lord threw a great wind onto the sea. And such a great storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break up. So the ship is like, this ain't happening. I'm not doing this, guys. So it's personified here. The ship threatens to even break apart. And verse 5, then the sailors were afraid, and each of them cried out to his God. They threw the ship's cargo into the sea, the light and the load. Meanwhile, Jonah was gone down in the lowest part of the vessel and had stretched out and fallen into a deep sleep. This phrase in verse 4 that Yahweh threw, or uh the Lord threw, literally means hurled. He hurled a storm upon the sea. Now, this is important because this starts a trigger of events throughout the book where we see Yahweh hurl Jonah out of the fish's mouth onto the dry land. And we see Yahweh intervene and do specific things throughout the book of Jonah. So it's interesting. Even the writer of Jonah, by the way, we're not totally certain who wrote the book. Some believe Jonah did. I think there's some good evidence for that. But again, we're not too certain. We're going to trust the Lord with that. But we see, it's interesting, just the literary nature that takes place throughout this book. The only get, if you're, if you're, if you are reading and digging into the Hebrew. And so this is a big moment here. He hurled. It came from him. He caused it to happen. So God causes this great wind and this great storm to take place. And here is the point that we get here in these verses, I think. God pursues us even when we refuse him. Our refusal of God can leave us in a lonely and dark place. The storm was raging, so much so that the Hebrew text literally says, again, that the ship threatened to break apart. This is not a fun scene. None of us would want to be there for this. This was terrible. And what does Jonah do? It's time to take a nap. So he goes down into the ship. He falls asleep. Think about this for a second. Jonah's sin had brought him to such a place where he had quenched his conscience that allowed him to superficially sleep soundly. But his sleeping wasn't gonna last. Because it wasn't a true, real state of rest. There was a storm. He was running from God. Things are about to get worse for him. You know, just because someone may look restful or that they have it all together doesn't mean that you're truly at peace with God. We too can find ourselves in these places where we've gotten so used to saying no to God that we sleep soundly. We sleep soundly at night. But that doesn't mean that what we've done was right. Or what we're choosing to do is okay. Because even us, we can live in this false sense of security with our own sin. What Jonah was doing wasn't okay. He was refusing to obey God, refusing the grace of God for himself and for others. He was looking at Nineveh and saying, no way. I mean, here's a good question of application for us here this morning. When we see our culture or our cities, what are we saying? Are we saying no way? Are we seeing our culture and our cities as a place in need of God's grace? Even though they don't deserve it, because none of us do, and that's the message of the book of Jonah. Are we seeing our culture in our cities as a place that need the grace of God that God has called us to be lights and witnesses to? See, in a big way, our response to God is a reflection of our hearts towards God and His character. That's what we see with Jonah. He's responding to God's character, refusing God's character. But God pursues him. And the next thing we see is this in the passage things can seem lost and hopeless. Things can seem lost and hopeless. Verses 6 to 13. You know, everything was going crazy. Jonah was sleeping, the crew of the ship was in a panic. The storm that Yahweh hurled onto the sea. Only had one outcome to these experienced sailors, and that was that was death. The ship was threatening to break apart. It's probably making all kinds of sounds. Maybe there's splinters of wood coming apart. There's water everywhere. There's a raging storm. It's darkness. It's fear. It seemed to be hopeless. And so these sailors, they're making this last stitch effort to survive however they can. They're in a panic. And that that's something that's that's important to say about an experienced sailor. I mean, they experience things like this fairly often, but this was different. They were in a panic. So the captain goes down into the ship, and he can't believe who he sees sleeping. I'm not sure if he smacked him upside the head, but maybe he did, David. Maybe. You know, um, who does this remind you of a little bit? Uh Jesus? Sleeping in a similar situation, right? But for a very different reason. It's like the complete opposite of what Jonah's sleeping for. Jonah's sleeping because he suppressed his conscience and he suppressed the presence of God and he has just just followed his sinful heart. But Jesus was at rest in the grace and in the sovereignty of God. Jonah was at rest in the comfort of his sin. And at this point, the crew wasn't sure what was causing such a monstrous storm. So they had their suspicions. It could be due to someone's bad karma, whatever it might be. And meanwhile, Jonah found sound asleep, thinking he's home free. And again, this other idea of thinking like we too can get so comfortable in our sin that we think we're home free. But the story picks up in verse 6. It says this the captain approached him and said, What are you doing? Sound asleep. Get up, call to your God. Maybe this God will consider us and we won't perish. Verse 7, come on. The sailors said to each other, let's cast lots. Then we'll know who's to blame for the trouble that we're in. Again, casting lots was kind of the idea similar to drawing straws. Let's let fate decide. Let's cast lots. And so they they cast lots, and the lots singled out Jonah. Again, God's sovereignty in this moment. Then they said to him, Tell us who is to blame for the trouble we're in. What is your business? Where are you from? So this interrogation takes. Who are you? Where are you from? What's your country? What's your business? They're a very superstitious culture, right? So they're thinking, what has this guy done? That all this is happening? What people are you from? What have your people done? All these kinds of things would come to mind for them as to why this is happening. You see, God in this moment, and we might see the chaos, we might see the darkness, and we might see the challenge, and we might see the storm and all these things. But God cared too much for Jonah and wanted Jonah to experience his grace so much that he continues to relentlessly pursue Jonah, even though Jonah seems to be sleeping his trouble away. God refuses also in our own lives to leave us alone. I mean, he graciously does what he does to get our attention back onto him and onto his grace. Have you ever had a moment like that? You know, as I as I get older, I see the Lord do this in different ways in my life and in other people's lives and your life as well. I mean, what's better than that moment when God gets our attention and we realize his grace and the flood of assurance as the deep comfort of the gospel reaches the depths of our soul? What better moment is there to know the warm embrace of his forgiveness and his grace? And what we see here, as Jonah's sin did, we're also reminded that our sin always affects more than just us. Who do we blame for this trouble we're in? They are asking. Jonah's sin affected more than him. They were in this predicament because of Jonah. Our sin always affects more than just us. Another thing that we can relate to in this way. Jonah's sin affected the sailors. Yet they still tried to save him. Look at what happens here as the passage goes on, verse 9. He answered them, I'm a Hebrew, I worship the Lord, the God of the heavens, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were seized by a great fear. And they said to him, What have you done? And the men knew he was fleeing. This is interesting. Here it is again. The men knew that he was fleeing from the Lord's presence, because he told them, He knew what he did. I'm running away from God's presence, from his grace, from his character. So they said to him, What should we do to you so that the sea will calm down for us? For the sea was getting worse and worse. He answered them, Pick me up, throw me overboard into the sea, so that it'll calm down at f so it'll calm down the sea for you. For I know that I'm to blame for this great storm that is against you. And verse 13, I love this. It's like, mm, they're like, no, we're not gonna do that. Uh so, nevertheless, verse 13 says, but they continued. Um nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land. But they couldn't because the sea was raging against them more and more. So, even like God's grace is showing through these unbelieving sailors towards Jonah, they're like, no, we're not gonna throw it. We're gonna try harder. Okay, guys, grab, grab, grab the row, let's let's try to make this thing work. Like these guys were desperately trying to save Jonah. They didn't want anyone to go overboard. So even the grace of God showing to Jonah in this way. But ultimately, there's nothing that they could do. Because more was at stake than just that. You see, God was on the pursuit of getting a hold of Jonah's attention and his heart. Sometimes things can seem lost and hopeless, and this leads us to our final point, but God pours out his grace in the most unlikely of ways. He pours out his grace in the most unlikely of ways. You know, no matter how broken or lost a situation may seem, God will use it for our good, for his glory, and sometimes in the most extraordinary of ways. And we know this, right? Romans 8, Romans 5, 1 to 5, amazing passage of scripture. If you don't know it, um if you do know it, I encourage you to put your finger there. Romans 5, 1 to 5, read that on your own. James 1, 2 to 4, another great one. Consider it great joy, my brothers and sisters, when you experience various trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. I mean, we know that God works through these difficult times. Because we know that God always gives us by his grace what we need the most. Look with me in verses 14 to 17. So they called out to Yahweh. Please Yahweh. So this is there, they're all now calling out to Yahweh, please, Yahweh, don't let us perish because of this man's life. These pagan sailors calling out to Yahweh. Don't let us perish because of this man's life. And don't charge us with innocent blood, for you, Yahweh, have done just as you please. I mean, they acknowledge, they acknowledge the sovereignty of God that he's doing as he pleased. And so they picked up Jonah, they threw him into the sea, and the storm stopped its raging. It's gone. Similar again to Jesus with the disciples. Jesus commanded it, and it stopped. Oh, I've often wondered if the disciples reflected on the story of Jonah after their experience. I'm sure they did. And the men were seized at that moment. See, they were seized with a great fear earlier, and you saw this earlier in the passage. They had a great fear in verse 10. But here they're seized with a great fear for a completely different reason because they notice the extent of the power of God. They're seized with a great fear of the Lord. It's not of the storm, but it's of Yahweh. And they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and they made vows. In verse 17, the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. God always gives us by his grace what we need most. The sea stopped its raging. And then he appoints a great fish. Two things taking place. Stopped its raging. It's what the sailors needed the most. And what Jonah needed the most was to be swallowed by a fish. Yahweh, and in doing so, I know it was a fish, but he protected him from being from perishing. He protected him from drowning. You know, sometimes the grace of God comes by way of a great fish swallowing us up. This was the pathway to Jonah's repentance and to the full experience of God's grace. He protected the sailors from perishing, which was their pathway to experience God's grace. You know what the sad thing is, though, on this story? The sailors seem to get it. But the sad thing is, even in a story, as we look at the story of Jonah, we even get to chapter 4, it never really gets Jonah's attention. Nowhere in the text do we see that this actually changed Jonah's heart. Even his prayer, which we're going to talk about next week, that's interesting. But even when he arrived in Nineveh, what does he say to the Ninevehes? These five like sad words. He's like, God's going to destroy you in 40 days. Wow, what a gospel message there. He wasn't even putting like a even just like, dude, put a little bit of effort into it. No. So you even see this in his heart all through the book. He's still not liking it. Chapter 4 reveals that to us. He's still not liking it. But for us here this morning, as we unpack this book in the weeks to come, let's just, for us here this morning, do you feel distant from God? Do you feel too broken for repair? Well, it's simply not true. Satan wants you to think that God's far, that he's uncaring. But he isn't. He's near. And he's grace giving, grace enabling. The patience of God throughout the book of Jonah with Jonah is just remarkable. And my question for us this morning, those who find themselves in that place, why not talk to God about your brokenness like the sailors did? Call out to him. That's a good first step. God is not out to get you. He's out to save you. To restore you. To give you grace upon grace. The grace that you and I need so desperately. Maybe you're dealing with a difficult situation. It's not because of sin. But maybe you're dealing with a difficult situation because of someone else's sin. But take heart. Our God is near. We can run, but we can't hide. Because there's no sin we commit or situation we face that is out of the reach of God's sovereignty and grace. There's no escape from God's sovereignty and grace. Jonah was trying to find one, but he was brutally unsuccessful. And next week we're going to talk about how what this gracious, loving correction of God looks like. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the story of Jonah. God, we thank you for your grace. In Jesus' name. Amen.