WEBVTT 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:12.720 This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota. 00:00:16.879 --> 00:00:27.440 In a little while, we are going to join together to partake in what Christians call the Lord's Table, often referred to as communion. 00:00:27.839 --> 00:00:35.439 That song is a wonderful entry point to begin orienting our hearts and minds to that moment. 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:40.159 Is Jesus going to be your judge or your savior? 00:00:40.719 --> 00:00:47.520 We find both of those elements combined in the Old Testament book of Jonah. 00:00:47.679 --> 00:00:50.560 If you have your Bible, I encourage you to open it to that point. 00:00:50.719 --> 00:00:55.039 If you don't have a Bible, you can use your device or the pew Bible in front of you. 00:00:55.119 --> 00:01:00.399 That's on page 774 in the seat back in front of you. 00:01:02.399 --> 00:01:12.480 Starting a five-week or so walk through this book that probably in my mind should be more like 10 or 12 weeks. 00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:23.120 There is so much richness in the book of Jonah, both in how it is constructed and in its theology. 00:01:23.519 --> 00:01:26.959 Jonah has a lot of what we call narrative theology. 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:28.879 It's a story, right? 00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:32.480 Some people don't believe that it's true. 00:01:33.359 --> 00:01:37.680 That it's just a story made up to represent certain characteristics. 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:40.879 But the Lord Jesus said it was true. 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:46.079 He based his own ministry and life on the account of Jonah. 00:01:46.319 --> 00:01:47.519 So it is real. 00:01:49.120 --> 00:01:57.280 Its accounts are real, but it's told in a story format that is part story and part art. 00:01:58.879 --> 00:02:05.920 I remember a high school English class that I took where we had to read Tale of Two Cities. 00:02:06.159 --> 00:02:09.439 You've all heard the beginning of it if you hadn't read the story, right? 00:02:09.599 --> 00:02:14.159 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, all at the same time. 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:22.639 That was the first time in my life that I ever really began to understand that authors do things with words. 00:02:24.159 --> 00:02:34.719 They take words and they purposely put them together using certain words, certain phrases, certain constructions to be able to communicate their story. 00:02:35.439 --> 00:02:37.840 Jonah is written like that. 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:42.319 So he tells us things by how he writes. 00:02:42.719 --> 00:02:51.759 But along with that, there is rich detail about God, about Jonah, and even about you and me. 00:02:52.879 --> 00:02:58.719 Let's start with perhaps an example that fits all of us. 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:04.319 If you haven't had this situation as an adult, you have had it as a child. 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:09.840 So kids, you will know what I'm talking about because we've all lived this. 00:03:10.319 --> 00:03:22.639 So as adults, maybe you've sensed through a sermon or through your own Bible reading, through your own devotional life, something that God is calling you to. 00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:32.560 Whether that's maybe a change of life, maybe God is calling you to the mission field or to vocational ministry or to serve in the local church. 00:03:32.719 --> 00:03:35.280 Maybe it's just a call to obedience. 00:03:35.919 --> 00:03:43.120 That you've understood something for the first time in Scripture and you sense that God is calling you to obey. 00:03:46.159 --> 00:03:48.000 But then you don't. 00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:54.639 You find that the more you think about it, obedience is uncomfortable. 00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:59.840 And you begin to turn away from obedience towards your own comfort. 00:04:00.159 --> 00:04:02.000 So, kids, you know what I'm talking about, right? 00:04:02.159 --> 00:04:13.520 Mom and dad will tell you that they want you to do something, and then mom and dad get distracted and they go do something else, and you decide, you know what, I don't want to do what mom and dad want me to do. 00:04:13.759 --> 00:04:15.520 I'm just gonna go play. 00:04:17.199 --> 00:04:19.439 That's what the book of Jona is like. 00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:30.000 Where God says something, and a normal, everyday human being says, Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:35.279 So Jonah is very relatable from the very beginning. 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:42.720 The message that God gives to us is clear enough. 00:04:42.959 --> 00:04:48.079 Whatever the message might be, it could be as simple as obeying your parents. 00:04:48.319 --> 00:04:52.319 The message is clear, but we simply decide to ignore it. 00:04:52.959 --> 00:05:06.399 But somewhere in the back of our minds, there's something that we really can't ignore that just keeps poking at us, poking at our conscience, reminding us of what God has said to be true. 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:14.319 That's what we find at the very beginning of this unusual, fascinating, and deeply convicting book. 00:05:16.079 --> 00:05:18.800 Its plot is very simple. 00:05:19.439 --> 00:05:31.360 God speaks, a prophet runs, and through that the narrator sets up one of the most dramatic stories in all of Scripture. 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:40.480 A dramatic story that becomes a foundational component of the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. 00:05:41.600 --> 00:06:13.279 It's a story that will have us watching a God who hurls hurricanes from heaven, and who will also take us deep below the surface of the sea to the gates of death, who will walk us through the streets of the most evil city of the ancient world, and finally onto a hillside outside of that city where the prophet sits stewing in the Middle Eastern sun because he's angry that God is who he said he was. 00:06:15.199 --> 00:06:18.959 The account begins with three deceptively simple verses. 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:21.360 If you have your Bible, I want you to turn with me there. 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:25.120 And we're going to read just the first three verses this morning. 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:27.600 Three verses. 00:06:27.759 --> 00:06:37.279 Beginning in verse one, it says, Now the word of the Lord, that word Lord is in all capital letters, so it refers to the covenant God of Israel, Yahweh or Jehovah. 00:06:37.519 --> 00:06:52.399 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, Get up, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. 00:06:53.199 --> 00:06:58.319 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. 00:06:58.639 --> 00:07:09.759 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 Yahweh. 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:15.920 Three verses, one command, one refusal. 00:07:17.759 --> 00:07:26.879 And the rest of the book is about God dealing with a man who decided that he could ignore the unignorable. 00:07:27.839 --> 00:07:33.040 Now, before we look at the text, let me tell you what this book is not about. 00:07:33.439 --> 00:07:35.360 At least, not primarily. 00:07:35.839 --> 00:07:38.800 It is not primarily about a big fish. 00:07:39.680 --> 00:07:43.360 The fish appears in one verse and disappears in another. 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:50.879 It's not primarily about Jonah, though he is certainly the most central human figure in the book. 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.879 The book of Jonah is about God. 00:07:56.319 --> 00:08:06.560 It's about who God is, it's about what God does, and how he cannot be confined by the narrow hearts and imaginations of his people. 00:08:07.519 --> 00:08:16.240 Now it's been said throughout history that what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:23.040 This short Old Testament book pushes on that point. 00:08:24.079 --> 00:08:36.639 It presses on your mind about what you think, it presses on your heart about what you believe, and it combines all of that into a theology that reveals what you think about God. 00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:54.240 And your thoughts about God are either shaped by what God has revealed about Himself, or your thoughts are exposed as something that you have invented for your own comfort. 00:08:55.519 --> 00:09:05.600 As we begin this study, I want to try to draw you into the narrative the way the original hearers likely would have heard it, as they would have experienced it. 00:09:06.720 --> 00:09:25.200 Not as a children's story with flannel graph about a man and a fish, but as a pointed, uncomfortable, beautifully crafted account of God's sovereign grace colliding with human resistance. 00:09:26.559 --> 00:09:33.120 And in the end, we're going to see that human resistance is futile when it collides with God's sovereign grace. 00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:34.879 How do we see that? 00:09:35.039 --> 00:09:42.240 Well, in verse 1, it begins by showing us that Yahweh is a sovereign God who does not ask permission. 00:09:45.279 --> 00:09:49.519 Verse 1 opens with what appears, at least in English, to be a very simple statement. 00:09:49.679 --> 00:09:53.120 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai. 00:09:53.919 --> 00:09:59.840 That sounds simple, but it's very dense in Hebrew. 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:01.919 Dense in a rich way. 00:10:02.159 --> 00:10:03.840 The word Jonah means dove. 00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:09.279 Jonah is this soft, gentle, flighty dove. 00:10:10.559 --> 00:10:17.120 The dove, even before our modern times, has often been associated with the concept of peace. 00:10:18.159 --> 00:10:26.559 So Jonah is a symbol of peace, of gentleness, of passivity almost. 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:29.279 And he's the son of Amitai. 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:33.360 Amati is a name that derives from the Hebrew word for truth. 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:37.039 So he is the dove, the son of truth. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:11:01.039 Perhaps more significant than that, though, is that the verb translated as Caim in our English Standard Version, now the word of the Lord, Cain, is not the kind of word that you would expect from a gentle communication between one person and another. 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:06.720 It's not something that you would use for a gentle or passive knock at the door. 00:11:06.879 --> 00:11:08.639 Hey, I've got something to say to you. 00:11:08.879 --> 00:11:10.240 Come open the door. 00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:17.600 Or that God sends something kind of drifting through somebody's mind that makes them aware of what he's doing. 00:11:17.759 --> 00:11:19.600 That's not what's going on here. 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:23.279 The word literally means to happen. 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:25.200 To happen. 00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:31.440 The word of the Lord didn't come to Jonah, it happened to Jonah. 00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:34.879 It's like an event that he can't escape. 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:38.399 It broke in on him. 00:11:38.559 --> 00:11:47.039 It arrived with the weight of a divine initiative that can't be negotiated, can't be softened, and can't be delayed. 00:11:47.679 --> 00:11:51.679 Friends, God's word doesn't come to us as a suggestion. 00:11:53.279 --> 00:11:56.559 It comes as an event that we must reckon with. 00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:08.240 Yahweh, the Lord, the covenant God of Israel, the one who revealed his personal name to Moses at the burning bush, is the one who initiates what happens with Jonah. 00:12:08.559 --> 00:12:11.360 Jonah does nothing to receive this word. 00:12:12.399 --> 00:12:17.200 He isn't presented as worshiping at the temple, although that may be where he is. 00:12:24.240 --> 00:12:26.080 God simply acts. 00:12:26.799 --> 00:12:33.919 And God's action becomes the defining reality of Jonah's life from that moment forward. 00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:38.320 And that's how it often is with God, isn't it? 00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:43.360 God doesn't wait for our readiness. 00:12:45.519 --> 00:12:49.919 He doesn't time his commands around our convenience. 00:12:51.679 --> 00:13:01.200 The word of God happens to people, it lands on them with full force, and when it lands, it changes everything. 00:13:01.759 --> 00:13:04.320 Now Jonah was already a prophet. 00:13:04.639 --> 00:13:06.879 This didn't make him a prophet. 00:13:07.279 --> 00:13:15.919 We find in 2 Kings chapter 14 that Jonah was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam II. 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:25.919 And that passage tells us that he had already prophesied, successfully, we might say, about the expansion of Israel's northern border. 00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:35.039 During this time period, the northern nation of Israel restored all of the land that Solomon ruled over to the north. 00:13:35.519 --> 00:13:38.399 Jonah prophesied that that would happen. 00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:43.759 So it's a time of relative prosperity in the land of Israel. 00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:50.159 Jonah, this prophet, has a substantial track record with God and the people. 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:55.679 He knew what it was like to receive the word of the Lord and to speak it. 00:13:55.919 --> 00:13:57.519 He's a son of truth. 00:13:57.679 --> 00:13:59.840 He is a son of God's truth. 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:13.919 But as I think we know too well, knowing what God says and obeying what God says are often two different things, aren't they? 00:14:15.279 --> 00:14:16.639 They were for Jonah. 00:14:18.639 --> 00:14:19.840 That's verse one. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:30.879 Yahweh is a sovereign God who doesn't ask permission when he acts. 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:39.759 He just acts according to his timetable, his time frame, his purpose, and his intention. 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:45.679 Verse two reminds us that Yahweh is a God whose commands may offend our humanity. 00:14:46.879 --> 00:14:53.519 So the word that happened to Jonah is this arise, get up and go. 00:14:54.639 --> 00:15:07.039 Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, because their evil has come up against me or before me, literally in my face. 00:15:08.399 --> 00:15:12.000 So two commands are given: get up and go. 00:15:12.799 --> 00:15:22.000 Every Jewish person who read those commands in the Old Testament times would hear them as the divine commands to prophets. 00:15:22.399 --> 00:15:26.080 Prophets, when they hear from God, are told, get up and go. 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:28.559 Speak God's word. 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:32.799 Jonah has a destination, Nineveh. 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:35.679 He's got a task, call out against it. 00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:40.720 He's got a reason because their evil has ascended, has gone up before God. 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:46.080 Now, Nineveh, Nineveh is not your typical city. 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:58.639 It might be comparable in our times to combining something like Las Vegas with New York City or Las Vegas with Los Angeles. 00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:04.080 It's the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and it's massive. 00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:11.440 Historians and scholars estimate that it may have been the largest city on earth at the time. 00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:21.440 But the Assyrians were, by ancient standards, a uniquely brutal kind of people. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:30.559 So imagine the most heinous brutality that you might hear about in the news today. 00:16:32.320 --> 00:16:37.600 And take that up a notch or two, and that gives you the Assyrians. 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:50.480 They did not just conquer nations, they destroyed them systematically, brutally, and publicly. 00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:58.480 And they practiced what I think can only be described as a unique kind of cruelty. 00:16:59.440 --> 00:17:05.599 Syrians preserved written and visual records of their military campaigns. 00:17:05.680 --> 00:17:12.160 And what those records describe are almost too graphic to relay in public on a Sunday morning. 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:18.960 Their own records display graphic and horrendous torture. 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:29.920 Populations deported, cities reduced to rubble, and the whole spectacle documented on stone for people to look at forever. 00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:38.640 If you came to Nineveh and you saw the walls around Nineveh, you saw visually, this is the kind of people who live inside this city. 00:17:41.119 --> 00:17:44.640 That was the city to which Jonah was sent. 00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:57.039 The prophet Nahum describes the city of Nineveh as a city of blood, famous for its violence, for its atrocities, even for its slave trade. 00:17:57.279 --> 00:18:00.240 The Assyrians were a growing terror to Israel. 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:08.000 Israel is expanding its territory to the north, while the Assyrians, even further north and to the east, are expanding their territory to the south. 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:10.480 There's going to be a conflict. 00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:16.880 They're hearing about the atrocities of the Assyrians. 00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:24.319 The city is so intensely evil that its sin has ascended before God's face. 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:29.440 And that phrase, that their evil has come up before me, is worth taking a moment to think about. 00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:38.240 Have you ever sat around a campfire when the wind comes in and swirls around and it sends the smoke directly into your face? 00:18:41.519 --> 00:18:42.559 Feel that. 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:47.759 Your eyes sting, your nose burns. 00:18:48.799 --> 00:18:50.640 What do you instinctively do? 00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:55.519 You close your eyes and you wince and you kind of turn away, right? 00:18:56.319 --> 00:19:01.680 Now exchange the smoke of the campfire for sin. 00:19:03.039 --> 00:19:10.559 And exchange your eyes and your nose for the holiness of a holy, holy, holy God. 00:19:12.160 --> 00:19:13.680 That's the image. 00:19:14.559 --> 00:19:29.920 Nineveh's wickedness had not merely grown or expanded, it had risen up like smoke until it reached the face of the holy God and offended his holiness. 00:19:31.519 --> 00:19:38.960 Sin in the presence of an eternally holy God is not a minor thing to be overlooked. 00:19:39.200 --> 00:19:41.359 It's an ascending offense. 00:19:41.599 --> 00:19:47.440 And Nineveh's sin had reached the very throne of God in heaven. 00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:55.759 The natural reaction of human beings is God, do something about it. 00:19:57.039 --> 00:19:58.000 Do something. 00:19:58.240 --> 00:20:00.480 Don't just sit there, do something. 00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:07.359 Yet God does not do what we might anticipate. 00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:12.880 He doesn't wipe out the city, he doesn't destroy it like Sodom and Gomorrah. 00:20:13.519 --> 00:20:17.200 Instead, he sends a messenger, a prophet. 00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:23.279 And before judgment falls, there's a call to repentance. 00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:26.079 God's holiness is real. 00:20:26.240 --> 00:20:29.440 His wrath against sin is genuine. 00:20:30.559 --> 00:20:34.960 But never forget that God's mercy is also very real. 00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:45.599 The command to go to Nineveh is not merely an act of divine judgment, it's an act of divine patience. 00:20:47.039 --> 00:20:56.559 The New Testament calls this out for the church, saying that God is patient with all of us, desiring everyone to come to repentance. 00:20:57.759 --> 00:21:01.519 And that is what Jonah could not stomach. 00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:11.440 It made him sick to think that God might grant repentance to those people. 00:21:26.559 --> 00:21:32.480 So Israel, Abraham's descendants was not chosen for their exclusivity. 00:21:33.119 --> 00:21:38.880 They were chosen to be a witness, a light to the nations. 00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:46.720 Israel was supposed to be the means through which the knowledge of Yahweh reached the world. 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:53.359 But they kind of developed a theology of privilege without mission. 00:21:54.640 --> 00:22:01.839 They sometimes acted like the Gentiles, everybody else was beyond the Reach of God's mercy. 00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:07.920 And the worse you were, the more beyond the reach of God's mercy you were. 00:22:09.759 --> 00:22:16.880 So the Assyrians would be the worst of the worst of the worst. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:36.079 And the idea that God, in his offended holiness, would send his prophet to those people with a message that might very well turn them from their destructive ways and grant them the mercy of God was offensive to this prophet. 00:22:39.359 --> 00:22:44.400 And friends, if we're honest with ourselves, the application of that is not comfortable. 00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:50.720 God's grace has always been wider than we want it to be. 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:54.960 We're generally happy, I hope. 00:22:55.200 --> 00:22:59.119 We are generally happy for God to show mercy to people like us. 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:02.240 That's great. 00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:09.519 If God is merciful and compassionate and gracious to people like me, that's wonderful. 00:23:09.839 --> 00:23:17.519 But what about the people who represent in your mind the moral sewer of our age? 00:23:19.519 --> 00:23:30.480 What about the city, the subculture, the group of people whose values strike you as the opposite of everything that God stands for? 00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:32.319 What about those people? 00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:44.240 We're not talking so much about the murderer on death row that God saves, although that fits. 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:58.079 We're talking about the moral filth that doesn't sit in prison but runs rampant in our society unchecked. 00:23:59.279 --> 00:24:05.440 That is an offense to a holy God, an offense to everything that God stands for, and is offensive to you. 00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:08.480 What if God sent you to them? 00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:16.799 God sent a prophet there. 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:20.640 God's mercy reached there. 00:24:22.799 --> 00:24:39.279 So Jonah's problem and our problem is that we sometimes wish that God would just judge somebody instead of being patiently merciful. 00:24:43.440 --> 00:24:44.640 That hurts. 00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:57.759 That I can sometimes wish that God would just judge instead of being patiently merciful. 00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:02.160 That hurts. 00:25:03.599 --> 00:25:07.759 Yahweh is a sovereign God who does not ask permission. 00:25:09.119 --> 00:25:18.559 And Yahweh is a God whose comments and commands sometimes offend our humanity. 00:25:20.240 --> 00:25:23.519 And in that situation, who's right and who's wrong? 00:25:23.839 --> 00:25:26.799 Is it our humanity that stands in the right? 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:30.880 Or is it God who stands in the right? 00:25:34.559 --> 00:25:36.720 Let's look now at verse three. 00:25:38.319 --> 00:25:42.799 At the prophet who runs from an omnipresent God. 00:25:45.279 --> 00:25:54.240 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from literally the face of Yahweh. 00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:56.960 So get that picture, get that image. 00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:00.640 What have we already seen is before the face of Yahweh? 00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:07.759 Sin, ugliness, filth, rampant terror. 00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:12.480 Everything that is opposed to God has arisen to God's face. 00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:19.920 And there is Jonah, and God wants Jonah to go to the filth, and Jonah runs from that face of God away. 00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:34.640 He goes down to Joppa, he finds a ship going to Tarshish, he pays the fare, he goes down into the boat to go with them to Tarshish away from the face of Yahweh. 00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:44.160 Everything changes here on two of the saddest words in all of Scripture. 00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:50.319 The two most glorious words in all of Scripture are but God. 00:26:51.599 --> 00:26:57.839 But the saddest words are when a human name fills that slot for God. 00:26:58.960 --> 00:27:03.519 It's not but God, it's but Jonah. 00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:12.400 But Jonah got up to flee from the presence of the Lord. 00:27:12.559 --> 00:27:15.440 So God said, get up and go. 00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:17.599 Verse 2, arise, go. 00:27:17.680 --> 00:27:20.960 So Jonah arose and goes in the opposite direction. 00:27:21.599 --> 00:27:27.279 God's given a command, and he just goes completely berserk, off to the other side. 00:27:28.960 --> 00:27:35.680 The two commands that open verse 2, get up and go, arise and go, are direct marching orders. 00:27:36.079 --> 00:27:42.000 Every Jewish reader would have known that those two prophetic commands are always obeyed. 00:27:42.160 --> 00:27:45.440 Prophets get up and go when God orders. 00:27:46.799 --> 00:27:52.000 Instead, Jonah takes God's command and reverses it. 00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:56.880 He gets up, yes, but he flees. 00:27:58.559 --> 00:28:02.960 He goes, yes, to Tarshish. 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:05.759 God said, go northeast. 00:28:06.160 --> 00:28:07.839 Jonah went west. 00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:17.759 He went to Tarshish, a location in the far western Mediterranean, a place that was in the ancient mind at the edge of the earth. 00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:20.480 God said, go toward the problem. 00:28:20.799 --> 00:28:27.759 Jonah tried to get the entire width of the known world between himself and where God wanted him to be. 00:28:30.400 --> 00:28:35.599 And now notice what our brilliant narrator does. 00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:44.640 He begins a pattern that runs through the entire first chapter and is one of the most artful pieces of narrative theology in this book. 00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:53.119 The narrator traces Jonah's path from the hilly highlands of Israel down to sea level and even more. 00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:56.000 Jonah went down to Joppa. 00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:01.839 He went down into the ship. 00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:07.440 In the very next verse, he will go down into the inner part of the ship to sleep. 00:29:07.680 --> 00:29:12.240 And later in the storm, he will go down to the bottom of the sea. 00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:19.119 And even in his prayer from inside the fish, he describes going down to the roots of the mountains. 00:29:20.960 --> 00:29:25.200 The narrator makes a theological point about Jonah's descent. 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:28.240 God told Jonah to do what? 00:29:28.880 --> 00:29:32.079 Get up and go. 00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:37.599 He got up and then went down. 00:29:39.119 --> 00:29:39.680 Down. 00:29:43.119 --> 00:29:47.599 God's word required an upward kind of obedience. 00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:54.880 But Jonah fled down, down, down, down. 00:29:56.480 --> 00:30:01.119 Every step away from God's calling is a step downward. 00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:07.440 Jonah will keep going down until he can go no further. 00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:15.759 And it's only there at the darkness at the bottom of the sea that he finally begins to look up. 00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:24.160 Jonah is trying to run away from an omnipresent God. 00:30:25.680 --> 00:30:27.839 What does that big theological word mean? 00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:31.279 God is present everywhere. 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:35.200 God is present everywhere. 00:30:36.079 --> 00:30:38.559 Now Jonah's a prophet already. 00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:43.200 As a prophet, Jonah has been involved in Israel's worship. 00:30:43.519 --> 00:30:45.359 He likely knows God's word. 00:30:45.599 --> 00:30:48.240 He likely knows Israel's hymn book. 00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:50.319 He knew his Psalms. 00:30:50.400 --> 00:30:57.119 And he had surely sung Psalm 139 that says, Where can I go from your presence? 00:30:58.240 --> 00:31:00.559 Where can I go from your spirit? 00:31:01.279 --> 00:31:04.720 If I go up to the heavens, you're there. 00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:11.440 If I make my bed in Sheol, in death, you're there. 00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:15.200 What does Jonah think he's doing? 00:31:16.799 --> 00:31:18.319 He's gone nuts. 00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:25.599 He is fleeing from the face of Yahweh who cannot be escaped. 00:31:28.559 --> 00:31:36.160 Jonah knew that we cannot run, outrun God, or find a place where God is not. 00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:40.000 So what is Jonah doing? 00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:43.519 I think Jonah's resigning. 00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:56.400 The phrase from the presence of Yahweh is used in the Old Testament often for the sphere of divine service in the tabernacle, in the temple, and in the sphere of prophetic ministry. 00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:01.519 Jonah's not fleeing from God's location, from where God is. 00:32:04.079 --> 00:32:06.720 He's abandoning God's commission. 00:32:09.279 --> 00:32:26.480 He's handing in his prophetic credentials, as it were, and walking away from this role, from this calling, and headed to a place where no one would know who he is, no one would know his background, nobody would know his history, nobody would know he was a prophet, no one would expect anything from him. 00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:29.359 He didn't want to hear from God anymore. 00:32:31.279 --> 00:32:33.759 And he even paid for the ticket himself. 00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:36.640 He paid the fare. 00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:43.039 He was going far away, so the cost couldn't be cheap. 00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:48.559 But we need to understand that this is not a moment of confusion. 00:32:50.400 --> 00:32:51.920 Jonah bought in. 00:32:53.279 --> 00:32:54.720 He was committed. 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:57.599 He was deliberate. 00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:02.640 But here's what's convicting about that. 00:33:03.359 --> 00:33:07.440 Jonah didn't run because he doubted God's existence. 00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:13.519 He didn't run because he doubted God's authority to command. 00:33:13.759 --> 00:33:20.240 Jonah didn't run because he questioned the reality of God's service for him. 00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:23.519 He didn't run because he lost his faith. 00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:26.240 His problem was not unbelief. 00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:32.319 He ran because his theology was too small for the God he served. 00:33:33.039 --> 00:33:40.000 And because what God was asking of him collided with what Jonah wanted for himself and his people. 00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:44.559 Jonah's problem was not unbelief. 00:33:46.240 --> 00:33:54.480 His problem was a small, boxed-in, self-serving cultural version of God. 00:33:55.599 --> 00:34:02.960 A God that he quietly remade into something manageable and comfortable and thought that he could take care of. 00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:16.880 And when the real God broke through that box with a word that shattered every image Jonah had, he chose his own remade version of God and fled. 00:34:19.920 --> 00:34:23.199 Now we don't generally run to Tarshish. 00:34:25.199 --> 00:34:35.039 When we hear God calling us to obedience, to action, to trust, to faith, we generally don't run to Tarshish. 00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:55.360 But there is a way of filling our lives with so many things that we become so full of other things that the word of God never quite has room to settle in in a way that leads to obedience. 00:34:57.519 --> 00:35:04.079 The things we fill our lives with end up pushing out God's word. 00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:24.320 There's a way of keeping ourselves so occupied, so distracted, so committed to other pursuits that we effectively end up ignoring what God says, even though what he says is unignorable. 00:35:26.559 --> 00:35:30.400 The form changes, but the direction is always the same. 00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:42.880 When we ignore God, we go down and away and further from the life God intends, and we go down, down, down and down. 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:50.320 That's where this story begins. 00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:56.880 But we are reading this story from a New Testament perspective. 00:35:57.760 --> 00:36:03.519 We're looking back at history, being able to see the full scope. 00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:12.159 And the great mercy of this story is the mercy that will fuel every element of the rest of this book. 00:36:12.239 --> 00:36:20.400 And it's the mercy that you already know, and that is expressed very clearly in Psalm 23, verse 6. 00:36:21.039 --> 00:36:27.519 That verse often is translated, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. 00:36:27.679 --> 00:36:30.400 But the Hebrew verb is much stronger than that. 00:36:30.719 --> 00:36:33.840 It means to pursue, to chase down. 00:36:34.159 --> 00:36:37.280 It's the image of a hunter chasing after prey. 00:36:41.039 --> 00:36:45.760 God's goodness and mercy do not merely trail behind us. 00:36:47.599 --> 00:36:56.800 God isn't like a hunter tracking prey very slowly and carefully and cautiously because he knows where we are. 00:36:57.760 --> 00:36:59.599 He knows how far down we've gone. 00:36:59.679 --> 00:37:01.280 He knows how far we've sailed. 00:37:01.519 --> 00:37:07.199 He knows exactly what to do and where to go and how quickly, and he chases, he pursues. 00:37:09.679 --> 00:37:12.880 Goodness and mercy chase God's sheep down. 00:37:13.039 --> 00:37:14.480 They do not give up. 00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:25.840 And the man who thought that he could go down far enough to escape God will discover over the next three chapters that God's mercy is faster than his flight. 00:37:27.119 --> 00:37:32.719 Jonah will learn that human resistance to God's sovereign grace is futile. 00:37:35.440 --> 00:37:36.719 Three verses. 00:37:38.480 --> 00:37:44.880 One God, one commission, one refusal. 00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:49.840 And already the book is convicting. 00:37:50.800 --> 00:37:53.840 It's convicting because it challenges our view of God. 00:37:55.039 --> 00:38:09.599 It forces us to ask whether the God we believe in is the God who actually is, or the God that we're trying to confine, to make smaller and more manageable so that we can live in our own comfort. 00:38:11.199 --> 00:38:15.440 It's convicting because it challenges our response to God's word. 00:38:16.159 --> 00:38:29.920 It forces us to ask whether we treat Scripture as an event that happens to us, that lays claim on our lives, or merely as background noise that we can turn down to a more comfortable volume. 00:38:32.320 --> 00:38:50.000 And it challenges our willingness to be God's vessels for purposes that stretch beyond what we can imagine, and that challenge our preferences, our comfort levels, our natural sympathies towards certain people or people groups. 00:38:51.599 --> 00:38:54.559 Friends, Jonah wasn't running in ignorance. 00:38:55.519 --> 00:38:59.360 He was willfully avoiding what he already knew. 00:39:01.199 --> 00:39:04.079 God's word happened to him. 00:39:05.760 --> 00:39:08.000 He understood a prophet's commission. 00:39:09.199 --> 00:39:11.760 He knew that prophets get up and go. 00:39:22.079 --> 00:39:24.559 You may be in a version of that moment right now. 00:39:26.719 --> 00:39:33.840 The word has come to you through scripture, through prayer, through the patient work of God's Spirit in your conscience. 00:39:34.559 --> 00:39:37.440 And you know what God says. 00:39:39.360 --> 00:39:40.480 You've heard it. 00:39:41.119 --> 00:39:42.480 You hear it echoing. 00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:49.039 The question is whether you will arise and go or whether you will buy a ticket to get you away from God's voice. 00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:56.239 But my friend, know that you cannot outrun God's goodness and mercy. 00:39:57.840 --> 00:39:59.360 He will chase you down. 00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:05.199 The good news of this book is that God does not abandon his people when they run. 00:40:06.880 --> 00:40:08.239 He pursues. 00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:15.280 Yes, that pursuit might come with discipline, but it will also come with restoration. 00:40:15.920 --> 00:40:18.719 But that process is rarely painless. 00:40:20.239 --> 00:40:33.920 And Jonah's story is an invitation really to spare yourself that going down, down, down by simply turning right now in the direction that God has called you. 00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:42.639 And first and foremost, that direction is to hear the word of God and to respond in obedience. 00:40:44.719 --> 00:40:46.400 May we be people who do that. 00:40:46.639 --> 00:40:47.599 Would you pray with me? 00:40:47.920 --> 00:40:48.880 Lord Jesus. 00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:54.880 Open our hearts to receive your word. 00:40:56.639 --> 00:41:05.440 To not shut it off and to put it in a file cabinet in the back of our minds and lock the door so that it doesn't come out. 00:41:07.039 --> 00:41:08.320 But to be convicted by it. 00:41:08.400 --> 00:41:12.960 May your spirit do a work of conviction in us to make us more into the image of Jesus. 00:41:14.159 --> 00:41:22.800 Cause us to hear your word and to know that you are a merciful God who chases us down to save us. 00:41:23.199 --> 00:41:25.760 In reality, to rescue us from ourselves. 00:41:28.239 --> 00:41:31.440 Cause us to turn to you even now. 00:41:33.760 --> 00:41:45.840 As our judge, who judges our sin, but who does it in a saving way by judging our sin in Jesus Christ, who becomes the Lord of our salvation. 00:41:47.280 --> 00:41:54.239 Lord Jesus, direct our hearts now and our minds to you, from Jonah to you. 00:41:56.000 --> 00:41:57.920 For your praise and your glory. 00:41:58.239 --> 00:41:58.880 Amen. 00:42:00.960 --> 00:42:04.719 That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church. 00:42:04.880 --> 00:42:11.760 Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus. 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:16.079 You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.