Man on the Run!

Jonah 1:1-6

God's Relentless Grace

Transcript

The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up
before me. But Jonah rose to flee from Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord.
He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare
and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the
Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty
tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners
were afraid and cried out to his God. And they hurled the cargo that was in the
ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner
part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to
him. What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God
will give a thought to us that we may not perish. Jonah is thrown into the sea.
And they said one to another, come, let us cast lots. That way we know on whose
account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
Then they said to him, tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What
is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country and what people
are you? He said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven
who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said
to him, what is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing
from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Then they said to him,
what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew
more and more temptuous. He said to them, pick me up, hurl me into the sea. Then
the sea will quiet down for you. For I know that because of me that this great
tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry
land, but they could not. For the sea grew more and more temptuous against them.
Therefore they called out to the Lord, oh Lord, let us not perish for this man's
life and lay not on us innocent blood. For you, oh Lord, have done it as pleased
you. So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea and the sea ceased from
raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to
the Lord and made vows. A great fish swallows Jonah. And the Lord appointed a
great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish these three
days and three nights. These are the precious words of God Almighty. Amen. Let's
take a minute and pray together. Father, we thank you that we're able to come in
this way and hear your word. And at this time we invite your Holy Spirit to
speak to us through your word. Help us to place ourselves under its authority
and power. Help us to respond to your word as you would see fit. We pray that
you would apply it to our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. So for the next five
weeks, we will be working through, the plan is to work through the book of Jonah
in the next five weeks. This is one of my favorite books in the Bible. And I
know that most people, when they think about Jonah, wanna know whether it was a
whale, whether some other really weird fish, whether a person could really
survive in there inside a giant sea creature for more than a few minutes. They
wonder sometimes whether the story of Jonah is really meant to be historical.
And we'll get to those questions later in the sermon series. But Jonah is not
primarily about the fish. Jonah is about the relentless grace of God. Grace is
when God gives his unearned favor to another. None of us earn God's favor. Any
relationship we have with God is based on his grace. We are people who run and
hide from God. We fall short of his standard. We have no ability to work our way
back to God. But Christianity is not about what you have to do to get into God's
favorable standing. It is about what Jesus has already done. And most of you,
many of you have heard that before. But Jonah communicates concepts of sin and
of grace through a powerful story. Jonah's a real person. He lived in the eighth
century BC. He was a prophet from a place called Gath-Hephir. He was an
Israelite. And he is actually a character in another book of the Old Testament.
Jonah's mentioned in the book of 2 Kings. And he prophesied during the reign of
Jeroboam II. So to give you a little background, Jeroboam II was an evil king,
the son of Jeroboam I. But God actually, during that time period, gave Jonah a
positive, prophetic message during that reign. And Jonah's message was
fulfilled. And Israel expanded its borders during that time. I'll just read this
short passage from 2 Kings, speaking of Jeroboam II, to provide us with some
background on Jonah's ministry. So 2 Kings 14, 24, and 25 says that, he, that's
Jeroboam II, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from
the sins of Jeroboam, his father, the son of Nebat, which he had made Israel to
sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-Hammoth as far as the Sea of the
Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by
his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath-Hephir. So
before the story of Jonah begins, Jonah had been able to give what would have
been a popular and well-received message to his own people, the Israelites, and
it was fulfilled. Now, in this book, the word of the Lord comes to Jonah again.
His job is to proclaim that word. That's what a prophet does. But now it's a
different audience. He is supposed to go to Nineveh, which is the capital city
of Assyria. These are not his people. These are his enemies. They're the enemies
of the Israelites. And the message that he's being given is a message of
judgment. The Lord says to Jonah, "'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, "'and
call out against it, "'for their evil has come up before me.'" That idea of
rising evil, it kind of brings to mind Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis. And
Jonah is being told to go to this dangerous, violent place. The Assyrians were
legendary for their cruelty and their violence, and they're enemies of the
nation of Israel. So this is like, we don't know exactly, but let's say 760, 770
BC in the eighth century. By 722, so another 40, 50 years, the northern kingdom,
which is Israel, would be overthrown by Assyrian invaders. These are enemies of
Israel. And yet, God commissions Jonah to go to these people. We're gonna go
through these first six verses today, and we'll see three parts. First, there's
the commissioning when God calls Jonah. Second, Jonah's response, he runs away.
And third, God pursues. Jonah is about God's relentless grace. And what we'll
see today is God is pursuing the proud prophet. God is pursuing the pagans, the
pluralistic sailors on board Jonah's boat. And he's pursuing the violent and
wicked and Ninevites that Jonah does not wanna preach to. God is full of grace
and full of mercy towards Jonah, towards the Ninevites, and toward the mariners.
God pursues the proud, that's Jonah, the powerful, that's the Ninevites, and the
pluralists, that's the sailors. And he pursues them through the storm. So let's
get into our text, and we'll start with this commissioning of Jonah. Now the
word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up
before me. So the word of the Lord comes to Jonah. That's a typical prophetic
formulation in the Old Testament. Jonah's being told by God to deliver a message
to Nineveh. Nineveh's the capital city of Assyria, it's 120,000 people, that's a
huge, powerful city in the ancient world, and Jonah's being told to deliver this
message of impending judgment. Obviously, that's frightening, that's dangerous.
You can imagine the danger that Jonah would potentially put himself in if he
went and did that. Just compare the two messages for a moment. First, there's
this prophetic message we read about in 2 Kings. Tell your home country that God
is going to expand their borders. Then secondly, tell your worst enemies that
it's time to repent, because God's going to judge them. This is, like I said,
this is a powerful, wicked city. Who knows what would happen if Jonah, as a
Hebrew, goes there and starts preaching about judgment and repentance? He could
be captured, he could be incarcerated, he could face death. So Jonah considers
his alternatives and he chooses to flee. And we might think that it's because of
the danger of the mission, that Jonah's acting kind of out of this self-
preservation, I can't do that. But we don't actually get the real answer for his
fleeing until chapter four. The actual reason is not that it seemed like a
suicide mission and that Jonah was sure it would be dangerous. The actual reason
is that Jonah was concerned that the Ninevites might actually listen and repent.
Look at what Jonah says in chapter four after God does indeed relent from
sending judgment on the Ninevites. And the Ninevites do respond to the message
of judgment. The beginning of chapter four says, "'But it displeased Jonah
exceedingly, and he was angry. "'And he prayed to the Lord and said, "'O Lord,
is not this what I said "'when I was yet in my country? "'That is why I made
haste to flee to Tarshish, "'for I knew that you are a gracious God and
merciful, "'slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love "'and relenting from
disaster. "'Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, "'for it's
better for me to die than to live.' And the Lord said, "'Do you do well to be
angry?'" It enrages Jonah that God chooses to show grace to the Ninevites. They
were enemies of his people. You might notice that in Jonah's anger, he quotes
one of the pivotal passages of the Old Testament, Exodus 34, where God reveals
himself to Moses. You read references to God's character throughout the Old
Testament that come from Exodus 34, including the passage that we read for our
confession this morning from Psalm 103. God is merciful, slow to anger,
abounding in steadfast love. Those are truths about God's character that bring
us to worship. Jonah turns that revelation of God into an accusation because it
angers him that God's grace and mercy and patience and love are being shown to
his worst enemies. And part of our sinful nature is we have this very deep
desire to feel like we are superior to other people. For Jonah, it was his
ethnicity, it was his spiritual heritage that made him feel like he was superior
to other people. Later on in chapter one, when Jonah's identified as the cause
of the storm, and when he asks about what's going on, he says without any
seeming sense of the irony of what he's saying, he says, "'I'm a Hebrew, and I
fear the Lord, the God of heaven "'who made the sea and the dry land.'" He was
one of God's chosen people. Today, we don't think in those, probably in those
exact terms, but for you, it might be something different that we cling to as a
means of our self-righteousness or superiority. It could be our families, it
could be our intelligence, it could be our incomes, it could be our knowledge,
it could be our possessions. One of those things that we kind of look to and
think tips favorably in our scale so that we might appear better than others.
The Nin of us, we're the ones that are the ones that are the ones that deserve
God's grace, the Nin of us, we're the ones that deserve God's grace, according
to Jonah. And he's right about that. They do not deserve God's grace. If you go
to the British Museum in London, or if you sit at home and take a virtual tour
on your laptop like I did this week, you can see the exhibit on Assyrian
violence from around this time period. The Assyrian art celebrates violence and
shows how they would torture the people, their enemies and ransack their cities.
The artwork celebrates their brutality and their conquest. Jonah's right, they
did not deserve God's grace. Where he's wrong is in thinking that he was any
more deserving. None of us deserve grace, we're equally undeserving. And one way
to test ourselves, how well we're grasping this is to ask yourself, how much
grace are you able to give to others? People who have a sense of that they have
received God's undeserved mercy can treat other people with grace, it overflows
from them. How easily does grace overflow in your thoughts, and in your words
and your actions toward others? Could be to your siblings, could be to your
spouse, to your boss, to your coworkers, maybe to the people that annoy you the
most. Jonah is a prophet, but he does not want to preach to the Ninevites. So
like the prodigal son, he runs away into the far country. God commissions him,
but he flees. Our text says, Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish, from the presence
of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he
paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the
presence of the Lord. You see that phrase twice, from the presence of the Lord.
That's what Jonah's trying to escape from. Well, we know, and Jonah knew, God is
omnipresent. You cannot escape from God in that sense. You cannot find a
geographical place where God is not at. Psalm 139, David says, "'Where shall I
go from your spirit? "'Where shall I flee from your presence? "'If I ascend to
heaven, you are there. "'If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.'" Jonah's a
Hebrew prophet, he knows that. It's not as though he believes that Tarshish is
literally a place where God is not at, but he is trying to escape, let's call it
the felt presence of God. He's trying to get away from the hand of God, pressing
down on him, which he feels when he has received the word and does not want to
obey it. So Nineveh and Tarshish are in completely opposite directions.
Nineveh's the capital of Assyria. That's northeast of Israel, so it's in modern
day Iraq. When Jonah heard that he was supposed to go there, he went to Joppa,
which is a coastal city in Israel on the Mediterranean Sea, and he got on a ship
going to Spain. This would be the equivalent of you and I sitting in Buffalo
receiving a mission from God to go to Maine and going to the airport and buying
a ticket to Alaska. So Jonah goes to Joppa, and lo and behold, there's a ship
headed for Spain. When we try to run from God, and we try to avoid his presence
and ignore his word, there's always going to be a ship available. That
opportunity is going to present itself. If there's something that we are
ignoring from God, some sin that we are not repenting of, some way in which we
try to live independently of God, well, lo and behold, that opportunity is going
to present itself. So Jonah goes down to Joppa, and hey, look, there's a ship.
It's going to Spain. And notice how deliberate the language gets as we see Jonah
is descending into spiritual darkness and death. He went to Joppa, he found a
ship, paid the fare, he went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from
the presence of the Lord. It's going all the way in. He's a man on the run,
descending towards spiritual death. He's trying to get away. In fact, his
descent ultimately goes as far as the depths of the sea. He heard God's word,
it's pressing down on him, so he's got to get out of there as fast as he could.
And how often are we like that? So this story begins with a man running away
from God and trying to hide. If we go back in our Bibles, that's the first thing
that Adam and Eve did when they sinned against God. And like our first parents,
we inherit their ways. We each have our ways of running and hiding from what God
requires and from getting out of his felt presence. We have our ways of
distracting ourselves or rationalizing. And Jonah goes out on the path to
spiritual death in his stubborn pride. He'd rather trust in his own wisdom than
in God's because it's not right that God would have compassion on his enemies.
And as Jonah pays the fare and boards the boat and leaves his old prophetic
ministry behind, here's what he would like. Just a smooth passage, just a safe
trip to Spain. He just wants to sleep and not think about things for a little
while. Is that too much to ask? How many of you can identify with that? We have
our ways of running and hiding and we may feel an uneasiness or a guiltiness,
but we want to avoid that. We don't want to deal with it. We don't want it to
be, maybe we're convicted about something, but we don't really want to think
about it. It seems like a whole big thing. Be easier to just not think about it.
So God, in his great mercy, sends a storm. We don't generally think about the
storms in our lives as expressions of God's mercy. That's exactly what this is.
God commissions Jonah, Jonah flees, God sends a storm. Verse four, but the Lord
hurled a great wind upon the sea. There's a mighty tempest on the sea so that
the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid and each cried
out to his God and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to
lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and
had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, what do
you mean you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a
thought to us that we may not perish. When the storm hits, Jonah's asleep. He's
doing a pretty good job forgetting about his mission and silencing his
conscience. He's gone all the way down into the bottom of the boat. And the
Lord, the God who's sovereign over all of nature, hurls a great wind to the
point where the shipwreck seems imminent. People feel like the boat's gonna
break up. Everyone's life is in danger up above board. And the mariners who we
could assume are experienced sailors and have seen some wind before are afraid.
They all start crying out to their own gods. You can see in the text the little
G gods. You notice that that is referring to whatever deities it is that these
men worship. And it's a picture of our pluralistic society today. When I say
pluralism, I just mean the many things that people worship or put their trust
in. Some are explicitly religious, some are not. We know this, right? Some
people believe that all roads lead to heaven. Some people believe in good karma.
Some people believe in mindfulness and meditation. Some people just say, my
religion is to practice kindness. Some people believe in the magic power of
tidying up. And all of that is fine when life is going well and you feel like
you're on top of things. But then when death is imminent and the storm is raging
and in the darkest moments of life, when people realize this might be it, it all
feels really stupid and inadequate. And God in his mercy uses this storm to help
the mariners realize our gods are powerless. There's this brilliant wordplay
here where God hurls a great wind and in response, the mariners hurl cargo.
They're doing everything they can to lighten the load, to get the ship to calm
down, but they're powerless. The wind is coming from the creator of the world
and they're throwing whatever that might be, grain in suitcases. It's like when
you arm wrestle with a toddler, like they're trying, but it's pathetic. It's so
weak, you have to laugh. And the mariners are powerless in the middle of the
storm. Meanwhile, there is a man who has the answers to what is going on, but he
is sound asleep in the bottom of the ship. In the New Testament in Acts chapter
27, it's interesting, Paul the Apostle and his companions, they encounter a
life-threatening storm on their way to Rome. And while everyone on board panics,
Paul functions as a faithful preacher of God's word and witnesses to the power
of God. That is not what's happening here. Jonah, the man of God is asleep. So
the captain rushes down to the bottom of the ship and says, what do you mean you
sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us
that we may not perish. Imagine a boat with a hundred people on it and each
person had a scratch off ticket. And unless the people, unless someone on the
boat had a winner, everyone was going to sink. That's kind of what the captain
is saying. Like wake up brother and scratch that ticket. We're about to go down.
We need every chance we can get. God is overflowing with compassion and with
grace, but it's not only for us. For Jonah, us meant him, his nation. God is
full of grace and compassion for us and for them. There's a great irony here.
The captain is just throwing darts among a variety of gods and hoping that one
will stick. He says, perhaps the God, still small G, will give a thought to us
that we may not perish. But God is thinking of them. He's pursuing Jonah and
these mariners through the storm. And there's great contrast here, of course,
between Jonah's unwillingness to go to a rebellious people. And then Jesus's
willingness to go to a sinful people. When we read the Old Testament, we read it
in light of Jesus. And in this way, it's by way of contrast. Jesus was sent by
God to lower himself and to preach the good news to people who were living as
enemies of God, who were separated from God. And the Gospel of Mark chapter four
tells us of a time when a violent windstorm came upon the Sea of Galilee, enough
to panic the disciples, enough to panic experienced mariners or people that have
fishermen, men who'd been on the sea. And like Jonah, Jesus was asleep in the
storm. And the disciples come to him and they say, teacher, do you not care that
we are perishing? In the storms of life, this is where we often go. Maybe we
verbalize it out loud, or maybe we just think it in our heads. Does God even
care? Does he even, is he really even involved in any way in this situation?
Does he have anything to do with it really? That's what the disciples are asking
Jesus in their fear. We're dying out here, do you even care? And Jesus
demonstrates his power over nature in that moment by calming the wind and the
sea. But he does far more than simply calm our circumstances. And usually when
we pray, that's the best that we're hoping for. But Jesus, unlike Jonah, shows
that he does care, not only by calming the wind and the waves, but by giving his
own life. And that's when we see God's grace towards sinners most clearly
through Jesus's death on the cross. That's where God's mercy towards the
undeserving is seen when God sends his son to suffer in our place. God pursues
proud people and prejudiced people like Jonah. God pursues powerful and wicked
people like the Ninevites. God pursues pluralistic people who have a whole
pantheon of gods and then realize when life gets real that none of them help.
And he pursues them through the storm. And if you have a storm in your life
today, and by that I just mean some unasked for crisis, it may be the mercy of
God. You will notice as we read the book of Jonah over the next five weeks, it
does not resolve like a traditional story. The questions that we would have as
normal readers, how big is the fish, what was the fish, how did Jonah survive,
what happened to Jonah, it ends with a question. The whole book was not written
to tell us what happened to Jonah, it's to make us reflect on our own hearts and
on our own spiritual condition. So for example, am I proud? Do I think that the
grace of God is for me, for my friends, for my family, but I'm not that excited
about the grace of God extending to others, especially my enemies, especially
people that offend me, especially people that I don't like. Am I living in
stubborn, sinful rebellion to God? Am I trusting in my strategies or my man-made
methods or ways of getting to God, or am I simply trusting in Jesus and his work
on the cross? God's grace is relentless for all of us, the proud, the powerful,
and the pluralists, and God's grace may come through circumstances that you are
not asking for. So let's pray now and we'll turn to God. Lord God, we thank you
for your great grace shown to us in Jesus Christ.