The God We Try To Escape
Jonah 1
Introduction
The central question, at the heart of the story of Jonah is simply this:
Who do you not want to be sitting next to in church?
It seems at first hearing an odd question, but it's an incredibly relevant question for the times we live in. The world is fractured and becoming more so. With the growing majority of people receiving their daily news intake from their social media feeds, the algorithms that curate your life, mean that you have less experience of being 'meaningfully' with people who think differently to you, than you would have ten years ago.
Whichever subgroups you belong to, you are encouraged to pick a side!
When I was at uni we were told to worry about a world where everyone was so tolerant of everyone else, there was no space to talk about sin. Now, there is no toleration of differences, and everyone is a sinner apart from you and your tribe.
So, who do you not want to be sat next to in church?
- Who makes you feel uncomfortable?
- whose presence would make you feel like you didn't belong?
- who walking through the doors on a Sunday would be a distraction from your worship not a catalyst for your praise to God?
For this is the question that Jonah wrestles with in this short OT book that we're going to be looking at over these next few weeks.
Link
Christian or non-Xian we're probably familiar with [1:17]
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights
But are you as familiar about how he got there?
Look at [4:1-3] , Just after God has saved the people of Nineveh -
We learn that Jonah ‘crashes out.’ Not because he thinks God has asked him to do the impossible, but rather he thinks God will definitely do it and although it's in God's plan to include the Assyrians from Nineveh around the family table of the children of God, that's not in Jonah's plan and he's furious.
Jonah is an example of a mission strategy built around racial discrimination.
Structure
- How did Jonah get here?
- How do we not make that mistake?
Point 1: How did Jonah get here?
[1], starts like the beginning of a Mission In Possible movie, Jonah agent of the Lord receives his new assignment: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’
This is a big assignment! It would be like you tomorrow morning with your quiet time in the morning, sipping a cappuccino and flicking through the Bible, and God declares to you in an unmistakable way that you’re to immediately find a way to get into Kabul, go to the middle of the city that is controlled by Taliban fighters, and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ with mega-phone.
But remember Jonah isn't daunted by this, as you or I would be. He knows God can do it, that God can bring revival – with his eyes shut.
So why doesn't Jonah say 'Yes – with bells on!'
Because Jonah is likely to be a nationalistic bigot.
2 Kings 14 tells us that he was a famous prophet, preacher, holy-man during the reign of King Jeroboam II. This king ruled over the northern kingdom of Israel when it was economically strong, and militarily powerful.
In fact [2 Kings 14:23-25] tells us that during this period Israel expanded its boarders like never before. This was an era of,
- slogans like: 'Northern Kingdom First',
- flags on lampposts,
- national security spending at its highest,
- Boarder controls would have been the national conversation.
And who was the mouthpiece for this era of nationalist expansionism?
who would have done the podcast rounds of straight-talking 'Make-Isreal-Great-Again'?
Who would have been on the GB News equivalent of a phone-in show?
[2 Kings 14] tells us it was Jonah.
But before you label Jonah as an unhinged far right influencer, you need to know that the fear he felt about Isreal's boarders being vulnerable to their Assyrian neighbours was a real threat.
According to history books, let me give you a flavour of the horror of the Assyrian war machine:
“Many captives from among them I burned with fire, and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears and their fingers, of many I put out the eyes. I made a pillar of the living and another of heads, and I bound their heads to tree trunks about the city. Their young men and maidens I burned in the fire.”
Other accounts describes the Assyrian practice of building pillar beside the gates of capture cities, using only the flayed skin and impaled bodies of captured soldiers.
No wonder Jonah doesn't want to contradict his career messaging!
No wonder Jonah get’s an Uber to the nearest ferry port and gets on, a ship headed to Tarshish which is modern day spain, because it is precisely in the opposite direction to Nineveh. It would be like you being called by God to do an incredibly difficult task and instead taking the next Ryanair flight to the Algarve. And who could blame him!
So if this is what caused Jonah to be on this ship [3], what warning can we learn from Jonah's understandable but mistaken belief that you can go against the will of God.
For those of us who would consider ourselves to be mature believers, this passage should make us feel uncomfortable.
Jonah was an experienced believer, with public reputation and acknowledged gifts for serving God’s people, and yet he’s clearly not in a good place and the storm (4) is designed to wrench him back to senses.
Jonah has two symptoms of a cold heart towards God; all believers should pay attention to in themselves:
1. Talk of mission becomes a burden not a joy.
For Jonah it should be a joyful picture of God’s unrelenting grace that he is giving the Assyrians a second chance, and opportunity to experience the undeserved mercy of God.
But Jonah’s bitterness, ‘how it makes him feel uncomfortable’ is stronger.
It is easy for us to find ourselves here too.
“More new people coming through the door, what about my friends, my feelings?”
“I wouldn’t mind so much if the people we were reaching were more like me, more my age, more my stage of life.”
You can always tell when churches begin to lose their way, because the conversations between believers shifts away from swapping stories of Gospel sharing amongst our friends and colleagues and drifts towards grumbling of personal preferences that have not been satisfied.
[young preacher]
Every dying church I’ve ever worked with, has always had a single thing in common, for the believers that remained - the service experience was precisely to their liking; they just didn’t have enough people to keep it going.
Call a spade a spade: mission is an invitation to glorious discomfort, you can either obey or run.
You can tell if you’re running, if you have no recent memory of sharing your faith with a colleague or inviting a friend to church.
Because if its true that Bible Society research says that 31% of non-church goers say they would attend church if invited by a friend or family member, rising to 34 per cent among 18–24-year-olds. And 56% would be happy for a Christian friend to pray for them,
Would suggest, if we have chosen to be silent, it says more about our discomfort than our friends or colleagues hardness to Christianity.
The second mark of Jonah -
2. You know the right thing to do but you ignore it anyway.
Perhaps the most obvious mark of Jonah in a believer’s life is, is knowing the right thing to do but choosing intentionally to do the opposite.
After-all, remember Jonah’s issue is not that he didn’t know better. He was man of God, a famous prophet, national reputation.
He doesn't run because he theologically thinks God can’t find him like an episode of Hunted, nor does he think this stunt will twists God's arm to change his mind.
Jonah runs away in the same way that you and I run from God sometimes physically but mostly in terms of obedience – because it’s protest!
To date a non-Christian despite having no intention to marry one, is akin to child who tantrums when their parent refuses to buy them an ice-cream that they found.
Most Christians who have the mark of Jonah know what they ought to be doing, or not doing,
- and they know that they are mad with God,
- and they know that they are stubbornly seeking what they shouldn’t
- or avoiding what they shouldn’t.
For Jonah God was making his family too inclusive
For you it could be God is making his rules for sexual expression too restrictive.
For you it could be that God isn’t protective enough when his people face health, financial or career challenges.
But the question is, does this sound familiar to you?
If the answer is ‘Yes’ your heart should be pounding now because Jonah 1 is a real warning, that God’s purposes will not be foiled by our cold hearted tantrums.
And if God intends to use you in his plan, he will come for you, find you, and shake your world to pieces if that wakes you up to your senses.
[Running away to Vietnam]
Point 2: How do we not make that mistake?
So how then so we make sure that our hearts don’t become as hard as Jonah’s?
If you’re not yet a Christian and wondering how do I fit into this passage, take a look at the sailors on the boat.
They are from Phonecia which is the ancient world version of Amazon delivery. They are not Israelites and are well outside the natural people of God.
They are caught in the storm and they are scared.
[6] they are spiritually aware, they believe that there are supernatural forces in their world.
[10] they recognise that they’re in real trouble, they are harbouring on their boat fugitive from the God of the universe.
[I: Holly Ratchford]
What would these sailors expectation be in the light of this realisation that they have inadvertently become the getaway drivers to God’s number one runaway.
Quite simply, that just as Jonah is the object of God’s just judgement, they would share that judgement too.
You can see why in [14] – “Are we going to make the situation worse if we throw this guy to his death overboard?”
Can you see the drama of the moment? As the storm of judgement grows, they realise that, they have one last role of the dice, the only way they can save themselves is by taking an almighty risk:
take this prophet (someone precious to God) and let him die so that they all can live.
You can see, that they’ve tried everything else possible to save themselves.
You can imagine, they have fought the storm, thrown their worldly treasures into the sea,
But as the waves break over the boat and the timbers crack as the boat fills, it all comes down to this: Jonah must die if they are to live.
If you’re not yet a Christian that right there is exactly the same path you will also have to take if you want to be right with God.
[Gospel]
But there’s something I want you to see if you not get a Christian or if you’ve been a Christian for years.
Look at [16], the storm is gone, the sailors have survived, and they – worship.
Why would these outsiders, these non-Israelites worship the God of the Bible?
Because they were this close to losing it all, and yet God in his mercy saved them against all the odds – and when you’ve had a near miss, snatched from destruction like that, it changes your life.
When I say 'near miss' I'm not talking about: God was surprised you survived too. I'm saying from our, human perspective, I can't believe I survived, I can't believe that somehow, nothing to do with me, somehow, I was snatched from destruction .
[car accident] – even to this day…"I made vows"
But we also witnessed another accident [girl on her phone].
You see, the key difference between those two responses is whether or not you know you were snatched from destruction You could have been destroyed, odds were that you should never have made it, yet you live.
It’s also the key difference between those who are cold hearted runaways and those who obediently love the Lord and will follow him wherever he calls - no matter how hard!
Paul [1 tim. 1:15]
15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.
In other words he knows he was snatched from destruction - that’s why in the light of God's mercy he travels around the Roman world planting churches and sharing the Gospel.
But then there’s Peter [Galatians 2:12-14] who used to have so much passion for the gospel, and yet he forgets, he forgets grace, he forgets 'the near miss' and thinks he belongs because he was born a Jew – and his heart grows cold.
And he becomes like Jonah and pulls away from the gentiles.
Or there is my friend Amy.
With months to left to live, she decided to be recorded in her church, by every slow and painful word, pushed out with every effort from her exahusted lungs, to explain the gospel to others.
Of course she did, with Lille time before her death she remembered she was snatched from destruction.
What else would make sense?
