Jonah 1:3
Turn in your copy of God’s Word
to Jonah 1. We will read just one verse tonight,
and I think you’ll see there is a lot of gold to mine out
of Jonah 1.3. So last week we looked at Jonah’s
call. Tonight we want to look at what I’ve called a fool’s
errand, and that fool’s errand is running from the presence
of God, fleeing the presence of God. So Jonah chapter one,
verse three, it says, but 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
on board to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the
Lord. Amen, the word of our living
God. Well, about this time of year,
I dread looking in the mail. The reason I dread looking in
the mail are letters hitting me up to fund people’s mission
trips. And you know the letters. Dear
so and so, God has called me to go to Sunny Mexico, right? And I’m not. There’s legitimate
mission trips. You’re getting curmudgeon tonight.
I think mission trips a lot of times are religious tourism.
There’s some good trips, definitely. I’m cynical because a couple
years ago, well, five, six years ago, we spent $14,000 as a church
sending three people overseas to do VBS. And it would have
been cheaper and easier for them to stay home and take care of
the children in our church, which they never helped with. But we
get these mission trips letters, dear, Dear Bill, dear Sam, dear
Aunt so-and-so, I need $1,500, right? I need $1,800. Now it’s more like $5,000. We
need this money to go on this trip, airfare, food, hotels,
whatever. There was never a letter written,
though. Dear so-and-so, it’s me, Jonah. I’ve been called to
Nineveh. I need a horse. I need caravan
fare to get across the desert because I’m going to Nineveh,
that wicked city. And in the letter, you get the,
well, we’re going to build a wall at this hostel, and we’re going
to do VBS with the little kids there. We’re going to sing Bible
songs with them. We get all those little things. I’m only half cynical, so don’t
take too much. But what does Jonah’s letter
say? I’m going to go to Sodom and Gomorrah or I’m going to
go to Nineveh. I got Wednesday night in my head.
I’m going to go to Nineveh and I’m going to call out against
it. And perhaps God will relent and not do as he did to Sodom
and Gomorrah. I need your shekels, right? I need your denarii. It’s urgent. I want to get going. We don’t
read in Jonah chapter one, verse three, and Jonah arose and went
to Nineveh. That’s not what we read, is it?
No, we read, but Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish. He rose to
flee from the presence of the Lord. He rose and went down to
Joppa. He rose and found a ship going
to Tarshish. He rose and paid the fare. He
rose and went on board to go with them to Tarshish. That’s
about the third time that little city’s mentioned, isn’t it? He
rose to get away from the presence of the Lord. I’ve got a seminary
buddy named Mark. He and I keep up. We chitchatted
earlier this past week. Mark and I were in seminary together.
I was 25 and he was 49. We showed up to Hebrew class
together and he was mid-career. I was a year out of college,
newly married and all the rest. He had been a licensed family
counselor in East Tennessee, had a log cabin, a dog, been
married, his life was settled. I mean, he was pushing 50 years
old and he wrestled with this call to go to seminary and take
up the ministry. In fact, this call was pretty
difficult because he had already been to seminary. He had gotten
his marriage and family counseling degree from another seminary
and that took a couple years. And so his nickname, his wife’s
nickname were Mr. and Mrs. Jonah. That didn’t last long, though.
The Lord’s call came and now they are reverend and missus
and they’ve been in ministry for 20 years and they are turning
70 this year. But that’s an example of sometimes
our reluctance to take up a call because we count the cost and
it’s a high cost. I think of John Calvin, who was
a Frenchman. He was one of the theologians
of the Reformation. He was born in 1509. And I think in about
1536, he, a Frenchman, went to Geneva in Switzerland. And he
served in what was a very difficult call, a very wicked city. And they finally ran him out.
And when they finally ran him out, that was after a lot of
hardship. He went months without pay. greatly disrespected. People
very often named their dogs after him so that they could cuss at
their dogs and kick at their dogs and get at John Calvin. He left Geneva and went to Strasbourg,
but his friend begged and pleaded with him and said, you need to
come back to Geneva. The work is not done. And John Calvin
said, I would rather die a thousand deaths than come back to Geneva. That’s how bad it was. But he
resolved, he said, but I am not my own. I’ve been bought at a
price. And so he went back to Geneva
and spent the next 15 years until his death serving the Lord. And
Geneva became, after much hard work, it became one of the most
flourishing cities ever on the face of the earth as that city
was reformed, not just the church, but the entire city, its government,
its people. its way of life was reformed
and patterned itself after the scriptures. But Jonah did not
say, I am not my own. He fled from the presence of
the Lord. He goes down to the port. He’s
a prophet in the northern kingdom. So he probably has to go a little
ways over to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. He could have
taken a 550 mile trip up to Nineveh. But instead he goes down the
coast, maybe 50 miles, a hundred miles, something like that. He
goes the other way and he gets on a boat that by all accounts
is going to Southern Spain. And he’s going to get on a boat
and he is going to sail across the entire Mediterranean Sea
from the East all the way to the West through the Strait of
Gibraltar to the tip of Southern Spain, just above North Africa. He’s going to flee from the presence
of the Lord. Now, you have to understand this
is a desperate move. Israelites aren’t sea people. Remember what happens when the
storm comes up on the Sea of Galilee? And that’s just a little
small body of water. They are in a panic. The customs,
the stories around The Psalms in particular show us that the
depths of the sea are like Sheol. It’s death. It’s Hades. It’s
a dark place. And to be cast into the bottom
of the sea is a great difficulty. He’s a land lover, right? Why
would he get on a ship? This is how bad he wants to get
away from this call to Nineveh. He wants to get as far away from
Nineveh as he can, as far away from the promised land as he
can, and as far away from God as he can. Well, I want to ask
and answer a couple of questions tonight. The first question is,
can you blame Jonah? Can you blame Jonah? From a human
perspective, can God be serious? Nineveh? I mean, Israel is plagued
by the surrounding nations. I think of this, the promised
land was to be a sanctuary, a sanctuary nation, a sanctuary within borders,
those borders. that were made by the conquest
of Joshua and Caleb and extended by David and Solomon, the greatest
Israel ever was under those men, a place of peace, a place of
purity, a place of holiness, a place of worship. Can God be
serious? Go to Nineveh, one of our arch
enemies, the Assyrians, and give them the opportunity to repent
and come to the Lord. Can God be serious? Can you blame
Jonah? Go and cry out against Nineveh,
an errand of death. Could you imagine being a street
preacher in New York City? Could you imagine being a street
preacher in Las Vegas? A street preacher in Sodom and
Gomorrah? A street preacher maybe on your own street and the ridicule. But this was an errand of death.
You’re going to go to the most powerful city of the East. Not even their capital city,
but it was a great city, a city of great wickedness. Think of
our studies in Acts, the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Israel.
They hated. In fact, they were not big fans
of Peter and John and the other apostles. Can you blame Jonah? It’s one thing to consider. Can
one really flee the presence of Yahweh? It’s another question
for us. It’s a yes and no answer. No,
we just sang Psalm 139, part of it at least, half of it. Verses
seven and nine, where can I go from your spirit? From your presence. How can I flee? We know that
God knows us. He knows our thoughts. He knows
our heartbeats. He knows our desires. He knows
our disobedience, our obedience. He knows our neglects, our faithfulness. Where can we go from the presence
of God? The answer is nowhere. But as
always, there’s a nuanced answer, right? Yes, one can flee the
presence of Yahweh. How, you ask? Well, by leaving
the promised land. by leaving those borders of the
promised land, the place of holiness, the sanctuary nation for God’s
people. Leave that special place where
God dwells with Israel and he dwells among his people. We speak
of sacred spaces, sacred places. And maybe you try to invite somebody
to church. just the simple invitation, come
to church, and you see their visible reaction, I don’t think
so. They don’t wanna come to that special place where God
is near. Or, I love this one, hey, what do you do? Well, I’m
an insurance salesman. No, really, what do you do? I’m
a preacher. Oh, I better hush, right? I better, you know, the
record stops playing. You get it, there’s a presence
of God that comes with a minister, or at least there ought to be,
So can one flee from the presence of God? Well, no, but also yes. And that’s what Noah does. Three
times it is mentioned, he is going to Tarshish. He’s going
to Tarshish. He’s going to Tarshish. He’s
going to Tarshish. Why in just one verse did it
say Tarshish three times? Is the writer of Jonah repetitive? Is he forgetful that he just
said it three words earlier? No, this is a grammatical, a
literary way of saying he’s not going to Nineveh. He’s not going
to Nineveh. He’s not going to Nineveh. Maybe
Jonah thinks perhaps another is willing to go. And maybe if
he’s down in Joppa, down in the bottom of the ship, down in that
seaport of Tarshish, maybe God will say, well, somebody else
will go. And while he’s away from the
presence of the Lord, he’ll hear about the conversion of Nineveh,
but it won’t be at his preaching. Friends, can one really flee
the presence of Yahweh? That’s really not the question,
is it? The question is, why would you want to flee the presence
of Yahweh? In fact, we say, Lord, bless me and Lord, keep me. Lord, make his face shine upon
me and be gracious to me. Shine your face upon me and let
your countenance be upon me. We beg, we look for, we long
for the presence of Almighty God. So can one really flee the
presence of God? That’s a tricky one, isn’t it?
All right. The next is not a question. It’s,
well, it’s a statement. And it’s three words, just like
we have Tarshish, Tarshish, Tarshish. I have these three words down,
down, down. The whistle blows at Joppa. The
captain calls all aboard and Jonah gets on a Phoenician ship.
He’s going to get up on a ship with sailors. So we’ve already
said, can you leave the presence of God? No and yes. Well, he’s
left the borders of Israel, right? By getting on the ship, getting
on the ocean. He’s getting on the boat with sailors and sailors
aren’t just notorious in our day, right? You live on a ship
for three to six months at a time. That’s kind of bad stuff, right? Lots of scurvy. Lots of drinking,
lots of lying, lots of, you know, they played poker on the ship,
this Phoenician ship, I’m sure. But sailors, foreigners, and
this isn’t racist, right? Israel was to be a sacred nation,
right? Israel was to be a sacred people,
not to mix and marry and mingle with foreigners because foreigners
were idolaters. And so he gets on this ship,
not to Nineveh, with sailors, foreigners, and idolaters. And
even worse, he is at the mercy of the sea. I don’t know about
y’all. I like boat riding. It’s fun.
I prefer it to be on a calm, calm sea type of day. I’ve been
out in the ocean where the waves and the chop were kind of big
and you wished you’d had your Dramadol or whatever it is that
makes life happy. But that’s not always been the
case. But to be at the mercy of the sea, maybe y’all have
seen that movie, The Perfect Storm, the sailors from Gloucester
went out and, you know, you can get seasick just watching those
waves and what a terrible ride that must have been. But we think
about Jonah here going down, down, down, down to Joppa, down
to the sea, down with foreigners, down with sailors, down with
idolaters. And he’s going down spiritually. Just last Wednesday and the Wednesday
before in our study of Genesis, we talked about Lot and what
did Lot do? He looked towards Sodom. He moved
near Sodom. And then by the time we get to
the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, he is living in Sodom and he’s
sitting at the city gate as an elder. And that’s a spiritual
descent for Lot. But we’ve got a spiritual descent
here of Jonah. He goes down to Joppa in verse
3. In verse 5, which we’ll cover
next week, he goes below deck. And then by the time we get to
chapter two, it speaks of being in the waters of the deep and
how they closed and surrounded him. And he was at the roots
of the mountains. Isn’t that a vivid picture? and
the weeds of the sea have wrapped around him. This is not a cruise,
right? This is not going to Charleston
and getting on a boat, going to Miami and getting on a boat.
This is not sailing through the Caribbean. This is a nasty boat
with nasty people. This is a spiritual descent. And you can bet, don’t you think,
when he dropped his bag in his quarters, He fluffed his pillow
and we know that he goes to sleep. You can bet that he said to himself,
so far, so good. The stars were out and the seas
were calm. And this is going to be a smooth
trip, not to Nineveh. And so we’ve asked, can you blame
Jonah? We’ve asked, can one really flee
the presence of Yahweh? We’ve looked at his spiritual
descent, down, down, down. But I want us to think of one
last lesson. I think it was Doug Hamilton this morning, he said,
you got to wear steel-toed boots sometimes in the church because
the preacher steps on toes. This is one of those moments.
There’s something in this for us to see. And so this last little
point I want to make is, but for the grace of God, and you
can fill in the blank, but for the grace of God, there go I. Many begin well in the Lord.
We hear This morning in our study of faith, right? What does God
require that we might escape his wrath and curse that is due
to us for sin? Well, faith in Jesus Christ,
repentance unto life and an endeavor to walk with and obey the Lord. And then we make a diligent use
of the means of grace to go backwards. We go to church, preaching to
the choir here, Sunday night people, right? Y’all are usually
the Wednesday night crowd and the Sunday school crowd as well.
So we make a diligent use of the means of grace. We endeavor
to live a new Christian life. We repent. We put our faith in
Jesus, the only righteous one. Many of us begin well in the
Lord. We’re zealous. We’re energetic. We’re on time. Right. And we could go on with
little descriptors of how we live well for the Lord. But sometimes
we make a turn. There’s a trauma in our lives.
The things of the Lord aren’t what they used to be to us. Maybe
we feel God has let us down. He never does, by the way. In
fact, we heard a song in our morning choir presentation. He
will hold me fast, right? But we make a turn. We make a
turn from godliness and trust and faith, and we make a turn
from that to something else. We get on a ship. We go down
to Joppa. We go below deck. We fluff our
pillow. We say, so far, so good. There was evil in Jonah’s heart. Jonah perhaps spent his life
savings to buy this fare on the ship. He cashed in his stock.
Right? He barred against his 401k. I
mean, this is not joking. He was desperate. He spent his
life savings and he’d rather been on a book tour in
the Northern Kingdom. Why do I say that? Well, he had
just done really well as a prophet. Remember, he’s a prophet in the
northern kingdom, the 11 tribes, not Judah and Jerusalem, but
the other 11 tribes. He’s a prophet and he had just
prophesied during Jeroboam II’s time. We thought about this last
week. He prophesied during his time.
You’ve been idolatrous, you’ve been wicked, you’ve been bad,
you’ve been stiff-necked, you’ve been all the things God doesn’t
like, and now you’re returning to the Lord, you’ve repented,
and God is gonna prosper you, and in fact, he did prosper them.
There were good days in the kingdom. And just think about modern church
days. It was time to publish a book.
and to have his picture on the front. That’s always a good sign
that you shouldn’t buy a Christian writer’s book if their picture’s
on the front. I think I’ve said that before, especially if they’re
smiling and their teeth are white. Don’t, don’t. But this was time
to open a Twitter account, right? This was a time to get the most
Instagram followers. This was the time for Jonah just
to put his feet up and not go to Nineveh. This was a time of
prosperity for Israel. And this is a time for Israel
to bask in their blessings from Almighty God. And God has different
plans, doesn’t he? He says, I want the people in
Nineveh saved. You can put your book tour on hold. In fact, you
can put that on ice. That’s not going to happen. Evil
came into Jonah’s heart. He’d rather a book tour in the
northern kingdom. then lose it all. And why would
he lose it all? Because he would have been the
one who would have gone to Nineveh and he would have preached Christ
and they would have repented. And he would have come home,
not a hero, but he would have come home and then they would
have said, you went to that wicked people and you preached to them
our God, our gospel, our hope, and they have become converted.
And those are a wicked people, a nasty people, an undeserving
people. But we have to see that God is
at work. There’s at least three of us
in the room who are ministers, right? The rest of us, good Christians,
right? We all want to serve the Lord.
But I think of this in light of being in ministry. We begin
well in the Lord. We’re zealous, we’re energetic,
we’re on time, right? Don’t raise your hand, the two
other guys in the room. Did you not see God at work most
in your weakness, and in your failures, and in your hardship? And probably when you least wanted
to serve people because they were mean to you and kind to
you, they withheld pay from you, they were talking about you behind
their back. In our weakness, God is made
strong. And friends, that’s one of the lessons we ought to see.
But for the grace of God, there go I. How many times would we
rather the book to her? How many times would we rather
the pad on the back? How many times would we rather
die than go back to Geneva? I remember in 2009 it was the It was the 500th anniversary
of Calvin’s birth. And it’s when I first heard that
story of Calvin and I was being called very reluctantly from
a place that I loved, from a house I loved, from neighbors I loved,
from a church I loved. I was being called to a very
hard call in another city. And I knew I needed to go. I
knew I needed to go vocationally. I knew I needed to go because
that’s what God was calling me to do. And it was 18 months of
agony because the more I looked at the church, the less I wanted
to go. The more I looked at the situation, the more I wanted
to stay where I was happy and I was comfortable. And I remember
hearing this about John Calvin saying, I am not my own. And
that’s what did it for me. Friends, we are not our own.
If God calls us to a ministry, if he calls us to a place, if
he calls us to a hardship, and maybe it’s not to go to Nineveh,
maybe it’s to take care of your grandchildren because your children
are in a hardship. Maybe it’s to step in when the
neighbor has made a poor choice, and you’ve made good choices,
and you’d rather just sit in the den and watch TV, but you’ve
got time, right? You could pitch in and help.
Fill in the blank. There’s things that you could
be doing the Lord puts in front of you, but you’ve got every
reason to say, no, I’ve done my duty, I’ve done my time. Well, you can’t escape Yahweh.
And what we’re gonna see is he is persistent. He wants nobody
else to go but who? But Jonah, I’m reminded of Hebrews
chapter four, verse 13, and I want to end simply by reading that
passage. Hebrews chapter four speaks of
the power of God’s word. It speaks of the power that it
has over our lives. It’s a two-edged sword, right?
Living and active, it gets to our joints and our marrows. It
knows the thoughts and intentions of our heart. We often quote
that verse, Hebrews 4.12. But 4.13 is particularly strong.
No creature is hidden from God’s sight. But all are naked and
exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.
So stay tuned next time. The reckoning is coming and Jonah
will have to give an account. Let’s pray together.