Title: The Wilhelm Scream
Text: Jonah 3:10-4:11
The Big Idea: There is no where to hide when God is doing the searching.
Acknowledgement: The title and four major points are lifted from Homiletics Magazine, Volume 20, September 21, 2008. The Wilhelm Scream, PP 21-24.
Introduction
Let’s take a moment to listen to what has become a rather famous Hollywood sound effect. It originated in old westerns and has been used in all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. It was even used in the the production of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Theme parks also use the scream in their pre-recorded sound tracks, which has become known as The Wilhelm Scream.
Play the sound track of Wilhelm Scream.
I suspect the main character in our story today did some screaming of his own… The first scream we hear in our text is the scream of Jonah in full retreat from God.
1. The Scream of Retreat
And the Lord said, “Get up and go to the great city of Ninevah! Announce judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction… to get away from the Lord. Jonah 3:1-3
Jonah’s dilemma is not unlike any one of us who have a sense of what God wants us to do. A tension exists wherever and whenever we have to make a choice.
a. Being obedient to God has to do with external directional movement.
External directional movement is about what we do with our bodies… it has to do with action and activity.
• Do we do what God wants us to do?
• Do we do the opposite?
Jonah took doing the opposite to the extreme in that he literally ran in the opposite direction. Joppa was nearby… Joppa was a seaport town on the Mediterranean Sea a few miles northwest of Jersualem. Ninevah was considerably further away in the country we now call Iraq and was northeast of Jerusalem. Jonah was asked to go east but he went west… he did the opposite in an attempt to escape from God’s will for his life.
b. Being obedient to God outwardly or externally, is directly related to our internal directional movement.
Internal directional movement has to do with our wants and our will. It has to do with do we want to do God’s will or don’t we? It has to do with our willingness to move inwardly and outwardly in the direction God is leading. So ultimately, our outward direction is decided inwardly.
• Will we move out of our comfort zones and into the zone of God’s will?
• Will we move with our comfort zone and away from God’s will?
Jonah wanted no part of God’s plan. Jonah heard the Word of God and knew he should go to Ninevah, but something in him rebelled and he went with his gut instead of with his God.
God’s will is not necessarily difficult or dangerous. The fact of the matter is this, whenever anyone does not do what God wants them to do, it is because they do not like what God says or commands. So they do the opposite.
The High Point: However, there is no where to hide when it’s God who is doing the searching. But Jonah tried…
A week or so ago, during one of our area pastor’s meetings I saw a colleague who spoke here several years ago. He had moved away and had since returned to the Front Range so when I greeted him I remarked about how favorably he had been received and commented on his excellence in the pulpit… and then I jokingly said, “I generally don’t invite people in who make me look bad.” Unfortunately, another colleague and friend, who has also spoken at our church was standing nearby. What was intended to be a light-hearted exchange to make one colleague feel good… made another colleague feel like he was chopped liver.
Apologizing is not something I do or anyone does because it is easy… offering an apology is not in the comfort zone of most people. But I knew that God wanted me to go to the person I had hurt. If I was willing inwardly to do the right thing… then I would outwardly move to make the apology.
If you think anyone can escape the urging of God, you are mistaken. Had I not moved to make the apology… I would still be nagged by the fact that I had unfinished business needing to be done.
A drunk came home one night absolutely plastered… he was dirty, smelly, and had been in a bar fight. So he crept into the bathroom and cleaned himself up and then bandaged his bumps and bruises before slipping quietly into bed.
The next morning he opened his eyes to see his wife standing over him with her hands on her hips. “So you were drunk last night weren’t you?” she accused. “No honey!” he protested. “Then,” she said, “who put all those band-aids on the mirror?”
No matter how much we try to run away, cover-up, or deny what we’ve done, there is no place we can hide from God.
The High Point: There is no where to hide when it’s God who is doing the searching.
The second scream we hear is Jonah’s awareness of his error.
2. The Howl of Awareness, 1:4-16
Jonah had run away in the opposite direction and had boarded a ship for Tarshish in order to escape from God. While he slept in the hold of the ship, a violent storm was pitching and tossing the ship so severely that the sailors were certain that death was imminent. Suspecting Jonah was the cause of their dilemma, they woke him.
The sailors demanded of Jonah, “What have you done to bring this awful storm upon us?” Then he told them that he was running away from God. So they asked him, “What should we do to stop this storm?” And Jonah said, “Throw me into the sea…”
Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Jonah 1:4-17
In Psalm 139 we are reminded that there is no escaping God. He wrote:
Can I ever escape from your spirit! Can I ever get away from your presence! (These are not questions… they are statements emphasized by exclamation points…) If I go to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night – but even in darkness I cannot hide from you…” Psalm 139:7-12
Jonah found out that there is no where to hide when God is doing the searching… there is no escaping God no matter how far or fast we go in the opposite direction. We cannot just ride out a storm if God wants to get our attention.
God may get our attention in any number of ways. The storms of life that grip our hearts and draw us back to God are many. Sometimes we or someone we love gets sick. Sometimes someone comes into our lives that makes us think about where we are headed. Sometimes we just make such a mess of things that we turn to God in desperation. Sometimes it is a literal storm.
The stories that continue to surface from the Hurricane Ike disaster are both heart breaking and heart warming. One story comes from Bolivar Peninsula, Texas where a group of hurricane survivors took refuge in a church… It so happened that a man who was trying to save himself and his full-grown lion was also looking for a place to ride out the storm. So he headed for the church where the people there helped him and his lion wade through the flood waters and into the church where they locked the lion in the sanctuary.
Another story from a survivor from Galveston later said, “It felt like an earthquake – the rumbling and rocking of the building,” she said, smoking outside a shelter in San Antonio. “Everyone was praying. It was so terrible. All I could say was, ‘Lord, please don’t kill me. Forgive me for what I done.’” Warner said, as a tear rolled down her cheek. (AP writers, Michelle Roberts in San Antonio, Tony Gutierrez on the Bolivar Peninsula, Peter Prengaman in Galveston, and Kelly Shannon in San Antonio, aol.com/article/riding-out-ike-on-an-island-with-a-lion/177167)
When things become desperate enough we tend to come around.
The High Point: Sometimes we have to admit that we are wrong, painful as that admission may be.
The third scream we hear in our text is Jonah’s depths of despair from the belly of the whale.
3. The Wail in the Whale
The sailors did indeed toss Jonah overboard where he was promptly swallowed by a large fish God had prepared for the occasion. It was understandably a less than pleasant experience.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. He said, “I cried out to the Lord in my great troubles and he heard me… when I lost all hope, I turned my thoughts to the Lord. I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord.” Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah on the beach and it did. Jonah 2:1-10
A couple of important things happened in Jonah’s heart:
a. He turned his thoughts back to God. He said, “When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord…” Jonah 2:7
b. He praised God and renewed his commitment to God. He prayed, “I will offer sacrifices with songs and praise, and I will fulfill my vows.” Jonah 2:9
Then, when Jonah was good to go again… God ordered the fish to spit him out on the beach.
Fortunately for Jonah, God is a God of second chances.
The High Point: God is the God of second chances!
The bible says that this time, Jonah obeyed God and went to Ninevah. On the day Jonah entered Ninevah he shouted to the crowds, “Forty days from now Ninevah will be destroyed!” The people believed God message, and from the greatest to the least they decided to repent and show their sorrow. Then the King said, “Everyone must turn from their evil ways and stop their violence. Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will have pity on us and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.” Jonah 3:1-9
And when God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he had mercy on them and didn’t carry out the destruction he had threatened. Jonah 3:10
You would think that Jonah would have been rather pleased with himself but he was not. The fourth scream is Jonah’s scream of anger over God’s mercy.
4. The Rant of Self-Righteousness
This change of plans upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the Lord about it; “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That’s why I ran away to Tarshish! I know you are a gracious and compassionate God… Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive because nothing I predicted is going to happen.” And the Lord asked, “Is it right for you to be angry about this?” Jonah 4:1-4
So much for Jonah’s about face in chapter 2… if nothing else, Jonah’s relapse simply serves to underscore how fragile our spirituality can be. Jonah seemed to have come around but he never dealt with the issue that sent him running in the opposite direction in the first place.
Underlying all of this drama was Jonah’s apparent dislike or perhaps even hatred for the Assyrian people. The Assyrian King and his court, the family of the king, the military leaders and soldiers of the Assyrian army, their families, the civilian population of the Assyrians living in Ninevah, including all the men, women, and children… Jonah did not want God to save any of them!
This of course raises the specific issue of people prejudice and bias of any sort. It raises the issue of personal hatred for individuals and people groups. And forces us to ask ourselves the question, “Who would I like to see God destroy rather than personally go to them in an attempt to seek God’s blessing for them and their well-being?”
Who would make your list? Democrats? Republicans? Islamists? Illegals? Politicians? Wall Street titans? The moguls who got rich sailing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and Lehman Brothers into the sunset so American taxpayers would have to save their sinking ships? Black, brown, yellow, red, white people? Poor people? Rich people? Management? Union members? Out-sourcers? Political protestors and anarchists? Drunk drivers? Smokers? Old people? Young people? Pierced and tattooed people?
Have you noticed that I’ve yet to mention the likes of rapists and murderers and drug dealers and flesh peddlers and trafficers of human beings and pedophiles and government resource management officials in bed with representatives of the big oil and gas companies?
I’m certainly not without fault… I have my own thoughts about the human gene pool every day when I read the letters to the editor in a couple of newspapers and I never cease to be amazed by the ignorance of some people and their ability to deny the powers of reason, objectivity, common sense, and civility.
I suspect that we all have a prejudice or two tamped down in the recesses of our hearts… but until we deal with those prejudices we will never be the persons God wants us to be.
Jonah’s value system was entirely skewed. In the story we read about how he sulked and pouted under a leafy plant that shaded him from the sun until the plant died. And then he became even more angry.
Finally God confronted him and said, “You feel sorry about the plant that is at best, short lived. But Ninevah has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness… shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?” Jonah 4:10-11
If we learn anything from this exchange we know that we have two options.
The High Point: We can sulk or we can ask God to show us where he is going and how we can get on board.
Conclusion
Fred Craddock is currently a Bishop in the United Methodist Church. He was formerly preaching professor at Emory University. He tells a story of his childhood of when he and his sister would play hide and seek.
He said he was a master at hiding. He could find places his sister would never in a million years think of looking in search of him. One of his favorite places was back under the front steps of their house… she would look under the porch but she would never look back into the dark recess under the steps. He said it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud when she would come looking. He laughed when he thought of how easily he could have reached out and touched her, but she never knew he was there under the steps. He knew that if he hid under the steps she would never find him. And then it occurred to him, “She’d never find him there.” She would never find him there! And that was a scary thought.
Fred said that there is something about us that wants to be found. We really don’t want to be lost… Jonah may have run in the opposite direction but he really did not want to be lost to God and God’s purposes.
I suspect that is true of us as well. If there is a stirring in your heart that would suggest that there is something that you are trying to keep hidden or run away from or avoid doing… perhaps this is a good time to be found. (Jon M. Walton, Something Fish About Jonah, January 22,2006)
Maybe answering three searching questions will help.
Three searching questions:
1. Has God been trying to get your attention?
2. What does God want you to do?
3. Will you accept God’s offer of another chance… and do it?
Will you?
