Jonah Series 2013 (You Can Run on For a Long Time)
Running From God
Text: Jonah 1:1 – 17
Open your Bibles to the Book of Jonah… We’re going to be spending the next few weeks looking through this book… and while you’re turning there; let me just start by saying that I believe that God is moving… I believe that we are in a place where God is preparing His people for something. “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward Him.” I believe that He is preparing His people, and that He is making a distinction… drawing a line in the sand if you will.
Alright… so we’re going to be looking at Jonah… Most of us are familiar with this story. Kids love it, but as we get older it sometimes loses its awe factor. I don’t know why, but it seems like adults read through it and go, “Ok, guy runs from God, gets swallowed by a big fish, gets puked out and then goes and preaches in Nineveh, the people repent.” Well I want to tell you there’s a lot more to it than that.
I remember quite a few years ago, that secular scientists claimed that since the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, that this story couldn’t be true, since no fish could do this… until a few years later, someone actually got swallowed by a whale shark and lived… and in case you didn’t know it, a whale shark is a fish… not a whale. Whales are mammals. But even if it wasn’t a whale shark that swallowed Jonah, I believe it’s a true, historical event. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because in Matthew 12:40 – 42 Jesus speaks of the event as a historical fact. And I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stick with Jesus.
Ok; let’s look at Jonah… I’m going to read all of chapter 1 and if you will, follow along with me.
(READ TEXT)
Now as we go through this book, I want everyone to understand that Jonah’s story is our story. Not necessarily the fish part… but I think that if we honestly look, we’ll see that we all have something in common with Jonah. And that is; that at some point in our lives, we have run from God… either we have run, or we are running. Maybe as a teen, or a young adult, or even now in your life. But here’s the great truth I’ve learned from Jonah… you can run from God, but you can’t out run Him! The Bible says that there is nowhere that He can’t reach you. And when I talk about running from God, I’m not necessarily talking about physically running like Jonah does here. I’m talking about a person who maybe when they were a kid was forced to go to church, but then once they graduated high school and left home, they left the church and all notions of God behind them. Or maybe the person who runs from God in a specific way… you know… the person who says, “Well God’s Word says I shouldn’t steal, and I shouldn’t commit murder….” And they don’t do those things but they have that one little area… maybe coveting, or lust, or pride… you know that one secret sin, and they are saying, “God you can everything in my life… but not that.” You know… that’s the person who; if they were honest would sing the song, “I have decided to follow Jesus… I have decided to follow Jesus… I have decided to follow Jesus… but not to there, but not to there.” There might be some here today. I’m talking about the person who is financially running from God. You know that God wouldn’t approve of how you spend your money… but by golly it’s your money. Or your time… or your abilities.
We can all hang on to things… and basically we run.
And we all run for the same reason. Everyone here… every time we run. This is one of those aspects where we’re all the same.
We run because we believe that if we don’t, we’re somehow going to miss out on something.
You know… we tell ourselves, “I know that God wants this from me, but if I do that… or if I give that up, I’m going to be missing out.” And that’s nothing new. That’s exactly what Adam and Eve fell for in the Garden… they were fooled into believing that God was holding His best back from them. And we’re exactly the same. And that should cause us to ask some questions like: What is this God that we serve really like? And: Why is it that I value this thing more than I value serving God? But truly we do that… we think that God is for some reason holding something back from us, or that if we give ourselves fully to Him and His cause we’re going to miss out on something… like this world has anything to offer us that can compare to what awaits us in glory!
Now some people are running because they’ve confused God with the people who claim to know Him. I actually know of some folks right there in Woodward who are like this. They’ve told me that they don’t want to attend Church services because they don’t like what happens behind the scenes. You know how behind the scenes people will talk about one another, but on Sunday they are all smiles… or the “politics” of church… “come be on my team, no come be on my team.” So they see the disunity, the back biting, the finger pointing… but on Sunday they saw them all take communion together. It’s a sad story actually, because they mistook the actions of the people who claimed to know God for the actions of God Himself and they decided to run from God. And what we as Christians need to realize is that the world is watching us, and that Jesus said that the world will know that we are His disciples by our love for one another.
So in the time that we have left; what I want to do is show you three things from our text that describes everyone who runs from God… Three things that we all have in common when we decide to run.
The first thing is in verses 1 – 3 (READ). So Jonah is close to Joppa, God tells him to go to Nineveh, and instead he gets on a ship headed to Tarshish. Today we call Joppa – Jaffa and it’s in Israel. Nineveh was in Iraq, and Tarshish was in Spain. Jonah’s going the wrong way. And so the first thing that is true when you run from God is: That you end up running to the strangest of places. At the time; Tarshish was a Phoenician port city, and the Phoenicians were a great sea-faring people, they were militaristic, materialistic, and outside of the covenant of God. So Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh because the people are wicked, so instead he goes to Tarshish… where the people are… wicked. Doesn’t make a lot of sense right? Well neither does running from God. But that’s what happens. You run from God you end up in bad places. Let me just speak to you single people real quick.
If you’re running from God, don’t get into a relationship. Because if you’re running from God, you’re not going to be making wise decisions. And I’ve seen it happen. You know… young men and young women who think they are rebelling against their parents, are actually rebelling against the ordinances of God, and they run off to Mr. or Misses Right and in a years’ time, their life is a wreck. If you’re running from God, you’re not going to make wise decisions.
And that leads me to the 2nd principle.
When you’re running from God, your life will eventually unravel and will self-destruct. It doesn’t happen overnight; at least not usually. But over a period of time, things will go from bad to worse. And here’s why. And it goes along with not making wise decisions. When a person runs from God, they are running away from the source of wisdom and truth. And when you turn your back on wisdom and truth, you begin making some seriously bad decisions. And the crazy thing is… we convince ourselves that they are good decisions. We tell ourselves, “Ah God wants me to have this.” Or, “God wants me to be happy and this makes me happy.” And remember; running from God doesn’t necessarily mean physically running away.
It can mean doing something that He says not to do, or not doing something that He says to do.
We justify our behavior and find ourselves asking, “Did God really say???” And here’s the thing: we run from God, we make terrible decisions, and then those decisions have consequences that can haunt you for life. Even when you repent there are still consequences! Just look at the life of King David – it’s a prime example.
So your life will fall apart when you run from God, and let me just try to explain why this happens. We can understand this from Jonah. The reason a person’s life begins to fall apart when they run from God, is because God has a plan and a purpose for you. God’s plan and purpose for Jonah was to go to Nineveh and preach; and when Jonah ran, he was not only running from God, he was also running from God’s very plan and purpose for himself!
And people will say, “Well what’s my purpose?” And I say, “Start with what you know. Are you a parent? Well that’s part of your purpose. Are you a Christian? Then part of your purpose is to fulfill the Great Commission. Look at the talents God has given you. If you can’t sing, then it’s a good bet that God hasn’t called you to be a singer.” The Reformers say this way, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” That’s part of your purpose. And you glorify God by what He has created you and called you to do.
And the third principle we see from Jonah about people who run from God is this: People who run from God always end up hurting those that are closest to them.
You see; as your life begins to unravel, everyone around you will be affected. We see that with these sailors who are with Jonah. These men had no idea what was about to happen to them. As far as they knew they were just taking a passenger along with their cargo to Tarshish. Now remember; Tarshish was a port city, and so these guys are merchants, taking their cargo to either sell it or trade it. It’s their livelihood, it’s how they make a living. But all of a sudden this storm hits them, and they end up throwing all their cargo overboard. There goes their paycheck. They are affected by Jonah running from God. Parents; if we run from God, it’s going to affect our families. Teenagers… listen… you want to know why mom and dad over-react when you want to hang out with certain people or date certain people? It’s because they understand that if that person isn’t living for God, and following God, you’re going to get hurt. And believe it or not, they love you and don’t want to see that happen. They love you a lot more than Mr. Smooth Operator. He might be a hunk-a-hunk-a burnin’ love, but if he doesn’t know Christ then he’s going to be burning another way, and he might drag your kids along with him. People who are running from God injure those around them.
Verses 7 – 14 (READ). This is amazing isn’t it? All this stuffs going on. You’ve got these pagan sea merchants who’ve just found out that Jonah is the cause of all their problems, and he even tells them to throw him overboard and what do they do? They do their very best to row back to dry land. And when that didn’t work they prayed… and look who they prayed to. That word Lord is the Hebrew word Yahweh! They start praying to God and asking forgiveness. These guys are convinced… these guys understand the FEAR OF THE LORD, even if Jonah doesn’t. So they are penitent, they’re asking for forgiveness, they’re praying and they don’t want to throw Jonah overboard. But while these formerly pagan sea merchants are repenting and probably converting based on verse 16; Jonah; the man of God, is unrepentant.
You say; how do you know Jonah was unrepentant? Well look at it here. He would rather die than follow God’s plan. That’s what he’s saying when he says throw me overboard. You know, he could’ve said, “I’m supposed to go to Nineveh, if you’ll drop me at the next port so I can go, all will be well.” But instead; he’s like, “Just kill me. Throw me into the sea.” And we look at that in awe, but the reality is, it’s really not that unusual. I’ve met people, and they’re running. They’ve got that area in their life that they’re unwilling to give to God.
They’re unwilling to repent of. It has its hooks so deep in them. It’s like that scene in The Return of the King… you know the last of the Lord of the Rings films… where Sam and Frodo are inside of Mt. Doom and Sam tells Frodo to just let the ring go… and Frodo turns around and says, “The ring is mine.” If you’ve never seen those movies you really should… or better yet, read the books.
But we can get that way. Sin can sink its teeth so deep into you, and it’s almost like it’s a part of you, and rather than let it go, you run from God, and you in effect say, “I’m not going to give that to God… I’m not going to bow the knee in this area.” God have mercy on those who have such strongholds. And I’m not talking about going to church more, or doing some kind of external modification. I’m talking about humbling yourself before the Mighty Hand of God and saying, “God you are God, you are Lord of all… I can’t let it go so I just need you to take it. Take it by force if need be, but take it so that I can stop running from you, but instead run to you.”
If that’s you this morning, there’s Good News. You can’t outrun God. He will pursue you, and if your life is a wreck… if it’s a mess, that very well might be a God ordained storm to get your attention in order to get you back where you need to be. If that’s you this morning, please stop running. And also; if you’re here this morning, and you would like to make this your church home… we’re genuine people, we’ve all ran at some point in our lives… if you want to be part of a family that will love you and pray with you and grow with you, I invite you to do that as well.
