ENGAGE
Show clip from “Taken”.
This gripping scene is from the 2008 film “Taken”. In that movie, retired CIA agent Bryan Mills, played by Liam Neeson, has only 96 hours to find his daughter, who has been kidnapped. Early in the movie we learn that Mills’ relationship with his daughter hasn’t always been great, due in large part to his work. But he decides to change his career path in order to try and gain back some of the time and trust he lost with his only daughter.
So Mills relentlessly pursues his daughter, overcoming all kinds of obstacles along the way. When he finally finds her on the yacht of a rich Arab businessman, where she had been sold into slavery, and saves her, she collapses into the arms of her bloodied and beaten father and says, “Daddy you came for me.” To which Mills replies quietly “I told you I would”.
TENSION
For the next four weeks, we’re going to look at the story of another Father who loves his children so much that He is willing to relentlessly pursue them like that, even when they have rebelled against Him.
Most people consider that story to be the biggest fish story ever told. But it’s not a story about a fish, nor is it even a story about a fisherman. It is instead a story about God and His relentless love for all – even those we would not expect. And secondarily it is a story about a reluctant prophet named Jonah who is a lot more like all of us that we would like to admit.
My goal is to accomplish two important goals over these next four weeks:
1) I want us all to develop a greater appreciation of the love of a God who constantly pursues us even when we run away from Him, and
2) I want us all to develop a deeper love for others, especially for those who might seem far from God or who might be so much different from us.
TRUTH
The story of Jonah is one of the most familiar in the entire Bible for many of us. If we’ve been around the church for any time at all, it’s one that most of us learned as kids. The story itself is not all that long. In my Bible it takes up less than two pages. But I’m pretty sure that we’re going to learn some things from that story that we may not have considered before.
So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to the book of Jonah. If you’re not sure where that is, it’s between the books of Obadiah and Micah. Honestly, that might not be a whole lot of help since Obadiah, which we’ll be studying in July, is only one chapter long. So there’s no shame in using your table of contents to find it – that’s what it’s there for. Or, if you’re using the same Bible I’m using, it begins on page 774.
Before I read the first chapter, I want to show you a brief video that will give us an overview of the history and structure of the book.
Show “Jonah” video from The Bible Project (thru 2:12).
With that background in mind, please follow along as I read the first chapter.
[Read Jonah 1:1-17]
In verse 1, we read that “the word of the Lord came to Jonah”. That is a phrase that is used frequently in the Old Testament to indicate that someone is a prophet. God’s direction to Jonah is very clear – He is to go to Nineveh and preach the message that God will give him.
Jonah would have been very familiar with Nineveh, which was located in Assyria. The Assyrians had been long time enemies of Israel and the Ninevites were known for being particularly brutal and vicious. They had been known to skin alive the men they had defeated in battle and then bury them in the sand to suffer a slow, cruel death. So it’s not hard to understand Jonah’s reluctance to go there.
But in one of the many twists that permeate the book of Jonah, we’re not going to find out the real reason that Jonah disobeys God until we get to chapter 4. So if you want to find that out, you’ll have to come back in three weeks.
Now you have to give it to Jonah, when he decides to disobey God, he sure doesn’t do it half-heartedly, does he? Instead of heading east about 300 miles to go to Nineveh, he instead heads 2,500 miles in the opposite direction towards Tarshish in Spain. [Show map].
He begins his journey by going down to the seaport in Joppa – notice that in this part of the story Jonah is always going down – and there he finds a ship that is ready to sail for his intended destination. He goes down into the ship and it sets sale towards Tarshish. Jonah goes down once again into the inner part of the ship and falls asleep. And it was not a little cat nap, but rather a deep sleep.
In the meantime, a great storm comes up – one that scares even the seasoned mariners on board. I think most of the time when we read the story of Jonah, we tend to pass right over these sailors. But they are actually a very integral part of the story, especially here in chapter 1. These pagan men, who had many gods, actually become Jonah’s very first converts on this trip – even though that is certainly not Jonah’s intent.
As the storm begins to rage around them, they do what they have always done in times of trouble – they cry out to their many gods. But, as we would expect, that does absolutely no good at all. So they began to throw their cargo overboard in order to lighten the ship. But that still wasn’t doing the trick. So, as a last resort, they finally wake up Jonah and tell him to cry out to his god, figuring it can’t hurt.
When that doesn’t work either, they decide to cast lots and Jonah is identified as the culprit who has caused this tremendous storm. They ask him a series of questions about who he is, where he is from and his occupation.
Jonah’s answer in verse 9 is rather interesting. He doesn’t even answer one of their questions and tell them that he is a prophet. But he does reveal that he is a Hebrew and that he fears the Lord who created the seas and dry land. That’s rather ironic given that Jonah didn’t fear God enough to do what He had commanded him to do. It is also ironic here that the fear of God actually impacts these pagan mariners more than it impacted the one who should have known better – Jonah.
So when Jonah told the men to just throw him overboard, they feared God enough that they weren’t about to throw the servant of this powerful God overboard and risk even more peril. So they rowed as hard as they could to get back to shore, but to no avail. Sensing there was nothing else they could do, they decided to do what Jonah had suggested and throw him overboard. But before they did that they cried out to the Lord and asked that they not be held responsible for his impending death.
The very moment that Jonah hits the water, the seas calmed. But those sailors still feared God enough to worship Him by making a sacrifice and making vows to God.
We all know what happens to Jonah next, but before we talk about that, let’s pause for a moment and identify the main theme which is going to weave its way throughout the book of Jonah:
Because of His relentless love,
God does not give up on us
even when we give up on Him
We see that first with the mariners on the ship. Those men got on that ship headed for Tarshish that day just like they had done many times before. But unbeknownst to them, on that particular trip they had a divine appointment with the Lord. And even though these independent, tough men had never previously had anything to do with the Lord, through His sovereign control over His creation and through the testimony of a reluctant prophet, God got their attention. He drew them to Himself, so that only a short time into their voyage, they had come to the point where they feared God enough to pray to Him and to worship Him.
But that was only the beginning of this story. God hadn’t given up on Jonah, either. In verse 17, we learn that God had appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. This is the first of three times in the book where we will see that God uses His sovereign control over His creation to intervene in Jonah’s life in order to show his relentless love for Jonah and to teach Jonah about His relentless love for all people.
APPLICATION
Earlier I pointed out that we are a lot more like Jonah than we would care to admit. So let’s see what we can learn from Jonah that will hopefully prevent us from making some of the same mistakes he did.
IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS FROM JONAH
1. God still speaks
The word of the Lord came to Jonah – and it will come to you, too. We’ve talked about this idea before, but it is so important that we need to be reminded of this again.
Although God probably won’t come and speak to us audibly, He does still speak to us in a variety of ways. I can’t possibly cover all the ways that God speaks, but let me point out a few of the most important.
• Through His creation. We see this in Romans 1 where Paul writes these words:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
(Romans 1:19–20 ESV)
This is what is often referred to as “general revelation”. We can learn a lot about the nature of God just from observing His creation. We see that God is a creative God, a God of beauty and order, a God that loves us so much that He has created a beautiful place for us to live.
• Through circumstances. This is one that, as we’ll see more fully in a few minutes. We need to be careful with because Satan can also use circumstances to try and influence us. But certainly God used circumstances to speak to the sailors on the ship that Jonah boarded when he was fleeing from God.
• Through His Holy Spirit. Those of you who are disciples of Jesus have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. This is an area that certainly requires more than just a few minutes to understand fully, but the Bible does teach us that God communicates with our spirits through the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that when the Holy Spirit came, He would guide us into truth. Paul reminds us that the Holy Spirit prays on our behalf when we don’t know what to pray. The Holy Spirit uses our conscience to guide us.
• The primary way that God speaks to us is through the Bible. As we talked about in much more detail six weeks ago, the Bible is the inspired Word of God that is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training.
Many people say they want to hear God speak, but the best test of whether that is really true in my life is whether I am spending time in God’s Word on a regular basis. In fact, I would go so far as to say this: If you’re not reading, studying, meditating on, and memorizing the Bible on a regular basis, then I would have to question whether you really want to hear God speak.
I think one of the reasons that some of us are reluctant to really hear God speak is that, just like Jonah, we know that…
2. When God speaks, I must make a choice
Once the word of the Lord came to Jonah, he had to make a choice about what he was going to do with that. And Jonah had basically the same three options that we have once we hear God speak.
• I can choose my way
When God speaks, He often will ask us to do some things we really don’t want to do. And the reason that we don’t want to do those things always boils down to the fact that we convince ourselves that we know what is best better than God does.
That is exactly what Jonah did here. As I said, you’re going to have to wait until week 4 to fully understand what Jonah was thinking, but even here in chapter 1, it’s obvious that he doesn’t want to do what God is calling him to do because he thinks there is a better way. And so he runs from God.
And what is really fascinating to me here is that as soon as he decides to choose his own way, there is a ship there waiting for him, ready to take him in the wrong direction. And the same thing is usually true for us. If I choose to follow my own way when God speaks, there is almost always a ship ready to sail and take me in the wrong direction. That’s why I cautioned you earlier about trying to hear God speak only through circumstances.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this played out in the lives of people who claim to love Jesus. There are times where they are doing something that clearly violates what God has revealed, and they board that ship that is taking them far from God.
o I’ve known people who say things like “I’m just not happy in my marriage. And I really believe that God wants me to be happy. So when I met this other person who really seemed to care about me....” And before they know it that ship has sailed.
o I’ve known people who choose their own way when it comes to their finances. They excuse the fact that they don’t give God the top portion of their income by claiming that tithing is an Old Testament principle that no longer applies. But then when a great deal comes along on something that they want to buy, they will claim that the deal is just too good to pass up even if they have to borrow money to buy it. And before they know it that ship has sailed.
o I’ve known people who choose their own way when it comes to their work. They violate the principle of Sabbath rest and work long hours seven days a week, claiming that they are just doing that to provide for their family. But eventually that ship sails, too and they end up losing the family they claimed they were working for.
o Or how about those who refuse to forgive others? They end up holding a grudge, sometimes for the rest of their life. And when that ship sails it brings bitterness and anger and regret.
• I can delay
Sometimes when God speaks, we’ll think, “OK, I’ll do that. But I can’t really get to it now so I’ll do it later.” Essentially that is what happens with Jonah. He does, after God intervenes in a miraculous way, eventually do what God called him to do.
Unfortunately, we sometimes perpetuate this idea of delayed obedience by the way we parent don’t we? “Son, you need to clean your room.” “As soon as I’m done with this game.” “No, I want you to do it right now.” “Just a minute.” “Look, I told you to do this now. Don’t make me come over there.” “I’m almost done.” “One, two, two and a half, two and three quarters, two and seven eighths…” What are we teaching our kids when we do that? We’re teaching them that delayed obedience is OK. But as we’ve talked about before, delayed obedience is disobedience.
Pastor and author Erwin McManus says that the mark of Christian maturity is what he calls “time lag”. He says that you can tell the level of maturity in a disciple of Jesus based on the time lag between the command of God and the obedience. The longer the time lag, the less mature the person is. I think he is right and that is a great test to apply to each of our own lives.
• I can obey
Mary and I really enjoy snorkeling. And there have been several occasions where we have gotten in what seems like really calm, clear water and we get so caught up in looking at all the beautiful marine life that we’re seeing that when we finally get ready to head back to the shore we look up and find that we’re a long way from where we entered the water because the unseen currents have caused us to drift.
If we’re not careful, the same thing can happen in our obedience to God. We obey when it comes to the really “big” things in our lives. But in some of the areas that seem less significant, maybe we just don’t seek God’s guidance or other times maybe we think it won’t hurt to disobey God just this once. But after a while we find that we’re a lot further away from God that we thought we were because we’ve drifted away from Him..
We really can’t be sure that is what happened in Jonah’s life. We just don’t have enough information in the text to be sure about that. But there is a hint in the account in 2 Kings 14, that perhaps Jonah had been guilty of telling the king what he wanted to hear rather than what God wanted to tell him. It’s hard for me to believe that one day Jonah woke up and just decided that for the first time in his life, he was going to disobey God.
So it’s important for us to obey God in every area of our lives – not just in those things that we consider to be the most significant.
3. My sin always impacts others
Jonah’s sin didn’t just affect him. It certainly had an impact on his shipmates. And had he not later obeyed God and gone to Nineveh, it would have impacted an entire city.
Our sin is never completely private. Even if you can’t see it on the surface, your sin, no matter how secret you might think it is, affects others. And usually the effects are felt most by those who are closest to us – our spouses, our children, our co-workers and our friends.
Fortunately for us, God is in the business of straightening that which we have made crooked. And in the case of the sailors on that ship, God took the impacts of Jonah’s sin and turned it around for the good of those men. He used the tremendous storm and the testimony of Jonah to bring them to the place where they feared and worshiped Him. But just because He can do that doesn’t mean that He always will.
We certainly see that in the life of David. After his adultery with Bathsheba, he repents of that sin. But in spite of the fact that God forgives David, He doesn’t remove the consequences of his sin and the baby that resulted from that adulterous relationship dies in spite of David’s repeated prayers.
If you choose to be unfaithful to your spouse, it doesn’t just impact the two of you – it will impact your children and every other member of all the families involved. If you choose to sin in the way you handle your finances, it may impact your entire family as well as your church family. If your work is not done according to biblical principles, it will affect your co-workers, your boss, the shareholders and even their families. Your sin never just impacts you personally.
4. Sometimes my worst nightmare is exactly what I need
Some people have claimed that the account of Jonah can’t possibly be true. So they either write it off as a fairy tale or claim that it’s only an allegory. But the book of Jonah does not begin with the words “once upon a time.” And Jesus certainly viewed this as being an historical account when He talked about Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish being a picture of the three days He would be in the grave.
Obviously those who want to disprove the Bible say this is nothing more than a fisherman’s tale that can’t possibly be true. There certainly have been some reports over the years of men being swallowed whole by large sea creatures such as whales, sharks, or large fish and surviving there for some period of time. But to be real honest, there are some valid reasons to question some of those accounts. But I don’t have any problem believing that the God who created the seas, the animals in the seas and Jonah could have caused this great fish to swallow Jonah and that Jonah remained alive in the belly of that fish, either through natural or supernatural means.
When he asked the sailors to throw him overboard, I have little doubt that Jonah figured that he would just die and that all his problems here on earth would be over. So when that fish swallowed him and he had to live in the belly of that fish for three days, it had to have been his worst nightmare. I’ve cleaned plenty of fish before – some only slightly smaller than the one that swallowed Jonah – OK they were a lot smaller than that. But what I can tell you from my experience, is that the belly of a fish would have to be one of the nastiest places anyone could ever be in even for a few moments, alone for three days.
But Jonah’s worst nightmare was exactly what he needed. God used that experience to prove to Jonah that because of His relentless love, He had not given up on Jonah, even though Jonah had given up on Him.
Maybe you are going through what you consider to be your worst nightmare right now. Several weeks ago we talked about suffering and we made the point then that not all suffering is a means of discipline or for God to get our attention. But sometimes it is. So if you’re going through a difficult situation right now, you need to at least consider the possibility that God is using that in your life because He loves you and He knows that is what you need in order to draw you back to Him after you’ve drifted away from Him.
INSPIRATION
Because of His relentless love,
God does not give up on us
even when we give up on Him
Like Bryan Mills, he is willing and able to relentlessly pursue us to the ends of the earth because He loves us so much. In fact, He loves every one of us so much that He was willing to sacrifice His own Son, Jesus to prove His love for us.
But He will never force us to accept that love. Like He did with Jonah, He gives each one of the freedom to either accept that love by putting our faith in Jesus or to reject that love by choosing our own way.
ACTION
So as we close today, I want to encourage all of you to consider taking some concrete steps to respond to what you’ve learned.
1. Thank God for His relentless love. In just a moment I’m going to give you a few minutes to spend some time in prayer with God and I encourage you to give thanks to God for pursuing you even when you weren’t pursuing Him. I’m confident that is something all of us can do.
2. Accept God’s love by putting my trust in Jesus. We haven’t talked a lot about this today, but God has prescribed the way for us to accept His love. And the only way we can do that is by entrusting our lives to Jesus and making Him both our Savior and our Lord. If you have some questions about exactly what that means or how to do that, we’d love to talk to you more about that.
3. Confess any disobedience in my life. Perhaps as I’ve been speaking this morning, God has been pointing out some areas in your life where you have chosen your own way instead of His. Or perhaps your delayed obedience or your disobedience in same areas of your life that you’ve considered to be insignificant have caused you to drift away from God, Will you confess that to Him this morning and ask Him to help you obey Him from this point forward?
