When I travel, I don’t want to spend too much money on the travel itself. I’d rather spend my money on whatever there is to buy where I’m going. I don’t want to hand much over to the airline or the railroad. I want to travel cheap. But I sometimes miss an important fact – that when I try to travel cheap, there may be hidden costs. There may be costs I hadn’t counted on.
A couple of years ago Margaret and I wanted to go to Texas for my niece’s wedding. We got discount airline tickets. The only flaw was that we would have to go to a more distant airport. Cheap fares were not available at National or Dulles, only at BWI. And the flight was to leave very, very early in the morning. That sounded okay. Just get up early, pack quickly, and scoot out to BWI – not a bad price to pay for a cheap ticket.
Travel day came, and we did what you have to do. We got before the birds. We grabbed everything in sight and packed. We warmed up the car, and we dashed off to BWI, arriving with just enough time to park the car, get our boarding passes, check our luggage – uh, oh, our luggage? We had some of it; but most of it was forty miles away, still sitting in our bedroom at home. We were in such a hurry to get to Texas on the cheap that we rushed out – Margaret is probably asking, “Who’s this ‘we’ he’s talking about?” – I rushed out and left our luggage behind.
Cheap tickets? When we got to Austin, we promptly went to the nearest shopping mall and stimulated the Texas economy, buying shirts and socks and blouses and skirts. So much for traveling on the cheap. Whenever you travel on the cheap, there are going to be hidden costs. Whenever you try to get by with a cheap fare, there will be other prices to pay you never even thought about.
And when God’s people try to cheat God out of what God wants us to do, there will be a price to pay. When God’s people attempt to get by without following God’s expectations, we will find that the fare is much higher than we had thought.
Jonah heard God’s call one day. It didn’t sit well with Jonah. This wasn’t what Jonah wanted to hear:
Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, "Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me."
The summons of God for Jonah was to go over to Nineveh, the great capital city of the Assyrian Empire, a place quite unlike Jonah’s home and certainly not friendly to Jonah’s people. There Jonah was to tell the people of Nineveh that they were wrong. That is likely to get you yelled at, cursed and spit on – or worse. So Jonah did just about what most of us would do: he ran. Jonah ran as hard and as far as he could go in the other direction. He found something else to do and some place else to go, right now.
But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.
We don’t know exactly where Tarshish was. One theory is that it was in what today is Spain. Let me tell you, that was a very long way from home. Might as well have sailed to the moon. The Biblical writer is trying to tell us that Jonah ran as fast as he could as far as he could. He “paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD”.
I
Now why do you suppose Jonah ran like this? Why do you suppose he was ready to shell out good money for fare on a ship bound for nowhere?
There isn’t much in the Bible to explain why, but there are two hints I want to develop. I can detect, from this text, that Jonah had both an emotional reason and a theological reason. An emotional, down in the tummy, in the guts reason, and a theological, intellectual, up here in the head reason for not going. Let’s look at those.
a
First, the emotional, down in the tummy, reason not to go to Nineveh. The people there were described as “wicked.” God said that their “wickedness” had come to His attention.. How does that word “wicked” make you feel?
Have you ever had to go some where you just knew you would be out of place and unwelcome? Some place that represented values that were different from yours? If you have, then maybe you can feel what Jonah must have felt about the people of Nineveh – they were wicked people, unpleasant people, not our kind of people. You just don’t want to go. It’s an emotional thing.
I was raised in an atmosphere where alcohol use was wrong, wronger, and wrongest. I was raised in the kind of climate where the very notion of somebody taking a drink brought grim faces and stern warnings. We were so against alcohol that in my church youth group, when I was a teenager, we had a long debate about whether or not to go to Howard Johnson’s for ice cream, because they had a bar. I neither defend nor criticize that stance now; I am just telling you what it was like, and how it made me feel about drinkers. I didn’t want to be around them. I didn’t want to associate with them. And I certainly didn’t want to go into those little dark spots, smelling of beer and reeking of smoke, that were on every corner of the city where I grew up.
Well, when I was sixteen I got a job as a delivery boy for a local drugstore. I peddled my bicycle around the neighborhood carrying prescriptions and other purchases to people’s homes. Every now and again my boss would ask me to pick up his carryout lunch, which he always ordered from a bar. Never mind that I was not going into that bar to drink. Never mind that he did not ask me to pick up any alcohol. But I still had to go in. Just the thought of entering Kaelin’s Bar, where I would have to pass drinkers and would have to smell the foul brew, was almost too much. I had an emotional reaction to it. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like those people. I would slink in and hope they didn’t see me. I would hardly even look at them. I just wanted to be out of there.
Now what was that really all about? I thought at the time it was about my being a Christian. But do you know what it was really about? I felt superior. I felt that I was better than the drunks taking in the swill. I felt they would contaminate me. And if, like Jonah, the Lord had said to me, “I want you to go to Kaelin’s Bar and invite them to your church”, I would have jumped on my bike and would have set a new Olympic record for pedaling in the other direction.
We, like Jonah, have an emotional reaction to being around people who don’t measure up. We don’t like being with certain kinds of people. But the problem is, that’s not really about them. It’s about us. It’s not about how bad they are; it’s about how self-righteous we are. People of God, the Lord does call us, as He called Jonah, to go and serve the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely. The Lord does call us to the group homes, the crack houses, and the dismal places of our city. He does. And the problem is not whether those folks are nice or not so nice. The problem is that you and I feel too lofty and too good to associate with the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely. So we pay the fare, whatever it is, and we sail to Tarshish, just as far away as we can get from the ones who need us most. It’s an emotional reaction, just like Jonah reacting to wicked Nineveh.
b
But then there was also that theological reason why Jonah paid his fare and ran. There was an intellectual, up in the head reason why Jonah didn’t want to go. He was invested in a wrong theology. He didn’t have his doctrine straight. And neither do we.
How about Jonah’s theology? Jonah “paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” Can you believe that? Away from the presence of the Lord. Jonah really thought that he could just get away from God. Never mind that the Psalmist had already written, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Jonah believed what he wanted to believe – that you can run away from God. Never mind that the Psalmist had sung,
“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
Never mind all that; Jonah believed what he wanted to believe. Jonah believed that he could get away from God’s presence and God’s truth. Jonah paid his fare and ran straight to Tarshish because he believed a bad theology.
I’ve found over the years that folks will just believe whatever they want to believe, no matter what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches, “There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." The Bible teaches that in Jesus Christ and in Him only is salvation, and in no other. But we don’t want to believe that. We want to make up fancy excuses. We want to talk about how people are happy in their own ways, leave them alone. We want to say the politically correct things about “different strokes for different folks”. All of that is very sweet. There’s just one problem. It’s bad theology. It is not what the Bible teaches. “There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."
And so we, like Jonah, pay the fare to Tarshish and run the other way rather than share the love of Christ with a spiritually hungry world. We, like Jonah, pay the fare to Tarshish and think we can outrun the embrace of the Lord God. Look, I understand why Jews are not happy when they hear that Baptists are praying for the conversion of the Jews. I understand that. I understand why Muslims get upset when they find out that in Ramadan Christians are praying for their conversion. I understand that too. I understand why Hindus dislike others describing them as in darkness, I understand why secularists in your workplace don’t want to hear the name of Jesus. I understand every bit of that. What I don’t understand is why a Christian agrees with them! What I don’t understand is why a Christian would say it doesn’t make any difference who your god is! What I don’t understand is why we become Jonahs and run away from the truth. We have made ourselves victims of bad theology.
Why didn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh? Two reasons, one emotional and one theological. "Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me." Jonah reacted emotionally; didn’t like those people. “But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” Jonah reacted intellectually, but with a very bad theology.
II
Now watch. Watch how Jonah ended up paying a very high price for his travel to Tarshish. Whatever the fare on that boat, it was nothing compared to the hidden costs. For when that little craft set out on the sea, a storm came up, and it looked as if the whole thing was going to sink. The sailors on board knew that something was wrong with somebody; somebody on board had caused this mess. Their eyes fell squarely on Jonah. There was nothing to do but cast the old boy overboard.
What do you think of your cheap fare now, Jonah, as you toss and turn in the storm? What do you think of your discount ticket and your dash away from God, as you are about to drown? How much was that fare to Tarshish, really?
People of God, how much will it cost us not to do missions? How much will it cost us, as a church, not to share the love of Christ? How cheap is the fare to Tarshish for you and for me, if we choose not to spend our resources in reaching others for Christ? Let me suggest that the fare is high. Let me suggest that the fare is very high indeed, for there are hidden costs.
a
One hidden cost is the loss of the vessel in which we are riding. Because of Jonah’s disobedience, the ship was about to sink, with everybody on board and all their property. Because Jonah didn’t want to do missions, the very vessel on which he was sailing was in danger.
If we do not do missions, we as a church will not survive. If we do not give ourselves away, we will die. If we do not spend what we have on others outside ourselves, we will shrivel up and perish. If all of our time, our money, our love, and our energy goes into maintaining ourselves, we will drown. And we will deserve to. The very heart of the Christian church is mission; and the heart of mission is sacrificial love. The church which is hazy about missions will be lost.
I was very proud of you in November, when you followed, almost entirely without argument, something I had asked you to do – to give a larger percentage of our offerings to missions. It came at a time when it looked as though we were pressed for cash. You might have said, “We can’t afford to be giving money.” But you didn’t say that. You said, “Yes, put a higher priority on missions.” I thank God for that. Maybe we do realize that if we do not do missions, this vessel will sink, this church will die.
How much is the fare to Tarshish? Too much if it costs us the very vessel in which we are riding.
b
How much is the fare to Tarshish? Another hidden cost is the loss of our joy. The loss of our joy. It is simply a profound spiritual truth that we are never happier than when we are giving ourselves away. And we are never more miserable than when we are indulging our own insatiable appetites. Jesus told us,
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
The most deliriously happy people I know are those who give away their money, their time, and their love. And the most dismally unhappy people I know are those who try to get by on the cheap.
Poor Jonah! He had tried to run away from Nineveh, because he knew the people over there wouldn’t like him. When he got on board the ship, what did he find but sailors who cursed at him and threw him overboard! How’s that for rejection? How’s that for unhappy?
How much is the fare to Tarshish? How much is the cost of not doing missions? It is the terrible price of personal misery and deep dissatisfaction. It is the loss of joy. I don’t think you really want to pay that fare. It’s too high.
c
There’s more. How much is the fare to Tarshish? It contains another hidden cost. There is the cost of all the social and human sickness around us. There is the cost of all the human wreckage we see every day.
How much does it cost to keep a man in prison for a year? A whole lot more than it would cost to send him to a fine college. How much does it cost to maintain a welfare family? A whole lot more than it would cost to train a father for a good job and to teach a mother how to care for a child. But it is because we have tried to run from these costs, it is because we have failed to invest up front, that we now have to pay the hidden costs of all these problems. Had we, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, done what we are supposed to do, had we reached and taught and redeemed and loved a whole generation, how much we would have saved! “Pay me now or pay me later”. And it is not just how many dollars we would have saved, but how many lives and souls we would have saved!
Just a week ago, on New Year’s Eve, probably while about a hundred of us were in this room at worship, a carload of teenagers smashed several windshields and cut several tires, just a block away. Young people, I expect, who were not in anybody’s Christian youth program. Kids not reached for Christ – what a price we pay if our outreach is not aggressive! What a cost, just in social and human problems, if we not do go to Nineveh!
Jonah found himself among nasty, gambling, cursing sailors. They were afraid for their lives and were ready to sacrifice the nearest victim to get rid of the problem. And when Jonah identified himself as a servant of the living God, these sailors went ballistic!
Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, "What is this that you have done!" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them so.
Folks, the world knows what we are supposed to be about. And when we do not do it, they become incredibly hostile! All that Jonah could do at that point was to bail out. He was about to be swamped, because he didn’t really see how much the fare to Tarshish was. He didn’t see that the fare to Tarshish included paying for the social problems and the human hurt that could have been prevented. A very high price!
d
But most of all, people of God, when I ask you how much the fare to Tarshish is, and when I suggest to you that there are costs far beyond what meets the eye – most of all, I am thinking of the costs that extend from here to eternity. The costs that go beyond this life and into the life to come. The plain and simple truth is this – that beyond this life, on the other side of the grave, there is a reckoning with the justice of God. I trust in the mercy of God, and I hope for salvation and for eternal life in His presence. But if I, like Jonah, have run from His presence in this life, what makes me think I will get it in the life to come? If, like Jonah, I have pretended that I could flee from His commands in this city, what makes me think I will happily obey them in the city which is to come? And if, like Jonah, I have not cared for my brother or my sister; if I have given no witness to my neighbor or my co-worker; if I have not been willing to get past my emotional reactions or my theological problems, so that I can share the truth with somebody here, what makes me think I will see anybody in eternity?
How much is that fare to Tarshish? Mighty costly if it means that for all eternity somebody won’t be there, because of me and my Jonah-like hang-ups. Very expensive if it means that everlasting life was never even offered by the folks at that ship of Zion on this corner. The hidden costs are high. They are unbearable. How much is that fare to Tarshish, away from God? Do you really want to travel on the cheap?
