Jonah Part 1 (1:1-3)

Joshua Kehler: All right, guys.

I'm super excited.

so we're gonna go to the book of Jonah.

what, so we'll spend a couple weeks here, then we're gonna go to the book

of Mark, and then the book of Mark.

We're gonna take it a chapter a week.

So we're gonna, we're gonna blow through it, so Jonah will probably

be in here in five for five weeks.

so we'll go Mark and then another Old Testament prophet, maybe Habakkuk,

cuz I think he's like amazing.

His message.

and then I'm thinking Romans, so that we might just plan

our flag in for a little bit.

But, I like getting some ot, Newt, ot Newt, and, Jonah's an amazing thing.

so I'm gonna do an introduction today.

so don't let this fool you.

I'm gonna read the first three verses and we're gonna stop because

it'll probably only be four more weeks after this, but, let me read

now.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh,

that great city and call out against it for their evil has come up before me.

But Jonah rose to Fleet Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to JPA and found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fair and went

on board to go with them to Tarshish.

Away from the presence of the Lord.

This is the word of the Lord.

Father, we thank you for your word this morning.

And God we just pray for insight into this.

Thank you for this story.

Thank you for preserving this, down through the centuries.

And, Lord, you included it for a reason and I pray that reason would take anchor

and root in our hearts, be glorified.

May your love be more obvious to us than it ever has been before.

May your grace, be disruptive in our lives.

May it be shocking.

God, we thank you, we just pray.

you'd bless this time.

Save us from the opinions of men and good ideas.

We just want your truth, Lord, for your glory, our joy in

the salvation of the city.

In Jesus name, amen.

So I've told you over the time I'm an electrician, that's what I do.

I've been shocked over 80 times.

Whoa.

yeah, I've been blown off a ladder, an eight foot ladder.

I've like almost been knocked unconscious.

Oh.

And You would think, and each time is like special.

Each time is like a reminder.

Each time is like, you don't get used to it.

at least I don't.

I've heard stories where guys get used to it.

They get callouses and, and so lots of times being shocked, don't like it.

Never found like, oh, I like this.

Or like, you know, I don't have coffee this morning, so I'll just grab the

two wires, you know, and that, yeah.

Never an option in my mind.

Not a fan.

Don't like it.

I think I'm so aware all the time cuz I don't like being shocked.

I'll be making up a live panel, and I'm just like jamming, trying to get

it done before inspection and all of a sudden I'll realize like, oh, my

finger's about half an inch away from me getting blown off of this thing.

I'm touching metal and I'm touching this and I like step back and

I take my breath away and I'm like, how did I get so careless?

I hate being shocked, And I'm like, gosh, how did I get lax and like, Regards to

this energy and this power, the worst experience I ever had as an electrician.

We were in a Home Depot.

It was open during the day.

I was on top of a scissor lift all the way up.

It would only go to 25 feet.

I had to get into this gutter where there's four 80 power

and I couldn't reach it.

And at the time my boss wasn't big on harnesses or safety things.

And so I got a six foot ladder, put it in top.

Oh my God.

Stood on top of it.

The whole thing swayed.

I still could only reach it like this and I had to splice in four 80 power.

Yes.

Oh, sweats pouring down my face.

Like I'm just like shaking.

I'm like, if I won bad move, I'm gone and died like that.

Yeah, people do and I should have like been.

Knowledgeable enough to say, what am I doing?

but you're in the moment and stuff.

But there was such a respect at that moment for the power

that I'm gonna tap into.

Oh, That's biblical.

And then, yes, and then there's something funny that happens where

you can get used to the power.

And it becomes something where you don't treat it like it has the

same energy and the same power.

you can ask 10 different Christians what the gospel is in a church, and very

likely you'll get 10 different answers.

Some will say it's, oh yeah, that's what we hear at the end of a sermon.

Or that's what, you get to enter in and become a Christian, or, that's

the good news or that's the news that gets you into the Christian life,

The first four books are the gospels.

Yes.

You used to think, growing up in the church that once you become a Christian,

you don't need the gospel any longer.

Now you need to hear the meat.

You need to hear instruction on how to live.

Okay, I'm in now.

Tell me how to live.

Tell me how to obey.

Tell me how to behave.

That's the meat, that's the deep theology.

That's where the rubber meets the road.

And nothing could be further from the truth coming to realize

that the gospel isn't just the ABCs, it's the A to Z, right?

As we say, it's like a hub on a wheel, on, on a bicycle.

You, it's not aoke.

It's the hub that ties everything else together, right?

we don't move beyond the gospel.

We move deeper into it, right?

Taste and see that the Lord is good, right?

We move into those truths, and those truths become more of a reality.

God's grace is still.

Just as shocking as scandalous as it was when we first were introduced

to it, just like that electricity.

It still has the same amount of power, can do the same amount of damage.

The problem isn't the power, it's that I get used to it and I fail

to realize the strength and the immensity of the power that's there.

The danger of becoming dumb.

The danger of becoming numb.

Yes, because you're around so much.

You're with it so much, you're around it and it, you get used to it.

To put it in a negative way, you take the gospel away and

all life is a form of slavery.

Relationships, work.

Pleasure, accomplishments, possessions, pursuits.

Take two.

Acceptance.

Here's mine, right?

The gospel announces what Jesus has done.

We already have God's full and final acceptance, 100%.

Never changing, can never be tarnished, can never be erased, can never be

damaged, can never be diminished in any way, but you take the gospel

away and that truth away without the gospel, we have to achieve acceptance.

And we work to achieve it through people and we become a slave to it.

I've gotta earn this acceptance.

I've gotta, the worst thing about earning acceptance is then

trying to keep that acceptance.

I had a superintendent tell me I was doing such a good job.

He warned me.

He said, one mess up.

He used a different word.

We'll take away 10 attaboy.

That was, that's the math right in the world, so I was doing so good.

He said, if you mess up once, it does away with all the good you have.

So I'm a slave to keeping this acceptance.

I'm a slave to keeping this praise.

Love What Jesus has done for us cannot be separated from God's love.

Nothing in heaven on earth can separate us from his love.

Romans eight, where can unconditionally and eternally love from God?

We are secure forevermore.

Nothing can separate us from his left.

No, not any created thing.

Paul the Apostle tells us, are you a created thing?

Yes.

You can't even separate yourself from God's love.

No matter how far you run, no matter how hard you run in the

other direction, you yourself cannot separate yourself from the love of God.

Amen.

We are unconditionally.

And eternally, forever, securely, invincible, loved by God Almighty,

because of what Jesus has done for us.

If people know anything, or, if we try, if we don't revisit that truth again and

realize the power in it, we will spend our lives trying to satisfy our deep

craving and need to be loved by extracting love from others to get what we crave.

Which again is a form of slavery because I have to be this,

I have to perform like this.

I have to do this in order to secure this love and this approval from this

person to get this from them, or I become a slave to my hardheartedness.

I become a cynic because I ha this person doesn't love me,

or I have failed so many times.

I'm gonna close my heart off to this and I'm gonna think that it's all a sham.

So Jonah.

If people know anything about Jonah, what is it?

What do we know about Jonah?

We know the whale.

it's got something to do with Jonah telling God no.

About going to Nineveh and then being swallowed by a big fish.

That's like the story in our minds, right?

Jonah in the book of Jonah is not primarily about a fish swallowing a man.

That's like two verses, just so we know.

That's like not the point.

It's so much more than that.

The Book of Jonah is a storied presentation of the gospel of grace.

it's a narrative telling of grace.

Like shocking grace.

Yeah.

Like holy moly, grace, like, wait, really?

God.

Grace.

So it's a storied presentation of the gospel.

Romans, Galatians, Paul delivers the truths of the gospel with like

precision, like professor at the most prestigious university like.

Every argument is perfect, theologically deep, like it's just

like you can't rock against it from the right hand or the left.

He's just like there, boom.

Here's the gospel and all its logical form and all its power, and all its

theology, and all of its implication.

And it's an amazing thing.

Jonah is different in a little way because it's a narrative.

It's a story telling you about the gospel that Paul is explaining in such detail.

It's a story of sin and grace of rescue and deliverance.

Rebellion and hardheartedness a story about idolatry and the true treasure.

In fact, here's what I think the thesis verse is, and Jonah, it's Jonah two eight.

Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace of God that could be theirs.

Those who cling to worthless idols, forfeit the grace of

God that could be theirs.

a story about running from God and how quick we are and how

quick God is to run after us.

A story that shows that even though our sin reaches far, his grace

reaches further, how God of great expenditure spares no expense

to rescue fugitives of grace.

So over the next couple weeks, I want us to peer into this amazing

grace of our incredible God, and I want us to recognize and realize and

remember the power that grace has.

The power of the gospel, right?

As Romans one talks about, Jonah won one.

Guys, these first three verses are so crazy.

Okay, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of am saying.

So again, how many of us know about the story of Jonah?

How many of us have thoughtfully studied through the book of Jonah,

like, sat with it and like, maybe even read like a commentary or

even a, a bible with notes, in it.

A lot of what we know has been absorbed through children's media,

honestly, about Jonah, right?

You look up the story of Jonah on the Internet, and every single book

or anything that has to do with it is Jonah and the whale, right?

A lot of what we know has been absorbed through children's media and

all the stories they fixate on The Great Fish, which is two sentences

long, but this is holy scripture that God ordained to put into the cannon.

Right, and the point of scripture is what?

To reveal the character of God to reveal Jesus and to reveal his heart and purpose

in the world toward us and to the world.

It honestly is one of the most brilliant stories in the Bible.

I think in the Old Testament, it's full of wit.

It's hilarious.

It's full of irony, humor and satire.

satire.

it's like,

One of the books of the Bible that is kind of funny.

It's like exaggeration for effect.

what is satire?

Satire takes a normal theme or a character, a known quantity,

like somebody, a president or a, a boss in a workplace.

it puts them in extreme circumstance to highlight and reveal the flaws and

the defects to be a mirror back to us.

One of my favorite things is I love the Onion.

I don't know if you guys ever follow The Onion.

It's like that satirical news, but the best thing is

my kids don't know it's fake.

No.

Every couple months.

In fact, this last week my son showed me a story and he said, dad,

there's like a new death penalty.

And so I'm like, it's gotta be the onion, because he started telling me about it.

And so I watched it and of course it was the Onion, but It's like because lethal

injection takes so long and it's so harsh.

We came up with a new robot that just rips the heads off of people, Yes.

They did not think that was real.

or, okay.

Um, but I love it because it's so funny.

Because it's satire and what does satire do is it holds a mirror up.

it's analyzing the death penalty and it's saying, we treat people like chickens

with their heads being ripped off.

so it's putting this extreme of absurd circumstance on something

that we have commonly to hold up a mirror to the whole system itself,

that we treat people like livestock.

And so Jonah's doing the same thing, the genre.

Of Jonah is written in this way to be a mirror to us that we

might see ourselves in the story.

In fact, this is crazy guys.

Yom Kippur, as the Jews gather still to this day, every year they read

the book of Jonah and at the end they say, altogether I am Jonah.

What might that mean?

Satire, death penalty.

pointing out this extreme, situation so that we might

see ourselves reflected in it.

and Jonah, you have extreme words more than probably any book of the Bible

and Jonah Gaal In Hebrew, it means great or huge, and it appears 15 times.

Nineveh is the great city.

It was seven miles around three chariots, side by side

could ride on top of its walls.

God sends a great wind.

There is a great storm.

The sailors are greatly afraid when they hear how God is dealing with

Jonah, with a prayer on their lips.

They throw Jonah into the sea afterwards with great reverence.

They offer sacrifices and make vows to the Lord.

God sends a great.

Fish to swallow Jonah.

Jonah goes down into the great deep.

Later on, Jonah receives a second command from the Lord and preaches the

message of repentance to the Ninevites.

There is a great fast.

Why Because even the greatest people in the city of Nineveh are

fasting, including the King God, relents Jonah is greatly displeased.

Later on, God makes a plant to grow over Jonah and Jonah's greatly happy.

With the shade provided by the large green cool leaves of the plant.

But then God sends a little worm, which destroys the plant overnight

and Jonah slumps into great anguish and despair, God reasons with Jonah.

But the prophet's response is not made known to us.

There are implicit references to great.

Yes, Nineveh is a great city, but its wickedness was also great.

The sound, sleep of Jonah's, actually a great sleep.

Quite extraordinary for a man being asleep in a ship that's

being battered by a great storm.

So why do I bring that up?

We have to read the Bible and ask what kind of literature is this?

The writer is passing onto us as historical event, and this is where I

come down cuz there's two sides to this.

I think it's in between.

People are like, it's completely like historical.

word by word people are like, no, it's a parable.

The riders passing onto us a historical event highlighting.

A specific me message for specific people.

And so Jesus says Jonah is a real historical person in Matthew 12

39 40, but he answered them an evil in an adulterous generation.

Seek for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet

Jonah for just as Jonah was three days.

So Jesus saying, Hey, this is true for just as Jonah was three days and three

nights in the belly of the great fish.

So will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth

because the fish has been the main focus.

And this is what's interesting when people come to the, to scripture and that's

why, We need to understand the context.

We can't read our, 21st century worldview into a historical document

that's thousands of years old.

We need to understand the time and the place and what it was written

in the genre it was written in.

But because the fish has become such a main focus, it actually

has become a litmus test to whether you believe in miracles

and the truthfulness of the Bible.

So people are like, they focus on the fish.

That's duck the point.

The point is on this story of God's grace rescuing, that's the point of

the story and the point of the message.

I remember it.

It was fascinating.

I just first bumped into this.

I was a young preacher and I was preaching an Old Testament survey, and

we came to the Book of Job and I was going over the chapters that are like,

I think there's like 13, 14 chapters of job's, friend's response to job.

And most of them, the three friends, except for the younger one, he had

good responses, were bad advice.

It was moral advice, it was legalism, it was religion.

And I just mentioned offhand, this is bad advice.

And the guy listening said, how dare you say that the Bible has bad advice?

And I was like, but it, the Bible's saying it's bad advice.

Like that's the whole story of job.

And he left angry and never spoke to me again.

And I was at the church for a while because he thought I was

attacking the credibility of the Bible because he had come to believe

that like every single verse, true.

And it is true in the sense that it's truly saying this is bad advice.

Pointing out in a narrative form that job's friends gave him bad advice to

the point where I shared with him.

Job has to pray at the end so that God doesn't smite

them because of their advice.

but we can sometimes look so weirdly at the Bible where it's like we can't

stand back and say, How was this written?

Is this apocryphal language like Revelation or Ezekiel

or Isaiah in some of it?

Like, is it poetry?

Like the first, book of Genesis?

Like how people understood it for 2000 years?

Like, like how do we look and come at the scripture?

We need to be students of the word and we need to be students

of not reading our time and place.

Into the Bible, but letting the Bible say what the Bible's saying because it says

a message that transcends time and space.

It says a message about God rescuing his people.

But it's so interesting how we can.

Twist something because we are coming with our context.

We're coming with our problems as a Republican or a Democrat in our century,

in 2023 with our problems in ai, and then we can see something in scripture that

maybe God's saying something different.

It's knowing text.

It's knowing the people.

It's knowing the worldview.

It's knowing the place God chose to speak through.

Breathe through these people in a specific time and a place,

and you have different people.

You have farmers, you have musicians, you have prophets.

You have all different kinds of people writing a cohesive story.

That should be one of the proofs itself, that the Bible is divine or

otherworldly telling a unified story.

About what Jesus and how he's coming to seek and save that which

is lost, how God saves sinners.

That's the overall story.

so we come to Jonah and, historic man, because we're gonna, we're gonna see

that Jonah was actually a historic person, but there's an emphasis on

the greatness of what's happening.

Again, to hold up a mirror so that we, like the Jewish

people could say, I'm Jonah.

He's not somebody we can disconnect from.

and just be like, oh, Jonah, he sucks Jonah.

Oh, he's such a racist Jonah.

Oh, he's such a bigot Jonah.

He's such a failure.

Jonah, he's such this, he's such that, but that we like can, because things

are so heightened, we can say, yeah, I see myself in that because he.

Represents the same things and the same rhythms that we so

often get into Jonah one, one.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amai, saying, so what kind

of people does the word of God come to?

You see this in the Old Testament, over and over profits.

turn to Micah.

Turn one page over.

First verse, the word of the Lord that came to Micah, the son of Murrah.

Same thing, same intro.

So they both, same way.

God's communicating.

God is speaking through a prophet.

These prophets speak on God's behalf.

Now, sometimes we get mixed up and we think the prophets are

only talking about the future.

Sometimes they do as God's speaking through them, and they don't even

understand what they're saying.

About certain things, but most of the time they were the messengers from God

to speak a specific message to specific people at a specific time and a specific

place they would speak on God's behalf.

God would communicate his message through these prophets.

Micah starts the same way you think you know how the book is going to go.

When you first read that verse, you think, okay.

Jonah's gonna talk about the message he's got from God, and he's

going to speak about the nations.

He's gonna speak about the flaws of Israel or how much God is chasing

after them or how much God loves them.

But all of a sudden, verse two and verse three, take us in

a whole different direction.

When you read, Jonah starts the same way as the other prophets.

We know where the go, the message is going.

What's fascinating is Jonah's name means dove pure innocent one.

that he's the son of Amai, amai means faithfulness.

So he's, the pure innocent dove, the son of faithfulness.

So good.

Alrighty, so just think of the readers listening to this, story about Jonah.

And Jonah actually came along.

A couple, maybe 150 years after Solomon.

So he's one of the earlier prophets historically.

And pure innocent ones, son of faithfulness in Israel or Juah

Israel, not Judah, Samaria, speak God's word to God's people.

Sometimes given a word about the surrounding nations.

But what's fascinating is God calls Jonah right?

To go to Nineveh verse two, right?

when you're a prophet, you would speak hard things about the

surrounding nations like Isaiah.

Remember Isaiah, he's fresh outta Bible college and he's like, whoa, to you.

Cort.

What to you?

Wo to you?

Whoa, woe to you.

he's doing it from the safety of where he lives.

God like shows up and he is like, Jonah, I want you to go tell Nineveh this message.

Wait, like go to Nineveh?

Like, can't I just talk about Nineveh?

no.

I want you to go to Nineveh.

I want you to go to Nineveh.

It would be like parachuting in to Berlin during World War II and holding up a sign

that says, down with a third Rech, right?

God's like, Hey, I want you to go and I want you to preach this

message of judgment and repentance.

It's okay.

That's a little nuts.

that's not the normal like job description for a prophet.

Like, we'll stand up, we'll be courageous in the face of kings,

but usually it's our kings, right?

But they would mainly do it within their national boundaries.

They didn't go and speak a word in the midst of their enemies where they lived.

and he's told not to just go and speak a message of health, wealth, and prosperity.

Go bless them.

go give them, go give them the soft stuff, but a message of repentance.

Verse two, arise.

Go to Nineveh, the great city and call out against it for

their evil has come up before me.

Nineveh was the capital of ass Assyria and one of the cruelest nations in history.

Two things about Nineveh.

It was very great and it was very wicked.

Historically, we know from historians that the Ninevites were known as some of

the cruelest people in the ancient world.

Nineveh boasted in their own histories, which we still have their

representations on, their stones that they carved about how cruel they were.

some of the most graphic pictures that we still have today, when they would

conquer a city, they would skin alive.

A lot of the men, women, and children, and spread their

skins out over the city walls.

Then they would bury these skin people while they were still alive, up to

their heads in the sand, pull out their tongues and drive a steak through

their tongue to into the ground.

So they would just languish and paint and die of thirst, and then

at night they would make them listen to Steven Curtis Chapman CDs.

Wow.

Gosh, Okay.

Not that part.

Wow.

You're spending an eternity with him.

I know.

I can't wait.

I bet he can.

they would rape the women and kill them.

They even boasted about raping, kill, killing little girls.

One account describes how they, the soldiers would impale some of

them alive outside the city gates.

They would behead.

the patriarch of the family and put it on a pole and make the family

carry it, carry the pole in a horrible parade through the city.

Wow.

And at the end, they would make a mountain of heads outside the city so

they could say, this is what happens to those who dare oppose the Assyrians.

No, these were the people that Jonah was asked to go to.

The worst.

People in the world

and to preach.

And by the way, if you read the Old Testament, you'll see that one of

Nineveh's primary targets for all of this abuse, its direct neighbor to the west was

Israel or the Northern tribes of Israel.

which means Jonah and the people he was represented speaking to

and ministering to, were often victims of that nvi cruelty.

And so naturally Jonah doesn't want to do it, but the whole reason is why.

It all hinges on why.

It's fascinating.

It's fascinating.

I used to read this and I'd be like, that's freaking scary.

Yeah.

To like go and to preach, and know that you might end up

skinned alive outside the city.

Like you're going to your death.

You're going to your death.

What's fascinating in this story is that's not why Jonah runs.

Okay, Jonah three.

Three.

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 fair, he went down into it to go, with them, to Tarshish

away from the presence of the Lord.

Now this is fascinating.

Nineveh was directly east of Israel, and which way does Jonah go?

west.

In fact, listen, this is crazy.

this is why this story's amazing.

Like the details.

Tarsus was the last port before the Straits of Gibraltar, and

then it would be the open ocean.

It was the furthest place you could get away humanly from Nineveh at the time.

It was literally the last port.

West.

There was nothing but unexplored ocean past that.

God's like, I want you to go to Nineveh.

He's like, no, I'm going the Furthest way.

I'm not just sitting here.

I am literally getting as far away from that place as is

humanly possible at that time.

Amazing.

Notice that it says that he did not run from his call, that

he did not run from his fear.

He did not run from Nineveh, but that he ran from God himself Jonah

had a problem with the job he was given, but he had a bigger problem

with the one who gave him the job.

Who runs from God?

it's probably like week one in his theology class.

You're reading Psalms and you're like, no one can run for my presence.

Do why run from God?

We just don't trust him.

Jonah Rose to flee a defiant claim that my way is better than God's way.

And here's the point of the story.

Well, there's another point of the story, but this is a big one

cuz the other point's so good.

Jonah doesn't run because he's afraid of his failure.

But because he is afraid of his success, Jonah doesn't run because

he is afraid of his failure, but he's afraid of his success.

Jonah wants to see his enemy wiped off the face of the earth, but he knows that

he cannot trust God to be un merciful.

He knows he cannot trust God to be un.

Merciful.

The other way to say it is God is always going to be merciful.

I'm fine with that when that comes to me, right?

So often, God's mercy, I love it.

I drink it up, but those of you have actually hurt me and wounded me.

I'm not so good with that.

His mercy, I love it.

I drink it up.

I sit under the ocean of it.

His grace, his mercy, his forgiveness.

But that person, you're gonna give them the same mercy.

You cover them in the same blood, how dare you.

I've wrestled with that, that very real truth.

The church is a great place to be wounded, scarred.

Those scars don't heal until eternity, and maybe they'll just remain like

his scars as he kisses them and changes them into marks of his grace.

But it's a very real struggle, and it's the scandalous nature of grace as that

it's for all of my neighbor, my enemy, people who believe different than me,

people who believe in a whole different religion other than me, people who

live differently than me, like grace.

It's not about us, it's about him.

Yeah.

And that grace has an outward face.

To the world for God so loved the world that he gave us on.

So I'm fine with that.

I believe in law and grace, we just think grace is for us and law is for them.

We are great lawyers when it comes to our own faults.

And great judges when it comes to the faults of others.

we know all the verses when it's us, but when it's, ah, does that

really apply in this situation?

Did he, Matthew 18?

No.

Did he follow the procedure?

You know, If he was guaranteed that God would obliterate the N

invitees, then he would have went and paid for a front row seat.

In fact, he actually thinks that's gonna happen and he stays.

He doesn't go.

His job's done.

He's not like, I'm out.

Let's leave.

Let's get outta here.

Let's, we don't want to even be around the, the.

Fallout, the cloud of his judgment.

he's heard the stories about sabor.

You couldn't even look at the city or otherwise, he'd turn

into a pillar of salt, right?

He's like, I'm here and I'm gonna watch it burn.

And he's here.

Popcorn.

Yes.

Where is my popcorn?

In fact, we find out his motivation of why he flees in, Jonah four, one to three.

But it, this is when God relents from his judgment, because

the people are repenting.

He's had the most successful five word sermon in history.

The city is repenting, even the king himself.

And Jonah says, but it displeased Joah exceedingly.

And he was angry and he prayed to the Lord and said, oh Lord, is this not what

I said when I was yet in my country?

So here's the real struggle for him.

This is why I made haste to flee at Tarshish for I knew that you are

a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding and steadfast

love, and relenting from disaster.

Therefore, now, oh Lord, please take my life from me.

For it's better for me to die than for me to live.

Dove, son of faithfulness.

He knew that somehow Yahweh would find a way to bring his grace and

forgiveness to his hated enemies, and he didn't wanna have any part of that.

He knows Yahweh loves to show mercy.

How do we know that he knows this?

This is fascinating.

Jonah appears elsewhere in the Old Testament.

Okay.

In Second Kings 14, verse 23 to 27, this is so good.

2 Kings 14:23–27

In the 15th year of Amazon, the son of Joe Ash, king of Judah's, king of Judah,

JIRA Beam, the son of Joe Ash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, so the

Northern tribes, and he reigned 41 years.

That's a long reign, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

He did not depart from all the sins of Jarbo.

The son of Neba, who he's named after, which he made Israel to sin.

He restored the border of, of Israel from Libo Hamath as far as the sea of

Arabah, according to the word of the Lord and the God of Israel, which he spoke

by his servant Jonah, the son of Amai.

So here he is the prophet who was from Ga Heifer.

For the Lord, saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter.

For, there was none left bond or free, and there was none to help Israel.

But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name

of Israel from under heaven.

So we saved them by the hand of Jarbo, the son of Joe Ash.

So let me paint this picture.

Jarbo he's named after was the son of Solomon, who actually.

Disintegrated the nations and seceded from nation being one Israel.

So then you had the southern tribes of Judah and the northern

tribes of Israel, Jarbo.

He sat and built two temples so that people wouldn't travel down to Judah

and Jerusalem to worship the Lord.

He said, no, we've got temples here.

You guys can worship.

Guess what he set up?

Because he didn't have the ark.

He didn't have, the ark with the 10 Commandments and Aaron's, rod in it

and the Holy of Holies and stuff.

He set up in his temple's, golden calves.

He's said, come worship here.

And it says in our texts that this Jarbo, who he's named after,

continued to make that happen.

But God did something crazy.

God looked at Israel and the suffering of Israel and the enemies that were

around Israel, and he said, I'm going to show you good in the midst of your evil.

And I wanna send my prophet Jonah to declare that message to you.

So Jonah is here and his first message that he's given biblically

here historically is that he's gonna go tell a wicked king, that God is

gonna bless him because God uses his goodness to bring sinners to repentance.

So Jonah's first interaction with delivering the message of God is

to tell a bad king that God is good all the time, unfortunately.

And this fired up prophet who wants to be in the line of these others who

are like fire and an anvil and like calling out this king and that king.

He's chosen and set apart to deliver a message.

Shane, in the midst of your wickedness, in the midst of your failure, I'm

going to be good to you because there is none to save except me alone.

And he's giving the nation of Israel those northern tribes.

Time to repent.

They don't do it.

what's fascinating is in Amos chapter seven, that time runs out.

They don't use the goodness of God to repent and God uses the Assyrians

to take back the land that he had given them through the word of Jonah.

Through the word of Jonah.

But you can start to understand, Jonah is like, you're gonna

send me to the invitees.

So it's one thing to go to your own people who are failing

to preach the grace of God.

It's another thing.

Now, the next step is to be sent to the most hated enemies, the cruelest

people in the face of the earth, the world power at that time, and

to preach and know that the same God is going and might just rescue them.

He says, no, I don't want anything to do with it.

And so he flees in the other direction.

Absolutely fascinating.

So he's, he knows this grace.

He knows God is God full of grace, full of steadfast love.

And he is just like, this is the line.

I can't.

This is too much.

This grace is too radical.

We all know that, right?

We want grace for our people.

We want grace for our tribe.

We want grace for those who are like us, who believe like us, but grace for others.

Grace who people who are completely different than us, grace, who

despise it at the time, like.

Nah.

We have the same temptation in all of us.

That's why at Yom Kippur, the Jewish people read the story of

Jonah and they say, I'm Jonah.

I'm Jonah.

What's fascinating though is Jonah's goal was to flee.

He knew he couldn't get away from the presence, but presence in Hebrew, that

word there is panim, which means face.

Jonah's goal was to flee from the face of God.

He knew he couldn't get away from the presence of God.

but from the fellowship, from the communion, he's like this grace this.

It's too much.

Jonah knew he couldn't get away from God.

The most basic theological lesson is that God is everywhere.

He wanted to be away from the panim, the face of God.

Ideally, he wanted to obey God and have his presence when it was convenient,

but when what he loved most went one way and the face of God went the other.

He chose to stay with what he loved most.

He thinks running away from God will make him free.

The face of God, it's too much.

Lord, I've seen the Wicked Prosper and the Godly per right.

That's one of the most famous Psalms.

But in reality, running from God makes him a slave.

What true spiritual slavery is is self-reliance.

We love that word.

Nowadays, we champion it.

It sounds so empowering.

Self-reliance.

You can do it.

You are the master of your fate.

You are the master of your destiny.

When you believe that everything depends on you, if you really

believe that theology, that like self alliance, chasing to be your

own God is a burden you can't bear.

It is the greatest form of spiritual slavery that you have to be the

master and commander Martin Luther called it the life of an unhappy God.

That's such a good quote.

The life of an unhappy God.

What's fascinating, this could be the end of Jonah's story.

Jonah says, no, and God could have said, oh yeah, okay.

You go.

You do your thing.

I'm done with you.

I'm gonna go find somebody else.

God could have sent anybody better.

The fascinating thing about Jonah is he never repents in this whole book.

he repents in chapter two to get out of the whale, but he's at the end.

He still hasn't come around, and it's like this narrative that's left open.

You're like, don't know what Jonah's response is to all of

this, and I think it's on purpose.

But God literally could have found somebody who's quite better.

He could set an angel, he could have raised up rocks to speak on his behalf.

That would've done a better job.

Jonah is hard-hearted.

He's cynical the whole way through.

think about it, three days before he starts to pray in a

fish, he's so like stubborn.

He's like, nah, come on.

Slowly devour me.

And it's just not, he's like, fine.

Okay.

I realize you're God.

What?

Does God's pursuit of Jonah tell us here's the purpose of the book and

the purpose for our lives here it is.

The ultimate mission isn't to save Nineveh.

The ultimate mission is to save Jonah

and you and me.

That's the focus of the story.

Nineveh.

Yes.

God's gonna save them.

And they save them from himself.

Repent himself.

Yes.

Save them from hardheartedness.

Save them from hatred.

Save them from bitterness.

Save them from unforgiveness.

The whole point of this story is free because who The sun

Setss free is free indeed.

God wants our flourishing.

God wants our joy.

God wants the celebration and the rhythm and the dance of eternity

in every single one of our lives.

The point of this story is the rescue of Jonah himself.

That's why he throws a storm at him.

It's not because God's throwing wrath at him or he's punishing him.

He's rescuing him.

Over and over through the story, God is doing miracles to chase after Jonah.

And to rescue him from himself.

And so God does for us.

And so story is full of grace.

The reason God runs after Jonah is not to punish him for

being bad, but to set him free.

The con, there's a contrast being set up here between how Jonah feels about

thees and how God feels about them.

Jonah wants to see them destroyed.

God wants to see them forgiven.

Matthew 12 says that Jesus says that he was a prophet like Jonah.

We read those verses.

He said that his death and resurrection were the fulfillment

of the sign given through Jonah.

Jonah was cast out into the sea and the sea.

Sea became calm.

He was swallowed by a fish and taken down in the depths of the ocean.

Then days later, he was brought back to the land of the living.

Jesus was cast out into the ocean of God's wrath at the cross and the great

tempest of our God against our sin.

Became calm, still is glass, as the sun was thrown into the wrath.

throw me in.

He was in the heart of the earth for three days, like Jonah and then resurrected.

The difference of course, was that Jonah went through all of that

involuntarily because of his disobedience.

Jesus went through it all because of.

Our disobedience.

Jesus did everything right that Jonah did wrong.

Jonah ran from his enemies.

Jesus ran toward them.

Jonah was on mission of revenge because he hated the Ninevites.

Jesus came on a mission of rescue because he loved them.

Jonah was all about his own self-protection.

Jesus poured himself out in self-sacrifice.

Jesus called the word because he is the very message from God.

He was everything God wanted to say to the world.

In a person, a God who endures our sense of entitlement, absorbs our

rebellion, and in after us, until our hearts melt under the heat of his love.

A God who pursues a God, who chases a God, who throws himself in.

Not for his own disobedience, but for ours, the God who absorbs our entitlement,

our pride, our arrogance, our bitterness, our woundedness, all the things we've done

to others and the things done against us.

He absorbs on the cross and that ocean, and he does it because he loves us.

God loves you.

And so I hope like as we get into Jonah, like it's all through, we're

gonna see just his grace pop up and just crazy ways So lemme pray for us.

Father, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you for so much for this story.

Thank you so much for this, man you put on display and then the man who

mirrors us so often, not only do I say I'm Jonah, I also say I'm the invitees.

But you came and rescued, you came into seek and save.

That which lost.

I was dead.

My trespasses and sins hopeless without God in the world.

But God, who's rich in mercy made us alive together by grace.

We'd been saved.

You chased us.

Pursued us.

Not because of us, but despite us.

that demerit favor that you bestow on us, that favor as fugitives

of your grace, those who run from it, you chases them despite us.

And so, Lord, I just pray again, you would just heat our hearts up to this theme,

this radical otherworldly nature of grace.

This power that it is that says that, Lord, not only do you take the least and

the most feeble, the most rebellious and hard-hearted, not only do you wash them.

Why is snow, but that you make them sons and daughters and heirs

of eternity, that everything that you have, you share with us.

We are heirs of eternity of a world that exists outside this

known universe and it's boundaries.

That's incredible.

That's insane that our names are written in the lamb's book of life,

that we're cherished, we're adored, we're held close that we have your face.

The panim, we have your face and that face will never turn away from us.

Even when we turn, even when we're faithless, even when we fail.

You never fail.

You're never faithless.

You're the faithful one.

You are the dove that took the curse of the snake.

Oh, faithful God that you are.

Boundless mercy and grace,

and you proved it as we celebrate right now by your body being

broken and your blood poured out

to wrap yourself in human flesh over at 33 years later to be broken

apart by those you're trying to reach and minister with your grace.

To feel the human blood coursing through your veins only to have your body pierced

in it, it shed on our behalf, a life.

For a life.

We say Thank you, Jesus.

We are for forever.

Grateful.

Thank you that this message isn't just for the Jews.

Or God's covenant people.

But it's for the invitees.

It's for the Gentiles.

It's for the heathens and the pagans, cuz that's our story.

Praise you, Jesus.

We love you in Jesus' name.

Amen.