Jonah 1:1-3

We are in Jonah chapter one.

Um, and as you're turning to Jonah, if you have a Bible, you can turn there.

Uh it's Super Bowl Sunday.

So this has really nothing to do with my sermon.

It's just getting me warmed up being up here, so just bear with me.

Um, I was raised an independent fundamental Baptist.

So what that meant in part is that you went to church on Sunday morning for Sunday school, and then you went to church again to big church, and then you went to church on Sunday night, and then you went to church again on Wednesday night.

And that meant that you never really got to see the Super Bowl.

Um, I always came in after halftime.

I always missed the first half.

So um I guess maybe I graduated in 2003, and then in 2004, the Patriots played the Panthers, and I rebelled and I said, I'm watching the entire Super Bowl.

Um, forget this.

I'm going and I'm watching, I'm going to my first Super Bowl party of all time.

And so I went to my wife's parents' house, and they had like a whole spread there.

They really do it upright.

And my brother, who's like five years younger than me, was with me.

I don't know how he got out of church, but he uh he did.

And he walks into the room, and I'm there with a lot of people that don't necessarily align with me theologically on some issues.

They hold to uh different, they have a different stance on some major issues.

And my brother, who who really doesn't have a theological stance on anything, um, for that matter, I mean he doesn't even know he just doesn't really, he just blurts out stuff.

He walks into the room and he says, he looks at one of these other guys and he's like, How do you guys believe that you can lose your salvation?

And I'm just like, oh my gosh.

And the guy, like, just this is like a deacon at their church and stuff, and he just starts laying out all these reasons, and then at the same time, it's brewing within me, like, I can't just listen to this.

So now I'm like combating with this guy about why we can or cannot lose our salvation, and my brother has just like loaded up his plate and like just walks out of the room, and like I'm just left with arguing with this guy.

I'm like, man, God, I'm like, I'm just trying to watch a Super Bowl, and I still was not able to get away from this theological debate.

But with that said, I will be watching the Super Bowl tonight.

Um, forsaken some of those independent fundamental ways, but clung I've still cling to some of those.

But anyway, that's just to get my voice warmed up.

Jonah chapter one, uh, verses one through three.

Uh, we're only gonna cover three verses today.

I figure if people can write an entire book on one verse, then surely I can do a sermon on three verses.

So we're gonna look at uh Jonah chapter one, verses one through three.

Uh we're gonna talk about uh God's call to Jonah and then Jonah's flight from God.

And we're just we're gonna jump right in.

Jonah chapter one, verse one says this.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, uh, God's so God's call to Jonah.

God's call to Jonah is is really no different than any other calls that he has to prophets in the Old Testament.

It's not like it's some special kind of call or anything.

This is really how God called and gave his word to these Old Testament prophets.

The term um the word of the Lord came to, that's used over a hundred times as a way of showing how a prophet was getting what word he was to say, what he was to prophesy about.

So that's used quite frequently.

Uh, and then what follows is instructions on what the prophet should say.

Uh and that's what we have here.

We don't have anything spectacular.

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah.

That's it.

But I don't want to fly over this, so I want to dig into just a little bit on this first verse.

Uh, the the word of the eternal God, uh, the one that created and sustains all things, the one that had provided miraculously uh for Jonah's people, that God sent word to Jonah.

This is the same God that uses his words to create the entire universe and everything in it.

Uh if you read Genesis chapter 1, it's full of God said, and then boom, like there's a bunch of stuff.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

So his word is very important.

God even uses his lack of words as condemnation.

Um, Isaiah 64, 12 says this, will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord?

Will you keep silent and afflict us beyond measure?

So, silence, the lack of God's word was punishment.

If you read throughout the Psalms, you will hear David pleading with God not to be silent to him.

Where are you, God?

Like, where are you?

Don't be silent.

Uh, in the New Testament, we see God the Son, Jesus, uh, raise Lazarus from the dead by simply saying, Come forth.

So, this is what we have.

We have the word of the Lord coming to Jonah.

There should be a significant weight there.

As we open the book and we we start to go through the book, that's a big deal.

That the word of the Lord has come to Jonah.

When when God speaks, he is moving his redemptive plan forward.

That's what's happening.

He's speaking to remove to move his plan of redemption forward.

And this is what he has to say to Jonah.

And verse number two arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

God's word to Jonah is packed, it comes packed with a command.

He simply says, Get up and go.

Go to Nineveh.

That is a direct command for Jonah to do right now.

Arise and go.

That isn't later, that's not that's not later on, that's not whenever you feel comfortable with it, that's arise and go.

And really, this is how many of God's commands worked in the Old Testament and really even today, but God has something for someone to do, and He just tells them to do it.

That's how it worked.

There's not a ton of detail in this command.

It just says, go to Nineveh and call out against it.

That's it.

Uh, it doesn't say take this boat over to this port and then take this boat over here and then talk to these people, and then don't talk to these people.

And if you get offered this opportunity, take that opportunity, but do not pursue this opportunity.

None of that.

It is just get arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it.

That's it.

I just want to pause here for a second and say, this is a lot how this is a lot like how God's commands work for us still today.

Uh we believe here that God is no longer giving special words.

He's not gonna give you a special word that contradicts his word, and he isn't speaking for us to write any new revelations, so we don't get that.

But God's word comes to us simply as his commands right here in the book.

Does the Holy Spirit impress upon our hearts to do things?

Absolutely.

Does he use the wisdom of others to uh shape our lives and instruct us?

Yes.

But we also have his completed word right here in front of us that is full of commands.

There's there's lots said in here about what is best to do and what's not best to do, but his actual instructions to us are pretty simple.

We're called to walk humbly with our God, we're we're called to share the gospel, to love God, and to love others.

I mean, it's really when it boils down to it, it's really quite simple.

It doesn't really tell us where to live, what to drive, it doesn't really necessarily tell us what to wear, who to spend our time with.

Uh there are definitely words in the Bible that mold these things and that help us make decisions, but for the most part, God has given us the ability and the freedom, as long as we are not pursuing something in sin, to make decisions, and God will be over those things.

That's how he works.

And my point really is this we spend most of our lives, a lot, a good portion of our lives, worried and wrapped up.

We we get wrapped up in the things that aren't even commanded in Scripture.

And then we spend very little thought on the things that actually are commanded in Scripture.

Uh we can see at the end of Matthew, if you go to the end of Matthew, you don't have to turn there, you can verify this later, or you can hurry up and get there now.

But we can see at the end of Matthew that God told his disciples to go into all the world and to make disciples.

And then if we go through the book of Acts, uh you see how important that is.

How important it is to share the gospel and to make disciples.

So we know that this is huge.

Like we need to share the gospel and make disciples.

We see throughout the New Testament the importance of personal holiness.

So, yes, we should go make disciples, and yes, we should live in a way that shares the good news of Jesus Christ, but we seem to get lost in all the other stuff.

Like, should I move, or should I take the job, or should I eat that, or should I do that, or should I go to the Super Bowl party tonight, or whatever it is.

We get wrapped up in all these other things, and don't get me wrong, we have a lot of decisions to make, and we should seek wisdom, and we should we should really try to make the best decision possible, but we should also follow the simple commands laid out in scriptures, scripture.

Should we move?

I don't know if you should move or not, but how about when you move, will you be able to better make disciples?

Am I shaping my life in a way that glorifies God?

We spend, we spend so much time on the gray areas that we neglect the black and white areas.

I remember doing this in the youth group.

I made this whole list of like, here's God's commands, and then here's like a list of stuff that's like, ah, I don't really know.

And like if you look at the list, it's like we spend all of our efforts worrying about the list that's like, ah, I don't, I don't really know.

God gives us the freedom to do those things.

And my point is follow God's simple commands.

Uh live to glorify Him, share the gospel, make disciples, and then just make some decisions.

Seek wisdom, yes, absolutely.

But don't spend your life worrying about the other stuff, the other stuff.

So I I think sometimes uh when we read Jonah, we're like, man, this isn't really relatable to us because uh Jonah, he had this chance, God just blatantly told him what to do, and he doesn't do it.

And it and I feel like if I was in that situation, I would probably do it.

And it's easy for us to jump on Jonah.

Like it's it's all right there for you, Jonah.

Just do it.

Get up and go to Nineveh.

God just told you to do it, but then we live our lives in a way that we are just paralyzed with indecision, and all the meanwhile, we're not following the basic commands that God has commanded us to do.

So that was just a pause to go there.

Now let's get back to our text.

Uh, back to Jonah.

God tells Jonah, arise and go.

Not not a lot of detail, just go do this.

Go tell Nineveh that their evil has come up before me.

That right there tells us quite a bit about Nineveh.

Uh, they are so evil that God has taken note of this.

And um, I want us to get a hold of that too.

Because we tend to romanticize scripture in our hearts.

Like we think, you know, these guys are just bad guys, and they have soft hearts, and and they're probably just, they're probably, they probably are well-meaning, but they just keep making stupid decisions.

And we romanticize these things.

Um, and and you, and we start thinking, like, man, if I was Jonah, I would have gone to the Ninevehites because I just, I'm really drawn to people that aren't churchy.

And that's really sweet and all, but like the Ninevehes were more than just not churchy.

They're more than that.

It's not just like, ah, they're the guy that just doesn't want to go to church and rebel a little bit.

They're the guys that want to go to the Super Bowl parties and not go to Sunday night church.

No, the Ninevehes are more than that.

I'm gonna read again.

I read this last time we went over the overview of Jonah.

Um, I'm gonna read it again.

This is a description of Nineveh in Naham chapter three, verses one through three.

It says this woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder, no end to the prey, the crack of the whip and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot, horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, host of slain, dead bodies without end.

They stumble over bodies.

Um, that's gross.

Nineveh is not like a rehab place where everybody's just trying to get better.

That's that's not what Nineveh is.

The Ninevites are not the guys that keep messing up and are like, man, I I just I really want to get I want to get better.

They are evil, wicked people.

Do not romanticize this in your mind.

Uh think rapists, abusers, murderers.

Terrible, awful things are happening in Nineveh.

And Jonah is instructed to go there and cry out against their evil.

Uh so before we we posture our hearts like, man, if God told me to do that, that's exactly what I would do because I love people that are outcast.

Before we do that, let us be reminded that God has instructed us the same thing.

He has instructed us to go and share the gospel to make disciples.

We can actually share the gospel with people that we like and that like us.

Jonah is going into Nineveh where people are, there are dead bodies.

People are apparently tripping over dead bodies.

I mean, this is a nasty place.

So God's call to Jonah is to go to Nineveh and tell them that they have sinned against me.

They have sinned against a holy God.

Uh this leads us to our next point.

So we got Jonah's Jonah uh Jonah or God's call to Jonah, and now we have we look at Jonah's flight from God in verse number three.

It says this But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshus.

So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshus, away from the presence of the Lord.

The Ninevites are evil.

We've established that.

Uh the city is full of wickedness.

It would be, it's seriously, I mean imagine this, it would be a scary place to go and say, You guys are evil and you need to repent.

I would just really struggle with that.

That would be very difficult.

However, I am in no way defending Jonah.

Uh we there's nothing to defend Jonah about here.

He has directly disobeyed the command of a mighty God.

The God that did all the things that we just talked about at the beginning of the sermon, the one that spoke this place into existence, the one that told a dead guy to not be dead anymore.

That God just told Jonah to go do something, and Jonah says, No, I'm going this way.

Uh there is no evil so strong that it excuses us from the commands of God.

There is nothing too scary for us to face that somehow we get a pass for disobedience on God.

He is God, we are not.

That's just that's how it works.

So I want us to feel the weight of Jonah's disobedience, the significance of this rebellion.

These are uh some quotes from Jonah's contemporaries.

These are some other prophets from the from the Old Testament.

Amos chapter 3, verse 8.

Amos 3:8

Uh, the lion has roared, who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy?

Uh Jeremiah 20, verse 9.

Jeremiah 20:9

If I say, I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary from holding it in, and I cannot.

So these are other prophets, and they are saying they cannot help but prophesy whatever God is telling them to prophesy.

So Jonah has to suppress all of this.

He has to sear his conscience and run in the complete opposite direction away from the presence of the Lord.

He's running away from the presence of the Lord.

By the way, I'm going to weigh in here with uh Psalm chapter 139 and verses 7 through 10, as we think about Jonah running from the presence of the Lord.

Psalms 139 · chapter mention

It says this, where shall I go from your spirit?

Or where shall 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 dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me.

And I really think that that Jonah knows this.

Jonah knows that as he flees from the presence of God, there's really nowhere that he's gonna go, that God's not gonna be there.

You can't outrun God.

He knows this.

But I think what Jonah's doing is he's making a statement that he will not be doing what God wants him to do.

He's really fleeing from what God wants him to do, to go to the opposite direction.

It's really like stomping your foot on the way out in disobedience to your parents.

Like if your dad comes up to you, your mom comes up to you, and um they say, We want you to go to go do something, and they're standing in front of you and you feel rebellious, you don't like just move over here and go over their left shoulder and move away from them.

No, you like stomp your foot and you turn and you walk in the opposite direction.

That's what we see from Jonah.

Jonah's disobedience is right up in God's face.

I will not do this, I will turn in the opposite direction, and I will blatantly and in your face disobey you by fleeing to a place that is opposite of where you have told me to go.

I will flee from your presence.

Um, I as Christians, uh, when we are in direct disobedience to God's commands, we are, I believe, of all people the most miserable.

Think about this.

If you're truly saved, if you are truly born again, and you continue in sin for a season, knowing that your sin is directly defiant to God, you cannot fully indulge yourself in that sin.

It's impossible.

It makes it miserable.

Knowing that the God you are saying that you love, that you actually are saying that this God saved me and I love him.

I've spent, I'm staking my eternity on this.

That you are hurting that God with your sinful behavior, it makes the actions impossible to enjoy.

It is much easier to continue in sin if you don't love God in the first place, if you don't care about it.

If you ultimately love your sin more than you love God, that actually proves that you're not saved in the first place.

You haven't actually been regenerated.

So I just want to make this very clear in case you didn't catch it.

If you are in sin and there is a pattern of sinfulness that has gone uncared for for a very long time, you feel no ultimate remorse for it, and your taste for that sin has never changed, you are not regenerated.

You are not saved.

You cannot love sin and love God.

It is impossible.

Matthew 6, 21 says, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

If your treasure is your sin, then your heart is not with God.

Stop pretending like it is.

Stop doing that.

God is disgusted by that.

If your heart has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God, then you can sin, but you will not find any joy in that sin.

There will not be ultimate satisfaction in that sin.

This is what we see in the book of Jonah.

God commands his prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh, to call out against their sin.

Jonah rebels against God, runs in the opposite direction, does the opposite of what God tells him to do.

And the rest of the book, we see Jonah as in a miserable state.

And actually, it's a weird book because the book actually ends with Jonah in this miserable state.

It's never like, yeah, Jonah got it together.

The closest he came is when he was in the belly of the whale and he was begging God to get out of there.

But it ends with Jonah whining and complaining.

This is a picture of a Christian that tries to live in rebellion to God.

It is miserable.

If you are enjoying your sin, please check your soul.

Check your soul because there's no way that you can love your sin and love God.

It is an impossibility.

So as we we've walked through these first three verses, uh, I just I just want to end with just a few questions.

I'm gonna read these first few verses, and then I want to end with just some a few questions.

Just to read all these together so we get a picture of it before we leave.

Uh it says this Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amitai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it.

Further Evil has come up before me.

But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord.

He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshus.

So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshus away from the presence of the Lord.

I would ask you a few questions.

What commands of God do you feel that you need to get as far away from as possible?

Like, are there things that God has asked, ways that he wants you as a believer to live that you think, yeah, I don't want to be associated with that?

I'm not doing that.

Jonah didn't want want to do, Jonah did not want to do it God's way because he thought he knew better than God did.

And when you search your heart, uh, when you you know take some spiritual inventory, what areas do you have that you have those same feelings?

Where you where you're just thinking, I just can't get on the same page with God on this topic.

I just I can't do it.

Because what happens is this in turn causes us to flee from God.

We may not physically run the other way, but in our hearts we do.

We really begin to doubt that he has our best intention in mind, he has our best interest in mind.

Uh we begin to doubt his goodness.

Maybe we just start to feel like he isn't relatable anymore.

Like God, if if God thinks this way, I just I can't get there, and therefore I just am not relatable.

God is not relatable to me because he's saying this, and I want to live this way.

And I don't know what those things are, and I'm not gonna try to spell those things out, but if those are things that you are dealing with, um I would really search your heart and soul about that.

Because when we take our eyes off the majesty of God, the one that knows and cares for us and loves us, uh, when we take our eyes off of that, we begin to flee his presence.

We stop putting ourselves in a place to hear from him.

We try to flee his presence.

But he is good, he is after our best, he is relatable to us.

And we know this because of the book of Jonah.

Look, he sent a disgruntled prophet to call a bunch of wicked sinners out of their sin and rebellion so that he could bestow his mercy upon them.

Because last time, remember what the we said the theme of Jonah kind of is is God loves to show mercy.

We we know that that God is relatable, we know that he is for us.

He just sent a whiny, disgruntled, grumpy prophet to tell a bunch of wicked murderers to repent so that he could bestow mercy upon them.

So we know he is good.

And later, after Jonah would come, God would ultimately send a better version of Jonah.

He would send his own son, Jesus, to not only call us out on our sin and wickedness, but to actually take on the penalty of that sin on a cross, absorbing the wrath of God toward us sinners.

The true prophet, the true and better Jonah, Jesus, would be commanded by God the Father to go.

Go to a bunch of wicked sinners and be the only sacrifice suitable for their sins so that you can reconcile them back to me.

But the true and better Jonah, Jesus, he would not flee from this, he would not run from God's presence.

He instead would go, he would bear the cross, he would go to Calvary, he would take on the sin and the wrath of God, he would take on our sins and the wrath of God to pay the price that we are unable to pay.

So when we're we're tempted to flee from his presence, remember he is the better Jonah.

He proved his goodness for us, he proved his love for us, he has a long track record of mercy to undeserving sinners.

And that's you and that's me, and he has proved that.

And if you're here and you're not a believer, or if you're here and you're trying to convince yourself that you are a Christian, but yet you're in the midst of enjoying your sin with no plan or desire to call on God to save you, I want to remind you, like Jonah did the Ninevites, God will not ignore your sin.

It will be paid for, it will overthrow you.

Repent and believe, I beg of you.

Let's pray.

God, um, I just pray that as we just we really just go over three verses today, that something from your word would uh nestle down into the hearts and the conscience of of us and would chip away, would chip away at believers, that this would be just a pebble in their shoe, that they would be transformed more into their to your image.

That they would um confess sin, that we would flee from sin and not your presence, we would flee to your presence and away from sin.

But God, I I really pray that if there is others in here that are not saved, or people in here that are really struggling with um if they are saved or not, that they would really take a spirit spiritual inventory, that they would they would examine their hearts and their souls.

And God, if if they love their sin, I pray that you would make it just utterly disgusting to them.

Make their sin feel like poison to them and and shake them out of their slumber and wake them that they may be saved this morning.

God, would you do that?

I I plead with you to save sinners in our midst.

To prove to them your mercy and your love by removing their heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh, by uh saving them from the sin that they once loved, and and then turning that sin into just um disgusting, a disgusting taste to them.

May we all uh flee to you, God, flee our sin and run into your presence.

We thank you for Jesus.

We thank you for ultimately sending us um the prophet, the son that that could do what no other prophet could do, that could actually not just announce our sin, but that could absorb our sin on the cross.

Thank you for that, God.

I pray that we would get a hold of that, that we would be all inspired by that, that our lives would be changed by that fact.

Um, we love you.

We thank you.

We just pray that you would bless the remainder of our time together and we give you the praise for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.