Called but Conflicted - Jonah

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning

into our podcast.

Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that'll

change your life.

And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

As a teenager I had person after person and I felt like endless numbers of people tell

me that I was going to be a pastor when I grew up.

Yeah I showed them, that's right.

I felt like every man, woman and dog had this opinion of my future.

And my response was always, I don't want to do that.

Part of the reason was my dad is a pastor.

And as people began to say this to me more and more, it went from I don't want to do

that to here are the 57 reasons that I would be a terrible pastor.

Because growing up as a pastor's kid I saw how awful Christians can be to each other

and to their pastors from an early age.

No you guys though, alright.

You guys are great.

No you guys.

I saw the spiritual way and the long hours and all the expectations people put on you

about who you should be and what you should be like and what you should do as a pastor.

And I just wanted none of that thanks.

Absolutely none of it.

There were 103 professions I wanted to do more than be a pastor.

It ranks somewhere between telemarketing and costing strangers in supermarkets trying to

sell them in those shopping centers trying to sell them products.

Apologies if you do any of those jobs.

But they're just not for me.

Sometimes I go outside of the shopping center and walk around just so that I don't have to

have that interaction.

I'm just going to be honest with you, really is one of our core values here at Encounter.

So I resisted and resisted and resisted it.

I found myself working as a youth pastor and I was still resisting it.

Whereas Ash, my wife, she felt like day one of her journey with Jesus which began as a

17 and 18 year old.

She had this crystal clear sense of call that she was called to be a pastor, called to vocational

ministry.

And I just thought people thought that I should be a pastor because I was intentional about

my faith and I was in my 20s.

But God kept chipping away at me and slowly and slowly he unpicked like a big old ball

of knotted crochet or something.

I don't know what it is.

All the 57 reasons that I had that I was not called to be a pastor, he just unpicked them

one by one slowly and gently.

And so I relented.

And now I have the honor of being ordained as a minister in a couple of weeks time, which

is a great, a great, a great thing.

What do you do when you're asked to do something that you really don't want to do?

Do you suck it up and just do it?

Push through?

Do you reject the premise?

Lay around it, push it off, avoid it?

Do you do what Judah did yesterday when I asked him to put his washing away and had a meltdown

screaming, but I just don't want to do it, dad.

And I was like, I don't want to do it either, mate.

What do you do when God asks you to do something and you don't want to do it?

We're in the second week of our series, which is titled called looking at how people in

the Bible respond to the call of God on their life and what we can learn from them about

responding to the call of God on our lives.

And in the hot seat this week, we have Jonah.

The Lord comes to Jonah and tells him to go to Nineveh, a huge bustling city and announce

God's judgment against it because he's had enough of how wicked the people are.

And Jonah's response is absolutely not.

He runs to the docks, gets on a boat, the head in the opposite direction to where Nineveh

is.

God calls Jonah to go and preach against the wickedness of Nineveh to tell them he's had

enough that their violence and abuse and corruption in the city can't be allowed to go on any longer.

If they don't change their ways, then he's going to have to destroy them.

And Jonah's response to the call is to run in the opposite direction.

Running away from the God who's just said he'll destroy a city, not a good strategy,

not the best strategy.

He's not making a really informed, rational, considered judgment, a considered decision.

He's making an immediate reactive decision.

Why does Jonah run?

Does he hate public speaking?

I mean I can empathize with that a little bit.

I used to hate public speaking and even today I find it difficult that you guys are going

to just be looking at me for the next 25 to 30 minutes.

It depends, it might be longer.

Who knows?

Does he fear for his own life?

Going and crying against a city who got his judging for its wickedness?

I mean that's kind of understandable.

Does he have more important things to do?

He didn't want to miss his underwater basket weaving course?

Right Carmen?

Yeah.

Very reasonable.

All possible explanations.

But the deeper reason that Jonah runs becomes apparent, it unravels as we hear more of his

story.

Jonah sails away from the Lord.

And so God sends us a storm so great that the men on the boat are praying to their gods

and throwing stuff over boards in the hope of survival.

All the while Jonah is taking a nap in the hold of the boat, obviously just thinking

to himself, yes, this was a very good plan.

The captain comes down, he wakes him, they've prayed to everyone else's God but the storm

still threatens all their lives.

Can you pray to yours?

He says.

And the man of the ship, they cast lots to find out who's fault this storm is and it

lands on Jonah.

And now Jonah is probably thinking, hmm, perhaps this was not the best plan.

The man demanded an explanation and Jonah tells him that he's running from his God and

that the storm would appear, probably has something to do with it.

And so your best bet is to, you know, just chuck me off the side of the boat, which is

kind of astonishing.

Jonah would rather die than ask God to pray to God, to ask God to calm the storm and to

go to an inniver.

And the men, they don't throw him off right away.

They try everything else to escape this storm, but the storm just gets rougher.

Jonah won't pray to his God.

So they pray to Jonah's God and ask him not to hold it against them and then they throw

him off.

Now, growing up hearing this story and even the way the story is written, I always thought

that the fish immediately swallows Jonah up.

But listen to the prayer he prays after three days and three nights of being in the digestive

system of a big fish.

This is Jonah two.

I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble when he answered me, I called to you from

the land of the dead and Lord, you heard me, you threw me into the ocean depths and I sank

down into the heart of the sea, the mighty waters engulfed me.

I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves.

Then I said, oh Lord, you have driven me from your presence, yet I will look once more towards

your holy temple.

I sank beneath the waves and the sea waters closed over me, sea we'd wrapped itself around

my head.

I sank down to the very roots of the mountains.

I was imprisoned in the earth whose gates lock shut forever, but you, oh Lord my God,

snatched me from the jaws of death as my life was slipping away.

I remembered the Lord and my earnest prayer went up to you in your holy temple.

Jonah's had a near death experience.

Jonah's hit rock bottom of the ocean.

Jonah is thrown off a boat and down and down he sinks, sea we'd wraps itself around his

head and down he goes so deep he feels like he's in the heart of the earth and he's blackened

out and just as he feels his life is slipping away, he finally prays to God to save his

life and good Lord, there is a very large mouth, snatches him away and he sits there

three days and three nights, probably just feasting on some fresh prawns, just hanging

out in that digestive system and then he prays his prayer.

And it's the last bit, verse eight and nine of chapter two, which is most significant.

This is what he says, those who worship false gods turn their back on all of God's mercies,

but I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise and I will fulfill all my vows for

salvation comes from the Lord alone.

Jonah has a moment where he acknowledges that God is God and he is not.

The Yahweh is God, the true God is the true God and to turn your back on the true God

is to turn you back on the only one who is merciful, worthy of praise and the only one

who can save.

So he says, I will fulfill my vows, I will follow you, I will do what you ask for, salvation

comes from you.

And so the fish immediately vomits Jonah back onto dry land, which is just a great image

in your mind.

So God asked him again, would you go to Nineveh and preach my message?

And so the world's most reluctant prophet barely gets inside the walls and he preaches

a seven word sermon.

I like to think it's Jonah's love of efficiency that causes him to preach a seven word sermon.

It's history's most efficient sermon.

There's no 50 minute Mike Wardrobe bangers here.

If I could have the same impact in seven words, I would do it just so you know.

But it won't be today.

Jonah declares 40 days from now, Nina will be destroyed.

That's his sermon.

It's great.

It's good stuff.

And the people listen.

They turn away from their wicked ways.

They go into mourning and fasting and God relents and decides not to destroy the city.

And Jonah is angry about it.

He's preached a seven word banger and a whole city is radically converted and he's angry

about it.

Now the truth of why Jonah ran comes out.

Jonah hates Nineveh.

He's prejudiced against them.

He wants to see them destroyed.

He says to God, didn't I say to you before I left home that you would do this Lord?

That's why I ran away to Tarshish.

I knew you were merciful and compassionate God.

Slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

You're eager to turn back from destroying people.

Just kill me now Lord.

I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.

Jonah knows that God called him to pronounce judgment against Nineveh.

Not because God wanted to destroy Nineveh, but because he wanted to save Nineveh.

And Jonah doesn't want Nineveh saved.

He would have rather died before, and he almost did, and he would rather die now than see

the city which he hates be saved.

God had called him to help save the people that he hated.

He was angry about that.

So he storms off and sits where he can watch the city hoping that they might return to

their wickedness and he would get to see some fire from heaven kind of action.

But God decides to lovingly teach him.

He grows a plant to give Jonah shade and then Jonah begins to love this plant.

But then God sends a worm that causes the plant to wither away and Jonah, who's just

been a beacon of joy and happiness up until this point becomes just an absolute sad Sally.

He's baking in the sun and he's just wishing he would die.

And this is God's response.

You feel sorry about the plant?

Though you did nothing to put it there.

It came quickly and died quickly, but Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual

darkness.

Not to mention all the animals.

Shouldn't I feel sorry for such great a city?

So the whole book of Jonah is about God's compassion towards Nineveh and also his compassion

towards Jonah.

God's desire to save Nineveh from their wickedness, but also to save Jonah from his own prejudice.

I want us to flip this now and think about this story from God's perspective because

I think it can help us to understand a little more about God's calling on our own lives.

There is this wicked, intolerably wicked city and the evil being perpetrated within those

walls and outside those walls cannot be allowed to continue.

Where would be the justice in that?

For God is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and filled with unfailing love.

He's eager to turn back from destroying people.

And then there's this Hebrew man, one of his chosen people.

People he chose to be a light of salvation to the rest of the world.

This man who God loves.

This man who was a deep prejudice against this wicked city.

And we don't know why Jonah has this.

Maybe people from the city did something to him that was evil.

Maybe it was just the done thing for a Hebrew man to hate Nineveh.

You see, God has a will.

Like you or I have a will.

My will is constantly for ice cream.

And I often make plans for how I can get ice cream.

And in a similar way, God has a will.

God has a plan.

He has a mission.

But that will is not for ice cream.

It might be, I don't know.

But it's to reconcile all things to God to himself.

In a world that has been broken and fractured by sin, God is on a mission to restore and

make it new.

God's will is perfect and good.

And for the good of all of us, of individuals, communities and the whole of creation.

God's will is to save Nineveh.

And his will is also to save Jonah.

But God has given humanity free will out of love for us.

We get the power to choose because love preserves choice.

If he knew someone loved you because they had to or felt obligated to, it would save

us.

It would suck.

It would not be the kind of love that we want.

Because true love requires the choice to love of someone's own free will.

And for God to override that free will would be to cause violence to us.

So here's the dilemma.

You have about a bajillion human wills, human plans, human choices.

And you have the will of God, God's plan.

These two things are not aligned.

I'm not good at maths, but it seems to me like an impossible equation.

They do not equate each other.

God wants to restore all of creation and do away with suffering and pain and tears.

And people want to destroy the earth for profit, exploit people for their own sexual gratification,

take people's lives and dignity out of prejudice, murder innocent people for political games

and profit and on and on and on.

The human will is obsessed with self.

And God's will is permeated by self-sacrificial love.

These two things are not aligned.

And that is the dilemma.

So what's God's options here?

Option A. He gives up on his mission to renew all of creation.

Option B. Destroy creation and start again.

He toyed with that.

Or option C, but A2, I guess.

There's a third way.

This is what Second Peter 3 says.

The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise as people think.

No, he's being patient for your sake.

He does not want anyone to be destroyed but wants everyone to repent.

God doesn't want A or B. And so he opts for C slash A.

Which is to work with and through the human will to bring about his will.

God's will is to save Nineveh from their wickedness and Jonah from his prejudice.

And so God plays nine D chess in the book of Jonah.

He calls Jonah to go and preach against Nineveh.

And Jonah chooses to run, which is a bold choice.

So God's going to storm to let him know he's not just going to give up on this.

Jonah could pray and turn around, but he chooses not to.

So God keeps the pressure on until something changes.

And it does.

The men throw him overboard at his request.

It's a clever move.

So God waits.

Are you really going to go through with this, Jonah?

You would rather die than go to Nineveh.

But Jonah cries out and God sweeps in and saves him.

Three days and three nights, God lets Jonah digest what's happened.

Doesn't this for one show us that God is far more comfortable with our uncomfortability

than we are?

Far more comfortable with our uncomfortability.

Jonah surrenders his will to God and God sits him back on dry land and he says, let's try

this again.

And so Jonah goes, he preaches and the people change their ways, which is just a great success.

But Jonah is angry about it.

And so God uses Nineveh and a plant and a worm to teach him about the love of God for

all his people, even the people that Jonah hates.

Can you see how in the book of Jonah, God has used human choice as an instrument to

accomplish his will?

Friends, God has a mission.

He launched that mission with Jesus' life, death and resurrection and the pouring out

of the Holy Spirit and the creation of the church.

And that mission is to reconcile all things to God, to put the world right.

And within that mission, God will have assignments for you.

Not in a, you're getting marked on this kind of assignment sense, but in a, I want you to

participate in my plan kind of sense.

He will call you, he will ask you to do things.

Some of them will be easy and fun and some of them will be the most difficult, uncomfortable

things you've ever done in your life.

But these calls do not exist in a vacuum.

You live in a world where you've got a bajillion humans centered, self-centered human wheels

that are doing what they want, regardless of whether it hurts another, justifying it

to themselves.

But you also live in a universe where a loving God is painstakingly, patiently working everything

for his plan.

Every good choice and every evil one committed by you and against you.

Every trauma, every sin, not God's will, hear this, not God's will, but used by God as an

instrument to accomplish his will.

So our call, our assignments in this life can be hijacked by sin and bad choices, ours

and theirs, but never ultimately defeated.

Romans 8, 28 says, and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of

those who love God and who are called according to his purpose for them.

The question is, when the call comes, how will you respond?

See, control is an illusion.

We can't control the things that happen to us.

We can't also manufacture the things that we are going to be called to, but our response

we are in control of.

Our response is our responsibility.

God's calling on your life might be to be set apart to the church, by the church, to

preach the gospel with your whole life for your whole life like mine is.

Or the assignments that God has given you might be to participate in God's renewal of the

uniting church, or to nurture a wife and a family like mine, but not specifically mine,

you can go and get your own.

Thank you.

Let me clarify that in life there are general callings, whether every follower of Jesus is

called to, to alert the world to the good news about Jesus, to love people into the kingdom

of God, to be with Jesus, become like him and do what he did.

Then there are specific callings that God will place on your life.

The church is made up of a body, it's called a body made of many parts for a reason.

No one can care about all the things they are out of care about, and no one's heart

can break for all the things that they are out of break about.

God calls you to care more deeply about what other parts of the body simply cannot, and

that's why we need each other.

People are called to specific things.

And God's calling on your life might be to teach the next generation, to work against

a particular injustice, to give dignity to a particularly isolated community, to work

for reform in society on particular issues, to heal the sick or cure specific diseases,

to make specific things beautiful of beauty and wonder, to be a Jesus presence in a particular

industry that sorely, sorely needs it, to repair something that is broken, to serve the poor

and the homeless in a particular community, to reach particular communities who need to

hear the good news about Jesus.

On and on, there are endless possibilities in a plan to reconcile all of creation to

God.

But maybe the call of Jonah is for you.

Maybe you see the one million people in this city of Adelaide who live in spiritual darkness.

One million people who don't know Jesus.

God is calling you to go to them, to call them to the light of Jesus Christ, to declare

to him that there is a better way, that there's a better kind of life and it's life with Jesus.

Or maybe you see the almost five million people in the city of Melbourne who live in spiritual

darkness and you feel a deep prejudice towards them because that's just what South Australians

seem to do.

And maybe God is calling you to go to them, to call them to the light of Jesus Christ,

to declare to him that there is a better way, there's a better kind of life and that life

is with Jesus.

Maybe God is calling you uniquely you, uniquely made with unique experiences and unique gifts

and skills in the same way he uniquely called Jonah for Nineveh's benefit and for his own.

I don't know what God's calling your life is and the assignments he'll give you, but

the question is how will you respond to them?

How will you respond when your life does not go the way that you think it would?

Will you respond by aligning your wheel with God's will and say yes to him?

Or will you take your wheel and run off in the other direction, resist, fight, make excuses?

I know a man who has had a specific call to vocational ministry for the last 20 years

and basically done nothing about it out of fear.

I know Tex touched on this last week, but we keep coming back to Jesus because Jesus

has the perfect response.

Jesus is the master in response to his assignment.

He doesn't run in the other direction.

But he feels the feelings, he's anguished and distressed and crushed with grief.

In the garden before he is arrested and betrayed, he prays three times, my Father, if it is

possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me, yet I want your will to be done,

not mine.

And then he submits to the will of God.

Jonah wanted to die rather than see God's mercy poured out on people that he hated,

but Jesus is willing to die in order that God's mercy could be poured out on people

that hate him.

Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale so that God could save him from the prejudice

and Nineveh from their wickedness.

And Jesus spent three days in the belly of the earth so that God could free and save

all humanity from this sin.

We can learn a lot about call from Jonah, but we can learn even more from Jesus.

If God is calling you to do something, maybe you've got an inkling or you clearly, clearly

know for one reason or 57, you are conflicted.

You are called, but you are conflicted.

We can follow Jesus' example.

One, feel the feelings.

Give them space.

Jesus prayed with such anguish that he sweated blood in the garden.

You do not need to hide your tears and struggle from God.

He is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

You can pray for another way.

Jesus asked God three times that there would be another way for a mission that actually

only he could fulfill as the Son of God.

So you can ask two.

If he can ask, you can ask.

And then three, do as Jesus did, submit to God's will, accept, surrender, trust, step

forward in faith.

I went on a silent retreat last weekend and I went there because for a number of different

reasons, it was a wonderful gift from Ash, but I went there searching for inner peace.

Because my life in a number of ways has not turned out the way that I thought it would.

And it's left me frustrated and at times angry, but there's nothing I can do about it.

So I wanted from the Lord, if there was nothing was going to change, I wanted to find a way

to have peace.

And the first day I wandered into the library to have a nosy because that's just my, it's

just Tim Behobuse.

And there's a book, and it's an old book, and it's sort of standing out from the rest

of the books.

It's called the Way of Interior Peace.

I was like, you're joking.

So I grabbed this book and I start reading it and it just like immediately uppercuts

me to the face.

I don't have inner peace, this book says, because essentially I don't trust Jesus.

That everything that has happened to me and everything that will happen to me, God will

use for my good and for his glory.

I don't really in my heart trust Jesus, that he is good and faithful and will keep his promises.

I was fighting against the will of God, not in an overt disobedience like Jonah, but in

a subtler kind of anger at God that my will is not his will.

A subtler kind of anger that Jonah also had.

This is not what I want, God.

And so I had to repent.

I have felt the feelings.

I have wept tears.

I've cried out to God.

I've written some very angsty poetry that no one will ever read.

I've prayed for another way, not just three times, but 333 times.

But I can now see that I never really got to the end of the Jesus prayer.

I never said I meant not my will, but yours.

And so first thing every day now, I pray this prayer.

Lord, I submit to you today in trust that whatever you have for me, good or bad, you

have willed it or will use it as an instrument for my benefit.

I accept that what will happen today is an act of love and sanctification from you.

Fill me with love, joy, peace and power, not my will, but yours be done.

Amen.

And it still has some road testing.

Yesterday was a very testy day, but submitting to God's will means that chaos can be going

on outside, but inside because I have peace with God, I am sitting on a cozy couch, snuggled

in a warm blanket, drinking a cup of tea while reading a book while it rains outside.

Because I am safe.

I am protected.

I am held in God's hands.

See when we line our will with God, when we as people align our will with the will of

God, when we submit to God, when we say not my will, but yours be done.

That's where we find true peace, my friends.

For some of you today, maybe you've been running in the opposite direction from what you know

God wants you to do.

And today you need to repent, which just literally means turn around and return.

That's what Jonah needed to do, needed to repent, which just meant stop running in the

opposite direction, turn around and come back.

So if that's you, I want to invite you to pray and a version of Jonah's prayer with

me.

And even if you are not feeling that, maybe we could all pray it as a way of giving those

who really need to pray it a bit of space.

I'm hoping it's up on the screen, but it might not be.

It's not.

That's cool.

Follow with me.

I will be slow.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you that you are a merciful and compassionate God.

Slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

I'm sorry for turning my back on your call.

Today I will turn around and follow you.

I will worship you with songs of praise for my salvation comes from the Lord alone.

Amen.

For some of you, you have struggled with inner peace because you have struggled like me

to submit to God's will.

You are following God, but you are not happy about it or at peace about it.

If that's you, as we worship again, I invite you to get on your knees, which is just, if

you can, which is just to posture your body towards God in an act of submission in your

whole body and cry out the prayer of Jesus while we sing, no one will hear you, I promise.

Father, if it's not possible, let the suffering pass from me, I want your will, not mine.

Not my will, but yours be done.

And in this time, in this worship, we're going to leave some space.

You can do this with God.

This is a space to come to God honestly with our whole heart wanting to seek Him and His

will to lay down the things that we keep.

To keep from God and to say sorry for the ways in which we turn away from God.

So there's some things that you can do and we can have prayer if you need it as well.

We might have some, we'll have some people come and find someone and we're going to sing

and worship God together.

So would you stand and let me pray as we get back into some worship.

Lord Jesus, we give you all honor and praise.

We give you all glory.

We thank you that you have called us to be your sons and daughters.

You have given your life for us.

We pray that we would be able to follow your example here, Lord Jesus.

That you would speak to our hearts, that your voice, we would hear your voice this afternoon

in worship and that the power of your presence here amongst us would change us.

Lord, we can do all these things with our hands and say these things with our words

and give our lives to you Jesus, but we need your presence and your Holy Spirit to change

our hearts.

We call us towards you to places in which to do things that are scary and hard.

We need your Holy Spirit to minister to us.

We as people can only do so much, Lord Jesus.

So we say, Holy Spirit, come, be here, Lord Jesus.

We want you here.

We want you to hear as we sing your praises.

So we glorify your name.

We want you here.

Come and be present amongst us.

Come and speak, Lord Jesus.

For when you speak, miracles happen.

People are changed.

Communities are radically transformed.

We pray for Adelaide and we pray for Melbourne.

They would have a Nineveh-like experience where they are ripped from the spiritual darkness

in which they live by the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

So your word would go forth, Lord Jesus, and that you would bring this city to its knees

in submission to you, onto its knees to cry out with every tribe and tongue that you are

Lord and you are to be glorified, Lord Jesus.

Calm Holy Spirit, we pray in your name, Jesus.

Amen.