Choice of man

Today's reading is from Jonah chapter one, three and four.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amatai.

Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because

it's wickedness has come up before me.

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed to Tarshish.

He went down to a dropper where he found a ship bound for that

port. Then the Lord sent a great wind,

and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to

break up. The sea was getting rougher and

rougher, so the sailors asked Jonah, what should we do to make

the sea calm down for us? Jonah replied, Pick me up and

throw me into the sea, and it will become calm.

I know that it is my fault. Then they took Jonah and threw

him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.

Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah

was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

This time Jonah obeyed. The Ninevites believed God, all

of them, from the greatest to the least.

Even the king of Nineveh rose from his throne and took off his

royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in

the dust. When God saw what they did and

how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not

bring on them the destruction. But to Jonah this seemed very

wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord.

Isn't this what I tried to prevent by fleeing to Tarshish?

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to

anger and abounding in love. A God who relents from sending

calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life,

for it is better for me to die than to live.

Well done, my Sophie Sophs. That's my Sophie Sophs.

Come on. I don't think you've heard Jonah

being read like that with such dramatic effect, am I right?

And the ship threatened to break apart.

I love it, my baby. I love it.

So as, as you know, we are carrying on in the book of

Jonah. And boy, oh boy, do I have a

whale of a story for you. Come on, who's with me?

I'm allowed a little bit of a dad joke.

So when we look at Scripture words going to look at the

context and we're going to go through a little bit of the

context in the book of Jonah, who Jonah was, who were the

Ninevites. We're going to look at why did

he choose Tarshish? Seems like an odd place.

Where is it? No.

Is it far away? Is it close by?

And why did Jonah, Why was he a prophet?

How did he make it into the Bible?

You know, he was someone that kind of just heard the word of

the Lord and then decided to not obey it, run away.

How does it how does this book even get into the Bible?

It's kind of weird. And then when looking at

Scripture, you've got to ask yourselves always two questions.

The 1st is what can I learn about God, about his character,

who he is? And we hear in the book of Jonah

that he's gracious and compassionate, slow to anger,

abounding in love, and one who relents from sending calamity.

What calamity is facing you this morning?

What's God trying to prevent in your life?

And then the second thing that we have to look at is we have to

ask ourselves, what do I recognize about myself in this

story? What do I see when I look at

Jonah? Last week Steve went through I

am Jonah. I'm Jonah to the city, to my

community when I just don't care, when I am unaware, and I'm

Jonah when I refuse to pray. And this week I want to continue

and say I am Jonah when I run away.

I am Jonah when I choose to run away.

So where is your Tarshish? 3 CR?

Where's your Tarshish? Where's that place that you

said? I've heard the word of the Lord,

but I'm just going to run away. I'm just going to go in the

opposite direction. James puts it this way.

The book of James, he said when when you read Scripture, it's

like looking in the mirror. OK, you're looking in the mirror

and you're saying, oh, is this my life?

You don't look in the mirror and then all of a sudden decide not

to action it. This is the reason why people,

everybody's walking around in Crocs.

You've got a mirror at home, you're looking at yourself.

You see wearing Crocs. Hey, they're comfy.

Are they comfy? I don't know.

I guess. Come on, that's good stuff.

Hey, who's wearing Crocs today? Don't know that.

You don't have to raise your hands.

You please let me, let me take a sip of water.

So, so God asked. I said look when you read

scripture, when you hear scripture, look in the mirror,

reflect and act upon it. Take some decisive steps towards

what you're seeing. So ask yourself, where is my

tashes? Where am I this morning?

Running away from from God. So just some context.

Jonah was a prophet as we understand it.

He was alive around the 8th century BC and it was the same

time as Israel had a king called Jeroboam the second kind of

rolls of the tongue. Jeroboam the 2nd.

The second. And this king did evil in the

eyes of the Lord. So not a good king, one that

promoted false worship, one that was unfaithful to the call of

God for Israel. But he was a very successful

king. And Jonah during that time

prophesied that Jeroboam the 2nd would restore the boundaries of

Israel. So a successful king and a very

successful time for Israel. There's no greater measure for

the success of a king than what to increase land.

You're doing well. Your business is getting bigger,

your family is getting bigger, your house is getting bigger.

I've got a beach house. Have you seen how much money my

business made? Have you seen the second Porsche

that I have in the garage? Don't confuse success with the

will of God. Don't confuse success with being

obedient to God's word for your life.

See, Jonah lived under this privilege of being able to see

his prophecy fulfilled, something that was quite

uncommon. Most prophets prophesied

something that was going to happen, still happened in a few

years, and never ever got to live to see it.

But Jonah prophesied that Israel would restore their borders and

it happened. It took place.

So he was living under this incredible privilege of seeing

his words come to fruition. So it cut.

It's so strange, so weird that he hears the word of the Lord.

He's a successful prophet, and he decides to do what he decides

to run away. Run away.

I'm going to run away. No, thank you Lord, not for me.

But strange why? And not only that he chooses to

run to Tarshish. Where was Tarshish?

Well, Tarshish was literally the furthest civilized place that

Jonah or any Israelite knew about.

It was literally the furthest way, a place that he could even

imagine. And here to get there by boat,

OK. And if you look at the map, you

know, he was living in Gath Heifer, which was kind of quite

close to where Nineveh was, you know, and here to get to Nineveh

by land, OK. But he had to get onto your boat

and boats, you know, in the 7th century BC, I don't know if

you've seen any pictures of them, but they weren't exactly

the safest things around, you know?

So he decides to risk his life, go on a journey that would

probably take longer than a year and say, I'm going to choose the

place that is absolutely the furthest place that I can

possibly find to get away from the will of God.

So where is your Tarshish? Where are you running from?

So we've got to stop at this point and say, Jonah, what?

Just just try, Let me try and understand what's going on in

your brain over here. Let's try and understand why,

why? Why would you do this?

Why not listen to God? You're a successful prophet.

You've seen all the success. Why don't you just listen to the

word of God and word of the Lord, the will for your life and

go to Nineveh? Well, he gives us the answer in

chapter 4. So you've got to go right to the

end of the book and he says this.

When God saw what the Ninevites had done and how they turned

from the evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the

destruction that he had threatened.

But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong.

This was not good. And he got very angry and he

prayed to the Lord. Isn't this what I said would

happen? Isn't this what I So they

obviously had a discussion prior to disobeying the will of the

Lord. He had a discussion with God.

God, I don't want to do this. You're asking me to do

something. I do not want to do this.

I don't want to go there. I know your character, God.

I know that you can save. We have spent almost six months

learning about the grace of God, the mercy of God, that he is

slow to anger, abounding in love, one who relents from

sending calamity for six months as a church that has been

birthed into us. So we know his character, but

still in this moment, God is calling us to say, I want you to

do this. I want you to go here.

And within our hearts there's this pool.

Nah, ah, God not there. Don't touch that.

Don't touch that. God, that's too.

That's that's too painful for me.

So Jonah hated the Ninevites and he had good reason to hate them.

You see, Nineveh was the last little bit of context.

Nineveh was the capital city of the Syrian empire, and the

Syrians had been in power for a few 100 years.

They were the dominant force within that region.

And not only that, they were cruel, they were oppressive, and

they were barbaric. Just to give you a little bit of

a picture, this is what one of the king said after he conquered

one of the nations next door to Assyria.

He said, I built a pillar over against his gate and I flayed

all the chief men and I covered the pillar with their skins.

Some are impaled upon the pillar on stakes.

So this guy had a had a thing for decorating.

I'm going to build a pillar. I'm going to cut up some

people's skins and stick it on to it.

Many captives are burnt with fire, some are cut off their

hands and their fingers from others are cut off the noses and

the ears, and some of them are poked out their eyes.

That's pretty much him bragging, saying this is how I deal with

my conquests. So who's been cruel to you?

Whose oppression have you been living under?

Who do you think yourself? Or that guy's a barbarian?

Where is your Tarshish? Where are you running from?

God? So let me tell you about my

Tarshish. So Sam and I got married in

2003, just 2003 pass that one. And quite soon afterwards, I

just felt like, whoa, I've just made a big mistake.

I think I married the wrong person.

And we were involved in church ministry and we're leading

worship. I think we're leading a Home

group. So what do you do?

You go like, oh, it's going to get better, definitely going to

get better. And being a good German and

being a good leader, we're going to plow through this.

It's going to get better. And Sam felt pretty much the

same way. Like, whoa, this marriage thing

is hard. But we didn't have a lot of kind

of, I don't want to say support, but the kind of the gumption to

say there's something wrong. We need to go and get some help.

We need to go get some help in this place.

So you know what happens when you live with these things.

Do they go away or do they just kind of grow?

Well, they tend to grow. I don't know if you've noticed.

If you don't deal with stuff, this tends to to grow.

So these feelings just grew and grew, and after a while I just

became depressed, became unhappy, was definitely not

living my best life until roughly around about 2012, nine

years later, just before Sophie got born, was born, I started

having an affair with the person that I met at work and the

storms came in. I was on this boat heading to

Tashish and I knew that our marriage wasn't what I wanted.

There was too much stuff, there was too much inner happiness.

And I remember driving in the car the one day and crying out

to God, saying God, this is not living, this can't be living.

I hated my life so much. And I eventually, through some

unexpected way at work, we got some counseling and the guy

looked at kind of the report that I did around the

psychometrics and all these other things.

And he said to me, oh, Kai, you look like you are deeply, deeply

unhappy in your relationship. What's going on?

And in that moment, it was actually the first time I was

honest about my relationship with, OK, got nothing to lose.

Let me tell this guy. And he gave me the best advice

I'd ever gotten. He said to me, you know what,

car? You're so unhappy.

You're so depressed. I'm sure Sam actually probably

feels the same way. You need to come clean.

You need to go home. You need to have an honest

conversation with your wife around how you feel and you need

to have an honest conversation around what you've been doing.

And then you need to lay it on the table.

And he actually gave us like a very little chance of, of us not

making it through this. But he says you can't live like

this. So for three days I wrestled

with that. It was literally 3 days.

And then I got home the one night and I said, listen, babe,

you know, we need to have a proper conversation, need to

have a but and I wanted it out. I just wanted to end the

marriage. I just wanted to get out of

there. And in that moment, I came clean

and I said to Sam, this is how I felt.

This is what I'm doing. And that's what it is.

And we had a conversation for probably about three hours.

And after that, she and I actually couldn't believe the

grace of God in that moment because Sam is can be quite

fiery at times. And one of my biggest fears was

just, you know what she would say to me.

And in that moment, right at the end, she looked at me and said,

listen, I want to acknowledge that.

I've not been the wife that I could have been, but in this

moment I feel God saying that I want to be the wife that he made

me to be. And even in that moment, I

looked at her and I said, oh, that's great.

But I want Tarshish. I want out of there and she said

I'm going to prove to you I'm going to fight for you.

I'm going to fight for this marriage.

The affair ended, but we still separated.

We've died for a while to the granny flat and Sam just loved

on me with a relentless grace and mercy that no human could

ever have done if it wasn't from him.

She even decorated the granny fat.

I was staying in she even one night.

One night I came in and said, look, I'll just come and put

some of the some of the things that you love.

And yeah, maybe I should or shouldn't share this.

But anyway, she would phone me up in the middle of the night

and say, hey, what are you up to?

Yes, Dennis. Dennis is giggling.

She was. She overwhelmed me with her

kindness, with her thoughtfulness.

And after a few months it was like we were having our second

honeymoon and I felt the love for her that I had never felt

before. And I was on this route to

Tarshish. I wanted out.

But through the grace and the mercy of God, we've been able to

restore our marriage. And now we've been married for

21 years. So back to Jonah.

We can kind of understand why in our lives and in Jonah's life,

you've got this, this Tarshish that you, I mean, you've got

this Nineveh that you just don't want to go to, so you choose to

run to Tarshish. He had every justification.

He, he'd felt the cruelty of the of the Syrians.

He'd felt the oppression he lived in that he'd grown up in

that he'd experienced it for many years.

And he had just thought to himself, I'm not going there.

I'm not going to do it. But the one question that we

haven't asked and we haven't answered yet is why didn't God

give up on Jonah? I mean, why go through all of

the mess? You know, there was actually

Amos and there was Hosea who were alive at the same time as

Jonah. They were both prophets.

Why didn't God just choose them to go speak to the linebites?

Why, why, Why go through the storm?

You know the boat, the conversation with the guys on

the boat. You know the whale, the

elaborate whale, or the big fish.

Why go through all of this? See, God went through all of

that with Jonah. Because he's gracious and

compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love, one who

relents from sending calamity. Why did God not give up on me

and on Sam and on Sophie? Because he's gracious and

compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love.

One who relents from sending calamity.

Church, where is your chargesh? Where are you running from?

God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and

abounding in love. And he's relenting from sending

calamity in your life. Amen.