Running Away From God

Last time we began a new sermon series in the book of Jonah and if you want to make your way, if you have a Bible, turn to Jonah, chapter 1.

Jonah 1 · chapter mention

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Many people are familiar with the story of Jonah, the Old Testament prophet, who runs away from the Lord and gets swallowed by a big fish.

Personally, I don't know what it's like to be swallowed by a big fish, but I do know what it's like to flee from something you did not want to face.

I think I was about six years old.

I told the story before, so forgive me.

It's one of those memories that are burned deeply into your psyche.

Six years old or so, I don't know seven, something like that I'm out in our backyard playing with my friend.

We're messing around.

We grab the garden hose and start spraying stuff, spraying each other.

My friend, who looked at me and said hey, jim, I bet you can't hit that upstairs window Two doors down, it's open.

I said yeah, water's poured in the window.

Now, a Hungarian family lived there by the name of Ladosi and he was a master carpenter.

The window was open.

All of a sudden, to my shocking surprise, as the water's flowing into the window and I'm gloating that I did that Mr Ladosi comes out, sticks his head out the window and I'm spraying his face in shock.

Before I realized, put the hose down and I ran for my life.

We all feared Mr Ladosi in the neighborhood and I'm like terrified.

I'm like oh, where can I go?

Where can I flee?

So I ran into the house, deep into the basement, down, down, down, as far as I could go, hid behind some stuff down there.

All of a sudden I heard this Knock at the door Mr Ladosi's there talking to my dad.

Next thing I know dad's coming down in the basement.

Jim, oh Jim, where are you?

He found me.

He said okay, mr Ladosi told me what happened.

He was putting cedar wood signings a master craftsman in that room and you just got it soaked.

He said wow, sorry.

He said now you're going to go over there, he's going to show you what you did and you're going to apologize to him.

I said no, dad, I can't do that.

He said oh, yes, you are.

We have this interchange for serval and I don't want to do that.

He said you either go over there with me or you're going to get a spanking right now.

I said give me the spanking, grab my hand.

No, you're going over there.

Go over there head bound, look at the soaking wet room dripping.

And I told Mr Ladosi I was so sorry and he looked at me.

I didn't know, sorry in Hungarian, but I think he got the message.

Anyway, as we return to the book of Jonah, jonah is running from someone much greater, much more important and more powerful than Mr Ladosi.

Jonah 1, verse 1, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.

Jonah 1:1

But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

God called Jonah initially to be a prophet to go speak to the northern kingdom in Israel.

The northern kingdom split off from the southern kingdom of Judah in 931 BC and from its beginning the northern kingdom was corrupt and idolatrous under the reign of its kings.

Jonah was sent to the northern kingdom and fellow Israelites under the reign of King Jeroboam II From about 793 BC.

Jonah preached there about 760 BC.

But when God called Jonah to leave his nice, comfortable home in northern Israel and his family to go preach against the pagan Assyrian city of Nineveh, a sworn enemy of Israel hundreds of miles away, jonah instantly became a prophet on the run.

So what can we learn from this?

Well, I'm going to try to answer three questions today why, what and how.

Why we run away from God, what running away from God means and how to stop running away from God.

You're probably looking at Jonah in this story and saying I would never do that Run away from God.

How ridiculous.

But you know something?

Jonah ran away from God for some of the same reasons you and I run away from God.

Jonah ran away from God physically, but his running away from God was much deeper than geography.

He's trying to flee from the Lord by getting into a boat and going to Tarshish, but he's running away from God in his heart.

First, the physical direction and geographical destination are only reflecting Jonah's true spiritual condition.

Notice how Jonah's fleeing is described as an increasingly downward descent.

Verse 3, jonah went down to Joppa.

Jonah went down into the ship.

Jonah went down to the ship.

Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship.

We keep going and in chapter 2, jonah is going to continue to go down into the depths of the sea, to the depths of Shio, place of the dead.

The truth is, any time we sin, we are in essence running away from the Lord.

It's a downward descent away from the Lord.

We know what God has told us to do, wants us to do Don't lie, don't steal, don't lust, don't cub it.

God has told us to be generous.

He's told us to forgive the person that has offended and hurt us.

He's told us to serve others, and a myriad of other things.

When we're face to face with it, we may not do this verbally, but in our hearts we're saying, nope, I ain't going to do that.

We're just running is what we're doing?

Sin is knowing what God wants us to do and not doing it.

As James in the New Testament, chapter 4, verse 17, says, whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin.

And I'm making a case.

Sin is basically running away from God.

He's told us something we don't want to do.

What's Jonah doing?

He's sitting, he's running.

The first step, though, in having any relationship with God is to admit that we've been running away from Him.

Maybe some of you right now are figuratively looking for a boat and want to go to Tarshish.

It's our nature to sin and run away from God, unfortunately.

You know why?

Because somewhere in our corrupt human nature, due to sin, we're not sure if we can really trust Him.

So we're going to hold back.

We're not going to step out, because we're not sure he really loves us and has our best interest in mind.

Can you imagine what Jonah is thinking?

Are you crazy?

And we'll run?

Running away from God is part of our corrupted spiritual DNA we inherited from our first parents.

We're at Adam and Eve's response when they sinned against God.

After they sinned, did something God told them don't do this.

God came to meet with them in the garden and they fled.

They didn't want to be in this presence.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They hid.

See everybody, every single one of us in this room.

We have our own reasons for why we run away from God and hide.

There's a lot going on in our hearts that can trigger us to run from God, knowing what he wants, and basically, in our heart of hearts, our will say no.

I think one of Jonah's triggers, and probably for many of us, is the problem of fear.

Think about this now.

God commanded Jonah to go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it.

Preach against it.

Jonah is a Jewish prophet being asked to leave Israel.

Go to a sworn Gentile enemy in Assyria and preach against it.

God is asking Jonah to go to the biggest, baddest, meanest powerful city in the world at that time and tell everybody there to repent.

Imagine how you would feel if God asked you to go to Iran, china, moscow, or speak to the Taliban against them and tell them to repent.

How would you feel?

What did Jonah expect would happen to him?

At the very least, probably he'd be derided, beaten and jailed.

At the worst, he'd be tortured and killed.

Fear will cause us to run.

Fear can keep us from obeying God and we will run.

Another possible reason Jonah ran away from God, I think, was his pride.

Same with us, jonah heard what God wanted him to do and said no, because it wasn't something Jonah wanted to do.

That's beneath him.

I'm a prophet.

Jonah thought God must be crazy honestly Preaching grace to his enemies, telling him Jonah was not ready to humble himself to do that.

What would the people back home think of him, his reputation Going on a mission to help their enemies?

Jonah probably was also triggered to run from God because of his anger, which was fueled by his pride.

We'll see later on in the book.

Jonah has an anger problem, anger.

Why was Jonah angry?

I don't know.

Probably for the inconvenience, the danger, craziness of it all.

I was asking him to travel, literally probably walk, I don't know, maybe a donkey asking him to go several hundred miles to the north to preach to his enemies and warn them of God's judgment, so they would repent.

But I'll tell you what Jonah thought.

You know what they deserve God's judgment.

I'm not going to say a thing.

Jonah, really.

I mean it's really rational and logical.

He despised the Assyrians for good reason.

They were awful Idolatrous.

They treated Israel with contempt.

They used their power.

They used their power to kidnap, rape, pillage, torture people just for the pleasure of it.

You do some reading on it.

It's just amazing.

Let's see here.

This is a stone relief they found in Innova archaeologists depicting what the Assyrians did to their enemies?

They impaled them on stakes, they skinned people alive, they were ruthlessly I mean.

I could go on and on and on.

Their history is incredible.

Can you blame Jonah?

Probably some of the people he knew were tortured and killed like this.

It makes sense that Jonah would be both angry, afraid and say, no, I'm not going to do that.

I'm telling you right now, like Jonah, we need to guard our hearts from fear, pride and anger that lead us to sin and disobey and run away from God.

I'm telling you right now, while everyone has their reasons why we run away from God, everybody also has their own strategies for how we run away from God and hide, which we'll look at next.

What does it mean to run away from God?

How do we do it?

As a Jewish prophet, jonah knows that the God of Israel is Yahweh, the Creator.

He knew the scriptures and his theology from places like the Psalms, psalm 139, for instance you can't run from your Creator.

He knew this.

Psalm 139, 7,.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I send to heaven, you're there.

If I make my bench, you're there.

So what did Jonah's running away from God mean If he knew.

Physically and geographically it was impossible.

The answers found in a word repeated two times in verse 3, the Hebrew word lipna translated presence.

Jonah 1.3 tells us that Jonah was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, the lipna of the Lord.

But lipna literally means face, face.

Jonah was fleeing literally from the face of the Lord.

Jonah was not fleeing from the actual presence of the Lord, he was fleeing from the felt, felt presence of the Lord.

How was he doing that?

He was going to Tarshish, where the Lord has nothing there.

It's way down on the Mediterranean I didn't show it on this one sorry Way across the Mediterranean from where he was in Canaan.

There he was headed as far away as the boat would take him, which was Tarshish, a place where Yahweh was not known and Yahweh was not worshiped.

There was a Gentile city on the Gentile coast.

He didn't want to be anywhere that reminded him of God's presence.

He didn't want to be around God's people.

He didn't want to be near God's presence in the temple, which that's where they went to be intimate and enjoy the Lord's presence and joy.

Just like Adam and Eve, jonah tried to hide from the Lord's felt presence.

When we run away from God.

It means we don't want to be in His presence.

We know we're not on the same page.

We won't go to Tarshish.

We'll just stop praying.

We'll just stop reading His Word.

How long has it been?

We'll just stop going to church.

I don't want to be in His felt presence.

We don't want to be with other Christians.

It's not like we can actually hide from God's presence.

We just don't want to feel like we're in His presence.

That's running.

That's how we do it.

Have you been running from God?

Does being at church make you uncomfortable?

He's promised Jesus said.

We're two or three, my followers are gathered together.

I am right there in their midst.

Well, now let's talk about how to stop running from God.

How do we stop and start crusting and obeying Him?

Jonah shows us what we must do.

Here's what you do if you're running from God have someone pick you up, take you downtown and throw you in Lake Michigan.

Just kidding, that's what they're going to do to Jonah.

You see, jonah's problem was he never really knew God deeply enough, experientially, to trust him.

He never really personally experienced God's grace.

But oh, that's going to change.

Jonah was a religious man, a Jewish prophet, who faithfully serving God, preaching to the northern kingdom.

Jonah knew the scriptures, worshiped the one true God.

Jonah even quotes scripture in chapter 2, but all of Jonah's head knowledge was absolutely no help to him.

When God asked him to do a hard thing, no help whatsoever.

At that moment Jonah froze in his fear, his pride or his anger.

And something he froze he felt badly in his spiritual life.

I think we can relate to Jonah.

We know who God is, we know Jesus, we trusted him.

But do we always trust him when the next hard thing comes?

Does he really have my best interest at night?

We know he really loves us, but do we trust him enough that we know we're going to be okay?

Jonah knew about God, but only in a limited, experiential way.

Just knowing doctrine isn't going to keep us from running away from God.

Jonah knew about the compassion and grace of God.

We'll see it point blank.

But he only knew it from a distance.

If you don't really know him as well as he wants you to, you're going to have trouble trusting him when it gets hard.

The only thing that will keep us from running away from God is knowing him personally, deeply, experientially, intimately.

He's shown himself to us time and time again, to be faithful, to be the provider, to be the fear cast out, to be the problem solver.

But this time I don't know.

Can I really trust him?

If you want to see this, consider the contrasting responses of Jonah to God's command and Abraham's response to God's command, who both asked to do something hard and crazy.

Jonah was asked to leave his country and go preach to Nineveh, his real enemy.

Abraham was asked to take his one and only son and sacrifice him on an altar to God.

Jonah fled.

Abraham obeyed.

Why?

Because he trusted God.

What's the difference?

Abraham took refuge in the character of God that he knew.

He knew him.

He personally experienced God's justice and compassion in his life.

When God was ready to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, abraham had a conversation, a prayer to God and asked him to save his nephew Lot, who was living in Sodom.

And in his prayer Abraham said to the Lord shall not the God of all the earth do what's right?

And God spared Lot and his family.

Abraham was convinced of the character of God.

He will always do what is right by everybody.

Do we believe that Sometimes we go through stuff that we think God's not treating me right?

I deserve so much better.

No, abraham obeyed because he knew God, his character, his grace, experientially.

While Abraham took refuge in the character of God, jonah was taking refuge in his own wisdom and feelings.

That to say, how well do we know God and his character in your life?

What has he taken you through to show you who he is?

That you've experienced, you know him.

The answer you give will determine how you will respond when God brings the next hard thing into your life.

How well do you know him?

Of course I say this every week.

The first place God invites us to experience his unfathomable love, his manifold grace, is in receiving his son, jesus, in our hearts, who was sent to die for our sins to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves us to the uttermost.

Nothing without, not even his son.

If you have received Jesus in your heart and His Holy Spirit is flowing through you, then you will know how to extend grace to others, because you've received it.

You get it you didn't deserve from Jesus.

Running from God, refusing to extend his grace to others, means you still don't know God's grace in your own life, just like Jonah, who is refusing to go to Nineveh to extend grace to them.

Now what we'll see next is how God steps in when we start running, and he will step in and what he's going to do is help us to experience His grace.

Until we do that, we can't go much further.

That's what's coming.

The thing of it is this is something else we learned from this passage If you want to flee from God, there's always going to be a ship ready to take you to Tarshish.

It's already.

There will always be someone or something ready to take you away from God's presence.

If you harbor impure thoughts, there will always be a bed.

If you harbor resentment, there will always be a way to strike back with words, actions or malicious things, facebook or something whatever they call that stuff.

If you harbor envy and greed, there will always be an opportunity to covet or steal, always fleeing from God, taking you away, further away from Him.

Do you fear that God is going to ask you to do something out of your comfort zone?

By the way, he asked all of us to do these kind of things out of our comfort zone, why he wants us to experience what it means to trust Him, his character.

He has to give us stuff where we're going to learn it, and a lot of times it's going to involve being out of your comfort zone, my comfort zone.

I've experienced many such events.

I just want you to remember that the grace of God and Jesus Christ, when Jesus was taken out of His comfort zone for you, left perfect fellowship and love from all eternity in heaven with His Father, and the Spirit left it.

Why For you?

He trusted His Heavenly Father and, as a result, when the last words are written, he is highly exalted.

He was willing to die so you and I could receive God's grace.

Could I say it again Believe in Him for the gift of eternal life.

And you see, when you and I flee from God, we're going in the wrong direction.

We're running the wrong way.

As the old hymn Rock of Ages puts it, we need to be fleeing to Jesus.

Listen from the hymn not the labors of my hands can fulfill the law's demands.

Could my zeal no respite?

No, could my tears forever flow.

All for sin could not atone.

Thou must save and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring.

Simply to the cross.

I cling Naked.

Come to thee for dress, helpless, look to thee for grace.

Filthy I to the fountain fly.

Wash me, savior, or I die.

Flee to Him.

Let's pray, father.

Thank you for your son, jesus, who died for our sins, gives eternal life to all who receive Him and believe in Him.

Please help us to stop running away from you and flee to you, and flee to you for help even today.

Help us to know you, not just about you.

Help us to experience your grace, trust that you love us, so that we may know what that feels like and be willing to extend grace to others, and trust you that you really love us in the hard things we do face.

We ask for help, lord, because we can't do this in our own power.

I pray, I commit our lives to you in this church and thank you for everybody here, and I pray that your spirit would work in our midst in a powerful way.

I pray in Jesus' name, amen.