JONAH (pt. 1)

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Today's message is from Pastor David Porter.

Living on the northern plains in the sand hills of Nebraska, I got to meet a lot of uh ranchers, a lot of uh cattle farmers or whatever you want to call them, a lot of beef people.

And we get to growing up, I got to hear some really fun sayings, analogies of life just from the idea of living on a ranch.

And one of those was this that if you were to take a huge thunderstorm that was coming your way, you would see the domesticated cattle run and from it, and you would see the bison run toward it.

And that's because the cattle were afraid and they thought they could run from it.

Well, the bison, they were smarter because what the the idea of this whole analogy is if you run towards the storm, you will get through the storm faster than waiting on it and it setting over you or running from it and it catching up and slowly going over you.

It's faster to run through the storm.

Anybody ever hear that before?

It's a really neat analogy.

I don't know if it's perfect, but it's fun because we live in a life of a universal run.

We are either running to things or we are running from things, whether they are healthy or unhealthy.

We run to new jobs.

We run to family, we run to friends, we run to the doctor when we're sick.

Uh we've also run into unhealthy in unhealthy ways, right?

We've run from relationship to relationship or one broken relationship after another.

We run to things that make us numb.

We we run to seclude ourselves because of the stressors in life.

The question isn't if we're running in a life, it's where are we running to and why am I running?

And it's the same way in our spiritual life, in our faith life, there is running.

In fact, Paul talks about this quite a bit that we're what?

Running a race.

That we are running a race, that we are running to God.

We are running this life of faith until we reach the promised land.

We run to God, but sometimes in our decisions, we decide to run from God.

Every time we sin, sin is a separation of us and God, we run to separate ourselves from God.

And over the next four weeks, we're gonna talk about Jonah, who runs, who tries to separate himself from God and the calling in his life.

Well, if you know Jonah, I think most of us that grew up in the church have heard of Jonah, um, but he was a prophet, and a prophet, if you remember, simply this.

It's somebody that God tells something to in order to tell other people in the world.

He is a messenger from God to tell people what God wants.

Uh in 2 Kings 14, we know that he lived, Jonah lived in the time of the northern kingdom.

Uh King Jeroboam II, so this is Israel, after David was split into two kingdoms, and he was from the northern kingdom.

Uh and so, just in the idea time frame, this was around 800 years before Christ came to the world.

And so over the next four weeks, I hope we see God's great love in the pursuit of all people, not just certain people or people that he wants, but in all people that nobody is beyond God's desire and beyond his reach.

Nobody is too far gone to say yes to his grace.

And in our story, that means not a wicked city, not some pagan sailors, and not even a disobedient, renegade prophet named Jonah.

And so our idea for today is this God's storms are not punishment, but acts of grace designed to redirect our course back to Him.

In other words, to draw us in.

Discipline gets a bad rap today.

Everybody's like, oh, don't discipline me, it's gonna make me feel bad.

But the idea of discipline is to redirect and to draw back onto the right course.

And this is what we learn from Jonah.

So let's go through Jonah chapter one this morning.

Uh, the first three verses, this is where the prophet runs.

This is where Jonah runs, where God calls Jonah, and yet Jonah flees.

So let's just read the first three verses together here.

It's on the screen, or if you want to follow along in your Bible, I'm reading from the uh NIV.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.

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

He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port.

And after paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

So God calls Jonah to go to this city, Nineveh, and Jonah runs.

But why?

Well, let's look at why.

First, let's look at Nineveh for you to understand who Nineveh is as a city.

It was a great city, it was a dominant city, um, but there was political instability.

Let me let me ask you if this sounds familiar for a great city.

Political instability, weak leadership, civil uh unrest, epidemics, and worshiping false gods and violent.

Sound anything like today?

This was Nineveh.

This is who Jonah was called to.

And on top of that, it was the kingdom's enemy.

It was the northern kingdom's enemy.

They didn't go to Nineveh.

So basically, God goes to Jonah and says, This is my translation, hey buddy, it's time to get up.

I got something for you to do.

I'm gonna send you to Nineveh, your mortal enemy, and I've got a message that I want you to take to them.

And basically, this is what I want you to say is that my judgment's coming because I've heard your people cry out to me.

I've heard the cries of the violence and the pain that's coming out of out of Nineveh.

And so my judgment is coming.

And so, Jonah, I want you to preach against Nineveh and I want you to preach that I am God.

I think I can with good conscience say that every one of us, if God came to us and said to do that, we'd say, Nope.

Amen.

I mean, who who wants to do that?

Who wants to go into a known uh violent city or country with instability, civil unrest, epidemics, false gods?

And we gotta understand why.

Maybe this helps us maybe see a little bit of Jonas Hart.

Was he afraid?

I'd be afraid.

Maybe it was nationalism.

Maybe this is what we wrestle with.

That's my enemy.

I'm in a free country.

I don't need to go over there.

I don't like them.

They're our enemy.

I don't want to go to our enemies, so maybe some of it was nationalism.

Maybe, maybe it was like Moses and he just felt incapable.

We we don't know the reasons why.

I think what we can do is look at ourselves and go, I wonder why I wouldn't.

Because I think we've all felt that way towards something that was uncomfortable that much.

So, what's he do?

What's Jonah do?

He goes in the opposite way.

It's kind of like that time where you're walking in Walmart and you see somebody who hasn't been very nice to you, and you do this.

Done it?

Right?

You you go the opposite way, you don't want to face anything.

So Nineveh's to the east, Tarshish is to the west, he gets on a boat in Joppa and goes west instead of east, as far away as he can go, as far away from God, as far away as where God is calling him.

Have you ever tried to outrun somebody?

I used to, I can't anymore.

I can keep up with my granddaughter now, that's about it.

But I've outrun people, I've outrun things.

How about God?

You've ever tried to outrun God in something where God's calling you to do something, or you feel that thing in your soul that you go, I think God wants me to go talk to that person, or I want God, I think God wants me to go serve there, but we go, yeah, I don't have the time for it.

And you think you won.

But who really wins?

God ends up winning in the end, but this is what Jonah was doing.

But then comes that wonderful, but God.

But God pursued him.

Let's read verses four through 16 here.

Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

All the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own God, and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.

The captain went to him and said, How can you sleep?

Get up and call on your God.

Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.

Then the other sailors said to each other, Come on, let's cat, let's let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this claim.

This is what they did.

It was about fate.

They were hoping fate and their false gods would tell them.

And listen to the hand of God here.

They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

So they asked him, Tell us who is responsible for making all this trouble for us.

What kind of work do you do?

Where do you come from?

What is your country?

From what people are you?

And he answered, I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

This terrified them.

And they asked, What have you done?

They knew he was running away from the Lord because he had already told them so.

The sea was getting rougher and rougher.

So they asked him, What should we do to make the sea calm down for us?

Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm.

I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.

But instead the men did their best to row back to land.

But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before.

Then they cried out to the Lord, Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man's life.

Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man for you, Lord.

Have done as you pleased.

Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.

At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.

Did you put yourself in that boat?

Listening to that?

Did you maybe just go picture yourself?

I mean, think about it.

It's no different than our boat in life, where we think we have smooth sailing and then the winds kick up and and and the waves are crashing in.

And you've gone through a lot of things in life, just like the sailors did.

They've weathered all the storms before.

You've weathered a lot of the storms, but this one, for some reason, is terrifying.

And so they start throwing cargo over to make the boat lighter, to get above the waves.

They do this with planes too.

If they're having a hard time staying above, they get rid of cargo so they can get above whatever's causing issues.

We've done this.

But where was Jonah?

He's asleep.

He was nap time.

And it says he's in this deep sleep.

Maybe, just maybe, it was the kind of deep sleep that we can fall into when we've been running so hard and for so long away from something that finally our conscience and our whole being just goes quiet.

That not even the storm, not even the storm makes us arise and go and see what's happening.

And so the captain goes and finds Jonah asleep and he shakes him.

Get up, call on your God.

And their lots fall on Jonah, and the interrogations begin now.

Who are you?

Where are you from?

What have you done?

And then Jonah reveals who he is.

I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of the heavens, the ones who made the sea and the land.

And I wonder, I wonder if they've heard the stories.

Because when you read through the Old Testament, you hear about all these countries who have heard about this Hebrew God, the ones with Abraham and Isaac and bringing people out of Egypt.

I wonder if they heard the stories because now what we hear is what?

That they're terrified.

That they're terrified.

It's almost as if they know this God that He's talking about.

And it seems like they're terrified not only of this storm anymore, but the God who sent it.

Feels like there's a shift.

What's wrong with you?

What'd you do to anger this God?

What should we do?

Throw me into the sea.

It's my fault.

Throw me into the sea.

Did they throw him into the sea right away?

No, they still tried to save him.

Everything pointed to Jonah, and yet they still had the heart as strangers, as people who didn't believe in the Hebrew God, to try and save him, to road ashore, and the storm just got greater and greater until they couldn't do it, and so they had no choice.

They said, Fine, and they speak now to the Lord.

In scripture, Capital L.

They speak to God, the Hebrew God.

And they said, Hey, don't hurt us, don't hold us accountable for what we need to do.

And it's at this point of the story that we see a turning point.

A turning point in the life of the saviors and the beginning of a turning point in Jonah's life.

In fact, we can call it a rescue.

The storm stopped once Jonah hit the water and they believed.

They didn't just believe Jonah, they believed in God.

God was not only trying to correct Jonah, but he convinced the sailors that he was God.

In fact, we could say this that this the sailor's spirituality at this point was greater than Jonah's.

People who didn't even believe in the Hebrew God had more faith than Jonah at this time.

I mean, think about it.

The pagans prayed when the prophet slept.

The pagans tried to save him when he didn't care about himself and said, throw me over.

They still tried to save him.

These sailors asked for forgiveness before what they did what Jonah asked them to do from the Hebrew God.

And then they offered, once everything settled down, they offered a sacrifice and they vowed to serve God.

The very thing Jonah was supposed to do for Nineveh, they did to Jonah.

The sailors did in the storm what Jonah refused to do on dry land.

God converted pagan sailors.

What does this tell us about the heart of God in the Old Testament?

It's no different than this heart in the New Testament because God doesn't change.

For God so loved the world.

For God so loved the world.

So they throw him into the water.

And then we get to a point that we like to call the divine pause.

Time for Jonah to reflect, a reflection in an obscure place.

Let's just look at verse 17 here.

Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah.

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Every time I read this part of the story, mom's not here today.

She's with my sister, but I can always hear her voice.

Go to your room and think about what you've done.

This essentially is what I'm hearing here.

God's telling Jonah, it's time to go to a room.

It's not a room that you're gonna like because it's gonna stink.

But you're gonna go to your room and you're gonna think about what you've done.

We we do this.

This is what discipline is.

We see it as punishment, but it's learning, it's redirecting, it's reflecting on the choices that we made.

And sure, God's doing that, but I want us to see it as something greater than that.

Because Jonah asked them to throw him into the sea, right?

To calm the storm.

I didn't see anything in here where God told Jonah to throw him into the sea.

Jonah was now in need of rescue, not just spiritually, not just through his faith, but physically.

The fish wasn't the punishment, the fish was also his rescue.

Physically, spiritually, the storm brought Jonah to the end of himself, the end of his ego.

And the fish is the beginning of God's second chance in Jonah's life.

God's storms are not punishments, but acts of grace.

They're gonna feel like punishments, but they're acts of grace to redirect us because God is relentlessly pursuing us and pursuing a relationship with us for us to stay on track, not just in our faith, but what he's called us to do because we believe.

And so it's time to stop running.

It's time to stop running as individuals, it's time to stop running as a local church.

And we got to ask ourselves, what are you running from?

What are you running from in your relationship with Jesus?

I would say that most, if not all of us in here, maybe there's some beliefs that you question, but I don't think we're running from beliefs.

But maybe you have at one time in your life.

Maybe it's a calling that God wants you to do something or God's asking you to do something, and you say, hey, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough money, I don't, I don't have the talent to do that, right?

I don't have the self-esteem to do that, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, or I'm just afraid to put myself out there because I'm afraid of failure.

Even the prophet of even the prophet of the Lord decided to run.

This helps us learn to stop running and start having more faith.

It's time to stop running to our Tarshish, the thing away from what God is calling us into, and instead to run completely and directly to Jesus.

What's your Tarshish today?

What is the place?

What are the things that you run into?

What keeps you from responding to God's call to be his church?

Some of us are workaholics.

I confess there's times where I'm so so busy in the work part of ministry that I forget to do the soul part of ministry for myself and for others.

Because something's got to get done.

We've all done that.

Perfectionism, I struggle with perfectionism.

I want it done, and I want it done well.

If it's not done well, I don't want to do it.

But God isn't asking us to do things perfectly, He's asking us to do them in love.

Or maybe it's a I have a good lifestyle.

I if I go and do this, I'm gonna have to give up some of my lifestyle.

Maybe it's doom scrolling on your phone and you're going, Man, I see how people treat Christians nowadays.

I don't want people to know that I believe and love Jesus because they're gonna unfriend me or they're gonna hurt me or it's gonna break relationships.

There's too many scandals in the church.

Why should I be part of a church?

Hobbies, I've got hobbies, I got things, I got kids, I got things to keep me busy.

I want my faith to be safe.

I I've I've been through all these, all these myself, and I've had to work through them.

And here's what we see in Jonah is that whatever we do to run, whatever we do to block God out in our lives is us going to Tarshish.

There will always be a boat, there will always be a temptation to take us from the will of God.

And friends, it's so easy to choose the boat.

Jesus says, Choose me.

Sometimes when we choose that boat, God wants to get our attention.

Sometimes to get our attention, God sends storms into our lives.

These storms, I don't believe, are meant always as punishment, but I think always they are an act of grace.

They are meant to be a disturbance in our lives to get our attention for us to recognize that we are walking the wrong path, that we are running the wrong way.

When we run from God, when we run from God, we never really get where we're going spiritually and in faith.

And we're always paying our way just like Jonah paid his way.

But when we go God's way, he always pays your way.

Jonah's rebellion was paid for by a storm and a fish.

He tried to pay his own way, and it created issues for himself and for other people.

Our rebellion, our sin, our running, when we give it to Jesus, when we ask him to pay for it, it's paid by the cross in an empty tomb.

Jesus fully pays our way.

Jesus takes the storm head on with us, paying the price that we cannot afford.

God's not out to punish you.

I used to think that growing up.

I used to think I was the worst person in the world when I was a kid.

I had issues.

And I used to think that God was out to punish me.

But instead, what I realized as I got older is God was fighting for me.

He was fighting for my heart, he was fighting for my soul.

And so storms were caused to redirect me back onto the course.

He doesn't just want to let you go, he will do anything to correct your course to come back to him.

And that's provenial grace at work.

And it's comforting for us to know that God can not only stir up the storms, but he's able to calm them too.

So today we've seen a prophet run as far as he could.

We've seen a storm chase him down.

We're gonna leave him in a fish for a week.

That's Waldemhole.

Through everything today, through it all, we see a God who never gives up.

Most of us know what it means and what it's like to run from him.

Maybe some of us still are.

The cattle run from the storm, the bison run through it.

Church, a storm's coming either way.

It's called life.

It's called life in a f uh a fallen world.

So let me ask, and this is between you and God will you run from it or will you run through it straight into the arms of a God who relentlessly loves you?

I hope we all choose to run to Him and say, Here am I, send me, send me.

And as New Beginnings Church, we yell out, Here we are, Lord, send us.

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