What Happens When You Tell God No! Part One in a Series on the Story of Jonah Jonah 1:1-17

Transcription

1 What Happens When You Tell God No! Part One in a Series on the Story of Jonah Jonah 1:1-17 Rev. Jeff Chapman ~ June 17, 2007 ~ Faith Presbyterian Church Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish. The sailors said to one another, Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? I am a Hebrew, he replied. I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, What is this that you have done! For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them so. Then they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may quieten down for us? For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quieten down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the LORD, Please, O LORD, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you. So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Let me begin this morning with a little geography lesson. Jonah was from a town in Israel called Gath, located on the coastal plains of ancient Palestine. One day, though were not told how, the Lord gives Jonah a command: Get up and go, at once, to the great city of Nineveh and cry out against the wickedness of the people you will find there. Not an especially easy command, but, no doubt, a clear one. Now, Nineveh, was a great Assyrian city located on the banks of the Tigris River in what is modern day Iraq. It was located about 500 miles to the east of where Jonah lived, a very long journey in those days.

2 2 So, when Jonah receives this message from God, he does the natural thing. He gets up and runs as fast as he can down to the coastal town of Joppa, and he books passage on a ship which is heading to the city of Tarshish, a city which historians believe was probably located on the coast of Spain, in the far western edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Over 2000 miles away! For an ancient Jew who had never left his homeland, this would have been, literally, going to the very end of the world. It would be like you or I heading to Siberia, or to the Australian bush, or to Bakersfield. Now understand, this was not a matter of Jonah getting his instructions confused. In fact, at no point in the story will Jonah say, Oh, I m sorry Lord. You wanted me to head east, by land, to Nineveh. Oh, I thought you said head west by water to Tarshish. My bad. No, Jonah understands exactly what God wants him to do. For reasons which we ll get into in the coming weeks and which have a lot to do with Jonah s hatred of the people in Nineveh, he simply doesn t want to do what God has told him to do. He understands God s will. He just won t obey. It s the same with us, you know. We like to say that life and faith would be so much easier if God would just spell out for us what he wants us to do. If God would just give me his will in black and white, I d have no problem following it. But we know right? we pretty much know what God wants us to do. We re supposed to love him more than anything else. We re supposed to love the people around us, even the ones that don t love us. We re supposed to share what we have with those who don t have much. We re supposed to speak the truth, honor our parents, be content with what we have. For the most part right? we know what God wants us to do. But a lot of the time we just don t do it. Jonah s story is our story. Well Jonah, with God s will clearly in his mind, heads as far in the opposite direction as was possible. In fact, the passage says that Jonah s goal was to get away from the presence of the Lord. He didn t just want to get away from what God wanted him to do, he wanted to get away from the very presence of God. And so Tarshish, a land far away which had never even heard of Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, was the perfect place to go. There, Jonah hoped, he could put as much distance between himself and the message and presence of God. Let me ask you, where do you go when you want to run away from God? What do you do when you don t want God interfering with your life? Jonah headed for Tarshish. Where do you go? All of us from time to time run from God. Might even be that some of you here this morning are running right now? So where are you running to? The problem is that it s not so easy to flee the presence of God. Some of us know this first hand. Psalm 139 includes these words. The Psalmist here answers his own questions. Where can I go from your Spirit, Lord? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 1 If I get on a ship and head to Tarshish, to the very ends of the world if I make myself so busy in my life that I have no time or attention to think about God or his plans for my life if I stay away from church, away from all the people who seem to be seeking you if I give in to this addiction if I give all of myself to my family if I lose myself in the distraction of my music, or my movies, or cyberspace if I do things I think will so turn God off he will leave me alone even there, even in all those places that we may try to run and hide from God and from his plans for our lives, even there, God s hand is reaching out to guide us, to lead us back to a path of life. 1 Psalm 139:7-10 (NIV).

3 3 Jonah, like some of us from time to time, mistakenly imagines that he can flee from God s presence, from God s plans, and that God will just let him go his way. But there, on the seas of the Mediterranean, God, is in hot pursuit. And in that pursuit, we re told that God hurls a great wind upon the sea, the kind of wind that sank ships and drowned sailors back in that day. If Jonah was ever going to get to Tarshish, it wasn t going to be easy. God wasn t going to let him go without a fight. That s just the way God is. A few weeks ago, our family was up in the mountains and my son and I discovered one of those giant mountain ants making his way across a huge slab of granite. And we wanted to get this ant to crawl onto a stick so that we could take him to show him off to Isabel and Esther. But you know how stubborn ants can be. We d put down the stick in front of him to crawl onto, but he d turn and scamper the other way. And so we brought in the famous human roadblock and began placing our hands down in the path of the ant to try to lead him toward the stick. But even this, with four hand roadblocks being thrown here and there on the granite, wasn t working too well. It was one determined ant. After a few minutes of failure, my son suggested what most seven-year-olds might suggest in that context Dad, he said, let s just squash him. Now 30 years ago, I would have thought that was a marvelous idea. Even as an adult, the idea was worth entertaining for a few moments. I mean, if the ant won t go where we want him to go, then the ant isn t going anywhere at all! Thankfully, maturity and compassion had enough a hold on me that afternoon to keep me trying until, eventually, that mountain ant relented and climbed on board our stick. As Jonah is headed away from God s plans for his life, God pulls a similar stunt. In the form of a storm, God s hand comes down as roadblock in Jonah s path. Of course, God could have squashed Jonah right then and there. And probably would have been justified in doing so. But he doesn t. He tries another strategy. Which makes me wonder. When in my life have I been running and God s hand had come down in my path to try to turn me back around? When has that happened in your life? In retrospect, are their times when you have sensed that God, in his loving pursuit of you, has hurled a storm your way to get you back on course? My guess is that it s happened to all of us, whether or not we recognize it. Well, the storm in Jonah s path that day creates a fascinating drama on board that ship. These pagan sailors, in fear for their lives, resort to desperate measures. They pray to any god they can think of. They start ditching their cargo in the sea to lighten their load. They re desperate. It s only in the end, that Jonah admits to these sailors that it is his God, the one true God, who is causing this storm because he is running away from God. Then, at his suggestion, they reluctantly agree to throw Jonah overboard. When they do, we re told that immediately the sea ceases from its raging. And these pagan sailors, in sharp contrast to Jonah, they bow to the Lord in humble adoration and worship, even offering a sacrifice and making vows. Now, what is absolutely amazing to me about this point in the story is that even though Jonah is clearly aware that he is rebelliously running away from God and that all this mess is his fault, he still refuses to turn back towards God and head to Nineveh. As he s being forced to walk the plank, why doesn t Jonah drop to his knees and plead in prayer, Okay Lord, you win. I m sorry. I don t want to die here at sea. I still don t want to go to Nineveh, but I ll go if you want me to go. I promise, I ll go and do what you asked me to do.? If Jonah were sincere, God would have seen it in his heart. And then, would not God have stopped the storm and let those sailors take him back to land? But Jonah won t do it. He just won t. He is so intent in his rebellion. So much so that, apparently, he would rather die than do this thing that God wants him to do. And on one hand, it is inconceivable to me how somebody can be so set against obedience. But on the other hand, when I think about it, that isn t that much different from the way I live my life.

4 4

5 5 I remember as a kid times when my folks would discipline me for something I refused to do. So, for instance, my mom would say, Okay, young man, you ve lost a week of television. No go clean your room now. And I would refuse. And she say, Okay, that s two weeks of television. And I d get smart, So I don t even like watching television. Okay, that s a month of television gone. So. I don t care. Okay, two months. At one point, I think I lost 43 years of television! Technically, I think I m still grounded. And you d think that at some point I would have weighed my options and thought, You know, it s probably better for me to just go clean my room than lose a month of television. I m just like Jonah who you d think would have had a similar conversation in his head, You know, as bad as going to preach in Nineveh would be, it s got to be better than drowning here in the middle of the ocean. And yet, he is stubborn in his rebellion. Just like us. So, instead of repenting. Instead of confessing his rebellion. Instead of asking for God s help. Jonah remains silent as these sailors pick him up and throw him into the sea where, they assume, he will sink to his death. But the most remarkable thing happens, the thing no reader on his or her first time through this story would ever expect. And yet, just the sort of thing one who truly knows the heart of God might expect God to do. As Jonah is flailing in the water, we re told, The Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Now be careful. Many people of the years get thrown off track at this point in the story. They have been tempted at this point to ask all sorts of questions about the fish. What sort of fish, anyway, can swallow a man whole? And do those fish even swim in those particular Mediterranean waters? And how could a man survive for three days in the belly of a whale? A wooden puppet sure, we can imagine that. But not a man. But these are the wrong questions to ask. For one, since this is probably a parable, the feasibility of a man-swallowing fish in those waters is beside the point. And furthermore, even if this really happened, are we to doubt that the omnipotent God of the universe could do such a thing? If God wanted to, God could have had Jonah swallowed by a jelly fish! The question to ask, rather, is what, in this story, is the great fish meant to point us towards. And the answer to that question is, of course, that the fish is supposed to point us to God s grace. In what I m about to say, remember that this story of Jonah is our story. God does not save Jonah after Jonah cries out for help. He doesn t cry out for help. God does not save Jonah after he has admitted he was wrong. He never admits he s wrong. God does not save Jonah after he has proven himself worthy. He doesn t prove himself worthy. Listen to me. God saves Jonah when Jonah is in the very midst of his rebellion. God saves Jonah when Jonah doesn t even want saving. Jonah is not going God s way. He refuses to go God s way. He would rather die than go God s way. And yet And yet God saves Jonah and leaves open the possibility that perhaps, on another day, this stubborn, stubborn man may yet turn his heart back to God and God s ways. In Romans 5:8, the apostle Paul wrote these words, Our God demonstrates his love for us in this: that while we were still sinners [while we were still living in rebellion and headed for Tarshish] Christ died for us. Even when the world would rather die than live with God, God chose to die for the world rather than to live without us. Even when you and I want nothing to do with God, when we are running to get as far away from God as possible, even then God comes after us.

6 6 Such is the amazing love of God in Jesus Christ for you and for me and for every person we meet. Such is our reason for gathering together here this morning to worship the one who, in spite of ourselves, pursues us to the ends of the earth in a grand effort to save us and give us life, and hope and peace. Amen. The Next Step: 1. Right off the bat, what strikes you most about the first chapter of this remarkable story? 2. God s pursuit of Jonah is quite revealing. What do you learn about the character of God from this story? 3. How do you see yourself in this story? Are you in there somewhere? 4. When you have run away from God in your life to avoid something he wants you to do, where have you fled? Where, or in what, have you imagined you can escape God? 5. Have you ever left a church or a community of faith with some excuse that was really covering up the fact that you were running away from God? What happened? 6. As you look back over your life, have there been times when God s hand has come down in your path to try to and lead you back around? (You might re-read Psalm 139:7-10 as you answer this question.) 7. What is one thing God wants you to do in life right now that you don t want to do? How are you in the midst of turning your back on God in rebellion? 8. What does it mean to you that God saves us and shows us his mercy even in the midst of our rebellion, even when we want nothing to do with him? How has this truth changed you life?