Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"Take A Chance On God" Jonah 3
We’ve been looking at the story of Jonah the last few weeks, and we saw in Jonah chapter 1 that the word of the LORD came to our hero and said, Go to Nineveh. Jonah ran the other way and boarded a ship for Tarshish…which is in modern Italy. God sent a storm at sea and after the ships captain begs Jonah to pray, Jonah tells them to throw him overboard. So after throwing him overboard the storm is stilled and the sailors are amazed and we leave them converted to God and worshipping him on the deck of their ship.
So the first chapter of Jonah might be summed up this memorable way: God says, "Go." Jonah says, "No." God says, "Blow." Jonah says, "So." Captain says, "Bro." Jonah says, "Throw." Sailors say, "Whoa." We were reminded that the safest place to be is in the will of God. And to run from the Lord’s calling on our lives is to drag our storm into the lives of everyone our lives touch. The sinking Jonah was swallowed by a great fish.
The Second chapter is Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish. In that prayer he actually becomes hopeful that he will make it. I guess where there’s life there’s hope. And he gives thanks that God hears him even from the bottom of the sea. We were encouraged to Pray from any and every situation. Pray, pray, pray.
Chapter two closes with a loud amen as Jonah is deposited like a salmonella salad on the beach.
Following Jonah’s three day’s in the warm cozy (no doubt) spa-like restful atmosphere of the fish’s insides, Jonah has landed on shore looking and feeling his best and once again he hears “the word of the Lord.” “Jonah” “What?! What do you want?” I want you to go to Nineveh.…the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you."
vs 3 says Jonah obeyed (what?) the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very important city-- a visit required three days. (yeah, for Jonah it required three days in a fish to even get him there. ) 4 On the first day, Jonah started into the city. He proclaimed: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned."
Now here’s where things get interesting.
5 The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Remember what we’d said about the Ninevites? These were hardened soldiers of fortune, they were terminators…they would capture whole cities and put their captives on death marches, and they piled the dead along the roadway as a warning to others of their strength. The Ninevites were a group of WWF wrestlers, Hells Angels back in the day before they got job and stuffs, they were like modern gang members, or tough old hillbillies and their even meaner women folk. Ninevites were not the kind of folks you’d expect to respond to a God message at all, let alone from an outsider. Yet they spontaneously declared a fast and put on burlap.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.
We’ll come back to this, because it’s just too silly not to, but think about it! The people’s repentance spread to the halls of the king, and the king extended their repentance even to their animals…man and beast herd and flock, they all fasted from food and from water, and they all put on sackcloth.
9 (The king’s edict includes this: Who knows? (this is the second “who knows” kind of God statement in the book of Jonah, do any of you remember the first one? The captain of the boat when he was asking Jonah to pray said, Maybe your God will take notice of us, and we will not perish." Here the King suggests, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
What an interesting history. Jonah lands on shore and has barely checked out the babes on the beach before the word of the Lord come to him saying “Go to Nineveh and preach the message I give you.” Haven’t we heard this before from the Lord? Does it sound to you like the Lord has moved on from his original plan for Jonah? Jonah ran from God (perhaps) with the hope that God might choose someone else for this Nineveh assignment. When I run from God, I certainly always hope he’ll choose someone else for the task while I’m away. But it appears God has not moved an inch…The Lord is like a broken record…for those of you old enough to remember what that sounds like. God still tells him to go, except now the message he’s to deliver has changed some. Now it’s not, ‘go and preach against the city’ NOW it’s go and proclaim to the great city of Nineveh the message I give you.
What happened to “go preach against that city because their sin has come up before me? Some dynamic has changed and I think this story might help us understand.
I read about a Jonah I know who was a lawyer. He was trying to get away from God on the ship of Tarshish. He had a lot of cash, and he was living for a lot more. His particular sea was a sea of alcohol. He could not stay away from alcohol. He just kept going down and down and down. The managing partner of his law firm told him at one point, "Your next bender will be the last one you have when you work for this firm."
For a couple of months, he stayed sober. Then he was sent to a convention, he blew off the meetings. When they found him in his hotel room, he had been on a three day binge. Just out of control.
He lost his job. He got put into a rehab clinic for a month, got assigned a sponsor who told him that he would have to get up every morning at six o'clock for an AA meeting. His response was, "No way am I getting up at six o'clock in the morning to meet with a bunch of drunks." His sponsor said, "You're not just going to meet with them; you're going to get up earlier and fix coffee for those drunks." Kind of a tough sponsor.
I think God is being a tough sponsor with Jonah. He’s now sending Jonah to serve the people. And I think the difference now is that God isn’t sending a holy prophet to a disobedient people. He’s sending a disobedient prophet to people who have not heard…He’s not sending holy Jonah to preach against the Ninivite’s sin. He’s sending a broken Jonah, who identifies with their sin…or if he doesn’t, he ought to.
In fact you might say Jonah’s sins is worse than theirs, because he knew God and still ran away…the Ninevites as we’ll see didn’t know what they were doing religiously. So now Jonah is being sent, not to preach against them, but now to proclaim to them God’s message. I think that’s sort of like having to make coffee for the drunks. He’s going to have to humble himself, and identify with the Ninivites…not just deliver a message.
Well, we know something’s changed because Jonah obeys. He goes. And you know what, suddenly everything works. Jonah is faced with a daunting task, one little guy in a fishy smelling robe walks into a city of a hundred thousand. How do you get a message out to so many? But look what happens. He proclaims in the suburbs, “40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And the Ninevites listen. It says they believed God. The Ninevites call a fast and they put on sackcloth.
Do you all know what a burlap sack is? Sackcloth. Itchy, uncomfortable, cloth made for utilitarian purposes, like hauling grain around. It was not the finer woven cloth made for comfortable clothes. You know when you buy sheets, they give a thread count rating…and the more threads per inch the softer the sheets will feel. Comfortable bed sheets are like 300, 400, 600, 700 threads per inch. Sackcloth would probably count out in the 15 to 20 threads per inch. So when sackcloth was worn, it was an announcement to the world around you that you were grieving, that you were denying yourself comfort because of a great loss. The Ninevites put it on to show God they were sorry for their sins. They were showing God they were not going to give themselves ease until they would know what God was going to do with them. The people responded in an amazing way to the proclamation of Jonah.
Their repentance and Jonah’s message soon reached the ears of the king, and amazingly the king joins the people in putting on sackcloth but the king takes it even further…he sits in the dust. He issues a proclamation that extends the fast to letting no one eat or drink…which if you’ve every tried fasting, is not recommended…you have to have fluids. And the King extends the fast beyond people to their livestock as well. In fact even the livestock are supposed to put on sackcloth, both flocks and herds. Which I’m sure the sheep, goats and cows didn’t appreciate much. In fact I imagine those who managed flocks and herds didn’t enjoy rounding them up to put sackcloth on them. If they had dogs and cats, my guess is they put sackcloth on the dogs, because dogs are sorry when they sin. Cats on the other hand, as we all know, are evil.
Sack cloth on cattle…was this silly? Yes. Did the cows know why they were wearing sackcloth? No! Did the people seem to know what they were doing in trying to please God? No! But did it get results? Yes!
Have the results they received here prompted other herdsmen in the scripture to include their flocks and herds in their repentance by dressing them in sackcloth. No. Why? Because it’s goofy. Cows don’t repent. The Ninevites didn’t know what they were doing but they hoped to turn away the wrath of God.
But though man looks at the outward appearance, God looks on the heart. And any repentant heart that would put their cows on a fast and put them in sackcloth is going to get God’s attention. But just because it worked in this story, does not mean it should be repeated. God saw in their prayers, and in their actions the sincerity of their repentance.
And here’s the deal. The King has heard the message (40 days). And he makes his edict. And listen to his comment… he says, “who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his anger so that we will not perish.” The word is we’re done, well….Let’s change our ways…who knows?…
In the story of Jonah, those who have taken a chance on God, are finding victory in their lives…even if they go about it in goofy ways. They repented not with any assurance that God would change his mind about them. They repented saying, “who knows?” God might forgive.
God looked down from heaven, heard the mooing of the hungry cows, saw them with their sackcloth on. He heard the prayers of the people and their king wearing sackcloth. He saw that they turned from their evil ways and from their violence. And God had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
God comes through for the people who take a chance on Him (and who call upon him for mercy) in the book of Jonah. The ships captain asks Jonah to pray because maybe his God might save them. Jonah’s God does save them. The sailors prayed for forgiveness even as they threw Jonah overboard…and God stopped the great storm. Jonah prayed for deliverance from inside the fish, and soon found himself on dry ground. And the Ninevites and their King took a chance on God, “who knows?”, and God had compassion on them.
Folks I don’t know where you see yourself in this story, or if you see yourself in this story, but let me suggest some ways you might see yourself or some of your loved ones in it.
You may see yourself in a storm, or far from God, or feel trapped working with people who are far from God. God hears the prayers of people, he sees every act of apology whether it’s goofy, (like putting sackcloth on livestock) or whether it’s heartfelt, as when the king put on the burlap and sat in the dust. He was humbling himself before God. If you humble yourself before God, he will raise you up. That’s what scripture says, Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up.”
Everyone who took an honest chance on God (meaning they prayed, and they turned from their evil ways)… everyone who took a chance on God in the book of Jonah, was rewarded with God’s favor.
I would not ask you to gather burlap for your selves or you’re your critters…but I do want you to know what works with God, when you find yourself outside his will. What works is true repentance. It’s turning from the wrong and settling yourself firmly with what is right. It’s apology to God for our sin, and it’s letting him work in you for change.
God will take you as you are, but he won’t bless you as you are, or leave you as you are. He will shape you, remake you, rebuild your life and it will be glorious! Take a chance on God
PRAYER
· Lord, are there places in my life that I’ve give up on? Like Jonah gave up on Nineveh? Show me, change me, I’ll take a chance on you.
· Lord, is there brokenness in my life where I’ve given up on the idea of healing? Show me, change me, I’ll take a chance on you.
· Lord, I see people finding help, salvation, restoration, peace as they give themselves to you. Show me, change me, I’ll take a chance with you. --Amen
Prayers From The Deep Jonah 2
Jonah 2:1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2 He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4 I said, 'I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.' 5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God. 7 "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. 8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. 9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD." 10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. (NIV)
Alice’s aunt invited us to use her cabin near Estes Park Colorado when the kids were small…something we were only too happy to do. It was a wonderful vacation spot. And as you often do when kids are young, you stop by one of those innocent looking fishing ponds where the kids are invited to catch trout. They must starve the poor fish, because they jump at the hooks before they even hit the water, and then the fish are cleaned for you, wrapped in paper, and you pay so much an inch for fish. I think our fish bill for three trout was close to 30 dollars. Anyway, we put the fish in the freezer over the frig and enjoyed the rest of our vacation, packed up for home, and forgot and left the fish in the freezer. That would have been fine except an electrical storm tripped the main and the fish not only thawed, they spent a couple weeks getting really nasty. When Alice’s Aunt opened the cabin door, she knew something was terribly wrong…and they seriously considered throwing the whole refrigerator away, but after some ugly work they were able to dispense with the smell.
I haven’t always had good luck with fish, even the dead ones. And my suspicion is that Jonah probably didn’t have much of an appetite for sea food after his experience either.
We’re looking at the Old Testament book of Jonah. And one of the problems with visiting a story like Jonah is we tend to think we already know the story… but I wonder if we really do. The average person usually associates the story of Jonah with one other character. If you ask someone, they will think of it as (what?) its’ the story of Jonah and the ________. (Whale) Right. …the whale’s name is Monstro, and Jonah is running away from his father, Geppetto and he wants to be a real boy, and …beyond that point people get a little fuzzy as to the details of the Jonah story. J I’d like to ask you to pretend you’ve never heard the story before, so imagine what it would be like to hear it for the first time. (got this joke from J. Ortberg)
Last week we looked at the first chapter of Jonah. And if there is one word that describes what God is doing in the first chapter the word would have to be great. God is up to something great. God says to Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh that great city. Because it turns out God has a great heart…because it seems God has a great heart for that great city. Then Jonah runs the other way, so God sends a great wind, and it produces a great storm. Then the pagan sailors are converted through a great fear. Then God appoints a fish for Jonah, …anybody want to guess what kind of fish it is? It’s a great fish. God is doing something great in this story.
Jonah on the other hand, is a total mess up. If there was one word that described Jonah in chapter one it was the word down. Jonah is going down. God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, and instead it says he went down to Joppa to catch a boat. Then he gets in a ship going down to Tarshish. Then in the ship, Jonah goes down into the hold …the bottom of the boat and there he falls into a deep sleep. Then he gets thrown down into the water in the storm…then down into the fish…and then the fish takes him down even further. Jonah has hit bottom figuratively and literally.
An Israelite at the bottom of the sea… you could not possibly get any lower. The sea was a frightening place, a place of death…Israelites were not typically sea-going people. If you remember their history, they handled seas by walking across on dry land…not boats. Jonah had been the only Hebrew on the ship. And now he finds himself inside God’s appointed fish.
Guess what Jonah does from inside the fish? He prays. He was told to go to Nineveh, he didn’t pray about that. No, he ran the opposite direction. He picks a ship in Joppa…no record that he prayed about that choice. During the storm everyone was spontaneously praying to their various gods, not Jonah. The ship’s captain wakes him and tells him to pray…as far as we can tell he doesn’t pray, he just tells them to throw him overboard. This ‘man of God’ hasn’t talked to God at all so far in this story. Even though pagan sailors have been converted and they’re having a worship service offering sacrifices to the LORD God and making vows. What kind of vows? We don’t know. Maybe they’re promising to lay off the grog, stop cussing, lose weight, and leave the strange women alone in the ports …all kinds of promises they’re making to God. You know…promises like you’ve made when your life has been spared. The sailors are making vows, that’s what it says.
But Jonah doesn’t pray through all of that…he’s not making vows…nothing spiritual is going on in his life ….until he ends up in the sea in a fish. Why do you think Jonah prayed in the fish? …He had nothing better to do. Think about it! What else are you going to do in a fish? Jonah had nowhere else to turn, nothing else to do so (we might say “finally”) he prays.
And let me offer sort of a humbling question, do you know why in our world we often have a hard time praying? Could it be because we have so many other things to do. We have so many things competing for our attention. We have so much noise, so many screens that we can turn on. Cell phones have text, and internet, and some even receive phone. People carry laptops, and have desktops, and big screen TVs…and there’s movies to watch on DVD, even in the car, and the CD players, mp3 players, and the radio. We seldom find ourselves cut off…except a few of us did on Friday….some of you may be still cut off…from electricity …we are.
Just like the sailors, we had a great storm, with a great wind, (did any of you pray while the wind was howling?) and after a few hundred trees fell down, suddenly there was no electricity, no screens, no computer, no TV, no radio except in the car and when it got dark outside, it got dark inside too.
Jonah is brought down, down, down to the bottom of the sea. The whole first chapter has been filled with exciting stuff, but it’s been a disaster because every decision was Jonah’s alone. He’s been the captain of his life, not God, and it didn’t work at all.
In the second chapter we just read, there is no action at all…just prayer.
Just prayer…Maybe because Jonah had nothing better to do. Maybe because Jonah’d finally hit bottom. Maybe because the fact that he was still alive sparked some hope in him.
And so he prayed, “In my distress I called and the Lord answered. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened. You hurled me into the deep…all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, “I’ve been banished…and yet…I will look again toward your holy temple. But you brought my life up from the pit.” He prays, “I with a song of thanks will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good.”
If we could take just a little time out here for a second, has anyone here ever been in over your head in life? Jonah would say, “pray.” Is it your own fault that you’re in that situation? “Pray anyway.” Have you been living a life that is contrary to what you believe God wants for you? Pray then too. Are you concerned that your motives are not pure, maybe you’re just looking out for your own best interests? I think Jonah would say, “pray anyway.”
God is never more than a prayer away. And God is so willing to hear. God is so tender hearted toward us that even when Jonah, or you, or I have hit bottom and we’ve nowhere else to go, God still says, “Come to me.”
Jonah prays, and God hears, and Jonah gets delivered on the third day. But again this is an odd book, and so his deliverance is not on the wings of angels, not with a chariot of fire, not with a parting of the sea. In this odd book, good things happen in funny ways here. So after three days in the fish, there’s (let’s say) an unsettling of great fish’s digestive system. You Moms out there, you know that look? …when your child has the flu…and is about to prove their illness once again…they get that look? At God’s command, the fish had the look. And the gurglings all around Jonah became profound. That had to be a gut-wrenching sound from inside, huh?
Verse 10 says, “The Lord commanded and the fish vomited Jonah onto dry land.” Now folks, is that a little more detail than we really wanted from the Bible just a few minutes before we go to lunch? Couldn’t the translators of the Holy writ have chosen a more dignified, churchier, more Methodist term than ‘vomit’ for what happened here? It’s as if this book was written for Jr. High boys. “Vomit” is a great word for them. Just the mention of the word brings back fond memories.
Preacher John Ortberg said, the scripture “is hitting us over the head with it. The writer wants to make sure the reader gets this. Jonah did not get dropped off by an angel. The Fish had a protein spill, tossed his cookies, lost his lunch, launched the food shuttle, took a ride on the regurgitron…ok?” (The only way this story could possibly have been better for 8th graders is if Jonah had finished the whole trip through the fish’s digestion system.
Jonah ends up on shore, not a tragic figure, covered with suffering. Not a heroic figure, covered with glory. But a ridiculous figure, covered with shrimp cocktail and tuna tartar…or whatever else the great fish had eaten.” My best guess is…it was extremely nasty…something like that refrigerator in Estes Park. My two boys like to watch that show “dirty jobs” and one of the only time’s I’ve seen the show’s strong stomached host lose his lunch was when he was grinding bait on a fishing scow. We’re talking something right guard just won’t take care of.
I wonder how long do you think it was before Jonah could laugh about how he looked there on the beach? I’m thinking it was a while…I’m sure his buddies would loved to have seen him come ashore…but no-one would have wanted to take him home in their pickup. Did that odor still lingered on Jonah when he arrived at Nineveh. I’m thinking it might have. “Great message pastor, but what’s that funky smell?”
Most stories are either comedies or tragedies. In tragedy: joy loses, life loses, hope loses. In a comedy: joy wins, life wins, hope wins. What is Jonah? What would you say? Is Jonah a tragedy or comedy? It’s a comedy. Jonah keeps going down, but great things keep happening. Jonah the prophet, who as the “man of God” ought to be the hero of the story runs from God and has to hit bottom before he even prays. It turns out that when people are going down, down, down, God is up to something great. Great things are about to happen for Jonah.
I’m sure the fish would tell us (with a wink) that you just can’t keep a good man down.
What can we take from this? Jonah chapter 2 tells us that people in the worst possible situations can pray, for God hears. People in the deepest holes imaginable can pray, and God is there. And as modern day Jonah’s, mess-ups like you and me, are willing to bring themselves, their situations, their lives to God…God can do great things with them.
The New Testament says, God can do “far more abundantly than we could ask or think.” And as we said last week, anyplace with God is better than any place we might choose without his blessing. Prayer is the language of positive change…no matter what language you pray in, prayer is the language of great possibilities. And deliverance is near when God is hearing the prayers of his people.
You may think God won’t listen, he will. You may know you caused the problem yourself…you may have…that fact changes nothing about God’s willingness to hear your prayer or work with you. In all honesty I think Jonah would tell us it might not be pretty…your deliverance might be an ugly smelly thing (as it was for him.) Jonah would remind us we might not get to keep our dignity…he didn’t keep his…but God will save. You may think it’s too late, it’s not. The situations you’re thinking of …its resolution may depend one someone you don’t think will change…let God deal with that. You can let life (every situation, every problem) let it all call you to pray.
My challenge to you this week is to see every situation as an invitation to pray. The worse it is, the more it needs prayer. The more it’s your own fault, the more it needs your prayers. The more you don’t want to pray, the more you must need to pray about it. From the belly of the beast that has swallowed you whole, pray! God can still do great things with your life. Pray, pray, pray. Do you understand the challenge? Do I need to say it again?
Then let’s pray right now.
Alice’s aunt invited us to use her cabin near Estes Park Colorado when the kids were small…something we were only too happy to do. It was a wonderful vacation spot. And as you often do when kids are young, you stop by one of those innocent looking fishing ponds where the kids are invited to catch trout. They must starve the poor fish, because they jump at the hooks before they even hit the water, and then the fish are cleaned for you, wrapped in paper, and you pay so much an inch for fish. I think our fish bill for three trout was close to 30 dollars. Anyway, we put the fish in the freezer over the frig and enjoyed the rest of our vacation, packed up for home, and forgot and left the fish in the freezer. That would have been fine except an electrical storm tripped the main and the fish not only thawed, they spent a couple weeks getting really nasty. When Alice’s Aunt opened the cabin door, she knew something was terribly wrong…and they seriously considered throwing the whole refrigerator away, but after some ugly work they were able to dispense with the smell.
I haven’t always had good luck with fish, even the dead ones. And my suspicion is that Jonah probably didn’t have much of an appetite for sea food after his experience either.
We’re looking at the Old Testament book of Jonah. And one of the problems with visiting a story like Jonah is we tend to think we already know the story… but I wonder if we really do. The average person usually associates the story of Jonah with one other character. If you ask someone, they will think of it as (what?) its’ the story of Jonah and the ________. (Whale) Right. …the whale’s name is Monstro, and Jonah is running away from his father, Geppetto and he wants to be a real boy, and …beyond that point people get a little fuzzy as to the details of the Jonah story. J I’d like to ask you to pretend you’ve never heard the story before, so imagine what it would be like to hear it for the first time. (got this joke from J. Ortberg)
Last week we looked at the first chapter of Jonah. And if there is one word that describes what God is doing in the first chapter the word would have to be great. God is up to something great. God says to Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh that great city. Because it turns out God has a great heart…because it seems God has a great heart for that great city. Then Jonah runs the other way, so God sends a great wind, and it produces a great storm. Then the pagan sailors are converted through a great fear. Then God appoints a fish for Jonah, …anybody want to guess what kind of fish it is? It’s a great fish. God is doing something great in this story.
Jonah on the other hand, is a total mess up. If there was one word that described Jonah in chapter one it was the word down. Jonah is going down. God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, and instead it says he went down to Joppa to catch a boat. Then he gets in a ship going down to Tarshish. Then in the ship, Jonah goes down into the hold …the bottom of the boat and there he falls into a deep sleep. Then he gets thrown down into the water in the storm…then down into the fish…and then the fish takes him down even further. Jonah has hit bottom figuratively and literally.
An Israelite at the bottom of the sea… you could not possibly get any lower. The sea was a frightening place, a place of death…Israelites were not typically sea-going people. If you remember their history, they handled seas by walking across on dry land…not boats. Jonah had been the only Hebrew on the ship. And now he finds himself inside God’s appointed fish.
Guess what Jonah does from inside the fish? He prays. He was told to go to Nineveh, he didn’t pray about that. No, he ran the opposite direction. He picks a ship in Joppa…no record that he prayed about that choice. During the storm everyone was spontaneously praying to their various gods, not Jonah. The ship’s captain wakes him and tells him to pray…as far as we can tell he doesn’t pray, he just tells them to throw him overboard. This ‘man of God’ hasn’t talked to God at all so far in this story. Even though pagan sailors have been converted and they’re having a worship service offering sacrifices to the LORD God and making vows. What kind of vows? We don’t know. Maybe they’re promising to lay off the grog, stop cussing, lose weight, and leave the strange women alone in the ports …all kinds of promises they’re making to God. You know…promises like you’ve made when your life has been spared. The sailors are making vows, that’s what it says.
But Jonah doesn’t pray through all of that…he’s not making vows…nothing spiritual is going on in his life ….until he ends up in the sea in a fish. Why do you think Jonah prayed in the fish? …He had nothing better to do. Think about it! What else are you going to do in a fish? Jonah had nowhere else to turn, nothing else to do so (we might say “finally”) he prays.
And let me offer sort of a humbling question, do you know why in our world we often have a hard time praying? Could it be because we have so many other things to do. We have so many things competing for our attention. We have so much noise, so many screens that we can turn on. Cell phones have text, and internet, and some even receive phone. People carry laptops, and have desktops, and big screen TVs…and there’s movies to watch on DVD, even in the car, and the CD players, mp3 players, and the radio. We seldom find ourselves cut off…except a few of us did on Friday….some of you may be still cut off…from electricity …we are.
Just like the sailors, we had a great storm, with a great wind, (did any of you pray while the wind was howling?) and after a few hundred trees fell down, suddenly there was no electricity, no screens, no computer, no TV, no radio except in the car and when it got dark outside, it got dark inside too.
Jonah is brought down, down, down to the bottom of the sea. The whole first chapter has been filled with exciting stuff, but it’s been a disaster because every decision was Jonah’s alone. He’s been the captain of his life, not God, and it didn’t work at all.
In the second chapter we just read, there is no action at all…just prayer.
Just prayer…Maybe because Jonah had nothing better to do. Maybe because Jonah’d finally hit bottom. Maybe because the fact that he was still alive sparked some hope in him.
And so he prayed, “In my distress I called and the Lord answered. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened. You hurled me into the deep…all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, “I’ve been banished…and yet…I will look again toward your holy temple. But you brought my life up from the pit.” He prays, “I with a song of thanks will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good.”
If we could take just a little time out here for a second, has anyone here ever been in over your head in life? Jonah would say, “pray.” Is it your own fault that you’re in that situation? “Pray anyway.” Have you been living a life that is contrary to what you believe God wants for you? Pray then too. Are you concerned that your motives are not pure, maybe you’re just looking out for your own best interests? I think Jonah would say, “pray anyway.”
God is never more than a prayer away. And God is so willing to hear. God is so tender hearted toward us that even when Jonah, or you, or I have hit bottom and we’ve nowhere else to go, God still says, “Come to me.”
Jonah prays, and God hears, and Jonah gets delivered on the third day. But again this is an odd book, and so his deliverance is not on the wings of angels, not with a chariot of fire, not with a parting of the sea. In this odd book, good things happen in funny ways here. So after three days in the fish, there’s (let’s say) an unsettling of great fish’s digestive system. You Moms out there, you know that look? …when your child has the flu…and is about to prove their illness once again…they get that look? At God’s command, the fish had the look. And the gurglings all around Jonah became profound. That had to be a gut-wrenching sound from inside, huh?
Verse 10 says, “The Lord commanded and the fish vomited Jonah onto dry land.” Now folks, is that a little more detail than we really wanted from the Bible just a few minutes before we go to lunch? Couldn’t the translators of the Holy writ have chosen a more dignified, churchier, more Methodist term than ‘vomit’ for what happened here? It’s as if this book was written for Jr. High boys. “Vomit” is a great word for them. Just the mention of the word brings back fond memories.
Preacher John Ortberg said, the scripture “is hitting us over the head with it. The writer wants to make sure the reader gets this. Jonah did not get dropped off by an angel. The Fish had a protein spill, tossed his cookies, lost his lunch, launched the food shuttle, took a ride on the regurgitron…ok?” (The only way this story could possibly have been better for 8th graders is if Jonah had finished the whole trip through the fish’s digestion system.
Jonah ends up on shore, not a tragic figure, covered with suffering. Not a heroic figure, covered with glory. But a ridiculous figure, covered with shrimp cocktail and tuna tartar…or whatever else the great fish had eaten.” My best guess is…it was extremely nasty…something like that refrigerator in Estes Park. My two boys like to watch that show “dirty jobs” and one of the only time’s I’ve seen the show’s strong stomached host lose his lunch was when he was grinding bait on a fishing scow. We’re talking something right guard just won’t take care of.
I wonder how long do you think it was before Jonah could laugh about how he looked there on the beach? I’m thinking it was a while…I’m sure his buddies would loved to have seen him come ashore…but no-one would have wanted to take him home in their pickup. Did that odor still lingered on Jonah when he arrived at Nineveh. I’m thinking it might have. “Great message pastor, but what’s that funky smell?”
Most stories are either comedies or tragedies. In tragedy: joy loses, life loses, hope loses. In a comedy: joy wins, life wins, hope wins. What is Jonah? What would you say? Is Jonah a tragedy or comedy? It’s a comedy. Jonah keeps going down, but great things keep happening. Jonah the prophet, who as the “man of God” ought to be the hero of the story runs from God and has to hit bottom before he even prays. It turns out that when people are going down, down, down, God is up to something great. Great things are about to happen for Jonah.
I’m sure the fish would tell us (with a wink) that you just can’t keep a good man down.
What can we take from this? Jonah chapter 2 tells us that people in the worst possible situations can pray, for God hears. People in the deepest holes imaginable can pray, and God is there. And as modern day Jonah’s, mess-ups like you and me, are willing to bring themselves, their situations, their lives to God…God can do great things with them.
The New Testament says, God can do “far more abundantly than we could ask or think.” And as we said last week, anyplace with God is better than any place we might choose without his blessing. Prayer is the language of positive change…no matter what language you pray in, prayer is the language of great possibilities. And deliverance is near when God is hearing the prayers of his people.
You may think God won’t listen, he will. You may know you caused the problem yourself…you may have…that fact changes nothing about God’s willingness to hear your prayer or work with you. In all honesty I think Jonah would tell us it might not be pretty…your deliverance might be an ugly smelly thing (as it was for him.) Jonah would remind us we might not get to keep our dignity…he didn’t keep his…but God will save. You may think it’s too late, it’s not. The situations you’re thinking of …its resolution may depend one someone you don’t think will change…let God deal with that. You can let life (every situation, every problem) let it all call you to pray.
My challenge to you this week is to see every situation as an invitation to pray. The worse it is, the more it needs prayer. The more it’s your own fault, the more it needs your prayers. The more you don’t want to pray, the more you must need to pray about it. From the belly of the beast that has swallowed you whole, pray! God can still do great things with your life. Pray, pray, pray. Do you understand the challenge? Do I need to say it again?
Then let’s pray right now.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
"You Can Run But You Cannot Hide" Jonah 1
YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE
NIV Jonah 1:1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD. 4 Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 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. 6 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, and we will not perish." 7 Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, "Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?" 9 He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land." 10 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.) 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?" 12 "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." 13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried to the LORD, "O LORD, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O LORD, have done as you pleased." 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him. 17 But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights. NIV
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You Can Run But You Cannot Hide
Jonah Chapter 1
(M) Maybe it was the great catch of fish in the passage we looked at last week that had me casting my nets to the Bible’s most famous fish story for our message today. Maybe it was the suggestion that the resurrection of Jesus is a lot to swallow that made me think of the great fish …who may have thought the same about Jonah. Or maybe it was something else that drew me to this Old Testament book.
(W) I’m hoping that we’ll find that God speaks to us today as we make an effort to bring a fresh set of ears to this old, old story. I think most of us are familiar with the bare outline of the Jonah story. But we may not have visited this book or even thought of this story since our days in Sunday School, or Bible School. And if that’s the case, last time you thought about it you probably were not looking in this story for insights for living. But there are treasures in this little book. Treasures for us today. It speaks to us if we’ve ever heard God’s prompting, but refused that voice. It speaks to us if we are afraid to obey the Lord’s voice. And let’s face it, it’s a funny book…and who couldn’t use a little comedy these days.
(G) The book of Jonah seems to start out like many of the stories involving the prophets. God speaks and the prophet takes action. But something is very different about this story right from the start. Typically prophets were called to speak for God to the Israelites. Most often prophets spoke in rather pointed terms about some part of the people’s relationship with God that they were neglecting. With that as their job, prophets (as you might guess) were not particularly popular…because their messages came from God and sort of slapped people across the face saying, “Wake up!”
You might remember it was a prophet that came to king David and exposed his sin with Bathsheba. The prophet first got David all riled up with a tender story of someone who had just one little lamb that he loved…and then a villain that had many sheep, stole the one lamb and ate it for dinner. Being a former shepherd himself, David demanded to know who the villain was. That’s when the prophet said, “You are the man.” David had a whole flock of wives, but he’s stolen Bathsheba from her husband and then had him murdered to cover his sin. King David got the royal smack-down from the prophet.
Confrontation is what prophets specialized in, so (as you might guess) not every town wanted to have one. In fact one or two prophets at a time was about all the whole nation of Israel could stand. I’m not really a prophet…I’m a pastor. Id’ call what I do a sort of spiritual shiatsu…(I said shiatsu…it’s a type of massage) What I do is find some tender spots spiritually and push on them a little, hoping you’ll respond appropriately. Prophets tend to do spiritual heart surgery with baseball bats. I used to think I was a prophet, but actually I was just hard to get along with. My wife taught me that it’s not the same thing. Actually my brother reminded me of that a few years ago…he just used a more prophetic word for “hard to get along with.” And whatever you’re guessing is probably close enough.
Now Jonah was an actual prophet. He had the job of prophet for about 50 years or so, and it’s not clear when in his life this particular story took place, but I hope for his sake that this story took place early enough in his career that he could learn from it and do better. You’d also want to be a young man to have adventures at high seas. If Jonah had been old, he’d have run from God by walking laps at the mall. To me, he sounds like a young man…full of his own ideas…and a person of hot and cold extremes.
The word of the Lord came to him. We’re not told how but there was no question in Jonah’s mind that it was God speaking. He is told by God to Go to Nineveh and preach (not to them, not for them) but preach against that great city. He’s being called to confront Nineveh. Confront is what prophets do. He could have said, “Yes LORD, I’m on my way.” Except…yuck, it was Nineveh!
Author John Ortberg writes that, “Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. In the seventh and eighth centuries BC, Assyria was the great world power. It chewed up and spit out countries right and left. It would put the populations of countries that it defeated on death marches. It practiced genocide as state policy. When Israel was split into two sections, there was a northern kingdom, ten tribes up there, and the southern kingdom, just two tribes. The northern kingdom, those ten tribes, was captured and basically vaporized, basically obliterated, by Assyria.
Assyria was hated so much…this is what a prophet named Nahum said about Nineveh, which is the capital, kind of embodied Assyria, "Woe to Nineveh" (this is in the Old Testament) "woe to the city of blood…" That is what it was called, that was its title. "…full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims, piles of dead." Now you think about this, "…bodies without number, people stumbling over corpses…your injury is fatal." Nahum here is predicting the fall of Nineveh. "…your injury is fatal.
Everyone who hears the news about you claps their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?" Nineveh is so hated. Not just cruelty, but endless cruelty.
When it is destroyed Nahum says, people are going applaud; they are going to stand up and cheer. If you want to understand how an Israelite felt about Nineveh, this is not just any other city…think of Al-Qaeda, think of Nazi Germany, think of a power that killed your children, enslaved your brother, brutalized your sister. Nahum said very, very strong condemning words about Nineveh, but where do you think Nahum was when he said those words? He was in Israel. He was a long ways away from Nineveh.
Then the Word of the Lord comes to Jonah, "Go to Nineveh." Learn to speak Assyrian and tell them face to face that they're facing judgment. Jonah says, "Lord, Nahum got to preach against them from a distance. Couldn't we like send them a nasty letter or something?" "The Word of the Lord came to Jonah, 'Go to Nineveh.'"
I remember a song that was on the radio when I was a kid about the bravest men in history the men of the 7th cavalry. The song was written from the perspective of a soldier under the command of Gen. George Custer. …and the scared soldier has a bad feeling about the little big horn. The chorus of the song goes, “Please Mr. Custer, I don’t want to go.” Any of you remember that song? Some of your kids might download an mp3 of it. That’s how Jonah felt. He was pretty sure that if he rode into Nineveh and started preaching against it, he’d probably get a nice Assyrian arrow in the back.
So rather than go to Nineveh, Jonah ran from God. In fact he ran in exactly the opposite direction. From where he was in Israel, Nineveh was straight East. Jonah went down to Joppa and got on a ship going to Tarshish…which is as far west as any trade was done. Nineveh was as far east as anyone went for trade…Tarshish was the far western port. He wasn’t satisfied to sit at home and disobey God…he was running from God’s will in his life. Now who in the world would do such a thing?
Well, let’s put it in more modern terms. Nineveh is that place that God is calling you to go…and you don’t want to go. Nineveh is that apology you keep putting off because you don’t want to do it…so you go to Tarshish. Nineveh was not in Jonah's comfort zone. Nineveh is trouble. Nineveh is danger. Nineveh is fear. What do you do when God says to you, "Go to Nineveh, go to the place where you do not want to go"? Because God if fully capable of saying that to us. If you decide you want go, you’re headed for Tarshish…which is as far from God’s will in your life as you can imagine…and that’s why you’ve decided to go there…you know, maybe rent a cabin for a while until this “God’s will thing” blows over. Maybe while you’re gone, God will choose someone else to do what he was asking you to do …and you’ll be off the hook.
Jonah’s running away from God’s will for him. Let’s see how well that works for Jonah… He gets passage on a boat for Tarshish. He’s headed to a port city. And for some odd reason, a storm arises at sea. Now this is where the story gets very interesting…because it seems that everything is backwards.
The storm is howling, the sailors are scared to death…or scared of death…and they each one prays to their own god. And they throw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship in hopes of surviving the storm. Everybody’s praying to their own god. If you had your bible open, you may have noticed that in the phrase, “their own god” that the word “god” is not capitalized. Back in Jonah’s day, many people thought that there were many gods. The different god’s were tribal, and local to where the different men came from. This evidently was a pretty diverse and multicultural crew. So they are practicing a vibrant form of pluralism… In calm waters, any god will do…but in the midst of the storm they want everybody calling on their god, because maybe one of them will be able to end the storm.
I hope I’m wrong about this, but sometimes I think we get prayer requests that sort of resemble this same sinking-ship mentality. When faced with an overwhelming storm, some people who chase every other possibility on earth, will sometimes call us to pray for them. They seem to think, “who knows it might work…if it does, great!” It’s not that they have faith in prayer, it’s just that the storm is bad enough their willing for anything to work…even prayer.
Here’s what’s backwards: everyone is praying to their own god except for Jonah…the man of God…who’s running away from the LORD God. Do you remember where we said he was? He was below deck asleep. Isn’t this just turned around from the way things ought to be.
The ship is filled with sailors who turn out to be religious men praying to their various gods. Jonah is not praying. Jonah (The man of God) is called to prayer by the pagan ship captain. In fact the captain can’t believe he’s not praying he says, “"How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god!” …in the King James it’s really wonderful it says, “What meanest thou, O sleeper?” He’s calling the man of God saying, “What are you doing, how can you sleep. Criminently! Get up and pray! Who knows, your god might help us.”
This is a real turn-about kind of happening: The pagan is doing what prophet's do…calling the man of God to pray. The prophet is doing what pagans do…sleeping when it's prayer time. God is up to something in this book.
You know what? The text does not tell us whether or not Jonah prayed. I sort of assume he didn’t…because he didn’t really want God to notice where he was. The next thing that happens is the sailors, having struck-out with prayer to their own gods, start tossing dice to see whose fault it is that the storm has come upon them. They toss lots…a way of divining…figuring out who is responsible. And the lot falls to Jonah. So now they’re all giving Jonah the hairy eyeball there…they knew he was running from his God…and Jonah’s God seems to be ticked. So they question him. Where are you from? Who are your people? Who is your God? Jonah tells them he’s a Hebrew who worships (when he’s not running) the God of heaven who made the land and the sea. The sailors are really afraid now, because the God who made the sea is troubling the waters.
They start to continue their questioning…but finally break that off and ask, “what should we do to you, so this storm will stop for us?” And Jonah says, “toss me overboard.” And bless their hearts, the pagan sailors don’t do it! They try to row to shore and make no headway. They express some real compassion for Jonah, a lot more than he felt for the folks at Nineveh. Finally in desperation, they call out to Jonah’s God… Then they cried to the LORD, "O LORD, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O LORD, have done as you pleased." 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard.
They basically apologize to the LORD God as they reluctantly toss Jonah to the sea. It was all they could do. And soon after Jonah hit the water, the seas calmed, and Jonah was no-where to be seen. And so, what did these new converts to Jonah’s God do? They offered sacrifices to the LORD…they worshipped, and they made vows…they made promises about their future behavior before the God who calmed the seas.
Something pretty amazing is going on in this story, because the man of God is running from God…he’s not praying, and the pagan sailors are men of prayer first to their own gods…and then when they begin to deal with Jonah’s God, they pray, they worship, they offer sacrifices they make vows. Even as Jonah is sinking down, down, down into the sea they have become converts. Jonah’s been an evangelist…and he didn’t even want to.
(Y) Now, what can you take from this story thus far. An obvious idea is that you can choose to run from God…but you can’t get beyond his reach. If God calls you to go to a certain place, and you refuse to go…there will be consequences. If God wants you to make peace with this person…who seems like a Ninevite to you…and you refuse, you’re running from God. Maybe God’s called you to make peace with a family member…and in your mind they have Ninevite tattooed right across their forehead…so you haven’t done anything about it. You’ve bought passage to Tarshish.
We all do this. People do it all the time. It happens to everybody in this room. It may happen like this: I know God is asking me to go to Nineveh. I know God wants me to confront this person, have a conversation about the truth, but that would be hard, that would be unpleasant. I don't want to face that pain so I'll just go to Tarshish. I know God is calling me to serve in this area, but I don't want to. It might be humbling. It might be difficult. It might be scary. I don't want to do that so I'll run away to Tarshish.
Maybe it looks like this: I know God wants me to confess this sin. I know God wants me to acknowledge this habit. I know God wants me to let go of this sexual relationship or this sexual habit. I know God wants me to release this judgmental attitude in my spirit. I know God wants me to forgive and not be bitter. I know, but I don't want to. So I'm looking for a ship to Tarshish.
If God calls you to Nineveh, and you run for Tarshish you can run but you can’t hide.
A second lesson from this chapter is that what you do has consequences others too. I don’t know where we got the lie that says, “Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone.” Sort of a Hippocratic oath for life. (the problem is life doesn’t work that way, it’s not possible…when you do what you want, people get hurt.) Or where did we get this one: “believe what you want as long as you don’t force anyone else to believe it.” That lie has a foot-note doesn’t it? Unless you’re a secular-humanist then you are free force people to believe in nothing.
Jonah wasn’t pushy with what he believed. Other than letting the other sailors in on the fact that he was running from his God…they didn’t know what he believed until in the middle of the storm he’d caused they asked him. The “man of God” wasn’t preaching on the boat, or praying over the meals in the mess hall, or acting religious at all…religiously speaking, he was trying to fly under the radar. Folks how you deal with the LORD God makes a difference to you and to those you come in contact with.
You can’t run from God and not drag other folks and their cargo into the same storm you’ve put yourself in. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas…not even close. And what happens here, doesn’t stay here either. How you live what you believe has consequences for every life that your life touches. That should be one of those shiatsu touches right there…if it stings a little it’s only to try to make it better.
Finally I think we can say, it’s never too late to stop running from God. When Jonah told the crew to toss him into the sea, what was he really saying? I’m tired of running from God, if God wants to do something with me, he can, but at least I’m not going to sink all of you. He finally thinks of someone other than himself. He gives in and puts himself in God’s hands…he thinks probably for death and judgment…but whatever comes, he’s God’s problem.
We should also so say that although it’s never to late, it’s never to early to stop running from God either. He could have spared the sailors a great loss if he’d not drug his problem onto their boat.
(W) We’re going to leave Jonah sinking into the sea for now…O not quite…God provided a great fish to swallow Jonah. Actually the word there translated provided is more like commanded, or appointed. God said, “hey fish.” And the fish, ever obedient said, Yes sir? And God said, swallow that guy floundering there on the surface, and swim back toward Israel…wait for further orders. And the obedient fish did so. We’ll leave Jonah there with the idea that for him, and for us. It is never, it is never too late to quit running from God, and I'll tell you something else, it is never too soon to quit running from God…never too soon.
Maybe you've been running in really obvious ways. People around you who know you and love you can see it. Maybe you've been running in secret, hidden ways. Maybe you were hardly even aware of it until right now and the Spirit is just talking to you…whatever area of your life. Maybe a storm has hit or is coming. Don't wait for the storm to get any worse. God’s invitation is always, "Just come running to me." Running away does not work in life. It just doesn't work.
So my challenge for you this week: Let's all think and pray, and wait and listen. Ask,” God, is there any place that you've called me to go? Something you're asking me to do, where I've been resisting you?”
Have I been running from you? Let's really look at that, and maybe three little words will come to you, your own calling, your own Nineveh. Then come back next week and see what comes next because the adventure with Jonah is just starting.
Let's pray.
NIV Jonah 1:1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD. 4 Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 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. 6 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, and we will not perish." 7 Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, "Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?" 9 He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land." 10 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.) 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?" 12 "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." 13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried to the LORD, "O LORD, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O LORD, have done as you pleased." 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him. 17 But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights. NIV
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You Can Run But You Cannot Hide
Jonah Chapter 1
(M) Maybe it was the great catch of fish in the passage we looked at last week that had me casting my nets to the Bible’s most famous fish story for our message today. Maybe it was the suggestion that the resurrection of Jesus is a lot to swallow that made me think of the great fish …who may have thought the same about Jonah. Or maybe it was something else that drew me to this Old Testament book.
(W) I’m hoping that we’ll find that God speaks to us today as we make an effort to bring a fresh set of ears to this old, old story. I think most of us are familiar with the bare outline of the Jonah story. But we may not have visited this book or even thought of this story since our days in Sunday School, or Bible School. And if that’s the case, last time you thought about it you probably were not looking in this story for insights for living. But there are treasures in this little book. Treasures for us today. It speaks to us if we’ve ever heard God’s prompting, but refused that voice. It speaks to us if we are afraid to obey the Lord’s voice. And let’s face it, it’s a funny book…and who couldn’t use a little comedy these days.
(G) The book of Jonah seems to start out like many of the stories involving the prophets. God speaks and the prophet takes action. But something is very different about this story right from the start. Typically prophets were called to speak for God to the Israelites. Most often prophets spoke in rather pointed terms about some part of the people’s relationship with God that they were neglecting. With that as their job, prophets (as you might guess) were not particularly popular…because their messages came from God and sort of slapped people across the face saying, “Wake up!”
You might remember it was a prophet that came to king David and exposed his sin with Bathsheba. The prophet first got David all riled up with a tender story of someone who had just one little lamb that he loved…and then a villain that had many sheep, stole the one lamb and ate it for dinner. Being a former shepherd himself, David demanded to know who the villain was. That’s when the prophet said, “You are the man.” David had a whole flock of wives, but he’s stolen Bathsheba from her husband and then had him murdered to cover his sin. King David got the royal smack-down from the prophet.
Confrontation is what prophets specialized in, so (as you might guess) not every town wanted to have one. In fact one or two prophets at a time was about all the whole nation of Israel could stand. I’m not really a prophet…I’m a pastor. Id’ call what I do a sort of spiritual shiatsu…(I said shiatsu…it’s a type of massage) What I do is find some tender spots spiritually and push on them a little, hoping you’ll respond appropriately. Prophets tend to do spiritual heart surgery with baseball bats. I used to think I was a prophet, but actually I was just hard to get along with. My wife taught me that it’s not the same thing. Actually my brother reminded me of that a few years ago…he just used a more prophetic word for “hard to get along with.” And whatever you’re guessing is probably close enough.
Now Jonah was an actual prophet. He had the job of prophet for about 50 years or so, and it’s not clear when in his life this particular story took place, but I hope for his sake that this story took place early enough in his career that he could learn from it and do better. You’d also want to be a young man to have adventures at high seas. If Jonah had been old, he’d have run from God by walking laps at the mall. To me, he sounds like a young man…full of his own ideas…and a person of hot and cold extremes.
The word of the Lord came to him. We’re not told how but there was no question in Jonah’s mind that it was God speaking. He is told by God to Go to Nineveh and preach (not to them, not for them) but preach against that great city. He’s being called to confront Nineveh. Confront is what prophets do. He could have said, “Yes LORD, I’m on my way.” Except…yuck, it was Nineveh!
Author John Ortberg writes that, “Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. In the seventh and eighth centuries BC, Assyria was the great world power. It chewed up and spit out countries right and left. It would put the populations of countries that it defeated on death marches. It practiced genocide as state policy. When Israel was split into two sections, there was a northern kingdom, ten tribes up there, and the southern kingdom, just two tribes. The northern kingdom, those ten tribes, was captured and basically vaporized, basically obliterated, by Assyria.
Assyria was hated so much…this is what a prophet named Nahum said about Nineveh, which is the capital, kind of embodied Assyria, "Woe to Nineveh" (this is in the Old Testament) "woe to the city of blood…" That is what it was called, that was its title. "…full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims, piles of dead." Now you think about this, "…bodies without number, people stumbling over corpses…your injury is fatal." Nahum here is predicting the fall of Nineveh. "…your injury is fatal.
Everyone who hears the news about you claps their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?" Nineveh is so hated. Not just cruelty, but endless cruelty.
When it is destroyed Nahum says, people are going applaud; they are going to stand up and cheer. If you want to understand how an Israelite felt about Nineveh, this is not just any other city…think of Al-Qaeda, think of Nazi Germany, think of a power that killed your children, enslaved your brother, brutalized your sister. Nahum said very, very strong condemning words about Nineveh, but where do you think Nahum was when he said those words? He was in Israel. He was a long ways away from Nineveh.
Then the Word of the Lord comes to Jonah, "Go to Nineveh." Learn to speak Assyrian and tell them face to face that they're facing judgment. Jonah says, "Lord, Nahum got to preach against them from a distance. Couldn't we like send them a nasty letter or something?" "The Word of the Lord came to Jonah, 'Go to Nineveh.'"
I remember a song that was on the radio when I was a kid about the bravest men in history the men of the 7th cavalry. The song was written from the perspective of a soldier under the command of Gen. George Custer. …and the scared soldier has a bad feeling about the little big horn. The chorus of the song goes, “Please Mr. Custer, I don’t want to go.” Any of you remember that song? Some of your kids might download an mp3 of it. That’s how Jonah felt. He was pretty sure that if he rode into Nineveh and started preaching against it, he’d probably get a nice Assyrian arrow in the back.
So rather than go to Nineveh, Jonah ran from God. In fact he ran in exactly the opposite direction. From where he was in Israel, Nineveh was straight East. Jonah went down to Joppa and got on a ship going to Tarshish…which is as far west as any trade was done. Nineveh was as far east as anyone went for trade…Tarshish was the far western port. He wasn’t satisfied to sit at home and disobey God…he was running from God’s will in his life. Now who in the world would do such a thing?
Well, let’s put it in more modern terms. Nineveh is that place that God is calling you to go…and you don’t want to go. Nineveh is that apology you keep putting off because you don’t want to do it…so you go to Tarshish. Nineveh was not in Jonah's comfort zone. Nineveh is trouble. Nineveh is danger. Nineveh is fear. What do you do when God says to you, "Go to Nineveh, go to the place where you do not want to go"? Because God if fully capable of saying that to us. If you decide you want go, you’re headed for Tarshish…which is as far from God’s will in your life as you can imagine…and that’s why you’ve decided to go there…you know, maybe rent a cabin for a while until this “God’s will thing” blows over. Maybe while you’re gone, God will choose someone else to do what he was asking you to do …and you’ll be off the hook.
Jonah’s running away from God’s will for him. Let’s see how well that works for Jonah… He gets passage on a boat for Tarshish. He’s headed to a port city. And for some odd reason, a storm arises at sea. Now this is where the story gets very interesting…because it seems that everything is backwards.
The storm is howling, the sailors are scared to death…or scared of death…and they each one prays to their own god. And they throw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship in hopes of surviving the storm. Everybody’s praying to their own god. If you had your bible open, you may have noticed that in the phrase, “their own god” that the word “god” is not capitalized. Back in Jonah’s day, many people thought that there were many gods. The different god’s were tribal, and local to where the different men came from. This evidently was a pretty diverse and multicultural crew. So they are practicing a vibrant form of pluralism… In calm waters, any god will do…but in the midst of the storm they want everybody calling on their god, because maybe one of them will be able to end the storm.
I hope I’m wrong about this, but sometimes I think we get prayer requests that sort of resemble this same sinking-ship mentality. When faced with an overwhelming storm, some people who chase every other possibility on earth, will sometimes call us to pray for them. They seem to think, “who knows it might work…if it does, great!” It’s not that they have faith in prayer, it’s just that the storm is bad enough their willing for anything to work…even prayer.
Here’s what’s backwards: everyone is praying to their own god except for Jonah…the man of God…who’s running away from the LORD God. Do you remember where we said he was? He was below deck asleep. Isn’t this just turned around from the way things ought to be.
The ship is filled with sailors who turn out to be religious men praying to their various gods. Jonah is not praying. Jonah (The man of God) is called to prayer by the pagan ship captain. In fact the captain can’t believe he’s not praying he says, “"How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god!” …in the King James it’s really wonderful it says, “What meanest thou, O sleeper?” He’s calling the man of God saying, “What are you doing, how can you sleep. Criminently! Get up and pray! Who knows, your god might help us.”
This is a real turn-about kind of happening: The pagan is doing what prophet's do…calling the man of God to pray. The prophet is doing what pagans do…sleeping when it's prayer time. God is up to something in this book.
You know what? The text does not tell us whether or not Jonah prayed. I sort of assume he didn’t…because he didn’t really want God to notice where he was. The next thing that happens is the sailors, having struck-out with prayer to their own gods, start tossing dice to see whose fault it is that the storm has come upon them. They toss lots…a way of divining…figuring out who is responsible. And the lot falls to Jonah. So now they’re all giving Jonah the hairy eyeball there…they knew he was running from his God…and Jonah’s God seems to be ticked. So they question him. Where are you from? Who are your people? Who is your God? Jonah tells them he’s a Hebrew who worships (when he’s not running) the God of heaven who made the land and the sea. The sailors are really afraid now, because the God who made the sea is troubling the waters.
They start to continue their questioning…but finally break that off and ask, “what should we do to you, so this storm will stop for us?” And Jonah says, “toss me overboard.” And bless their hearts, the pagan sailors don’t do it! They try to row to shore and make no headway. They express some real compassion for Jonah, a lot more than he felt for the folks at Nineveh. Finally in desperation, they call out to Jonah’s God… Then they cried to the LORD, "O LORD, please do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O LORD, have done as you pleased." 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard.
They basically apologize to the LORD God as they reluctantly toss Jonah to the sea. It was all they could do. And soon after Jonah hit the water, the seas calmed, and Jonah was no-where to be seen. And so, what did these new converts to Jonah’s God do? They offered sacrifices to the LORD…they worshipped, and they made vows…they made promises about their future behavior before the God who calmed the seas.
Something pretty amazing is going on in this story, because the man of God is running from God…he’s not praying, and the pagan sailors are men of prayer first to their own gods…and then when they begin to deal with Jonah’s God, they pray, they worship, they offer sacrifices they make vows. Even as Jonah is sinking down, down, down into the sea they have become converts. Jonah’s been an evangelist…and he didn’t even want to.
(Y) Now, what can you take from this story thus far. An obvious idea is that you can choose to run from God…but you can’t get beyond his reach. If God calls you to go to a certain place, and you refuse to go…there will be consequences. If God wants you to make peace with this person…who seems like a Ninevite to you…and you refuse, you’re running from God. Maybe God’s called you to make peace with a family member…and in your mind they have Ninevite tattooed right across their forehead…so you haven’t done anything about it. You’ve bought passage to Tarshish.
We all do this. People do it all the time. It happens to everybody in this room. It may happen like this: I know God is asking me to go to Nineveh. I know God wants me to confront this person, have a conversation about the truth, but that would be hard, that would be unpleasant. I don't want to face that pain so I'll just go to Tarshish. I know God is calling me to serve in this area, but I don't want to. It might be humbling. It might be difficult. It might be scary. I don't want to do that so I'll run away to Tarshish.
Maybe it looks like this: I know God wants me to confess this sin. I know God wants me to acknowledge this habit. I know God wants me to let go of this sexual relationship or this sexual habit. I know God wants me to release this judgmental attitude in my spirit. I know God wants me to forgive and not be bitter. I know, but I don't want to. So I'm looking for a ship to Tarshish.
If God calls you to Nineveh, and you run for Tarshish you can run but you can’t hide.
A second lesson from this chapter is that what you do has consequences others too. I don’t know where we got the lie that says, “Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone.” Sort of a Hippocratic oath for life. (the problem is life doesn’t work that way, it’s not possible…when you do what you want, people get hurt.) Or where did we get this one: “believe what you want as long as you don’t force anyone else to believe it.” That lie has a foot-note doesn’t it? Unless you’re a secular-humanist then you are free force people to believe in nothing.
Jonah wasn’t pushy with what he believed. Other than letting the other sailors in on the fact that he was running from his God…they didn’t know what he believed until in the middle of the storm he’d caused they asked him. The “man of God” wasn’t preaching on the boat, or praying over the meals in the mess hall, or acting religious at all…religiously speaking, he was trying to fly under the radar. Folks how you deal with the LORD God makes a difference to you and to those you come in contact with.
You can’t run from God and not drag other folks and their cargo into the same storm you’ve put yourself in. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas…not even close. And what happens here, doesn’t stay here either. How you live what you believe has consequences for every life that your life touches. That should be one of those shiatsu touches right there…if it stings a little it’s only to try to make it better.
Finally I think we can say, it’s never too late to stop running from God. When Jonah told the crew to toss him into the sea, what was he really saying? I’m tired of running from God, if God wants to do something with me, he can, but at least I’m not going to sink all of you. He finally thinks of someone other than himself. He gives in and puts himself in God’s hands…he thinks probably for death and judgment…but whatever comes, he’s God’s problem.
We should also so say that although it’s never to late, it’s never to early to stop running from God either. He could have spared the sailors a great loss if he’d not drug his problem onto their boat.
(W) We’re going to leave Jonah sinking into the sea for now…O not quite…God provided a great fish to swallow Jonah. Actually the word there translated provided is more like commanded, or appointed. God said, “hey fish.” And the fish, ever obedient said, Yes sir? And God said, swallow that guy floundering there on the surface, and swim back toward Israel…wait for further orders. And the obedient fish did so. We’ll leave Jonah there with the idea that for him, and for us. It is never, it is never too late to quit running from God, and I'll tell you something else, it is never too soon to quit running from God…never too soon.
Maybe you've been running in really obvious ways. People around you who know you and love you can see it. Maybe you've been running in secret, hidden ways. Maybe you were hardly even aware of it until right now and the Spirit is just talking to you…whatever area of your life. Maybe a storm has hit or is coming. Don't wait for the storm to get any worse. God’s invitation is always, "Just come running to me." Running away does not work in life. It just doesn't work.
So my challenge for you this week: Let's all think and pray, and wait and listen. Ask,” God, is there any place that you've called me to go? Something you're asking me to do, where I've been resisting you?”
Have I been running from you? Let's really look at that, and maybe three little words will come to you, your own calling, your own Nineveh. Then come back next week and see what comes next because the adventure with Jonah is just starting.
Let's pray.
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