"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.