God Pursues the Runaways

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0:00you all and serve the Lord as pastor here at New Creation. We're taking a pause from our Luke sermon series, which we've been in since basically the start of the church back last October. We're going to do a four-week sermon series on Jonah. I got to tell you, I love the book of Jonah, so I'm excited about this. I hope you are too. Um, the book of Jonah, um, it's a book that nearly every, anyone, even if you've never been to church before, has got some passing familiarity with the story. You may not know all the details, but you know something about the book of Jonah. But what is the book of Jonah about, really?

0:42The themes are complex, um, but as I've been reading and reflecting on it, a word keeps coming to my mind, and the word is persistence. The sermon series, um, for the book of Jonah, it's going to be called this, God's Persistent Grace. His Persistent Grace. God does things throughout this book that frankly are unwelcome, intrusive, unsettling, but they're acts of love. They are intentional, thoughtful, deliberate acts of God, and they reveal his heart to bless, to help, to save. I'm reminded of, of my mom, of being middle schooler, being fairly new to this area, and her saying to me on Sunday afternoons, hop in the car, you're going to youth group. And I made it clear in no uncertain terms often that I did not want to go to youth group. But nevertheless, I still ended up in the car, dropped off at church.

1:59It was good for me. And in time, I began to realize that. And I was grateful, eventually, she did that. I'm reminded of Nikki. I think about our first couple years of marriage when I was working a rotating shift. It was two weeks daylight, two weeks evening, two weeks graveyard, and it was rotated like that. And so the weeks where I was coming off of graveyard and back onto daylight shift, those weekends were hard. I would come home exhausted, and I would tell Nikki, I'm just going to lay down for a little nap. And, you know, but she knew, and I knew, that a four, you know, a four-hour nap was going to completely wreck my sleep cycle, and I wouldn't be able to go to sleep on time. And I would be a wreck for the daylight shift next week. So I'd be laying on the couch, and she would come and try to wake me up. And I was having none of it. I let her know often, and I know in certain terms, go away. I want to sleep. Go away. But she was persistent, and she kept at it despite my grouchiness, and it was good for me. Once the evening came, and I went to bed at a decent time with her, I was glad that she had woken me up, that she had persisted, shaken me sometimes, endured me, so that I could be on the right sleep schedule. She was loving me. The book of Jonah gives a similar picture about God. God's purposeful, saving, sanctifying work in his people. People who we might not even think he cares about. God's work in the world, but it's also in us. It's intrusive sometimes, but it's loving. So let's turn to Jonah 1 and see how this whole thing gets started. This is God's word for us.

4:11Let's pay attention to it. Let's receive it. It's from the Lord, infallible, just like he is. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each called out to his God. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish. And they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

6:10Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Then they said to him, What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us? For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, Pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the Lord, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood. For you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.

7:04So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. Pray with me. Jesus, as we approach your word, we know that we cannot by our own strength pull out something helpful here and spiritually change ourselves. That is work that only you can do, and yet you have promised to do it in part through your word going forth. And so I pray that it would go forth with power today. That you would confront us with ourselves and with your grace. Lord, work in me. Work among everyone here so that we see you for who you are and that we cherish you more than when we walked in here today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God pursues the runaways. When God's call is difficult, he meets us with his grace. Now Jonah is different than the other prophetic books of the Bible. It's more concerned with the prophet himself than the prophecy he speaks. It tells us an episode in Jonah's life. Other than God, Jonah is the main character here throughout the whole book. And we learn from this book not through direct sayings, not through proverbs or statements. We learn through, mainly through satire and irony. For example, Jonah is an agent of God, but he hates his own mission.

9:05His ministry later will produce great fruit, but he's bitter about it. He is part of God's covenant people, but he's furious about God's character and about God's purposes. And God speaks directly to him. But everyone around him, including the foreign pagans, are more responsive to God than he is.

9:31Jonah is something of an antihero. When Cadence was in the womb, I was talking with someone and I was confiding in them some of the names that we were thinking about. And I said, well, if it's a boy, we're thinking of the name Jonah. And the person responded to me, why on earth? Jonah was terrible. He ran away. He disobeyed. He pouted. He was stubborn. And I said, sounds like me.

10:14Listen, as we get started, hear this. The key to learning from this book is seeing yourself in Jonah. You'll get very little out of this book if you think Jonah is other people. Jonah is you. And Jonah is me. The more you can see that, the more you will see your need for God. And you'll see that the grace that chases after Jonah is the grace that chases after you. Let's start here. The runaway prophet. Jonah was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel above the kingdom of Judah. This was the time of the divided kingdom. We used to be united under David and Solomon. Now it's divided. The 10 tribes in the north make the kingdom of Israel. That's the prophet. That's where he was from. That's where he ministered to. His ministry was during a 30-year period from about 780 to 750 BC. He was successful and he was probably quite popular, at least as prophets go, because he had been given a message from God of imminent good news for the people of God. Look at this in 2 Kings. Jeroboam, king of Israel, restored the border of Israel from Labo Hamath as far as the Sea of Ereba, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath Hefer. So after many years of oppression by a foreign nation, Jonah was sent to announce the expansion of the northern kingdom's borders. This is good news. The Israelites up there are saying, now this is a prophet that I can listen to. Thank you, God, for finally sending someone who

12:08has good things to say. What else you got for us, Jonah? Keep on talking. Jonah is a rarity among prophets. He speaks God's words and he's well-liked for it. And then he gets a new assignment. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. This was a record scratch moment for Jonah. Lord, I must have misheard. I could have swore you said go to Nineveh, but that couldn't, no. You couldn't have said that. This was unheard of. Prophets often spoke about foreign nations. Sometimes they spoke to foreign nations, but they just did not go to foreign nations. Hebrew prophets did not, where they were not sent out to walk into foreign nations and announced things. This was completely unheard of, especially not this nation. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. Assyria was a brutal empire. Assyria was infamous throughout the ancient Near East for their cruelty and their violence. Their records, their own records gloat in detail about sadistic and public torture done to captives. Things which I won't repeat here. They did evil over and over and over and were gleeful about it, and they used it to terrorize surrounding nations. And right at this moment, when Jonah gets this word, Israel is a looming threat to Israel. It's a storm cloud on the horizon. The prophet Amos, which was a contemporary of Jonah's, had spoken about a coming invasion of the northern kingdom, and Assyria

14:11was the most likely candidate to do that. So imagine yourself in Jonah's place. There is no mistaking the task. It's clear. And there's no mistaking the risk. To his reputation? To his safety? To his life? Why on earth would God do this? This was an unwelcome and a difficult calling. Now when we hear that word calling, sometimes we think too narrowly. When we think that a calling is only what happened to Jonah, a special prompting towards some huge action in our life. If you think that way, you're going to go through much of your life thinking that you have no particular calling. You're going to hear the word calling and you're going to think, oh, that's for other people. So to help you get into Jonah's shoes, let's talk about this word calling for a second. Let me invite you to think of callings differently.

15:14If you've been thinking about it only like what happened to Jonah, let me tell you this. A calling is simply what God wants me to do. That's all it is. A calling is something that God wants you to do. And with this perspective, you don't need some special prompting to know what your calling is. Callings can be discerned by evaluating three other things that start with a C. Commitments, circumstances, and commandments. The commitments I've made, the circumstances in my life, the commandments of God, these things give me clarity and give you clarity on what it is that God wants you to do. Today and tomorrow, next week, next month. Let me give you an example.

16:09Suppose I wake up in the morning and I get down on my knees and I spend 30 minutes in prayer and I'm like, Lord, reveal to me your will. Tell me who I should love and serve today sacrificially. Make it clear to me, God. Make it clear to me who today, right now, I should love and I should serve and I should give myself towards. And I spend 30 minutes in prayer and I hear nothing discernible. And then I walk downstairs and Nikki's there and she goes, good morning. How are you? And I said, fine. And she says, boy, my day's really busy today. I got a few hours of work I'm trying to get in.

16:49The girls have got to be taken here, there, and yonder for all kinds of things. My sister's coming in town and the house needs to be cleaned up. I just don't know how I'm going to do it all. But anyway, how about you? What's your day going to be like? And I say to her, well, I prayed and I prayed. I asked God to show me who I should love and serve, but I didn't hear anything from him. So I think I'm going to go play a round of golf. You're right to be laughing. And I walk out the door and I think, well, God didn't speak to me. I prayed. That's a big miss, right? The commandment of God is for husbands, love your wife like Christ loved the church. I'm a husband, so that commandment applies to me. The commitment I made to Nikki on June 15, 2002 was to be her husband. And the circumstances of my life right now is that my wife is saying, I need some help today. Right? If I just were to walk out and say, well, I didn't hear from God today, that's a big miss. God's commandments, my circumstances, and the commitments I've made make it clear what callings I have to do today. Does that make sense? That's the way you should think about callings. Commitments, circumstances, and commandments, considering those brings your callings into focus. Christian students, you have a calling to study hard and to be respectful to your teachers.

18:21Christian employees, you have a calling to work with integrity and to be respectful to your boss. Christian supervisors and teachers, you have a calling to manage with patience and wisdom, to guide and to teach and to instruct with their good in mind. Christian parents, you have a calling to love your kids sacrificially, to pray for them, to instruct them in the faith. And all Christians live in community, no matter how big or how small. So we all have a calling to live peaceably, to seek the common good, to exemplify Jesus, to be salt and light. Now, as we think about our lives in this way, we can relate to Jonah a little bit more, right? Every follower of Jesus has callings that are difficult, they're costly. Sometimes what God asks us to do sounds like going to Nineveh. We don't want to do it.

19:28Our flesh, our old self does not want to do it. We start looking around for an escape route, just like Jonah did. And that was exactly what he thought that he found. Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish. He says, arise? You want me to arise? Oh, I'll arise, all right. And I'm going this way. Nineveh was east of Israel. Tarshish was west. Way west across the Mediterranean, maybe even in Spain. It was way, way far away. Jonah is not just going to say no and stay put, cross his arms and his legs and sit down on the ground. No, he's like a child, basically, that does the exact opposite of what his parent says to do. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. Now he knows that you can't actually escape the presence of the Lord. He knows the psalm that we read earlier, Psalm 139. He knows it.

20:40But he just wants to stop feeling the presence of the Lord. When we're actively disobeying, resisting God, we don't want to feel his presence. We say, perhaps subconsciously, I'm going to go to where I can't even sense him anymore. Sometimes we do this without traveling anywhere. We binge watch. We pour ourselves another drink. We scroll social media endlessly.

21:14Something, anything to dull the feeling that God is nearby, tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me of what I'm called to do. Friends, are you running from God today? Are you running from God? If so, I want to tell you, you're not alone. You're not alone. And it's not too late to stop running. And also, God's after you. He's after you with his grace and his mercy. Because our God is the pursuing God. Let's turn the page now to this part of Jonah 1. It only takes until verse 4 for the grace of God to break through. Look at the ways in which God reaches down to Jonah. The first thing he does is this.

22:11The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. I like the world hurled here, because I picture God just throwing a 100 mile an hour fastball right at the ship, right at Jonah. And God hits the mark. The mariners were terrified. Each one of them was crying out to his own God for deliverance, but noticed nothing is changing.

22:43Meanwhile, Jonah is asleep. The story is told to emphasize Jonah's withdrawal from God. Four times the word down is used to describe Jonah's movement. Down to Joppa. Down into the ship. Down into the inner part of the ship. Down and was fast asleep. This is the sleep of denial. The sleep of avoidance. The sleep of detachment. Jonah's peace is a false peace. And God, his grace is in the storm. Because this is the beginning of Jonah's revival. The next pursuit of God comes through the captain, who shakes Jonah, wakes him up. And look at what the captain says. Arise. Call out to your God.

23:33Far away from Israel. Far away from Israel. Out in the middle of the Mediterranean, Jonah wakes up hearing the same command from God that he heard back in Israel. Arise. Arise, Jonah. This pagan sea captain tells him to do the very thing that he's been avoiding. Call out to your God. Sometimes a person who doesn't even know God can challenge us to practice what we preach. To live according to our identity as followers of Jesus. We do well to pay attention to such moments. The mariners decide to cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. And this is the next place God intervenes because the lot fell, wouldn't you know it, on Jonah. God is sovereign over circumstances.

24:34Jonah had been trying to hide out in the storm. He was detached from reality, but God is just pulling him back in. Welcome back to reality, Jonah. Here I am. Finally, the Lord pursues Jonah through the mariners themselves. They pepper Jonah with questions over and over and over. They know now that he knows what's really happening. One part of his answer stands out to them. I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Does Jonah even know what he's saying at this point? In the ancient Near East, people believe that the God of each nation had their own territory, their own specialty, their own special ability and things that they could control. Of course, Jonah didn't believe this, but the sailors do. So when the sailors hear this, they put two and two together. Wait a minute, your God controls the sea and you're running away from him? Jonah is completely exposed. He has nowhere to go. He's got no cover to hide behind. He's been dragged out from the bottom of the ship. All eyes are on him in the middle of the storm on this boat in the Mediterranean. All of this has been a work of God's intrusive grace. It's like God is staging an intervention. And all these mariners who don't know anything about the God of Israel, who don't worship him, they have been brought in by God. The sea and the storm, it's all been brought together to confront Jonah. So Jonah comes to a crucial moment. The mariners ask him what to do and Jonah says, throw me over. He acknowledges the truth for the first time. It's my fault. It's my fault.

26:31I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. He still doesn't like God's call, but he's at least taking responsibility and accepting the circumstances and the consequences. The sailors, to their credit, they still try to save him. Isn't that amazing? They still try to save him. It's his fault, but it's no use. So they ask God for forgiveness. They pick him up. They pitch him over. When the sea instantly calms, their response changes. The men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. God's pursuit of Jonah, it spilled over to the people around Jonah. You can't contain God's grace. When he's working in one place, it has a way of breaking out and touching people nearby. While they're worshiping the Lord, Jonah is sinking further down into the Mediterranean. His attempt to flee from the Lord was futile, but his story will continue next week. We'll find out what happens next. Now, if you're here and you're not a Christian, you may be a little bit dumbfounded right now. You may be saying to yourself, this guy was a prophet? What a loser. This guy was set apart by God to speak the word of the Lord? This is the kind of person that God sends in his name? To that I'd say, well, yes, that's right. This is exactly the kind of person that God sends. Fallible, deeply flawed, sometimes even unlikable. In other words, human.

28:32If then you start to wonder, well, then how can anything good come from a faith where a hot mess like Jonah is involved? That's a good question, but I would say Jonah's actions are not where we put our hope. Jonah was a hot mess, it's true. He heard a call that he thought was too difficult, and so he ran. But I know of someone who had an even more difficult calling. A calling of not just possible scorn, but certain scorn. A calling of not just possible death, but certain death. This man didn't run away, but he obeyed. Yes, friends, I'm talking about Jesus now. The one whose faithfulness is the perfect contrast is the perfect contrast to all of Jonah's failings. He too was sent into enemy territory, our territory. We lived there. He was sent into enemy territory on a saving mission.

29:42Just like Jonah, he went down, down, down, down to the earth, down to humanity, down to suffering, down to death, but not because of his disobedience, but because of our disobedience. He was taking our place. He too, like Jonah, was sacrificed for the sake of others. He gave up his life on the cross to silence the raging storm of our rebellion from God, so that everyone, including you and me, who feared the Lord and made vows of faith could be saved, could have peace with him. We don't rest in the work of Jonah. Thank goodness. We don't rest in the work of me or the work of you. It is far from enough. Our only hope is in the perfect work of Christ. If Jesus is your Savior, then just like those sailors, you have been delivered by his sacrifice. Even if your disobedience was a hundred times worse than Jonah's, you've been delivered. And now you're safe as you follow him. You're safe.

31:07Look at the front of your bulletin for a second. With Jesus as your Savior, you're safe as you follow him. Listen to these two quotes. One from Augustine. Long time ago, he said, without you, what am I but the captain of my own ruin? But look at what Christian author and speaker Trillian Neubel says. The love and the pursuit of any human pales in comparison to the love and pursuit of God. Because he first pursued us, we can pursue him. The only way to say yes to the difficult callings in your life is to rest in the one who said yes to his difficult calling. It's the only way forward for us.

32:03You have to rest in Jesus and his work for you. Then you can stand to face the callings that God's given you with boldness and courage because the Spirit is now living in you, helping you to walk in obedience, helping you to pick yourself back up. God picks you back up as you fail in your callings. Your failure is not the end of the story. Jesus' success writes your story if you trust in him. He has done the work. He's delivered you and he will continue to meet you with his grace. No matter what your calling is, no matter what day it is, he will pursue you and meet you. Let's pray. God, it's amazing the way that you intervened in Jonah's life. Lord, there's not much about Jonah that we can look at and want to be like today. We see a cautionary tale in Jonah 1 of running from God and the consequences that entail with that, Lord. But if we're honest, we see ourselves there because there are plenty of times where we run away from the call that you have for us in our lives. They seem too difficult and maybe they are too difficult. Jesus, would you please work in us? Show us in Jonah 1 how your grace goes after us. Your grace meets our need and most of all, Lord, we see that Jesus did not do what Jonah did. He fulfilled the calling that he had and we have salvation and peace in your spirit because of it.

33:51Jesus, lead us. Help us to not be disobedient people. And Lord, when we do disobey and run away, come after us. Call us back to you. Jesus, we pray this in your name. Amen.