Well, it's seldom a matter of location; it's seldom a matter of situation; most of the times when you do it, you probably aren't conscious that you're doing it. I would ask you, "Is there a way, perhaps this week, where you ran from God, maybe not location, maybe not situation? Was there a time when you thought your plan was better than God's plan; your way better than God's way? Was there perhaps a moment where you denied the presence of God? Where you acted as if He wasn't there? Is there perhaps someplace in your life where you yet run from God?"
Reading Jonah 1:1-3
Turn, if you would, with me to Jonah, chapter 1. I want to read for you, again, just the first three verses of Jonah 1, page 774, in your church Bible. [I lost my mic.] 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 them, for their evil has come 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 on board to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.
I said last week that we don't know a whole lot about this man, the prophet Jonah. Only one other mention of Jonah is in II Kings 14, verse 25; we know he was the son of Amittai. We know he was from a town called Gath-hepher...near Nazareth. What we know about Jonah is very scant; yet, this story is known to almost everyone who has even a cursory exposure to Scripture. And, if you are ever going to understand the importance and the drama of the story of Jonah, the way it is so incredibly apt for us as we think about our personal lives and as we think about ministry to the city, you really have to understand God's call to Jonah.
Look there with me. 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 them, for their evil has come before me. A remarkable call, a unique call! There were many prophets who were called to prophesy against the evil of the surrounding nations. But they were given the ability to make those prophecies from the comfort of home. Jonah's call is unique; he's called to leave his town and to actually go to that great city of Nineveh; it's a hard call.
There's a good possibility that this evil city, this city where its ruler had called himself the "Almighty", this city full of idolatry. There's a good possibility that it would not be receptive to this Hebrew prophet proclaiming the judgment of a foreign God. Don't be too hard on Jonah. And I would have us think, if God asked you to leave your home in Mount Airy or South Jersey, Rittenhouse Square, and move to Logan-would you go? If God called you to move from the suburbs to an immigrant community in South Philly, would you go?
Would you go? Would you go? It was a hard call. It would surely change this man's life. It was dangerous and it was unsettling, and yet that was the call of God. God's call to us is not always comfortable. God's call to us is not always easy. God calls us to things that we would've never planned for ourselves that we would've never imagined that we would be asked to do. Are you willing as we think about our city; are you ready to receive God's call? The response of Jonah is quite immediate and quite clear.
Jonah runs from the call of the God of grace. And the extent to which Jonah is running just has to be noticed. It says here that he first goes down to Joppa, a seaport, and his intention is to pay his fare and get on a boat and go to Tarshish. Now let me explain a little bit about what that means. Jonah lives near Nazareth, just a short distance from the shores of Galilee. To get to Joppa would probably be about a 50 mile journey. Fifty miles by foot is the picture of a man who's wanting to get away.
But that's just the beginning of this journey. His intention is to get on this boat and to go to Tarshish. Tarshish is way, way on the Western end of the Mediterranean Sea. Now, if you had the geographic consciousness of a man living in this period of time, Tarshish is on the other side of the earth. This man is literally intending to run to the other side of the earth from God. He's running as far as he can run from God. And our passage, if you notice, says twice, that his intention was to run from the presence of the Lord.
Poor Deluded Jonah
Poor deluded Jonah! I mean you can run from a location, and you can probably run away from a particular call of God, but the one thing no one is ever able to do is to run from the presence of God. That sort of has the futility of attempting to shovel smoke with a rake-it just isn't going to happen. You can't run from God's presence, but that's how determined this man is to get away from this call of God. The futility of thinking that I can escape the presence of the God who is ever present everywhere, poor deluded Jonah.
Now, think about this. Maybe all of us, in some way, did that this week. Perhaps you had a conversation that you could not have had, had you recognized the presence of God. Perhaps you had thoughts in your mind that you could not have had if you had been conscious of the presence of God. Perhaps you let your eyes and your heart do something that your eyes and heart could never have done if you caused yourself to be aware of the presence of God. Maybe you made a decision that you wouldn't have been able to make if you would have been aware of the presence of God.
Is there some way in your life, even as a believer, where you're tempted to deny the presence of God, and denying the presence of God, you were able, then, to take your life into your own hands, and you're able to flee to your own personal Tarshish? Maybe that's in your business; maybe that's in your home; maybe that's in your parenting; maybe that's in your friendship; maybe that's with your finances; maybe that's with the way that you respond to your neighbors. I would ask you this question, "Is your life a picture of what it means to live with a ready, constant consciousness of the presence of God?
A presence of God that protects me and moves me and shapes the way that I respond to everything that's in my life?" Do you live deeply aware of the presence of God, or are there ways, that even though you call yourself a believer, you deny the very presence that you say is your ultimate motivation and your ultimate hope? Jonah ran from the call of God. But we are not left there. We know why Jonah made the response that he made. As I read commentators, it was a bit mystifying to me that there were commentators who would argue that we really don't know why, why Jonah ran from God.
And the thing that I think is so powerful about this little book is, not only do we have a window in Jonah on the heart of God, but we are given a window into the heart of Jonah. If you take this book as a whole, and if you actually believe that Scripture interprets Scripture, Scripture exegetes Scripture, then the fourth chapter of Jonah exegetes what goes on in the first chapter of Jonah. And we understand why Jonah would run the way that he ran from God. Here is the bottom line, and I want to argue this with you or for you.
Jonah ran from God because Jonah did not have the heart of God. There was a divergence between the heart that motivates God and the heart that motivates Jonah. Boy, this needs to be said, brothers and sisters, ministry is not propelled by strategic planning and programs; ministry is not propelled by schedule; ministry is not propelled by ministry leaders to get together and organize ministry. Ministry is propelled by the heart. Nothing else will ever propel ministry! And when I run from the ministry that God has called me to, I run because I do not share God's heart.
Now, lest those of you who have given your lives to help plan the ministries of Tenth be too offended at this man, let me say, planning is very important because planning organizes the ministries of the body of Christ in a way that's very necessary, but we must not mistake organization for motivation. And I think there's three clear areas that you can see in this passage where Jonah did not share the heart of God. Here's number one: Jonah clearly did not have God's sensitivity to sin. God could not look at Nineveh and see the evil that had taken over that city and be okay with it; this is a holy God!
God Could Not Rest With Evil Before Him
And He could not live at rest in His own heart with the evil that was there before Him; this is not what God created people to be and to do. And as I've said before, this kind of evil is not just a denial of spirituality; it's a denial of the very essence of what a human being is supposed to be. It's a denial of humanity; it is not okay. Brothers and sisters, it should not be okay to us either. There is a way in which the Church of Jesus Christ should be the saddest community on earth because we really do understand what sin has done to individual lives.
We understand what sin does to a family; we understand what sin does to a person's identity; we understand how sin distorts meaning and purpose, and distorts communities and distorts cities, and distorts nations and leaves the world a broken place; it's not okay; it should touch our hearts. It should break us; it should motivate us; we should say, "God, if I can be part of reconciliation, if I can be part of transformation, if I can be part of the restoration of all things, please Lord, please Lord, use me!"
I wish I could say that that's the way I lived every day in my life, but I don't. I get so easily satisfied with the comforts of my own life, with the good things that God has provided for me, and I can move through my culture; I can move through my community; I can move through my city as a man with blind eyes and a cold heart. Oh, Lord, please forgive me! May we be broken, broken by the vistas of the ravages of sin that are before our eyes; may we have God's heart. There's a second thing that's clear.
Jonah didn't share God's unshakable commitment to His plan. You see, there's a principal for us here as well: That if your life isn't shaped and directed by the plan of God, it will be ruled by your desire. You see, coming to Christ is not just a welcome to the family of God, it's not just a welcome of forgiveness and grace--it surely is that--Praise God for that!...but it's a welcome, it's an invitation, it's a call to be part of something hugely bigger than the borders of your own life. Paul says in Corinthians, "You've been bought with a price, therefore, you are not your own, your life no longer belongs to you; you have been purchased."
And you are now connected to the great plan of redemption; your life is meant to be structured by the call of that plan; personal and corporate decisions are meant to be made with a submission to the plan of God. It's His will; it's His way; it's His call. We must not view ministry as sort of this process whereby I step out of the life that is my own, and I step episodically into the work of God's kingdom for a moment, and I step back out of God's kingdom into the life that is my own; every area of your life belongs to your Redeemer.
Every part of your life is part of His call. Marriage is ministry; friendship is ministry; parenting is ministry; work is ministry; culture and leisure is ministry. It's all owned by the Redeemer; it's all meant to give glory and praise to Him. We are all meant to be part of what He's doing; and if Jonah would have had that mentality, there would've been no debate, and there would've been no running; his answer would have been, "God, You've called; I go!" But there's a third thing. Jonah doesn't share God's heart of grace.
A Call of Grace
This call to Jonah is deeper than a call of warning and a call of judgment; it's the call of grace. God is announcing His warning because He's giving Nineveh an opportunity to turn, and the end of the book, we find Jonah disappointed and angry with God; he's saying those words we know well, "I knew that You would do this because I knew what You were like; I knew that You were a God of grace; I knew that You would forgive; I knew that You would turn from Your anger; I knew it. Is there perhaps a community in Philadelphia that you would rather see judged than forgiven?
Is there a person in your life, and you struggle with them; you struggle to be gracious toward them in the way that God has been gracious to you? Are your responses to the people in the situations around you characterized by grace? Oh, I don't mean by that that you compromise what is wrong, but you respond to what is wrong with the heart of grace; what you long for is God's grace to operate in those situations and transform those people and transform those communities. You love the grace that you have received; you feel deeply privileged; you wonder how it ever happened that you would be the object of God's love, that you would be the object of His patience and forgiveness and grace, and you long for the people around you to experience the same grace that you've received.
Are you in love with the God of grace in such a way that makes you a person of grace? It's a shocking thing that Christianity can degenerate into something that is selfrighteous and judgmental. When the core message of our faith is: We have been given what we couldn't have earned and what we never would've deserved. We are the sons and daughters of grace! Praise God! And we should be the most tender and most compassionate and most patient and most loving and most gracious of all communities. Do you share God's heart? ...His sensitivity to sin, His unshakable commitment to the work of His kingdom, His heart of grace?
You see, if you do, can I say this to you? Well I am your pastor, I will, "You're already going." I don't have to call you to go; you're already going because your life is moved by that sensitivity. Your life is moved by your commitment to His kingdom. Your life is moved by a heart of grace. Maybe you are sitting there this evening and you're saying, "Paul, this is very convicting, are you going to leave us with some hope?" Well, I do plan on doing that. There's hope in this passage; you know, it is an amazing thing that in the arrogance and outrageousness of Jonah's turning from God, (Are you hearing me?)
God doesn't turn from Jonah. Isn't that amazing? God is not done with this man. God doesn't say to Jonah, "That's what you want? Have at it!" This God literally harnesses the forces of nature to draw this man back to where he needs to be. That is your Lord. He will not turn from his plan, and take comfort; He will not turn His back on you. But there's even a more profound comfort in this passage. It is that the words we've read, point down to the ages to a second Jonah...One who was sent to a foreign country, sent to a place that would not receive Him, sent to people who would despise His message, and this Jonah didn't run.
This Jonah, the Lord Jesus Christ, said, "Father, I will go." And He not only preached, He gave His life so that there would be hope for runners like you and me, so that there would be grace more powerful than our ability to run. Praise Him! Are you running? Was there a conversation this week that was a portrait of a run? Was there a decision this week that was a portrait of a run? Are you untouched by the brokenness around you in a way that's a portrait of a run? We can stand before our Lord and say, "Lord I do run from You.
There are places even this week where I denied Your presence, and I bring myself before You, and I would say, "Won't You give me Your grace so that, perhaps, I would run no more?" Let's Pray: Lord, thank you for the sadness and the celebration of this story. The sadness informs our hearts of the temptations to run from You. And the celebration of the story gives us hope that in all of our proneness to wander, there's hope for us because there is grace that is greater. Forgive us, and draw us back to You that we may be people who share Your heart, and because we share Your heart, we say to You, "My Lord, my Father, my Redeemer, my King, I will go." We pray this for Your glory and for the benefit of the work of Your kingdom. In Jesus name, Amen.
