Welcome to week 2 of Jonah. Some of you have expressed surprise that we will take six weeks to study this book. I get that. But as it becomes more and more clear that this tiny book is like the entire Bible in miniature, you may start to wonder why this series isn’t longer.
I want you to grab a Bible and find Jonah. It’s the first part of the Bible called the Old Testament. That means it’s all the stuff that happened before Jesus. There are 39 books in the Old Testament. Jonah is the 32nd. If you find Psalms, keep going. If you find Daniel, next comes Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and then Jonah. When you get there, hold it open.
If you missed last week, give yourself the gift of watching that message sometime this week.
This is one of the things we talked about. The entire Old Testament is stitched together as a cohesive whole. Whenever we read one part of the Old Testament, we are supposed to read it with all the other parts in mind. That means that we owe it to ourselves, you owe it to yourself to become familiar with it.
The point of all of it is that we need God’s law. I want to talk to those of you who wouldn’t describe yourself as a Jesus follower. If you aren’t sure where you stand with Jesus or religion. If you’re checking things out and exploring questions—that may sound sketchy that you need God’s law. If that doesn’t give you the warm and fuzzies, can I ask you a question?
Have you ever sensed that things should be better? Do you ever look around and say, “That’s wrong?” If you do, is that your opinion, or are there actual injustices in the world? If there truly are injustices in the world, and things truly should be better, that has to be grounded in something more durable than opinion, grounded in something that transcends our opinions.
It is inside of God’s law, inside of his design for how life is supposed to work is where we find a life of thriving. By the way, Jesus said all of God’s law could be distilled down to two things. What are they?
- Love God with all of who you are.
- Love your neighbor (all other people) as yourself.
But we have a big problem. It’s actually a heart problem. We fall short. We even actively resist and reject God’s law. So we also need someone who knows God, who can close the relational gap between us and God, and who can bring reconciliation. That’s Jesus. All this [pointing to screen] is working together to get us to come to terms with our pride, humbly repent, and turn to Jesus.
Jesus came to give a life of abundance to those who trust in him. That’s the promise of living inside God’s ways. I want to look again at what we read last week.
PSALM 1:3 That person [the one who delights in God’s law] is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.
Their life is like a lush and vibrant garden. In the beginning, God put people in a garden. Heaven is described like a garden. Garden imagery is used to describe the lives right now of those who delight in God’s ways.
We just wrapped up week 4 in a 12-week prayer emphasis. We are asking the Holy Spirit to soften our hearts and shape us as we seek to take our next steps in being a church of all cultures. This is part of a life of thriving, making our church like a lush garden. We need this, and the world around us needs this.
Lately, there has been some unacceptable rhetoric and false accusations about immigrants in our country. I’m especially grieved over the way Haitian immigrants have been talked about in Springfield, Ohio. Not only has it resulted in bomb threats to schools in Springfield, but it’s also resulted in bomb threats to local churches there who support the Haitian community. Security guards had to be hired to protect those churches. There is ugliness out there. May we be a garden that shows off the goodness of God and his way.
PRAYER
As we jump into chapter one, I want to remind you of a filter for reading through this book.
Jonah is the story of a QUESTIONABLE prophet who QUESTIONED God, written so that we will QUESTIONourselves.
I’ve got a question for us to ask ourselves.
QUESTION: Where is the line?
We all have a line where enough is enough. There might be a line for every category of relationship. We all have a line we won’t cross, even if that means the relationship ends. That can be true for your relationship with an employer, a friendship, a romantic relationship, even with family.
Sometimes that line is a good and wise boundary. There is a moral line you won’t cross even if it may end the relationship. Maybe you ended it with someone, or maybe you resigned from a job because there was something that you couldn’t bring yourself to do for moral reasons.
Sometimes, the line is altogether different. Sometimes, we would rather let the relationship end because we’ve drawn the wrong kind of line. Again, this could be with a job, a person, a church, or even with Jesus.
- To keep going may require more patience than we are willing to give.
- To keep going may require more generosity than we are willing to give.
- To keep going may require more forgiveness than we are willing to give.
- Maybe to keep going requires giving up a personal agenda and we just are willing to give it up. That’s a line.
Where is the line? Where do you find yourself saying, “That’s too much!”
JONAH 1:1-16 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
This word great, it’s the Hebrew word gadol. It’s used 15 times in this short book. It’s one of the indicators that this a book of extremes, full of exaggerations, all designed to bring us face to face with truth.
This is the second time in the Old Testament that you’ll read, “the great city...” The first time was the founding of Babylon. Throughout the Bible, Babylon represents power structures that stand opposed to the way of God. As readers, we are supposed to immediately think of Ninevah as a city that’s trying to achieve greatness and thriving, but in a way that stands opposed to God.
But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.
This is ironic. It’s tragically laughable. The one who has the word from God, the one who we should all expect to represent God his way—he also is opposed the ways of God. This is not the kind of story we would expect.
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. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
This is one of the reasons that Jonah reads like a comedic satire. The ship is personified. The ship is so afraid and strained by the storm that the ship is thinking about breaking apart. Have you ever been on a road trip with a hangry person? At some point they say something like, “If we don’t stop soon, I’m going to lose it!” That’s the ship. It’s not a prop. It’s a character in this story, too.
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.
Already, this is the third time that the writer describes Jonah with downward language. After he ran from God he went down to Joppa. He went down below deck. He laid down. The writer assumes that we are reading this like adults, that we are reading carefully and seriously. What are we being told?
Every time we make a DECISION, we pick a DIRECTION.
If you are in school, every decision that you make about studying or not studying that’s not an isolated decision. That’s a step in a direction. Every decision that you make dating. That’s not just an isolated moment. That’s a step in a direction. It works the same in your marriage. That is how it works with money. It works the same way with engaging social media or the news. That’s how it works with everything in life. Decisions are steps in a direction. What is the direction that you want to move? What is the direction that you are moving toward?
A pastor once said, “It’s your direction, not your intention, that determines your destination.” The writer of Jonah is letting us all in on something that maybe Jonah himself didn’t realize in the moment. When we resist God’s way, it always and only directs us downward.
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 so that we will not perish.” 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. So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 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.)
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?” “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.” Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
There is no way to read this without concluding that God was serious about sending a message to Ninevah. He was so serious, so committed to this task, that he supernaturally intervened to turn Jonah around. If God himself is so serious about it, how was it that one of his prophets, one of his guys, absolutely refused?
If we talked honestly right now about how the Ninevites treated people, it would require a content rating that’s inappropriate for families. This was the capital city of the Assyrians. When the Assyrians conquered people...
- They would cut off someone’s head, put it on a pike, and make that person’s family members carry it around.
- They skinned the bodies of conquered victims and hung the skins on city walls.
- They would cut off both legs of a victim but only one arm. Do you know why? It’s so you’d still have one hand to thank your tormentor.
We can’t be causal in our response to evil and brutality like that. And yet, this is a lean-in moment to receive truth that may offend. Jonah’s aversion to taking God’s message to these people was understandable, but it wasn’t virtuous.
It’s always easier to see THEIR sin than it is to see OURS.
It’s always easier to recognize, be repulsed by, and condemn the sins of the other group than it is our own group. This is one of those moments in the book of Jonah when we are supposed to be aware of other parts of the Old Testament.
2 KINGS 14:23-25 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.
Jereboam was the king of Israel. He was a wicked dude. We must sit with this messy tension. God sent Jonah to prophesy blessing for Jereboam and Israel, even though he was an evil king who led the nation to do evil things. What do you do with that? God is pleased to bless people who do not please him. Why? Maybe God was wooing Jereboam to repentance.
Here is the point. Jonah knew that Jeroboam was a wicked king who led the nation to do evil things. He had no problem delivering that message. Whatever Jonah thought, he wasn’t so bothered by the evil in his own group that he was uncomfortable delivering a message of blessing.
Amos was a contemporary of Jonah. Because King Jereboam and Israel continued their sins, God told Amos to deliver this message that later rolled back the blessings he promised through Jonah.
AMOS 2:6-7 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.
This was Jonah’s people, during the time of Jonah. Israel had become so greedy and so materialistic that they valued a pair of shoes more than a person’s life. They rationalized their oppression of people because of their greed. They lost all sense of moral boundaries sexually.
Let’s turn the spotlight of scrutiny on ourselves. Could this be written to our country today?
- Repentance is the only appropriate response for lying about immigrants in a lust for power.
- Repentance is the only appropriate response for exploiting the poor and vulnerable in pursuit of more stuff.
- Repentance is the only appropriate response for sexualizing our children and pushing boundaryless sexual agendas in schools and across society.
That’s not a message to be delivered with anger or a sense of superiority. That’s a message to be delivered in love and with humility. Why?
There are superior MORALS, but not MORALLY superior people.
The point is not that all sins are equal. They are not. There’s a pretty good chance that my sins are worse than yours. And yet, we are all the same at the foot of the cross. We all fall short. We all need a Savior.
Jonah was guilty of the same thing I’m guilty of. He wanted to believe he was morally superior to the people who did him wrong. He lost sight of the fact that his people, and that he himself was just as much in need of the grace and compassion of God as were the people of Ninevah. So, he ran. Would you write this down?
It’s impossible to run FROM without also running TO.
Where was he headed? Tarshish. It was a trading center and a place where gold was acquired. Tarshish represented economic prosperity and even economic dominance. Perhaps we are meant to think of Tarshish as a false Eden. There are three things that every single one of us want.
- Significance
- Security
- Satisfaction
What gives my life meaning and purpose? What is it that’s going to keep the good life and my sense of worth safe? Where do I find fulfillment? At rock bottom, all people are united in the search for these things. God designed us with the need for these.
Just like Jonah, when we resist God, when we move away from him, we move toward something that we believe is going to provide this for us. Have you gotten honest enough with yourself yet that you know what it is that you’re banking on to give you a life of thriving?
This is a very old human problem. I want you to see and hear how God used the prophet Jeremiah to talk about this.
JEREMIAH 2:13 “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
Whenever we turn from him, we are always turning to something else. And when we go our own way, we are turning away from the one who can satisfy in exchange for something that will leave us thirsty and impoverished.
When God brought the storm that convinced all the sailors they were going to die, he was just trying to turn Jonah back toward Ninevah. He was trying to turn Jonah back to himself. Sometimes God manufactures hardship in our lives, not as punishment, but as a means of grace.
Don’t take that and assume that every bad thing that happens is a message from God. That’s not the point. Sometimes God manufactures adversity because he is gracious and loves us. Sometimes he does that on purpose to get our attention and soften our hearts.
In this moment, the sailors believed this wasn’t a natural storm. They believed something supernatural was going on. So they cast lots, which would have been something like drawing straws. And sure enough, the lot fell to Jonah. And he had to come clean and admit that he was running from God. The storm was his fault. I think there is a wisdom lesson for us to learn here.
The difference between being VULNERABLE and being EXPOSED is who chooses it.
Jonah didn’t get brutally honest with himself and others until it was no longer possible to hide. He got really real only after being backed into a corner. Can you relate to that? Is this a room full of people who have it all together? Or is this a room full of people who have messes? The problem is that most of us, maybe all of us, live with a fear of people knowing the full story of moral messiness.
If you can relate to that, please spend some time thinking about this. The only difference between being vulnerable and being exposed is who chooses it. When we are exposed it’s because someone else shared what we’d prefer to keep hidden. When we are vulnerable, we are the ones who share what we’d prefer to keep hidden.
And that sort of sharing should be done with wisdom. It should be shared with people who love you and have your back. It should be shared with people who will also share vulnerably in return. It should be shared with people who want to walk with you in the way of Jesus. Jonah got exposed. And the reality of being exposed is that it’s often done by people who don’t have your back.
If there is a sin or a habit that is kicking your butt, that’s getting the best of you—if there is sin or a habit that you know you are vulnerable to, you get to decide if you’re going to be vulnerable with someone who has your back and will support you. And you get to decide if you’d rather risk getting exposed. One is the way of wisdom and the other is the way of pride.
Let me ask you the same question I did at the beginning.
QUESTION: Where is the line?
For Jonah the line was honesty and compassion. He wasn’t willing to be honest about his own sin and the sins of his people. He wasn’t willing to join God in being compassionate to his enemies. That was too far.
For the sailors, the line was murder. They cared more about the life of Jonah than he did theirs. They did everything they could to spare his life. When they finally gave in and threw him overboard, the storm stopped. And how did they respond? They worshiped. We are supposed to read this with the understanding that the ones who didn’t know God repented and worshiped. And the one who did know God ran and still hasn’t repented.
[Pointing to the screen] Where is the line for Jesus? Remember that all of this is ultimately supposed to point to him. How does this point to him?
Jonah would rather die than carry the message of reconciliation. Jesus would rather die than not to. For Jesus, there is no line. There was no cost that was too much make relationship and reconciliation possible.
COMMUNION