Up and Down The Beach of Escape Jonah 1

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 1 of 8 Up and Down The Beach of Escape Jonah 1 I first began to sense that I was called to pastoral ministry back in high school. But like most high schoolers, I wasn t sure about it. I couldn t say for certain that I was meant to be a pastor or that I even wanted to be one. So I decided to talk to my own pastor about it, to see what he would say. I told him I thought God might be calling me into the ministry, but I just wasn t sure. He said, Joe, let me tell you about my own path into the ministry, and maybe that will help you discern your own. He said that he always wanted to be a doctor when he was growing up but in college, several people encouraged him to go to seminary and become a pastor. So he went, but he still wasn t quite sure about it. He completed his degree and took his first appointment as a Methodist pastor, but in the back of his mind he was still wondering, What if I had gone into medicine instead? After five years in ministry, being a pastor wasn t everything he thought it would be. He was still having doubts, so he decided to apply to medical school thinking that if he got in he would go, and if he didn t he d just drop it and commit fully to being a pastor. Well, he got in. When he saw what the tuition would cost, he decided he d apply for a scholarship. If he got a big enough scholarship, he would go. If not, he would stay in the ministry. Well, he got a full ride. At that point, he figured that had to be a sign so he took a leave from the ministry and enrolled in medical school. He determined that he would give it one semester and if it felt right, he would go all the way and leave the ministry. But if not, he d go back to the church. After that semester, he came to two realizations: 1) He loved medicine and wanted to be a doctor; 2) He had never been more certain that God was calling him to be a pastor. So he dropped out of medical school, went back into the ministry and 30 years later, he said he s loved every minute of it and never looked back since. After telling me that story of his own call, here s the advice my pastor gave to me: Joe, in my experience, God gives you the freedom to answer His call or to not answer His call, but He will never let you escape His call. You can try running all you want, but He s always going to be there calling. You just can t escape God. Today we ve got a Bible story about someone who tried to escape God. It s actually a pretty familiar Bible story Jonah and the whale. Jonah tried to run from God, and what he discovered was that at every point along the way, God was already there. Let s take a look at how the book of Jonah begins: Jonah 1:1-3 1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 2 of 8 me. 3 But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. In case you re a little rusty on your 6 th century BC geography, Jonah wasn t making a detour on his way to Nineveh when he boarded the ship to Tarshish. Tarshish was a seaport in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh. In fact, Tarshish was at the very edge of the known world for Jonah. When the ancient Hebrews wanted to describe a place as far and remote as they could imagine, they talked about Tarshish. So when Jonah gets on that ship, it s as if God had told you to go to New York City, and instead you hopped on the first flight to Timbuktu. Now let s have some sympathy for poor Jonah. In his defense, what God was calling him to do was insane. Nineveh was the great city of the Assyrian Empire the empire that conquered Israel and much of the Ancient Near East in its heyday. The Assyrians were also known for their cruelty and their brutal treatment of their enemies. They didn t just conquer you; they made a spectacle of you! So think about what God is asking Jonah to do: walk right into this mighty city and tell all of your brutal enemies just how wicked they are. How would you think that would work out for you if you were Jonah? You might be running off to Timbuktu! Yet notice what the story actually says of Jonah. It s not that he s running away from Nineveh; he s running away from God. Twice in those first three verses, the narrator says that Jonah was running from God: Jonah 1:3 But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. Now, I know what you re probably thinking: What does this have to do with me? I m not running away from God. The very fact that I m here in church means I m not running away from God! That may be true, but I think there s more than one way to run from God. You know, it wasn t until God gave Jonah a place to go and a mission to accomplish that Jonah started running from God. Jonah was perfectly happy worshipping God, in the appropriate place and at the appropriate time. As long as he could stay home with his people he would be faithful to God. But as soon as God calls him to take his faith elsewhere, suddenly he flees. I think that can also be a struggle for us sometimes. We re happy to come to church and to worship God for an hour on Sunday mornings, but as soon as we leave the campus we can pretty well live our lives as if God doesn t exist. For a lot of Americans

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 3 of 8 today, we think of God the same way we think of Cheerios. You know how the Cheerios ads always end by saying, Cheerios are a part of a balanced breakfast? Oftentimes we think of God as a part of a balanced life. We want a little family time here; we ve got to have some work time over here, some recreation, some social time over there. Then we come to church to balance out the week with some God time here. We end up living most of our lives as if what we do here at church has nothing to do with what we do at home, at work, or around town. But God isn t like that. God isn t one ingredient you can add to have a better life; God desires a relationship with you that encompasses your whole life. If you re married, you re not just married when you re around your spouse. You re married 24/7 and your marriage changes the way you live the rest of life no matter where you are or whom you re with. If you ve given your life to Christ, then you ve got a committed relationship with God, not just on Sunday mornings or while you re here in this building, but wherever you go and whomever you re with. It may not seem like there s a lot of similarity between Jonah s story and our lives, but anytime we try to leave our faith behind on Sunday mornings, we re doing the very same thing Jonah did by boarding that ship to Tarshish. We re trying to escape God. We re trying to keep God in just one compartment of our lives. We re telling Him, I m yours for one hour a week or every other week or whenever I can make it; just don t ask anything out of me the rest of the time. Well, if you re familiar with the story, then you know that didn t work out too well for Jonah. As he s sailing to Tarshish, God sends a storm to keep them from going any farther. The storm keeps getting worse, and the sailors are doing everything they can to keep the ship from sinking. Eventually they figure out that Jonah is the reason they re facing this storm, so they start peppering him with questions: Jonah 1:8 Then they said to him, Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? See, the sailors are from a bunch of different nations, and each of them worships a different god. They re trying to figure out who Jonah s God is and what he possibly could have done to make his God so angry. Jonah answers them: Jonah 1:9 I am a Hebrew, he replied. I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 4 of 8 I like to imagine that Jonah s voice caught in his throat as soon as he said, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. It must have dawned on him the moment he said it. Here he is trying to flee God by boarding a ship to sail across the sea to a land far, far away but the God he s trying to escape is the very one who made the sea and made the land, even as far as Tarshish. Finally, he realizes he cannot escape this God no matter where he goes, because wherever he goes, God is already there. He created it all, and He watches over it all. I think we lose sight of that just like Jonah did. The reason we think we can leave God behind here on Sundays is that we think that God doesn t really have anything to do with the rest of our lives. I sell shoes for a living; God doesn t have anything to do with that. I m taking my kids to school this morning; God doesn t care about that. But the truth is, just as God is the One who created the sea and the land and everything in it, God is the one who gave you your life and everything in it. There is not one aspect of your life that God doesn t care about. There is not one moment of your day when God isn t actively involved. You can pretend He doesn t see; you can try to ignore His presence, but you can t escape it. He s already there, no matter when or where or what you re doing. At this point, some of you might be thinking, Okay, I get it; you can t escape God, but that doesn t really sound like good news. Wherever I go, God is going to hunt me down? Is that supposed to be comforting? Well, Jonah began wondering the same thing. He wasn t very comforted when he realized he couldn t escape God either. The sailors ask Jonah what they should do now that they know it s Jonah s God who is causing the storm. And Jonah says: Jonah 1:12 Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you. It s important to remember, by the way, that the ancient Israelites were not exactly water lovers. They weren t a seafaring people. They thought of the sea as a dark, scary, and dangerous place. They didn t know much about the ocean at all. Maybe you ve noticed that in some translations Jonah is swallowed by a whale, and in other translations he s swallowed by a fish. That s because the ancient Israelites didn t have a different word for fish and for whale. They thought of just about anything that swam in the ocean as a fish. Actually, in the entire Old Testament, there s only one word for fish, and that s fish. There are like six or seven different words for various types of buzzards, but only one word for fish. If you don t spend any time out on the ocean, then a fish is a fish is a fish. So it was no small thing for Jonah to volunteer to go overboard.

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 5 of 8 He was expecting to die in that water. That s probably why he had to tell them to throw him overboard; he knew he wouldn t have the courage to jump on his own. Sometimes, the way this story gets told, though, it can sound like Jonah suddenly turns into a hero here. Sure, he tried to run away from God, but now he s sacrificial. He s willing to give up his own life to save the rest of the sailors on the ship! There was an easier way for Jonah to save the ship. He could have just turned the ship around and headed for Nineveh. That s why God sent the storm in the first place because Jonah refused to go to Nineveh. So why doesn t Jonah just say, Okay, God, I m done running; I ll go wherever you want me to go? It s because Jonah still doesn t want to go to Nineveh. When faced with death or going where God is sending him, Jonah chooses death! Jonah is still trying to flee from God. He couldn t escape Him in life, so maybe he can escape Him in death. You know the rest of the story. After some hesitation, the sailors agree to Jonah s plan. They pick him up and throw him into the sea. But even there, Jonah can t escape God. Jonah 1:17 But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. You know, sometimes you have to hit a low point before you re ready to give in to God. They say that the reason most people visit a church for the first time or the first in a long time is because of one of the four D s: Death, Divorce, Disaster, or Displacement. All of those represent a low point in someone s life. I wonder if that was ever true for any of you. Turns out, you can live quite a while thinking you don t need God in your daily life until your life hits rock bottom. That s when you start asking, Where is God? But that s also when you discover that it really is good news that you can t escape God. Jonah s rock bottom is there in the belly of the fish (or whale, or whatever it was). Throughout the story, as Jonah is trying to flee from God s presence, the narrator describes it as one long spiral downward: Jonah 1:3b He went down to Joppa... Jonah 1:5b Jonah, meanwhile had gone down into the hold of the ship, and had lain down and was fast asleep

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 6 of 8 Jonah just keeps going down until finally, he goes down the side of the ship, down into the water, and down into the belly of the fish. But it s there, once he s gone as far down as he possibly can to get away from God that Jonah finally looks up and cries out to God: Jonah 2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish. All of chapter 2 is then the prayer that Jonah said to God from the belly of the fish. And in that prayer, we see Jonah finally entrusting himself to God, entrusting his whole life to the Lord after hitting bottom: Jonah 2:6-7 I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Here s the good news, folks: You can t escape God. There is no place in your life where God is not already there, and that means there is no part of your life that God cannot redeem when it falls into the Pit. No matter how deep down you go, God is there, and God will lift you up. You know, there are a lot of similarities between this story of Jonah and the story of another man in the Bible. The sailors find Jonah asleep in the bottom of the ship while the storm is raging outside, just like the disciples will later find Jesus asleep in the bottom of the boat during a storm. Jonah spends three days shut up in the belly of the fish, just like Jesus will later spend three days shut up in the belly of the tomb. Jonah gives up his life to save the ship, just like Jesus will later give up His life to save the world. But is one important difference between the story of Jonah and the story of Jesus. Everything that Jonah does he does in order to escape a God who will not let him go. Everything that Jesus does He does in order to save a people He will not let go. I think Psalm 139 says this as well as anywhere else in the Bible: Psalm 139:7-10 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 7 of 8 Brothers and sisters, I don t know of a better hope than that. I don t know of a better way to live our lives than looking for God to fill every aspect of our day and redeem every pit we find ourselves in. But whenever we try to leave God behind in some areas of our lives, whenever we try to keep our faith relegated to Sunday mornings, we re closing off the rest of our lives to the redemption that God is ready to work there. Jonah tried his hardest to close himself off from God s redeeming presence. Because he was so intent on running from God, he missed something else that God was doing on that ship. I mentioned earlier that the sailors were from all different nations and worshipped a bunch of different gods. Well when the storm first hits, it says that each sailor cried out to his own god, which is exactly what you would expect. When they wake Jonah up, they tell him to pray to his God, too, because, you know, the more the merrier. If their gods couldn t help, maybe his could. Later in the story, though, once they realize the storm came from Jonah s God, they pray to the Lord, the God of Israel: Jonah 1:14 Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish So, clearly they believe in the Lord, but it s not clear that they re particularly devoted to Him yet. They may just believe in Him as they do any of their other gods, but then after the Lord answers their prayers and calms the storm, it says, Jonah 1:16 Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. See what s happened? This whole time we thought the storm was all about Jonah. In fact, Jonah thought the storm was all about Jonah. Meanwhile, God was using Jonah s disobedience to bring about the sailors obedience. God used Jonah s rebellion to bring a whole ship of people to faith in the Lord. And Jonah was so determined to flee from the Lord, that he didn t even see what has happening right in front of him. How many times do we miss what God is doing right in front of us because we re consumed with our own lives and our own desire to leave God behind? CONCLUSION Back in May, I met a man named Wayne who was gracious enough to share his story with me. Wayne is 78 years old and until the age of 72, he had only stepped foot inside a church one time in his life, which was the day he got married. He had never read a word of the Bible, and he wanted nothing to do with God. But at 72, he decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. And one night he got caught in a storm up on top of a

Up and Down/ The Beach of Escape Page 8 of 8 mountain. As he told me this, he shook his head and said, I don t know what to tell you happened that night. All I can say is the Holy Spirit grabbed ahold of me and said, You re mine now. And I said yes. The next morning he walked off the mountain, left the trail, and walked into the nearest church he could find. He s spent every day since that moment trying to let God guide his life, and he later told me, These are the happiest years of my whole life. The only thing that makes me a little sad is I just keep thinking about all that I was missing those 72 years. Don t miss out, friends. Don t miss out on the redemption God will work in and through you in every part of your day, every day of your week, every week of your life. Life Application Questions 1. Why do you think Jonah resists God s call to go to Nineveh? Have you ever resisted God s call? What caused you to resist it? 2. Jonah tries to escape God, but quickly learns that God is already present wherever he goes. Do you ever find it hard to believe that God is with you? How can you remind yourself in times of trouble that God is there? 3. By running from God, Jonah misses out on what God is doing in the hearts of the sailors. How can you take your relationship with God into every aspect of your life so that you don t miss out on what God is doing? 4. What is one specific way that you can comfort someone else by letting them know that God is here with them?