ALLERGIC TO GOD?: Running From God

The fish of the whale, but it's not about the fish. You know, VeggieTales is not helping us at all with this story. Some of you know the VeggieTales version with Archibald the asparagus and Mary the Cucumber and the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything? Okay. Yeah, some of you all know what that dates you to. But this is not a cartoon. There are very mature adult themes throughout this book, and it's a really appropriate one for us to study during this time period.

The book is really not about the fish. The fish is only mentioned in two verses here and in very little detail. This is about so much more. Four little chapters, but this is crammed full of all kinds of things that I think we can relate to.

It's a story about sin and grace, about desperation and deliverance. It's not about a fish. It's a story that exposes all the other things that we would locate our lives on, the foundations we would put our lives on, places that we would make our identity. It's not about the fish.

It's a story about idolatry, the things we would depend on to make life worth living, the things that would make us feel like we matter. Again, not about a fish. It's a story about how quick we are to run away from God and how quick God is to pursue us. It's not about a fish. It's a story about a God who spares no expense to chase down fugitives of grace. It's not about a fish.

It's really a story about God and not even about Jonah. It's about how one man came through some painful experience to move from the things that he knew about God, the doctrines he held and even attested to, for those to become really personal, for those to become owned in his life in a way they hadn't before. And this story, this very simple, small prophetic book in the Old Testament, has a way of searching us, has a way of helping us understand ourselves.

We're moving into, as of this past Wednesday, a season in the church calendar called Lent. Now, not all churches follow the church calendar. Nobody says you have to, but it's a helpful way of organizing the themes that the church focuses on during the year. And Lent is a time from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday when the church focuses on our need for the cross and the resurrection. And we talk about themes such as our mortality. We talk about themes like what is our heart and how do we know our hearts? We talk about themes around what is true confession and repentance. And Jonah hits all of those. This is the perfect book for us to study, for us to read ourselves in what God is doing in this little book.

So this morning, I'm going to tell you again, it's not about the fish. Instead, we're going to look at this opening under three headings. First is, The Runner—why runners run, and God loves runners.

The Runner

So Jonah 1 starts out in the way so many of the Old Testament books do. All these little prophetic books begin: "The word of the Lord came to so and so, son of so and so." So the word of the Lord here comes to Jonah, and he's got this call to preach. And it's a message that's not "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." This is not a prosperity message. This is a doom and gloom message. Like, you have this much time to repent, turn away from your sin, turn toward God.

And what's unique about this little book is that of all the other prophetic books in the Old Testament, this is the only prophet who doesn't get to stay home. Lots of other prophets have messages of destruction, impending destruction coming on the nations around Israel and Judah, but only Jonah is given a call to go, to actually take that message to the Ninevites, to the Assyrian Empire.

Now, when you heard the word Assyrian, you heard the word Nineveh this morning, I should have heard an audible gasp from you if you were a good Jewish audience. God sending him where? The Assyrian Empire is noteworthy in history for being a terrorist state. It makes ISIS look kind of tame. The Assyrian Empire was a threat to the Northern Kingdom and ended up wiping it out, and to the Southern Kingdom, and they were notorious. If you read Assyrian history, it is a bloody, cruel history. These were people who knew how to torture their captives very well.

I'm not going to be too gory, but I'm going to give you a couple of examples. It's a common practice from the Assyrian army to take captives and cut off both legs and one arm so that as the victims are dying, they could shake hands with those who'd run over their kingdom. They were known for taking family members and giving them a pole with the heads of their family to carry around. These are cruel people. Skinning people alive, pulling out tongues. This is a horrible people. So again, the call for Jonah to go preach to the Assyrians, this is shocking.

And Jonah does therefore what makes kind of sense—he puts on his track shoes, and he runs the opposite direction. Look how far Jonah runs. First, I want you to see this. He goes west, not east. Now if you envision in your minds where Israel is in the Middle East, his call was to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, which is in modern day Iraq. He goes instead to Tarshish, which is on the Western Coast of Spain. Now in that time period, this is as far as you can get in the known geography. This is sort of like the opposite end of the world. One way ticket he buys to Tarshish, west on the Mediterranean. And you'll notice this passage repeats over and over again—to Tarshish, to Tarshish, Tarshish. Jonah is going to Isengard, right? Like he's going the wrong way. Okay, he's not going there. He's going the wrong way from where God's telling him to go. West, not east.

He also goes down, not up. This is easier to see in Hebrew, but you can see this a little in your passage. God keeps saying these things: "Get up. You're going to go up to Nineveh because their evil has come up before the Lord." Instead, this is what Jonah does. He goes down to the port at Joppa, pays the fare, went down into the ship, then goes down to the lowest part of the ship, lays down, and eventually will go down into the belly of the whale. So Jonah's going west, not east, and down, not up.

Now, one thing I want to point out in this is that this is again saying he's definitely not going to Nineveh, but the text implies in that—that going down over and over again—we'll see this theme—is going down into death. He's going down to death. And this is really always the pattern of running from God. When we run from God, we are going down into what is death, not life.

In every area of your life, in every time in your life, there's always a discerning of there's a pathway that leads to life and a way that leads to death. — Proverbs

There are decisions that we make, even small ones, that are leading us toward God and His purposes or leading away from that. So again, Jonah goes west, not east. He goes down, not up. He goes over water, not over land. He gets into the boat. He is running away from God. He's running away from God in every possible way.

Running Away Has a Pattern

And I just want to make a note about this for our lives. If you want to run away from God, there will always be—like for Jonah—there's always going to be a port, there's always going to be a boat. He goes down to the town of Joppa, which is down on the coast, a Philistine city. And he's in a place where nobody is going to recognize him and go like, "Jonah, what are you doing here? I thought God told you to go that way. Funny seeing you here." Now he's in a place where he's not going to bump into anybody he knows, and that's on purpose.

And that's true for us. I watch this pattern in the lives of Christians. This is what we do. If you want to run away from God, there's always a Joppa you can go to. There are places that you can go. There are ways that you can avoid people who know you enough to ask you good questions. "What's going on? You're not acting like yourself right now." There's always ways to find to escape from God, and there's always going to be a boat. If you want to distract yourself, you can. If you want to push God out, you can do that.

It's like Jonah starts singing that '70s song by Christopher Cross, "Sailing." Sailing takes me away to where I always heard it could be. Just a dream and the wind to carry me soon I will be free. Fantasy gets the best of me when I'm sailing. Now, that fits because here's Jonah thinking like sailing away from God is going to work. That is pure fantasy.

So let's ask this question here. That's the runner. Why do runners run? And the real answer is we don't know. This is just a little personal note from me to you, but like, y'all who like to run, there's something wrong with you. Running is painful, and it's not pleasurable. It hurts. It's not good for you. I mean, think that the only time you should run is when you're being chased—like by a bear. But even that, like, right, don't they tell you if you're being chased by a bear, you don't run? You're supposed to lay down and pretend you're dead. So even like, don't run. Running is bad.

Okay, back to our sermon. Why do runners run? I want to know how many of you ever ran away as a kid? I mean, just like out in the bushes, out in the garage, for an hour. Anybody? Come on. First service, it was a lot of hands. They are the rebellious service, I think. You know, I'm amazed at how common that experience is among people. There's something in us that's like, "Got to run away." One of our family's favorite books when our kids were younger is by an author named Lillian Hoban, and it's a story about a little girl who runs away.

Actually, her name is Frances and she's not a girl, she's a badger. But she runs away because the family has a little sister. The book's called A Baby Sister for Frances, and she gets angry about this. So she packs up her backpack with all of her essential supplies and runs away to the dining room under the table. It's a very cute little story.

As she's there, she sings a running away song. And then she decides she should call home and check on the family. How's everybody doing? From the dining room, right? So she takes the invisible phone and picks it up and calls mom and dad: "How are things back there?" They're like, "They're fine. How are things where you are?" It's a cute story. And one of the funny things about reading that story to little people is they don't get it. They're taking this at face value. They're like, "She ran away." It's really cute.

That's really cute except for in God's prophet, right? It's not so cute when the prophet runs away. In fact, it seems inordinately stupid. I mean, do you notice this? He's got a plan, but it is such a dumb plan. I'm going to go get on a boat where there's no way of getting off. I'm going to go on the ocean. The only thing that could be worse is getting on an airplane—and they didn't have those at the time. This is a dumb plan.

And I think it shows us something about our rebellion. Whether these are big rebellions or little rebellions, they're all the same. There's something about it: running from God or rebellion always has a measure of self-deception in it. You get stupid. You get a little stupid.

Why Jonah Really Ran

Now I said Jonah's reluctance to go to Nineveh is understandable, right? Like these people skin people alive. I don't want to go there. But I want to point out that he's not afraid of death. That's not why he's running.

In chapter four, we find out why Jonah is running. His reluctance is not fear of failure—it's fear of success in his mission. This is what Jonah says:

"This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster." — Jonah 4:2

This is one of those moments where you just go, "What?" I know that you're gracious and merciful, and that's why you're running away, Jonah? Yeah. Jonah knows that in God sending him to preach this message of doom and gloom to Nineveh, it's a message with a door. There's an opportunity here. There's a chance that these people will repent. There's a chance that they will turn to God, and he's afraid.

This is what Jonah is saying about God: "I'm afraid you're going to be just like God, God. I'm afraid you're going to do all those things that you say about yourself—that you're merciful and kind and gracious to sinners." That's why he doesn't want to do this.

I mean, that is so like us. Jonah knows on some level, he's like, "I don't trust you, God." God's purposes and Jonah's purposes don't line up here. So he's like, "No, I don't want to have anything to do with you." He's like, "I'm fine with mercy for me, but not for them. I'm fine with mercy for me, but not for my enemies."

This is what we're all like. All of us want grace for us and law for other people. We want them to toe the line and get things right. He would have been happy if napalm falls on Nineveh. That's what he really, really wants. Destruction of his enemies.

Jonah would have obeyed if that's what God had asked for. See, I want to point this out because this is what's ironic about this story. I know that this is a tough story for you to swallow. I mean, it's the story of a guy in a fish. But you know what makes Jonah so believable? Because it's not the kind of story we would have made up. This isn't the story we would have made up.

Here's what I mean by that: Who's the bad guy in the book of Jonah? Who's the person who stands against God and His purposes? Who's the one who's like, "I don't want you to be gracious to other people"? Who's the bad guy? It's the preacher. It's the church guy. It's the one who's God's prophet.

And Jonah shows us something really profound: it's very possible to be around the things of God, to be knowing all the doctrine about God, to have things memorized about God, to be around God's people, and yet have a heart that is far away from God and His purposes. It's very possible to say, "I know who this God is, but I do not trust this God. God's purposes don't line up with my purposes."

Do you know something of that? I think all of us have had moments and will continue to have moments where we're like, "God, I don't know. I don't know that I can trust You. I don't know that You're up to good in my life or this world." I mean, maybe you're sitting in a doctor's office and it's a biopsy report. Maybe it's watching somebody who's really close to you suffer.

Maybe it's a relationship that you thought this is really going to be it and it didn't work out. Maybe it's going for job after job after job that seemed like closed doors. Maybe it's an inability to have children. There's a whole host of these things. These things come in our lives in multiple ways, and there are moments where we have to say, Do I really trust this God? Is God really up to good in my life? Can I really trust Him?

And Jonah is running, it says here, and repeats it just so you get it, from the presence of the Lord. That's repeated twice in this passage. Just to make sure we're all paying attention, Jonah's running away from the presence of the Lord. And what's funny about that is that's not possible.

One of our favorite Psalms that we talk about all the time, we read regularly in our services is Psalm 139.

Where can I go to flee from your presence? Where can I hide from you? If I go up to the heavens, you're there. If I go to the depths of the air. If I go to the far side of the sea, even there... — Psalm 139

I mean, like, Jonah, read your Bible. Like, this is over and over. One of the comforts for us is God's presence. And if you ask Jonah, "Hey Jonah, do you know about the doctrine of God's omnipresence?" Well, we know that he does. I mean, verse nine, which we'll go over next week, he says this to the sailors:

I'm a Hebrew, and I fear the word of Lord God of heaven, who made the earth and the sea and the dry land. — Jonah 1:9

Yeah, Jonah gets it. All his theology is right in line. But yet, he's trying to get away from the presence of the Lord. I mean, this is a joke, but this is precisely how sin works. We need to understand this. The way sin works in our hearts is on some level, we have to believe that God doesn't see, God doesn't know. We can get away from God's presence. We can outrun the Lord.

I mean, Jonah thinks that running away from God will make him free. That's what we think all the time. Self trust, self reliance, I'll take matters into my own hands—that's what's actually going to make things work because I can't trust that God. And the irony is that, like, that is running away to what is the most enslaving and destructive.

See, everybody thinks that we're a magician when it comes to God. I mean, think David Copperfield, think David Blaine, think Job from Arrested Development. Well, I can make God disappear. In the pilot episode of Arrested Development, Michael, his brother is like, "Job, I'm just tired of your tricks." Job responds, "They're not tricks, Michael, they're illusions." When you call it tricks, you call it illusion, you call it magic, whatever you want to. All of us have this thing in our hearts. We're like, I can make God disappear. I can make God disappear.

And see, sin for all of us—we learned this from Jonah—sin is trying to run away from the presence of the Lord. I mean, throughout the Bible, isn't the presence of God a source of comfort for God's people? We read over and over again, like:

You hide me in the shadow of your wings. — Psalm 91:4

The Lord is a shield.

The name of the Lord is a strong tower. — Proverbs 18:10

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. — Psalm 84:10

Like all those Psalms, all of them say the same thing. Being near God, that's the best. That's a place of comfort. That's a place of safety. The Lord upholds us with a mighty hand. But sin always distorts that. It takes what is God's presence—not as a comfort, but a threat. The gaze of God on your life—instead of that becoming a place of intimacy, it becomes a place of shame and hiding.

This is why Genesis three—when Adam and Eve sinned, what did they do? The first impulse is to hide and cover. They've been with God so directly and suddenly it's like God is threatening. This is what sin does for us. It doesn't just bring alienation from the presence of God, it requires a denial of the presence of God. We walk around like Jonah all the time, pretending that God is not present.

A Personal Pause

And I just want to hit a pause on the sermon for a sec. And I just want you to think about this past week. Is there a moment this past week where you said things in conversation that you wouldn't have said if you were aware of God's presence? Is there a moment this past week where your eyes wandered places that you wouldn't have let them go if you were aware of God's presence? Are there thoughts that you gave quarry to this week that you wouldn't have followed if you're aware of God's presence? Are there daydreams that you allowed to just keep going—that if you were aware of God's presence, you'd be able to cut that off?

See all of us in our hearts are doing this. We could pretend like God's not real. You know, conversely, you want to know one of the wisest things that you can do? Figure out the pathways that your heart runs down to, your pathway down to Joppa. What are the ways? And all of us, we are tremendously sophisticated and creative in this. It's very personal.

What are the ways that I personally tend to pretend and run from the presence of God? That's wisdom to know that about yourself. But the good news—this book is filled with this back and forth between seeing our hearts and seeing what God is like. The good news is that God loves runners.

Many people have pointed out that this book of Jonah reads very similar to a New Testament passage, where Jesus tells the parable in Luke 15 of the prodigal son. In fact, a lot of people think Jesus had Jonah in mind when He told that whole parable. Jonah, just like the younger brother, runs to the far country. Jonah runs away and like the father in that story, God lets Jonah run. He lets him go, at least for a little bit.

Have you ever been fishing? You know that when the fish bites the line, you're not supposed to just pop it up, right? You'll jerk the fish off the line. Instead, you let the fish bite the line and run with it for a little bit before you pop it and you start. And what is that doing? The fish is running with this line like, I got it, and popping it actually eventually sets the hook. God loves fishes like us. One of the ways that's expressed in our lives and in Jonah's life is letting us run. Letting a rebel run, just like in the Prodigal Son story, he has to come to the end of self, face the consequences of his decisions before he's like, "Oh, this has been idiocy." That's what God's up to with Jonah.

The writer George MacDonald put it well this way:

As cold as everything looks in winter, the sun has not forsaken us. He has only drawn away for a little for good reasons, one of which is that we may learn we cannot do well without Him.

God is committed to setting us free—setting us free from self-trust and self-reliance, thinking that our way is actually freedom when in fact it's idolatry and slavery and foolishness. But one of the ways that God allows us to learn that is by feeling the consequences of our decisions.

Jesus: The Greater Jonah

This book over and over points us to the Gospel. Jesus actually pointed out Jonah's story as a sign of His own coming. He said, "One greater than Jonah is here." So we could play mix and match Jonah versus Jesus.

Think with me about this. Jonah ran from God; Jesus runs for God, straight to the cross, goes willingly. Jonah is all about self-protection and self-preservation. Jesus, the greater Jonah, is all about self-sacrifice. Jonah wanted all his enemies to die; Jesus comes and lays down His life to rescue His enemies.

Jesus is introduced to us in John 1 as the Word of God. It's a very curious statement to say Jesus, the Word of God, came and lived among us. But that phrase tells us something. Jesus being the Word tells us that if you look at Jesus, Jesus is the content of everything God wants to say to us. This is the character and the heart of God towards sinners. In Jesus is all the message that God wants to communicate to our world about who He is.

The Gospel comes to us and it's never just "God loves you," but it's "God loves you at the cost of His Son's death and resurrection."

God's Pursuit of Our Hearts

One thing I love about this book, about Jonah, is that the ultimate rescue mission in the book of Jonah isn't the Assyrians—it's the prophet. This is a story of God rescuing a runaway prophet. God is about our hearts. The Assyrians here—it's like collateral salvation. God's like flexing. He's saying, "I can save this here, but I'm really about Jonah." And it tells us that God is pursuing us and our hearts. He's pursuing you.

The thing that Jonah has to learn, and we'll watch him throughout this book, is: you can't outrun the Lord.

If I were God, I would have ended this book at chapter 1, verse 3:

Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, so he went down to Joppa, found a ship that was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and boarded it to go to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord.

And the end of the book would have been: "And God said, 'Goodbye. I can find somebody else to do this. We're good. See you. Have a great life, Jonah.'"

But that is not what happens here. We read this real beautiful phrase—"but God"—which is all over your New Testament as well. But God hurls a mighty storm on the sea in verse 4.

We're going to see it over and over. This is the message. This is one of the biggest messages we hear in the book of Jonah: God is never done with you. He's never like, "Well, that's enough. Cut them off. Cut her off. We're done. We're good. See you." No. Again, God in this story—they're full of surprises. This is what your heavenly Father is like. He has never done with you.

He looks at you and your life in all the different ways we all have rebellious hearts that are prone to wander or run away from the Lord. And what do we see? You can't outrun Him. God lets him run, but only for a moment. Jonah's story is my story, and it's your story. The pursuing love of God.

I've told this to my kids. When various ones of them have, in their rebellion, done some stupid things and gotten caught, one of the things I've said to them is this: Man, God must really love you to allow you to get caught. God must really be pursuing you to allow you to get caught. God's not letting you run forever. You're getting caught is a sign that God is at work. When we're exposed or shown to be who we are, our hearts are revealed—that's actually God's grace and mercy.

There's a connection here over and over between this book and Luke 15, the prodigal son story. What do we learn in that story? God's a runner. The father sees his younger son coming, and he runs down the road to meet him. God is also a runner. God's pursuing love comes at Jonah in this package of a storm. It's such a bad storm that veteran sailors are fearing for their lives, crying out to their God, throwing cargo into the sea. The storm is so violent, but it's not a storm of destruction. This isn't God coming with payback time. It's bring back time. That's what that storm is about. God is not out to destroy His prophet. He's about to bring him home.

God hurls a storm on the sea, and where's Jonah? Sleeping in the bottom of the boat. In fact, it's the same word used in the creation of woman from the rib of Adam—God caused Adam to fall into this deep sleep. So here's Jonah, deeply asleep in the bottom of this boat, and the storm doesn't wake him. He sleeps right through the wake up call from God. It's only the other sailors who have to come in and grab him, shake him, and say, "Don't you care if we die? Come call on your God."

Are You Sleeping Through the Storm?

This is also a picture for us, and this is where I want to leave us this morning. I want to ask you: Are you sleeping through some of the storms that God is sending into your life that should be waking you up?

You know, Lent is a time where we look at our hearts. We look from outward to inward. And we ask: Where am I with the Lord? What has God up to in my life? Those words that I say about loving God and praising Him and living for Him—are those true or have those become empty in my life? Lent is a time of revival and renewal for the church. For us to remember: Man, I need the cross every day. And I look forward to Easter morning and remember the resurrection. This is what I need more than anything else.

So the question for us as we begin Lent together is this: Are you sleeping through your alarm? Are you sleeping through things that God has put in your path right now, which should be waking you up? Would you ask Him? Would you spend time with us these next weeks studying this book and therefore studying our own hearts and studying the grace of our God? Would you join us in that?

Let's go to the word together. Father, we thank you that you are a pursuing God. And truth be told, Lord, there's a lot of times we don't want to be pursued. Lord, we pray during this season that you would help us to know ourselves and our need for you—to locate ourselves in this story so that we might see your hand right now in our story. We pray, Father, that you would wake us up to our need for the cross and a Savior, and help us to remember how great the grace of God is for rebels like us. We pray this all in His name. Amen.