A Prayer from the Deep
Transcript
We're in week two of Jonah, and this week is going to be especially puzzling for us because we come up against an aspect of God's character that most of us have heard of before but never really get, most of us don't truly believe in our souls. We're going to come up against this aspect of God's character: his deliverance does not depend on our excellence or our behavior. Now when I use the word deliverance, I'm not talking about delivery as in delivering a baby, although pretty much everyone has that on their mind at the moment. I'm not talking about delivery as in two-day free shipping for Amazon Prime members, which is always on my mind. I'm talking about the kind of deliverance that's more like a rescue against all odds, something that no one expects to happen, something that seems to defy logic.
Like when your wife, trying to be sweet and nice, says to you, "Let's watch a movie together, a romantic movie," and you go, "No." Then she entices you, she makes it sweet, there's popcorn involved and hot chocolate involved, and you know that the night is going to be horrible anyway. You're looking forward to hot chocolate, but not a romantic movie. And then it comes on, and you know what? It's kind of cute. The movie wasn't so bad. It kind of, you know, that movie delivered against all odds.
But beyond that, we're talking about deliverance where the God of the universe, creator of the heavens, creator of the seas, the dry land, creator of land animals, sea animals, birds in the air, insects... I don't know why he did that... the creator of man says to one specific man, "I want you to do something for me." And that man says, "Nope." Then God sends a giant fish, of all things, a giant fish, and says, "I'm going to make you do what I told you to do." And the giant fish scoops him up, travels I don't know how far, and spits him out and says, "Get on your way." We're talking about that kind of against-all-odds deliverance, something that should never, ever have happened, that blows our minds, that doesn't seem to make sense in any way. And we're going to learn that when God does deliver, it's not based off of anything that we do, but purely on his grace.
Now, we typically oppose that notion. We don't really believe it. We think that on some level, in some capacity, I can do something that contributes to this transaction. Most of us on some level still think that if I just do something, if I just be good, that will contribute something to this scenario. And even people who don't believe in God say, "If God did exist, surely good people would be blessed and bad people would not." This whole human transactional understanding that we have of what's fair and what's not fair is that good people deserve good things and bad people deserve bad things. It's kind of just ingrained in us.
But today's passage is tough because Jonah is a guy who knows a lot of the Sunday school answers. Obviously his parents sent him to kids' church, and he learned it from a very young age. He knows how to say good things about God. But then when it comes down to doing them, when it comes to getting out there and doing what he's told, he bails and does the exact opposite. It's tough because Jonah's the guy, he's a prophet of God, he's supposed to be the one who knows what to do and does what God says, and then abandons that. So what happens? What happens when someone says one thing and does the opposite? What happens when someone knows what they're supposed to do and chooses not to do that? Does God still deliver people like this? Will he only rescue the people who actually deserve it, who do things to earn things from God? And what happens to someone who thinks they have it all right, thinks that they're doing the right things, thinks that they know things about God and that that will save them, but actually do the wrong thing? And could that be me? Could I be that person?
Go ahead and open your Bibles to Jonah chapter 2. If you have a Bible that looks like this, it's on page 502. If you have a different Bible, then it's right between Obadiah and Micah. You're welcome. Somewhere in the middle you'll find it. Jonah chapter 2. We're going to read the whole thing up front. We're going to make observations about it, so leave your finger in there. We're not going to do the thing where you read a passage, talk about it, read a passage, talk about it. We're just going to read the whole thing up front, so keep your finger in there. Basically, the whole time, it's Jonah praying, and that's why we would do this up-front thing. The whole time is Jonah's prayer. And what's interesting about reading other people's prayers is it gives you an insight into how they think. It gives you an insight into how they relate to God themselves, how they see themselves before God, and how they think God relates to them. And we're going to see that in Jonah chapter 2.
Father God, we praise you and we thank you for this morning. And we pray that you can reveal things to us from your word. And we pray that, most of all, we will grow in our love for you and not depend on ourselves to be saved. We know that we will come up short if that is the case, and we praise and thank you that that is not. Please be moving in our hearts this morning that we may learn from your word and put it into action in our weeks. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, we're going to read the whole chapter up front. But we're going to start in the last verse of chapter 1. So chapter 1:17.
> And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
> Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying,
> "I called out to the LORD, out of my distress,
> and he answered me;
> out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
> and you heard my voice.
> For you cast me into the deep,
> into the heart of the seas,
> and the flood surrounded me;
> all your waves and your billows passed over me.
> Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight;
> yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.'
> The waters closed in over me to take my life;
> the deep surrounded me;
> weeds were wrapped about my head
> at the roots of the mountains.
> 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.
> When my life was fainting away,
> I remembered the LORD,
> and my prayer came to you,
> into your holy temple.
> Those who pay regard to vain idols
> forsake their hope of steadfast love.
> But I with the voice of thanksgiving
> will sacrifice to you;
> what I have vowed I will pay.
> Salvation belongs to the LORD!"
> And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. (Jonah 1:17-2:10 ESV)
So Jonah got thrown into the ocean by the sailors in chapter 1. He got swallowed by a giant fish, and while he was living inside that fish for three days, this was the prayer that he prayed.
Now let's keep one thing in mind: Jonah got here by disobeying God. This wasn't just like a random thing that he decided to do. Jonah got here by disobeying God. He was told to go to Nineveh, and instead he planned to go to Tarshish. He was told, head east, but he headed west. The dude is now trapped inside a giant fish.
Most times when we think about this, and in fact most times when it's illustrated, when it's in a cartoon, maybe in a Bible story sermon series, it gets cartoonified. It gets made nice. There's theme music, like, trouble. And so the life of Jonah is summarized in disobedience, swallowed by a fish, delivered out on land, on your merry way. Let's time out and go back to the living-inside-a-fish thing for just one moment, because it intrigues me.
I've smelled a fish before from the outside. It wasn't very nice. It was okay. And then you put a knife in it, and you slide it open, and the guts fall out, which is gross. I know that. I'm sorry. But that doesn't smell any better. Jonah was inside those guts for three days. I have been on a boat before. I've felt this thing that I thought was imaginary called seasickness. Boats rock. I guess submarines would be even worse. They would go underwater and move around a good bit. Jonah's inside a fish. Those things wiggle, and then they jump, and then they dive down, and then they go up. And he's inside the thing, like floating, presumably in fish guts and water and nastiness. I assume he probably got seasick. I would. He probably vomited, and then it splashed back up on his face when the fish went down. Jonah was from the Middle East. He probably had a giant beard. He got fish guts in that beard. They don't come out real quick. I have a little itty-bitty mustache, and I get smells stuck in that, and it's right under your nose. Jonah was inside a fish with little fish-gut smells inside his nose. It cannot have been nice.
And what's worse is, I assume there's no light in there. I don't know if you've ever been in pitch black before. I have. It's terrifying. If you go down this hallway that way, the guys' bathroom lights are on a motion sensor. Do you know how stupid crazy that is? When you go to the restroom in the morning and the lights time out and you're stuck in pitch black in a restroom in a foreign school, you will never be more thankful for your iPhone in a moment like this. Jonah does not have an iPhone. He's feeling sick. He's inside a fish. But thankfully, this is the time when he chooses to pray.
Now, I know that's what I can be like sometimes. I wait until the final moment. I wait until life gets really tough. Maybe not that tough. But I wait until life gets tough, and that's the moment that I choose to pray. It's almost like when things are going good, things are going well, life, you're feeling healthy, you've got enough money to get through this week, you're feeling okay, there's not really any need to pray. And then as soon as you get chopped off at the knees, suddenly you're sick and you've got no money because you spent it all on medicine. Suddenly, now it's time to pray. And we've got a little bit of this urgency in times of need like that.
Now, in this whole story, the first time we hear of Jonah calling out to God is once he's been thrown off the boat. This is a time when he needs something to rely on. I don't know if they have this saying in America. I kind of grew up with it, at least in the church. Someone coined the question way back in the day: is Jesus your steering wheel or your spare tire? Do you turn to Jesus when you've got a flat on the interstate? Does he only ever come out when life is tough in the moment, and then as soon as the problem's fixed he gets put back in his little spot in the back? Or, alternatively, is Jesus your steering wheel, the one who guides the path at all times, gets you from A to B, completely relied upon for direction?
Now, it might be old, I don't know, that might be the first time you've heard it, but it's a valid illustration of what's going on in this situation. And you could say that, given that he hasn't prayed up until this point, he's left it until the very last of minutes. The time came for prayer earlier, and he didn't until he was drowning in the ocean. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with calling out to God in times of need. In fact, definitely call out to God in times of need. I say that, I do that, the Bible says that. The question is in motivation and attitude in the whole situation. What's going on in the thought processes, and what drives you to pray in that situation?
We have a guy here who's done a serious wrong by God, that God's chosen to rescue anyway, at least physically in this moment, at this point in time, and regardless of his disobedience. You might expect this to be the time when Jonah starts to repent. That is, he acknowledges his own sin and apologizes for it, feels broken about it, and says, "God, forgive me." You might expect this to be a time when he realizes how disobedient he is.
And on the surface, when you read through this passage, there's a bunch of things that look really good that he says. A number of really good things. In verse 2 he says, "I called to the Lord." Good. You should do that. In verse 4, "I will look upon your holy temple." Good. In verse 6, "You brought my life up from the pit." True. In verse 7, "I remembered the Lord." You should do that. Remembering God is good. Verse 9, "I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord." Good. Good. It sounds like Jonah's on the right track, at least that he's starting to get it.
But actually, what we see of Jonah's character up until this point, and spoiler alert, in the future as well, is that he has a very self-centered understanding of his faith. He has a very self-centered attitude toward how he relates to God. He thinks that things he can do are what govern his relationship with God. We actually find in this prayer the inner workings of a man who is so self-centered that he ignores his own sin the whole time. He believes that he deserves to be rescued. Now, whether he thinks he's entitled to it because of his position as a prophet, some people probably would feel that. Maybe he feels that he's entitled to it because of his heritage as a Jew. Most likely, he thinks he's entitled to it because of what he does. This prayer is all about Jonah because he thinks he's earned something.
Now, there's a difference between these two kinds of prayers. One kind of prayer focuses on self and the other focuses on God. A prayer that focuses on God, a legitimate, authentic, heart-changed prayer, would sound like this: God, please have mercy on me. I'm busted. I'm broken. I'm sinful. I can't do anything right. Please save me from me. Jonah's prayer, not so much like this.
Now, maybe I'm throwing you under the bus and lumping you in with my own sin here. We typically pray in a way that treats God like an exchange program. We typically pray in a way that says, "God, if you'll just give me this, then I'll give you that. God, if you'll just deal with this, then I'll stop doing that. God, if you get me out of debt, I'll stop using credit cards. God, if you help me get healthy right now, if I feel healthier by the end of the day, I swear I'm going to quit smoking. God, if you just get me a girlfriend, I promise I will stop playing video games until next week." And we treat the whole situation like it's a cosmic exchange program, like we have something to offer God. That's kind of how Jonah does it.
Let's read some of the things that Jonah says. He doesn't start with, "God, you rescued me, I'm a sinner." He starts with, "I called out to the Lord and he answered me. I cried out and you heard my prayer." I initiated this relationship. It's my turn to speak, and I've done something to earn your attention right now. Then in verse 3, when he should be recalling all the things that God has done for him, instead what he says is, "You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the floods surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me." You put me here. This is your fault.
What Jonah's already forgotten can't have been more than a day later. What Jonah's already forgotten is that he put himself here. He was thrown into the ocean by the sailors who came to him and said, "What do we do?" And Jonah said, "Throw me overboard." Jonah disobeyed God, ended up on a boat where the sailors thought they were all going to die, ended up throwing Jonah overboard, and now he's saying, "God, you put me here."
Then toward the end of his prayer, right down at the end, in verse 8, he says, "Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love." Here's one of those cases where that is a true statement. Those who have idol issues, have idolatry problems, they do forsake the hope of steadfast love. But what Jonah does is he puts these people over here and separates himself from them. Jonah doesn't see himself as one of those people. He's talking about the pagans, the sailors, the guys who were on the boat who threw him over. He says those who pay regard to idols do not have your steadfast love. What he doesn't realize is he's a part of that group, and actually the sailors are less a part of that group because they renounced their idols, they feared God, and they made sacrifices to him. It's a true statement, but he doesn't understand what he's saying.
And then he says, "I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will pay." Basically he's saying, I'm not like them. I have it right. And for the record, in the rest of the book of Jonah, there is no evidence that Jonah ever makes good on any of these vows. He never makes sacrifices, he never vows anything or comes through with any of this stuff. He might sometime in the future after the book ends. We don't know. But what we have here is a bunch of empty vows, empty promises. So while on the surface it looks like he's saying a bunch of good things, we actually have a guy who doesn't really believe the things that he says.
What Jonah doesn't see is that he's blinded to his own sin. What he doesn't see is that he doesn't think he's busted, broken, and disobedient. He thinks he deserves salvation. And even in his last-minute prayers to God, his emphasis is on himself, what he's done to earn that favor in the first place. And it's almost this half-hearted, last-minute, inside-the-belly-of-a-fish prayer to, yep, thanks for that.
Now, I know it sounds like a kind of a downer that we can be like that as well, that we think of this as a cosmic exchange program where we give him this and he gives us that, and it can sound bad to us that we can't do anything. It sounds really horrible that we have no power in this. But actually, if you see it in perspective, it's a massive relief. Because if God was a cosmic accountant and he had a list, a balance sheet of all your credit and all your debt, all your pros and your cons, all your good and your bad, your bad would be through the bottom. And you might be able to chalk up some good things, but you could never possibly tip that balance to the good-person status that we assume exists but doesn't. It's actually good news because we don't have a God that weighs us in the balance like this with a good and a bad list. We have a God who sets the list aside and loves us regardless. It means that we don't have to try to get more good than we do bad.
Now at the end of the prayer, the very last line of his prayer, he says, "Salvation belongs to the Lord," which is again a great statement of faith. You can't deny that he knows some good things. But what's interesting is this is a person reciting a textbook answer that doesn't understand what that means. It's like he studied for the exam but didn't understand the content.
Now, if you've passed high school, you're probably familiar with this concept of studying for exams but having no idea what's going on in that class. At least in Australia that was the case for most of us. For example, I took trigonometry. I can tell you the cosine rule. I'm pretty proud of it. A squared equals B squared plus C squared minus 2BC cos A. You impressed? Yeah. I even know the song. That's how I remember it. A squared equals B squared plus C squared minus 2BC cos A. And then you clap. A squared equals B squared plus C squared minus 2BC cos A. People in exams would clap in Australia. It was crazy. Thing is, I know it's to do with triangles. Something to do with sides. Cos means an angle. I know that. I have no idea how to use that. I may know the formula, but I still can't pass the exam. And it's the same thing that's going on with Jonah. He studied the formula but failed the exam. He knows things about God, but doesn't understand how that impacts life.
Now I reckon at this point in time God is pretty disappointed with Jonah. After the whole running-away thing, I can't imagine that he's in the good books, even though Jonah for some reason thinks he is. And I like to imagine the whole scenario. If Jonah's thoughts were right and God did like him, maybe it would be different.
We've established that being inside a fish is a gross way to do things. So if Jonah was in God's good books and God wanted to rescue him in a nice way, perhaps it would have looked differently. Perhaps it would have been he parts the sea and Jonah gets to walk back. That could have been nicer. Perhaps it could have been he's just back on land. But the funniest thing, and the best thing to me in this whole story, is that that's not how it happens. God kind of gives him a little slap on the back of the head, a bit of a bruise on his ego, and has a fish vomit him. That's the best.
God says, it says that God spoke to the fish, which I think is also funny because he... I don't know if it's a pet or if it's like, fishy, fishy, fishy. Fishy, fishy, go and vomit Jonah out on dry land. I just imagine the fish being like, woohoo, and then going off and doing that. It could have been even nicer with the fish. God can speak to fish, obviously. He could have said, fish, deliver Jonah to the dry land. Or fish, go and open your mouth on the beach and let him walk out. But instead God says, vomit him out. Make sure he gets the point that he's done something wrong. Make sure he gets a little bit of fish guts in his beard for the rest of the walk. I love it.
And that's how chapter 2 ends. Brilliant. Jonah walking on his way to Nineveh from the beach covered in fish guts and rancid smells that take weeks to go away. And that's the story of chapter 2. That's how Jonah got from in the ocean to a fish's belly, prayed to God, spit back out onto the sea.
Now let's pause for a second, set that entire story aside, and let's think for a moment on how it could have happened differently, what it could have looked like if Jonah actually got it, if Jonah understood from the start how it all could have happened. Option number one would be God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh, and Jonah goes to Nineveh. Yeah. Option number one.
Option number two: God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh. Jonah says, no, that sounds scary, I don't want to do that. Maybe I should. And then he goes back and goes to Nineveh. That's option number two. That's valid. That could have happened, would have worked. God would have been pleased with that. Option number three: Jonah, go to Nineveh. No, bump that, I'm getting on a boat, I'm getting out of here. Oh, this was a bad idea. Something's going to go wrong, I can just tell. Guys, turn the boat around, we're going to Nineveh. Turn around, go to Nineveh.
Option number four, this can go all day. Option number four: God says, Jonah, go to Nineveh. He says no, he gets on a boat, gets on the boat, goes to sleep, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. The storm comes, the sailors come to him and say, Jonah, pray to your God. And he goes, I should have done that earlier. He prays to God, the boat turns around, they go back and they go to Nineveh. At any point in time in the story, Jonah had an option of repentance. At any point in time in the story, Jonah could have done something. The only thing he could have done is repent. He could have said, God, I was disobedient. And he chooses not to.
The entire time, he is strictly disobedient. He sets himself up in his prayer as someone who deserves to be saved, when the exact opposite is true. But that's exactly the point. He doesn't deserve to be saved, but he is. Our actions do not govern God's deliverance, because he doesn't choose to save people based on their individual merit. He doesn't choose to save, to rescue people from sin, based on how good of a person they are.
And yes, we have this sense that there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us. We have this sense in us that there are small things we can do to influence God in some way, small transactions we can make where he will bless us if we do good for him. And if we think that, then we're just like Jonah. And if you think you're off the hook and that you're not like that at all, then you've proven that you are on the hook, but you're blinded to the hook and you're a whole lot like Jonah.
What we see in the story of Jonah is the prayers of a self-righteous man, one who thinks what he does will give him credit against God. But he's blinded to the fact that he's a sinner and has something to atone for before God. Yeah, God chooses to rescue him physically, at least by means of the fish in this moment. But the fact that he was physically saved by a fish does not necessarily transfer over to spiritual salvation, spiritual deliverance. There's a difference in this case between physical deliverance and spiritual deliverance.
And honestly, we don't know about Jonah at this point. So far, he has yet to repent. He's yet to admit that he's a sinner and ask God for help. And so the jury's still out on Jonah. But here's something interesting. Seven hundred and fifty years later, when Jesus was walking around, he was on the way to Jerusalem and he was confronted by a crowd, and he spoke to an incredibly similar situation. He spoke to a situation where there was the group of guys who thought they knew everything, thought they had it all under control, thought that God liked them because of the things that they had done, and they held it over other people.
So I don't want you to turn there, but I'm going to read from Luke 18. This is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
> He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:
> "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
> The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men,
> extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
> I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.'
> But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'
> I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 18:9-14 ESV)
Seem pretty similar? The Pharisee emphasizes his own importance, his achievements, his credentials. He listed reasons why God ought to love him. And then he distances himself from other people. He distances himself from the tax collector. He distances himself from people who he thinks God doesn't love. He says, I'm not like them at all. And the tax collector, he beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
There's a massive difference between these two guys, and sadly Jonah's a whole lot more like the Pharisee. Only, at least the Pharisee actually did do some stuff. Jonah didn't do anything. So when it comes to spiritual deliverance, God chooses to deliver people not based on their merit, but by their faith and trust in him. God doesn't choose to deliver based on merit. He chooses because of his abundant mercy and amazing grace. That's what puts the tax collector, this guy who's lived a life of sin, miles ahead of a Pharisee who lives his entire life by the rules, trying to obey and do things to earn favor with God.
But Jonah did nothing to deserve being saved by God. He ran away from him and tried to escape him. So yeah, God did save him physically. We know that it's not because he deserved it. He definitely didn't. It's because God doesn't save on account of merit. He saves on account of his love and mercy. Now we don't know if Jonah even will be delivered spiritually. The jury's still out on that. But we know the truth that repentance and faith in Jesus are what grant deliverance.
I'm going to invite the band back up. We're all going to zoom out a little bit and try to land this plane. Let's distance ourselves from these figures, these characters, these stories. How do you picture yourself and your relationship with God? Do you picture God as the cosmic accountant, the one who keeps score of all the bad things you've done and weighs them up against all the good things? Or do you see God as a loving father who sets the score aside because he loves you?
When you pray, do you bargain with God as if you've got a stack of chips that he wants and that you can offer him things and that in return he'll give you things? Or do you praise him for what he has done in your life and beg him to forgive your sin? Do you see clearly your own sin and live rightly based on the merit of Jesus? Or do you point out the sin of other people and try to live by your own merit before Jesus? Is God the hero of your story, or are you the hero of your own story?
Do you trust yourself to make every good decision? Do you trust yourself with the steering wheel? And do you treat Jesus like the spare tire that only ever comes out when life gets tough? Or is Jesus your steering wheel, who guides every direction that you ever take? Do you know stuff about God like Jonah does? Or do you actually know God and understand God?
Jonah had one thing right. Jonah knew that salvation belongs to the Lord. But Jonah thought that his actions at least in some way affected what God does. We know that only faith in Jesus can save. Your only hope in salvation is trusting in God. It's the only way. The things that you do will not and cannot earn it for you. So trust in him, not in your own ability, not in your own talents, not in your own credentials. Trust in the God who laid his life down so that you wouldn't have to do that. Only he can truly save.
Let's pray. Father God, we thank you that you are the only way. We thank you that we can rest in your love, knowing that by the death of Jesus we can be saved. We thank you that you're not a cosmic accountant. We thank you that you do not give us a score based on the good and the bad that we do because we know that we can never match up. We thank you that you forgive us of our sins when we ask of it and that we can be saved through our faith in Jesus. And it's in his mighty name that we pray. Amen. Amen.
God's Response to Runners
Transcript
Well, good morning. We're going to be in the book of Jonah. You're going to go ahead and want to start flipping there. It's on page 502. If your Bible looks like this, it's really hard to find. If your Bible does not look like this, best of luck to you.
It's towards the end of the Old Testament with a bunch of names, Jonah, Obadiah, Amos. A bunch of just kind of names that sound like maybe they came out of Star Wars or something. But it will be 502 if you have one of these Bibles. What we're going to do is for the next four weeks, we're just going to walk through verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the book of Jonah. And then it will be Easter. And on Easter, we celebrate.
We celebrate that Jesus is alive. And this Easter in particular, we're going to celebrate through baptism. So we're going to get together. We're going to celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead, that he is alive, and that he still calls people to himself, still makes people alive as they place faith in him. We'll celebrate with baptism in our Easter gathering. And then afterwards, we'll eat food, hang out, be church family, and just make a big deal out of the whole thing.
So we're going to walk through Jonah for four weeks. And then it will be Easter. And we'll have a lot of fun doing that. But so my wife is 38, 39, somewhere around in there, weeks pregnant, which means that at any point she could go into labor. So if she goes into labor this morning, I'm just going to tap out.
Someone else will come up and finish the rest of the chapter of Jonah, and I'm going to head on. It's actually not true. If she goes into labor this morning, she can just hold it. We're really close to the hospital. And first labor takes a long time anyway. And so she can just step out, wait in the hall, and we'll finish up.
We've got work to do in the book of Jonah. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to start in Jonah chapter 1. God, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your word that we get to study together as a church family. And we pray, Lord, that as we look at this book that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, this story that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years and been relayed for hundreds and hundreds of years, Lord, that you would help us to see clearly who you are through it and to see clearly your grace, your massiveness, and your relentless pursuit of those that you love in light of your will and your purposes.
And so, God, I just pray that you'd help us to see this as we study your word this morning. And we love you, and we praise you, and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. So we'll be in Jonah chapter 1. So as we look through Jonah, as we study through this book, there's going to be some things that just are striking.
I've really enjoyed getting to study and read Jonah multiple, multiple times. It's a really short story, and we just get to see some clear pictures of God. And so as we look today, we're going to see a few things about God that I think we see as a part of his nature and character throughout Scripture. But Jonah just shows it to us really clearly. So some of the things we're going to see about God today as we look is that he's bigger than we think.
He's more personal than we think. And he's willing to go further to chase us in our sin, to pursue us when we run than we think. And so that's kind of what we're going to see this morning as we study this book. And so chapter 1, verse 1. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai.
Now that's not super weird. That's kind of a normal way that prophetic books would start. The word of the Lord comes to a prophet. And what we know is that Jonah is a prophet. He's mentioned in 2 Kings. So he was like a legit normal prophet who did normal prophet things.
So people would come, inquire of the Lord from him. He would proclaim things. He was a normal prophet. So this isn't odd, although it doesn't happen to a lot of different people in the Old Testament. But it was a normal thing for Israel.
And so as we look at this, I just want us to give us an idea of where we are in the history of Israel. So we've got this timeline that Raz made for us. So you've got creation at the top. It kind of comes down. You've got Egypt. You've got the promised land.
And then the kingdom is divided. So the kingdom of Israel was one kingdom for three kings. So Saul, David, and Solomon. After that, it busted apart. And so we're going to be looking over here in Israel. That's kind of where we are.
So there was Judah and Israel. We're going to zoom in on that. So Jeroboam was the first king. It's during Jeroboam 2 that Jonah prophesies. Hosea and Amos are prophesying as well to the nation of Israel at the same time. And we'll talk about what they were saying in a second.
And then Jonah was a prophet at this same time. And Assyria in some years is going to come take over the northern kingdom. And then it would just be the nation of Jerusalem and Judah. So it would be that nation after Assyria comes in. And so here's what happens. It says, 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. Okay, so the word of the Lord comes and it says, Go arise and go to Nineveh and cry out against it. For their evil has come before me. This is weird. Because Nineveh is a very large city in Assyria. Most of the time, prophets prophesied to Israel.
They prophesied to the nation they were a part of. So they would proclaim to Israel. Now sometimes they would prophesy about other nations and other cities. But they were always giving their prophecy to Israel. Now there were times that other prophets had been carried away to other nations and would prophesy while they were there.
But Jonah is specifically told to go to Nineveh. Which is just weird. And at this time, Amos and Hosea are both prophesying to the nation of Israel, Repent or Assyria is going to come take you over. Repent. Turn from your sins. Stop it.
Or Assyria is going to come get you. And then God says to Jonah, Go to Assyria and cry out against them. Tell them basically the same thing. Because the generic prophetic message is, Repent. Turn. Destruction is coming.
That's kind of the basic baseline message. Now God would give them different ones at different times and be more specific. But it's really weird that he sent to Nineveh. Now, what we know about Assyria is that they were terrible. They were evil in a lot of ways. We've got historic accounts of a king who wrote bragging about when they took over a city how he skinned grown men alive.
They would show up and they would rape young women. They would torture young boys. They would kill and skin men alive. They would enslave people. They would just absolutely destroy stuff. They would dig holes, like post holes, and bury men in them.
And then pull their tongue out and stake it into the ground. And then let them die from exposure and bleeding out and mental anguish. They were bad people. And Nineveh was one of the primary cities. At this point it had at least 120,000 people that were a part of it. They had a 100-foot wall around it that three chariots could race on.
It was a big city. It could race along the top of it. And God says, go to them and cry out against them. Go to this evil city because their evil has come up before me. And here's something that Jonah learns when God says this. Jonah begins to see that God's bigger than he thought.
Because God primarily spoke to the nation of Israel and he was the God of the nation of Israel. So it's a little bit weird that God would just care about Nineveh. It's not in relation to Israel at all. It's just Nineveh. And so Jonah immediately would be going, okay, what does that have to do with us? Like, Hosea and Amos are saying these things.
Like, why would I be good? Like, he's got to have this running through his head is that God is involved in things that he would have, before this, probably didn't think he was involved in. Probably didn't see that clearly. He begins to see that God cares about Nineveh, has some paying attention to Nineveh, this Assyrian city. And he sees that God's a little bit bigger than he thought to send him to them. And so Jonah gets the word of the Lord, hears this, and we see how he responds to it.
So we'll start reading it from the beginning again. 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. One thing I want to say there real quick. We, in general, our culture pushes back some when we see God acting as a judge in the Old Testament. Like, we have a little bit of a pushback there. Now we're not super upset here because he says that they're evil.
But even if we thought a country was evil, even if we thought a nation was evil. So let's just take the problem with nations that are evil is we still think, okay, but there's like women and children there. There's people who aren't involved in this. And so you can't just carpet bomb the whole place. You can't just nuke the whole place every time a nation causes problems. And so when we look in the Old Testament and God stands as judge over nations, there's just a little bit of us that goes, Ah, you can't really just kill a whole city, though.
I mean, there may be some bad people there, but you can't just destroy everyone. And, like, you'll even talk to people and they'll say stuff like, My God is a God of love. And if there is a God, he's a loving and compassionate God. That's true. But for some of you who maybe have that pushback, if that's you, if you sit in this room today and you're kind of checking out this whole Jesus thing, you're checking out this whole God thing, and your general disposition is, Okay, I believe there probably is a God because of some things I see through science and the way the world exists.
Like, I think there's probably a God and how. But if there is a God, he's a loving God and he's a compassionate God. And he wouldn't judge and he wouldn't destroy. The only thing I would ask you to do is to investigate a little bit as to where you got that idea. Just look in a little bit as to where you got the idea that if there is a God, he's a loving God. And what you'll find is you got that idea from Scripture because no other religion teaches that about God.
Buddhism doesn't have a personal God. Islam doesn't teach that. That concept of a loving God came from Scripture. And so, honestly, the only way we can reckon that there is a loving God is to study Scripture and understand what kind of loving God is and what that means. And here's the truth. He can't be loving and not hate evil.
He can't be loving and not hate sin. He wouldn't be loving. That's how love works. So, if I love my wife and you slap her, I can't just be like, hey, bro, don't do that. Like, stop it. Or whatever.
Like, you'd be like, man, I don't think you care much about your wife. Like, I don't think... Like, if you have children and something comes against them, you hate whatever comes against them. Whatever we love and however much we love it makes us the most capable of hatred and wrath. Does that make sense? So, if God is a loving God, then he has to hate evil.
And if your God is only capable of just love, nice feelings, then honestly, he doesn't really love. And, just so you know, just to help you out, if you have a God in your brain that only ever agrees with you, he probably doesn't exist. Like, if I said, yeah, I'm married and my wife only ever thinks I'm right. And only ever wants to eat where I want to eat. And only ever thinks that all my ideas are good ideas. You'd be like, bro, your wife is a figment of your imagination.
Like, she's not real. I'm going to need to meet her. Because real entities disagree. So, if God is real, we would just assume, it would be logical to assume, that he and I wouldn't be on the same page on everything. Does that make sense? Okay, so God says, their evil has come up before me.
And I want you to go to him. And so, here's what we see. Verse 2. 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, went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. That just sounds dumb. Like, if we're reading that, we're going, okay, Jonah, he's not the brightest crayon in the pack, right? Like, he just, God comes to him and says, I want you to go, he says, go east to Nineveh, and Jonah goes west to Tarshish. That's what happens.
And we think that's dumb. It says he's fleeing the presence of the Lord. So, the word of the Lord comes and says, go to Nineveh. And Jonah says, mm-hmm. Now, I'm going to go get on a boat, and I'm going the opposite direction. And we'll find out as we read the story later why he did that.
But here, doesn't it just seem ridiculous to flee the presence of the Lord? Like, we're looking at this going, shouldn't Jonah have known better than to run from God? Doesn't it seem like God could hawk you down? Like, don't you think, like, don't you think if somebody could catch you, God could? Like, I mean, if I was going to, in a foot race, I'm not racing God. I'd just be like, no, you got this one.
I remember when I was growing up, my dad's a big, intense man. And I was like, I don't know, I was eight, nine, something like that. And my dad was fussing at a German shepherd. And this was a big German shepherd. It was like as big as I was at the point. And my dad has a very love-hate relationship with dogs.
Like, he's going to have a dog. He's going to do what he wants it to do. Otherwise, he's not going to have a dog. Like, he'll just give it away or whatever. And so he was fussing at this German shepherd. And we were down kind of in the woods.
And we were in a field. And there were some woods. And the German shepherd was probably 10, 15 feet from him. And he was fussing at it. And it was laying down. And he used to do this thing when he was getting fussed at it.
It would just kind of slowly crawl towards him, you know? And so it's laid on the ground. And he's going, come here. Come here. And the dog's kind of crawling. And then the dog stops and looks over his shoulder at the woods.
And my dad goes, you better not. And I'm like, I don't know if the dog understands English that much, you know? He's like, come here. The dog looks at him and then goes, he goes, don't do it. And about that moment, that dog, boom, I mean, just took off. My dad did not flinch.
Took off right after it. So this dog takes off running. And my dad, just as fast as he can, is running after a dog. Just, I mean, dog runs into the woods. My dad runs into the woods. Me and my two brothers are just like, all you hear is, shh, shh, all through the woods.
Two minutes later, my dad comes walking out of the woods, holding the German shepherd by the back of the neck going, you going to run from me? You going to try to bite me? Because apparently they got in a fight in the woods. He's like, have you lost your mind? And me and my brothers, we learned something that day. We ain't running from our daddy.
If he can catch a German shepherd in the woods, I'm in trouble. So he used to do the same thing with us. He said, boy, and you just knew, stand still. And he said, come here. You came here. There was no, none of that was happening with us.
And you got to think that Jonah knows. You don't run from God. Like you would just think, Jonah's got to know he's a prophet of God. He's got to see this, right? He does not. So Jonah automatically is like, man, I don't know.
You ain't cooking with much. Like, I don't know what you're doing. Verse 4. Okay, so it says he fleed from the presence of the Lord. Verse 4. But the Lord, which I love that it says, but Jonah, and then there's a rebuttal.
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, that's just sailors, that's the guys who were running the boat, who Jonah paid to give him a ride, were afraid. And each cried out to his God. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. Okay, so things, when the mariners are afraid, that's a problem because they're the guys who run the boat.
Like when the people who are running the boat get scared, like, you know, okay, we ought to be scared. When they start throwing the cargo out, like, they're like, man, we ain't going to eat. We ain't going to drink. We just going to hope we float around and survive. Like, they don't need the weight moving around. It says the ship was threatening to break apart, which means you're on this boat and it's going, like, you can hear it cracking and snapping.
And it's a bad storm. And we're about to find out how bad. To lighten them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. So Jonah wasn't even, like, guilty.
He just, he's like, well, I'm running from God. I'm going to have a nap. Like, that's where he was. He wasn't stressing about this. What you would think that he ought to have been. All right.
This is how intense this storm got. Check this out. He 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. Captain of the ship. Best plan he's got working is have everybody pray. That's all he's got. If you're on an airplane in some turbulence and it's bouncing around and it's jerking and all of a sudden the captain starts walking down the aisles going, wake everybody up. We just need to pray.
Who's in the cockpit? Man, ain't nothing happening up there. Handle snapped off. We just we floating. You need to pray. Pray to whoever you got.
Wait, wait that fool up. He better be praying. Like, that's the best plan the captain has is cry out to your God. Maybe we'll live like he ain't holding that thing anymore. He's just spinning. It's broke off.
Like, best thing we got is you pray. Everybody pray. You an atheist. I don't care. Pray to science. Pray to Oprah.
Whatever you got to do. Like you pray. Just start calling out. Like, I don't care who you got. Call out to him. We got to get everybody here.
That's all we got working. That's what the captain's doing. So he's waking people up. Ain't you supposed to be captain? And this is all I got. This is my plan.
This is plan A. Plan B is drown. That's what we got. All right. Verse 7. And they said to one another, so it gets worse.
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 to Jonah. Okay, so casting lots was like a way. It was kind of like flipping a coin, but it was more, you know, had more spiritual backing to it. And it was something that ancient Israel used to do, but other cultures did too. But it was basically like if we were going to cast lots, we split the room in half.
Y'all are heads. Y'all are tails. Oh, it's tails. Okay. Split the room in half. Y'all are heads.
Y'all are tails. And it's a real quick way to just divide it down until you got to one person. And then it comes to Jonah, which I wonder if in this process Jonah was thinking, I wonder if this is about somebody else. Like you think Jonah was like, you think he was sweating or you think he was like, if it's not me, it's probably that guy. Like came down to the end. Jonah every time was like, me again?
I'm in the group every time. Like, but it's gotten so bad that the only plan they have now is let's figure out who to be mad at. We're all going to drown. We might as well know who we ought to be mad at. Let's figure out whose fault it is.
We ain't doing nothing anymore but floating. Let's find out who we should be mad at. This storm is terrible. God's bigger than Jonah thought as he tears this sea apart. He's bigger than Jonah thought. Eight.
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? And 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. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this you have done? All right. You want to know why they're exceedingly afraid? God's at this point. Little G gods.
In their understanding, we're only over a certain piece of nature, a certain land, a certain area. God's at this point where they understood gods. They were local gods. That's why he's waking people up and saying, cry out to your God. Maybe he's close. Maybe he'll hear us.
Maybe he has something to do with water or with wind. Maybe he can help. So when Jonah says, I fear the Lord, the God of heaven. So in most cultures, the God of heaven was a big God. So immediately they're like, oh, okay.
This guy worships one of the big ones. He didn't just say the God of my field or the God of, he says the God of heaven. And then he says, who made the sea and the dry land. And they're terrified because he's bigger than the gods they were used to. So like in Egypt, there was a God of the sun and there was a God of the Nile.
And there was a God of like all these little gods, even in ancient Greece. Like you had Zeus was like the God of storms and the God of the sky. Poseidon was the God of the ocean and horses, which I have no clue how that worked out. Like, did they have a draft? It was like Poseidon's first pick. I'll take the ocean.
It's a good pick. Poseidon rolls back around. I'll take fire. Bro, you can't have fire and the ocean. Like they're opposites. Plus those are both pretty big.
Like you got to pick something else. All right, I'll take horses. You can't take horses and the ocean. Like you pick the ocean. Well, then give me fire. Okay, you can have horses.
Like, I don't know how it worked out. I don't know how you got the ocean and horses, but I bet in ancient Greek culture, seahorses were super cocky. Because they were the only thing in the middle of that Venn diagram. But that's how they understood gods. They understood that they were only limited to certain things. Like, I'm riding a horse.
You ain't got nothing to do with this, Zeus. Like, that's how they understood it. And so when he says, I fear the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land, they're terrified. Because this God they're just being introduced to is bigger. And there's no other God to call out to for help or hope. Because he's in charge of everything.
And here's what we begin to see with Jonah. And I want us to see. I want us to see very clearly with Jonah. You see, earlier, when it said, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it. And then in verse 3 where it says, But Jonah rose to flee.
Every single one of us, our hearts should have skipped a beat. Every single one of us should have leaned forward in our chair. Because we suddenly became a part of the story. Every single one of us should have said, Oh, hold on a second. I want to find out what happens with Jonah now. Shush, shush, shush, shush.
We'll figure out what we're eating later. Shut your mouth. I've got to find out what's happening with Jonah. Every single one of us should have done that. Because when that happened, we all became a part of the story. When it said that Jonah knew the word of the Lord and then headed the opposite direction, all of us just became a part of the story.
And we should all be very interested to find out what happens to Jonah and how God responds to Jonah. Because for most of us, we have a pretty good handle on some of the things that God likes, some of the things that God wants from us, some of the things that He desires. Most of us, the word of the Lord is clear. In many, many instances, and we head the other direction. One of the things we do when we sit down with somebody and we're counseling through some sin stuff, one of the first questions I ask is, Okay, in this particular instance, do you understand that this behavior is sin? It's one of the first things I ask.
Eight out of ten times, the answer is yes. Okay. That's going to guide our conversation. The next part is, why don't you want to repent? If someone says no, then okay, let's study the word. Let's look.
You're ignorant as to what the scriptures say. But for most of us, and most of our sin, the word of the Lord is clear. And we've headed the other direction. We know what the Bible says about sexuality. And we head the other direction. We know what the Bible says about our finances, how we treat others, how we treat generosity, how we treat our money, and we've headed the other direction.
We know what the Bible says about being a husband or being a wife or being a father or how we're supposed to treat our parents. We know it. The word of the Lord is clear and we've headed the other direction. And so all of us should be going, what's going to happen to Jonah? How is God going to respond to Jonah? What is going to happen here?
Because I need to know, because it's personal now. Because most of us know about God, know who He is, and have headed the other direction. And here's what we see so clearly as we get to this section in Jonah. Jonah says, I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Jonah did not have, he wasn't ignorant to God. He didn't misunderstand who God was.
He had very good belief. He knew stuff, but it wasn't here. There was something bigger that he cared more about, something that was driving his behavior more. See, Jonah knew stuff about God. He could have passed the theology test. He could give really good Sunday school answers.
Jesus, you nailed it again, Jonah. But he was heading the other direction, because it wasn't real to him. It wasn't actually true. It hadn't sunk in yet. So he knew the word.
He headed the other way. He knew God very clearly. As we read the rest of Jonah, we're going to see that Jonah understood who God was, but he didn't act like it. He wasn't acting on it, because it wasn't a real belief. He may have known it, but he wasn't, he wasn't here yet. And that's us.
Most of us have a good handle on who God is, what he's like. Some of us, maybe not. Some of us, maybe we're just learning some of this stuff. I'd say most of us, have a pretty good handle on what the God of the Bible is like. How big he is, how holy he is, what he feels about sin, and our attitudes, and our actions. And most of us, quite often, head in the other direction.
We see that, we feel that, understand that. Then the men were exceedingly afraid, that's verse 10, said to him, what is this you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them, God is bigger than we think. See, Jonah thought he could flee from his presence, which we all know at this point is nonsense. And God begins to bend nature to his will. It wasn't just that he set it up, and it just happened to be what was happening.
God bends nature to his will, because God is bigger than Jonah thought, and God's bigger than we think. We so often feel like, God doesn't care about this section of my life. Yeah, I do my church thing, but God doesn't care about work, or how I handle this part of my life, or God's not really paying attention to this, or God's not over this, or God doesn't care about those people. God's bigger than we think. And it's very clear as we look at this text. Verse 11, 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. The sea's just growing worse and worse. Verse 14, therefore they called out to the Lord. Nope, I messed up. Let's see.
Tempestuous 12, and 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. Jonah says, the only way to pay for sin is death. Jonah says, the way that I get out of this is death. The way that you get out of this is death. Jonah's right.
He understands God. He understands the nature of God. He understands sin, and he understands that sin leads to death. The Bible says that clearly. And so Jonah says, the way out of this is death. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not.
So they didn't want to kill him. They had showed compassion on Jonah, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. So it's getting even worse. 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 it as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah, they 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. So picture this. Jonah says, the only way out is for me to die. The only way for you all to escape is for me to die. I know it's because of me. And they don't want to do that.
But they weren't quick to kill him. And so they try to row, and then they can't. So they basically say, God, you're in charge of this. You chose. And so they grab Jonah. They throw him into the ocean.
The ocean swallows him, and then the sea ceases its raging. How terrified were these men? Let me tell you something. A storm is scary. When you feed the ocean a person, and the storm stops, that's terrifying. Just so you know.
Like there was a guy on the boat who was like, I'm glad it's been raining because I just wet my pants. And I don't want to be made fun of. Like that's how terrifying it is for the ocean to be tossing you about, and when you throw a man in it, it just ceases. And so what they did was they said, okay, you actually are God. I'm swapping teams. I'm not praying to that guy I was praying to anymore.
I'm praying to you. They make vows. They make sacrifices, and they say, you're God. You're in charge. The sailors see clearly who God is, and they respond appropriately, which is more than we can say for Jonah. 17.
And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Okay. That's weird. But God can do what he wants, and he's more in control of things than we think. So if you've ever been fishing and think, is it wrong to pray for fish?
Well, God is in charge of fish, so he can send one your way if he wanted to. But what we see is that God in this story sends this giant storm and then appoints a fish. He goes from this massive picture to this, hey, I got a job for you. Fish says, yes, sir. God's bigger than we think. He's in control of all of this, and the fish is grace.
It's grace to Jonah because it actually saves him from drowning. What we know is that God uses the fish to rescue Jonah. So the truth is, sin leads to death unless God intervenes. Sin leads to death unless God in his grace intervenes on our behalf. And here's what we see as we see this story. We see clearly that God's bigger than we think, that he's more involved in his world than we think, and we see very clearly that he's way more personal than we think because he's chasing after Jonah.
He's chasing after one man. So you think often, God doesn't really pay attention to me. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't really care what's going on with me. He's not really here. But you look at the story of Jonah where for God's purposes and his own glory, he's chosen to use Jonah and he's not going to give up on it.
For God's purposes and his own glory for Nineveh and for Jonah, he's not going to let him outrun him. This is beautiful because the answer to the question from earlier of how does God respond to us when we run from him? How does God respond to people when they know the word and they run from him? Grace. Unrelenting, unwavering pursuit in his grace. You see, it would have been God's judgment on Jonah to let him just go and use someone else.
But God wasn't willing to do that so he stops his boat, gets Jonah thrown in the ocean and swallows him with a fish because God was chasing him down. Because God cared about Jonah. You hear that? Like, I think we've gotten used to that idea, but God cared about Jonah. One man who was in direct disobedience. He could have just squashed him.
As we read the rest of the story, you're going to think, God, you should have just squashed him. But God chooses, chose us, mm-hmm, God chooses to chase him down because that's God's response to us in our sin, in our rebellion. And here's what's crazy. We read this story and we go, okay, big storm, big fish, a fish swallowed a dude and he was in the fish for three days. That's nonsense. This is ridiculous.
But you see, God's willing to go further than we think to chase us in our sin. God's willing to go further than we think to pursue us when we run. And the truth is, this is just a small picture of how far he's actually willing to go. You read this story and you think this is absolutely crazy that he would do this, but the truth is, the Bible has a more epic, more mind-shattering story that God's willing to go to more elaborate lengths to chase after us because he actually becomes a man, lives perfectly on our behalf in the person of Jesus and dies so that we don't have to. You think a big fish is crazy?
God died. The God of the universe who created, the God of heaven who created the dry land and the sea became a person who changed. The unchangeable God changed. The ever-living God, the eternal God, died. Ceased to exist. Was laid in a grave for three days.
And then he came back to life because Jonah is just a small picture of how far God is willing to go to chase us when we run. So the answer to the question, how does God respond to us when we rebel? Unrelenting grace. And he's willing to go to elaborate, mind-shattering lengths to chase us down. Bianca, Matt, and Raz are going to come back up. The appropriate response to this type of grace is repentance.
The appropriate response to God bending history and bending the world on our behalf is to turn away from sin and to run back to God. It's the appropriate response. I pray for some of you who know the word of the Lord and are headed in the other direction, I pray that God in his grace sends a storm. I pray that he stops you where you are. That he cares enough about you to wreck you. You see, when we love someone, we don't let them destroy themselves and I pray that God in his grace wrecks you to stop you and to bring you back to himself.
Some of you, you're in that storm. The appropriate response to God when he wrecks you is repentance because he's already gone farther for you than he went for Jonah. He's already done more for you than he did for Jonah. You think that fish is ridiculous? The God of the universe died. So that we could have life.
So that our debt could be paid for. Sin does lead to death and Jesus died in our place for our sin. So that we could have life. Some of you just needed to hear today that God's bigger than you think. More capable than you think. More willing to bend history on behalf of his people than you'd think.
Some of you needed to know that he's more personal. He actually knows what's going on with you and he actually cares. God cared enough about Jonah to chase him down. He knows where you are. He cares. And some of us absolutely need to know that God was willing to go farther than we'd ever think to rescue us when we run.
And our opportunity the grace offered to us is to stop running. To accept his rescue offered to us through the cross and to be given life that only he can give us. Let's pray. God, I pray that through your Holy Spirit right now you would draw people to yourself. That you'd help us to all clearly see that you went further for us than you went for Jonah. That you did something more elaborate, more crazy, more mind shattering.
God, I pray that you'd make that real to us. God, for so many of us where we know your word and we're running the other direction, I pray that you'd help us to stop and to repent. I pray that those who won't, Lord, that you'll send a storm in your grace to stop them. That you'll pursue them and draw them back to yourself. God, I pray for those in the midst of a storm that they would recognize it. Recognize that sin leads to death and that you died for us so they don't have to die.
They don't have to be destroyed. They can have life and salvation and hope. God, I ask that your Holy Spirit would wreck us. That we'd see your grace clearly and that those who need to trust you, place their faith in you, turn from their sin back to you, that they would. God, we thank you that you love us more than we see you here loving Jonah. That you love us as much as you loved him to chase him down and that you show it to us more clearly as you died for us.
You saved us through your own death. We praise you. In Jesus' name, Amen.