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.