Running Away from God (Jonah 1.1-3)

Introduction

We’re starting a five-part series on the Book of Jonah today. Do you know, I wasn’t sure when it was the last time I preached on this book so I checked my records with a computer and I found, to my amazement, that I have never preached on Jonah before. That’s 834 sermons in English, and 465 in French. Some of you are thinking, “all that practice, and he’s still useless…”

Jonah is, of course, one of the best-known stories in the Old Testament. It’s right up there with Noah’s Ark, Samson and Delilah, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Many of us will know it from childhood.

So, this is a first for me. And yet Jonah is a preacher’s dream; it’s got action, adventure, plot twists and humour. It’s only four chapters long, so you can cover it in a month. And to top it all, there’s a clear link to Jesus, as we’ll see.

Jonah is also the subject of many funny stories and jokes.

There’s a Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon I once saw showing a bearded man standing at his front door, dripping wet, with his clothes in tatters. His wife opens the door, takes one look at her dishevelled husband and says, “For crying out loud, Jonah! Three days late, covered with slime and smelling like fish. What tall story do I have to swallow this time?”

Well, there’s plenty of comedy in Jonah; it’s almost slapstick at times, there’s a Monty Python absurdity about it, and it’s full of irony too for those with a drier sense of humour.

Summary

You’ll find Jonah in the middle of the minor prophets, but it is quite unlike any of the other 14 prophetic books in the Bible. It’s not a collection of dire predictions and warnings. It’s a short story about the adventures of a reluctant preacher.

And the story is, I hardly need to remind you, about a man who tries to run away from the God who calls him to preach in the great city of Nineveh. Most preachers warm to the idea of addressing a great crowd but, in this case, it’s an unpalatable message to an already hostile congregation.

So, he boards a ship which sails into a raging storm. The superstitious sailors draw lots to determine whose fault it is, find out Jonah is to blame and throw him, with barely a whimper of protest, into the sea. Whereupon Jonah gets swallowed by a large fish that later vomits him up on a beach.

Again, God calls him to Nineveh and, this time, he goes. Amazingly, Nineveh responds with mass repentance, so God relents and does not bring about the destruction he had threatened.

Jonah then goes into a sulk and says to God, “I knew you’d do that! I knew you’d forgive them! Well, I’ve had enough. I want to die.”

Then there’s a bizarre epilogue. God provides a plant to give him shade - and Jonah’s happy about it - but he forgets to thank God. Then God sends a worm to eat the plant, removing the shade. Jonah gets sunburnt, and he complains. And it ends abruptly with God saying, “You know what Jonah? You need to take one hard look in the mirror! You care more about your comfort of a bit of shade from the sun than about the lives of 120,000 people and their animals.

And that’s it. The book ends hanging in the air with a rhetorical question from God. The end. That’s the story.

Background

Since early times people have wondered what kind of book God has given us here.

Some people, of course, write it off as pure fiction; a tall tale or fairy story, much like Jack and the Beanstalk or Cinderella. Many treat the book of Jonah as worthy of ridicule.

Others, some Christians among them, see it as true, but in the same way that the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan are true. So, they would classify the book of Jonah as a parable; an earthly story with a heavenly point. And the point is that God calls us to reach the entire world, not to stay in our comfortable, holy huddle.

Others, and this is a view popular with Jews, see it more as an allegory, where each detail of the story has a deeper meaning. Like Animal Farm.

So Jonah represents Israel, the large fish is the Babylonian power that swallows Israel up, the response of Nineveh is the hoped-for conversion of the Gentiles, and Jonah’s complaint at the end is about the Jewish objection to opening up their religion to non-Jews. So, they would see it as a kind of satirical story.

Approaches 2 and 3 see Jonah as a story that somebody wrote, not with the intention of deceiving people but actually helping them to see something that they were spiritually blind to.

Others take Jonah at face value; perhaps stylised, but basically a factual account of real, miraculous events that actually happened. And they do for three reasons.

Firstly, 2 Kings 14.25 presents Jonah as a real historical figure, not a made up one like Harry Potter or Miss Marple. Jonah, son of Amittai. Same name, same father’s name. He lived and prophesied in the reign of the evil king Jeroboam II.

Secondly, the book seems to be presented as history. Not only is the central character a real person, the places are real too; there’s no Lilliput or Middle Earth. Joppa and Tarshish were both busy trading ports with ships. Nineveh actually existed as a city.

And thirdly, Jesus referred to the book of Jonah on at least two occasions and seems each time to have accepted it, as it stands, as a historical account.

As we’ll see over the next few weeks, Jesus makes two main points from the story of Jonah; a comparison and a contrast.

Firstly, a comparison: just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. In other words, Jonah’s being swallowed up is a foreshadowing of Jesus being in the tomb three days before rising again.

And secondly, a contrast: unlike the Ninevites, who humble themselves and repent when Jonah points them to God, Jesus said that the people of his generation don’t listen to him and will go on to reject him.

Incidentally, that is a very, very powerful point right there. Those who refuse Christ now, Jesus says, will one day meet the people of Nineveh at the last judgement, who will look at them and say, “We repented even before Jesus came when Jonah spoke to us. But you refuse to listen even after hearing the words of Jesus himself.”

So – fairy story, parable, allegory or history? What do you think? I think it does talk about Israel’s reluctance to be a light to the Gentiles and I think there are lessons about not staying in our comfort zone. But it seems clear that Jesus spoke of Jonah as a real historical figure and he treated the story as factual. And that’s decisive for me. I’m not going to stand here and tell you the Son of God was naive or mistaken.

Hearing from God

Well, that’s a very long introduction, but I hope it sets the scene and will help you get to grips with the whole book. Now let’s get into the text.

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’”

God calls. God speaks. We’re not told how Jonah heard from God. We’re not told where, or when, but Jonah must have heard God’s voice distinctly and clearly because in v3 he runs away.

How do you hear from God? Obviously, he speaks primarily through the Bible. This is God’s word for all places and all times for all people. I hope you’ll never complain to me that God is silent if your Bible is always closed.

But God’s word to Jonah was a specific call found nowhere in Scripture. How do you hear from God about your work, your relationships, your home, your money, your ministry? How do you hear from God for others?

God speaks through circumstances (because he opens doors and closes them). He speaks through the peace we have in prayer – or the lack of it. He speaks through the counsel of mature believers. He speaks through dreams and visions. And there is a prophetic gift that some have in greater measure than others, where God speaks through a clear, inner impression.

I shared a story in August, but many of you were away, so I’ll tell it again.

At New Wine Inspire a speaker from York, told an amazing story from his time as a vicar in training three or four years' ago. He was in a pretty boring lecture all about clergy tax and expenses, and he was struggling to concentrate when, out of the blue, he had a strange impression that someone was standing on a street corner outside the college and that he should go up to them and invite them to become a Christian. He put it to the back of his mind, but about ten minutes later the thought returned. 'There's a woman standing on the corner of Ridley Hall Road. She hasn't seen her son in ten years. Go and speak to her and invite her to become a Christian.' Should he leave the lecture and go or should he stay? He stayed.

But a bit later a third thought entered his mind with even more detail. 'There's a woman standing on the corner of Ridley Hall Road. She hasn't seen her son in ten years. She is meeting up with him tomorrow. Go and tell her it's going to be OK and then invite her to become a Christian.' So he thought, 'Right, I'm going.' 

He went out the college gates, walked up to the corner of the road he had seen in his mind's eye and... there was a woman standing on the corner, all alone. He went up to her and introduced himself. Then he told her that he thought God just told him that she hadn't seen her son in 10 years. She burst into tears. He told her that she would see him tomorrow and that it would be OK. She confirmed that they had indeed agreed to meet up for the first time in a decade the very next day.

He then invited her to become a Christian. Understandably, she wanted to know what that was about so he took her into the College common room, made her a cup of tea and explained. It turned out that she was a witch, into the occult. But she gave her heart to Christ that day and has been walking as a new-born Christian ever since.

It says in the Bible, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” There’s an aspiration in Scripture that hearing from God in this way might be common. Do you want to hear from him more? Ask. Keep asking. It may be a gift he wants to give you. But like that man, and unlike Jonah, you will have to be ready to take risks.

Reluctance 

Hands up please if you have heard of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. (Keep them up; we Anglicans need the practice) … It’s basically about the sorts of needs we all have. We all have to satisfy basic survival needs at the bottom of the pyramid first before we can work up the scale towards finding happiness and ultimate purpose and meaning.

A lot of people have heard of that. But how many of you know that Abraham Maslow also came up with something he called “the Jonah Complex”? Well, he did. To have a Jonah Complex is to evade your destiny. Maslow used to speak about it as “the fear of standing alone.”

Some of us here are paralysed by the fear having to stand alone. Maybe at work. Maybe in the family. It’s natural – few people like standing alone. But don’t miss out on what God wants to give you because of fear. Why did Jonah run from God? Because he didn’t want bad people to be forgiven (as we’ll see in Chapter 4) but first of all because he was not prepared to stand alone.

Truth is Anti- and Pro-

God said, “Preach against that great city.” People don’t like preaching that is “against” anything. People want preachers to say nice, uplifting, affirming things. People want to be entertained and walk away with a nice warm glow.

The American Presbyterian theologian R. C. Sproul, who died last year, once said, “For every truth there is a corresponding falsehood. Christians are known not only by what they believe or affirm, but also by what they reject and deny.” [Quote modified for inclusive language].

Paul said, “If I was still trying to please people I would not belong to Jesus Christ.”

False prophets only tell you what you want to hear. True prophets tell you what you need to hear. 

Jesus didn’t shrink from saying hard things. In Matthew 23 he made a sustained and devastating outburst against hypocrisy and legalism. Seven times he said, “Woe to you if...” People don’t want a Jesus like that messing up their church. But it is part of who he is.

But he also preached in Matthew 5, “Blessed are you…” and next to his 7 woes he spoke 8 blessings over those who listened to him. He spoke more blessings than woes, but he spoke both. And ministers of his gospel are required to refute error as well as commend sound teaching.

Running Away from God and Avoiding Church

So v3 says, “He ran away from the Lord,” and “he sailed for Tarshish to flee the Lord.” Did he honestly think he could get away from God? He will have known Psalm 139 written several hundred years beforehand.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there… your right hand will hold me fast.”

In fact, the form of words in v3 “to flee from the Lord” in the original Hebrew usually refers to avoiding the Lord’s presence by staying away from the temple.

Whenever Christians walk in disobedience or rebellion against God, the last place they want to be is near is a church. We suddenly find it easy to be busy. We go missing for weeks. We get distracted and find all sorts of other interesting things to do on a Sunday.

So Jonah goes down to Joppa to get a ship to Tarshish. Tarshish is about as far west as Nineveh is east. Donna Levin was saying to me last week that she remembers a talk from her childhood about Jonah going down, down, down, down… down to Joppa, down in the ship’s hold, down into the sea. That’s where running away from God takes you; down, down, down… She has never forgotten it.

·         As Jonah travelled to Joppa, what was going through his mind? 

·         As he queued up to buy a ticket, was there a tug on his conscience? 

·         As he said, “Ticket to Tarshish please” did his voice crack?  

·         When the man said “Return ticket?” how long did it take him to say, “No, just a single”?

·         As he opened his wallet, and counted off the banknotes, was there a second thought in his mind?

·         As he boarded the ship and looked around to see no one from God’s people aboard, just a bunch of hard-swearing sailors, did he really feel at home?

Ending

And are you thinking you might run away from God? Throw your tickets in the bin. Get off that ship before it sails. Turn around and come home because God has something better for you. His will for your life is good, pleasing and perfect.

Let’s pray…


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 2 September 2018