Full Transcript

It’s great to worship with you after a dark week in our world—to get our eyes up out of the world, and on the One Who is the same, no matter what’s going on down here. Let me invite you to open your Bibles to the Table of Contents. . .You say, “What? Did you run out of things to preach in the Bible? You’re going to preach out of the Table of Contents?” We’re going to use it as a roadmap, because I’m about to ask you to open to a place that’s going to be hard to find.

In such a dark week, there was a really happy thing that happened yesterday that I got to be a part of. Andrea and I got to go over to Wheaton, Illinois, where the wedding was being held for Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Robert Wolgemuth. Nancy’s been a friend for a long time. If you don’t know Nancy, she’s the radio host for Revive Our Hearts, a daily radio program heard over six-hundred outlets across the country. She’s a fifty-seven-year-old woman who’s never been married. Yesterday she said, “I do.” What a celebration it was!

I remember my first conversation with Nancy, twenty-one years ago. I was a twenty-six-year-old youth pastor in Arkansas who was being recruited by Life Action Ministries to join the team and come and travel and kind of do youth ministry on the road. Nancy was a part of the team that interrogated. . uh. . .interviewed me [laughter] in that process, wanting to know if I really had a heart for God.

She began asking me questions about my calling and, “Why do you want to come?” And I realized what she was asking was this: She wanted to know if I really sensed God calling me to this kind of ministry, or whether I was just chasing a woman named Andrea, who was already a part of Life Action Ministries—so my motives were in question at this point.

Now, I’m grateful God allowed me to do both, but I had to ask Nancy yesterday (just about three hours before her wedding), “What was really your motive for doing this? Are you sure, Nancy, that you’re not just chasing Robert here?” [laughter] Anyway, we had some fun with that.

I’m about to ask you to open your Bible to a book about a chase-er and a chase-ee. How many of you are either married or in a relationship right now, and you are or were the chaser? You’re the one who saw what you wanted and went after it? How many of you feel, “I was the chasee. I was playing hard-to-get a little bit, I had to be a little convinced.”

What I just summarized for you is the story of the Book of Jonah. You have your Bible open to your Table of Contents. I took a picture of my Table of Contents this morning [it’s on the screen]. Notice, I have a little trouble navigating through parts of the Bible, because there are some really obscure parts of it, so I’ve put some hints in there for myself.

You know, the first five Books of the Bible, that’s called the Old Testament law; that’s where we find the Ten Commandments; it’s called the Torah. . .then Scripture goes into some of the history of the judges and the kings and chronicles Israel’s history. Really, it’s kind of a downward spiral and descent. And then we have some wisdom literature in the parts of the Bible we really like, Psalms and Proverbs. . .and then you have what’s known as the Prophets.

The Prophets are divided into two different groups: we call them the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets. The Major Prophets are no more significant than the Minor Prophets, it’s just that the Major Prophets are longer books. So, Isaiah, Jeremiah—those are some of the longest books we have in the Bible—and then we get to some of the really obscure parts of the Bible, like Obadiah. Does anybody know the plot of Obadiah? Habbakuk, Nahum. . .

Well, I’m about to ask you to open to the most famous minor prophet, and his name is? Jonah! [listeners respond] Jonah was a man overboard. [He has them say together what page Jonah begins on, p. 1265 in ESV.]

Before we dive into it, let me give you some context. We don’t know exactly who wrote the book. It could have been Jonah himself, kind of writing a biography, but really Jonah is not a book by a prophet, like many of the others—it is a book about a prophet. We’re going to find there is a story here that’s basically pretty hard to believe. Some people don’t believe it; they think it’s just kind of a parable or a myth or something.

The reason we know this is actually an historical event is because of the very specific names and places and statistics that are in the book. You don’t put that into myths and fairy tales. The Book of Jonah doesn’t say, “A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. . .”—something very general; no, it’s not like that. We have specific settings here that can be tested over time, so we know this is an actual event.

You know the story of Jonah, right? This is about seven-hundred years before Christ showed up. Jonah is a prophet, God calls him to deliver a message to Nineveh, he doesn’t like the message and so he goes in the opposite direction catches a boat, the boat is sunk, he gets thrown overboard, gets swallowed by a fish. I believe every word in the Bible. I believe it. If the Bible says Jonah got swallowed by a big fish, I believe it. If the Bible said that Jonah swallowed a big fish, I would believe that as well. I just believe the Bible, okay? It has stood the test of time.

So Jonah gets swallowed, and the fish regurgitates him back on the beach, gets him headed in the right direction, [he says] “I think will obey God now!” He goes and preaches the message to Nineveh, Nineveh repents, Jonah gets mad and has a pity party, sucks his thumb, and that’s the way the book ends. You all know this story, right?

We’re going to take the next seven weeks and unpack this story. So we’ll have Thanksgiving and Christmas with Jonah, because we have seven weeks left in the year. That’s where we’re going in the next part of our preaching calendar.

So the plot, if you put it all down into one sentence, is simply this: Grace Chases a Fugitive from God. That is not only the summary of the book of Jonah, that is a summary of the Bible! So we have, in the forty-eight verse in Jonah, a summary of the relationship between God and man, and it all comes to this: grace chases a fugitive from God.

How many of you have ever been a fugitive from God and would be willing to admit it? “Yeah, there was a season where I took a little detour.” And how many of you would testify, “God chased me and brought me back.” That’s the story of Jonah, of the Bible, and that’s the story of so many of you here. We’re going to uncover that as we walk through the Book of Jonah.

We’re going to see three scenes. First of all,

 

• When God calls you out. (Jonah1:1-2)

 

Let’s look at the passage. Say “man overboard!” [listeners respond] Jonah 1:1-2 says this, “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.’” The first thing we read in Jonah is that the word of the Lord came to Jonah.

Do you understand that everything we know about God was not discovered? Everything we know about God has been revealed. God has chosen to disclose Who He is to mankind, and He’s done that by His word. He has spoken. So when we read that the word of the Lord came to Jonah, that is a very significant thing—that God stepped out of time and history and spoke His will to Jonah.

We might ask the questions, “How does the word of the Lord come to us? And how did it come to Jonah? Did he have a dream, did he have a vision, did God deliver a manuscript to him? How do we know?” We really don’t know. The Bible doesn’t really tell us how the word of the Lord came to Jonah; it’s kind of a mystery.

But it’s not a mystery how the word of the Lord comes to us. We know that because of what the Bible says in Hebrews 1:1 says, “Long, long ago in a galaxy far away. . .” No, that’s not what it says, is it? But it’s kind of close. Scripture says this, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by [who?] the prophets [Jonah was a prophet; the writer’s thinking of the prophets here, maybe even Jonah, so God spoke to prophets in a lot of different ways and at many different times], BUT [the way He speaks to us is a little different—notice] in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. . .”

So we understand that one of the titles, in the Bible, for Jesus Christ is this: the Word of God. . .the living Word of God. For thirty-three years God lived among us in flesh and blood. He became one of us. As He lived His life, He revealed—He disclosed—Who God is.

Now Jesus was only here for thirty-three years, so the question for us is, “What happens to us who didn’t live during those thirty-three years?” You see, God has left us—not only the living Word of God—but He’s given us a record of what Jesus is like in the written Word of God. So it is not an insignificant thing when I tell you, every week, “Open your Bibles.” Do you know what I’m saying to you? “God is about to speak! Do you have ears to hear it?”

When we open our Bibles to the Book of Jonah. . .We don’t exactly know how God spoke to Jonah, how the Word of the Lord came to Jonah, but we do know that as we read it, the Word of the Lord is now coming to us. My question for you is, “Do you have ears to hear it? Are you ready to listen to what God has to say specifically to you this morning?”

I know some of you came to church burdened over what’s going on in the world [suicide bombers killed many people in Paris recently], and you probably wish, “God, I wish You would speak to those people over there; I wish You would comfort their hearts.” But the question for you, right here and right now is, “What does God want to say to you?” Are you leaning into that?

Are you burdened for your teenager, are you burdened for your parent, your husband, your wife? Do you want God to speak to them? What does God want to say to you this morning?

[Notice] “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai,” Let’s talk about Jonah. Who was this guy named Jonah? Interestingly, this was not the first time the word of the Lord had come to Jonah. We read, back in the book of 2 Kings (remember, that’s part of the history of Israel), there was a king named Jeroboam. Jeroboam restored the border of Israel (2 Kings 14:25): “[Jeroboam] restored the border of Israel. . .according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet. . .”

So, this is the story: Israel was being threatened by terrorist nations, and at the time an evil king, Jeroboam, was ruling the nation. And it was a little chaotic. But God used Jonah to get a message to the king saying, “I want you to secure the southern border.” Donald Trump would have loved Jonah! He was all about securing the borders. He understood there was a whole lot of illegal immigration going on, there were open doors for terrorists to come in, so he wanted to secure the nation of Israel. God used Jonah to get that message to the king and the king actually did it, and it resulted in the borders of Israel (where God’s people lived) being more secure. That was the first message God gave to Jonah.

The second message God gave to Jonah was not to secure the border, but to cross the border. The first message God gave Jonah had to do with protection from terrorist invasion from Nineveh. The second message God gave to Jonah had to do with planning a gospel invasion of Nineveh. The first message Jonah delivered had to do with keeping the enemy out. The second message had to do with sending a missionary in.

The first message Jonah delivered had to do with the salvation of God’s people; the second message had to do with the salvation of the enemies of God’s people. The first message that Jonah delivered made him a popular, well-known national hero. The second message had to do with him being labeled as a psycho—that somehow he would actually want to go and help people who were the natural-born killers of God’s people.

So, now you might think, “I think I might sympathize a little with Jonah.” The first message was a message of prosperity, and prophets like to deliver messages of prosperity. If you think I like getting up here every week and calling you a dirty, rotten sinner, that is not my favorite thing. I love to stand up here and tell you Jesus has delivered you from your dirty, rotten sin, and if you’ll just trust Him, you’re going to have a prosperous life. That’s a great message!

But in order for you to get there, a faithful prophet often looks at you and says, “You’re nothing but a dirty, rotten sinner!” And that was the message that God wanted Jonah to deliver to Nineveh. And he didn’t want to do it, because that’s not a popular message and that might get you in trouble. That might take you out of your comfort zone. You might even risk your life in saying a message like that if people don’t want to hear it.

Let’s look at Jonah 1:2—here was the message; God said to Jonah,  “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. . .” Let’s learn a little bit about Nineveh. Nineveh was the city that was basically the capital city—or the militaristic depot—of the nation of Assyria. Assyria was an empire. They were natural-born killers of God’s people, they were known for their brutality. When they would kill, they would behead, they would skin their enemies; they would hang their skins on the walls of Assyria, “Just to let you know we mean business.” These were bad people, evil people.

Nineveh was located about five-hundred miles east of Jerusalem and it was located about two-hundred miles north of Baghdad in what is now the city of Mosul. Do you know who is in control of modern-day Mosul? ISIS—natural-born killers of God’s people. Isn’t it amazing how relevant God’s Word is to us today? That’s why we say we need to know what God would have to say to enemies like these.

So God says, I want you to go to this nation and deliver this message. I want you [Jonah] to “call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” Evil. . .the word “evil” is used nine different times in the Book of Jonah, and it’s translated into three different English words in our translations: first of all, “evil;” secondly, “disaster,” and then, thirdly, “discomfort.”

Here’s the message: Nineveh was an evil place filled with evil people who were causing discomfort to God’s people, and because of that they were headed for disaster. Mark it down, this place saturated with evil. But here’s God’s heart: God’s heart is to overcome evil with good, so He selects a prophet and sends him to deliver a warning message to Nineveh.

Have you seen any evil this week? Have you been watching any news [broadcasts]? Let me ask you this, “Do you think a nation or a people is ever too far gone for God? Have you at times been so discouraged by what you see–the saturation of evil in the place where we live—that sometimes you lose hope? Do you understand that no people is beyond the compassion of God, and the only thing necessary for revival to happen is for a good message to be delivered by a good prophet?

That was God’s heart—to resurrect and to restore the most evil place on the planet at the time. And He’s going to choose Jonah to do it. He wants him to deliver the message and call out against these people—just speak truth, to speak in terms of black and white, good and evil.

Let’s make that personal this morning. What is God calling you to do? Do you think that the call of Jonah was so unique and so different from the call that God places on our lives? Do you know that God, right now, is calling some of you to something similar to what God called Jonah to?

Let me say this, if you’re not a Christian—if you’ve never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ—if you’re here trying to figure out, “What do these people believe? What’s this thing about the Bible? Who is this Jesus guy,” do you know that, right now, God is calling you—not to go to Nineveh—God is calling you to come to Christ.

God calls sinners to repent of sin and come and find rescue and hope in the power of Jesus Christ. He was your substitute on the cross, and God treated Him the way He should have treated you. If, by faith, you will embrace what Christ did on that cross you can be saved, you can be delivered, and God will relent from the disaster that He has planned for you. That’s the call that’s going out to you, if you’ve never responded to that message. Today, don’t be Jonah, don’t turn a deaf ear to that, don’t run in the opposite direction. Come to God for salvation through Jesus Christ! There’s a way provided for you to know Christ.

Now, if you are a Christian—if you’ve had that experience some time in the past—God is still calling out people. I believe God’s calling people out today, in this room. God calls every Christian to do what Jonah did, in a general sense. Do you remember the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18? He uses the same word. God says to Jonah, “Arise and go.” He’s saying the same thing to us as a church.

It’s time to leave your comfort zone, it’s time to cross some borders—outside of Granger, maybe—and maybe head into other parts of the city, or maybe even other parts of the world—to be on mission to make disciples, to preach the gospel, and to let the good news of Christ be known. Every Christian is to be a part of that Great Commission call.

God calls some Christians to have an even greater level of responsibility in the leadership and the development of a church or of a ministry, and so I believe that God is calling some of us out today. You’ve heard the call so many times from up here—how our church is growing so rapidly. We need people to step into roles of leadership, to lead small groups, to disciple people—to come alongside of people and help them mature in the Lord. God calls every Christian to go. He calls some Christians to lead. And He calls a few Christians to actually be full-time vocational ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Maybe God’s calling you to do that.

Maybe God is actually calling some of us to leave a comfort zone, to cross a border, to go to a hard place, to leave what we have known, to risk everything in order to penetrate a dark, hard place with the gospel. That’s what He called Jonah to do. Now, you may say, “Well, how do I know what God’s calling me to do? How do I know?” There’s a little book by Dave Harvey that I read this week titled Am I Called? (I think we’ve got some of those available, if you want some of those.) I get this question all the time.

People come up to me and say, “I think God may be calling me to ministry. How do I know?” Well, my question back to you is, “God calls every Christian to do the Great Commission work. Do you witness to your neighbor; do you talk to others about Christ? Have you done that? Are you leading a small group?” If you want the highest level of leadership, the avenue to that is through other levels of leadership.

Part of my story is simply this: I met the Lord when I was fifteen. “The word of the Lord came to Trent,” when I was fifteen and I heard the gospel and I surrendered my life to Christ. I just loved being at church, because that’s where God’s people were and that’s where God’s message was, and I was just absorbing all that. I would make different excuses to find a way to go to church on Thursday afternoon at two: “I wonder what the youth pastor’s doing. I think I’ll stop by in there.”

There was a ministry opportunity that became available at our church. The church was hiring, so I applied for the position. My first ministry at the church was janitor. That was my ministry. And the ministry job description included cleaning the toilet. That’s ministry.

You say, “I really feel called to preach. I just want to be up there! The lights are so bright, and everybody sits and listens to you, and. . .” Yeah, the path to the pulpit is through the toilet—that’s what I’m telling you. Start with the toilet [laughter], vacuum the carpet, set up the tables. . .Pretty soon somebody asked me if I’d teach a seventh-grade Sunday School class. You have not lived until you have tried to teach seventh-grade boys something from the Bible! If you can teach seventh-grade boys, this [preaching a sermon to a congregation] is easy. . .I’m telling you right now.

You do the little things, you do the things you don’t get credit for, you do the things nobody thanks you for. That’s ministry! Do you want a platform—or do you just want to get the gospel out?

That little book I mentioned earlier, by Dave Harvey, Am I Called?. . .he’s got six questions. If you want to know if you’re called. . .Are you godly? Because we don’t need ungodly people in ministry. Do you practice spiritual disciplines? Do you meet with the Lord, do you read your Bible, do you pray, do you talk to other people? That might be an indication that God has something more for you. Are you godly?

Here’s another one: How’s your home? You see, you don’t skip over your spouse and skip over your children and try to reach the world. If it’s not happenin’ at home, you’re not qualified to reach anybody else. Start at home.

Here’s the third question: Can you preach, can you teach, do you know the Bible? When you open the Bible and talk to people, do people fall asleep. . .do they leave. . .do they get mad. . .or do you have a way of guiding the truth around the mental roadblocks that people have built up in their lives and they walk away saying, “I think I want to do that.” That would be an indication that maybe God has another opportunity for you.

Can you shepherd? It’s not just about happens up here, but it’s about all the things that happen one-on-one and one-on-two, and discipling, and untying knots in people’s lives and all the different things they have tied up in their lives.

Do you love the lost?. . .not just do you love to hang out at church, ‘cause it’s easier here. . .but do you love to penetrate the  hard places?

Does anybody agree with you? That’s probably the most important question. You think you’re called, but does anybody say, “We see so much giftedness and so much fruitfulness in your life that we want to ‘buy up’ all your hours—we want you doing anything else. We want you doing this, because you’re so valuable in the church.”

James MacDonald says it this way: “God is not calling you full-time until God needs, full-time, what you’re already doing part-time.” So, if you think you’re called to ministry, then minister. The avenue to greater ministry is through a thousand small things that you do faithfully in the Lord.

So, Jonah’s first ministry assignment = A+. His second ministry assignment—let’s see how that went. Because the second scene we’re going to see is not just when God calls you out, but:

 

• When you run away (Jonah 1:3).

 

Look at verse 3, “But Jonah rose. . .” Now, what would you expect to follow that? God comes to Jonah and God says, “I want you to go to Nineveh.” You would expect to read, “And Jonah rose and went to Nineveh.” No, that’s chapter 3, verse 3. So we have a twenty-six-verse detour that we have to go through to find out what happened next.

Scripture says, “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 and went down into it [onboard], to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”

Let’s talk about Tarshish. Where was Tarshish? Do you like to use the maps in the back of your Bible? If you turn back there and look at your maps, you would not find Tarshish. So, stop turning back there—you’re wasting your time. Nobody really knows where Tarshish was. It’s kind of an ancient city that was lost to antiquity. All we know is that it was somewhere in the western Mediterranean.

This is what we do know about Tarshish: It was in the opposite direction of Nineveh! Nineveh was five-hundred miles to the east; Tarshish was across the Mediterranean Sea to the west. In order to get to Tarshish, Jonah had to go down to a place called Joppa—a Mediterranean coastal city where there was maritime trade and all these maritime routes going across the Mediterranean. Jonah says, “I am getting on a boat and I am going in the opposite direction!”

So the question isn’t really, “Where is Tarshish?” Because we don’t really know. A better question is, “What was Tarshish?” What we know about Tarshish is this, it’s a place in the opposite direction from God. Apparently, Jonah could not trust the wisdom and the character of God, and so he came up with a detour. He said, “I think I’ve got a better plan. I’m going in the opposite direction!”

Now, I know that most of you—if you stretched yourself out of bed and came to Harvest Bible Chapel this morning, you came here because, “I kind of want to go in the direction of God.” How many of you would be honest enough to say, “Yeah, I like to go in the direction of God—I think I’d like that.” That’s why you’re here: “Give me some direction and I’ll go that way!”

Listen—no matter how long or how far you’ve followed the direction of God—WARNING—you are one step away from heading in the opposite direction. Today you will be faced with choices, today you will be tempted. Every time you choose—every time you are tempted—you make the choice to either move in the direction that God has called—or—turn your back on Him and go your own way. Jonah made a choice to turn his back on God and go in the opposite direction, toward Tarshish.

Here’s another thing we know about Tarshish. Tarshish was a place where a ship was always going, and the same is true for you. If you want to run from God, there will always be an Uber driver there to take you! [laughter] The devil will make sure! There are all kinds of vehicles that we use to take the opposite direction from God.

Sometimes it’s as simple as an excuse, right? If you talk to the average person out there—he doesn’t know God, love God—you invite him, “Hey, why don’t you come to my church?”. . .what’s the number one, most popular answer to that question? “Uh, no, I don’t want to go to a place with all those hypocrites!” Do you know what he did? He grabbed an available vehicle to give him a reason to go in the opposite direction. His vehicle of choice was “hypocrites in church.” My answer to that is, “Yeah, there are hypocrites in my church. You’ll fit right in! Because, at some point, we have all got issues,” right? “So just come be part of us. We’re just trying to figure it out, and everyday we’re trying to make choices to move in the right direction.”

Some people use the excuse of hypocrites. . .some people use the excuse, “Oh, if you knew how hard my life has been you would understand why I can’t obey God. If you knew the kind of mom and dad I had—if you knew the limitations, the hardships in my life. . .if you knew the way people have treated me. . .I can’t obey God, because people have let me down. If you knew how hard my marriage is! I can’t obey God. If you knew the temptations—the place I work and the language they use there. . .” So, you’re using the vehicle of your surroundings to keep you from obeying God. It’s an excuse.

Other people actually use physical substances: alcohol is available; media is available to try to numb the pain (your music, movies—to try to create a fantasy world, because this one’s so hard.) Some people actually, literally, take a trip away from God on drugs. There have been many people who have used a love relationship to take them away from God. “This is the love boat,” That takes you away from God.

You say, “I can’t obey God because I’ve got this person and I don’t want to lose this person.” What you’re saying is that you love this person more than God—and that is idolatry. And in order to obey God, you may need to break up with the person who has become the vehicle taking you away from God. If you want to turn your back on God, the devil will always make sure there is a ship to take you there.

Here’s the third thing we know about Tarshish: It’s a place where the cost of living is high. Look at this: Jonah paid the fare and went aboard. Jonah paid a price for disobeying God, and he was willing to pay it! I believe this is what kind of happened in Jonah’s mind (if it didn’t happen in Jonah’s mind, it happens in yours—it happens in mine). There’s a high cost to obeying God, and we kind of calculate, “Boy, it’s going to cost me this if I do this, and it’s going to cost me this—I might lose that relationship. The cost of obeying God is so high! The cost of disobeying God. . .I think I could afford that!”

The problem is this: this was not the last price that Jonah was going to pay for his disobedience. He paid the fare, but the old famous sermon is true: “Sin will take you farther than you want to go; sin will keep you longer than you want to stay; and sin will cost you more than you want to pay.” Have you ever heard this message? It’s the first sermon that every preacher preaches. So, if you are called to ministry, just write that little outline down. It works everywhere!

Sin will take you farther than you want to go; sin will keep you longer than you want to stay; and sin will cost you more than you want to pay. Jonah paid a price for his disobedience and he’s going to pay an even higher price.

No matter what it might cost you to obey God—and it is costly to obey God, no doubt—but please hear me! It is not near as costly as disobeying God! So, do the right thing, do the hard thing, and you will come out better on the other side.

Here’s the fourth thing, Tarshish is a place where God can still find you. I don’t know what Jonah was thinking, like, God doesn’t live in Tarshish? God’s off limits? No, God’s there, too. The reason we know that is because of what we find in Psalm 139, which says: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, where shall I flee from your presence?” This is what we call the omnipresence of God—God is everywhere present at the same time.

God is here in church today, and when you walk out the door, He’s going to be waiting for you out there. And when you get home, He’s going to be there too, and He’s going to be at that bar on Friday and Saturday night, and He goes with you on the date, with the person—He sees it all, He knows it all, He is with you. You cannot flee from God’s presence. “If I ascend [go] to Heaven,” that’s an easy one. Is God there? Yes, He is. You are there.”

“If I make my bed in Sheol, in the place of the dead. . .” Yeah, “You’re on the other side of the grave there, too. You are there.” He goes on, “If I take the wings of the morning. . .maybe I could get up so early that God’s not even awake!” No, as a matter of fact, God doesn’t sleep. So there He is, when you wake up.

“If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea [Jonah needed to know this], even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” [Psalm 139:8-10] You can’t go so far that you will ever be outside of the reach of God.

Here’s the fifth thing about Tarshish. Tarshish is a place you should leave right now! I am looking into the faces of some people who have lived in Tarshish for years. Years ago, God called you to do something and you said, “No.” And you’re running as a fugitive from God. It may have been disobeying parents, it may have been entering a relationship that took you down, it may have been a financial decision that lacked integrity.

It may have been something God called you to do in your marriage, and you said, “No.” And it was at that point you started heading in the opposite direction from where God wanted you. Here is the grace and compassion of God—He brought you here today. The word of the Lord has come to you today and He’s telling you, “Arise, go! Get out of Tarshish!” Risk whatever it costs you. Leave your comfort zone, cross the border of disobedience. If you don’t, you’re going to end up in scene:

 

• When God chases you

 

Look at Jonah 1:4, “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.” Have you ever been in a storm? —not a literal storm. . .we have all experienced that—but have you ever been in a situation where you just felt like, “The wind is just blowing against me. I cannot seem to go at the pace I want to go! It seems like every attempt to move in this direction is met with an obstacle!” That’s a storm. Have you ever stopped long enough to ask yourself, “Maybe I’m going in the wrong direction? My relationships seem to end in dysfunction and chaos. I can’t seem to keep a job. It doesn’t seem like I can ever save any money. It seems like I never get my prayers answered!”

Have you ever stopped long enough to consider, maybe you’re headed in the wrong direction and you need to turn around and understand that maybe it is your own sin that has invited the storm? Sin always invites a storm. Now listen, not every storm is the result of sin. Sometimes those storms in our life are trials, sometimes they are because of the sins of other people, and we’re caught up in what somebody else did wrong (that’s next week’s sermon, by the way).

But every time you sin, every time you run from God, it invites God to hurl a storm at you. This is what was happening to Jonah. The hurricane that was happening on the inside of Jonah was met with the hurricane that God graciously sent to Jonah: Hurricane Jonah, meet Hurricane Gracie.

God sent Jonah just enough difficulty—just enough pain—to get his attention, to let him know, “You are not where you are supposed to be. You are not headed in the direction you are supposed to be moving.” So, He is in the process of turning Him around. Here’s what we learn from this: God is committed to sinking every ship that threatens to take you away from Him. That’s how much He loves you!

So, in the midst of the storm—can I warn you—don’t curse God! That storm and that difficulty and that chaos that you’re experiencing right now—that’s not what you think it is. That is a gracious God trying to get your attention to try to get you to move in the direction that He wants you to go. So stop cussing Him and stop blaming Him for how difficult your life is. You might want to wake up and ask yourself, “At what point did I start walking away from God?” and “Is this a loving God chasing me down to send me in the right direction?”

Here’s the truth: There is no refuge from God; there only is refuge in God. So, if you’re resisting Him, if you’re rebelling against Him, if you are running from Him, you’ll never find the peace and the satisfaction you think you are looking for—outside of God. God did not design life to go well when you are headed away from Him.

Here’s the good news of the gospel: As fierce as the wind is, as chaotic as the storm is, it’s nothing compared to the storm Jesus Christ faced on the cross—for you. Sin invites a storm, but the good news of the gospel is, God has diverted the wind and the waves away from you and poured them out on His Son Jesus—so that you could be in right relationship with Him.

God should have sunk all of our boats long ago, yet He is using this opportunity to get you headed in the right direction. Jesus endured the fierce storm of God’s wrath on your behalf, so that in the middle of your storm you would have an opportunity to turn and repent and head back to God. That’s how God chases you down!

So, are you running from God? Listen, the first step toward getting right with God is recognizing and being willing to admit humbly, “I’m a fugitive. My heart has been away from God. I don’t trust God’s direction.  I would rather trust my own bearings. I want to do what I want to do.” If that’s you, the first step toward God is admitting it—you’re running from God. And the second step is to turn around and get going in the direction He’s called you to.

So what is God calling you to do? Is God calling you, maybe, as a person who’s yet to believe, who’s yet to surrender your life to Christ? Is that what God’s calling you to do this morning? Then do that! We’ll give you an opportunity to do that.

Maybe you stopped following hard after God—you’re coasting—you’re just kind of drafting off of what other people are doing—and yet the little thing God’s calling you to do—is what you need to do this morning. God’s probably not calling most of us to sell our house, pack up everything we own and move to Mosul to evangelize ISIS—although He may be calling some of you to do that.

For most of us, God is calling us to do some little thing that is probably undetectable to others, but you know in your conscience, that’s the thing that God wants you do.

So, why don’t we bow our heads here a minute, and would you just talk to God about that? Maybe your first step is to say, “I’m a fugitive. I’ve heard Your voice—I don’t like it. I think the price is too high. I don’t know why You’re calling me—You didn’t call other people to do that. Lord, call somebody else.” If that’s you this morning, why don’t you just humble yourself and admit, you’re a fugitive from God. . .

Then, whatever area He’s put His finger on, just agree with God and say, “God, I will obey. I’m going to follow you, I’m going to turn. Thank you for another chance; thank you for the storm.” Tell Him about the storm. Say, “Lord, it seems everything is falling apart, the boat is breaking up—and instead of thanking You, I’ve cursed You. God, I want the wind and the waves to stop, but more than that I just want to know that I am moving in Your direction.”

So, Lord, we come to You this morning as fugitives. All of us have areas in our lives that are bent away from You, yet Lord I know that there are people here today that—even though they are in church, have brought their Bible, look good, talk the language—there are obvious areas where they have refused to move in the direction You’ve called them to move. So, God, I pray for them this morning. Thank you for the storms that are a sign that You are willing to hurt us just enough to turn us around.

 

 

 

 

 

SLW