Jonah 1:1-6 Sailing from the Mission

This week our pastor Don Filsack brings us a message out of a series entitled Embracing the

Mission of God, a Study through the Book of Jonah. As many of you know we're going to be launching into a brand new series here for the next few weeks.

We're going to be going into the Book of Jonah and I think it might be eerie for those of you who have been a part of the journey through the

Book of Acts so far and obviously we're not all the way through the Book of Acts but that the way that that theme, that central theme of the

New Testament of the mission of God starting something new or doing something amazing, how that carries through.

So I think a lot of times we can have in our mind this kind of concept of an Old Testament God and a

New Testament God. Have any of you had that in your mind or experienced that a little bit? Kind of like there's a little bit of difference, okay, right?

But God's mission has not changed. The subtitle of this series is Embracing the

Mission of God and fortunately we're going to get there by watching a poor example of that.

We're going to be watching and seeing the life of a person who does not embrace the mission of God and is actually running from the mission of God and today we're going to see him running away from that mission.

But despite our first impressions about this Old and New Testament God, a plan of mercy and grace to the nations has always been the point.

It's always been pointing forward towards Jesus Christ and now we live in a time when it's pointing backwards towards Jesus Christ and that's kind of the point of all of history.

The centerpiece is Jesus Christ and ultimately the establishment of his kingdom, a kingdom of people who are bought back from sin and from death and from destruction.

A kingdom ultimately that crosses all boundaries of race, politics, ethnicity, language, and culture.

And that's what God has been doing for centuries, for millennia. That has been from the time that we sinned and we broke this creation and Adam and Eve fell.

From that time forward God has been working out a plan, one consistent theme that rings throughout all of Scripture.

God purchasing back his creation for his honor and for his glory and he did so through Jesus Christ.

And so again we live at a time where we can look back at that. But this morning we're going to be introduced to a man who's running from that mission, who's running from that vision of God.

And as Jonah runs we get to watch the relentless and severe mercy of God towards Jonah.

It's relentless and it's severe but it is mercy, it is grace. You see

God, we're going to see, loves Jonah too much to let him sail off into obscurity. God has a plan for Jonah and so ultimately he loves

Jonah like a hurricane and he's going to bend Jonah like a tree. And how many of you know that a tree has a breaking point?

How many of you ever, have you seen that recently? Okay probably all of us experience that in our neighborhoods and around.

There's a point, and any of you ever felt that way in life? Like there's a level of flexibility isn't there in our,

I mean, we have varying degrees, would you agree with that? Varying degrees of flexibility. How much can we stand before the pressure starts to kind of crack, crack, crack, and eventually, have you ever felt like maybe you're just going to break?

I think Jonah felt like that in this text and we're going to see at least a boat that felt that way. The boat thought it was going to break apart.

But we're going to see as we come to worship God this morning, I want us to think through specifically this first song because I picked this first song intentionally.

Dave and I sit down every week and walk through this and I wanted to walk through the opening lines of the song because as we sing it,

I think sometimes we can misunderstand what the words mean to the song. So I wanted us to see particularly how it shows, it talks about how

God loves us and that love is sometimes shown in hardships and difficulties of life.

Sometimes his love comes to us as hard things, difficult things. So here are some of the lyrics.

We sing these often. He is jealous for me, speaking of God. He loves like a hurricane.

I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. You see, what these lines are saying is

God is able to do what is necessary in my life and in your life to get our attention.

And that means sometimes his love for me is best expressed in hurricanes, strong storms.

Obviously we're talking figuratively but we actually got to see a real one, a literal one on Monday, right? Huge storm rolls through and we've got a perfect picture.

By the way, I was studying this text. I was studying about the storm, when the storm rolled through and I was sitting in the office and I looked up and the sky was black and I was like, case study.

I was just like, here we go. Pretty awesome. But the lyrics go on.

So God's love, are you getting what I'm saying? God's love sometimes comes to us in those hard things.

Sometimes that is his expression of love, is to grab our attention, to get us back to where we need to be. How many of you acknowledge that there are times in life where you need a reset?

You actually need God to reset you and he sometimes does that and it's not always easy. Would you agree with that?

Not always easy. But the lyrics go on, that all of a sudden, in a moment, the afflictions that God sends me can be eclipsed by his glory.

Because if I focus on him, I see his beauty and his amazing love for me and I recognize that what he is doing is for my best.

It is in my best interest and that's something that you have to come to that conclusion. It is extremely abundantly annoying if somebody else tries to drive you to that conclusion.

Do you know what I'm saying? You're going through hard times and somebody's like, well just what is God teaching you through this?

Why is this happening? Okay, done. You ever feel that way? I mean, for real?

Have you been there? You've got to come to that. I mean, you've got to come to the end of yourself. In a moment, in a sudden glimpse of God's glory, recognize that what he's doing and we're gonna see

Jonah out on the sea, in a storm, significant danger. I mean, mortal danger to him and these sailors and it's not comfortable.

It's not a happy, fun place. But in a moment you can see that ultimately these hardships are because of his love for you.

Unfortunately, we're gonna see throughout the book of Jonah a painful illustration of a man who never gets there.

He never gets to the place of having the glory of God eclipse the hardships and the difficulty.

But I can encourage you and I want to encourage you to go there this morning as we come to worship.

Can we try, work hard, ask God for his grace to recognize his love for us and that his love is too much to protect us from storms, too much to protect us from cancer, from autism, whatever it might be in your life that is the hardship that is driving you to your knees.

Whatever it is that almost is breaking you in half. And I recognize that as I look out here,

I mean, some of you are going through pretty good times. Some of you are going through extremely difficult times. Some of you are going through a fight with your, you know, for your very life right now.

He lets us face hardships so that ultimately we might be drawn closer to him. And so I want you to open your

Bibles, please, to Jonah chapter 1. So we read this passage, Jonah 1, 1 through 6, just so that we can get a good glimpse of what a running man looks like here.

Page 658 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, 658. If you're going to try to find

Jonah in your own Bible, it's probably going to take a few minutes. It's a small book in an obscure corner of the

Bible, but Jonah 1, 1 through 6. And if you don't own a Bible, I'd encourage you to take the one that's in the seat back in front of you with you.

That's a free gift from us to you. We want everybody to own a Bible. But page 658 in that Bible. Follow along as I read.

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.

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 on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the

Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was threatening, so that the ship threatened to break up.

Then the mariners 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.

But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship, and had lain down and 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. Let's pray.

We're gonna obviously be diving into the book of Jonah here, pun intended, and the the setting for the book of Jonah I think helps a little bit for us to kind of understand who is this dude

Jonah that we're gonna be looking at over the next several weeks. So there's one other reference to the to the prophet

Jonah in the Bible that's not found in the book of Jonah, so if you're taking notes and you want to go back and kind of check me on this, 2nd

Kings chapter 14, where you probably spend a lot of your personal reading and you get a lot of, you know, sustenance from that, you know, each and every day you're probably looking for something from the from the book of Kings.

But 2nd Kings 14 verse 25 is the only other verse in the entire Bible that mentions the name

Jonah the son of Amittai, this exact same prophet. He even gives his father's name so that we know we're talking about the same dude.

But to get the bigger context, it's really 2nd Kings 14 23 through 28 to understand everything that's being said about him there.

Now from that passage we get some of the setting, we understand where he was in history. So he is actually a prophet in the days of King Jeroboam, a king of the northern tribe of Israel, and it's

King Jeroboam 2 .0. Now there was a King Jeroboam 1 .0, and I don't know, he's probably like the, he was an evil wicked king, so it's probably more like the

Vista thing or something like that, so 2 .0 he brought in even more wickedness and more evil.

Some of you aren't very techie, so you didn't get that, but some of you used Vista and know what

I'm talking about. But okay, so he was a wicked king, but so what did prophets usually do with wicked kings?

Anybody have any ideas? What were prophets usually saying to wicked kings? Quit it, cut it out, change your ways, you know, all of this stuff.

Jonah was a different kind of prophet during that time, because despite the wickedness of the king over Israel at the time, this is a time of a divided kingdom, by the way, so there was a united kingdom, all of Israel, the kind of a golden heyday under Saul, David, Solomon, three main kings.

Solomon's son Rehoboam made some boneheaded decisions, like sons sometimes do, and totally tore the kingdom in half by his foolishness.

And so one guy, Jeroboam, took the northern ten tribes, and another dude, the son of Solomon, Rehoboam, took the southern two tribes.

And so we've got this divided kingdom going, and Jonah is a prophet to the northern part of that, as I said earlier.

So with that, you got this wicked king, and Israel is going through the process of expansion.

They're in this expansion campaign, their borders are growing, they are on the list of who's who among the nations of the

Middle East during this time. You know, if you're playing Age of Empires 2, or you're playing some video game, and you get these...

okay, I'm losing a lot of you... you got these lists of nations here, and on the list of nations, things are going really well for Israel right now.

They're at the top of the list. So Jonah was used to, and this is what the whole reason

I'm even setting this out, Jonah was accustomed to positive prophecy, saying good things.

That was his MO as a prophet. He's literally going to this king, Jeroboam, who's wicked, and he's saying,

God has told me that your kingdom is going to expand during your reign, and it's going to be good, and things are going to go well.

And it's like, that's that was his MO. That's how he rolled. So you kind of get a little bit of who he was by what he prophesied earlier, what we already know about him from the book of 2

Kings. He was pro -Israel at a time where Israel was rocking. So you got to set that stage in your mind that that's who this guy is.

He is for Israel, but not so much for Israel's enemies. He is not even prophesying that they're going to be destroyed, which they will eventually for their wickedness.

So that's our dude for the next several weeks. That's this guy. He's used to saying good things to the king.

And we see from the start right away, obviously he's a prophet. The Word of the Lord came to him, giving him instructions.

Oftentimes a prophet, the Word of the Lord comes and says something, and he's supposed to go and repeat that. But that's not what happens here.

He's actually just given some instructions, go and do these things. He's told to arise, to go to Nineveh, and to call against them.

Three simple commands. Arise, go, and call.

And God even gives a reason for his call. He says, here's why I want you to go do this. Now how many of you know that God doesn't owe us an explanation for the things that he wants to do in our lives?

Are you aware of that? He doesn't owe us an explanation. But oftentimes we find in Scripture that he's gracious enough to give the reason.

And the reason here is the wickedness of the Ninevites. These people have something specific about their wickedness, their evil.

Now does God know all wickedness? Does he see everything that happens on this globe? He sees everything that goes here.

But something unique about the Ninevites literally grabbed his attention. It was like, whoa, this is getting bad. Okay, so you got to put that in perspective and realize

God sees everything, but particularly their wickedness was rising up before him. And so God calls

Jonah to go and call against them. But there's one huge problem for this prophet of Israel.

He's being told to go to Nineveh. Nineveh is called a great city multiple times in the book of Jonah, most often by God in the text.

Not great, obviously, because of its moral, upstanding, ethical character, but because it's a huge town.

It's an enormous place. It's not yet the capital at the time of Jonah. It's not the capital of the Assyrian Empire, but it's very prosperous.

It's an up -and -coming political center. Assyria is going to be the nation that is going to eventually roll through northern

Israel, destroy it, decimate it, and exile its people. Now Jonah doesn't necessarily know that at this time, but Assyria is going to be the tool that God uses to judge wicked

Israel on down the road, which you can see some irony in the course of history in Jonah being asked to go to Nineveh and call them to repent.

But because Jonah didn't know that was going to happen, it is primarily about the wickedness of the Ninevites that is causing

Jonah to stand off. It's like, I don't really want to go there. I don't want to call them the repentants, because their wickedness was legendary during Jonah's time.

Even though they're not the primary superpower of the time, they're up -and -coming, and their wickedness is known even to Jonah.

We certainly know that they had obtained God's attention, specific attention, and that's why God is sending

Jonah, and he says that outright. So God said, arise and go. Jonah gets the verbs right.

He rises up and he goes, okay? But he gets the objects wrong in the sentence. So where it's, arise and go to Nineveh, he arises and flees to Tarshish.

Two times in the verse, if you look at verse 3 in your text, we're told that Jonah flees from before the presence of God.

The text there, the words that are used is actually before the face of God. He's trying to get away from God's face.

He's trying to get away from God looking upon him, is the idea here. He goes down to Joppa, and it's interesting to note, there's a lot of poetic structure in the book of Jonah.

It's written in a unique style where it's certainly prose and it's telling us a story, but there's a lot of repetition, a lot of things that we're meant to see.

Like for example, it's very, very clear that this going down to Joppa is the beginning of a descent for Jonah.

He is descending. We're gonna see him going down, going down, going down. Almost any time we see a direction arrow for Jonah, from here forward, it's going to be down, down to Joppa, down into the belly of the boat in a moment, then down into the sea, then down into the whale.

We're gonna see down, down, down, and it's a spiral, and it's like Jonah is going to be spiraling out of control in our text.

But he goes down to Joppa, and Jonah, ironically, finds a ship ready for Tarshish.

He had already made up his mind he wanted to go to Tarshish, this town, and I'm gonna explain it to you in a second. What I want us to see from that is, okay,

Jonah says, I'm gonna run from God, and I'm gonna flee to Tarshish, and he gets there, and he finds a ship ready to go to the place that he's trying to flee to.

Now, circumstantially, does that sound like maybe fate is on his side or something? To put this in perspective of timing in the historical and cultural setting,

Tarshish was a three -year round -trip journey from Joppa. It took you three years to get there, so the chances that a ship ready for Tarshish are there in port at Joppa are slim to none at the time that he needs it.

He goes down, there's a ship there. Now, what I want to point out from that is not everything that circumstantially seems to be going peachy in your life is circumstantially peachy in your life.

Do you see what I'm saying? Just because your wheel lines up and doors are opening doesn't mean you ought to go running through every open door.

You getting what I'm saying here? You can easily go, oh, well, God must be in it because it blah blah blah, and everything fell into place, and then crash and burn later, and be like,

God, why? Why? You see what I'm saying? I mean, and ultimately, Jonah could go down to that ship and say, oh,

God provided a ship. Obviously, he wants me to go to Tarshish when he knows what God has asked of him, and I've heard people say that all the time.

Well, God wants me to divorce her because these things have happened this way. I've heard that with my ears.

God wants that for me. But maybe there's something here that God has told you directly that you ought to think about, or that has clearly been revealed to you.

Like, didn't God come to Jonah and say, I want you in Nineveh? He could easily point to the circumstances and say otherwise, but how many of you know that running from God is misguided?

Did you know that? A couple of you think so? I don't know what the rest of you who didn't respond to that are thinking, but let me tell you that running from God is misguided, okay?

He paid the fare, even though this is likely a large cargo ship.

They would be pretty eager to have a paying customer, and the word that's used for paying the fare is likely that he basically paid so that they wouldn't bring anybody else on board.

He paid the total of anything that they would bring anybody on board for passage.

So he's paid a sum of money, a large sum, and what I want to point out is that Jonah is willing to part with his own personal wealth, with some of his own personal wealth at least, to escape the mission that God is calling to him.

He is running, and he's running hard. He's willing to sacrifice even finances to get away from this.

Now Tarshish is not easy to locate with certainty. If you look on the maps in the back of your Bible, you might actually see

Tarshish. Probably not just in a simple map, but if you were to get a Bible atlas, they would have it over in Spain somewhere, and that seems to be quite likely.

There's a town with a name in Latin that's very similar to Tarshish, and so people make that connection and say, okay, that's probably it.

Ultimately what we need to know is that it was legendary in ancient writings as a place where the name of God was not named.

So in Jewish writings that are extra biblical, that are not biblical, or not part of the

Bible, in ancient writings that Jews wrote, they were like, if you wanted to talk about a place where God wasn't named, where nobody knew about God, it was

Tarshish. So out in Tarshish, the place where nobody worships God, Elohim, Yahweh, the

God of the Old Testament. And so it was legendary in that standpoint, but it was also considered to be the extreme edge of the known world.

So that if you wanted to talk about Timbuktu, or maybe some of those places, would you use Timbuktu that way? Like a place that's out in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of society, at the edge of the world, or something like that.

Tarshish was that Timbuktu to them. So that is ultimately where we're looking at when we're saying he's planning to go to Tarshish.

He's heading west when God told him to go east.

Now I want to say this, because I think we can give Jonah a bad rap and not really understand. I don't believe that Jonah really thought he was going to lose

God. I don't think he literally thought he was going to go someplace where God physically is not present.

Have you thought that before? Like he's running from the face of God, like he's trying to get away. Like how dumb was this guy?

I mean really, literally. Or maybe we're being kind of silly just for thinking he was that dumb. Does that make sense?

Because I mean of course he knows he can't. He's a prophet of God for goodness sake. He's been serving the Almighty.

He knows he's not going to get away. So what's he doing? I mean let's really give

Jonah a little credit here. I believe he's trying to lose his calling. The idea of being before the face of God is one of service to him.

I mean a prophet would seem to be before the face of God in receiving revelation and then disseminating that and spreading that to God's people and going about doing the duty that he's been called to.

And he's trying to lose all that. He's done being a prophet. He wants to stop representing God.

He's trying to get to the southern coast of Spain for a nice retirement from his religious duties. By the way, good choice of location.

Have you been to southern Spain? Awesome. Okay, good place to retire if you're looking for a place to retire. Jonah is trying to do it up in style.

But one does not easily lose their calling, especially when God is the voice that is doing the calling.

So the Lord hurled a great wind. Anybody here ever experienced a great wind? About 80 miles per hour recently?

If you're looking out the window last Monday, you got a glimpse of the awe of a great wind. I was standing right over here when that storm started to come across.

And I was watching out those windows and just watching. I mean those trees almost touching the ground. It was just intense, amazing.

Deidre was here in the morning and she was over there at the office center working. And at one point I finally said,

Deidre, maybe we would just kind of go away from the windows for a second here. It was kind of like, that's gonna just all come in.

It just felt like that. Did anybody get to look out the windows while that thing was coming across? Intense, amazing.

Okay, so I don't need really any other explanation because God gave a perfect case study this week about an amazing storm. The only thing

I need to add is put yourself out to sea on Monday. Put yourself on the ocean on Monday.

And now you're getting a perspective of what God is doing with Jonah here. They've set off, they've set sail, and they are on their way.

Rickety old ship and the storm comes up. Anybody else thinking like me?

No thanks. Okay, Lynn and I had a chance to cross the Tasman Sea going from New Zealand on a cruise ship over to Australia.

Awesome trip of a lifetime. No, we're not just that wealthy. Somebody actually bought that for us. Amazing trip for our 10 -year anniversary.

One day on that cruise, we woke up in the morning and couldn't see land.

There was only one day like this. Woke up in the morning, couldn't see land. Went to bed that night, couldn't see land. It was crossing the Tasman Sea, basically a three -day passage, leave the port, and then out to sea for basically a full day and then another half day.

During that crossing, some storms swirled up. We never saw lightning, never really saw the storm itself, but they were out there somewhere.

33 -foot swells out on that ocean that night. You could feel the front of the cruise ship slam down on the waves.

Cruise ship. Huge ship. Okay, enormous. I skipped dinner that night. I was green.

Now, when I say I skipped dinner, you need to understand what I'm talking about when I say I skipped dinner, okay?

And I just got to lay this out for you to just show, I mean, just the intensity of what it's like to be at sea in a storm. Okay, I could have had prime rib, lobster, crab legs, as much as I wanted, and the waiter would have cracked the crab legs for me at my seat if I had asked him.

All the dessert that I wanted. Did I mention I skipped dinner that night? And not only did I skip dinner, but I literally went to bed in place of dinner.

I was just like, I got to get out of this. I just got to lay down and just try to get someplace else other than right here.

This was the kind of storm where if I wanted to go to my office, I would start off in this direction and eventually end up over at my office.

It was literally like you pick a line in one direction and go, I'm going to, I got to get over here, so I'm going to start heading this direction.

The fury of a storm at sea is something that's terrifying. Has anybody else experienced that? It is intense.

It's crazy. Everybody ought to try that sometimes. The text gets kind of funny because, again, it's a little bit poetic, but it actually personifies the ship and it says, well, the ship, you know, the ship was thinking maybe it ought to just break up.

Okay, maybe the ship is thinking, maybe I just snap in half. We see that the sailors are afraid here.

Now, these are seasoned mariners, you know, argh and stuff, and they are scared.

Okay, they're terrified. Now, how many of you know when the captain of the ship is scared, that does little for my confidence? Okay, do you know what

I'm talking about? I was flying on a plane into a ship hole in Amsterdam, and the captain of the ship, yeah, the captain of the airplane called across the thing.

He said, I just want to tell you there's 30 mile per hour crosswinds as we're coming in. We have to land now. We're next up in line, and stewardess says go ahead and have everybody assume impact positions.

Anybody ever been in an airplane and, you know, you've seen that. Anybody ever read the card where you see this in your head?

We did that, okay, and I was like, you don't want to do that, right? You're just kind of like, did people really do that?

Yeah, we did, and we came in, and we got two landings for the price of one. I mean, it was the stiffest landing. I thought it was done.

Like, everybody just screamed, and it hit, and we were back in the air again, and then down again, and it was intense, okay, and I looked up at the stewardess at one point during that, and she was pale.

She was white as a sheet, and I thought, this is not good. You know, if she would have been cheery and happy, that would have been nice, but she was not pleasant, and I was like, okay, if she's scared,

I'm scared. Okay, now we're there, so you kind of get this idea that even the mariners are afraid, and so that's what makes this whole picture even more funny, what we're going to see next in verse 5.

This is going to show the depth to which Jonah has sunk, really, in just a few short verses. Sailors are praying.

They're working to save the ship, working to save their lives, working to save Jonah's life. They're throwing cargo into the sea to allow the ship to ride higher so it takes on less water, but Jonah's going down deeper, even down into the bottom of the ship, and he's laying down, and he's gone to sleep.

You ever heard the phrase, no rest for the wicked? It's not true. Sound sleep is not just reserved for those with a clear conscience, but also sometimes sound sleep comes to those who just don't care.

You know what I'm talking about? And that's what's happening here. Jonah, the one who is the cause of the storm, is doing absolutely nothing to help, but is down sleeping in the bottom of the ship.

So the captain, the word captain there, is literally the one in charge of the ropes.

That's a literal translation of that word, the one in charge of the ropes, the one who guides the ship and catches the wind with the sails and all of that stuff.

He wakes him up, and he says, and I'm going to loosely translate this for you, dude, for real, you're asleep?

Like that's what he says. I mean, look at it. I mean, it's a loose translation. Dude, for real.

And what the captain says next is hilarious. If you don't think God has a sense of humor, you've got to look at this down at the, unfortunately, you got to look at it kind of at the

Hebrew level to get it, but God has a sense of humor in this passage. This sailor, this idol -worshipping, non -Jewish, foul -mouthed sailor,

I say foul -mouthed just because he's a sailor, I don't know, but I just had to throw that in. This sailor says these two words to Jonah, arise and call.

What did God tell Jonah to do in the first place? Arise, go, and call.

He's going, he's going, but now he's being told to still arise and call.

And there's, I don't think that that was lost on Jonah, that here this sailor is using the exact same words that God has.

Arise and call, that's what Jonah should be doing, right? Isn't that what he's supposed to be doing? Only in Nineveh.

But now he's being asked by the sailor to arise and to call on his God. The sailor says, perhaps your

God will give thought to us and maybe even be gracious enough to save us.

The storm was so bad that ultimately the captain of the ship assumes that aside from divine intervention, they are all going to be fish food.

The plight of these sailors and Jonah at this point should not be minimized, they are in imminent mortal danger.

This might seem like a strange place to end with this call, but this ultimately concludes the running. This is the section, the passage that has the fleeing on it.

We're going to see next week a little bit more of the revelation of what Jonah, Jonah actually owning a little bit of what he is doing, recognizing before them that he is fleeing and running.

So it might seem like a strange place to kind of end and a little bit abrupt, but I want to point out it didn't take

God any time to catch up with Jonah. He's not going to quickly give up on his chosen prophet.

I'm going to draw a couple of applications from the flow and the focus of this text. A couple of things that I think really, you know, this is an ancient text, but that we could draw out and see where we're at here in 2011.

The obvious central application comes from the concept of running from God. Although none of us bear the title of title and office of prophet, we have been called to be a prophet of God in the mouthpiece and speaking

God's words, God has indeed created each of us for a purpose. Would you agree with that? He has a reason for us, a reason for you, a reason for me.

We have gifts, talents, resources, abilities. Did you hear that list?

Think about yourself. I'm going to say that list again and you think about yourself. Gifts, talents, resources, abilities.

I would suggest that those things in your life add up to a calling on you.

Those things are a part of the package of what God has made you to be.

You have been given, each one of us has been given a stewardship of mind, a stewardship of heart, of skill, a stewardship of stuff, and the fact of the matter is some who have come to faith in Christ can spend all of their lives squandering their gifts and abilities.

You know what I'm talking about? We can do that. Running ultimately from God's calling, the calling and the things that he's given us and the abilities and the talents, soaking up but never giving, ultimately asleep in the bottom of the ship.

It's easy in the modern church to blend in and really only you know, only you know if you're sandbagging in your calling.

Do you know what I'm saying? Now some of you hear that and I mean I'm afraid that some of you hear that and feel guilty who are not sandbagging in your calling.

As a matter of fact, maybe you're pulling somebody else's load too, but so often those who are doing a lot of work are the ones who feel extra super conscious about this and so you're thinking

I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you to really assess, to really figure it out, and that means that not all of us are called to do the same thing.

Would you agree with that? But genuinely assessing the gifts, the talents, the abilities, the resources that God is giving you and then saying, am

I maximizing that? Am I using it for his glory? Am I running from God or am I doing it? And by the way,

I'm wrong. It's not only you who know whether you're sandbagging, but God knows if you're sandbagging, right?

If there's things that that he wants of you, that he wants to do through you, that you are holding back at the reins and saying no,

I'm just not going to go there. I just can't do that. And that leads to the second point that not only does

God know if we're sandbagging, but God can catch up to us, right? He doesn't readily let us go.

He doesn't readily let us just drift off on our own. Now I want to point out, God is not punishing

Jonah with the storm. This is not punishment. We will see ultimately he is saving

Jonah. Saving Jonah from making a massive mistake. Jonah's trying to shed

God, but God in his mercy will not let Jonah get far. We're going to see a remarkable theme of the merciful mission of God here in this book.

The book of Jonah and the prophet Jonah take for granted that God is gracious and merciful.

As a matter of fact, we're gonna see a complaint later that ultimately the reason Jonah doesn't even want to go to Nineveh is because he recognizes that God is merciful and he doesn't want

God to be merciful to Nineveh. He doesn't even want God's mercy.

He wants them to be judged. And so he says no, that's the reason he's running from God.

He wants mercy for himself, Jonah does. He wants mercy for his own people, but not for others, and certainly not for those wicked

Ninevites. And the last application here, lastly comes the major theme of the entire book, and that is

God's merciful mission towards sinners. And we're gonna see him turn this on its head and ultimately demonstrate throughout the course of this book that it's not just Nineveh that needs mercy.

Sinners like wicked Jonah, whose nationalism and religious pride have blinded him to the malignancy of the sin in his own heart.

Those caught up in their own righteousness need the mercy of God. And sinners like idolatrous sailors crying out to Poseidon and Neptune on the deck of a foundering ship need the mercy of God.

So Jonah needs mercy, the sailors need mercy, I guess you could say they're both in the same boat. Thanks, thanks, that was kind.

Some of you are generous in your laughter. Jonah needs mercy, the sailors need mercy,

Nineveh needs mercy. I think it's just kind of neat how it all works out, because everybody we encounter in the story of the book of Jonah, everyone we encounter needs mercy, and graciously we see

God enter the scene. And guess how God reveals himself? A God of mercy.

He is a God of mercy for those who need it, and there is nobody in the book that doesn't need his mercy.

There's irony all throughout this text, and I'm going to conclude with a particular form of irony that I see here, because it flies in the face of the modern church, the way that we sometimes think, and things that I see in my own heart.

Ultimately it is who that's running from God in the text, it's the prophet of God that's running, it's his very prophet, his chosen one, the one who is to serve him.

He's running, the idolatrous captain is begging God's prophet to pray.

Do you see how that's flipped on its head? Isn't that ironic?

The tables are turned, and the ones furthest from the covenant are calling the one who is a minister of the covenant to remember his calling.

Come to this text, where would you expect to find hope in God? God's prophet?

That'd be where you would naturally expect to find it. Where do you expect to see faith?

Often we find that those that appear at faith value to be furthest from God are actually the closest, and often those who have a veneer of being closest to God, unfortunately, are some of the hardest to reach for God.

Have you experienced that in your own life? Have you seen those times when you're putting on a facade of closeness with God are the darkest times in life, aren't they?

The times when you're real and you're authentic are the times where you're growing the most, and I want to point this out, you see the word authenticity on the back wall, it's one of our core values, something that we value here.

It's not a trendy word that just seems to attract young generations, so we threw it on the wall. Authenticity is a theological concept of relationship.

In authentic relationships we recognize our need for a Savior, not just their need for a

Savior. See the difference? Do you hear the difference there? Our need, my need for a

Savior. I'm a pastor, I need a Savior. I've studied the Bible, I have a bachelor's degree in studying the

Bible, and you know what? I need a Savior. That's reality. Jonah had a keen awareness of the sins of others, wasn't so in tune with his own, was he?

Those others need mercy, and he refused to be a conduit by which it would flow to others.

In conclusion, I'm asking for an internal assessment of ourselves. Are we running from God's calling?

If you're taking notes, jot these questions down. I want you to seriously consider these. Are we running from God's calling? Is there mercy you should be showing to others but are denying them?

Is your heart right regarding others? Ask God to search you and point out places of pride and arrogance in your own heart.

And then as we think about coming to communion this morning, God forbid that we should come to communion feeling like we deserve it, feeling like we've earned it.

At communion we remember ultimately how bad we are, don't we? Isn't that kind of part of the point? Is it a joyous thing?

Yes, it's a joyous thing because God has made a way for unrighteous people like me, for sinners like me, and he's made a pathway, a way for us to be saved.

Those most worthy of communion are those who recognize how hopeless they are without Jesus Christ.

If you've pleaded with him to give a thought to you that you might not perish, look at the words of the captain and it's not as though I want to imply that the captain came to a saving knowledge of God in this last passage, but listen to the words and echo that in your mind.

Have you cried this out to God? Perhaps, God, you would give a thought to me that I might not perish.

Have you been to that place where you recognized you were a sinking ship and you were going to be fish food and you were going to be on the bottom, you're gonna be in Davy Jones' locker if you did not get this salvation from God?

If you've done that, if you prayed that, if you've asked God that he might give thought to you that you might not perish, he will save you and cleanse you from your sins on the basis of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

If you've asked him to save you, then I encourage you to come to the communion table during the song to remember the body, his body that was crushed for your sins and his blood that was shed for you.

The fact of the matter is all of us are on a sinking ship. Some here maybe have yet to cry out to God saying give a thought to me that I might not perish.

Would you save me on the basis of what Christ has done? I encourage you to call out to him while there is still time.

Even today you can have hope, you can have forgiveness, and you can have peace through Jesus Christ. If you're here and you do not know that peace, you do not know that forgiveness, please come and talk with me after the service.

I would love to walk through that with you and see if maybe today would be the day that you would give your life over to Christ.