Joel Brooks: If you would turn to the book of Jonah, where we are gonna hear from another missionary, a failed one. You don't meet many people named Jonah, do you? There's a reason for that. Sorry, there's probably somebody here named Jonah. I just realized that.
I've never met one. Jonah chapter 1. 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 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 us a thought a thought to us, that we may not perish. They said to one another, come let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.
So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country?
And what people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, what is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?
For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea, then the sea will quiet down for for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you. Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore, they called out to the Lord.
Oh Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, oh Lord, have done it as it pleased you. So they picked up Jonah, and they hurled him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the mere men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and made vows. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. If you would pray with me. Our Father, we ask that we would hear clearly from You as we look into this text. Lord, that You would speak to us and that You would change us. That my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, Your words would remain and change us.
We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. In Matthew chapter 5, some people came up to Jesus and they asked for proof for Him to give them a sign that He was indeed the Son of God, that He was the Messiah. And Jesus responded to them with these words. He said, an evil and adulterous generation ask for a sign, but no sign will be given to it, except for this, the sign of the prophet Jonah.
It's astounding if you think about it that of all the signs that Jesus could have given or of all the prophets that he could have alluded to, or pointed to, or quoted from, he chooses Jonah. And he says, you wanna know who I am? You wanna sign? Look at the life of Jonah. This is why we're looking at the life of Jonah.
We're gonna spend 4 weeks in this short book, in order that we might understand our savior more. Jonah, the sign of Jonah is way more than just Jesus being in the grave for 3 days, just like Jonah was in the belly of a fish for 3 days. No, the sign goes much deeper than that and I look forward to the next 4 weeks of going through that with you. I love this book. I really love Jonah because I believe it gives us one of the best pictures we have of the gospel.
It's unlike any of the other prophetical books when you study it. All of the other prophetical books, well they have prophecies. I mean, that's why they're called prophetical books. And so if you read Isaiah or Jeremiah or Hosea or Amos or Micah or something like that, you're gonna get these prophecies. You're gonna get these declarations of who God is and these declarations of what sin is, but you don't get any of that in Jonah.
It's not like those. There's no long declarations of sin or statements about who God is. The only declaration of judgment that Jonah gives is when he goes to the Ninevites and he literally says 5 words. Five words. That's, I guess, his prophecy.
Instead, what we are given here, is the story of his life. That that is the prophecy. It's his story. By seeing Jonah run from God, we actually get a really good picture as to what sin is. Sin is running away from God.
And we get a great picture of what grace is. Grace is when God relentlessly pursues us. When He relentlessly pursues Jonah and the Ninevites, we get a beautiful picture of grace. So in all the other prophets, you get things like sin and grace defined for you. But here, they are shown for us.
They're demonstrated for us what these things look like. It's one of the reasons I love this gospel or this prophet. Now Jonah, he was a 8th century prophet. We know this because he's mentioned one other place in the Bible, in 2nd Kings 14. So he's an 8th century prophet, meaning his contemporaries were Hosea and Amos.
This was a very prosperous time in Israel's history, so it's likely that Jonah was a well respected and revered prophet. And it's here at this time that the word of the Lord comes to him and says, I want you to get up and I want you to go to the great city of Nineveh. Now Nineveh was this city far out in the east. It was this growing power. It was evil.
The people of Nineveh were becoming a threat to the Israelites. And so it was understandable why Jonah probably would not want to go there. Another Lord of the Rings illusion, this would be like Frodo being sent to Mordor, alright? You don't want to go there. Why would God send you to a place like that?
But really, it was not because Jonah was scared so much as to go there. We're we're not told the reasons why he won't go in chapter 1. The author saves it for chapter 4. But we find out there that the reason he won't go is just because he doesn't think the Ninevites deserve God's love. He's absolutely fine with him having the love of God.
He thinks he deserves it, but not those people. And we find out that Jonah is nothing more than a self righteous bigot. And there's no other way around it. And he refuses to go to a people like them. Instead, he gets up and he flees.
He hightails it out of there as fast as he can. And what we're seeing here is not just disobedience. This goes beyond disobedience. This is outright rebellion against God. Disobedience would just be, you know, Jonah saying, God, I hear what you're saying, but I think I'm just gonna kinda stay right here.
Or maybe, I might eventually get there. Maybe it's a delayed obedience, which is really disobedience. That's not what you have here. Instead, Jonah hears what the Lord asked him to do and he says, you want me to go this way? I'm going in the exact opposite.
It's complete and total rebellion against God. He says, I hear you loud and clear, but I'm just not gonna do what you want for my life. Uriel Simon, in his commentary on Jonah, he's a Jewish scholar, in his commentary, he says that this phrase, and the word of the Lord came. So as you find that phrase throughout scripture, it's a common phrase in the Bible used to describe the initial calling of a prophet. And the word of the Lord came.
And he says when Jonah flees here, this isn't just disobeying God, he's actually fleeing from God's call on his life. He's rejecting God's will for his life. He's saying, God, I understand what you're saying. I understand that you have created me in order to do this, but I reject that purpose. Not your will, but my will be done.
It's outright rebellion. This isn't like Moses, or Gideon, or Jeremiah, when they received the word of the Lord and they were called, and they put up some resistance. They made excuses. You know, Moses, I can't speak. Jeremiah, I'm too young for this.
They offered excuses, but notice, Jonah doesn't even offer an excuse. He doesn't argue. He just runs. This is a religious, moral, respected member of society, hearing what God wants him to do, and saying no, and running away. It's a great picture of sin.
Now, can any of you in this room relate to this? Can you? If you were in this room, you were likely, you know, somewhat religious. Maybe, somewhat moral. Some of you, you know, you might even be respectable members of society.
You might be like Jonah here, but has there ever been a time where you've run? Perhaps God's asked you to share your faith. I'd like you to share your faith with that person. And you've said, maybe another time, and you've just kinda gone this way. And you decided not to do that.
Has there ever been a time where God asked you to forgive somebody, and you just said, no. No. Or a time where you were supposed to be generous and give with your money, and you said, God, later. Maybe later. All of those things are a form of running.
In which we clearly hear the Lord's call on our life and we decide not to do that. And hear me, when we decide to do that, disastrous consequences follow. That's what we see here. Disastrous consequences. When you choose your will over God's will for your life, know that your life is going to fall apart, just like Jonah's.
So hear me. No matter how scary God's word is to you, no matter how impossible His commands seem to you, if you don't obey, your life falls apart. Look at verse 3. Verse 3, it begins by saying that Jonah's trying to flee the presence of the Lord by going to Tarshish. Then verse 3 ends by basically saying the same thing.
He's going to Tarshish to flee from the presence of the Lord. So it repeats that thing twice in just one verse. And so you have to ask, what's so special about Tarshish? And why exactly does he think he could flee from the presence of the Lord there, in that place? Did he really think that he could outrun God?
Did he really think that there was a place on this earth where God's presence wouldn't be? We just heard earlier, Matt prayed Psalm 139. Oh Lord, where can I flee from your presence? That was a psalm written by David about 300 years before Jonah. He would've been familiar with that.
He would've known you can't flee from God's presence. So what is he doing here? This is what I think is going on. You have Nineveh, which is about 500 miles in this direction. And then you have Tarshish, which is about 500 miles in that direction.
And literally, what he is saying is, I am going to do the exact opposite, Lord, of what you have called me to do. The exact opposite. And I don't think that Jonah believes if he makes it to Tarshish, that God's presence will not be there. I mean, if God's presence could be within 500 miles in that direction in Nineveh, certainly God's presence could be within 500 miles there in Tarshish. I don't think he actually believes he is going to somehow hide from God there.
He knows that God is the God of heaven and earth and that you can't actually run. But I think he's thinking this, if I go there, if I go to Tarshish, there'll be nobody there to remind me that I'm running from God. There'll be nobody there who actually cares. No one in Tarshish reads their Bible. Nobody in Tarshish goes to church.
Nobody worships the Lord God there. If I go there, there's not gonna be a single person who looks at my life and says, you know what you're doing is wrong. You know you're disobeying the Lord. Nobody's gonna point out my sin if I go to Tarshish. And so I think that's why he flees, is so he simply won't have any person there to point to him and remind him of sin.
I heard or read a commentator that said, this is similar to when a girl breaks up with some guy. One of the first things she does is she removes all pictures of him. And to flee from the presence of the Lord, the presence of the Lord really, in Hebrew, is the face of the Lord. And Jonah's trying to remove all pictures of Him. You know, if you do have that break up, the girl, she's gonna change her Facebook status to single.
She's gonna block, maybe her old boyfriend's phone number. She's gonna give away, maybe some of the presents that she received. She's gonna get rid of every reminder that she has of him in their relationship. This is what Jonah's doing. If I get there, I will be removed from every reminder of my relationship with God, and so he flees.
You ever do anything like that? Have you ever tried to flee from God's presence? I think if we're honest, we didn't have to say we all have done that at some point. You know, we Have you ever had a day where you refused to pick up your Bible and read, simply because you know the sin you want to go ahead and do that day? And you don't wanna be reminded that it's wrong, because you've already made up your mind that you're going there.
So so I just, I could just put this aside and I could avoid God's presence. No one would be reminded of your sin or or times where we don't pray. We we avoid prayer because we know, we know to sit in God's presence would be too painful because of the life we've chosen to live. Sometimes we avoid certain people, those godly people who might actually point out our sin. You can't be anywhere near them, because they're just gonna make me feel guilty.
So I can flee from God's presence by just avoiding them. Or perhaps there's a time when God's specifically called you in your life to to go this place or to obey this calling and you have just said no. All of those are examples of running from His presence. And it's likely every person in here has done one of those. We're not really different than Jonah.
So yes, I mean, when I look out here, and I see respectable, moral, religious people, but you don't have me fooled. I shouldn't fool you either. All of us, at times, have wanted to get away from the presence of the Lord and do our own thing. So Jonah runs, and when he runs, God sends this storm to him. Now you need to understand that this storm that the Lord sends is an act of mercy on His part.
Do not see this storm as God's punishment or God's wrath being poured out on Jonah, because that's not the case. God's wrath being poured out on Jonah would have been to let Jonah flee from His presence. That would have been the Lord's wrath. Jonah thought obeying God's call and going to Nineveh would have been hell for him, but that's not hell. Hell is actually fleeing from the presence of God.
That's what hell is. Hell is not when God comes after you. Hell is when God leaves you alone. But God would not leave Jonah alone. Even though Jonah left God, God would not leave him, and so he sends this storm, and it's not just any storm, it's tempestuous.
This storm has seasoned sailors terrified. The translation is somewhat ambiguous in the ESV, but when the storm comes, in the Hebrew, it indicates that Jonah actually waits until he sees the storm coming and then he goes down into the hole. He's not asleep before the storm comes, but as he sees the storm coming, he gets below deck. And while everybody else is working like crazy, Jonah decides to just go to sleep. It's crazy.
He just decides to go to sleep. Now this word asleep here is only used 4 other times in the Bible. It's used when God put Adam to sleep in order to take out one of his ribs. It's used when God put Abraham to sleep, in Genesis 15, And he has that vision of the melting pot. It's when God establishes His covenant there with Abraham.
And then it's used with Daniel. When Daniel went into a deep sleep and had those visions. You know, Daniel chapter 9 on, the visions we can't figure out in the Bible. And then, we have it here. Basically, it means, he was knocked out.
He was knocked out cold. Once again, Uriel Simon and his commentary, he translates this, a sleep unto death. It's a sleep unto death. It's not an ordinary storm that comes, and this is not an ordinary sleep, because one cannot sleep in conditions like this. And what I think we're seeing here, and this is this is just me interpreting this, but what I think we see here is Jonah giving up.
I think he's just giving up. He knows God's coming after him. He sees the storm. He's like, he knows it's coming. He's so tired of running.
He doesn't have the strength or the desire to repent, yet he doesn't wanna keep on going through with the direction he's going, and he's just, he just wants it to end, and he just gives up, and he goes into the hole, and he's like, I'm just gonna lie down. I think it's a sleep of despair. He's too exhausted to run anymore. Have you ever been in a place like that, where you simply just don't care anymore? You don't care about fighting that sin that you were fighting for a while.
You just, you just don't care anymore. You just give yourself into it. You've been running from God for so long, you're just so tired. Yet you don't have the strength to actually turn around and repent, yet you don't wanna keep going in the same lifestyle you've been going. You just wanna lay down and sleep.
It's Jonah. But hear me, God won't let you. God will not let you lie down and sleep. He's gonna pursue you and pursue you, and in His grace, He's gonna keep sending storm after storm and storm into your life to get your attention. Once again, this is not God's wrath.
This is God's mercy to you. Romans 1 gives us a great picture of what the wrath of God looks like. Paul tells us what the wrath of God being poured out on somebody looks like, and it's it's not God smiting people. It's not fire and brimstone. God's wrath being poured out on someone, looks like this.
When they run away from him, he lets them. That's his wrath. Over and over again in Romans 1, you you read these words, and God gave them up. He gave them up to their passions. He gave them up to their lusts.
He gave them up to their evil thoughts and desires. Basically, God says, you wanna have your way, you wanna leave me, here's my wrath. Do it. Have your own way. I'll let you do what you want.
Tell me how that turns out for you. That's the wrath of God being poured out on someone, is when God lets people run away, He lets them just sleep. But God's grace is when he throws storms at you, and he won't let you get away with it. Once again, this is no ordinary storm. These mariners or these sailors are terrified.
Really, if when you begin to look at this in the Hebrew language, it's it's fantastic. Even the words that are used sound like winds and waves crashing against a boat. You have the people, they're hurling objects into the water and then you have God hurling a storm at them. They're hurling things at one another, but God is the better hurler, alright? And God's gonna win this one.
At one point, I love it, it says that Jonah, he goes down into the boat and the language, the Hebrew language, it personifies the boat and it says the boat was becoming a nervous wreck. Jonah was going down into the belly of a nervous wreck. His life was falling apart. He could not run God. Verse 6.
They come to him. The captain, apparently saw him go down at some point, goes down and says, what do you mean you sleeper? I can guarantee you, the captain did not say that. Alright? You find me a ship captain who says, what do you mean, you sleeper?
This is the PG account of what happened here. There was probably a lot of expletives and, basically is, What the heck are you doing? Lots of other words. Get up and do something. Jonah hears the exact same words that he heard at the start of this book.
He hears the words once again, arise, call out. And it's like this nightmare just will not stop for him. But yet, he doesn't once again rise up. He doesn't call up to call out to God. He never prays to God.
He never utters a single word to the Lord throughout all of this. Well the sailors, they decide they need to draw lots. Like, this isn't an ordinary storm. It's obviously some kind of punishment from one of the gods out there. Somebody here has done something bad, let's draw lots.
And Jonah's like, oh great. I mean he knows it's coming to him. He's not surprised when he draws the short stick. He draws it out and they all look at him and they're like, what is it you've done? What is it that you've done?
And once again, I want you to see that when Jonah is exposed here as the sinner, the one who's on the evil action, this is not God's wrath, but this is God's grace on Jonah's life. God exposing sin is one of the most merciful things that He can do. I've never met a Christian who has had their sin exposed in a painful way, who didn't come to a point where they said, I'm so glad the Lord did this. I have so much more freedom and joy now that He painfully exposed my sin for everyone to see. He simply wouldn't let me keep continuing in that lifestyle, and that's what we see here.
When the sailors realize that it is Jonah, they ask Him a question in verse 10. What is this that you have done? Now, I have read the story. I cannot tell you how many times, but I didn't catch the meaning of that question till probably about 20th, mostly because I'm an idiot. Alright?
And it's it's, you know, once I saw this, I can't see this any other way now. But this is the exact same question that the Lord asked Adam. It's the exact same question. What is this you have done? Remember when Adam, he he ate from the tree that he was not supposed to eat?
Then what did he do? He disobeyed the Lord and he tried to flee from God's presence and he went and he hid. He thought if I could just hide from God's presence, I wouldn't be called out on this. And so he goes and he hides and the Lord, in his grace, goes to Adam and says, Adam, what is it that you have done? Both Jonah disobey.
Both Jonah and Adam, they flee from God's presence and they try to hide, and God says, I'm not gonna allow it. I will hunt you down in grace. Adam, Jonah, what have you done? You see, this is the theme of the whole Bible that we're seeing right here. We sin, we rebel, we try to run from God's presence.
God won't let us. Says, I know hell would be to let you go, but I'm gonna, in my grace, pull you back in, and that's what we see here. So Jonah now, he has to explain things to the sailors. And after he explains things, they're like, what are we supposed to do? Jonah goes, Well, you're gonna have to kill me.
That's the solution. You're gonna have to throw me overboard. Another hurl. Literally, hurl me overboard. And they had the same reaction as probably most of us would have if we were on a boat and one of our friends said, the solution to this storm is for you to throw me overboard.
They're like, are you crazy? That's not an option. We're not throwing you into this. And so these sailors, they start trying to row to shore, which is the dumbest thing that you can do in a storm. But they're desperate.
Throwing Jonah overboard is not an option. They actually have more decency and integrity than Jonah has. But finally, they realize it's futile. They've gotta do something. And so we read in verse 15, so they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.
Then, the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. And it's strange here, that these sailors, who were so scared when the storm began, and they became even more scared as it progressed, you would think that when the storm stopped, they would no longer be afraid. But it's actually when the storm stops, they become exceedingly scared, fearful. And it says that they feared Yahweh exceedingly. They feared the Lord.
Not the gods that they were calling out to earlier, they feared the Lord. This means they worshiped him. And I think what you are seeing here is conversion. I think that these pagan sailors are becoming converted, and understanding who the Lord is. And they began to understand who the Lord is when they saw that Jonah sacrificially gave his life for them.
And we don't know exactly why Jonah decided to do this, why he decided to have him thrown over into the sea. I've read so many commentaries on this. They're all divided. It's amazing how you read all the commentaries through this book of Jonah and they're pretty much, there's a consensus in most of the book. But, when it comes here, everybody has different opinions.
And some will say, you know, Jonah's just, once again, he's in despair. He could couldn't care less about his life anymore and he just wants to end it all. And then, he had the other end of the spectrum saying, Jonah is actually starting to show real love and affection towards the pagans and He gives His life as a ransom for theirs. And, what I would say is I'd probably hold up both of those and say, there's probably some of both of those. Yes.
He's in despair. And yes. I believe he's beginning to be his heart warmed towards those who don't know God. I think he's finally looking at these sailors and he's thinking, they don't deserve. They don't deserve to die.
Not like this. They don't deserve to die because of me. And hear me, this is huge, huge for Jonah. I wanna flesh this out more in the weeks ahead. Remember, Jonah is a seemingly righteous, well respected Jew, who couldn't care less about the nameless, faceless, pagan Ninevites.
There's no way he was gonna go to those nameless, faceless, pagan Ninevites. But now, he's with these pagans and they're no longer nameless. They're no longer faceless. He's literally in the same boat with them. He's in the same boat with them, and he realized they deserve judgment just like he deserves judgment.
And so, He says, my life for theirs. I think you begin to see just just a hint of the gospel here. A hint of the gospel in which He does indeed give His life as a ransom for theirs. When the sailors see this sacrificial act on their behalf and they see how the wrath of Jonah's God seems to be appeased by this, they become Lord Yahweh worshipers. And, it's here that we have to remind ourselves of Jesus' words.
You want a sign of who I am? Go to Jonah. Go to Jonah. Just like Jonah was thrown into the wrath and judgment of God, and it brought peace, Jesus was thrown into the wrath and the judgment of God, and it's brought us peace. Jesus sacrificed himself in order that we might be saved.
Now, there's a lot of differences. Jonah was fleeing from the presence of God. Jonah was living in disobedience to God and Jonah doesn't literally die. Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to God and Jesus did literally die. Jonah is just a sign pointing to the greater Jonah, which is Jesus.
Jesus is the one who we go to to be saved. Let me ask, are you running? Are you running? Have you rejected God's will for your life? Stop and surrender because you will not outrun God.
Stop and surrender. You simply can't out love outrun the love of Christ. Pray with me. Father, we thank You for these first hints that we see in this book of Jonah, these first hints of Your glorious gospel, and how You are relentless in Your pursuit of us. And You have willingly given Yourself as a sacrifice for us that we might be saved, and we give you thanks for that.
And I pray that in the weeks ahead, we begin to understand your gospel more. Your heart for us and your heart for the nations. Lord, spirit be at work in us. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.