If you're with us last week, you know that we ended our year long
study of the Gospel of John in many ways, a gospel that is
centered on the love of God poured out for us through his
Son Jesus Christ. And over the next fall and
spring, we're going to stay in that theme of God's love.
In the spring, we'll turn our attention to New Testament
letter of Paul to the Ephesians, talk about how God's love shapes
us as the covenant community, as the church.
But this fall, together we're turning to the Old Testament
book of Jonah. So we really please turn in your
Bibles to Jonah or turn your bulletins to Jonah chapter 1.
I'll be reading the first 3 verses.
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai,
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
down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence
of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord.
You may be seated. The book of Jonah is one of the
most recognizable stories in the Bible, and odds are, whether you
grew up in the a Christian home or not, you probably have heard
about Jonah. And whether you are a follower
of Christ this morning or not, you probably know something of
the story. In fact, when I say the name
Jonah, what are you automatically thinking of?
A whale. What's funny is actually the
Bible never mentions a whale. It actually says really big
fish, so we don't know if it was a whale or some giant catfish or
some other sea creature. It's an amazing story.
It's the true story of a prophet named Jonah who refused to
follow the call of God and go to Nineveh.
A prophet named Jonah who was swallowed up by a whale and
lived in its belly for three days before he was spit out on
dry land really is the stuff of legend.
I think that's one of the reasons that for many people,
the story of Jonah is just too incredible to be true.
And in fact, many Christians even will say that this could
not have happened. It has to be some kind of myth,
an allegory, or it must be some kind of parable recorded and
ever to give us some kind of lesson about God and about
ourselves. But as we begin this book
together, I want you to know that Jonah is no mere myth.
It's not an allegory. It's not a parable.
No, the story of Jonah is a miracle, a miracle meant to show
us the covenant love of God for rebels like you and like me.
You see, more amazing than the fish is the God behind the fish.
And what we'll see together is that the main character of the
book of Jonah isn't Jonah at all.
It's God. A God who loves us so much that
he will stop at nothing to bring us back to himself.
And so this morning I want to look at that theme, just the
first 3 verses. That really is the theme of the
book in just two ways. The first is this.
I want us to know that God loves rebels who are far off.
God loves rebels who are far off.
And look with me at Jonah one verse one.
We're told that now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son
of Amitai. The the book of Jonah wastes no
time in introducing us to its namesake, a prophet named Jonah.
And we know he's a prophet because of the first few words
of the book. Now the word of the Lord came.
This is known as the prophetic formula.
Throughout the Old Testament, these words are used to describe
the office and work of a prophet.
Let me give you just a few examples.
This is the prophet Isaiah. The word of the Lord came to
Isaiah, and in Jeremiah the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah,
and then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah.
And then here in Jonah, the word of the Lord came to Jonah.
But the other reason we know that Jonah was a prophet because
the very specific words that are used to describe who he is,
Jonah the son of Amitai, Every time you see that in the Bible
we're we're given some sense of who this person is and not only
who they are, but who their father was.
It's used to help us connect the dots biblically from one place
to another to know which Jonah is.
This Jonah, the son of Amitai is almost like a last name telling
us specifically that this is the very same Jonah that we read
about in Second Kings chapter 14.
Now you don't have to turn there, but I want you to just
listen to this Second Kings 14 records for us, a prophet named
Jonah who was the son of a Mitai, and it tells us that he
ministered and prophesied during the reign of King Jeroboam over
Israel. Second Kings 14 we're told that
Jeroboam restored the border of Israel from label Hamas as far
as the sea of Arabah according to the word of the Lord the God
of Israel, who which spoke by his servant Jonah the son of
Amitai the prophet who was from Gath heifer.
For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel was very bitter and
there was none left bond or free, there was none to help
Israel. This was around 780 to 750 BC at
a time when the nation of Israel was divided into two kingdoms,
the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom.
The Southern Kingdom was made-up of Benjamin and Judah.
The Northern Kingdom made-up of the other 10 tribes.
It was known still as Israel. Now before your eyes glaze over,
you fall asleep. Let me tell you why this
matters. Jonah was not just a prophet,
he's one of the 12 minor prophets.
The 12 Minor Prophets ministered and prophesied during this time.
There was a time, as we just read in Second Kings 14, that
was filled with great difficulty for God's people, filled with
division and chaos and affliction on every side.
The 12 Minor Prophets are the last 12 books of the Old
Testament before they are put into utter darkness awaiting the
coming Messiah. But you see, Jonah is unlike any
other minor prophet. Well, the other prophets, we
typically read oracles of prophecy, a word from the Lord,
some kind of warning or proclamation from God himself.
That's what the office of prophet was to do.
They were to speak on behalf of God to his people.
But Jonah is completely different.
As we open the book of Jonah, we don't see oracles of prophecy,
we don't see proclamation. We see a story.
Book of Jonah is not primarily centered on Jonah's prophecy.
It's centered on who he is as a prophet.
And what we learn is he has to be the worst prophet of all
time. We're told in verse 2 that the
word of the Lord comes to Jonah. God himself speaks to him, and
this is His command. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great
city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up
before me. This is Jonah's commissioning.
This is God's call on his life. Jonah, you are my servant.
You are one of my prophets, and now I am commissioning you to
go. Go to Nineveh.
Now this is significant. Typically when God called His
prophets to speak, they were called to go to His people, His
people, Israel. But here Jonah is called not to
go to Israel or not to go even go to some place where the
people of Israel were in exile. No, God calls Jonah to go to
Nineveh. Now today the ruins of Nineveh
can be found in modern day Iraq. At the time, it was one of the
great cities in the Assyrian Empire.
The people of Assyria were known for their wickedness, their
cruelty, their animosity, and the way they set themselves
against anyone who got in the way of their expanding empire,
especially the northern Kingdom of Israel.
In other words, God didn't call Jonah to go to Israel.
He called Jonah to go to Israel's enemies.
He called Jonah to go to his own enemies.
And Jonah wanted nothing of it. Was also a godless city.
And when I say that godless, I mean Capital G God filled with
idolatry and false worship. And so immediately we have to
ask why? What is God doing?
In many ways that must have been in the background of John
Jonah's own heart and mind. Why, God?
Why would you call me to go to these people who hate you and
hate our country and hate your people?
Why them? Anyone but them are told that
Jonah was called to go to Nineveh to call out against it.
That means to condemn what they were doing, to speak a word of
warning. We see that throughout the
prophets. They would also often go to the
people of God and condemn them, to warn them that judgement is
coming. God is righteous and just and
good, and because He's righteous, just and good, He
must pour out his judgement on sin and so repent, turn back.
But now God's calling Jonah to do the same thing for a bunch of
foreigners, Gentiles, his enemies.
Now this is incredible, I think for two reasons.
The first was that the God of Israel would care enough about a
bunch of foreigners in order to send a prophet to warn them of
coming judgement. This summer, on my sabbatical,
one of the things that the Lord, surprisingly at least,
surprising to me, led me to study.
I had a very different agenda. But as God often does, he leads
us where he wants to go, and he led me to Romans chapter one.
In Romans chapter 1, Paul tells us that the God of all creation
has revealed himself to all people.
It's what's known as the doctrine of general revelation.
Let me read it for you. This is Romans chapter 1.
The apostle Paul writes verse 18.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their
unrighteousness suppress the truth.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God
has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes,
namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
perceived ever since the creation of the world and the
things that have been made so they are without excuse.
And what does that mean? It means that every single
person in this sanctuary, every single person in the city of
Dallas, every single person that you will meet, every single
person on this planet has been revealed the truth of God's
existence. There is no such thing as
complete blind ignorance. God, by His grace, has revealed
Himself to all people through His creation.
And so Paul says that people rebel against Him, not because
they forget the truth, not because they don't know the
truth, but the word he uses is suppress.
They push the truth away. That is the very definition of
rebellion, that it fundamentally is what sin is.
It's rebellion. It's not just doing something
bad or committing some immoral act, but it's rebellion against
the one true God who created all things, including us.
What that means for the people of Nineveh is that they were
rebels. They have been shown clearly who
the one true God is and all of creation, and yet they had
invented and fabricated false gods and goddesses.
They they'd set themselves against God and his commands and
against his people. They were rebels.
And yet here is God caring enough about him.
He would send one of his own prophets to warn them of coming
judgement. That's the first thing I think
is so significant. But the second is that we're
told that the reason Jonah's called to call out against them
is because they're evil had come up before God.
Now, that word evil in Hebrew is a fascinating word.
In fact, so much of Hebrew is difficult because it's so hard
to translate in a finite way. What I mean by that is there's a
range of meaning. It's almost pictographic.
And so the word for evil in Hebrew actually can mean
anything from evil to disgust to displeasure to divine judgement.
It just depends how it's used. Now, if I were to read Jonah to
you in Hebrew, which would be a terrible idea by the way, not
because you can't understand it. I can barely pronounce it
correctly, You'd begin to notice a repetition in just 48 verses.
9 times the Hebrew word for evil.
There it is again and again and again.
And yet each time it means something a little different.
And at the end of Jonah, after Nineveh repents and after God
has mercy on them, the book of Jonah uses the word for evil to
describe the way that Jonah feels about God's grace.
Now, in your Bible, it probably says something like it
displeased him, but literally in the Hebrew it says that for
Jonah the grace of God had become an evil to him.
Jonah reached a place that was so dark and twisted that the
grace of God became evil to him. You say, well, how can that
happen? What we see that unfolds in the
book of Jonah is that the rebels in this book isn't just Nineveh,
but it's Jonah himself. And that's the second thing I
want you to know that God loves rebels who are near.
God loves rebels who are near. I want you to look with me.
Verse 3, we're told that Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from
the presence of the Lord. Jonah didn't just disobey God's
command, he ran from it. And the wording here is
poetically similar to God's word that came to Jonah.
In verse 2 and verse 2, God says Jonah get up and go.
Here in verse 3, we see that Jonah got up and he fled.
And the word for flee literally means escape.
It's not just he's running. He's running from, he's trying
to escape. Well, who is he trying to escape
from? He's trying to escape from God.
One of God's own chosen prophets, one of his ministers
is running from him. And I think all this is to
highlight just how deliberate Jonah's disobedience actually
was. In fact, we're told that he went
and had to go find a ship. He had to find a captain and a
crew. He paid his way to deliberately
get a far away from God and his command as he possibly could.
And I think all of this shows us just how deliberate our
disobedience really is. So often far more deliberate
than we care to admit. But why?
Why did Jonah run away from God? And why Tarshish of all places?
We don't exactly know where modern day Tarshish would be.
From other biblical accounts we know that in Israel's mind it
was very far away, on the edge of all they knew on a map.
We also know that it was to the West, Nineveh to the east,
Jonah, I'm going as far as I can West.
Some of you even imagined that maybe it's even as far as Spain.
That's a long way off. So why did he do it?
Why did he try to get as far away that he could from Nineveh,
as far away that he could from God?
Well, surprisingly, the book of Jonah doesn't actually tell us
here. And many have supposed that,
well, maybe it's because Jonah didn't really understand God
fully. He must have been confused about
his character in person because of his misunderstanding, his
confusion. That's why he did it.
But I don't think that's the explanation.
I don't think Jonah ran from God because he didn't understand
him. No, I think Jonah ran away
because he did in Jonah chapter 4.
If you have your Bible, I want you to turn there.
This is Jonah 4 verse 2. At the end of the book Jonah
tells God why he fled. He tells God why he ran from
him, why he disobeyed his command.
Jonah responds to God saying This is why I made haste to flee
to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful.
Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting
from disaster, Jonah knew the character of God.
He knew that the God of justice and righteousness that pours out
judgment for sin is also the gracious God of steadfast love
and mercy. He knew.
He knew that if he went and warned Nineveh of their sin and
God's coming judgement and they repented, that God would have
mercy on them. He knew.
It's because he knew that God was a God of covenant love.
That is why he disobeyed. He knew that God would show his
love for them and he didn't want them to.
He couldn't imagine that God's covenant love that belong to
Him, the people of Israel, would ever be extended to the
Gentiles, let alone his own enemies.
The word that we see here in verse 2 of chapter 4, one word
that's often translated into two in English, Steadfast love.
It comes straight from God's covenant name that He gives to
Moses, the Exodus, Exodus 34 or God tells Moses he is the Lord,
the Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness.
That phrase steadfast love in Hebrew is just one words, the
word hesed. It's used over and over and over
again throughout the Old Testament to describe God's
covenant love, that is, His faithful love, His loyal love,
the kind of love that a husband has for his bride.
Of all the translations of Hesed, my favorite isn't in the
ESV. It's not in the NIV.
It's not in the new King James. It's in a children's Bible, the
Jesus story of a Bible, the never stopping, never giving up,
unbreaking, always, forever love.
This is one of the wondrous mysteries of the attributes of
God, the beauty of the gospel, that God's judgement and his
love are not contradictory, but in fact they meet at the cross.
Because in love God poured out his judgement on his own Son, so
all who believe in him would have everlasting life.
Every rebel whose turns back on him might be saved.
Why? Because of his love.
It's the great mystery that Paul speaks of in Ephesians.
What we'll look at in the spring together, that the mystery is
the Gentiles, our fellow heirs, members of the same body,
partakers of the same promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
It's the message that Peter proclaimed at Pentecost to a
bunch of foreigners for the promises for you and for your
children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord
God calls to himself. And don't miss this.
It's the reason that you and I are here this morning that God's
covenant love was not just for his people, Israel, but it was
for every tribe and tongue and nation.
And now you and IA bunch of Gentiles who are once far off
rebels just like Nineveh have been brought near by the blood
of Jesus Christ. The same covenant love for
rebels, just like Nineveh, but also just like Jonah.
You see, we can never forget who we once were.
We were once rebels. Apostle Paul says in Romans 5
that while we were enemies, Christ died for us.
We were once God's enemies. But we can also never forget who
we are now in Christ. We are God's beloved.
And this is what Jonah had such a hard time with, that God would
love a bunch of people that he hated.
And when we refuse to offer the grace of God for other people,
it reveals that we think we no longer need the grace of God
ourselves. So let me ask you, who is your
Nineveh? Who are your enemies?
One of the great questions that the book of Jonah puts before us
is this. Is anyone too far gone to beyond
the grace of God? Who are those people in your
life or in your own heart and mind that you think are too far
gone? Those who you disagree with,
those that have a particular view of theology that you cannot
fathom someone could actually hold.
Someone who's politically opposed to you sees the world
differently than you. For some of you it's
self-righteous people. For others, it's those who are
sinful in ways that you aren't. As you confront that question,
is God's grace inadequate to reach the hardest heart, you
might be tempted to 1st go to Nineveh.
But what we see in the book of Jonah is that the great
rebellion in the book of Jonah isn't Nineveh, It's Jonah.
He is the ultimate rebel, refusing to offer God's grace to
Nineveh. Jonah rebelled himself.
And so we're told the end of verse three, that Jonah went
down to Joppa, down into the darkness, into the depths.
He found a ship going to Tarshish.
He paid the fare and he went down into it, down, down, down,
descending more and more in the darkest places of his own heart
and mind and hatred. He went down with them to
Tarshish. And for the second time it tells
us away from the presence of the Lord.
Jonah just wasn't trying to get away from Nineveh.
He was trying to get away from God.
So the final question I want to leave you with is this, can you
actually do that? Can you actually run away from
God? Says here that Jonah tried to
flee away from the presence of the Lord.
Is that possible? Well, remember I told you in
Romans one that all people, every rebel, every atheist,
every false religion has still been revealed the truth of who
God is. Even an atheist can't get away
from God. But even those who are close to
God, just like Jonah, just like many of you and me who know His
Word, know his gospel, that even when we try to turn our backs on
him, what Jonah and this amazing story shows us is that we can
never get away from him even if we try.
As I studied this week, I couldn't think of help to think
of David's words in Psalm 139, where David asks, where shall I
go from your spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I send to heaven, you're there.
If I make my bed and shell, you were there.
If I take my wings of the morning and dwell on the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
Jonah tried his hardest to get away from God, and God sent a
fish after him to bring him back to himself.
And so whether this morning you think you're more like Jonah,
more like Nineveh, as we end, let me do something that Jonah
refused to do. I want you to know that there is
a God who created all things, the God of the universe, the one
true God. He is good and mighty and
righteousness, and out of his goodness and righteousness he
will pour out judgement for sin. I want you to know that
judgement is coming. And so repent, turn from your
sin, and turn to God. But I also want you to know that
this God of judgement is also a God of steadfast love and mercy,
and he has not sent a fish after you.
He sent his very own Son at Jesus Christ, who didn't disobey
God's command, but obeyed it to the point of death, even death
on a cross. He will stop at nothing to bring
rebels like you and me back to himself because of love, and he
will love us to the very end. Let's pray.
Father in heaven, we thank you for this covenant love that you
out of your sovereign grace and nothing in and of ourselves have
set upon us. We thank you that we who are
once enemies, rebels, just like Jonah and just like Nineveh,
could now be called sons and daughters, your very beloved.
And so I pray as we leave this place this morning and we are
blessed by the words, the benediction, that we would carry
this love into our city, into our neighborhoods, into our
workplaces and parks, into every conversation, and into the
depths of our very own hearts. That we would be marked by your
covenant love, and that we as a church would embody that love
not only towards one another, but we would proclaim that love
through the gospel to the ends of the earth.
It's the name of Jesus Christ. We pray.
Amen. Let's stand and sing.