Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide

Historical Context: Jonah, Jeroboam, and a Wicked Israel 0:26

Now, speaking of drama, let's set the stage for our study of Jonah by looking at the dramatic historical context of this prophet's life. Just like is the case whenever you look at any book or chapter or passage within the Bible, it's helpful to look and say, where does this fit? When did Jonah live?

Where did he live? What were the circumstances? Who was the king? Were the people being good?

Were they being bad or what have you? It's helpful to consider these things. Well, scripture suggests Jonah lived in about 750 BC, give or take a decade or two. Now he lived during the reign of a guy named King Jeroboam in the northern kingdom of Israel.

You remember at this time, the kingdom has been divided. You have the northern kingdom of Israel and you have the southern kingdom of Judah. Now the southern kingdom of Judah, generally speaking, was more healthy. At the very least, they had some kings that were good and mature and led people towards God.

Not every king was good, but a number of them were. However, in the northern kingdom of Israel, all the kings uniformly were terrible. So Jonah reigned at a time where there was a bad king in charge in Israel. And we know that because there's a passage in another book, 2 Kings chapter 14.

It's the only place in the rest of the Old Testament that mentions Jonah directly, and it puts him in this age of Jeroboam. Specifically, second Kings 14 says this: in the 15th year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king of Samaria, and he reigned for 41 years.

And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and he did not depart all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel to sin. He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, whom He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher.

All right. So what does 2 Kings 14 have to do with Jonah chapter one? Well, it establishes that Jonah was a prophet during an age where things were going bad and the leadership was bad. Jeroboam was a bad king.

The Grace Jonah Had Already Seen 2:35

And yet, although he was a bad king, something interesting was occurring. In 2 Kings 14, we see that they had a bad king and bad people, and yet, and yet, even as the enemies of Israel attacked them, we see in 2 Kings 14 that even as the king was bad, the people was bad, and as the enemies came in, that God protected them from their enemies.

2 Kings 14 verse 27 says, the Lord would not blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam. So Israel had messed up, and Jeroboam was an evil jerk. And yet, and yet, God still preserved them. God still demonstrated grace.

People were bad. The king was bad. They were all doing naughty. And yet, God still preserved them.

God still gave them grace, although you could argue they deserved the exact opposite. You could argue that this generation, this king, these people deserve death, destruction, justice, and yet God has shown him grace. And Jonah had seen that grace. Here's the tie-in.

Jonah, this reluctant prophet who didn't want to go to Nineveh, didn't want to extend grace there, had seen grace in his homeland, had seen what it meant for God to be kind and patient. And yet when it came time to take that kindness and grace and patience to Nineveh, Jonah says, uh-uh, what's good for me is not good for thee.

Jonah's story is that of one who had watched God take care of him and his own people. And yet when God sent him somewhere else, he said no. He said no out of the hardness of his heart. The idea that God would ever be gracious to anyone else, especially the pagans in Nineveh, it was too much for Jonah to handle.

And so he ran, which is what we see in chapter one.

God's Call and Jonah's Flight to Tarshish 4:19

“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

— Jonah 1:2 (NKJV)

But as the old saying goes, you can run, but you cannot hide. Let's look at verses one through three and see this again. Verse one. Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.

It's like a stench, a foul smell. Their wickedness has come up before Me. But Jonah arose, verse three, to flee to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa.

He found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare, went down into it to go with them to Tarshish and away from the presence of the Lord. All right, we've already established that Jonah is a prophet. He's a prophet during a time when Israel has been wicked and where there's wickedness all around, even the bordering nations.

Everybody's wicked at this time. Now, if you're a prophet, what sort of work did you do? Well, you prophesied. That was the primary occupation.

That was the primary job description. You look at his LinkedIn profile, it said that he prophesied to the people. With that said, he prophesied apparently at those times and seasons where he liked the prophecy involved and the people to which he was speaking. However, that's not what God is going to say or do in verse 1.

God's plan is going to conflict with Jonah's and Jonah is going to attempt to run. Jonah is going to attempt to hide. He does not want to go to Nineveh. He doesn't like the people of Nineveh.

He feels Nineveh is a dangerous city. It's an Assyrian city to boot. This is not a city in Israel. And so he rejects God's overt instruction where God says, Arise, go to Nineveh, for the wickedness has come up before Me.

Now again, God in this verse does not give him a lengthy set of instructions. Sometimes God, when He speaks to you, Arise, through His word, through His spirit, Sometimes He doesn't give us the whole narrative. Now, we want it. We want to know, okay, you're going to do this and then this and then this and this and this.

That's not the way it works. Here, there's one imperative, just one given at the outset, and it's go. Arise, get up, and go. This is all that God asks, and yet apparently it's too much.

And we see in verse 3 that Jonah does arise. He does get up, but he arises to go in the opposite, the exact opposite direction that God had called him to.

Fleeing the Presence of the Lord 6:44

Specifically, see in verse 3, he went to get on a boat. Now, I don't know if any of you are geography majors. Was that a major? If any of you are experts in geography, but if so, you might know this.

You don't need a boat to get to Nineveh. You just need feet. Getting to Nineveh was not that hard, and it sure didn't involve getting on a boat. If you were to follow God's instructions, as Jonah, if you're in north Israel, all you have to do is go north, a little northeast, and you get to Nineveh.

But Jonah doesn't head north. He doesn't rely simply upon his feet, but he goes and finds a boat. And he gets on a boat in an area called Joppa with the idea of going to Tarshish. Now here's the interesting thing about Tarshish.

At that time, in the then modern age, there was no place on the face of the earth that was considered more remote, more distant at this time, than to go to this small city across the waters, 2,500 miles away from Joppa, the small place of Tarshish. This is not Jonah saying, you know, if I just kind of can hide over that hill, or I can go out to that island.

This is not like us in Gulfport trying to hide out on Deer Island or what have you. That's not what's going on here. This is trying to go as far as you humanly can to avoid the hand of God. This is the equivalent of trying to drive to the far end of the globe to avoid God's direction.

Now we might conclude from his travel plans here that what Jonah's trying to do is he's really trying to avoid Nineveh. We might conclude, we might say, well, you know, Jonah is really anxious, he doesn't want to go to that mean city with those horrible people, he's kind of anxious and afraid of them, and so he's trying to avoid the Ninevites and go as far away as he can.

We might conclude he's trying to avoid Nineveh. That's not what these verses say. These verses say he was trying to avoid God. He was trying to travel to a place so far, so remote, that it would be as if you could an attempt to get out of God's jurisdiction.

You know, if you're ever traveling on the coast and you got your favorite radio station, you know, playing what have you, and you drive to Mobile or New Orleans or what have you, you notice that the signal starts getting weaker the further you go. Well, that's what Jonah is trying to do. In verses one through three, twice, it says that Jonah is fleeing from the presence of the Lord.

It's not just God's instructions that he's trying to avoid. He's trying to avoid God Himself. You know, as a parent over the years, especially when my kids were younger, I noticed that, you know, sometimes kids, when they're playing, they try to play just outside of, of earshot. You know, as you, as your parent, you got smaller children and the kids, sometimes they play where you just can't quite see them and where they can't quite hear you.

And I learned over time that this has the effect of giving the child plausible deniability. You cry out, you say, dinner time. And no kid shows up and you have to go find the kid. And then when you say, why didn't you come for dinner?

They say, what? I didn't hear you. Aha. Aha.

This mindset that just doesn't apply to small children. It applied to this fully grown adult, this prophet Jonah. He attempts to travel outside of God's jurisdiction, so to speak, in order to avoid God's mandate. Now, is that the way that it works?

Well, no, not if God means God, not if God is sovereign, not if God is transcendent, not if God is omnipresent. No, absolutely not. You cannot do this.

Plausible Deniability: Avoiding an Encounter with God 10:11

And yet this is what he attempted to do. As a side note, some of the reasons that people avoid coming to church? The same thing. If you avoid putting yourself in a place where you might encounter God and His word and His laws and His mandates, if you avoid putting yourself in a place where you have to have an encounter with what God has said, then you can at least argue to yourself that you have plausible deniability when you fail to do what He has told you to do.

If you want to do sinful things, you may avoid hearing the law that convicts you of those sins.

The Hardness of Jonah's Heart Toward Nineveh 10:42

However, it does not work that way as we've just described. In any case, what was it about Nineveh or God's prophecy towards Nineveh that caused Jonah to have such a strong reaction and to run elsewhere? There had to be something about Nineveh that was on Jonah's heart. So what was it?

Well, in the fourth chapter, we'll see in a few weeks here, but in the four weeks, the fourth chapter, he actually explains what he was thinking back in chapter one. He's going to say, this is the reason why I ran, know God. He's going to say, ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still back in my country?

Therefore, I fled to Tarshish, for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God. You're slow to anger, You're abundant in love and kindness, and You're one who relents from doing harm. In other words, what Jonah is saying is that he avoided Nineveh because he really disliked the Ninevites, and he was concerned that God would be nice to them.

This is not us just having conjecture and guessing what was on his heart or mind. That's what he said. He says, God, the reason I ran, the reason I didn't want to go to Nineveh is because I know You're good, and I know You're kind, and I know You're loving, and I know You're forgiving.

And I know if I go there and preach that message, You're going to grant that to them, and I don't want it. I don't think they deserve it. I don't want any part of this. Find yourself someone else.

This was his approach, and it speaks of a hardness of heart. He was a prophet. He was a man of God. And yet, there was still a hardness of heart here, to the degree that he was willing to run thousands of miles to avoid doing what God wanted him to do.

Can you relate to that hardness of heart? Have you ever felt that way about some person or some people group, that they're undeserving of God's grace? Have you ever been in a rush to condemn someone or thought that someone was unworthy of God's grace, the same grace that He's offered you? Have you ever thought this?

Have you ever looked down on someone based upon their skin color, based upon their life choices, based on something about them, and the thought that they were unworthy, unworthy to receive the grace that God has freely poured out upon yourself? Well, according to his own words, this was Jonah's view towards the Ninevites.

Nineveh Deserved Wrath, But So Did Everyone 12:58

They don't deserve it. They don't deserve it. Now let's step back for a minute here. What was it about Nineveh that brought about this kind of reaction?

Well, here's the thing. Nineveh really was bad. Jonah was not wrong about that. When he looks at Nineveh and says, these people are terrible, he wasn't wrong.

These people were terrible. God Himself says that of the cities of this age. Nineveh, in some exceedingly sinful way, their works, their actions, their thoughts, their deeds rose up like a foul stench to His nostrils. God even identifies Nineveh as particularly wicked in this time frame.

And if we know anything about God, it's that He does deal with wickedness. But in what way? In what way would He deal with it? In what way would He deal with the Ninevites?

Well, if it were up to Jonah, it would be like this. If it were up to Jonah, God would simply take the largest boulder He could heave from heaven down and smash the Ninevites. If it were up to Jonah, he would bring back, God would bring back the days of fire and brimstone because that's what Jonah thought the Ninevites deserved.

However, fortunately, fortunately for the Ninevites and really for all of us, God had a different view. God had a more gracious view. You see, when God will finally give a prophecy to Jonah for the Ninevites, it doesn't include immediate fire and brimstone or summary judgment. It includes an opportunity to repent and to turn.

The prophecy that Jonah will ultimately give to the Ninevites suggests hope and repentance and forgiveness. It's a prophecy of grace to those who only deserve God's wrath. Now, again, to be clear, Jonah was right. Nineveh did deserve God's wrath, but so did he, so did Israel, so did everybody.

The minute you start calling out one person or one people and say they're worthy of God's wrath without looking in the mirror, the minute you start calling out about some other people, group, some other nation, some other family, what have you, and say God should deal with them, you misunderstand what the gospel is all about.

Jonah was right. Nineveh did deserve judgment, but so did he, so did Israel, so did the whole world. Psalm 130 puts that same concept this way. It says this, it says, if You, O Lord, were to keep track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand?

God, if You don't give grace, if You don't pour it out on someone somewhere, on some people's nations, on those who call out, if You don't pour out grace, all of us are doomed because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Well, whatever the case, Jonah wasn't thinking this way.

He could only see anger. He could only see vengeance. He could only see a need for these people to pay. And so he gets on this boat, tries to leave Nineveh and God behind.

I'll ask you this question briefly. Has God ever placed a call upon your life that you have been running from? Has God ever placed a call on your life in such a way that was unmistakable and yet you run from it?

The Sovereign God of Wind, Sea, and Lots 15:55

Well, if so, let's see how that decision turned out for Jonah and then tried to extrapolate from there. Let's look at verses four through nine. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea. There was a mighty tempest on the sea, so the ship was about to be broken up.

Then the mariners were afraid. I imagine they were. Every man cried out to his God, and they threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship.

He laid down and he was fast asleep, and so the captain came to him and said this: what do you mean, oh sleeper? Arise, call on your god. Perhaps your god will consider us so that we might not perish. And then they all said to one another, come, let's cast lots that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us.

So they cast lots. The lot fell on Jonah, and they said to him, please tell us, for what causes this trouble upon you? What's your job? Where do you come from?

Where's your country? What people are you from? And he said to them, I'm Hebrew. I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land.

He says in verse nine, that God has made the sea. The minute he gets on the boat, he should have known. You can't outrun God. This is a bad idea.

Where can you go to successfully avoid an omnipresent God? Short answer, nowhere. The very definition of omnipresent suggests you cannot avoid Him.

The Omnipresence of God: Psalm 139 17:20

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.”

— Psalm 139:7-10 (NKJV)

Now, Jonah, he was a prophet. He was a man of the word. And again, he should have known that. If he thought back to Psalm 139, which he should have been aware of, he would have known this.

Psalm 139, King David asked this rhetorical question. He says, oh God, where could I go to flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You're there. If I make my bed in the depths, You're there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me. Even there Your right hand will hold me fast. David in Psalm 139, it's a famous psalm even now, let alone then, but David says, look, where could I go?

If I should want to avoid You by going up or down or sideways, where could I go to step outside of Your sovereign control? And David concluded and says, there's nowhere. Even if I was to go to the far side of the sea, which is ironic because that's exactly what Jonah's trying to do.

David says, Your right hand will hold me fast. You are not an AM radio station whose power weakens the further I get away from You. Even if I go there to the farthest place, Your hand shall still hold me. Well, here's the thing.

God didn't wait for Jonah to get to the other side of the sea in order for Jonah to learn this lesson. And so in these verses, verses four through nine, demonstrating His sovereign control over man and nature alike. God uses the waves. God uses the winds.

God uses the waters. He even uses the casting of lots here as the means to highlight Jonah's disobedience, and it caused him to turn. Jonah couldn't avoid God. It was impossible.

Neither can you, neither can I. None of us can. In these verses, 4 through 9, I love the pagan sea captain. He comes up, the pagan sea captain. Remember, they're out there like praying to whatever gods they had.

If you read this text, these pagans on this ship, each one's praying to their own God. Bob, which God do you got? You pray to him, Stu, you pray to this one, and so forth. Well, the captain, ultimately, none of that works.

None of those gods respond.

The Call to Arise: Apathy and the Christian's Task 19:23

And so the captain goes down, finds Jonah, and he says in verse 6, as he finds Jonah sleeping, he says, What are you doing? He says, What do you mean, O sleeper? Arise. Now, the word arise, it's come up multiple times in today's text.

In verse 1, what was the very first thing that God told Jonah to do? Arise. Get up. Get moving.

The same message comes from this pagan sea captain who was being used by God to tell Jonah the same thing. Look, Jonah, you can't ignore this. You can't run from it. You can't sleep through this.

You've been called, called to a certain task. Get up and get about it. As I suggested a few moments ago, I think that God has the same message for you and I. God called you. He raised you up.

He formed you. He fashioned you for a purpose. The oddest, ironic thing is how often we run from the very purpose of which we were formed. We avoid doing those things that God has put front and center on our radar.

So often, believers have a task that God has given us to pursue. And yet, instead of being about our Father's business, we're sleeping in the ship's hole — little resting of the hands. We're asleep at ease in Zion. Is there some task God has given you that you need to get started on?

If so, then arise. In Jonah's case, Jonah had gotten to the point where he was just content if everybody just went down in the ship. Jonah had gotten to a point in his mind where he's content if everyone died. Jonah's content to watch Ninevites die.

He was fine with that outcome. He was fine with the ship going down. He didn't seem to care. Verses four through nine.

He's not like a Nyquil where he's knocked out here and he doesn't know there's a storm. He knows there's a storm. He just doesn't care. And the greatest hour of need of the people immediately around him, even if they were pagans, he's caught taking a nap.

What insensitivity this was. Even if he didn't care about his own fate or future, he regularly didn't care about the fate or future of others either, whether it was the Ninevites or these poor guys on the boat who are only in trouble because of him, who are only about to die because of him, and yet he doesn't care.

This man of God, this prophet, sometimes your vocation cannot veil your sensitivity to the hearts and lives of others. This is certainly true here. Apathy is not a good adjective for a Christian to have, and yet it was the number one adjective that you could use to describe Jonah, apathy towards God's mandate or God Himself and to the people around him.

The Pagan Sailors Show the Grace Jonah Withholds 21:58

All right, with that said, the sailors will show him compassion that he's not extending to them. Let's look at that compassion as we look at verses 10 through 16. Then the men were exceedingly afraid. They said to him, why have you done this?

For the men knew that he had fled from the presence of the Lord because he'd told them. Then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us? Because the sea had grown more tempestuous. And he said to them, pick me up, throw me into the sea, and then the sea will be calm for you.

For I know that this great tempest is because of me. So he's at least articulating truth, even if he's not acting upon it that much. Verse 13, nevertheless, the men rowed hard. They really tried to get back to land.

So they rowed hard to return to land, but they couldn't, because the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them. Therefore, they cried out to the Lord and they said, we pray, O Lord, please do not let us perish for this man's life, and do not charge us with innocent blood, for You, O Lord, have done as it has pleased You.

And so they picked up Jonah, and they threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, verse 16 says, they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and took vows. This moment had a profound effect on the hearts and minds of these sailors. All right, in these verses, Jonah tells the sailors, he says, look, this is all happening because of me.

And he even gives them permission to throw him into the depths. You know, he could have jumped. This is another example of Jonah just really not being with the program. He could have jumped once he came to this conclusion, but no, he puts it on them.

Look, you guys want to be spared. I know it's because of me. You could toss me in, but he could have jumped. He could have sacrificed himself to save them, but he still puts it on them.

You guys got to throw me in. He is not showing them grace. He didn't show the Ninevites grace. He doesn't show anyone grace.

And yet, these pagans are trying to show him grace. They tried to get to land, they tried, did everything to try to save this guy. And then finally, regretfully, fearfully, they pray and say, oh God, don't blame us for this, we don't see any other options here.

Wrath Satisfied Through a Substitutionary Death 24:01

And so then finally they throw him in and the net effect is that the waters immediately stop their raging. Now let me stop — going to explain the single most important part of this passage. Jonah had sinned. That is obvious.

And because of that sin, God's wrath had come down upon him. So how is God's wrath satisfied? Through his death. Jonah had sinned.

God's wrath had come down upon him. How is God's wrath satisfied? Through death of the offender. That's what Jonah even concluded.

That's what the sailors concluded — that God's wrath would only be satisfied, the storm would only go away, through Jonah's death and his sacrifice on behalf of the other men in the boat. Now, does this remind you of anything? I hope it does, because the gospel is peeking through. See, for all of his errors, Jonah was right about one thing.

The people of Nineveh did deserve God's wrath, and he was right later on in the chapter in detecting that he deserved it too, detecting that God was angry because of what he had done, and he knew he deserved to become fish food. However, as we'll see, God had a different, more gracious plan for Jonah, just as He did for Nineveh.

God looks at wayward sinners and He has mercy and grace. He had mercy and grace for the Ninevites, as horrible as they were. And even this prophet, this reluctant, wayward, sinful prophet, apathetic prophet, he still has grace on this guy.

The Sign of Jonah: The Gospel in Old Testament Clothing 25:26

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

— Matthew 12:40 (NKJV)

And we see that grace near the very end of today's passage, when it says that the Lord had prepared, verse 17 I believe, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and for three nights. Although he deserved to be drowned in the torrent of God's wrath, God had prepared.

God had prepared a means of salvation to rescue him from that wrath. The whale is a type of Christ. This traveling air pocket going through the seas prepared beforehand was the means for protecting and preserving Jonah from the wrath, the waters that otherwise would have killed him. God prepared these means.

Next Sunday, we're going to build on this point, because next Sunday, the entire chapter is Jonah in the belly of this great fish. As I close here, again, that last verse, it's worth lingering on for one more minute here. The last verse said Jonah would spend three days and three nights in the belly of the beast.

I trust that that time frame reminds you of something else. Matthew 12, Matthew 12 said this, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The story of Jonah transcends Jonah.

The story of Jonah transcends the prophet himself. Jonah's tale ultimately points to the cross. It ultimately points to the tomb of the resurrection. In this book we see the gospel.

In this old testament book, little tiny book, four chapters, three pages long, we see the gospel in old testament clothing. And so if you're able, please join us next week as we consider the next chapter in this whale of a tale, the next chapter, a tale that doesn't end in Nineveh, a tale that ends on Calvary.

Let's pray