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John Capill

Jonah • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

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THE FIRST COMMISSION OF JONAH

JONAH 1:3 - 4 – Number 2

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever been asked to do something you felt totally incapable of doing or perhaps did not even want to do?

I remember the very first time I had to speak in public: it was a school speech competition when I was about 13 years of age:

- I even remember what the topic was: “Worms”

- The truth was I didn’t want to do it but it was compulsory

- I will never forget how petrified I was;

- I clearly remember my knees caps physically shaking as I trembled with fear!

- I would have done anything to run out of that assembly and avoid my mission.

- I vowed I would never speak in public again.

Well, today we are going to continue our study in the book of Jonah and look at some of the possible reasons why Jonah ran from his mission.

The last time we looked at Jonah, we were examining the first two verses.

We looked at two points:

1. Jonah: The man

And we saw that Jonah was a real person, in real history and that he was, according to 2 Kings 14, “a servant of Yahweh and a prophet” to the northern tribes of Israel.

We saw:

- He had a family heritage.

- And we observed that he was a true prophet –he predicted an extension to the boarder of Israel under Jeroboam II, and that prediction came true, even though Israel was in spiritual decline and did not deserve such a blessing from the Lord.

And I tried to demonstrate for you that there was no hint of unfaithfulness in Jonah.

2 Kings 14 talks of him in the highest of terms. He was “God’s servant”, and he faithfully delivered the message that God gave him as a “prophet”.

And so, I suggested to you, that we need to be careful of those interpretations of the book of Jonah that simply put the boot into poor Jonah.

He was like every single one of us:

- We have times of faithfulness

- When we are close to God and love His Word and His people.

- But sadly, we have other times when we fall into sin and are disobedient and sometimes God must deal with us.

The other thing we looked at was bit more complicated:

2. Jonah’s Mission

And what I tried to set out for you was that Jonah’s message given in verse 2 included both an explicit message for Nineveh (and even that had a coded message within it) and an implicit message for Israel.

a) For Nineveh

- The message was clear: Jonah was to cry against that great city because its wickedness had come up before God.

- He was to call them out for their sin.

- God saw that they were evil, violent, blood-thirsty, idolators who had become proud and arrogant.

- Their sin came up before God. God took notice of it and it was time to act!

Jonah was sent to them to explicitly deal with their wickedness:

- Yet Jonah also knew Yahweh; that He was actually giving these people an opportunity to repent.

- That was the coded message which Jonah understood from the very beginning.

b) But what was the implicit message for Israel?

- Well, I tried to demonstrate for you that judgement was implied against Israel too.

- There were two sides to the one coin if you can recall.

- On the one side, was the shocking news that God was sending one of their own prophets to a gentile nation.

- He was giving Israel’s blessings to pagan gentiles; gentiles that Israel thought were beyond saving and outside the covenant.

- And we saw that that would have been read as an afront to their self-righteous pride - they considered that they and they alone were the recipients of God’s favor.

Not only that, but I drew your attention to curses of the covenant that God established with His people in Deut.

- This was the other side of the coin that also implied judgement against Israel.

- We saw one of the curses set out in Deut 32 was that if Israel refused to repent and turn from idolatry and embrace the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength,

He would make them jealous by a people who were not a people; they would be provoked by a nation who was not the nation of God.

And clearly God was doing just that in Jonah’s mission:

- Israel’s own prophet was being sent to another nation.

- Not to just any nation, but to their ach enemies, the Assyrians.

- Not to a good nation, but to one that was even more evil and wicked than themselves

- Giving that nation the blessings of grace that normally belonged to Israel.

- Why? That Israel might be provoked to come back to the Lord.

That was the implied message for Israel. They too needed to repent, or they would lose the covenant blessings completely.

And we observed that that method of discipline would become a means of grace that God would use again in the story of redemption when He sent the gospel to the gentles, as Paul sets forth in Romans 10 and 11.

That God’s own chosen people, the Jews, might be provoked to jealousy and might be re-grafted into the vine and bow the knee to our Lord and Saviour, even Jesus Christ.

Well this morning, we are going to look at how this mission messed with poor Jonah’s head as we look at what I’ve called:

3. The Mutiny of Jonah

Perhaps you want to open your Bibles to Jonah 1 and we will read the first three verses:

The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” 3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord.

Isn’t that marvelous!

Jonah obeyed the first 3 words of his mission: “He rose up!!!”

Unfortunately, that is where he stopped obeying!!!

Charles Stanley, in his life principles Bible, a principle that says something like this: “Partial obedience is disobedience”.

Sadly, that was true of Jonah.

We are going to look at two things this morning:

1. The extent of his mutiny

2. The possible causes of it

1. Look with me, if you will, at the extent of Jonah’s mutiny against the Lord’s mission.

Look again at verse 3; it tells us the extent of his rebellion…

He rose up, not to go to Nineveh, but to “flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord”.

When you read that verse, you get a picture of man who was determined to flee, do you not?

He deliberately goes to Joppa, on the coast, the opposite direction to where the Lord had called him to go.

And he just happened to “find” a ship going to Tarshish.

He had his heart set on going to Tarshish and it just happened there was a ship going there and he was going to make sure he was on it.

It’s almost as if Jonah finds events conspiring, to aid him in carrying out his disobedience.

My friends, if you are on the path of sin, on the broad way, you will find the means and the opportunity to help you facilitate sin.

- A man may drive around Manchester Street and just happen to find a prostitute standing on the corner.

- You might have spare time and you use it to surf the internet and just happen to come upon a site with plenty of pornography to whet your appetite.

- Someone might have a bad temper and just happens to find a weapon, which ends in murder.

Of course, thank God, in His providence He often restrains sin we find in our heart we want to commit.

That is why we need to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Literally, deliver us from the evil one.)

But sometimes God allows us to find a ship going to Tarshish. He allows us the space, the time, the opportunity, that will result either in our sinful rebellion or the rejection of the temptation orgenuine repentance if you fall into temptation.

The truth is if you rebel against a clear command of God and turn aside from doing His will, you will soon find the means and opportunity to sin.

But, my friends, the opposite is also true. If you set your heart fully on doing the will of God, you will find, just as readily, the means and incentives to facilitate doing what is right and good.

- If you pray in the morning for an increase in grace and usefulness in the kingdom throughout the coming day, is it not true that very soon you find opportunities to be used of God?

- The day that starts wanting to do God’s work, ends up identifying such opportunities.

Sadly, Jonah’s heart was set on disobedience, and he just “found” a ship going to Tarshish!

We don’t know for sure where ancient Tarshish was, but scholars think it was modern day southern Spain:

- It was definitely far south-west, when Nineveh was far north-east!

- It was the furthest port away from Nineveh you can think of.

- It was very difficult to sail there but Jonah was determined to get there.

- He went to Joppa on the coast.

- Found a ship.

- Paid the fare.

- Went down into the ship.

- And like the prodigal son, he went on a journey to the fair country.

Look how determined he was to sin!

It is hard to imagine a firmer, more dogged, determined, resolve to sin against the Lord.

The servant of God and the prophet of Israel took each step, without repentance or even reflection on what he was doing.

My friends, we need to take care when we embark upon all such disobedience.

- You may think you have gained your sinful end and achieved your purpose

- You might think that God is not angry with you because He has not prevented it.

…But the Lord has you in His hand and never more so than just the moment you think you have succeeded.

- And so we need to take stock regularly and look at the course of action we are following...

- Stop at the first step; don’t wait until your sin is fully accomplished!

- At every step, there is an opportunity to turn back to the Lord in repentance and humble dependance on His grace.

- He is waiting for you to do just that!

- Listen to the prompts of the Holy Spirit and the pangs of your conscience and look to Him and NOT your own effort!

There is something else we must not miss as we look at the extent of Jonah’s mutiny.

You will notice that verse 3 says: he fled “from the presence of the Lord”. It says it twice for emphasis.

What was he thinking by saying he sought to go “from the presence of the Lord”?

Well, I’d like to put it to you, that he was not thinking that he would end up being beyond the sight of the Lord. (That’s how it is often interpreted.)

- Jonah was a prophet of God.

- He knew that God is omnipresent and omniscient (that He is everywhere present and knows all things).

- And that it was futile to think you could find a place where God was not!

And I have no doubt that Jonah knew the Psalms well. They were written a long before his time.

- Surely, he would have known Psalm 139:

O Lord, You have searched me and known me. 2 You know [a]when I sit down and [b]when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. 3 You [c]scrutinize my [d]path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. 4 [e]Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all. 5 You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in [f]Sheol, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

- The point is God sees and knows all things. Nothing is hidden from His sight.

- He is omnipresent and omniscient.

- There is nowhere you can go and hide or that God does not see and know.

Jonah surely knew all this too.

- He might be disobedient, but he wasn’t ignorant.

So what does it mean when it says he fled “from the presence of the Lord”?

Well, we get some insight into those words by going back to the very first use of similar words in Gen 4:16. It says that “Cain went out from the presence of the Lord”

- Cain had killed his brother Abel and God called him to account: “Where is Abel your brother?”

- And Cain refused to take responsibility. He said to God, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

- But God who knows and sees all things says, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to Me from the ground.”

- And the upshot was that God curses Cain on the face of the earth.

And then we read in verse 16:

“Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”

- Clearly that does not mean that Cain found a place to escape the all-seeing eye of God.

- What it implies is that there was some special place, a consecrated place, where the Lord’s name was especially present.

- Where His worshippers assembled and where they bought their offerings and called upon the name of the Lord.

- That was the setting where Cain and Abel bought their respective offerings, that ended in murder.

- Most probably, it was the gate of the garden of Eden, where God placed the cherubim and the flaming sword.

- It amounted to the seat of sacred worship.

And it was from that sacred place of worship that Cain left the special presence of the Lord.

- Of course, later on, that special place where God chose to put His name became the tabernacle as the Israelites travelled through the wilderness.

- Eventually, it became the Temple on Mt Moriah which Solomon built.

My friends, God is everywhere present, and He knows all things, but in His grace and mercy He reveals Himself in a special way when His people gather for worship. That is why corporate worship is so essential to our spiritual growth and edification.

- And that is what Jonah was trying to escape from.

- Jonah sought to flee “from the presence of the Lord” meaning he sought to escape the center of worship and that special place where God’s presence was especially with His children.

- Many Jews believed that the Spirit of prophecy was confined to the promised land.

- So, it makes sense that Jonah would try to escape the command of the Lord by leaving the land of Israel.

- And if he stayed there, he would remain exposed to more revelation and more conflict with Yahweh about the mission he didn’t want to do.

My friends, have you ever tried to escape the presence of the Lord?

- Maybe you know that God is everywhere present.

- That He sees all things and that there is nowhere you can go away from Him…

- Yet you feel uncomfortable in His presence because there is some unconfessed sin and you try to escape His watchful eye.

- Perhaps you do that by avoiding having a daily time of devotion with Him, so that your conscience is not pricked.

- Perhaps you do that by stopping coming to church where the Word might challenge you or others might confront you.

- Perhaps you no longer have a time of devotion with your family; suddenly you become too busy and miss it out because you know you have unfinished business with the Lord.

All these things are ways we try to escape the presence of the Lord.

If that is you, then you need to take note of what happens to Jonah.

Although the Lord might have a special place where He reveals Himself, such as in the midst of the believers when they are gathered together in His church, He will surely pursue you as He did Jonah.

- There is nowhere where you can go to escape Him.

- Even the darkness is light to Him.

The point is: you need to flee TO Him, not away FROM Him.

You need to go to Him and deal with what is not right and if you seek Him with all your heart you will surely find Him! That is a promise He has made!

Jonah’s mutiny against the Lord’s mission is plain and clear to see by looking at the extent to which he went to flee from the presence of Lord.

Well, if that the extent to which he went…

2. What were the possible causes of this mutiny.

What was his motive to flee?

And I want to give you four possible reasons that might explain his fleeing from the presence of the Lord:

1. Maybe Jonah thought the mission was too difficult.

What I mean can be summed up in the words of God Himself in his call to Jonah in verse 2:

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

We looked at this last time – let me remind you:

a) On the one hand the Lord says the city was very great

- Chapter 4 confirms just how large this city was…

- We are told that it contained 120,000 infants and that suggests the population was anything from between 600,000 people, but more likely to be as high as 2 million people if you take the surrounding area.

- Historians tell us that he walls were 100 feet high and so broad that 3 chariots could run abreast on the top of them.

- It had 1400 towers and each one was 200 feet high.

The difficulty of this mission is very clear:

- here is one man,

- sent to preach as a herald, of an unknown God;

- the God of another nation;

- and without any support or backing…

- and he was to proclaim the destruction of this great city.

What response could he expect except ridicule and maybe death?

b) On the other hand, (not only was it great) but the Lord says the city was very wicked.

- 150 years later the Prophet Nahum also prophesied against this city

- Listen to how wickard that prophet describes Nineveh in the curse he calls down upon them in Nahum 3:1-5:

Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillage; Her prey never departs. 2 The noise of the whip, The noise of the rattling of the wheel, Galloping horses And [a]bounding chariots! 3 Horsemen charging, Swords flashing, spears gleaming, Many slain, a mass of corpses, And [b]countless dead bodies— They stumble over [c]the dead bodies! 4 All because of the many harlotries of the harlot, The charming one, the mistress of sorceries, Who sells nations by her harlotries And families by her sorceries. 5 “Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of hosts; “And I will [d]lift up your skirts over your face, And show to the nations your nakedness And to the kingdoms your disgrace.

In such a place of military and political hardness and pride, of unbridled sin and violence, what chance was there for a poor preacher of the Lord’s holiness and anger to succeed?

It was bad enough preaching in Israel! But at least there was a covenant to appeal to.

I want to put it to you; you can see that Jonah’s mission was extraordinarily difficult.

Jonah’s only hope would be to remember the word of God: “Call upon Me in the time of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me.”

Or the words of Psa 27: 14:

“Wait for the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord.”

I wonder how you would react if you were given such a task as this?

Would such difficulties stop you in your track?

Would you continued to trust the Lord or give in to the enormity of the task?

I don’t know about you, but I might have been tempted to escape the presence of the Lord in the light of the difficulties.

Sometimes, my friends, God asks us to speak up for His sake and the gospel in a very difficult situation. You might be all alone. There might be no sympathy with your views.

Are you willing to be bold and nevertheless share the gospel?

Or are you ashamed to own your Lord and maintain His cause?

Jonah might well have been overcome with the difficulty of the mission. BUT, dear friends, there is no evidence that Jonah was alarmed at the difficulties of the work. There is not a hint of that in this book.

And so we must ask: what other reason could there be for his flight?

2. Perhaps Jonah feared for his life.

That would be understandable in these circumstances, would it not?

Jonah was charged to deliver an unacceptable message to a proud, headstrong, violent people, pronouncing destruction on their great city!

Hardly a popular message to be giving to the enemy of Israel!

Here is – one man; a prophet of another nation; who was an enemy; walking in by himself … declaring that the great city was to be no more.

Nineveh, a great city, that was known for its intolerance and bloodthirstiness. How would they react to this message?

How would you like to be sent, as a Christian, to the Taliban with the mission to tell them that God was going to overturn their hold on Afghanistan?

Did this mission terrify the man of God? Did he fear for his life?

Did he expect to be persecuted for righteousness’s sake and did that scare him to death?

I don’t know about you, but that would terrify me. I don’t think I would have the guts to do it! I would do anything to try and avoid such a mission!

But, my friends, you would greatly misunderstand his character if you said that about Jonah! There is no evidence of that at all.

It is very clear, as you look through this book, that Jonah had no fear of death; in fact, look at how many times he says he was prepared to die!

- Chapter 1:12 talking to the sailors he says:

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm [g]for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you.”

The sailors were afraid to do that, but Jonah shows no fear of dying.

- Chapter 4:3 after the people of Nineveh repent – what does he say?

“Therefore now, O Lord, please take my [c]life from me, for death is better to me than life.”

- Again, in Chapter 4:8, after the worm eats his favorite plant, what do we read?

“When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.”

I’m sure if there was another verse in the book of Jonah it would be:

“Lord I want to die.”

He doesn’t appear to fear death!

But I’m equally sure that he was not suicidal either. I’m quite sure there was more behind these statements.

Any loyal prophet in Israel must have lived with the expectation of being, at any time, called upon to lay down one’s life for the truth of God.

They simply did not “count their lives as dear to themselves” as Hebrews puts it.

They were prepared to die for the cause of God. Whether that be at the hand of their own people or an enemy.

And in that sense, my friends, the same should be true of every Christian.

“To live is Christ; to die is gain”. Our lives are to be used in service to Christ in the here and now. We should live life to the full and for His glory. But should He call us home, we should see that as our gain – we will be in the presence of our Lord and Saviour.

“To depart and be with Christ is far better”, says the Apostle Paul.

The Christian is not afraid of death because he or she knows they have the victory in Christ and that they will never die.

2 Cor 5:6-8 puts it this way:

Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— 7 for we walk by faith, not by [c]sight— 8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. 9

I want to ask you, are you prepared to give up your life for Christ?

Are you prepared to suffer for righteousness’ sake?

Very often we think of this in terms of violent persecution coming upon us, but are we prepared to “die to self” and boldly declare Christ before our work colleagues or our neighbor when we are having a casual chat over a cup of tea?

I think if we are honest, too often we keep silent rather than own our Lord because we fear for our lives and focus on our reputations and worry about what others will think of us.

But Jonah did not fear losing his life. There is nothing in this book that suggests he was not prepared to lay down his life for the sheep, even as our Lord did for us.

So what other possible reason caused Jonah’s to flee?

Well, we already touched on another possibility last time:

3. Perhaps he was fleeing because of the unusual nature of his mission.

I’m sure that in Jonah’s wildest imagination, he did not expect to be sent to the enemies of the Jews and told to preach to gentiles!

- That was simply not on his radar.

- Nor was it expected in Israel.

Jump forward a few hundred years:

Even our Lord, when He came, frequently said He was sent first to the lost house of Israel. That was the focus of His ministry.

Do you remember His response to the Canaanite woman whose daughter had an evil spirit in Matt 15:24? He said plainly:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

It was unusual to be sent away to those Israel regarded as “unclean”.

This was the struggle Peter had when he was saw the vision of the sheet being let down from heaven with unclean animals in it and was told to get up and eat in Acts 10.

Peter was puzzled by it and had to be told directly, and more than once, not to call unclean what the Lord had made clean.

Perhaps Jonah could not see how his mission to Nineveh could be right – perhaps he couldn’t understand it.

Jonah’s mission was unusual:

- being sent to pagan gentles

- being sent to a foreign people who Jonah knew God had an intention to save.

My friends, sometimes God send us on unexpected and unusual missions.

- Do we have the simple faith of Abraham who was told to sacrifice his one and only son; the son of the covenant promises?

- That must have been an unusual command given the number of times God had promised Abram he would have his own child and given that he was now over 100 years old!

- And now he is being commanded to take that precious son and sacrifice him?

- But he listened to God and obeyed!

- Are we like Abraham who trusted God despite this being an unusual command? My friends, his faith was counted as righteousness!

- Or do we doubt God and try to flee from His clear instructions?

- Perhaps God has called you to go to the mission field, but you doubt that can be right when you have responsibilities for a family. When you have a good job. When it would involve you pulling out of the work in the church which you love!

- God has called all of us to “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Are you prepared to make the sacrifice that He might be requiring of you?

- Are you obedient to the call despite it not making sense?

- That’s the test!

Jonah might have been tempted to flee the presence of the Lord because the mission seemed illogical and unusual.

Yet, this too is NOT the true reason that Jonah gives for running away.

In fact, after he faced God’s discipline, he did go and “cry against” Nineveh – just as God commanded him to do!

Well what was the true reason?

4. The real reason is given by Jonah himself in Chapter 4:2.

(I’ll just touch on this now, but we will look at it in more depth when we get to chapter 4, Lord willing.)

What does Jonah say after Nineveh has repented?

“Please Lord, was not this [a]what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore [b]in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”

Jonah shows the power of God’s grace in him because he is motivated, not by any of the selfish motives that you or I might have been motivated by:

- Such as the difficulty of the task

- Or fear of losing his life

- Or how unusual the mission was..

- No, his concern had to do with how God would look before this pagan nation.

He focuses on Yahweh. He focused on God’s attributes.

- Jonah was tempted by a spiritual temptation – he was tempted to try and defend God’s own person when God needs no defense. That was why he fled.

Jonah knew that God was “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and One who relents concerning calamity.”

- Jonah was fearful that God’s name would be tarnished by God NOT doing what He said He would do to Nineveh.

- And he did not want this pagan nation to see Israel’s God as inconsistent or changeable or soft.

- He wanted his God to appear strong, and powerful, aster and ready to judge.

- Clearly, he did not think that these pagans deserved such grace and compassion either.

- He had misguided zeal for his Lord.

It was the attributes of God that made Jonah run from the presence of God.

He knew his God and knew that He was compassionate and gracious. He knew this could only end in one way:

- The enemy being saved!

- And God’s character maligned!

Apply:

I wonder if we are like Jonah, with spiritual reasons to flee the presence of God?

Perhaps we want to defend God’s name. Our motive might be right, but the truth is we are scared about what people will think of our God!

We know that many things about God, cut across modern thinking.

- Some might see it as primitive to talk about ONE true God; One who is completely sovereign and controls whatsoever things come to pass.

- One who is angry with sin and who demands perfection unless you trust in Christ alone for your salvation; and

- One who will judge us when we die.

Perhaps we do not want to talk about the reality of hell for those who do not repent and trust the one way of salvation: Christ who is the way, the truth and the life. Perhaps we are scared that people will think our God is to narrow.

Perhaps we might feel embarrassed by the record of miracles found in the bible that Jesus performed; not to mention talking about His virgin birth and resurrection and ascension of our Lord.

These are strange things to the modern ear.

We live in an age of rationalism; scientific discovery and there is no place for the supernatural!

Perhaps it goes against the grain to talk about election and predestination, in an age that talks a great deal about free will and self-determination.

Is this not why modern evangelism spends all its time on promoting what YOU can get from Christianity and not what God requiresof you? (The need for repentance and the cost of discipleship and likelihood of suffering has all but disappeared.)

These could be spiritual reasons for wanting to run and flee from the God that is revealed in Scripture!

My friends, I want to say to you this morning that God does not need us to defend His own holy character.

He is the Lord God Almighty, and we are called to trust Him; embrace Him with faith. To obey without question. It is as simple as that!

CONCLUSION

Well, this morning we have looked at:

1. The extent of Jonah’s mutiny

a. He took deliberate steps to avoid God’s presence

b. And was blatantly disobedient to God’s clear call.

2. And we have found the real cause of it – he was spiritually embarrassed at His God who Jonah knew was gracious and compassionate and relented from bring calamity - when calamity was what Jonah thought Nineveh deserved.

I wonder if that is you this morning?

Are you trying to escape the presence of the Lord because you are not right with God?

Are you disobeying a clear call of God upon your life?

OR do you trust and obey because you know there is no other way?

My friends, I finish with these words from Isaiah 55:6-7 which tell us what to do:

Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return TO the Lord, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.

Don’t run from the Lord, dear friend. Run to Him!

PRAY

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