Sermon: Running From a Faithful God

If we haven't had the chance to meet before, my name is Ben Preiser. I'm a pastor here at the church who's being sent north to Petoskey, Michigan, to plant a new church there. So we are excited for what the Lord will do, excited for how he will bless the work of his church, the preaching of the word in that area of the state, which is very much in dire need of a good Reformed Presbyterian church there. So we appreciate all your prayers to that end.

Now let us pray together as we come to the Lord's word.

Lord, as we heard in our call to worship, the rain falls from the heavens and it waters the earth. You have sent the rains the last few days. It has cooled the face of the ground and lessened the heat of the summer, and we ask that as we receive the rain, the nourishing, soothing, precious moisture of your word, that it would tame our hearts, that it would banish away the heat, the danger of sin, the fever of it, and that you would be glorified,

that your word would accomplish all that for which you send it and your purposes. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Please turn in your Bibles to the Book of Jonah. We've started a new sermon series during our morning services here at URC, going through the Book of Jonah, which, as you may be astute to notice, is four chapters long, and yet we are spending five weeks on this book. So Nick Setterington, last Sunday, very ably gave us

an overview of the Book of Jonah. And now today, and the next few weeks, we will be going chapter by chapter, filling in more details, seeing how the themes that Nick drew out for us last week are concretized and made more tangible in each of the chapters of the Book of Jonah. So please take your Bible with you and follow along. I'm going to read for us from God's Word in Jonah 1:1-17. "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 down into it, 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 a thought to us, that we may not perish.'

And 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 of 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 you. For I know it is because of me that this great

tempest has come upon you.' Nevertheless, the men rowed 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, 'O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.' 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 the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Well, if you've spent much time reading the Bible, and I certainly hope you have, you'll know that Jesus sometimes says strange, odd things that don't always make a lot of sense at first blush. The one that comes to my mind as we hear this story in Jonah 1

is something that Jesus said when he was on his way into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, a week before Easter, the Sunday before he would be crucified on the cross, the Sunday before Jesus accomplished the will of God for our salvation on the cross and by the empty tomb. And on the way into Jerusalem, he was receiving praise and worship from all the people who were there watching, except for a few people The Pharisees, they didn't like what they heard, and they said,

"Jesus, tell them to stop this. Rebuke these people. They should not be doing this. They shouldn't be praising you." And Jesus responds with a very odd thing. He says, "I tell you, if these were silent," these people, "the very stones would cry out." The very stones would cry out. What is Jesus saying here? What he's saying, in a very odd way, is that if it were the case that he was riding into Jerusalem, humble and mounted on a donkey, the king coming in his

glory as it says in Zechariah 9:9. If he were to do that, and everybody, all the humans watching, refused to worship him, they refused to obey, they refused to give their ascent and their praise to God's plan for mercy and gospel grace, that all the rocks on the ground would grow mouths and throats, and they would do the humans' job for them. They would do what humans refuse to do. They would obey when humans refuse to get on board with God's plan for

mercy. And that reminds me of Jonah 1, because in this passage, we see a very stubborn man, a very hard-hearted prophet, who will not agree with God's plan for mercy. He will not get on board, although he does get on board a ship headed away from the Lord. He will not do what God says. He will not obey.

And everything else does. Not stones, perhaps, but wind, waves, giant fish, sailors who are pagans and are worshiping other gods. Every single person and thing in this story obeys God except Jonah. Everything else.

And yet, though Jonah is rebuked for this rebellion, that's not the whole point of the story. It's not just, look at Jonah, look how hard-hearted and stubborn he is, but it's actually a deeper, more thrilling, richer point for us in this story, that I think you'll see with me, is that the Lord's purposes for mercy will not be stopped or thwarted by Jonah, even though he is alone in his rebellion and his face is set like flint against God's purposes and he will not give in.

It does not slow God down one bit. He cannot stop what God wants to do. He cannot thwart God's plan of mercy. So let's see how that theme unfolds over the chapter in four different scenes. There's four scenes in this story, and we're going to see how this theme comes out again and again. Jonah's rebellion and hard-hearted stubbornness, and God's mercy that will not fail, despite all of Jonah's schemes. Firstly, scene number one, Jonah flees.

He flees foolishly. This is in the first three verses of chapter 1. There's a pivot that happens in verse three. In the first couple of verses, things are going how we might expect them to go. If you're familiar with reading the Old Testament and about prophetic narratives, there's often a call where the Lord commissions a man and says, "You are my prophet. I want you to go to so-and-so. I want you to tell them this."

And they receive that call, sometimes reluctantly. Think of Moses, think of Jeremiah. But they go, they obey. They do what God tells them to do. And the call comes to Jonah in verse two. But he doesn't do what everyone else does. There's this startling pivot in verse three, "But Jonah rose to flee." God says, "Rise and go to Nineveh," and he says, "I'll rise, but I'm going to Tarshish. I'm going the opposite direction.

I am not listening to you." God says, "Go," and Jonah says, "No. I don't think I will. I don't think I will do what you're telling me to do. I'm not going to obey." It's very shocking, especially if you're used to these other prophetic calls in the Old Testament. You might have expected, oh, I think I know how this story's going to go. Not at all. Jonah runs the opposite direction. He gets out of town. He doesn't just stay in the

promised land and disobey, and say, "I'm not going to go to Nineveh." He says, "I am going the other direction from what you say, God." He flees. He flees away from God. Did you notice that phrase repeated three times in this chapter? It says twice in verse three, and then later in the chapter, that he flees from the presence of the Lord. He's not just running from his responsibilities, from his calling, his job. He's not even just running away from home.

He's running away from God. He's breaking himself off from fellowship with God. He doesn't want to be with God anymore. But why? What would cause him to such an abrupt rupture with his former way of life? Why is he running? We don't find that out till chapter four, where Jonah has preached to Nineveh and the Ninevites have repented. Jonah goes outside the city and he sits down and he starts to pout and feel really sorry for himself.

And God understandably says, "What? Why are you so angry? What is wrong with you? Why are you upset?" And Jonah says, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?" "That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish." Why? Why did he flee? "For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster." What an odd reason to run away. Why would Jonah flee

from God's merciful purposes? Wouldn't you want to be a part of that? Wouldn't you want to be an instrument of God's grace to other people? Jonah doesn't. He says, "I don't want any part of this mercy mission, God. If I go to Nineveh and I preach to them and they repent, you're going to forgive them, because that's what you do, and I don't want that. I do not want that for them. I don't want them to receive mercy because I'm mad at them,

because they killed my people, and they are murderers, and they are terrible empire-building people who are spreading across the face of the land." That's the context. Ninevites were Assyrians. They conquered all sorts of people in the world at that time, and Jonah hated them. We see that clearly. He didn't want them to receive mercy. He says to God, "You're merciful, and I'm against your mercy. I don't want to take part in it. I don't want to be a part of this.

I don't want your mercy for those people. I'd happily receive it for me and for Israel. I'll preach to them. But I don't want these nasty Ninevites, these evil Assyrians, getting what they don't deserve. I don't want grace for them. I don't want mercy." It's a very evil heart, it's a very merciless heart that Jonah has. And Jim Boyce, Presbyterian pastor from Philadelphia, James Montgomery Boyce, he said this. He gave an illustration to help understand exactly what Jonah is doing and why

he's doing it. So imagine this. He says, "We can understand the geography and Jonah's motives," so two things, "if we imagine the word of the Lord coming to a Jew living in New York City during World War II, telling him to go to Berlin, to Nazi Germany, and preach the gospel to the Germans, to the Nazis, but instead that Jewish person runs to San Francisco and boards a boat for Hong Kong." That's an illustration to help you understand

what Jonah's doing and why he's doing it. He does not want to help the enemies of his people, and he goes the opposite direction from where he's supposed to be going. He's fleeing away from God and from His presence and from His calling. Now, what can we say about Jonah's flight? First, it's foolish. Fleeing God is utterly foolish, and Jonah knows it's foolish. He says, "I serve the Lord who made the sea." And then he gets on a boat

on the sea and attempts to get away. But he knows that God is the Lord of the sea. That's ridiculous. That's absurd. That's so foolish. Why would you do that, Jonah? That is so silly. He also knows Psalm 139, which was written before Jonah's time. Psalm 139, what does that say? "Where shall I flee from your presence, O Lord?" That's a rhetorical question. You can't. "Where shall I flee? 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." Now Jonah, in the course of this story, he's going to learn a thing or two about dwelling in the uttermost parts of the sea. But even there, he can't escape from God. He's going all the way down. You see that in this passage. He goes down to Joppa. He goes down into the belly of the boat. He's going to go down into the fish. He's going down into the ocean.

Instead of arising and going to Nineveh, Jonah's going down, but it doesn't matter. He can't flee from God. He's on a fool's errand. His fleeing is fruitless. He's done before he even starts. He couldn't possibly succeed.

It's like trying to run away from air. It doesn't even make sense, and if you were to succeed, it would be very bad for you. You don't want to be away from air. Air is good. God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. He's in more places than air is. He's more inside you than your insides are. God is everywhere, and Jonah knows this. He knows this. He knows he can't get away from God even in his own skin. So what he's doing is just ridiculous.

It is so foolish, and children can understand this. I was last week reading this passage to my sons. They're very small. I thought, if I can explain it to them, I could probably explain it to you guys. Chapter one of Jonah, let's give this a shot. I read them the story, and I say, "What do you think Jonah's up to here? What's going on with him? What's he trying to do? What do you think of his fleeing from God?" And my six-year-old says,

gives me this knowing grin, "God's everywhere. Can't get away from God. Can't do it." He's been catechized. He knows the answer. I say, "Where is God?" He says, "God is everywhere." He knows the answer. A six-year-old knows how silly Jonah is being. Fleeing is foolish. Don't do things that six-year-olds know are ridiculous, is the moral of the story. That is what we're supposed to see in Jonah. What he's doing is so misguided and so absurd.

But not only is his fleeing foolish, as if the greatest thing that we could fear is being made fun of, it's also very costly. Did you notice that he had to pay a fare to get on the boat? He's not riding for free. Jonah pays his own money to get on a boat and not even reach the place he's going to, and getting taken by a fish exactly where he was trying to escape from. But his pockets are lighter when he gets there. He lost out.

He missed on his fare. He paid money for the privilege of failing in what he was trying to do. It was costly for him.

Furthermore, there's fear. That's a cost. The sailors, they're terrified, and that's a cost that he's incurring for other people. So his sin and his fleeing is not just costly for him, it's costly for people around him. It's ruining things. They have to throw their cargo overboard. That's a cost. His fleeing is expensive. He's putting all of this capital forward, and it's not getting him anywhere. But worst of all, the highest cost that Jonah pays is his hope and his

peace. As we'll see in the next scene, Jonah goes to sleep in the boat. And we'll talk more about that, but here I just want to note that his sleep, it's not restful. Right? He's sleeping because he doesn't have anything else to do. What are the sailors doing? They're praying. They're throwing themselves on the mercy of their false gods. Is Jonah praying? No. He's sleeping. If you're in a hopeless situation, you know I might not have any idea how this can turn out for me.

I might not see my way through to clear skies on the other side of this horrible storm, but I can cry out to God. God who made the storm, who can calm the waves of the sea, He can bring me through this. And you can pray, say, "Lord, help me. Bring me through this." Jonah can't do that. He doesn't have that option available to him. He knows that he's rebelling against God, and so he just has to go to sleep. It's the best he can hope for.

That is the best thing that Jonah can do, is take a nap. There's no rest for his soul or for his spirit. He doesn't have a God anymore, a God that he can throw himself on that God's mercy. Not even a false god like the sailors. He's got nothing, and that is exceedingly costly. Jonah's flight from God has cost him peace of mind and hope in the midst of a dire situation. What we sang earlier, we were singing the psalm of confidence, Psalm 46, "Lord of hosts, you're

with us in the storm." Jonah can't sing it. It's not his song anymore because he's turned his back on God. It's costly. And the flight that Jonah participates in, thirdly, is sinful, it's disobedient. It's a metaphor, you could say, for sin itself. When we sin, when we disobey, we're removing ourselves from the presence of God. I already drew your attention to that. It says it three times in here. That's what Jonah's after,

but even if that's not what you want when you sin, that's what happens. That's what sin does. It separates you from the Lord. That's what the Garden of Eden story is about. After Adam and Eve sin, they're thrown out of the garden, away from the presence of the Lord. But what does it say before that? In verse eight, they've sinned, they've eaten the fruit, they've disobeyed, "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the

day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." They are hiding. They are fleeing from the presence of the Lord. Their sin has thrust them away from Him. And those two things go hand-in-hand. You can't sin and stay with God. It doesn't work that way. When you sin, like it or not, you separate yourself from the Lord. It's tragic. It's what our sin produces.

And Jesus teaches us this. He said, "If you want to abide in me, abide in my commandments." You want to be with God? The best way to do that is to listen to what He says and obey Him. Fleeing from God, conversely, is disobedience. And of course, I'm not talking about how are we saved. I'm not talking about how is it that you ultimately get yourself into a right standing with God. That comes by grace through the blood of Christ.

But we're talking about communion with God and patterns of life that will lead you toward Him or away from Him. So Jesus, who knew about the gospel better than we do, He says to us, "I have come that they may have life." He says, "If anyone looks on the Son, he will have life." He says, "I have come that they might not be condemned." And He says, "If you would abide with me, abide in my commandments." It's necessary for us. And Jonah,

he is out of town. He's running from God, and that is an icon. It's an emblem of his disobedience against God. Notice that what Jonah is doing in running away from the promised land is a sort of self-excommunication. Right? We think he's just running away from home. He's getting away from where he's used to living. But the land was really spiritually significant for Israel. To live in the land, the promised land, was to be a part of God's covenant people.

So to get out of the land is to run away from God and His promises. It's to say, "You know what? I tried life on God's terms, and that wasn't working for me. He asks too much of me," is what Jonah's saying, "and so I'm out of here. I don't need Him anymore. I don't want Him anymore." He's cutting himself off. That's what Jonah is doing. He doesn't want to be an Israelite anymore. Now, we don't flee physically because where we live isn't tied to our

faith, and that's a good thing because it means there's Christians all over the world. They can live wherever they want, and they can praise Jesus. We don't do that, what Jonah did. We don't flee God physically, but we sin the way that he did. Our sin says the same thing that Jonah's sin did. We have that same heart. We partake of the sin of Jonah when we disobey God. We flee not with our bodies, but in our souls. We flee from God's presence. We run from His commandments.

And we come up with all sorts of silly, vain, empty reasons and excuses and even philosophies and worldviews to try to bolster up why we should be allowed to do that. And they're ultimately foolish, but that's what we do when we sin. We run from God. We reject the rightful claim that He has on us. And so this passage asks us, when we find ourselves in that position of fleeing away from the Lord, which we all do, in small ways or large.

When you sin, that's what you're doing. You're running away from God. Some of us do it in big ways. Some of us, maybe this morning, are fleeing from God in every way. You're here at church, but your heart is hard. I don't want anything to do with this, but I'm just here because my friend made me come, or I'm just used to it and I don't really want to listen. That would be a big way to flee from God. But a small way would be saying,

"I mean, I like God. He's my God, but I don't know if I really want to listen to Him on this thing that I've got in my life." When it comes to this question, this situation, this area of my life, I'm going to go the other way from what God says. And this chapter is asking us to turn around. Don't be like Jonah. If you find yourself fleeing from God, large ways or small, would you turn around? Would you right the ship? Go back.

Say, "I've sinned. Forgive me, Lord." Stop fleeing from God's presence and His truth. That's what this passage is encouraging us to do. Reject the way of Jonah. It's foolish, it's costly, it's disobedient. Jonah was a fool for trying to escape from God, but may that not be said of any of us. May we heed this warning sign for us. The second scene is that Jonah sleeps. We talked a little bit about that already, but what else do we know about his sleep?

Why focus on that? There's a lot of things going on. This is in verses four through six. There's a lot going on. There's a storm. The Lord is hurling winds. The waves are growing more and more tempestuous. The soldiers are running around like headless chickens, throwing cargo overboard. They're praying. The captain is rousing up the sleeping Israelites in the belly of the ship. "Wake up." Everybody's active except for Jonah. That's the point.

The point of this is to show you how sleepy Jonah is. And I don't say that just physically. He's sleepy spiritually. He has become dull. He's become numb to the situation that he's in. His sleep is a sign of his seared conscience. His conscience is asleep. He's not able to understand anymore what he's done. And so he's sleeping, but it's showing you just how unresponsive he is. The soldiers are working. They're bailing out buckets of water.

They're falling on their knees to their pagan gods. They're working as hard as they can. And Jonah, the supposed hero of this story, the namesake of the book, is sleeping, not doing anything. He's not helping. He's not awake. He's not awake to the danger that his disobedience has brought him into. He's senseless, literally and spiritually, without sense, without sensitivity to what's going on. And this is ironic. We would expect him to be attentive to what's going

on because he's the Israelite. The pagan sailors are the ones who are doing what they should be doing, and they're trying everything that's available to them. They don't have anything else. They're working as hard as they can. They're praying as hard as they can. It's not helping, but at least they're trying. At least they're diligent. You feel bad for them. You feel bad. Why? They can't make any headway here Jonah's the one who ought to know how to get out of the situation, and

he does. Is he doing anything about it? Nope. He's asleep.

His conscience is seared. The more we persist in disobedience, the harder it becomes to turn away from it. The more we run away from God, the harder it becomes to stop running and to turn around. This is the folly that you'll hear from people if you share the gospel on campus with college students. I'll have time for that stuff later. Just don't bother me. I want to go to a party tonight. I want to live my life my way on my terms.

What are they assuming? Friends, they are assuming that the chance to turn around will always be available to them. That is a dangerous assumption to make. Don't assume that if your conscience is awake now, that it will never fall asleep. That's what Jonah did. And his sleep is an indictment of his spiritual situation. He seared his conscience, and his nap is a rebuke. It's showing us again how ridiculous he's being. Who sleeps in the middle of a hurricane?

Who could do that? I didn't want to go to sleep on Friday night when the sirens were going off and it was loud and there was wind and rain, and that wasn't nearly as scary as this. I wasn't going to sleep. I was going to stay awake and see what's happening, see if I need to gather my family into the basement and hide. Jonah's hiding, but he's not looking out. He's being foolish. And this is a chilling fact. Jonah's lukewarmness, his apathy, is dangerous.

It's not safe for him. It's a huge lie in the world that you can ignore God safely. It's not true. People tend to think that somehow that's neutral, that you can go and you can plead with someone to be reconciled to God through Christ and say, "I care about your soul. God is offering you a way of escape through the blood of Jesus." And how do they respond? I've never been that interested in spiritual things. It just doesn't do it for me.

I'm not interested. I fall asleep in church. I tried it all. I went to Bible camp. I went to Sunday school. I went to VBS. I grew up in a Christian family. I never thought it was that interesting. Do you hear what you're saying? You're not interested in God, who made you, who loves you, who gives His Son for you? This is dangerous. It is dangerous. It is just as dangerous as an angry atheist who's trying to convince everyone around them of the

falsehood of religion. Because at least that person knows they're fighting something. An apathetic person doesn't care. They're asleep. It's not safe.

There's no neutrality. That's an insult to God to say that you're just not that interested in Him. So beware, friends. Beware sleepiness in your soul. Beware your conscience falling asleep. When you don't take an opportunity to turn around, it's not safe for you. Jonah should have known better. He may not be climbing up in the rigging, shaking his fist into the sky as the wind and the rain are lashing at his upturned face,

but he is not safe in the belly of that ship. He's actually worse off because he doesn't even realize what's going on. Jonah sleeps. Thirdly, Jonah's condemned. We've seen him flee. We've seen him sleep. Now he's awake. Maybe he'll notice what's going on. Maybe he'll repent. Nope. He's condemned. That's the theme of this middle section. It's verses seven through 16, so it's almost the whole rest of the chapter. And there's this scene.

Jonah's hauled before the sailors to answer for himself, to explain himself. What have you done? Why have you gotten us into this situation? Your fleeing is ridiculous, it's foolish, and it's costly for us. Why would you do this?

What's interesting, too, is that the pagans, these sailors who are condemning Jonah, they're portrayed as sort of good guys. They're working hard. And did you notice that they're actually converted at the end of the story? They start off praying to their gods, is what it says. They each pray to his god in verse four or verse five. And then at the end it says they pray to the Lord, and they fear Him exceedingly, and they offer a sacrifice to the Lord, and they

make vows to God. They're converted. Their hearts are changed. They make sacrifices and vows. They have faith and obedience. They obey God, but Jonah still will not. The big fish will obey God in verse 17. The wind and the waves obey God when he says, "Stop." But Jonah won't listen. He's condemned in his hard-heartedness. And even his own words condemn him. Look what he says in verse nine. I find it very hard to read this verse

without a little bit of snark and sarcasm coming out because I just can't imagine he's saying this with a straight face. Jonah said to them, "I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord." Okay, Jonah. Really? You fear the Lord? You don't seem like you do. You don't seem like you fear much of anything, bud. You're asleep in the middle of a storm, and you want to tell me that you worship the God who made the sea? I don't believe you, Jonah."

The pagan captain rebukes him. He grabs him. "Wake up. What are you doing? Why are you sleeping right now?" "Well, I fear the Lord." "It doesn't seem like you do, Jonah. If you really believed that, if you really feared the Lord, you say you believe He made the sea and the dry land, I don't think you'd be doing what you're doing. I don't think you'd be running away from the Lord across the sea." He has no excuse, and even his own words show how silly he's being.

What else do we see about Jonah's sin in this section? Well, last week, Nick talked about there's sort of an ethnocentrism in the Book of Jonah that's being called out and rebuked. It's the sort of a racist attitude in Jonah's heart. I think that's present here. He doesn't like the Assyrians, and it could be that he hates them simply because they're Assyrians. That could be the case. But I think what's even deeper than that, alongside that sort

of those are the other guys and we don't like them because they're not like us, alongside that, and maybe even fueling that, is a hatred for his enemies. He hates his enemies, which we know better because Jesus said to love your enemies. Does Jonah know better? Exodus 23: "If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall

refrain from leaving him with it. You shall rescue it with him." Proverbs 24:17: "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles." Jonah's disobedient. He should love his enemies. God has told him to, but he hates them. He wants them to die. He doesn't want them to receive mercy. He's more unrepentant than this whole horde of pagan sailors. He's more unrepentant than Nineveh. They're going to repent in chapter 3.

Everyone repents, but Jonah doesn't. He's hard-hearted and he's hateful. Here's his chance. He's awake now. Here's Jonah's chance to say, "You're right. I was wrong. I shouldn't have done these things. I repent. I'll go back." He knows that it's his fault. He says as much. He says, "The storm is here because of me." So what's the obvious solution? Obey God. This is happening because you're disobeying, so obey God. Repent and go back.

He could've said those things. He could've said, "Turn the boat around. We won't be safe until I obey God." But does he do that? No. He says, "Throw me overboard." And we shouldn't miss how horrible that is, because he doesn't know that a fish is coming. It's not like Jonah was thinking to himself, "I'll just catch this oceanic taxicab to Nineveh, and I'll just jump in the fish's mouth. Take me to Nineveh. Are you headed that way?"

He doesn't know. What's he doing? "Hurl me overboard." He wants to die. He's committing suicide. "Get me out of here." In this moment, when Jonah has a chance to repent and go back to Nineveh and obey, he literally says, "I would rather die. I would rather die than obey God. I'd rather die than see the Ninevites live by God's mercy." That's horrible. That's hateful. Jonah doesn't know the fish is coming. He wants to get out.

"I'm done with this. I'll never repent. I'll never listen to God. I'd rather die."

And this is the type of unloving, narcissistic, unmerciful depravity that happens when we run away from God. That's what Jonah is showing us. This is who we turn into when we run from God, and His purpose is for mercy. The mercy is on the side of God. We run from Him, we end up like Jonah. We only think about ourselves. We never have mercy for others. It seems so simple. Just go to Nineveh. Just obey the Lord. "No. I will never obey," he says.

Perhaps the storm would melt Jonah's heart and he'd realize this storm is a message from a good God warning me, telling me, "Turn, come back. I could destroy you like this, but I'm warning you. Please just do what I'm telling you to do." He says, "No. I won't."

And receiving God's mercy should melt Jonah's heart. It should tell him, "Well, God has mercy on me. Surely I can be a part of His plan of mercy for Nineveh. If He has shown me grace, why shouldn't He show grace to them? I'm just as bad as they are." That's the whole point of these contrasts, showing you Jonah is worse. He's worse than Nineveh. He's worse than the sailors, because he's asleep while they're trying their

best.

He should say, "I'm worse, and if God can forgive me, why shouldn't He forgive them?" That's what he should say. He doesn't. He's selfish. He's chosen his path. It's a dark one indeed. He's become a hateful, unrepentant, small-minded, hopeless, stubborn, incorrigible bigot who would rather drown in a watery grave than see his enemies benefit from God's grace. That's where Jonah is. This is the condemnation of Jonah. This is showing you just into the heart of his sin, how wicked

it is, just how ugly his sin is, and what our sin looks like when we flee from the Lord. And yet, even here, God's mercy cannot be thwarted. You might say, I thought the theme of this sermon was how God's mercy triumphs over rebellion and stubbornness, and we've only talked about stubbornness so far. It's been a lot of that stuff. Well, look at what happens in the face of Jonah's stubbornness. He says, "I'm not going to Nineveh because I don't want the pagans to be saved."

God says, "Fine, I'll save pagans on your boat.

I'm going to save more people than you thought I was going to, and that was part of the plan the whole time. But you thought you were tripping me up, Jonah, by running away. You're the one who tripped." It's like if I tell my son to go upstairs and take a bath, and instead he says, "No," and runs away across the yard, trips, and falls into the kiddie pool. He takes a bath. Right? He was trying to run away, but he does the exact thing

that I was telling him to do. This is what happens. Jonah's attempts to flout God's commands have actually led to God doing exactly what he wanted to do: show mercy to people who don't deserve it. There's this humorous irony in what's going on, but Jonah's not the one laughing. He doesn't get the last laugh. He's just not strong enough to beat God's plans. He can't stop them. No human is. No human can thwart God's plans for

mercy. Though Jonah is hell-bent on running away, he's unable to succeed in the simplest part of his goal. He's foiled, and God is the one with the last laugh. When God wants to show mercy, he will. Nothing will stop him. This is not just a story about Jonah and how dumb he is. Oh, look at Jonah. He's so foolish. He's so ridiculous. Don't be like Jonah. There is that. That is in the story. But it's even more about a God who cannot be stopped,

thwarted, turned aside from his purposes for mercy, no matter how foolish we are, no matter how stubborn. And I want you to notice at the end, verse 17, our fourth scene, which is that Jonah himself receives mercy. Jonah is rescued. This most hard-hearted of men, the man who has done nothing but sin since the beginning of verse three. And that's good news for us, because we've been stubborn, too. We've been hard-hearted.

We've been wayward, headstrong in our sin, just like Jonah at times, but there's still hope for us, too. God would've been entirely just to let Jonah drown in the ocean or be digested in the belly of the fish. He didn't have to tell the fish to spit Jonah out. Jonah could've been a lot shorter of a book. Right? After verse 17, we could've had this. Jonah was swallowed by the fish, and he died, and then God sent a different prophet

to Nineveh. The Ninevites repented, and everyone lived happily ever after, except for Jonah. No one was sad because he was a jerk. That's how it could've ended. Jonah could've ended that way, and it would've been totally fair. Jonah wanted to die. God would've been giving him what he asked for. But his mercy shows no bounds. As we read this book and we think, Nineveh? God, you want to save Nineveh? Really? Okay. And then these pagan sailors, you want to save them, too? Okay.

All right. I guess you can do that. And we might start to get the wrong idea. We might think, aha, I see the way this story is going. The bad guys are the good guys, and the good guy is the bad guy. Jonah's the one we're supposed to be rooting against. He's the bad guy. Boo Jonah. That's the story, chapter one. And as soon as we say that, God saves Jonah, too. The moral of the story is that we're all bad guys, and God

shows mercy to really bad guys. Guys who don't deserve it. Men and women who are running away from him. Men who have been ruthless and brutal like Nineveh, women who have worshiped other things besides God, and all of us when we're rebellious and we run away. God will save the least likely person, the least deserving person you can think of. And you can think of someone right now in your head. I know this person. I would not expect them to be saved.

I would not expect it at all. If they were to turn from their sin and repent, I would be blown away. I would be shocked. But God can do it. He does it every day. So the real message is, as soon as you start to think so and so is the bad guy, and now God's going to come in and show mercy to that person, now you're starting to get it. That is the message of Jonah. There's no person so far gone as to be beyond the reach of God's kindness.

Even those set in their sins and hard-hearted in their rebellion can still be rescued.

And this is the God of Jonah, the God of this book. Not the false gods who couldn't do a thing to help the sailors. The true God, the God who extends grace to those who don't deserve it, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the triune God of mercy and patience and kindness, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This is our God, friends.

The God of Jonah, the God who saved him. The God who welcomes all who come to him through Jesus' name. So how will you respond to him when you see your sins, when you recognize how far you have fled,

when you notice just how wicked your heart is, sometimes like Jonah's? Will you repent like Nineveh? Will you be like the sailors who offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise, and they pledge themselves to the Lord?

Or will you run away? Will you despise his mercy again? Don't be like Jonah. God is far too good a God for that to ever work. He is far too merciful, more merciful than you are stubborn. And if you're still hard-hearted, I just told you all that about God's mercy, and if now you're still hard-hearted, God still offers you mercy. You're here. You're breathing. There's a chance for you, like there was for Jonah in the boat and then in the fish

and then in Nineveh. He calls out to you still, even now. God's mercy is for you. He will save everyone he intends to save. You can't beat him. His mercy will have the last laugh and the final say. Psalm 95 says, "The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down." And then it says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Let's pray.

Holy God, we are thankful for your mercy that searches us out time and time again. Please soften us. Please give us eyes to see how merciful you are to us. Please help us to not have seared, blunted consciences, but to always run back to you and receive your kindness that you give to us in Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.