NO WHERE TO HIDE 2: GOD'S PRESENCE IS INESCAPABLE

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.” Jonah 1:4-6

Jonah thought he could run away from God’s purpose to preach to the Ninevites so instead of going 850 miles to the eastern bank of the Tigris River to their city, he is fast heading the opposite direction to the farthest city called Tarshish. He hops on a ship and pays his fare (Jonah 1:3). All this just to get away from God’s presence (I can imagine him pumping Bobby Brown’s “I Gotta Get Away”, I’m dating myself already). He is about to find out how serious Jehovah is with His purpose to save all humanity from the curse of sin, death, and sickness.

Jehovah decides He is going to do some wind hurling on this runaway ship and creates a perfect storm. So scary is this storm that each of these hardened sailors – not known for their religious propensities – starts to cry out to his god. Think four-letter word vocabularies bursting forth in rapid prayer to whatever gods they could recall in such a storm. Just think, don’t say. Then the prayers don’t seem to be working because this ship is on the verge of breaking up. That’s when they decide to do their own hurling of the precious cargo overboard. Still, the storm does not seem to be abating and the captain, probably wracking his brains about what else to throw overboard, finds Man of God Jonah sleeping like a baby below deck. In alarm and a very ironic reversal of roles, the sailor admonishes the prophet for not praying to his god in such a calamitous situation.

My point: when you actively refuse and run away from God’s purpose for your life, you set yourself up for God’s disaster because His presence is inescapable. You can’t run from God. Just like Jonah, He will foil your “initiatives” until you fail. Sometimes your failures are not because Satan is attacking you or your enemies, however you conceive of them, are out to get you; no, it’s because God is stopping you and very intent on your not succeeding in your disobedience. You may do the Esther Fast thing (three days without food or water)  or the Jesus Anointing (forty days dry fast) but it ain’t working, baby, because you just made the One who makes things work mad at you. 

Secondly, Jonahs are liabilities to their fellow passengers. All the cargo gets wasted in trying to keep the ship afloat. Jonahs are kind of expensive to hang around because helping Jonahs is like trying to stop God from disciplining them. We all know who wins in the end, right? So you may want to help a Jonah from a far by shouting to them that it’s time they started obeying God. Trust me, you don’t want to be in the same boat with them. Plus, Jonahs are just not sensitive to the chaos they are causing. While you are busy praying yourself hoarse for God to change things for them, Jonahs are peacefully sleeping downstairs. 

Finally, when it is obvious to everyone, even four-letter word spewing sailors, that this is a situation that requires God’s intervention, the backslidden Jonah has no desire at all to call on God. Disobedience always leads one further away from God and desensitizes one to the spiritual realm. Sad. 

You don't have to be a Jonah.

NO WHERE TO HIDE: GOD'S PURPOSE IS NON-NEGOTIABLE

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the Son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. – Jonah 1:1-16, English Standard Version

Many of us learn the hard way. We will only obey after we have learned a bitter lesson just like Jonah. He had to learn that disobedience to God brings God’s disaster. I am pretty sure you don’t want to learn that lesson the Jonah way. So what do you need to know and do to avoid such a situation in your life? Jonah 1:1-16 shows us four ways how we can avert such a disaster and over the course of the week I will be discussing them. For this post though, the first thing to know is that God’s purpose for your life is non-negotiable and you disobey it at our own peril.

Jonah (Hebrew - “dove”) the son of Amittai (Hebrew - “faithfulness”) is a tried and tested prophet of Jehovah, God’s covenant name revealed to Israel through Moses and usually translated LORD in many English versions. He prophesied in the prosperous years of King Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23-28). Jehovah sends him to Nineveh, some 850 miles on the eastern bank of the Tigris, with a mission to warn the city of God’s impending judgment because of its evil. But he decides to head the opposite direction, to Tarshish. 

Now, to understand properly what’s going on with Jonah, we need to remember that God’s purpose is to restore His creation after it “fell” because of Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Satan had lied to them through the serpent that if they disobeyed God’s instruction not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, they would be just like God (Genesis 3:5). Talk about ego! Anyways, with their disobedience they shut themselves off from God’s blessing and brought curses upon their lives and the whole of creation (Genesis 3:15-19) that the world has had to deal with ever since. But God, gracious and merciful as He is, was not done with humanity. In the midst of the curses, God proclaimed the first good news of humanity’s restoration when He said that the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent (Satan) and so set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the fulfillment of His restorative purpose (Genesis 3:15b). Throughout the Bible, God chose people with whom He has worked with to bring to fruition His on-going plan of salvation. People like Abraham to who he promised myriads of descendants, a land, and to be a blessing to the nations of the world (Genesis 12:1-3). The last promise is also what Jonah’s mission was about: to preach to Nineveh – one of the nations of the world – that God was going to judge this great city because of their evil. Ultimately, this last promise would climax in the sending of “His only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). So when Jonah decides that he is not going to go east to Nineveh but to the furthest western city that was thought to be the end of the world, Tarshish, he has set himself against God’s very purpose of redeeming humanity and creation to Himself.

Now before you rail accusations against Jonah that he is a traitor and a false prophet, look first at the log in your eye. More than Jonah, you have a very clear mission of what God wants to do in the earth. In fact, you have John 3:16 memorized from childhood. You know the many that surround you that live lives characterized by evil. These are the contemporary Ninevites whose evil has come before God and are in danger of a worse judgement at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ when comes to judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1). You too, believer in Jesus Christ and partner with Him in the salvation of the nations, are in the same, if not worse (because of the greater revelation of God’s purpose in the New Testament) situation as Jonah when you go the opposite direction of not sharing the Good News of Jesus with those destined for God’s wrath.

Many of us are mature enough to know the areas of service that God has called us to. No, it’s not just within the four walls of the church. It’s also in those classrooms, offices, clinics, marketplaces, etc that God has sent us to. If we are not sharing and living the Good News of God’s kingdom in the spheres of influence He has sent us to, we too have ran off to Tarshish and are in danger of God’s disaster coming on us just like Jonah. Sounds scary? It is.