You Can Run But You Can’t Hide
Tom Shrader examines Jonah's futile attempt to flee from God's presence, emphasizing that believers cannot hide from God or escape His loving discipline. He teaches that sin may provide temporary peace but always comes at a cost, while obedience brings genuine peace through God's presence. The message challenges Christians to live transparently as witnesses, noting that unbelievers often hold believers to higher standards than they hold themselves.
“When you run away from the Lord, you never get where you're going, and you always pay your own fare.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Jonah (2004)
Recorded: 2004 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 48 min
Themes: obedience, disobedience, running, hiding, discipline, presence, transparency, witnessing, running from god, avoiding responsibility, struggling with obedience, feeling exposed, new believer, christian witness, pastor, feeling disciplined
Scripture: Jonah 1:1-3, Jonah 1:3-11, Psalm 139, Psalm 139:7, Psalm 139:23, Hebrews 12:1, Hebrews 12:5, James 1:13-15, 2 Corinthians 4, Romans 5:1, Proverbs 16:33
Theological Themes: omnipresence, divine discipline, sanctification, biblical authority, covenant faithfulness, god's sovereignty, christian witness, spiritual accountability
Full Transcript
Good morning! How are you today? Did you sleep well? Did you have some of that great cracked corn this morning, or whatever it is—cracked wheat or whatever? Something was cracked, probably the minds of those who ate it.
Let's open your Bibles to Jonah. Hopefully we got a great introduction yesterday. I was at the door greeting some of you coming in and met a number of people who were not here last night—I assume travel or whatever. So let me just bring you up to speed very quickly.
We're going to take our time today and through the rest of this week to look at the book of Jonah. I deliberately did not do what I would normally do in a teaching setting, which would be to spend a great deal of time on an introduction. I didn't even mention who wrote this book or the time frame or any of those things, but we'll tie it together at the end. I'll give you just a tip: the book is autobiographical, so Jonah is the one writing this book. We probably have some sense of Jonah and who he is and his story, even if you're only vaguely familiar with Scripture or maybe don't even know Scripture at all.
The Reality of Jonah's Story
We said last night that Jonah was a real man and that was a real fish, and it really swallowed him and really spit him up. There really was a Nineveh. This is not just a fable, like Aesop's fables, to try to teach us a principle or truth, but this is an actual story. This drives home immediately to us that the Bible is in fact the Word of God.
We looked last night at the first three verses and said that as we do this, what we're seeing is that this book is a great picture of the goodness of God. As Johnny sang this morning, talking about God's goodness and how good He is, even in the midst of this blatant disobedience on Jonah's part, God is there and He's faithful. It's a remarkable Old Testament picture of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a story of salvation. It is a story of grace, and not just to Jonah, but also to the Gentile world, not just the Hebrew.
Here's what we looked at last night, really the first three verses: "The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.' But Jonah arose 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 from the presence of the Lord."
Jonah's Two Great Mistakes
There were two great mistakes that Jonah made. Number one, he was trying to flee—and it's there all over verse three, you see it twice there in verse three. He's trying to flee from the presence of the Lord. That's a great mistake, and we'll start there this morning. Also, he believes he can escape the discipline of the Lord.
The message comes to Jonah and says, "Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh." Remember our illustration? Jonah's in Chicago, and God says, "Go to New York," and Jonah says, "I got the message—New York, right? Yep, that's what I want." God could not be more clear. "I want you to go to New York," and Jonah said, "All right, I got it." He goes down to the port, to O'Hare, and he buys a ticket to go to L.A. He goes to Joppa, there's a ship, and he says, "Where are you going?" They say "Tarshish"—exactly the opposite direction—and away Jonah goes, trying to flee the presence of the Lord.
The Impossibility of Hiding from God
Psalm 139, let me just read you a little bit of that from the Living Bible: "O Lord, You have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts when I'm far away. You chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment You know where I am. You know what I'm going to say even before I say it, Lord. You both precede and follow me. You place Your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!"
"I can never escape from Your Spirit! I can never get away from Your presence! If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I go down to the grave, You are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there Your hand will guide me, and Your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—but even in darkness I cannot hide from You. To You the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to You. You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it."
Here's what the psalmist says: there's no place I can go to hide from You. Verse 7 of Psalm 139: "I can never escape from Your Spirit! I can never get away from Your presence!" Jonah's mission, defined right there in verse 3, is to escape from the presence of the Lord. It's utterly impossible to do.
A little bit of a side note, but let me just draw your attention—you can just make a note of it. Psalm 139, verse 23 is a great prayer: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends You, and lead me along the path of everlasting life." Jonah thought he could hide from the presence of the Lord. It's utterly impossible to do. You can't hide.
The Futility of Avoiding God's Discipline
The second thing is Jonah thought he could avoid the discipline of God. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 says this: "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Chapter 12, verse 5: "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines." Now it's clear here that God has placed a call on Jonah. God has this love for Jonah. Jonah's one of God's kids—hard to imagine at this particular point.
If you are a child of God, and by the way, we all are not children of God. That's one of the great lies, isn't it, in the world we're in today, that somehow we're all children of God and that there is this one true God and we all pray to this same God.
Right after September 11th, I don't know if you remember this—I think September 11th was a Monday or Tuesday, and on that weekend, they had an ecumenical service in Yankee Stadium. Do you remember that? Do you remember the emcee? Oprah. Oprah was the mistress of ceremonies for this event, and they had people from every possible denomination. They did everything that day but sacrifice a goat. They had people from all over, every walk, every place, who had conflicting theological views. And somehow we got together and thought they were all praying to the same God.
We Are Not All Children of God
They aren't. This is really important. This is what separates Orthodox Christianity from everything else. We believe that Jesus is God come in the flesh, who died on the cross for our sins so we could have everlasting life. If you believe that, you have heaven. If you don't, you won't. And these people aren't praying to the same God. We are not all children of God.
Paul writes to the believers in Ephesus, and he says this: "You were formerly children of wrath, but now you're children of God." If you're God's kid, and if He loves you, He's going to discipline you. Remember what we said last night? Most of the time our problem is not trying to figure out what we don't know, it's obediently following what we do know. And if you're disobedient, I can promise you this, He's going to take you to the woodshed, my friend.
God's Discipline Is Like Parental Discipline
There's a whole bunch of kids around, but there's two that I have a particular fondness for and they are mine. That's the way it is. When our kids are playing with other kids, I always teach what I learn on my summer vacation. And almost every year I'll talk about parenting, because it is an absolute lost art. I am stunned at how poor parents are today.
I see kids all the time who absolutely just need to be throttled. There seems to be this new thing now: they'll go, "Tyler, Tyler, come here." And the kid couldn't care less. "Tyler, one, two, three. We're counting down Tyler," and then at about ten, Tyler comes slaughtering over. Here's how it should go: "Tyler, come here." No? Bam! That's how you deal with it. It's not hard to figure out.
I know some of you are going to cringe at this, but I'm telling you, it's not terribly different than training a puppy. The reason parenting is hard is this: it's 24-7 and you have to be consistent because they're relentless and they're going to test you and test you and test you, and you can't give in.
Now when I'm out and I see all these kids and they're swinging from the projectors and they're moving all around, I know what they need. They need to be disciplined. But I don't spank them because they're not my kids. Now if my kid even looks at the projector, we deal with that.
The Same Is True of God
The same thing is true of God. This is really important to get your arms around. Because you look at people and you're saying, "They sin and sin and sin and sin. Why doesn't God do something?" They're not His kids.
If you're one of God's kids and you're like Jonah—and remember there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us—if you're like Jonah and God's told you what you need to do and you don't do it, I can tell you, if you're just cruising along and everything's fine, duck, because discipline is coming. Or something worse—there'll be no discipline because you aren't His kid at all. See, this is a real serious thing. What happens to Jonah here is really important, and that is God's going to discipline him.
Suffering Obediently vs. Prospering Disobediently
I had an old mentor, John knows him well, and probably no one else in this room has ever heard of him. His name is Larry Wright. Larry died a couple of years ago. Larry was the most influential person in my life outside of my immediate family. I'm driving along one day, listening to one of Larry's tapes, and Larry said this: "I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently, because I know my obedient suffering is as temporary as my disobedient prospering."
Do you get that? Let me say it again: I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently. Now that seems odd—I'd rather suffer than prosper. Remember the context. I'd rather suffer obediently than prosper disobediently, because I know something. I know that my obedient suffering is as temporary as my disobedient prospering. In other words, all this is fading away.
Before you got here this week, Randy Alcorn taught, which makes you wonder, why in the world didn't you sign up to be here at the beginning of the week? Randy Alcorn was there. And the emphasis of those sessions was on heaven.
You can get way down into heaven and explore some profound things. Some of it's way more than I can handle—it's just not my deal—but I want to know about heaven. I want to know all this. I don't need to answer all those questions, but I want to know that there's heaven. And heaven needs to be real and more and more real to me.
Why? Well, because this life and this momentary light affliction, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are temporal. The things that are unseen are eternal.
We're going to touch this more in our third, fourth, and fifth sessions. But you and I are not residents of earth, but citizens of heaven. So there's going to be things that come along in our life where God places His calling on us, and it's as clear to us as it was to Jonah. For us, obedience is not something that's optional—it's mandatory. We'll even see that you may be able to sin, and at least on the surface think you're going to get away with it, but ultimately God's going to discipline you.
The Price of Running from God
I said last night when we left, there's a little phrase in here that I love, and I'm sure you all found it. It's right here, tucked away in verse 3: "But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish." Here's the phrase: "and paid the fare."
He paid the price. That's what we're talking about. Donald Gray Barnhouse writes this: "It's always that way. When you run away from the Lord, you never get where you're going, and you always pay your own fare. On the other hand, when you go the Lord's way, you always get where you're going, and He pays the fare."
Somebody said it this way: sin will always take us further than we want to go, and keep us longer than we want to stay, and cost us more than we want to pay.
The Lure of Sin
Sin is very appealing. You look at this and wonder—if you're removed from it, you're thinking, how stupid are these guys? You look at the athletes, for example. I have an opportunity probably about every other year, every third year, to be with either the baseball guys or the football guys, and all us jocks just hang out together. So we'll be talking, or doing the PGA stuff with the golfers, or whatever.
You look at them and think—if you're sitting there, every boy kind of dreams growing up, generally playing center field, or pitching, or hitting the shot at the buzzer, or throwing or catching the touchdown, or making a putt or something. You see these guys, and you see their life. There's a kid from Phoenix who's playing in one of the NBA teams—he just signed a six-year, $74 million deal. That seems like a good deal to me.
Then you see them come along, and you see them fail the third drug test. You find yourself saying, "How stupid are you? I mean, you know they're going to test you. You know you can't fool this thing. What are you thinking about?" And the answer is, they aren't thinking. It's the lure of sin. You watch these guys who say, "I want to stop," when it's got such a hold on them. That's what sin does. Sin just comes in and entices you away.
The Process of Temptation
Turn to your Bibles. Keep your finger there in Jonah, because we'll be right back. Turn to James, James chapter 1. James is writing to people who are suffering, who are in the midst of hardship and pain. He writes this in James chapter 1, verse 13: "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God.' For God cannot be tempted by evil, and He does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death."
He talks about being carried away with your lust. When we hear the word lust, we typically think sexual, but that's not all that it means. It means any illicit desire. There's a process in which I'm carried away, I'm enticed. It's like a fishing term—I'm baited.
The Fisher Boy Story
Years ago, I was invited to a dude ranch—apparently that's where us dudes hang out. It was my kind of dude ranch. We were up in the mountains, and we had our own pastry chef from the Waldorf Astoria in New York. We had people who came at night and turned down our bed and put chocolates on our bed. We had satellite cable TV. If you're going to do a dude ranch, this is the dude ranch you want to do.
The first morning I'm there, I go down, and there's a guy hanging around. I said, "Are you one of the dudes like us?" He said, "No, I work here." I said, "What do you do?" He said, "I'm the fisher boy." I said, "Unfamiliar." I'm not a hunter or a camper. We used to tell the kids, "Camping is not putting sheets on the bed." That's just not our deal. I know that's sacrilegious up here in the Northwest, but that's why I don't live here.
So he says, "I'm the fisher boy." I said, "What's a fisher boy do?" He said, "Come here." He had a closet, like a bureau, with two drawers and two big doors. He opened them up, and there were these little compartments, dozens of them. He would go in—they were all filled with lures. What he would do is go down and fish the stream first thing in the morning, then come back and tell all the fisher dudes what they were hitting.
Jonah paid the price, he paid a huge price. Let me say it again: when you run away from the Lord, you never get where you're going and you always pay your own fare. On the other hand, when you go the Lord's way, you always get where you're going and He pays the fare.
Don't we see that in salvation? I can work and work and work and work and work and I'll never be good enough and salvation will never be mine. But when I come in repentance and faith, His grace covers my sins and He paid the price. We sang about it this morning.
God Intervenes in Jonah's Flight
So now God moves into action. Let's read verses 4 through 11:
"The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea, and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid, and every man cried to his God, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, laid down and fallen sound asleep. So the captain approached him and said, 'How is it that you're sleeping? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.'
And each man said to his mate, 'Come, let us cast lots so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.' So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, 'Tell us now, on whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?' And he said to them, 'I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.' Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, 'How could you do this?' For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. So they said to him, 'What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?' For the sea was becoming increasingly stormy."
God intervenes now. Look at verse 4: "The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up." Now these guys were rugged sailors. They were not amateurs.
A Personal Illustration About Storms
Susan and I moved about a year and a half ago and we now have a boat. We live on what would be embarrassing to call it a lake up here—it's just a little man-made thing. From probably our house to the house across the lake is probably the distance of this room, and there are these little fingers that go in there. The largest catfish ever caught in the state of Arizona was caught on our lake, by the way—75 pounds. They just pulled an 80-pound carp out of there, so there are these big fat fish.
But we've got a boat. Now unless you get carried away and think that it's a difficult boat, it's an electric boat. You plug it in, you drive it, it just putters around at a low speed and comes back. If there's a cloud, I say, "Gee, looks like rough seas—we'll stay in today." So that's boating for me.
That's not these guys. These guys make their living like this. They've seen these hellacious storms.
God Controls the Storms
These sailors would come screaming through the region. They would see giant waves and that was just the norm for them. That's what they expected. But there's a storm here that has these guys, verse 5, afraid. It's a mighty storm.
Now look who hurled the storm. Who is it? God. It's getting a little tough here, but I want you to understand this. In your life and mine comes storms, difficulties, trials, tribulations. What I want you to understand is that they are all either caused by or allowed by God.
If that's not true, then He isn't God. Are you saying God caused? That's not my gig. I can't get into that. All I'm saying is we've got information here that helps us see the situation and here comes this extraordinary tribulation to these guys. They are afraid and the reason is God has caused this storm.
Everything that comes into your life is either caused by or allowed by God. That's huge. And that may cause all sorts of questions. You may go, that's not fair. Whatever. I'll tell you what it ought to give you. It ought to give you comfort because it means God's in control. No maverick molecule loose in the universe that could subvert His plan. Everything that happens in your life, my life, either caused by or allowed by God.
The Sailors Cry Out to Their Gods
These sailors are afraid and they cry to His God, His own God. The God of their choosing. The God that they prefer.
I mentioned I'm reading a bunch of different books and this is one on the building of the Panama Canal. Really, really interesting story. Takes them 150 pages for us to get the shovel on the ground. But there's some interesting stuff in here. And there was a big battle. I don't know anything about the Panama Canal. You all probably know all about it. But I didn't know anything about it.
The route that we have now was not necessarily the way it was going to go. There was a challenge. The way they go through Nicaragua, there was an option up through Mexico, there was one down through South America. There were five routes. They're talking about the climate in 1870. They're talking about the explosion of science.
There was a man by the name of Commander Thomas Selfridge. He's an American and he's been commissioned by the Secretary of Navy to go and to do a survey to try to determine where to put the canal. Here's what McCullough writes: "There really seemed no limit to what man might do. Another report, the kind of Commander Selfridge, was submitted and it contained the expression under providence in conjunction with certain accomplishments. But such terms seem perfunctory. Man, modern man, the scientist, the explorer, the builder of bridges and waterways and steam engines, the visionary entrepreneur, had become the central creative force."
Modern Paganism
So here's what they were saying. Because when we read, they cried out to their own gods. We go, boy, we're more sophisticated than that. We don't even have a dollar or a coin that says, you know, in God we trust. That's a great comment from McCullough.
As far as I know, McCullough has no religious background that at least infiltrates into his work. Here's what he's saying. They wrote "under providence," under God, but they didn't believe it for a minute. That didn't even matter to them.
Let me say it again. You live in a very spiritual environment. We could, in the midst of a 9-11, almost say to people, well, cry out to your own gods. Because we've got people all around who are worshiping these false gods. Do you worship the one true God? That's so important, isn't it? We keep coming back to it.
Fear, Prayer, and Action
I like this. See the progression in verse 5? They were afraid. And these are pagans, by the way. And then they prayed. They prayed to their own God. Maybe this storm was so bad that they said, this is supernatural, we don't see stuff like this.
But you know what? This is a good lesson for us. They didn't just be filled with fear and pray. They did something. They're throwing cargo overboard.
We had a guy that came to one of our studies. And we do a couple of studies. We're involved in a church, so we're pretty busy with church stuff. But actually, I make my living teaching studies out in the marketplace. I do three of them a week. I do one, it's now back at our church, unfortunately, the place went out of business. Thursday morning, I'm in a bar in a hotel, and then a big study on Thursday noon.
So we get a lot of guys, there's a lot of Christians in there, but a lot of non-Christians. And I love it because I think it keeps me very fresh.
Waiting Versus Working
So there's a guy in there, and he lost his job. The company called him in and said, we're downsizing, and we're starting with you. And at this point, it's a one-person downsize, so you're gone, he's gone.
So I see him four or five, six weeks later, and I said, how's the job search coming? He said, well, not much is happening. And I said, well, what are you doing? And he said, well, I know God will provide, and I'm waiting for a call.
And I said, that's it? He said, yeah, don't you think God can provide me a job? And I said, yeah, I do. And he said, don't you think God will probably do this? And I said, yeah, I think He will. And he said, then I'm waiting for Him to call. And I said, but I think He'll probably provide it through like a resume, and interviews, and pounding the pavement. See there's that whole process there.
And the pagans here give us a great illustration. They're afraid, they pray, but now they do something.
Jonah's Dangerous Sleep
But look at our old buddy Jonah. He's sound asleep. See, I want to come back to that. Jonah, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is out of the will of God. And you might be out of the will of God and find some peace there for a moment.
We talk a lot about sin, and we beat sin up, but let me tell you something. Sin is fun. If your sin isn't fun, you aren't doing it right. Sin is fun. Now finish that sentence for me. Sin is fun for a season, for a short period of time.
Jonah's saying, you know what? I'm all stressed out. Now I bet Jonah's mind
Jonah went like this: "Boy, I know God's telling me to go to Nineveh, but I want to go to Tarshish. And oh, here's a boat. Where's the boat going? Where are you going? We're going to Tarshish. I knew it. I knew God would not have provided this boat if He didn't want me to go to Tarshish. God wouldn't have put these desires in my heart if He didn't want me to follow them."
Isn't it amazing? We can take the biggest sin in the world, and we become extraordinarily creative when it comes to sin. All of a sudden we're Walt Disney when it comes to sin. We can imagine all sorts of things. So Jonah, he probably hasn't had a good night's rest in a long time.
Peace in Disobedience is Temporary
I'll run into couples, and they're fighting and arguing, and all of a sudden they'll separate. And they'll say, "Well, this is the first time we've had peace." Well, I'm sure this is the first time I've heard that. I understand it with most people - it would be awful.
One of the great blessings I have in my life is Susan, and essentially my life in that area is tension-free. We just kind of get along. We've kind of worked it out. Our kids moved out. Last one got married April 2nd. We are now those empty nesters. I've got to tell you something - we love our kids. Our kids, we're very close. They'll call two, three, four times a day. We're really a close family. But I'll tell you what, I wouldn't want them back on a bet. I'm serious. I love them, and you may think, "Oh, that's..." I'm telling you, we're really, really close. This is incredible. Here's the way I describe it: It's just like dating, except we've either resolved or given up all of the things that were issues, and now we have a little bit of money. It's a great place to be. It's a magnificent place to be.
So I'll hear these guys say, "Well, gee, we've got peace. We slept. Everything is great." Yeah, for a season. But let me tell you something: You're going to put your kids through hell. You're going to bring a mark as you separate in the midst of this sin, a mark against God and His church.
I'm not denying for a second that you can't be in sin and have some sense of peace. But the measure here is not your peace. The measure is obedience.
God Wants One Thing: Obedience
I don't know hardly any of you, but I know this. I can tell you right now what God wants from you. This is real simple. He wants one thing from you: obedience. That's all He's looking for from you. That's all He wants from you is obedience. If you obey Him, it will demonstrate that you love Him. That's what Jesus says: "If you love Me, you'll keep My commandments." And if you obey Him, you will have peace.
Now hang on with me here, because you're going, "Wait a minute, I'm obeying Him and my life is filled with turmoil." Peace is not the absence of turmoil; it's the presence of God. It doesn't mean that here you are and circumstances are going like this, and now I'll be obedient and they'll go like that. No, they're still going like this, but you're just tooling along right in the middle of it. Not fleeing from His presence, but understanding that He's there and He's with you.
Jonah's False Peace
He's sleeping. To the world, maybe even to other believers, it might look like, "Oh, Jonah's all right because he's down there and he's asleep in the midst of this." Jonah experienced temporary peace.
Romans chapter 5, verse 1, Paul writes this: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." One of the paraphrases says we have real peace or genuine peace. Genuine peace is not found in the absence of turmoil, but in the presence of God, in the presence of a right relationship with Him.
The Captain's Question
Now look what happens in verse 6. This great storm has come. All of a sudden, the captain comes to him and this is a great question. This chapter has in it some great little phrases. "Paid the fare" - here's another one: "How is it you're sleeping?" How can you be sleeping in the midst of all of this? Everybody, I would guess, on that ship is in turmoil. They're throwing cargo overboard. The captain is probably supervising all of this. All of a sudden, he goes down into the bottom of the ship and there's Jonah, sound asleep.
He said, "Well, how can you do this? How can you sleep? Get up, call on your God." Verse 6: "Perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we won't perish." Jonah, climb on board with us. This is God. God won't let Jonah rest. He's using the captain now. He used the storm, now He's using the captain. The hound of heaven is on to Jonah at this point and He is not going to relent.
Casting Lots
"And each man," verse 7, "said to his mate, 'Come let us cast lots so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.' And the lots were cast and they fell on Jonah."
What they would do is take something like we would call dice, but they were typically made of the ankle bone of sheep. They would have markings on them and they would cast lots. Another place it'll say, "cast lots on a lap." What they would do is take a tunic and one guy would sit down like this, stretch the tunic across and they would throw the dice onto that tunic.
They cast lots. Proverbs 16:33: "The lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision that's from the Lord." Man throws the dice, but it's God who makes the spots come up. God's in control. He's in control down to the casting of these lots. And they fall on Jonah.
The Interrogation
All of a sudden, now these guys who probably never even gave Jonah a second thought, never occurred to them to ask him about who he is and what's going on, now they've got this whole series of questions. See them there in verse 8? "On whose account has this calamity struck us? What's your occupation? Where do you come from? What's your country? From what people are you?" What do we have there? One, two, three, four, five questions.
Jonah ignores the first four questions and goes right and answers the fifth one: "From what people are you?" And his answer is, "I'm a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God." I'm a little sarcastic
Jonah's Confession and Our Own
I would add to Jonah's words: "I fear the Lord God but not enough to obey Him. I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land." Jonah's running. Why is he running? He did not want to go to Nineveh and he did not want to preach.
Here he is on this boat and he has now been outed. He's out of the closet. It's totally reasonable to assume—I understand it's outside of Scripture—but totally reasonable to assume that some of these sailors were Ninevites themselves. Here's Jonah, running, running, running but he can't hide. The lot falls on him and he says, "You know what? I'm a Hebrew. I fear the Lord. It's the Lord who created all of this, the heavens and the earth."
Are You Out of the Closet?
Are you out of the closet? I guess I would ask that. Do the people around you know of your faith? We had a guy, and he came in one day to one of the studies and he said, "God's answer to prayer—I've got a Christian now at work." I said, "Well gosh, the last time we talked they had a hiring freeze on. They hired a new guy?"
He said, "No. It's a guy who was already there. In fact, he and I have been working together now for almost 10 years." I said, "I want to make sure I understand this. You've been next to this guy for 10 years and neither one of you knew the other one was a believer?" It sounds like something's wrong to me.
Christians Need to Act Like Christians
We had this guy—he's part of the Reagan administration. He's like a sub-ambassador to the continent of Africa. He works with all the embassies and everything. So he comes and there's a bunch of Christians, and he comes and he does the politics government talk. He's all done and the first question is, "Mr. Ambassador, do you think we need more Christians in government?"
I thought, "Geez, here we go." And the guy was great. He said, "No, no we don't. We don't need more Christians in government. We need the ones who are there to act like they're Christians." That's a great call, isn't it?
The same thing is true at Intel or at Starbucks or at Nordstrom's or where you work. We don't need a whole bunch more Christians there. We just need the ones that are there to stand up—and there's a cost associated with it. This whole idea of witnessing—and we're going to talk about it more—this whole idea of witnessing is that witnessing isn't optional, it's not mandatory, it's inevitable. You're being a witness right now.
The Sailors' Fear and Higher Standards
Now we'll close out these last two verses. The men then become extremely frightened. Why? Well they knew of the Hebrews. They knew of their God. They knew of the plagues that were brought on Egypt by that God of the Hebrews. They knew of the God that parted the Red Sea. They knew of the God who was this extraordinary God to be praised and worshipped, and now they are very much afraid.
Now here's the third phrase. One was, "You pay the fare." Two, "How can you sleep?" Look at this question: "How, Jonah, could you do this thing? Jonah, what are you thinking about?" I want you to understand this: your pagan, unbelieving friends around you have a higher standard for you as a Christian than you oftentimes have for yourself.
Jonah just moves away from God and thinks he can hide from Him, and these guys say, "Jonah, how could you do this?" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he told them. Jonah apparently—and we only have a small record of this—Jonah said, "I'm a Hebrew. I fear the Lord." And apparently he's telling them this story. "The call came. Go to Nineveh. But I ran to Joppa. There's the boat. I got on. I'm running to Tarshish. I'm trying to get away from God. That's what I'm trying to do." And they said, "Jonah, how can you do this? What should we do? Jonah, how could you possibly live this way?"
Living Under the Microscope
I want you to understand that when you come to Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center, you carry around a Bible, or you invite a friend to church, or you invite them to Young Life or Campus Crusade, or you invite them into your small group, and all of a sudden you're saying to them, "I'm a Christian"—I want you to understand they're going to take you and put you right under the microscope. They're going to watch everything you say and do. They're going to hold you to a standard higher than the standard you have for yourself.
Remember this? There's a little bit of Jonah in all of us, isn't there? Here's the scene: He wants to flee from the presence of the Lord. He's on this ship. Here comes the storm. The storm's roaring. These guys are afraid. And now they have identified the problem. It's you. It's you, Jonah. You're the problem. That's why we have this storm. And they ask, "What should we do to you that the sea might be calm?" For the sea is becoming increasingly stormy.
That's right where we'll pick up tonight.
Father, help us see this truth. God, in the midst of this world where we—at least many of us—have declared we're followers of Christ and the world begins to watch us, and so often we have a standard lower really than the world has for us. God, help us understand this truth. For those that are here again today, this weekend, that somehow think they can flee from the presence of the Lord, God, just remind them how foolish that is. And that You discipline them because You love them. You love us perfectly. You love us even more than we love ourselves. God, thank You for Jonah. Let us be smart enough to learn from his sin and for us to live a life that's righteous and holy, brings honor and glory to You. God, thank You. In Christ's name, amen.