Man on the Run
Jonah 1:4-17
I can still see the scene from the movie Titanic where the orchestra is brought out on deck to play music-all of this happening while the sip is sinking. Drinks and food are being passed out in the dining room to make everything seem normal. Passengers were eating, drinking and dancing as the ship was going down. It reminds me of what Jesus said, “as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the son of man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24:37-39.
Most of us tend to think that it is people who don’t know Christ who tend to ignore how the seriousness of the time we live in but many believers fall into this category as well because we spend our time eating and drinking and going about our lives as usual while people are dying every day without Christ. And that was the case in the life of Jonah. People are dying without Christ in need of the message of salvation and Jonah couldn’t care less. In fact Jonah wanted to see them face God’s judgment. Jonah would have been happy if all of them had been destroyed.
But here’s the problem….God was about to ask Jonah to do something he never would have dreamed that God would want him to do. God asked him to actually “care” about these people and to then go and preach the gospel to try and turn the city of Ninevah in the right direction. But Jonah was reluctant. And there were several reasons. First of all…
1. Jonah did not want God to love people that he hated. There is a German word…schadenfroida…it is when we gain satisfaction from the misfortune of others. It’s when we gain satisfaction from the misfortune of others. It’s when that person you don’t like at work gets turned down for a promotion or that girl who was so popular in high school and she comes to your ten year reunion and has gained 50 pounds and you’re happy about it. I know who you are. That was Jonah. Jonah was thinking that the Ninevites might be destroyed. But God wasn’t happy with Jonah’s attitude. He was not the first of have this kind of attitude nor would he be the last. 20 centuries later we still see this kind of thing taking place.
The Jews suffered terrible things in the 1990’s. The Christians in Germany were not only silent about it; many of them actually supported Hitler. Christians began to persecute the Jews. And why? Because we could not believe that God would love people that we hated.
What about today? 2012. Were you happy when Saddam Hussein was taken out? What about Bin Laden? You say it’s not the same thing….it’s exactly the same thing. God loves these people. Think about it. Does God loved the alcoholic, the drug addict? Absolutely. But not all of us do. Does God love people with tattoos, body piercings, hair 4 colors? Absolutely. But not all of us do. What about the pedophile? Are we happy on the inside when they get caught? The list could go on and on but you get the idea. Surely God doesn’t love those people any more than we do—or does He? The Bible teaches that it is very important that we get this right….2 things (1) love the sinner and (2) hate the sin.
But we tend to get that reversed. Part of the danger in taking a strong stand against sin is that we can come across as being against people, the very ones Jesus died for. You see Christ didn’t die for perfect people. And all of us are sinners. It’s just that we think our sin is different. Jonah thought that way and it was one reason He was reluctant about going to Ninevah.
2. A second reason was that Jonah thought they were unworthy of God’s love. You see for some people the longer they are saved they tend to forget about their past. They tend to forget where they came from. Jonah had somehow forgotten how patient God had been with Him and how undeserving he actually was. You see Jonah just really didn’t think these people could actually change. Have anyone in your life like that?
Jonah had forgotten that the prophets had been preaching to Israel for hundreds of years and Israel would not listen and they were supposed to be God’s people. God had been reaching out to them for centuries only to be rejected by them. The truth is that Jonah’s own people were further away from God than the Ninevites were. And here’s the thing…
Israel had the scriptures, Ninevah didn’t
Israel had the temple, Ninevah didn’t
Israel had prophets, Ninevah didn’t
Israel had all of these things and chose to ignore them all. Ninevah had none of them and God was asking Jonah to give them one chance…just one. But Jonah, remember was running from God…he was disobedient….he overlooked his own sin but he wanted God to destroy them for their sin. The apostle Paul said, God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
3. A 3rd reason for his reluctance was that Jonah was more concerned about himself than others. In fact he admits it…listen….Jonah 4:2-3. Then God said to him, have you any right to be angry? But Jonah didn’t respond to God’s question…he just went and sat on a hillside to watch and see if God would destroy Ninevah after all. Then God made a vine grow to give Jonah some shade while he was sitting in the hot sun and Jonah was very happy about that. But the next day God commanded a worm to go and destroy the vine and Jonah would have no more shade. This was all to teach Jonah a lesson…we will get to that in a couple of weeks. God sent a strong wind and along with the hot sun Jonah was now really missing the shade. And God said to Jonah do you have a right to be angry about the vine? Jonah said yes. He said I’m angry enough to die. God said you have been concerned about this vine but you didn’t nurture it, you diodn’t grow it…it sprang up overnight and it died overnight. Ninevah has more than 120,000 people who need help. Shouldn’t I be concerned about them?
It is with that question that the book of Jonah suddenly ends. We have no indication that Jonah changed his opinion. He never answers God. Why? Because he was so consumed with his own needs he didn’t have time to care what happened to Ninevah. The interesting thing is that when Ninevah does hear he gospel they did repent; on the other hand Israel heard it over and over but still refused to repent. Jonah, a prophet of God chose to run from God rather than obey God. So God sends this great fish to bring them back. But the story sort of gets turned around. It’s turned around from what we would expect it to be.
Israel-God’s chosen people refuse to repent
Jonah, God’s chosen prophet refuses to preach but
The people of Ninevah repent
The sailors on the ship express their fait
The great fish does what God tells him to
The king of Assyria even repents
Everyone and everything does what God wants except Jonah. Even the worm follows God’s orders. But Jonah can only think of one person-himself.
So how does this apply to us? Let me ask you a few questions to help us think through this. Please bow you heads. I am going to ask that no one leave. And I want you to think about these questions….
Is there anyone that you consider to be a lost cause?
Anyone who really isn’t worthy of God’s love?
Anybody you would rather not sit next to in church? Don’t look around.
Or maybe you would sit with them in church but you’re not gonna hang out together.
Is it possible that we are so concerned about ourselves that we just don’t have time to be concerned about anybody else?
Jesus loves lost people. He spent his entire ministry helping those who were sick, healing the broken, preaching the gospel, feeding the hungry….. if someone was hurting he was there. Plenty of people-the leper, the woman at the well, Zacchaeus the tax collector…the man with so many demons he was called Legion. No one wanted to have anything to do with them. But Jesus stepped up and said I do.
Jesus said I have come to seek and to save that which was lost. That was his mission and it must be our mission as well. Our vision is to enlarge the size of heaven by taking as many people as possible with us.
There is another scene from the movie Titanic that bothers me. The huge 900 foot cruise ship which sank on its first voyage from England to New York caused the deaths of 1500 people. The officers on the ship attempted to keep the 4th class passengers locked in the lower decks so that the first class passengers could use the lifeboats. Eva Hart who survived that night said that when the Titanic sunk after crashing into an iceberg she said “I saw all the horror of its sinking and I heard even more dreadful the cries of drowning people. They had 20 lifeboats and rafts, certainly not enough…they really were not prepared for something like this because they never thought the ship would actually sink. She said that the Titanic went under at 2:20 AM but only one lifeboat rowed back to look for survivors. No other boat got involved in the rescue. Many were afraid if they did that too many would try to get in and their raft would then sink. They were more concerned about their own safety than the others.
We are a lot like that. We are afraid to get our hands dirty or to get our feet wet or to just get involved in the lives of others all because it might cost us something. We are a whole lot like Jonah. If we plan to reach this community for Christ we have to change. What will you do?
