The Costly Decision to Run From God - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, November 2nd. Do you hesitate when you face a new God-given challenge? Today, you'll hear about the importance of obeying God by looking at the life of someone who didn't.

Jonah's life highlights the costly decision to run from God. Do you remember the last time you ran from God? So, oh, I've never run from God. Yes, you have. You know, how do you know?

You don't even know me. How do you know I've run from God? Because all of us have. Well, how do you run from God?

Well, it's real simple. When God tells us to do something, and we choose not to do it, and we head in the other direction, we're running from God. That you may be walking in the process, but you're running from God.

We've all done it. We've all paid the price, but oftentimes we forget that. And some people are running from God who do not even realize exactly what's happening in their life. People run to all kind of things. You don't run from God to nothing. You run from God to something, or to somebody, whatever it might be. And so, what you have to ask is, what difference does it make?

And what I want to show you in this message this morning is simply this. It makes a lot of difference whether you and I obey God or not. And what I want to talk about is the costly decision of running from God.

Because it is indeed costly. And one of the reasons that so many people are in trouble about all kind of things in their life, they're running from God. They've chosen to disobey God.

They don't like what He says. They don't like what their conscience says. And so, they just run. They run from God to drugs. They run from God to alcohol. They run from God to some sexual experience. They run from God to busyness, to work, whatever it might be. And so, everybody has to deal with this at some point in their life. And the earlier you and I learn in life that running from God is a very, very costly experience, the better off we'll be. I want you to turn to the book of Jonah.

Now, I want to settle once and for all right up front. Somebody says, well now, wait a minute. I don't, that's, all that stuff about a big fish or a whale, that's just the parable and that's not really true. Well, I want to show you why it was true. First of all, I want to show you that Jonah was not some figure that somebody came up with. But he was a prophet in the time of Jeroboam. And here's what the Scripture says to him all the way back in Second Kings, the fourteenth chapter and the twenty-fifth verse, it says, speaking of the king, he restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of Aravah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah, the son of Amittiah, the prophet who was of Gathhevar.

And that's about three to five miles from Nazareth where Jesus was born. Let me just say this about the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah is not about a man, not about a prophet, it's not about a fish.

And a sea monster was probably a whale because the right kind of whale can swallow not only one man, but more men at one time than simply one. And so, it's not about whales, it's not about sea, it's not about this prophet. It's about the will and purpose of God. Therefore, the message of Jonah is a message that every single one of us need to consider. It is in the Word of God for a very specific reason. Paul said, and to his Corinthian friends there, he said, I want you to remember that those events of the Old Testament that we have, they're here for our good.

In other words, to see how God worked in the lives of those people so that we wouldn't make the same mistakes they make. So, there's a very specific purpose for which Jonah is in the Word of God. So, I want you to turn to that little book, if you will, and I want us to begin in verse one. Now, somebody may say, well, where in the world is Jonah? Well, if you look at the big prophets, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then you'll find the books like Hosea, Obadiah, Joel, Micah, and so forth.

Well, Jonah's one of those. And if you have your Bible, I trust that you'll turn to it. And let's read these first three verses. Now, the reason I say it's all about God, not about Jonah, because listen, in these four short chapters, thirty-eight times God is referred to. So, this is a book about God and His will, which is a subject that every single one of us have to deal with every day. So, he begins in the very first verse by saying, The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittiah, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh the great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah arose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Now, I'm going to give you about six principles. Six truths from this book and from this incident that all of us need to be reminded of continually.

And so, here's the first one. When God commands us to do something, He does not withdraw His command because we are unwilling to obey it. And oftentimes people have the idea, well, if I'll just ignore it, it'll go away and God'll forget it and He won't keep hounding me with it. When God gives you a command, listen, He does not withdraw the command simply because you and I ignore it or refuse to abide by it.

A command is a command. And His command to Jonah was very, very clear, like all of God's commands. And that doesn't mean that every single time that you and I are able to comprehend exactly what He's saying at first, but He'll make it clear. And here's what He said, very simple. In five Hebrew words, He said this, Arise, go to none of the great city, cry against it, for the wickedness, their wickedness has come up before Me.

Now, here He was living, as He said, about three to five miles from Nazareth. And He hears the Word of God, crystal clear. It's very plain what He said.

First of all, He said, Get up and get going. And I want you to go to Nineveh and here's what I want you to do. I want you to cry out about the wickedness of Nineveh that they may come to their senses and repent of their sin. And so, very clear of what God told Him to do. He made it very clear to Jonah, and listen, He will make it very clear to us. But here's the thing about it.

Just because you don't get clear understanding first doesn't mean it's not important, because oftentimes some of the most important things takes a little longer. Now, God made it very clear to Jonah. He may have been prodding his heart even before then, because I know that Jonah was about half backslidden when God spoke to him, or if he had not been, he would not have responded the way he did. God said, Get up and go to Nineveh. And so, Jonah just got up. The rest of what God told him to do, he ignored.

He did something entirely different. And when he said, Go to Nineveh, there's a reason that he rebelled against God. Nineveh, the Bible says, was a great city, and by that it was great in size and great in population.

It took three days to walk rapidly across Nineveh, had a huge wall around it, and it was somewhere around three hundred square miles, even bigger than Babylon. And the most important thing was they were extremely wicked, they were fierce warriors, and the way they treated the people they captured was absolutely beyond description. For example, it said when they finished a battle, they would pile the skulls up like pyramids.

They'd cut people's heads off. And all the things that they did were beyond our comprehension. And what I want you to see is this, when God is not in society, society is hardly worth living in, because man in his extreme evil will express itself. And so, you go back in history and realize how people treated each other.

It is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ that changed man's ability and his comprehension to understand the value of a human being in the eyes of Almighty God, and therefore makes them valuable in our eyes. And so, the primary purpose here between Jonah and God was this. Jonah knew the kind of people who lived in Nineveh. He knew what kind of warriors they were. He knew that the Ninevites were the worst and most feared enemies of the nation of Israel. His desire would be to go and proclaim that God was going to wipe them out and then stand back and watch God and just wipe them out, because he wanted them destroyed.

His prejudice and his anger toward them and his fear of them was the issue. And so, whatever the issues in a person's life, remember this, that whatever our issue is, we can never justify disobeying God. A person says, well, I know what God says, and then they add that three-letter word, but. Everything on the other side of but is a waste of time. When God tells us to do something, remember this, He has a purpose behind it, number two.

It is a good purpose, number three, it's for our good and more than likely for the good of someone else also at the same time. So, when God says to you, here's what I want you to do. And you say, well, God has never said it to me that way.

Well, what you need to do is to ask God, Lord, speak to me in such a way that I understand. He doesn't speak to everybody the same way. But one thing for sure, He does speak. He speaks through His Word, He speaks through our conscience, He speaks through the Holy Spirit.

The problem is most people never take time to listen. They're so busy, busy, busy doing this and this and that and watching the other, they don't take time to listen to see if God has something to say. God doesn't just speak to pastors, He doesn't just speak to missionaries or musicians or people who are on church staffs. He speaks to everyone who's willing to listen to Him. And so, He does have something to say.

He wants to give you direction and guidance. And the safest place to be in life, listen, is in the center of the will of God. And the worst place you can be is outside the will of God and people get outside the will of God because they are on their way somewhere else running to something other than God. And so, this is exactly what Jonah did. And so, he told them where to go.

He told them exactly what to do. And God's commands, as we said, are very clear. And the issue is, I'm either going to be obedient or disobedient. Somebody says, Well, I did two-thirds of what God told me.

You're still living in disobedience. Because partial obedience is what? It's disobedience to God.

And you see, you don't hear many sermons on obedience, most places. You hear a lot from me for the simple reason I believe it's the bottom line in my relationship to God. If you and I obey God, that opens the door for God to bless us in every single area of our life. If we disobey God, that shuts the door, closes the door, limits what God will do in our life. You want His best, you obey Him. You just want some of His best and you disobey Him. You decide and God will respond accordingly. So, here's what He does. He decides, I'm not going to do it. And He told God why He wouldn't do it. Those Ninevites are wicked, vile.

They are the enemies of your people, the nation of Israel. Why in the world would you want me to go there? No way am I going to do it. Disobey God. Well, so we said in the very beginning, you can disobey God, but it doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of what God's required us to do.

Then the second thing is this. And it's real simple. It's impossible to run from God successfully. How are you going to run from God? Remember this. Somebody says, Well, God's over yonder, and God's over here.

No, He's not. Here's what the truth is. The truth is that everything that exists in heaven and earth and the atmospheres and the stratospheres and all the rest are in the presence of Almighty God who's the Creator. Therefore, if you read that one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm, He asked the question, Where can I go from the Lord? And He concludes after a number of verses, There is no place to go to hide from God, to escape from God. Now, some people learn that early in life.

Some people never learn it. And it may be that you're not a believer and you say, Well, that running from God business, I never thought about running from God. I just do my own thing. Then you've run to yourself. Listen, you have established the fact in your mind and heart that you're going to be the Lord and God of your life.

One of these days you're going to realize that is a tragic and it could be an eternal mistake in your life. God has a will and a plan for your life no matter who you are. His plan is the best plan.

You cannot improve upon the plan of God who created you, created you for a purpose, has your best in mind, and whatever difficulty you and I may go through, He'll use all of that for our good. And so, He says to Jonah, I want you to go, and here's what I want you to do. I want you to cry out to this great city.

Cry out, for their wickedness has come before Me. And so, He attempts to run from God. So, how does He do that? Well, the Scripture says He did rise up. That's the one thing He did. That's the only thing He did that God told Him.

He did get up. He, and He, the Scripture says, to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So, here's what He did. Went down to Joppa and He bought him a ticket to Tarshish. And he headed out sailing to Tarshish, exactly opposite direction of what God told him to do.

It's interesting if you look at these verses because there's nothing unimportant in the Word of God. Watch this. Verse three, Jonah rose up to flee. It's the only time he got up.

Watch this. Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, so he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. The next thing you know, he's down in the water. He's down, listen, whenever you choose to disobey God, you have just started down because you cannot disobey God. You cannot rebel against God and go upward in your life. You're going down.

You may think you are. And if you'd ask Jonah at any point, where are you headed? I'm headed to Tarshish. And you see, as far as he was concerned, he only saw his plan. What he did not see was God's plan. He said that he was running from God.

He had to say that to himself. I'm just getting out of here. I don't want to go. I'm going the other direction. He thought that if he went far enough in that direction and everything would be all right. You cannot run from God, listen, because all time and all space is in the presence of Almighty God. And so, impossible to run from Him.

Where are you going to run? And you see, one of the problems we have in our society today is disobedience and discipline. Parents don't discipline their children.

So what happens? They disobey their parents and the parents, because they're afraid of being rejected by their children, do not discipline their children to teach them to obey God. So why do you expect kids to grow up obeying God whom they cannot see when they don't obey their parents whom they can see and their parents let them get by with it and their parents think they're doing the right thing? And the truth is, you're doing them a great disservice when you do not discipline them.

Somebody says, Oh, I couldn't do something like that. You must do what God tells you to do in order to discipline your children to do what's right. Do you want them to do what's right? You're their teacher. You want them to grow up and be godly young men and women?

They've got to see it in you first of all. And then, if there's correction, that correction needs to be made in a way that's godly and honorable and the way that, listen, doesn't break a child's spirit but breaks their will until they're willing to submit to authority. They're not going to submit the divine authority if they're not submitting the human authority.

And so, the basic things about obedience we cannot deny. And so, God said to Jonah very clearly, Here's what I want you to do. Jonah, decide that's not what I'm going to do.

Here's what I'm going to do. And so, he heads out. Now, the problem is when he got on board ship, the Scripture says that God 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. And so, they were so scared, they threw all of their cargo overboard and they began to ask, Well, what's the problem and what's happening?

And so, they all got together. The captain went down into the ship, woke Jonah up, and it's interesting that he went to sleep. Now, if he'd have had drugs, that's probably what he was on.

Alcohol, that's what people do today. In order to destroy their conscience, kill their conscience, deaden their conscience so they don't have to face God or get busy or something else, so he was down there sleeping. Woke him up, got him up on deck with everybody else and they said, Whose fault is it? I guarantee you that Jonah already knew what was going to happen.

So, in those days, what they would do to cash lots, they'd put a bunch of white stones in a bucket or something or whatever it might be, and they'd have one black one in there. And so, everybody reached in. Don't you know that Jonah knew before he ever reached in that his was coming out?

And that is simply that he was the guilty one. So, he told them, Well, it's my fault. I'm running from God.

My God is the God who created the heavens and the earth. And so, they said, Well, what shall we do with you? Well, by this time, he was totally hopeless and helpless. He'd relegated himself to the fact that he was going to die.

In fact, he wanted to die. Finally, they picked him up and threw him overboard. Well, was that an escape?

No. He couldn't escape going to Joppa. He couldn't escape getting on the boat.

On his way to Tarshish. And he couldn't escape on the boat because God exposed him there. And when they threw him into the sea, he couldn't escape there because the Bible says that God had prepared a great fish. And I think of his whale, and that's the most probable thing it could be, swallowed him.

Well, you'd think that'd convince a guy and bring about real dependence, wouldn't you? And the Scripture says, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to the land of the great city, proclaim it, and make the proclamation which I'm going to tell you. This time he got up again, but this time he went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Nineveh was an exceeding great city a three days' walk."

Now, here's what happened. He's headed three or four hundred miles in the opposite direction. So, the whale throws him up and he heads into the city. And he had a long, he had about a five hundred mile walk. And he's three miles across and he's into the city about a mile and then something begins to happen.

So, what I want you to see here is this. You can't get away from God. And the truth is, if you're honest, you don't want to run from God. And somebody says, Well, I don't think I am. Well, are you living in obedience to Him?

No. I'm doing what I want to do in life. If you're doing what you want to do and you've ignored God, what you've done is you have run from God to your plans and your ideas and your future and your this and your that. You're running from God. Because, listen, God loves you and me enough that He doesn't say, Well, you know, just forget it with Him. You have to become reprobate in mind. So far down into sin that you lose your sense.

Listen, you literally lose your sense of right and wrong. And your conscience is totally seared before the Bible says God turns you over to it. So, if you're living in rebellion toward God, does that mean you're hopeless?

No. What I want to say to you is simply this, that first of all it's impossible to run from God and therefore it is a waste of your time, a waste of your money, a waste of your energy, a waste of your efforts to run from God because eventually you're going to have to face God one way or the other. Thank you for listening to The Costly Decision to Run from God. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.