When You Run From Responsibility - Part 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Obligations, we all have them, and many times we don't like them. Today, a story of an obligation God gave to a prophet and his amazing journey to avoid that obligation. Jonah was told to go preach to the people of Nineveh when everything in him said, no way, stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, when God told Jonah to go preach, he was clearly making him an offer he could not refuse. Well, of course, Dave, as you know, Jonah tried to refuse that offer. You know, when I read the book of Jonah, what I discover is that lessons jump out at me all over the place in every single chapter. But one of the ones that sticks with me very directly is this. Here's a man who is told expressly what God's will is, he rejects it, and then you think of all of the things that God did to get him back on track.

We're talking about a fish, we're talking about a storm, we're talking about sailors. Isn't it amazing that God did all that for a reluctant, disobedient prophet? I want to thank the many of you who support the ministry of Running to Win. Our desire is to help people make it all the way to the finish line as we like to say, would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us month by month with their prayers and with their financial commitment. Of course, the amount that you give is your decision.

Very quickly, you can go right now to RTWOffer.com, click on the endurance partner button or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Meanwhile, let us learn from the life of a disobedient prophet. Would you ask God to speak to you today and give you the grace to be obedient to whatever he tells you?

Father, thank you for reminding us in so many ways of our helplessness apart from grace. The way we rationalize, the lies we tell ourselves, the attitudes that we adopt are deeply entrenched and only you can change us. Would you do that? Would you change me? Would you change all who are listening to this message?

By your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen. Have you ever had the experience of coming to a fork in the road of life and making a wrong turn? And maybe you made that wrong turn deliberately, you knew what you were doing, but you decided to choose the easy path and sometimes, however, the easy path is not necessarily the holy path. Maybe you decided to make the decision you did because of desire. You were desire driven.

I want this. Maybe it was a matter of greed or lust. And you said to yourself, I want what I want and I'm not even going to ask God because I think I know what he might say if I ask him. So you've gone on your way.

Self absorption, self will, I need to protect myself, whatever that decision may be. How would you like it if the decision that you made were public news? And now it's all out there. Well, today we're going to look at the story of a man who took a wrong path and it's all out there.

Millions of people have known about it for hundreds and hundreds of years. His name is Jonah and his story is plain for all to read and for all to see. As a matter of fact, I can imagine that when we get to heaven, you know, and we meet him, we'll say, so you're the guy. You're the guy.

What was it like in the belly of the fish? And furthermore, the question I want to ask him is not that. I'd like to ask him, did you ever get over your stubbornness? Because the book ends with him just as being as stubborn as you can possibly be and there's no hint that he ever changed. And I want to say, Jonah, did you change before you died?

Tell me. Yeah, what fun we'll have when we meet Jonah. God wouldn't have asked him to go to Nineveh to preach unless he was a well-known and good prophet. And when he said no, it wasn't because of the pure bigotry. He was beyond that. It wasn't just because he was a coward because actually he wasn't a coward. He was willing to die. In fact, he said to the men in the boat, please throw me over. Over and over again, he lives with this death wish. It is better for me to die than to live.

No, no, no, no, no. His refusal had nationalistic roots. It was the idea that if he were to preach to Nineveh, they might repent and God may bless them and they might in turn punish Israel.

So he had high motives for his disobedience. I hope by now your Bible is open to the book of Jonah, a little difficult to find. Jonah, Micah, Nahum among those minor prophets, minor, not because they're unimportant, but because they're shorter. Jonah, 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. God says, go to Nineveh, but Jonah has issues. Jonah says, I'm not going to go.

And then what unfolds is this story. Now you have to understand that there are some people who find it difficult to swallow the story of Jonah in the belly of the fish, but Jesus believed it and so do I. Now let's look at the lessons that Jonah learned when he was running from God outside of the will of God. A few years ago I preached a series of four messages on Jonah. Today we're looking at the entire book.

We're just surveying the whole book and putting it together in one piece. What were the lessons that Jonah learned running from God? First of all, he learned that when you run from God and from responsibility, God pursues you. God pursues you.

Now let's look at the text. It says in verse three, but Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Literally the Hebrew is from the face of God. He says, I want to get away from God. So he's trying to run from before the face of the Lord. Some of you may be in Chicago because you're running from the face of the Lord. Well, I've got some news for you. God is in Chicago too.

You know that, don't you? And you'll notice that he paid the fare. He found the ship and he paid the fare and he went down to Joppa. Verse three, verse five, he goes down into the inner part of the ship. He goes down into the water and eventually down into the belly of the fish. Whenever you run from God, you always go down.

You never go up. But how does God pursue Jonah? He pursues him through circumstances. Verse four, and the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea and it caused the fish to be discombobulated and fishermen were scrambling to live and the shore was affected by the blast of these waves and everything. But God had something else in mind. There was a disobedient prophet that he was trying to get back into his plan. God would have been gracious if he had simply said, Jonah, adios, I'm through with you.

I'm going to find something else. But God pursues him just like God pursues you. Considering the lives that there may be listening to me today, isn't it amazing that you're listening to this message? God pursues him through circumstances. And there is this huge storm, huge storm, and they take the cargo and they throw it overboard. And what's Jonah doing when all this is happening?

This is unbelievable. It says that they throw the cargo out of the ship into the water and Jonah, last part of verse five, is fast asleep. And the captain has to come and say to him, what do you mean, you sleeper? Is it possible to have a clear conscience and sleep well in a state of disobedience?

The answer is yes. You can talk yourself out of doing God's will and get a good night's rest. Jonah could sleep contentedly with all this going around him as a rebellious prophet walking away from his responsibility. It's interesting and we say it in passing that the storm was not brought about by the wicked sailors. The storms in America that we face, the erosion of our freedoms, our moral free fall. It's easy for us to blame certain groups.

We blame the ACLU, we blame various liberal groups, we blame Hollywood, and all of them I'm sure have some blame. But maybe the storms even that we encounter are not because of the pagans, but because of righteous people asleep on a boat who should be repenting. Maybe that's the reason that we've encountered so many storms in this country. It's not always because of the pagans. Sometimes it's disobedient Christians.

So God uses circumstances and God uses people. The sailors, they come and they talk and he tells them in verse 10 that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. It says they knew that he was doing that because he told them.

I can imagine Jonah as he's rationalizing all this. He's saying, well, at least I'm honest. Have you met people like that? Well, one thing about me, sure, I'm doing ABCD, but at least I'm honest. Yeah, you're honest, but you're also wrong and rebellious.

Thank you very much. So Jonah, of course, tells them and then they cast lots and they discover that it's because of Jonah that they're having this problem. And he, of course, always this desire for suicide, always this desire to die, throw me over and let me die. I am finding the will of God so distasteful I would rather die than go to Nineveh and preach to those people. What a mirror of the human heart, pretty stubborn, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, Jonah is a chip off the same block that you and I have in our hearts. And so he wants to get away, but God now is getting his attention because God is pursuing them. There are some people to whom I'm speaking today. You are out of the will of God geographically. You're running from responsibility geographically. There are many of you who are running from the will of God and responsibility morally, morally you're living a lie that God knows all about. And then there are others who may be running away from the will of God relationally.

You're pulling back from relationships where you ought to be drawing closer. You've ruptured relationships and you don't have the humility to go and to ask people's forgiveness. And you too are running from responsibility and from God. But God is pursuing you. That's why I wanted us to pray at the beginning of this message because God is pursuing you. He is after you, graciously after you, and he's not yet written you off because you are here and you're listening either by radio or on the internet or here in the sanctuary of Moody Church. So God isn't finished with you. Second lesson that he learns is that when you repent, God hears you.

When you repent, God hears you. You know, we all know that if you eat a bad fish, that's botulism. Not sure that there's a word for a fish eating a bad man. But the Lord appoints a great fish and the fish, God says to the fish, do you see that guy over there?

That's your dinner. And he goes for it. And now Jonah is in this creative learning center and he cries out to God in his distress. What a marvelous prayer he prays very quickly. He is repenting in verses three to five. He acknowledges God for you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the flood surrounded me and all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down.

Wow. What he's saying is, God, you've caught me. I was running and you caught me. God, you now have my full attention.

All other options are closed doors, needless to say. So Lord, I was drowning. Some people actually think that he died because he calls out from Sheol, but he's in distress and he's in desperation. And finally, he says, God, you caught me. May I ask you today, has God caught you yet at this point in the message? And then he says, God, you've caught me.

And now he says, God, you've got me. He says in verse seven and following, I will. When my life was fading away, I remember the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. God says, okay, fish. He wasn't your dinner after all. And the fish vomits him out on the shore.

Wow. And then God says to him now, chapter three opens, then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, arise to go to Nineveh, that great city. You know, sometimes the impression is given that Jonah arrived in Nineveh with seaweed around his neck and he looked white because of being in the belly of the fish for three days and so forth.

That's not possible. And the reason is because Nineveh, which is in modern Iraq, Nineveh was 400 miles from the sea. So it was probably weeks, weeks, maybe months before he got there. But the word of the Lord came to him the second time. Now, God says, Jonah, I'm taking you back where you got off track. I'm taking you back to that point in the fork of the road where you pursued disobedience. And I'm coming to you a second time and I'm giving you a second chance.

Now, mind you, his attitude was no better, as we shall see in a moment. But God is the God of the second chance. But some of you are saying, yeah, that's maybe possible. But my problem is, you may be saying, my problem is I can't go back to that fork in the road where I got off track. The decision I made was too serious. Maybe it was a marriage.

Maybe it was a vocational decision. There's so many decisions that can be made. And now too many years have passed. Too many ruptured relationships have taken place. There's just no way that I can go back to where I was.

And that indeed may be true. You can't go back to the fork in the road. It's in your past.

So now what? When we repent, God begins to have a new series of forks in the road. We've learned enough in this series of messages making the best of a bad decision that God not only doesn't give up on us, but nor is it true that God can no longer use us. When we are brought to the point of desperation, the point to which Jonah was brought, we are then in a place where God comes along and says, now that you've repented, now that you once know or finally acknowledge what you should have known, that I am Lord and King, and you bow humbly before me every single morning for instruction, I will give you a new series of forks in the road and give you an opportunity to choose and to make the right decision from here on out. If I may speak very plainly, it is still possible to do the right thing after you've done wrong. It's possible to do the right thing after you've done wrong and the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord comes to you a second time. Well, this is Pastor Luther. Isn't it wonderful that God is so patient with us? He was patient with Jonah and he's patient with us. If you were to look into my heart, you'd discover that I take delight when I find out that the ministry of running to win not only is in other countries, but is changing lives.

I'm holding in my hands a letter from someone from East Africa. I am who I am today because of the teaching on running to win. It's always been ministering to me every day of my life. You my friend are a part of that testimony.

Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Well, I hope that you have a pen or a pencil handy because you need some info. Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. And when you're there, click on the endurance partner button or call us right now at 1-888-218-9337.

Become a part of the running to win family that goes around the world, rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time once again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Sometimes it takes years for people to see themselves realistically and then to see God as He should rightfully be seen.

Here is the story of Natalie. Why does it take so long for people like me to yield our lives totally to God? I was saved at an early age and married, I thought, happily. But my husband, in effect, divorced me without my knowing it.

Yes, that's what happened right here in the USA. It's a long story, but the good part is this. At last, God got my attention and I yielded my whole life to Him. How is it that I could be saved as a child and yet not really become a new creation until the age of 40?

Did it make a difference that I was now old enough to have experienced the world and had exhausted my own ability to cope with life? What does it take until some of us give up fighting God and finally submit to Him in all things? Only now, with all of these trials, have I experienced the reality of God. Natalie, I don't know why it is that it takes us so long to totally yield to God.

But you know, your experience is not unusual. There are plenty of people out there who say that God had to drag them from one briar patch to another before they put their faith in God, and truly yielded to Him. I'm so sorry that it took such a difficult experience for you to yield yourself to God, but thank God you did. And let your life be a testimony to others.

To yield and to finally give up self-will, Jesus said that unless a corn of wheat fall into the ground and died abides alone, may your life be an example to others that the sooner we learn that lesson, the better. Thanks for your testimony, and God bless you. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Jonah's attempt to flee brought him to the God of the Second Chance. Next time we meet the God of the Second Chance, the God who points us back to doing His will. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.