I am Jonah

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. There's a lot of godly people who look like they're walking with God in every other way, like Jonah. But there's some area, there's some area they're saying no to him in. Listen, listen, you are never farther from God than when you're close to him and you say no. What Jonah is, is a guy who is religious and upstanding in every way, but he's got one area where he's like, no God, you cannot touch this.

Have you ever tried to run and hide from God, only to figure out later that you should have run towards him instead? That's our subject today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer, and I'm your host, Molly Vitovich.

We're beginning a highly relevant series to begin this new year titled Cast Away. Pastor J.D. is opening the book of Jonah to remind us of God's relentless love for runaway prophets and rebellious people. If you're new to the ministry, let me be the first to say welcome and happy new year. You can learn more about Summit Life when you visit us at J.D.

Greer.com. Now, as always, grab your Bible and join Pastor J.D. with today's message titled I Am Jonah.

I am Jonah, the son of Amittai, and said arise and go to Nineveh. Now, let's stop right there, because if people know anything about Jonah, they know it's got something to do with God telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and Jonah saying no, and then somehow Jonah ending up being swallowed by a big fish or a whale or whatever. And a lot of people stop right there at this point in the story and they're like, well, this can't be true. I mean, seriously, how is that even possible? Staying alive in the belly of a fish for three days?

This has got to be a myth. Well, I would just remind you, if that's kind of your reaction to this, that this is not a story about a big magical fish or how people can stay alive in the belly of a fish for three days. This is a story about God. Honestly, I would not even put this in my top ten hardest things to believe in the Bible list. I mean, how about Genesis 1.1? In the beginning, God created everything there is with just the word of his mouth.

How about Luke 2? God was born as a baby, and then God grew up and God did miracles. He raised the dead. He healed the sick.

Then he was crucified and raised himself back from the dead. Once you believe those things, the rest of this stuff is not that hard to believe. The real question that you've got to ask is simply this. Is there a God, and does he work in the world? Is there a God, and does he work in the world?

Was God at work in Jesus Christ redeeming the world? Once you believe that God spoke all this into existence and you believe that God was really present in the world in Jesus Christ, this kind of stuff should not be that difficult for you to get your mind around. I know that kind of your gut reaction is that this week in our family devotion times, you know, I have four kids.

My oldest is eight. Somehow, I don't even know how we got off on this, but somehow we get off on me explaining to them what the resurrection from the dead, how Jesus is going to come back to earth and raise people's bodies from the dead. My oldest daughter, Kara, says this.

This is even her tone. She says, so, Dad, you're telling me that a Jesus that none of us have ever seen is going to come back through the clouds, back to the earth, and raise people's dead bodies out of the dirt so that their spirits will be rejoined with their bodies? I said, well, yeah, that's what the Bible says. She says, I don't know, Dad, sounds kind of mystical to me. So, yes, I understand that that's kind of the reaction for this.

But, again, just keep your focus on the right question. Is there a God who works in the world? And if so, is this an accurate record of the work that he has done? If God came as Jesus, then this should not be that big of a deal to you. Well, some people say, well, maybe this is supposed to be read like a parable. Maybe it's like an enlightened myth that has a point to it. Well, the problem is it's just not written that way.

The names, the dates, the details, it's written in the genre of history. Do you notice how it said Jonah, the son of Amittai? Not once upon a time there was a guy named Jonah.

It's giving you a detail. Plus, you can look in 2 Kings 14 and you'll find the story of Jonah who did a bunch of other stuff in addition to this right here. The other thing is that Jesus thought of this story as actual history.

He referred to the historical events as a very important prophetic sign for his own ministry. Matthew 12 41, Luke 11 30. So Jesus thought of it as actual history and I just feel like he would be in a position to know. So if he believes it's actual history, I'm going to stick with him.

All right? Verse 2. Verse 2. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it because their evil has come up before me.

Two things about Nineveh. First of all, it was a very great city. Secondly, it was a very wicked city.

It was very great. It was huge. Jonah's going to tell you it took him three days to walk from one side of the metroplex to the other. Historians tell us that Jonah's walls were so thick you could ride three chariots across them at the same time.

That's how wide they were. It was a great city. It had a lot of great architecture.

It was a cultural hub. But in addition to that, it was a very wicked city that a lot of times is true about big cities. In fact, historians tell us that Nineveh was one of the cruelest, most vicious cities in the ancient world.

Nineveh's own histories tell us that. I was looking this week at a series of pictures, like hieroglyphic kind of stuff, that the Ninevites produced about what they would do to a city when they conquered it. They boasted in their histories and in these pictures, they would skin alive a lot of the men and the women and the children. And they would spread out their skins over the city walls. They would take some of these people after they partially skinned them and they would bury them alive up to their heads in the sand. They would pull their tongues out.

Again, this is all in the pictures. They would pull their tongues out and drive a stake through their tongue into the sand so that they would just sit there for several hours languishing in pain and dying of thirst. And then at night, if they were still alive, they would make them listen to Paris Hilton CDs over and over and over again.

No, no, I'm kidding about that part. But these people were unspeakably brutal. They would rape women and kill them. They even boasted in their histories about raping and killing little girls. One account describes how they would take the soldiers and impale some of them alive outside of the city gates.

They would behead a bunch of others and they would make a big mountain of heads that covered over the city gate so that they would give a message to everybody. This is what happens when you dare oppose Assyria. These are the people that God has told Jonah to go to. Now, by the way, if you read the Old Testament, you know who one of Assyria's primary enemies was?

Israel. So we're talking about Jonah going to a group of people that had done these kind of things to people that he knew. So I feel like you probably shouldn't be so judgmental on Jonah. You're kind of like, oh, Jonah disobeyed God. He got what was coming in.

Seriously. What would you have done if God told you to go to those kind of people? You know, Jonah has personal bitterness against the Ninevites. Verse 3, so Jonah, 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 down into it to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord. Here it begins, Jonah's Rebellion.

He gets God. God clearly told him to go, and Jonah runs the other way. By the way, and not just a little bit out of the way, Tarshish was 1,500 miles away from Nineveh.

In a world where you walked everywhere or rode a camel or whatever, that's a long way. So here's a couple things that you should notice about his disobedience here. First, Jonah was upstanding in every other way. Jonah was upstanding in every other way. 2 Kings 14, 25, I referred to that earlier, tells you that Jonah was one of Israel's primary religious leaders. He was their religious leader at a time when Israel was at one of their economic and spiritual heights under the reign of Jeroboam. Jonah had made some prophecies and they come true. Jonah was like the Billy Graham of Israel. He was their religious and spiritual leader.

Write this down. Rebellion is simply saying no to God. Rebellion is simply saying no to God. The reason I say this is because we tend to evaluate our walk with God by comparing how godly we are to others. We kind of think of like a bell curve. We're like, you know, I'm on this side of it, I go to church more often, I've got better morals.

You know, I give a little more. And we think as long as God grades on the curve, as long as I'm over on this side, everything's going to be fine because, you know, I think proportionally I'm better than the majority of people. But lordship is one of those things, listen, that if it's not absolute and total, it's not real.

If it's not absolute and total, it's not real. You are never farther from God than when you are close to him and say no. There's a lot of godly people who look like they're walking with God in every other way, like Jonah. But there's some area, there's some area they're saying no to him in. Maybe for you it's a relationship that you know is not pleasing to God, but you won't quit it. Every other part of your life is fine. But you've got this one area, this relationship that you know is not pleasing to God, but you're not going to let him put his hands on that. Maybe there's a sacrifice that God has put in your heart to make.

Maybe he's put his finger on something he wants you to give away, some amount of money he wants you to give away. And you're fine in every other way. You're an active church person, you're doing everything you're supposed to do, but you're like, no, God, you cannot touch that, you cannot have it. Your poverty of spirit right now ought to be enough to let you know that you're not walking with God in this. But you won't give it up. You're like, I'm not going to give that up because I need that for security, I need that for pleasure, I'm just not going to do it. Maybe it's a sin you need to confess. Maybe it's a sacrifice of your time that God is leading you to make. To be involved with some ministry and you're just like, no, I'm not giving that up. Maybe it's like Jonah to go somewhere, somewhere very uncomfortable, to leave family, friends, to leave what's comfortable and to go to a place and you are just saying no to God. Listen, listen, you are never farther from God than when you're close to him and you say no. What Jonah is is a guy who is religious and upstanding in every way, but he's got one area where he's like, no, God, you cannot touch this. Second thing that I notice in this verse is that little phrase that says he found a ship ready.

Found a ship ready. You ever notice that people assume the readiness of the ship is like God's okay on whatever situation they're about to go into? I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where people are doing something clearly against the will of God. And they're like, oh, but look, it just all worked out.

It just all happened right here in front of me. That's got to be God's okay because otherwise how would it have happened this way? I've talked to people in the midst of adultery and they're like, well, I was miserable in my marriage and then magically I just met this other person and they're perfect. And I know that God wants me to be happy. He doesn't want me to be miserable in marriage.

So that must be God's okay that he wants me to go into this new relationship. And I want to say to people, don't you think that there might be an enemy who is laying a trap for you? You've got an enemy whose primary responsibility is to ready the ship for your disobedience. The readiness of the ship is not necessarily God's okay in the situation. The readiness of the ship might be your enemy that is laying a path and a trap for your destruction.

Let me tell you something. Again, write this down. If you want to run from God, if you want to run from God, there will always be a ship ready to tarshish. That's a hard word to say, tarshish, tarshish.

Every time I say it I feel like everybody's laughing at me, tarshish. I'm in the middle of a serious point. So if you want to run from God, there is always a ship that will be ready to take you away. You've got an enemy whose sole role is that. If you allow your eyes to wander, there will always be a girl who will return your flirtations.

If you want out of your marriage, there will always be a too-good-to-be-true relationship that presents itself out of nowhere on Facebook. If you tolerate greed in your life, there will always be a great deal on something that you just have to have. Or how about this one? I hear this a lot of times. Well, I just had a piece of my heart about it.

When people say that to me, I literally have to put my hand in my pocket so I don't punch them in the throat. I'm like, oh, you had a piece of your heart. That must override God's word.

Remember Genesis 3, the original temptation? What's Satan doing in that? Oh, it's good for food. It'll make you wise.

You're not going to die. He's giving her a piece about disobeying God. Your enemy's role is to give you peace about doing the wrong thing. That piece in your heart might not be God's affirmation. It might be Satan numbing your conscience as he leads you down a path toward death. So don't look to peace in your heart as a guide to what God wants you to do.

Peace in your heart can be as fickle as determined by what you ate that morning and what kind of mood you're in. God's word is a rock. God's word never changes. God's word that came to Jonah was the guide for what he was supposed to do. All right, verse 4. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea. That's the problem you see with running from God is God's already at the place you're running to.

And he's in the whole place in between the place where you are and where you're going. So God's fully in charge. He's hurling a storm from up there so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each one cried out to his own God. Okay, here's the situation.

All these sailors are on top of this deck of the ship. They're scared out of their minds. And they're like, well, what God do you worship? Well, why don't you pray to him? What God do you worship?

Why don't you pray to him? And so they're like pooling their resources. They're getting all their bingo cards together. And they're like, hopefully, one of these gods will pick up. One of them's going to be in a good mood. And he's going to save this one that prays to him. And then we'll all be saved. Okay, that's what's going on there. So they all pull out their crystals and their amulets and their hankies that are blessed by the television evangelists.

And they're waving and wiping and rubbing and everything. And they're all praying, verse five. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. Jonah is a literary masterpiece. If you don't read it in Hebrew, which I didn't and I know most of you aren't either, you don't see much of this. But this is one of the verses where Jonah employs all these rhetorical devices. The first words, but Jonah. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep.

How ironic is this? Here the pagan sailors are up on the deck of the ship having a theological discussion about God. And the prophet of God with the message of God is down in the belly of the ship asleep. There's a play on words happening here that you should see. You see that word down?

Jonah's full of stuff like this. That word down is being repeated. He's going down into Joppa, down to the inner part of the ship, down into sleep. That word sleep, by the way, is a Hebrew word that means a deep sleep.

It's not like you'd say he dozed. It's the same word that was used when God put Adam to sleep and made Eve. He's talking about a sleep of death. What he is doing is giving you a picture of the downward progression of sin.

It starts with small disobedience and it goes down, down, down into total spiritual disaster. It's kind of like when you ever swim in the ocean and you're like 20 yards from the sand and then you look up like 30 minutes later and you're like 15 hotels down from where you started? And you're like, did I just get swept into another city? Where am I? You're there and it just carries you along.

Hopefully it's not taking you out because then you never come back. But you're in this current that you don't even perceive that just carries you. What he's saying is sin is like that.

There's these little acts of disobedience and you are being swept along until you are swept into something that takes you farther than you ever wanted to go. You have to beware of the drift of sin because it is subtle and it will take you out to where you can never come back. What I'm trying to tell you is adulterous relationships at 40 start with pornography addictions at 20. That's what I'm telling you.

I'm telling you that eating disorders in college start with jealousies that you don't deal with when you're in middle school. An obtuse heart at 50 years old that won't listen to anybody, including God, starts with rebelling against the God-given authorities in your life when you're in college. Beware of the drift of sin. Verse 6.

So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, old sleeper? Arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish. And so they said to one another, Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on, surprise, Jonah. It's been the roulette wheel. God puts it on Jonah.

Let's try it again. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. Forty-three times in a row, they're like, I think it's Jonah. Jonah's like, all right.

And they say, look at him, and they say, Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your job, by the way? Where do you come from? What's your country?

What people are you from? Jonah said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, not very much, but a little, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and they said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he just told them.

Let me write down a couple more things. Our disobedience affects others. Our disobedience affects others.

We never sin in private. For some of you, your disobedience is destroying the people around you. It's causing you to be a bad father. It's causing you to be an unfaithful husband, to be an unfaithful friend. There are people that God intends to use you in their lives positively as a blessing, and your disobedience is killing them. Your kids are becoming materialistic because you're materialistic. You're poisoning them. You're destroying them. We never sin in private.

C.S. Lewis had a great picture of this in his book, The Great Divorce. He talked about when people are running from God, they begin to get more and more hollow as individuals to the point they become see-through. But when somebody comes back to God, they begin to take on texture and color. And what he was trying to show is that when somebody's walking with God, they become so much more alive. They become the right father.

They become the right husband, the right wife, the right kind of friend. God intends to use you for redemption and salvation in people's lives, and your disobedience is killing some of those people. It's having an eternal effect on some of those people.

The greatest gift that you could ever give to somebody that you love is your personal walk with God. I think about that. I think about how my walk with God affects my wife, how it affects my kids, how it affects you. I mean, yeah, I serve God for God's sake. I serve God for my own sake. But I also do it for your sake and for their sake because the greatest gift I can give my children is my walk with God.

I almost think of it like, you know, when you're on the airplane, they tell you, you know, if the oxygen mask drops out, they tell you to do what should be counterintuitive for you, which is to put it on your face before you put it on your kid's face. God intends to use you positive, to use you as a blessing in their lives, but if you're not breathing spiritually, you're killing them. Your disobedience affects others.

Here's another thing. God sends storms to break his people from self-reliance. God sends storms to break his people from self-reliance. God sends storms into your life to get your attention. You see, one of two things will humble you.

Listen to this. Either your theology or this kind of storm, this kind of affliction. Your theology should humble you.

Your theology should teach you that you're a sinner, that you desperately need God, that rebellion is stupid, that pride is stupid, but because most of us, including me, are hard-hearted and because we don't usually just walk down the street and say, my whole basis of my life is off. I need God. What God usually does is he sends a storm of affliction.

He puts you flat on your back so you look in the right direction. He attacks your idol so that you will learn how much you need God and how much you have to walk with him. So, for example, if you're a slave to money, then God attacks it. If you're addicted to people's approval, then God lets them disappoint you. You're proud, and you don't want to listen to anybody, so God allows you to fail. You're the kind of person that feels like you don't need anybody to make things work out for you, including God, so God allows you to face devastation. You're self-centered, so God allows your marriage to blow up. Some of you are there right now, aren't you?

Some of you are there right now. Now, by the way, I'm not talking about all affliction. Not all affliction goes back to disobedience.

Sometimes God allows these things just as a part of his plan in our lives, but sometimes there's a storm that God puts in there because he is in love trying to wake you up and get your attention. This month we asked our listeners to really take a step of faith and get involved in supporting this ministry financially. Can you share a little bit about what their giving accomplished? Yeah, Molly, like we said last month, the end of the year is a critical time financially for ministries like ours here at Summit Life, and we are so, so grateful for every single one of you who stepped up and joined with us so we could close out our year in a very solid position, ready to take advantage of the opportunities that God has placed in front of us to make the gospel more accessible and to help people go deeper in the gospel. In addition to that, because of your generosity, we were able to give very crucial support to the Rudolph family who are living and church planting in Germany in a very unreached part, a very underserved part of Germany. We were able to expand their ministry there.

We've also been able to expand so that more people here can listen and be engaged by the gospel. You've also enabled us to be able to create some more content, some resources that hopefully are helpful to you in your spiritual growth. So again, we just want to take this moment from the bottom of our hearts to just say thank you. Thank you to those of you who've supported us throughout this year. I want you to know, literally, we could not do it without you, and I hope that you feel a sense of gratification and joy in the way that God has taken what you've given and multiplied it for the blessing of others. Let me just echo J.D.

one more time by saying it again. To everyone who supported us in the month of December, thank you for your partnership. We wouldn't be here without you. And you know, it's never too late to join us in our mission to bring gospel-centered Bible teaching to the radio and web. You can start the year off by becoming a monthly gospel partner or by giving a single gift of $25 or more. When you do, we'll say thanks by sending you an exclusive resource, the 2021 Summit Life Day Planner. It's got plenty of room to keep track of your schedule, and we've also included Bible verses and a Bible reading plan. Grab this resource today so you can start off the new year right with God at the center. Ask for the Summit Life Day Planner when you give today by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can give online and request the planner at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. So glad to have you with us as we kick off the new year. Something about new mercies comes to mind. May it be so. Be sure to join us tomorrow when we continue the message titled I Am Jonah.

It's part of our brand-new series called Cast Away. Join us Tuesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.