Tasting the Gruel of Love

Running Away From God

Dr. Larry Thorson*
June 28, 2009

Jonah 1:1-3a

1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 "Go to the great city Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish.

This summer we’re going to take another look at that favorite Sunday school story of Jonah and the whale. Hopefully it will be a fun series for you and maybe you might even learn something new from this ancient story that you can apply to your day to day summer experience.

Today we’re going to look at running away. Most of you are too old to run away from home although my dad once escaped from the temporary nursing home where he had to go following his stroke so your running away is not beyond the realm of possibility. But there are more ways to run away than physically trotting down the street. Dads will run away from their responsibilities at home by playing golf or softball or dirt biking or whatever. Moms will run away from having to take care of her kids 24/7. Church members will avoid worship when they’re asked to do something they don’t want to do. There are lots of ways to run away without actually running. Maybe you’re running from something right now.

We don’t know much about Jonah except his father’s name and that he got a word from the Lord…"Go to the great city Nineveh and preach against it." Remember that word “great” because it’s going to come up a number of times in this book.

Now those words from the Lord involved jeopardizing Jonah’s life. It was kind of like God telling Jonah to go walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He would have probably preferred doing that over what he was told to do.

The great city Nineveh where he was sent was the capital of a great world power of its day called Assyria. In the seventh and eighth centuries BC, Assyria chewed up and spit out countries right and left. It would put the populations of countries that it defeated on death marches. It practiced genocide basically as state policy.

The king of Assyria had three palaces in three major cities of his kingdom. He ruled from each city for 4 months at a time. There were various advantages to this arrangement. It dispersed power through out his kingdom. It dispersed his army throughout the kingdom. It encouraged trade to be dispersed throughout his kingdom. And it dispersed his wives and children. One of those three cities was Nineveh.

Assyria had invaded the ten northern tribes of Israel and basically obliterated them. This would be like Iraq under Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait without the United States intervention. So obviously Assyria would be a much hated place for a Jew like Jonah.

Listen to what the prophet Nahum in the biblical book of Nahum said about Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, "Woe to Nineveh", "woe to the city of blood…" (Nahum 3) That is what it was called “city of blood". “…full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims, piles of dead." Now think about this, "…bodies without number, people stumbling over corpses…your injury is fatal." Nahum here was predicting the fall of Nineveh. "…your injury is fatal. Everyone who hears this news about you claps their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?"

Nineveh wasn’t just any other city…think of Al-Qaeda, think of Nazi Germany. While Nahum said strong condemning words about Nineveh, where do you think he was when he said those words? He was in Israel, a long ways away from Nineveh.

Let’s get back to that word of the Lord to Jonah, "Go to the great city of Nineveh." Learn to speak Assyrian and tell them face to face that they're facing the judgment of God. I can just imagine Jonah saying something back to God like, "Lord, Nahum got to taunt them from a distance. Couldn't we like send them a telegram or something?"

"The Word of the Lord came to Jonah, 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it.'" How did the Word come? Was it a burning bush? Was it a still small voice? Was it an angel? Was it a vision? Was it a dream? Was there room for doubt? The text doesn't say. Did people around Jonah know? Was there a Mrs. Jonah? Did Jonah go home and have her ask, "How was work today?" And tell her, "Well I'm supposed to go to Assyria and condemn them face to face," and have her say, "You've got to be crazy." The text doesn't say. It just says the Word of the Lord came to Jonah, "Go to the great city Nineveh."

Nineveh was not in Jonah's comfort zone. Nineveh is the place God calls you to where you do not want to go. Nineveh is trouble. Nineveh is danger. Nineveh is fear. What do you do when God says to you, "Go to Nineveh, go to the place where you do not want to go"? If you have a close relationship with God, God will say that to you.

Would you just sit there taking a nap in front of the pastor or would you be like Jonah who was so moved by the Word of God that he got up and left home but not where God wanted him to go. He headed for Tarshish. Anybody want to guess what direction Tarshish was in? It was the exact opposite direction of Nineveh. It wasn’t like Tarshish was on his way to Nineveh and he wanted to pick up his favorite donuts there. It would be like God telling you to go to San Francisco and you head for San Diego. The text says in verse 2, "But Jonah ran away from the Lord, and headed for Tarshish."

Tarshish was the kind of place where you would least expect a revelation from God. Scholars are uncertain about the exact identity of this city, but the most likely candidate is a town on the coast of Spain at the far western edge of the Mediterranean – in other words, what would have been in Jonah’s day the far edge of the known world.

The people there for the most part didn't know the Lord. Here’s a lesson Jonah teaches us. If you’re going to be disobedient to God don’t go to Forest Home Conference Center where our youth go, there are too many on fire Christians there. If you’re going to be disobedient to God don’t go somewhere where you’re going to run into God's people. Don’t do it. Jonah wanted to be a safe distance from anything that reminded him of God and that’s why he didn’t just stay home in Israel and ignore God.

What I’ve found in my years as pastor of various churches is that when a guy is trying to have an affair with someone other than his wife, he doesn’t want to be in church unless he’s a pretty good actor. When someone is trying to pull off something they know God doesn’t want them to do, like short changing someone they don’t want to be in church. They run away from God.

But what a foolish thing to try to do. Who would ever try to do something that dumb as to run from God? Like where could you hide? What about inside Chappies bar? No way, you’ve got a radar all over you and God will check that place out before you even enter there. See, one of the things about disobedience, one of the things about sin is, it requires the illusion that I won't get caught.

John Ortberg tells the story of a football player who was kind of struggling in his class work, and he was sitting across from the smartest kid in class. The professor says that he must have cheated on a test, sitting across from this real smart kid. The professor says to them, "You both got the exact same score on the test, you just got one question wrong." The football player says, "Well, that could have been a coincidence." Prof said, "Yeah, but you both got the same question wrong." Football player said, "Ah, well, that could have been a coincidence." Prof said, "But the best student's paper said, 'I don't know the answer to this question, ' and your paper said, 'I don't know the answer either.'" I don't know if it happened or not, but it should have if it didn't.

See if I want to disobey the Lord, the first thing I have to do is make sure my mind does not think about the Lord being right there. I have to find a way mentally to not think about God's presence and God's character and God's will and God's holiness. I have to keep my mind thinking about other stuff so it doesn't think about that stuff. So if I want to do something I know is wrong, it always involves me running away from the Lord.

We all do this. People do it all the time. It happens to everybody in this room. It may happen like this: I know God is asking me to go to Nineveh. I know God wants me to confront this person, have a conversation about the truth, but that would be unpleasant. I don't want to face that pain so I'll just go to Tarshish. Or I know God is calling me to serve in such and such an area, but I don't want to. It might be humbling. It might be difficult. It might be scary so I'll run away to Tarshish.

Maybe God is calling me to let go of the grip that money has on my life, and I know that it does. I know God says, "Trust me enough to be generous." I know God says, "Test me with your tithe. Test me on this and see if I am not faithful, if I don't care for you." But I don't want to tithe. I'm afraid. So I'm going to run to Tarshish.

Maybe it looks like this: I know God wants me to confess this sin. I know God wants me to acknowledge this habit. I know God wants me to let go of this sexual relationship or this sexual habit. I know God wants me to release this judgmental attitude in my spirit. I know God wants me to forgive and not be bitter. I know, but I don't want to. I'd rather go online and look for a ship to Tarshish. That's what Jonah does. He thought, as everyone of us sometimes thinks, "I can run from God. Nobody will ever know." Maybe you are there right now.

In 1960, John Updike wrote a novel called Rabbit, Run. It was a book about a man named Rabbit who runs away from home in an attempt to escape the confines of what he thought was a failing marriage and soul-crushing job. He goes out to buy his wife cigarettes, and he doesn’t come back; simple as that. But it doesn’t take long before he gets lost. Stopping for directions, someone tells him: "The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where you're going before you get there.”

My question for you this morning as I close is where are you going this summer? For some of you it will be Alaska. For others it will be Italy. For others the Sierras. For some the beach. For some of us, beautiful downtown Hemet. But I expect at least more than a few of us may also have Tarshish on our itinerary. Tarshish, that place where we think we can drink as much and whatever we want, we can swear what we want, and most of all we think we don’t have to do that thing God is calling us to do.

But know this God will be there. You can run and you can hide but in the end God will still be there. Take some time this summer to think about where you’re going beyond this summer and why. Ask yourself ‘What’s driving me right now to do what I do more than anything else?’ Most if not all of you know what happens in this story of Jonah and so you know I’m going to be watching weather reports around the world this summer especially for those going on ships.