Jonah 1:1-9
Rebellion, Jonah Goes Down
(You can run but you
can’t hide ~ part 1)
Open your Bible to…
Jonah 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
Jonah 1:2 “Arise,
go to
Jonah 1:3 But Jonah arose 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 from the presence of the LORD.
Pray
Intro
√ The book
Like the other prophetic books of the Old Testament it bears the name of the prophet.
What’s unique about the book is not that Jonah was a reluctant prophet, others didn’t want to preach (Jeremiah)…
…but that Jonah has the distinction as being the only prophet who tried to run from God!
While the story recorded in the book of Jonah revolves around the prophet…
…the real story focuses upon God and how He works in the lives of people and nations.
√ The author
Hebrew and Christian have always ascribed the authorship of the book to Jonah himself, though the book doesn’t actually claim him as the author.
1) Who ~ he was
Jonah was a prophet of God who ministered during the reign of Jeroboam II (793-753 B.C.).
His name means “dove”, while his father’s name, “Amittai” means “my true one.”
He ministered to the spiritually bankrupt
However, God had granted a measure of success to king
Jeroboam in the hope that he and the people of
Ex. Jonah predicted that the kingdom would expand
2Ki 14:23 In the
fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of
2Ki 14:24 And he
did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of
Jeroboam (the 1st) the son of Nebat, who had made
2Ki 14:25 He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher.
Under Jeroboam
Jonah lived in the
2) What ~ he wrote about
The book records God’s call to Jonah to preach a message of
impending judgment against the Assyrian capital city of
However, Jonah didn’t like the Assyrians so he decided to try to circumvent God’s plan by sailing in the opposite direction!
Didn’t work out like he planned and his story provides us a great (and humorous) example of…
1) How God’s sovereignty and Man’s free will work
2) That God must first break a person before He can use that person.
You could outline the book of Jonah…
Chapter 1 ~ Rebellion, Jonah goes down
Chapter 2 ~ Repentance, Jonah goes up
Chapter 3 ~ Restoration, Jonah goes to
Chapter 4 ~ Resentment, Jonan goes out
The lesson of Jonah is universal because it illustrates how God desires to use each of us and the futility of resisting His will.
3) Why ~ he wrote
Jonah was inspired to write about his own failure,
disobedience, and hard heart to help both
To demonstrate God’s concern for all people ~ Jews and
Gentiles! The book is a reminder that
To demonstrate the sovereignty of God ~ that despite Israel’s failure to be a light to the Gentiles that God would still get His message of Love to the World.
To serve as a rebuke to the people of
To use Jonah as an example (symbol) of
God’s desire was that the people of
Ap. A warning to Christians and the Church
Individual Christians and the Church are called to be a “light to the world”!
God still wants to reach the lost and has called us to reach them!
He’s given us a message to preach, He’s given us a command to go, and His Spirit to help us.
Yet, many Christians today and many churches have rejected that call.
Ex. S.C.C.
Refuses to join any evangelical outreach to our community, including the Billy Graham Crusade, the Harvest Crusade, and even Operation Christmas Child.
Jonah’s experience reminds us that…
We can run, but we can’t hide from God’s call.
He will get the message out, with or without us.
We can be “fishers of men”, or “fish bait”, the choice is ours.
So, we begin with looking at chapter 1…
…Rebellion, Jonan goes down!
God sent a prophet (vs. 1-3)
Jonah 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
Jonah 1:2 “Arise, go to
Jonah 1:3 But Jonah arose 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 from the presence of the LORD.
√ God sent a prophet
Jonah’s adventure begins with a word from the Lord to go and
preach in
Located on the
It’s ruins lay opposite the modern city of
God sent His prophet there because He wanted to give them an opportunity to repent before He implemented His judgment against them.
The reason for God’s impending judgment was that
“Arise, go to
In fact,
1) Their cruelty
They were know to have skinned their enemies alive and covered the walls of conquered cities with the skin.
King Ashurbanipal bragged that he tortured a captured leader thusly…
“I pierced his chin with my keen hand dagger. Through his jaw I passed a rope, put a dog chain upon him and made him occupy a kennel.”
That would not be “puppy love”!
2) Their idolatry and pride…
King Esarhaddon said of himself…
“I am powerful, I am all powerful, I am a hero, I am gigantic, I am colossal, I am honored, I am magnified, I am without equal among all kings, the chosen one of Asshur, Nabu, and Marduk”.
“I am woman!” ~ sorry that was Helen Reddy
It’s not hard to understand then that they had caught God’s attention and that He was going to bring judgment upon them if they didn’t repent!
√ But Jonah
The way that vs. 3 begins is revealing…
“But Jonah”
That is, Jonah didn’t like the assignment that God gave him so he fled to Tarshish…
…the opposite
direction from
If we didn’t know what we just learned about
A bad prophet.
But, knowing what we know about the wickedness of the Assyrians makes it easier to understand why he would not have wanted to go there!
Ex. What if God told
you to go to
I might think about fleeing to
The point is that
God’s will was to give the people of
…but Jonah’s will
was get as far from
God sent a storm (vs. 4)
Jonah 1:4 But the LORD sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up.
√ God sent a storm
Note the way that vs. 4 begins…
“But the LORD…”
That is, God counters Jonah’s disobedience by sending a storm to prevent him from reaching Tarshish.
In this storm we see the first of many examples in the book of Jonah as to how the mystery of God’s Sovereignty and Man’s freedom to chose interact to accomplish God’s will.
And, how both can be true though they would seem to mutually exclusive.
The storm also reminds us that God sees everything we do and that we simply can’t hide from Him!
Depending on your mindset at any given time that truth will either comfort you (if you’re in His will)…
…or convict you (if you’re out of His will)!
David knew both and ultimately found this truth to be a great comfort to his soul…
Psa. 139:7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
Psa. 139:8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
Psa. 139:9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Psa. 139:10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
Ap. Are you comforted or convicted by His inescapable presence?
Your answer reveals your heart condition.
The reality is that you’ll find life when you surrender to His will, and death if you resist it.
Ex. Rip tide
So, God sent a storm to keep Jonah from reaching Tarshish and to turn him around so that he might go in God’s direction.
God sent a sign (vs. 5-9)
Jonah 1:5 Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.
Jonah 1:6 So the captain came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”
Jonah 1:7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
Jonah 1:8 Then they said to him, “Please tell us! For whose cause is this trouble upon us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”
Jonah 1:9 So he said to them, “I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
√ God sent a sign
In response to the storm that God sent, the pagan sailors do everything within their power to stay afloat, they…
Lighten the ship
Pray to each man’s god
Meanwhile, Jonah sleeps!
Don’t miss the message here!
Jonah represents more than just himself in the story, he is symbolic of the nation of
Sailors ~ Gentiles
Jonah ~ Jews
Sailors ~ Trying to save themselves
Jonah ~ Slept instead of praying & preaching
The symbolic picture is that God ordained
But, they were in such rebellion to God that they had fallen into a spiritual sleep and were not concerned at all with the Gentiles who were perishing all around them.
So God sends a Gentile to wake up His sleeping prophet!
√ The sign
From the narrative of the story it is apparent that the sailors were sure that this storm was of supernatural origin…
…so they cast lots to figure out who’s in trouble with the God and how they might save their lives from the storm.
Once more God demonstrates His sovereignty by causing the lot to fall to Jonah!
A sign from the Lord!
Ap. Your sin will find you out!
Put yourself in Jonah’s sandles.
He knew going into this thing that the storm was from God and that it was his sin that had brought this trouble upon them (ref. Vs. 12).
After all, he was a prophet!
Yet, he goes along with the whole casting of lots in the vain hope that he’s not going to be discovered!
Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he just fess up and get his secret sin off his chest?
Because he probably thought that if he kept quiet that no one would find out!
He may have thought…
“What are the odd that they find me out?”
Ah, but what Jonah neglected to factor into his calculations of the statistical possibility that the lot would fall to him was that…
…God was in control.
So, God sent a sign to His wayward prophet to wake him from his spiritual slumber that he might repent and do God’s will.
Close
√ Jonah
So, in chapter 1 we read of Jonah’s Rebellion, Jonah goes down.
God sent a prophet
God sent a storm
God sent a sign
We’ll pick up the story next week and see where Jonah’s rebellion took him!