Pastor Jonathan Rivera opened a new sermon series with a title that doubles as a warning. You can run but you can’t hide. In Jonah 1:1-6, a prophet gets a clear word from God and runs the other way, which raises the question he asked the room to write down. How do you consistently respond to the word of the Lord?
What Is the Book of Jonah Actually About?
Most of us think of the great fish, or Jonah on the run, or the hatred he carried toward Nineveh. Pastor Jonathan said the book is not about Jonah at all, even though it carries his name. The main character is the Lord. Only three names appear in it, Jonah, his father, and the Lord, and the name Yahweh shows up more than twenty times.
That shapes how you read it. Keep your eyes on the Lord. Then hold two things at once, a window and a mirror. The window is the story on the page. The mirror is you. We like windows, he said, and we really do not like mirrors, especially when one shows us something we would rather not see. He repeated a line all morning and promised to repeat it all series. We are more like Jonah than we like to admit.
He added the church’s mission, to love God, love people, and make Christ known, then the principle he said you cannot afford to miss. Every book in the Bible points to Jesus, who is all over Jonah without being named once.
Why Was Nineveh So Hard for Jonah?
Nineveh was a major city of the Assyrians, in what is now Iraq, with one of the most powerful militaries in the world. Pastor Jonathan slowed down here, because we give Jonah a hard time without knowing who these people were. They were violent conquerors with a reputation for cruelty, and Jonah was being sent into the middle of it.
He also knew the character of God. Later in the book Jonah says it outright, that he knew God to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. That is exactly why he ran. He knew that if he went, God would show mercy to Nineveh, and he did not believe Nineveh deserved any.
Pastor Jonathan turned that on the room. Is there anybody in your life like that, anyone you have quietly filed as beyond mercy? Here is the mirror again. God wants to deal with us when we look at ourselves honestly, and He is able to take anger and hatred and change how we see people.
What Does Running From God Look Like?
Verse 1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, so the Lord initiated this, not Jonah. Verse 2 gives the assignment. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before Him.
So how do we respond when the word of the Lord comes? We can arise and go. We can arise and stay put. Or we can do what Jonah did and flee the opposite way. Nineveh sat about 550 miles from Joppa. Tarshish, near Spain, was roughly 2,500 miles the other direction, the far edge of the known world.
Watch the verb. Jonah went down to Joppa, down into the ship, and later down into its inner part. On the outside he was going away. Spiritually he was going down, and running from God moves a person in one direction, down toward depression, anxiety and stress, down to places the Lord never wanted us.
Hypocrisy hides it well. You can look like you are climbing while inwardly you sink. Jonah was a prophet, and he sank anyway. So where are we resisting? What command are we avoiding? Do we trust our own wisdom over His?
How Does the Lord Pursue a Runaway?
Verse 3 said but Jonah. Verse 4 says but the Lord. He hurled a great wind on the sea, a mighty tempest, until the ship threatened to break up.
Pastor Jonathan spent 27 years in the military, 15 of them on ships, and he knows seas like that, where the hull vibrates and the last place anyone wants to go is overboard. That was on an aircraft carrier. Jonah’s boat was not. The mariners had no part in any of this, and the storm hit them anyway, because being near someone who is running from God means getting caught in the mess.
In verse 5 they are afraid, each crying out to his own god, hurling cargo overboard to lighten the ship. The book repeats words on purpose, and the same verb for the Lord hurling the wind is used for the sailors hurling the cargo. Then, but Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and was fast asleep. It is hard to sleep on a ship rocking like that. You have to be exhausted, or very far down. The storm outside was bad. The storm inside Jonah was worse.
How Does the Lord Get Your Attention?
In verse 6 the captain finds him. What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god. Compare that to the word God gave Jonah. Arise, go to Nineveh. A pagan captain used the Lord’s own word, and Jonah, down in the dark, missed it completely. Sometimes the Lord speaks through people and we miss it, because we are not in a state to hear it.
So how does He speak? Through His Word first, written by the Holy Spirit through forty authors across sixteen hundred years, meant to be read as God’s word to us rather than a textbook. Through the Holy Spirit, in a way Pastor Jonathan called mysterious, where you simply know. Through circumstances, trials and blessings. Through creation, where a door points to Jesus the door of salvation, water to the living water, bread to the bread of life. Through a pagan captain, and later in Jonah through a fish, a worm and a plant.
You Can Run but You Can’t Hide, So Now What?
Through all of it God reveals one thing about Himself, that He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. The greatest revelation of that mercy is a person. A mentor taught Pastor Jonathan to picture the Old Testament as a house full of furniture with the lights off, and the New Testament as the same house lit. Christ is concealed in one and revealed in the other, though even in the dark you catch a glimpse.
Look at Mark 4. A great windstorm, waves filling the boat, Jesus asleep in the stern. The disciples wake Him, He rebukes the wind, tells the sea to be still, and there is a great calm. Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?
Set the two side by side. Jonah on a boat, Jesus on a boat. Jonah asleep, Jesus asleep. Jonah fled the Lord’s command, Jesus came down from heaven and obeyed the Father’s. Jonah could not calm the storm, Jesus spoke and it obeyed. Jonah needed mercy, Jesus died and rose to give it.
Look at the Lord. Look at Jonah. Look at yourself. Most of all, look for Christ, because He is the one Jonah needed, and His blood covers any sin ever committed.
If you are running right now, that is worth bringing into the light with people who will walk through it with you. Plan your visit or find a life group and take that next step.