JONAH: The Calling

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve (with edits)

A couple things just to set the stage before we look at Jonah chapter 1. Most of you know this—we have the sacred scripture to reveal to us God and the Trinity. And it also reveals to us God’s personality. And so the Old and the New Testament really take hands, right? You need the Old Testament because it all points towards Jesus, and there’s all this symbolism, and like I said, kind of all these events that is pointing us to the coming of Christ, and then New Testament in the sense that Jesus refers a lot to the Old Testament to say, “Hey, all of these prophecies have been fulfilled.” And again, you will see some of that happening in this passage.

So just a disclaimer, I know that there might be people here today sitting with different views and beliefs on the book of Jonah. Was this really a story? Is this just a parable? Now, at least from my perspective—and I can maybe throughout share with you why I say this—I believe that this event really happened. And so that’s the way that I will be teaching God’s word for us over the next several weeks. And so Jonah was a real person. I believe the whole story with the whale was real.

And so number two that is really important—a lot of times when we talk about the story of Jonah, we think about…? The whale. Who said “whale?” Okay? No, it’s true. A lot of times we talk about the whale, right? But I don’t think we see any translation where it actually talks about a whale. It talks about a big fish. So we can say “big fish.” We can say “whale.” You’re still gonna go to heaven, amen? Even if you get that wrong, there’s grace.

But I want you to know today—and this is key, this was really a big revelation for me once I started to take some time to study God’s Word—that really, the big fish, the whale, is such a small part of the story. Right? So kind of get that out of your head this morning, right? There’s like two lines in it about the whale. There is bigger stories that is way more important for us as believers. It’s a great story.

Lack of Vision

And so this is our dog, Abby. She is a cutie. Her love language is definitely touch. She thinks I’m her sleep number. She loves sleeping right on me. She prefers me at number 55. But she is a handful, and a lot of energy, especially when she sees we’re gonna go for a walk. Right? And then she goes absolutely nuts. I can’t believe—I picked her, so I can’t even blame Venessa or Hailey. It’s like, I picked her, right? And so it is quite entertaining to see how she takes us for a walk.

But I think it was on Independence Day on Thursday, we took her to Twin Ponds. We want to—we’ve heard that they’re good swimmers, and so we put the leash on her, and we went to Twin Ponds. And she has this ugly habit a lot of times to escape, right? And she just, she broke free, and now she is just running everywhere, and we’re really concerned because the street is busy, there’s all kinds of cars, she’s running in front of the cars, and she is actually running opposite—every time we’re getting closer to her, she just goes in the opposite direction. Right? And she is lacking the vision that, “Hey stay with us. First of all, we’re not trying to interfere with your fun putting on a leash. This is actually for your protection. And we want to take you to the lake so that we can see…” and she could not swim by the way. It was ugly. So we’ve got a little bit of work to do with her.

But I think when we read and when we look at this story, this is—I would say a big point in the life of Jonah is that he lacked vision of what God actually wanted to do in his life and with his life. And I think a lot of times we do the same thing. And so I’m curious, you can share with me over the next several weeks if you can relate with this story.

The Book of Jonah is Unique

So let’s go to Jonah chapter 1, and we’ll read, and we’ll stop, and we’ll reflect through a couple things here.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah…

So I’ll just stop there, right? And so Jonah is… what? What’s his office in ministry? He’s a prophet, right? And so this is not anything new. The Lord is speaking to him. He’s got a message. And this is not for Jewish people; he’s actually got a message for Gentiles, and God wants him to take this very important message to the Gentile people because he’s a prophet. And so he is supposed to go and preach about their sin, to call them to repentance, right? He’s got a word from the Lord. Now when you actually look at some of the other prophets, when you actually just turn to Micah and some of the other ones, you will see that it actually in a sense starts the same way, right? They all have kind of, “The word of the Lord came to Micah,” right? And so—but with the other books, we see, we kind of zone in, we focus in on the prophetic words, but Jonah is very different, because we’re not looking at the prophetic words, but we are looking at the character of Jonah. We’re looking at the prophet himself. So this is what makes it very different from the other prophets.

And just from commentaries and other scholars that I’ve listened to, it is interesting to see how in a sense upside down the whole book is, right? And just, it is so different in the way that they’re trying to get our attention and trying to communicate the ministry of Jonah and some of the things that he is dealing with.

We Can Act Like Jonah

So:

The word of the Lord came to Jonah [Right?] son of Amittai…

Now something that’s interesting—“Jonah” means “dove.” Right? And “son of Amittai” means “son of faithfulness.” Now again, what I’ve shared with you, everything’s kind of upside down because he is not the son that is faithful. He’s actually the exact opposite of being faithful to God’s word, at least here in chapter one and what we can pick up so far. So:

The word of the Lord came to Jonah…

Let me just pause there again. Do you realize that the Lord speaks to you as well? Today we don’t maybe have prophets in the same way that we have seen it in the Old Testament, because one, we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, and we have God’s Word. I do believe that God still speaks through all kinds of things. He speaks through nature; he does speak through people, right? But he speaks to us mainly through his Word and through the Holy Spirit in our lives. And it’s easy to point fingers this morning and to say, “Naughty naughty Jonah,” right, “you are not listening to this important message.” But I wonder even in our own lives how many times God has spoken to us where we have kind of ran in the opposite direction. And so maybe instead of just pointing fingers—and I know I had to do that this past week and just kind of as I was reflecting, it’s easy to pick on Jonah, it’s like, “Man, why are you so rebellious? What’s going on?” I mean, he’s a really good candidate for a counselor. He needs a good spiritual counselor when we actually look at some of the stuff that is happening in his life. But really when we look at this chapter, I mean, it stirs something. There’s some areas in our lives that we can relate with as we read this.

God’s Call to Jonah

And so he’s got a word. God is calling him. He says:

Go to the great city of Nineveh [right?] and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.

Now Ninevah is the capital city of the Assyrian country, right? And they were well known for being violent and being evil. There’s a lot of kids, so I will not go—I’ve talked about this before, right, some of the things that we’ve read through historical documents and things on just how they described these tribes, when they would invade a country, all the things that they would do. I mean, it was extremely violent. And so I’m sure that Jonah has heard some of these things, and now God is calling him to go and minister and call them to repentance and to say, “You guys are busy with wickedness. You need to make right.”

Jonah’s Response

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.

All right? So it says Jonah rose up, and he was running away from God’s presence. Now a good call and invitation to us in our own lives as well this morning. Just, you know, the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives. The Lord has a purpose for all of us. I believe that with everything in me, that the Lord has a great purpose for your life. And even when we just look at the Great Commandment, where it says to go into all of the world, and we’re supposed to make disciples. We’re supposed to share our testimony and to share the gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, right? That’s part of our calling. And a lot of times we have small opportunities to do that, and instead of running to the presence of God every morning and saying, “God, how do you want to use me,” a lot of times we wake up and we run the opposite direction, where God’s purpose and calling in our lives and what he wants with our lives in that moment is not even on the radar, right? And so just that invitation to all of us every morning, how do we wake up? Are we willing to say, “Yes, Lord, here I am. Let’s go. Use my life. I want to be obedient.” And so he is intentionally—Jonah rises up, and he’s running away from his purpose, and he’s running away from God’s calling and to go and preach the gospel.

A lot of you even here today might be running away from some of the callings that the Lord has placed on your life, right? And side note—there might be a lot of side notes this morning, we’ll see—do not run away. If God is calling you—maybe God is calling you to do some hard things; maybe God is calling you to be a missionary; God is calling you—whatever it might be. And in the natural, it just looks insane, it looks hard, but guess what? It is way better to be obedient and to be faithful to that call than for you to run away.

So I’m wondering even today, as we read this, if there’s maybe a stirring with the Holy Spirit in your heart with something. There’s some sort of calling, there’s something that the Holy Spirit is reminding you of this morning. It’s like, “You got to do this.” There’s maybe something in your life that you’ve been putting off for years and years and it’s like, “Lord, that’s just too tough. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do this.” But maybe this morning you are here because God wants to just remind you, and the work of the Holy Spirit is prompting you again to be obedient to what God is calling you to.

Avoiding God’s Calling

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.

Now just a note here—what is interesting, Tarshish was probably Spain, and it is exactly the opposite of where he is supposed to go. And so at that point, Tarshish was kind of at the end of the world as far as they have explored. And so he’s like, “Okay, I am going. I don’t know exactly what is all on this side, but I’m so running away from God’s calling that I’m willing to go the extra mile, pay money, to ignore God’s calling.” It’s just fascinating sometimes in our own lives, a lot of times, the things that we will do, the things that we will spend money on to avoid God’s calling for our lives.

God’s Persistence

He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare…

At least he paid.

… he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

So just again, as we pause there on what is happening, he’s on the ship, and now God is calling him again and reminding, it’s like, “Hey, I’m not done with you. There’s a plan, there’s a purpose.” And it is fascinating to see that God is creating this major storm, this violent storm. We have to wonder, right? I’m not saying this is true for everything, but a lot of times we’re so easy to dispel God’s judgment with storms and different things, and yet we see here that God is creating the storm because he’s trying to call Jonah’s attention.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.

This was fascinating; I have never seen this before. Just through commentaries and some of my studies,

there’s a theme here of Jonah going down. It’s like there’s a movement from him moving further and further away from God. And so you see this downward movement in the life of Jonah. And so what is trying to be communicated to us here is to just say as he’s moving away from God and moving in a sense into sin—and that is what sin will do. As we interact with sin, as we open up that door to disobedience, guess what? It will always lead us downward and lead us away from God. So even throughout this chapter, I’ve got it highlighted here just kind of every time you see that, it’s like him moving down.

Comfort in Sin

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

Now it is again interesting that he goes down and he sleeps. It’s a huge storm, and I think the meaning behind some of that for us this morning is a lot of times we can get so comfortable in our sin. We can get so comfortable in our sin that we’re willing to fall asleep in the midst of our disobedience to God. And that is never a good place. And it is interesting that the Lord—and he is the prophet, he should know better! Right? He’s the one with the word, and he’s falling asleep. He’s so comfortable, he’s like, “Well, I’m going that direction. I’m staying safe. I’m just gonna sleep. I know I’m not exactly where God wants me to be, but I’m just gonna fall asleep.” And now God is sending the unbelievers to him to say, “Hey, maybe you should call on your God.” What an irony. Again, kind of just this upside down piece. He’s supposed to preach to the nonbelievers, but now the nonbelievers are kind of calling him out.

And I believe even for us as the church and as for God’s people, for us never to get comfortable with sin. Right? For us never to get comfortable with sin and where we just allow sin into our lives. It is important to repent. We know that there’s gonna be consequences for sin, and we want to be in that right standing with God. We need to deal with the stuff that is in our lives that is not right with God. Don’t just fall asleep. Don’t just ignore it.

We got so frustrated last night. We had some time—Hailey was working, and we got home, and it was like, “Okay, let’s watch some movies.” And so a movie, and we started one, and it looked good. There was a guy in his dog, and I looked at the rating pieces, and that looked all okay. And then it was like, man, just swear word after swear word. I was like, “Okay, well, we can’t do that. Let’s stop that.” And then we tried another one. And it was all about, yeah, just witchcraft and different things. It’s like, “Come on,” right? And it’s so easy to sit even in that. It’s like, “Well, let’s just...” Because it takes more time to search for something than to actually watch something. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that, right? And so we just all kind of gave up. I went back to study, and Hailey was playing piano. But again, it’s like, man, there’s a temptation to just sit in that moment and to say, “Ah, it’s gonna be okay.” No, it’s not okay. God doesn’t want us to sit in that and to take that all in, for us not to get comfortable with sin. We need to deal with that.

Acknowledging God

Verse 7:

Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

“But by the way, I’m also running from him.” It is amazing, his declaration here. He’s pretty bold, right? He’s coming out, he’s like, “Man, I’m a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” It is funny that he’s actually acknowledging that because he is now in the sea. And he’s saying, “Well, you know what? Actually God is the one that creates everything, and how silly of me that I actually even have to say it, because I’ve been trying to run away from God by getting in this boat and trying to cross the ocean. But oh yeah, I forgot that he actually created the heavens and the sea.”

This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)

The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

I think we’ve all asked that. It’s like, man, this is nerve-wrecking.

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

And so he’s fessing up. He said, “Hey, this is God. He’s calling me. I’m disobedient. But throw me in the sea.” You know what he’s actually saying? “I’m willing to die. I am willing to die.” He doesn’t have the vision and the prophetic word to jump in and say, “Oh, there’s a big fish waiting for you.” He’s saying, “I am rather willing to die than to actually go back and do what God has called me to do. Just throw me in the ocean. Okay? Throw me in the sea.”

Instead…

This is an interesting response.

Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before.

So these guys, I mean, they’re showing some integrity. They’re like, “Hey, I don’t want to throw him in. We don’t want to just throw him in and see him die. And let’s see what we can do in our own power here. Let’s just row.”

And then God said, “No, I’ve got bigger plans. I’ve got other plans.” And the storm got wilder and bigger.

Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.

It is, again, fascinating. You don’t even see really Jonah preaching. He’s the prophet. Great opportunity—here’s kind of a Billy Graham moment for them. They’re on the boat, right? The storms, these guys are scared. All he has to do is preach the gospel, and he’s not doing it. But through all of this, God is using Jonah in this situation where they actually now worship the Lord. Isn’t that just amazing and beautiful in the context of this story, right? It’s like how God is using some of this stuff.

God’s Provision

And then we see in verse 17:

Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

It is amazing. I mean, again, Jonah could’ve died. He was actually asking to die instead of to do what God has called him to do, and so they throw him overboard, and there’s a big fish, and this fish—obviously you know the story—swallows him up, and then next week we’ll see how it, you know, spits him out.

But again, we just see God’s hand of provision, God’s hand of provision, even in that moment of his disobedience. God makes a way, and God’s pursuing him. He’s like, “I’m not gonna kill you.” He can be glad that I’m not God, because I was like, “Oh, Jonah, you want to die? Okay. You have real deep issues; you’ve got some things; you’re the prophet; you’re supposed to be the man of the hour and to have this voice; and yet you are rebellious, and you’re not being obedient to what I have called you to do.” And so he could have died, and God said, “Nope, I still want to use you. I’m still gonna make a way.” And then we have the big fish, right? And he ends up where he needs to end up at the end of the day, and we’ll look at that at chapter 2.

God’s Mercy

The heart of the story, in closing, is this—and we’ll see that, and this is the whole problem, because in chapter 1, we don’t see why Jonah is running away. We don’t know if it’s—at least in chapter 1—we don’t know if it’s because he’s scared. I probably would have been a little intimidated to go to that area and to preach the Word of God, and you know what they do with people, right? And so it’s like, “These guys are barbarians, and they’re wild. They’re gonna kill me.” But this is not the reason why Jonah doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go because he doesn’t want to see God’s compassion and mercy in their lives. He wants them to die. He wants them to die.

So I’ve got to ask you this morning—I talked a little bit about that lack of vision for our dog, but this is showing such lack of vision in his life that he’s missing, first of all, to be part of something so powerful where you get to go in to be a voice for God, to go into this evil city, and then to see revival. I would love to be part of that! I would love to see that, right, to be part of that story. But not in Jonah’s life. He’s like, “You guys have committed all these evil crimes. There’s no way. You need to burn. You need to die. You need to experience the wrath of God.”

And here’s the big story—the whole story of Jonah is to show us the mercy and the compassion of God for his people, and even in our own lives, because so many times in our own lives, we do stuff and we run away from God. We run away from the purpose and God’s calling on our lives, and then we sit in sin, right? We get comfortable with sin, and we think, “Well, God will never forgive me.” And this is not the story and the message that we find in Jonah, where God is trying to reveal himself to us. He’s trying to show his compassion and his love for us that nobody is out of reach of God. And so even in your life this morning, in family member, people that are so evil, and maybe you’re just, you’re so angry, you’re so bitter, and it’s like, “Yeah, you deserve to die and to burn in hell.” Because sometimes there is some emotions, strong emotions that we experience that when we have experienced pain. But guess what? God wants to show mercy and compassion in everybody’s life. It’s for all of us this morning. And we get to experience and we get to be agents of love and to be that voice to say, “Man, Jesus died on the cross for you. You don’t have to die. You don’t have to experience eternity in hell. God is compassionate, and he's loving, and he’s merciful, and he’s gracious, and you can experience his forgiveness.”