You Can
Run, But You Can’t Hide
Pastor Mathew Magera – 7/22/18 – Sermon 297
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
A Sunday school teacher was
giving a lesson on the story of Jonah one day. Toward the end of the lesson the
teacher turned to one of the students and asked a question, "Johnny, if
you were Jonah and God told you to go to Nineveh, would you have gotten on a
boat for several days through the wind and waves to get away from God?"
Johnny looked at her and quickly said, "Absolutely not. I would've taken
an airplane."
Why didn’t Jonah want to go
to Nineveh? Since we’re spending our summer looking at different ways that God’s
humor presents itself in the Bible to make a point, we have to come here and
ask that very question. Why didn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh? Jonah 1:1-2
says, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Ammitai: ‘Go to the great city
of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
We don’t even have time for introductions in this book. We open the book and
are immediately thrust into the story. Now, just imagine how short this book
would be if Jonah said, “Ok, Lord” and went to Nineveh. Unfortunately, that’s
not what happened.
Nineveh is a large city, the
capital of the Assyrian Empire, a growing force encroaching on part of Israel's
northern borders. The Bible calls it a great city but don’t let that word fool
you, this city was anything from great. Yes, it met the definition of great as
in lots of people but it sure isn’t the kind of place you’d find good school
districts in if you were looking to move. Nineveh is evil and God wants Jonah
to go and tell them they can’t hide from God.
Well, Jonah hasn't been
sleeping in church. He knows a thing or two about God and if there is one thing
he knows about God he knows that God is merciful. So, Jonah is presented with
this situation. God is asking Jonah to go to the capital city of a rival
nation, the powerhouse of the growing Assyrian Empire, to tell them to repent
of their sins. Well, when they do, Jonah knows God is going to be merciful to
the people of Nineveh. If God is merciful to them, he won't destroy their city.
If God doesn't destroy their city, the empire will continue to grow. If the
empire continues to grow they will attack and conquer Israel. If they attack
and conquer Israel, off goes Jonah as a prisoner of war, best case scenario.
So, you can imagine this is what Jonah is thinking when God tells him to go to
Nineveh. You want me to go where? You realize that if I go there I know you
will be merciful to them and they will grow and come and destroy us, YOUR
people! Jonah did the math.
As a result, Jonah believes he
has only one option at this point. He's ‘gotta get outta dodge.’ If he preaches
and the Assyrians repent, they'll grow. If he doesn't preach and God doesn't
inflict any judgment on them, they will also grow. It seems like a lose-lose
situation for Jonah. So, rather than walk a few hundred miles to this large
city to preach he's going to hop a boat ride over a thousand miles the other
direction. He couldn't just flee into another country, no he's got to go the
very edge of the known world on the coast of western Spain to get away from
this. Well, Jonah can run but as we can see by the rest of the story, he can't
hide, despite his best efforts. God is going to watch him closely and he's
going to give the boat a rough time at sea. He's going to run, but he certainly
can't hide.
There are people today who
run from God. Christian or not, there are people in this world who run from
God. They don't believe he can do any good. They believe he's a myth, a legend,
not real, fake news. People run from God because they feel he's uncaring,
doesn't answer prayer and can make life a living hell. People run from God
because he has failed them, let them down. These are all perfectly understandable
reasons to run from God, for it is only our natural instinct to run from
perceived threats, signs of danger so that we might seek fulfillment elsewhere.
The story of Jonah, however, shows us a man who is running from God not because
God is a bad God but because God is a good God. Jonah runs from God because God
is good.
There are not many people
who run from God because God is too merciful, too gracious or too loving. Or
are there? Jonah knows God will be merciful to Nineveh and because of this he
runs from God and tries to hide. He runs from God because he doesn't want God
to be merciful to Nineveh. Jonah knows they are the enemy, that they will soon
be making life difficult for Israel, that God might use the Assyrians as a
judgment against Israel. Jonah wanted it the other way around. Jonah despised
Nineveh. Why help them out? He wanted God to rain fire down onto them and wipe
them off the face of the planet. He wanted them dead. He sure as heck wasn't
going to do anything that would alter their destiny. You're too merciful God,
I'm out.
We have a tendency still to
want bad people to end up with bad consequences. We have a mercy problem. It
could be someone who disagrees with us or someone who hurts us physically,
mentally, spiritually. It could be a friend, family member, or even a complete
stranger. Something is discovered that divides us and that division, no matter
how small, can completely set us off. Take this story for example.
There was this Christian
lady that had to do a lot of traveling for her business so she did a lot of
flying. But flying made her nervous so she always took her Bible along with her
to read and it helped relax her. One time she was flying, the man next to her
noticed when she pulled out her Bible. He gave a little chuckle and went back to
what he was doing.
After a while he turned to her and noticed she was
reading in the book of Jonah. He asked “You don’t really believe all that stuff
in there do you?”
The lady replied “Of course
I do; it is the Bible.”
He said “Well what about
that guy that you are reading about who was swallowed by that whale?”
She replied “Yes, Jonah. Yes
I believe that, it is in the Bible.”
He asked “Well, how do you
suppose he survived all that time inside the whale?”
The lady was a little
irritated by that question but said “Well I don’t really know I guess when I
get to heaven I will ask him.”
“What if he isn’t in
heaven?” the man asked sarcastically. Now, she was getting more than irritated.
“What if Jonah isn't in
heaven? Then you can ask him.”
There are times when we
legitimately want to run from and hide from God because we know he will be
merciful when we don't want him to. We don't want God to intervene and make
this person or this situation better. We don't want to be gracious and merciful
because we have not seen or felt grace and mercy from them. So, when our hearts
want wrath and revenge, we try to sweep God under the rug because we know God
is good even to those we don't like, because we know God is good to those who
don't deserve mercy, or grace, or love. They are your Nineveh. That great
looming threat that you want nothing to do with and you want God to burn to the
ground. They are your Nineveh.
God is asking Jonah to
address Nineveh, a place he feels deserves nothing but the pure unbridled wrath
of God. So, Jonah is going to avoid it. He's going to avoid Nineveh. He's going
to avoid God. God is asking us to dare to address those Nineveh's in our lives,
those place you would rather see God's judgment and not his love. Just like
Jonah, we might just as soon avoid Nineveh and God. If God's going to be nice
and forgive their sins, then I don't want a part of it.
Yet, when we turn this whole
thing around, the cry changes. If we have Nineveh's in our lives, then surely
we must be a Nineveh to someone else. It must mean that we are also a person
whom someone else desires nothing but judgment and punishment and not God's
mercy. It could be for something pretty big that we did or for something fairly
small. Why would they want God to have mercy on us when we don't deserve it
after what we did? Fair point. We don't deserve God's mercy. Now, instead of
crying out for judgment, we cry out for mercy. Because it is us. Can't they
understand how sorry we are and that it wouldn't hurt for us to have a little
bit of mercy? When it's our life, our survival, our future, the cry changes
from judgment to mercy. We are a Nineveh to someone else. How very humbling.
Fortunately, God is merciful
to us. The God who we know to be a merciful God, the God we might avoid when it
comes to the sins of others is the same God that comes to sinners like us with
that same mercy. God doesn't run from us, he runs to us. God doesn't flee to
the other side of the world to get away from you, he comes to this world to be
a part of you when he sends his Son to die for us on the cross.
I'm not saying it is easy to
confront those people and situations in our lives that we would rather see
judgment over mercy but I'm saying that when God faced that choice with you, he
chose to give you mercy. It may not be everything we need to go to our Nineveh
but it's a start in the right direction. God's mercy opens the door. And we're
about to see God's mercy in action.
Jonah is unable to go to
Nineveh, so we watch as he boards a boat for Tarshish and though many places
have that name, he was likely headed to the furthest one he could get to, at
the edge of the known world. So, off he goes. The waves come up, everyone is in
peril on the sea, the boat rocks back and forth and the sailors are praying to
any god they can think of. Whoever started this storm, please stop it! Cargo
went overboard to lighten the ship and then they had to cast lots to see who
was the one to blame and the lots fell on Jonah. The jig was up and Jonah
finally realized he had to do something. He knew he needed to be thrown
overboard. So that's what they did. They threw worthless Jonah into the sea and
the storm ceased.
What hope does he have now
when he failed to bring God's Word to Nineveh? There is no way he was going to
be let back on that boat. He had to be terrified and crying out to God from the
water, seeking the very mercy of God he had been trying to avoid.
Little does he know, God is
going to come through in a big way for Jonah. God is going to show him mercy.
God will come to his rescue. We may think it is too late when we feel unable to
be merciful. We may feel we can never get to that point. When we are able to be
merciful we can give thanks to God for the opportunity to be so. But when we
are not able to be merciful, we can safely fall back into His arms. It's a
tension we will always live with, the struggle to be merciful to others while
openly desiring the mercy of God upon ourselves. It is at that point, when we
feel we are unable to keep that tension in check, that God comes to us again
and again just as he always has to remind us of his love for us in Christ who
paid the ultimate price so that we would receive mercy even though we don't
deserve it.
God has a humorous way of
showing us who he is and who we are. God wants to bring mercy to the worst
possible place and we want to run illogically far away from it. There's truly
something fishy about God and how he operates, that he would do nearly
everything opposite of the way we would. Still, this is the kind of God we have
as our example, that even when we turn from him he still seeks us, though we
sin he forgives us, though we deserve judgment he brings mercy. May we seek to
be like God and may we one day also seek to go to Nineveh. To God be the glory,
now and always. Amen.