20241211

no escape

Jonah 1:1-16

Jonah 1:1 The word of Yahveh came to Jonah son of Amittai:
Jonah 1:2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because their evil has come up before me.”
Jonah 1:3 Jonah got up to run away to Tarshish from Yahveh’s presence. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from Yahveh’s presence.
Jonah 1:4 But Yahveh threw a great wind onto the sea, and such a great storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break apart.
Jonah 1:5 The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his god. They threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. Meanwhile, Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel and had stretched out and fallen into a deep sleep.
Jonah 1:6 The captain approached him and said, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up! Call to your god. Maybe this god will consider us, and we won’t perish.”
Jonah 1:7 “Come on!” the sailors said to each other. “Let’s cast lots. Then we’ll know who is to blame for this trouble we’re in.” So, they cast lots, and the lot singled out Jonah.
Jonah 1:8 Then they told him, “Tell us who is to blame for this trouble we’re in. What is your business, and where are you from? What is your land, and what people are you from?”
Jonah 1:9 He answered them, “I’m a Hebrew. I worship Yahveh, the God of the sky, who made the sea and the dry land.”
Jonah 1:10 Then the men were seized by great fear and said to him, “What is this you’ve done?” The men knew he was running away from Yahveh’s presence because he had told them.
Jonah 1:11 So they asked him, “What should we do to you so that the sea will calm down for us?” Because the sea was getting worse and worse.
Jonah 1:12 He answered them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea so that it will calm down for you, for I know that I’m to blame for this great storm that is against you.”
Jonah 1:13 Instead, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they couldn’t because the sea was raging against them more and more.
Jonah 1:14 So they called out to Yahveh: “Please, Lord, don’t let us perish because of this man’s soul, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For you, Lord, have done just as you pleased.”
Jonah 1:15 They picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped raging.
Jonah 1:16 The men were seized by great fear of Yahveh, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahveh and made vows.

no escape

In my sermon on this text, I said “Jonah thought he could escape from the commission of the LORD. He traveled to Joppa and found a merchant ship heading to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard it to go with them to Tarshish because he thought that distance would be far enough away from the LORD for him to ignore his commission. It wasn’t. No place is.

Our God is omnipresent. We could get in a spaceship and go to the far reaches of the Galaxy, and we will not have traveled one inch away from God. He is everywhere. If he gives us a commission, there is no place we can go to escape from it. Guess what? He has given us a commission. He told us to go to every place on the planet and share his good news.

We cannot escape his commission by going somewhere, neither can we escape it by ignoring it. Jonah thought that if he just focused on going away, that he could ignore God’s command for him to go to the particular place of Nineveh.

Jonah did not like the Ninevites. He was convinced that they were not worth saving. But our God has compassion on us all, even though none of us is worth saving. He sent the storm that day to keep some pagan Ninevites. He also sent the storm because some pagan sailors needed to be saved.