Running To Win

Dave McAllister: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. God has many ways of getting us to say yes, even when we're digging in our heels. We're about to study the life of the prophet Jonah. We'll see that God has a multitude of creative ways to make sure we change our minds. Stay with us.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, when people think of Jonah, they think of a whale swallowing a man. What's the real story here?

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Dave, I love the story of Jonah. And the reason is because here's a rebellious prophet, and it shows us all the things that God is willing to do to keep this prophet in His will. And oftentimes we are rebellious and we turn against God, and God has many ways to bring us back to Himself.

But at the same time, we have to recognize this: that oftentimes what God has to do is something painful to bring about a good result. And that, of course, is the story of Jonah and all that God has done. Well, we're going to be talking about that in this series of messages.

And you know, the world is very broken, we are all sinners. And I'm holding in my hands a book I want every listener to have. It's entitled *Dorie: The Girl Nobody Loved*. Because it's a story of someone who was not rebellious, though as a child she was, but someone who was seeking God in the midst of abuse, in the midst of hardship, in the midst of one home after another as an adopted child, and yet at the same time it is a story of grace.

I wrote it because my wife and I met her and her husband and the wonderful story of what God can do with an abandoned child. The title of the book, *Dorie: The Girl Nobody Loved*. And at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info so that this book can be yours.

Dave McAllister: About two weeks ago, a friend of ours was a Christian leader who enjoyed spending a lot of time on the road out of town. It was discovered that he had a relationship with a woman who was not his wife. That was the reason why he wanted to be out of town so much.

It's interesting that when another friend, a Christian, confronted him, the man admitted to the relationship, said that he knew it was wrong, but also said he was not ready to change, to go back to his wife, to repent, and to heal their marriage.

I wonder how long it's going to take for God to get him to say yes and to be obedient. I have no doubt that at some point he will, but maybe at that point he will have destroyed his marriage permanently and impacted his children, which is an ongoing event that is obviously happening.

And perhaps by the time he says yes, the ruin will be much greater than it is even now. Also, you know, there are stories that come to us like of a Christian who had a pattern of deceit, admitting only what needed to be admitted but hiding a great deal of things regarding financial matters and other kinds of matters and unwilling to say yes to God.

Oh, kind of say yes, but not really yes. How does God handle self-willed Christians with their self-exaltation and with our great penchant for self-protection? How does God get us to break and to say yes?

Through marriage, I'm related to someone who likes to tell this story about himself, so he wouldn't mind if I were to tell it to you. That when he was a boy, he was being spanked for taking a chocolate that he was not supposed to take. And there he was across his father's knee—that's the way it used to be done. And while he was across his father's knee getting the spanking, he reached out and took another chocolate.

How does God deal with defiant children? That's the topic that we're going to be speaking about. This is the beginning of a series of four messages on the Book of Jonah titled "Brokenness: How God Gets Us To Say Yes." And we'll discover that even Jonah never really does in the book say yes, yes. When we get to chapter four, we're going to see his full-blown narcissism come to the surface as God tries to deal with a prophet who will do everything that he possibly can to obstruct the will of God.

Jonah lived in about the year 750 years before the time of Christ. And what happened is there were two other prophets who were prophesying at that time, Hosea and Amos, and they made predictions that God was going to use the Assyrian Empire—and the capital was Nineveh. God was going to use this wicked nation. And those Assyrians, unlike Assyrians that we know today, those Assyrians were wicked. I won't even tell you about the atrocities that they committed.

And that God was going to allow them to come to Israel and there in Israel God would let them take people captive because of the people of Israel's disobedience. And Jonah was not happy with God's arrangement. I'm beginning to read here in Jonah, and I know it's difficult to find in your Bibles, some of you may have to use the table of contents, but it's in what is called the minor prophets because they are short, not because they're unimportant. And it's Jonah, Micah, Nahum as you get near the end of the Old Testament. That's where you'll find it.

I'm reading today from a translation called the English Standard Version, the ESV, and some of the reasons why I'm reading from it will become clear even as we go through the text. But keep that in mind, English Standard Version.

Verse 1 says, "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.'" Could anything be clearer than that word from God? "But Jonah rose 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 on board to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord." Going the opposite direction.

What was sticking in his—what burr was in his saddle, we might say? Sometimes people say, "Well, he was just a bigoted man and he was such a bigoted man he didn't care about the salvation of others." Not quite right because when he's there on the boat, he cares about the salvation of the pagans that he's with. In fact, apparently he leads them to faith in Jehovah.

Some people say, "Well, he was afraid to die and he thought he might get killed in Nineveh." No way. This guy wanted to die. You've got to have a death watch on this guy. He's constantly complaining about "Why aren't You striking me down? It is better for me to die." You get to the fourth chapter. He's wanting to die.

No, no, no. His rebellion was more noble than all that. He was a nationalist, loving the nation of Israel. And he says, "If I go to Nineveh and if I cry against the city, God may choose to forgive them and that would only strengthen them and then they'd come against us." That was his problem.

Sometimes our rebellion—most often our rebellion is because of petty issues that we hang on to. Some of you, God bless you, you live with people who have issues and they don't want to give up those issues. Those issues are precious to them. They've had them for so long they're not going to give them up.

And so you live it like this and most of the time it's petty issues. Sometimes it is very noble issues. Very noble. That's what is going on here in the text. He has noble issues with God.

And so what he's saying is "Lord, you know"—later on he explains in chapter four why he didn't go. He says, "You know You're merciful, You're gracious, and I thought that You might show mercy on this city. That's why I fled." He tells us.

And what he's saying is "I'm a lover of Israel, and You expect me to go to these pagans who in turn are going to be persecuting us." Now you need to know that when you run from God as he does, you don't stay home. Because whenever you run, running from God is never static. And that's why he flees from the presence of the Lord. It's because he doesn't want to just stay home and rebel, he's got to run to cover his conscience and to give the illusion of him doing something worthwhile. So he is running.

It would be like a Christian Jewish man, a Messianic Jew, being sent to Berlin say in 1942 to preach to the Nazis a message that God might actually forgive them and strengthen them as a result of it. And so because of this intense nationalism, his hatred toward those evil Ninevites—and they were evil—Jonah said no.

It's interesting that three times in chapter one you have the word "down" mentioned. It says in verse three, he went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. Then later on, now we're in verse five, it says he went down into the inner part of the ship and when he had lain down, the translation I have says, he slept. Down, and then he gets thrown into the water down into the depths of the sea. Whenever you run from God, listen carefully, you always go down. You never go up.

You always go down. Down, down, down, down. He also used the circumstances, I'm sure, to justify his own will. The scripture says that he went down to Joppa, he found a ship going to Tarshish. There weren't ships leaving for Tarshish every day, you know.

But you know, isn't that wonderful? There's a ship. Do you have room for one more passenger? Yes, we have room for one more passenger. Do you have money? They ask him. Oh yes, yes, yes. And he pays the fare thereof. And he says to himself, "Surely God must be blessing me in my disobedience. Look at this confluence of events the way in which things are working out."

There's a ship, I've got the money, I'm on my way. God is affirming my disobedience. And so he pays the fare thereof. Now one of the things we're going to learn is that he's not the only one who's going to have to pay for this. However many shekels it cost him to go out of the will of God, I can assure you of one thing and that is this: that it's going to cost him a whole lot more and it's even going to cost the sailors something. Because you don't go out of the will of God without paying the fare thereof.

Well all that by way of introduction, three lessons come to mind and then three further lessons—three or four. We want to make sure that you get your money's worth today. Okay, first of all, one of the things we learn is that when we run, God goes with us. He wanted to flee from the presence of the Lord. It says that twice in verse three. He rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish, paid the fare, went on board, away from the presence of the Lord.

Now you say, well, did he honestly think that God was localized? In those days, you had local deities. You had a god who was in Israel, and it was believed that once you left Israel then there were other gods for other countries.

One day I had a long ride with an air traffic controller who told me that a plane leaving some part of the world may actually go into the airspace of several different countries and one traffic controller hands it off to the other country, and then the other country hands it off to the next country. And in the very same way, there were people who said, "Well, you know, God is the God of Israel and there's different God once you get out of Israel you have to worship another God."

Now that is true historically, that's what was believed. But Jonah, Jonah knows better than that. He's a prophet of God. You'll notice in verse nine he tells the sailors, he says, "I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and dry land." He knew that he could not escape the presence of the Lord as such. What he's saying is "I resign. I'm finished."

And as far as God is concerned, what I'm going to do is to take all these issues of my relationship with Him, I'm going to put them on a shelf and on that shelf I'm going to put a label that is going to say "to be dealt with later." For now, God isn't a part of the picture. That's what happens, you know, to backslidden Christians. Oh, they still say grace. Yeah, they pray at meal times and they say nice words, but basically if you ask them about their relationship with God, that is being postponed until another time. God is on the back burner, not the front burner. And so there they are, they are running from God. They're resigning.

But you can't run from the presence of the Lord. Psalm 139: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I go to heaven thou art there, if I make my bed in Sheol behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall uphold me. If I say, 'Oh, surely the darkness shall cover me,' then even the night shall be light about me. For the darkness hideth not from thee, the night shineth as the day, the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." You run from God, and God is with you. You can't run from the presence of the Lord. You can't even hide from God in a big city like Chicago. You can't hide from Him.

Second lesson, and that is that when we run, God disciplines us. You'll notice the text now. It says in verse three, "But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." Verse four, "But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea." Jonah and God are going to "but" one another now.

And you'll notice it says the Lord hurled a great wind. The NIV says he sent a great wind. He just didn't send it, the Hebrew text says he hurled a great wind into the sea. And the sailors in turn, they hurled their cargo into the sea. God hurls this great wind into the sea. Now the wind has numerous different effects, most assuredly.

The wind causes the fish to recongregate and causes confusion. It may have done some damage along the shoreline. Maybe the wind was able to even destroy other vessels that were in the area. So the wind here is really blowing. It sweeps the coast.

But its purpose, its express purpose in God's sovereignty is to get to a man who is running away from the express will of God. God is trying to get to Jonah. That's the purpose of all this.

Now notice that the storm was not caused by the pagans. Sometimes we say, "Oh, you know, America has so many different problems," and then we blame it on the radical liberals, their agenda, our losses and our freedoms and we say to ourselves, you know, look at the storm that we are in. Well, yeah, we are in a storm morally and spiritually and our freedoms are in jeopardy. But listen carefully: maybe the storm is not because of the pagans that we love to talk about. The storm may be there because of believers who are not walking with almighty God. That could be the purpose of the storm.

The storm is for the people of God, at least in this context it is. Now notice that what is Jonah doing in the middle of this storm? Well, it says that he went down into the inner part of the ship, I'm in verse five, and he had lain down and was fast asleep. Don't tell me that it's not possible to have peace outside of the will of God.

You can run from God and you can say, "Well, you know, I have my peace. This is what I want to do and I've decided to do it and I'm at peace with myself." And so Jonah is sleeping. The other sailors, of course, are absolutely desperate, but Jonah is asleep in the bottom of the ship.

And so it's the pagans who come to Jonah and say, "Jonah, we're all calling on our own God, why don't you call on yours?" Cast lots and God controlled the lot and it fell on Jonah. And then Jonah becomes very honest with them and says, "Well, you know, I'm running from the presence of the Lord and this great storm," he says, "happened because of me." So he gives them some insight into this meteorological phenomenon of the storm and he says it's my fault.

And then he says, "Cast me into the sea." They say, "Oh no, we don't want to do that, we've cast the cargo into the sea, but we don't want to do that." And they're praying to God and they're saying, "We don't want to—we don't want to toss him overboard." He said, "Hey, toss me overboard. Toss me overboard. Let me die. I'm not going to go to those Ninevites." We're talking about stubbornness here. And so eventually they say, "All right, we have no option or else all of us are going to drown." So they cast him into the sea.

And now we come to a third lesson that we learn. When we run, God confronts us. The Bible says in verse 17, "And the Lord appointed," not just prepared, but appointed. This is God appointing a fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. So God says to this fish—and we don't know what kind of fish it was. We as Christians don't have to measure the gullet of a whale to see whether a man can get in it.

And I'm sorry—I'm not sorry to have to say this, but I'm sorry for you if you don't believe the story because Jesus apparently did. But what happens is in the text here is God says to this big fish, "Do you see that man over there? Go swallow him."

Now when a man swallows a bad fish, I think it's called botulism. But I don't know what word to use when a fish swallows a bad man. Not sure exactly what the word is. But God finally says to Jonah, "Jonah, guess what? You and I are going to meet, and I'm preparing a meeting place. And we're going to get this business of your rebellion ironed out. And I now have your undivided attention." As we shall see in the message next week.

But lest you think, well, the sermon's over, he only preached 15-20 minutes today. No, not quite, because I have some additional lessons. First I began with two, then I had three, then I had four, then I had five, and I said, "Lord, if You keep showing me things in the text here, these people are going to be here for a long, long time." So I've reduced them to four.

Dave McAllister: Well my friend, you certainly are going to have to listen to Running to Win next time to hear the implications of this message. And I believe that those implications are totally transforming. And what we need to do is to look at the Book of Jonah and to understand that that is really our story as well.

But there are other stories. I'm holding in my hands a book entitled *Dorie: The Girl Nobody Loved*. It's the story of a girl who was dropped off in an orphanage at the age of five or six. She was with her sister. Her mother loved her sister, but the mother totally rejected Dorie because Dorie was conceived out of wedlock.

But it's a story of hope. Despite the abuse that she endured, not only in the orphanage but also in some foster homes, God was working in her life and she was converted when she heard the words "God loves you." She said, "God, if that's true, you've got all of me."

She and her husband ended up being missionaries in the Baliem Valley, opening the door to the gospel of Jesus. It shows you what God can do with someone who has been deeply hurt, deeply abandoned, and deeply rejected.

I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some contact info as to how this book can be yours. Here is what you do: you go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337.

We here at Running to Win are deeply committed to help you run the race of life all the way to the finish line. I believe that this book will help you in your journey. Once again, go to rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life.

Jonah was determined to avoid doing a distasteful job, preaching to a pagan city that they might repent. He'd rather hit the road than tell the Ninevites that judgment could be averted. Next time, a story of futility as God blocks Jonah's escape route. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.