The Wrong Direction: Jonah 1 | When God Pursues the Runaway

Watch This Sermon: “The Wrong Direction”

Jonah didn’t just hesitate when God called — he ran the opposite way. But God pursued him through a storm, a ship, and even the sea. In this sermon on Jonah 1, Pastor Mark invites us to consider not only Jonah’s flight but our own.

What does it mean to serve a God who pursues disobedient people with grace? And how does Jonah’s story point us to the gospel? Join us as we begin our journey through the book of Jonah and discover the mercy of a God who refuses to let go.

📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon

Have you ever had something that you really, and I mean really, really didn’t want to do? Now, I’m not talking about something that maybe you procrastinated on until the last minute, or you avoided for a long time, and it was just something that you just didn’t want to do. I’m talking about something that you just completely removed yourself from. You just went the complete other direction and got out of there. Now chances are we’ve all done this in some way. Whether it was something that you were afraid of, or something you were opposed to, you just removed yourself from it. And then you hoped that the situation would resolve itself without you. And if you can relate to that type of circumstance, then you can relate to what we see in Jonah this morning.

The book of Jonah is very well known. If you grew up in the church, this was a Sunday school highlight. Right? You may even have images in your head from learning about this story. Maybe you remember the images from the felt board, when they were moved around and you were taught the story in Sunday school. Or maybe it was the cartoon Bible that you had when you were younger, and you can imagine Jonah based upon those images. But regardless, we all have some level of investment in this story, because we know it. And I also think that we can relate to Jonah. While we know what Jonah did was wrong, I think at some level, we can all really understand why Jonah behaved in the way that he did. But as we dig into Jonah, I wanna challenge you. The story of Jonah is absolutely about not obeying God, but there is also so much more going on in this book than what we see in the popular, well-known part of the text. At the root of what happens in this book is the grace and the mercy of God. Jonah also points to the salvation that we have in Christ. Us non-gentile folk, it points to that salvation that we have in Jesus. And Jonah, while definitely about the importance of obeying God, is more importantly about God’s grace and how he seeks out his people and he leads them to repentance. And so that’s what we want to see as we go through Jonah.

But before we dig into the text of Jonah today, we need to take a moment to look at who Jonah is and some characteristics of this book that bears his name. You may already know that this is not the only spot where Jonah is mentioned. He is mentioned in Second Kings fourteen twenty-five. He’s a prophetic voice during the reign of Jeroboam the Second. And there’s also something else that we need to note about the book of Jonah. It’s considered a prophetic book and it’s in the section of our Bible we designate as being minor prophets. But as you read this book, you quickly notice that this book is different than some of the other prophetic books. It’s not like them in most ways. Just last week, we finished up our public reading of Amos, and we heard phrases like, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. And we also heard prophetic statements such as, I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel. You’re really not going to get that kind of language in Jonah. You can read all of Jonah in just a few minutes. In fact, the audio Bible widget that I use for the church website has the whole book coming in at eleven minutes and fifty-nine seconds. And the reading of the text that they use there is not by any means quick. So just reading it to yourself in your head, you can feasibly read it in less than ten minutes. And so if you were to sit down and read it, you would just get this sense that this isn’t like the other prophetic books. It just sounds different. And sure, there’s a point where Jonah tells the citizens of Nineveh to repent, but Jonah has a different flavor than other prophetic books. It’s more about telling the story of a prophet than telling us the words that the prophet is saying that are from God. It’s just different. And we’ll feel that as we go through.

So who was Jonah? Well, Jonah lived sometime between July and July, and we know that because this is when Jeroboam was the Second king or was the king of Israel. That’s when he was there. So this was a politically prosperous time for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, because Assyria had other issues going on in the world. And so, King Jeroboam was able to take back some territory that they had lost because Assyria just didn’t care. They were busy with other stuff. And so, this Jeroboam was seen as a successful king. And it’s with this context in mind that we now come to this infamous opening phrase that we have from the book of Jonah. The word of the Lord comes to Jonah, and he tells him to go. To Nineveh. That’s right. Nineveh. Wait, what? That’s an Assyrian city, God. That’s a city full of gentile pagans. What are we concerned about there? What are you doing, God? But God is calling a prophet of Israel to go to gentiles, to repent of their evil. Now this had to be really confusing to a good Hebrew like Jonah. This Hebrew prophet who had heard the word of the Lord, he’s supposed to go to his people. Why in the world is he going to Gentile pagans? He’s spoken the word of the Lord to his people. But now he’s going to Gentiles. And sure, the people in Israel may have been living in disobedience to God’s word. But at least they were considered to be clean. The Hebrews were clean people. They were people who had a knowledge of God and who he was and they have a grasp of God’s law. They’re not like those Gentile pagan dogs. Mind when he received the call to be a prophet that the Lord Almighty, God of Israel, would send him to Assyria to go to Nineveh to tell Gentiles to repent.

But before we move on to Jonah’s response, I think it’s really important that we understand something here. That we understand that we’re like Jonah. There’s a call on each of us that is similar to the call that was on Jonah. And before we judge Jonah, we need to see that we are all like Jonah. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to bring a message. We are called to bring a message to a place that’s not friendly to that message. The world is hostile to the gospel, and yet we are called to share that message as we live, and as we move in our world. And for Jonah, it would have been really difficult for him to hear that he has to proclaim the message to a big city somewhere in Assyria. But for us, it might be that person we’ve never really gotten along with. And we know that they need to hear the message of the gospel, but we see the divide between us as being too big. They’ll never listen to us. And I don’t know about you, but that hurts to think about. That’s painful. I am way more comfortable looking down on Jonah as I read this book. It’s much easier to judge Jonah and justify my actions than to acknowledge my sin and struggle with the very same issue that Jonah has. Because, yes, Jonah had the word of the Lord come to him and command him where to go. But we have the word of the Lord that comes to us. The word of God tells us to take the message of the gospel to all nations, and that includes the people we know. The word of God tells us that the gospel is the power of God into salvation. And so that’s the message that we’re told by the word of the Lord to take. But yet, like Jonah, we often fail to share the message that God has given to us. And that is a very convicting thing. I personally don’t like comparing myself to Jonah, because we know the story of his rebellion.

He goes completely the wrong direction. He runs from God. He runs from what the word of the Lord has commanded him. And we do the same thing. But let’s look at what Jonah does here. He goes the opposite direction. And this is the part of the story that I absolutely get a kick out of. What did Jonah think that he was gonna do? I mean he’s a prophet of God. He knows him intimately. Did he really think he could hide from him? He’s like a toddler who covers his eyes while they’re playing hide and seek and assumes that you can’t see them. Right? That’s what Jonah’s doing here. He has to know that God can see him anywhere. But as much as I want to mock Jonah, you have to admit, he means business here. He’s taking this seriously. He isn’t just staying at home and stubbornly hoping to ignore God. You can see on this map here where Nineveh is. And then it points with a question mark to where we think Tarshish may be. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter where Tarshish is though. Because as you can see, this isn’t that Jonah is getting on a boat, and he’s telling the captain to go west instead of east to Nineveh. To go to Nineveh, you don’t get in a boat at all. His rebellion is that he got on the boat in the first place. He should have been at the bus station, right? He should have been picking up a ticket and heading down to Assyria to Nineveh, but instead he’s down at the pier heading out on a cruise. And he pays the fare, he gets out of Israel. In other words, he’s doing the complete opposite of what God has commanded him to do.

But all the joking that we might make about Jonah and his trying to hide from God, we see that he was right to try and hide from God. Because God is coming after him. God is going to pursue him. The Lord causes there to be a storm of legendary proportions, because Jonah has disobeyed God, and God’s judgment is coming in a storm. And the wind is so great and so violent that the sailors question the integrity of the ship. Now, these aren’t first-timers on a cruise. These are sailors who have been on the sea before. This isn’t a bunch of tourists who are wondering if Captain Stubing can keep the love boat afloat. These are sailors. They’re hardened sailors. They’ve been through storms before. This one has them trying anything to get this storm to stop. They cry out to their pagan gods hoping maybe they can do something about it, but it doesn’t work because they’re just screaming into the night. Their gods can’t hear them. They throw cargo overboard. That doesn’t work. This storm is the real deal. But despite this storm, God hurled them a storm, sent it their way, scares all these sailors. But where do we find Jonah? He’s below deck. He’s sleeping. Sleeping through it all. He’s not only running from God, he is oblivious to what God is doing to call him back to himself.

But the sailors do a head count and check all the tickets and realize that not everyone has tried calling out to their God. Not everyone has said, oh great regional pagan deity, if you get me through this, I’ll sacrifice more, or I’ll become a priest, or whatever kind of an oath you would make to a pagan god. There’s hope that maybe this God of Jonah will be the one who will be satisfied, and maybe the storm will go down. And the sailors decide that the best thing to do, the best way to determine who’s responsible is to cast lots. Now this was a common way of divining the will of the gods in the ancient world. But this wasn’t just what pagans did. It wasn’t just the practice of pagan nations to cast lots. The casting of lots was never forbidden in ancient Israel. And the idea was that God could rule over those lots and change the course of things through those lots to do his sovereign will. He’s God. He is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. And in this case, God ordains the casting of lots to fall on Jonah. And this causes the sailors to wonder, what’s going on with this guy? They wanna know why there’s all this trouble and Jonah is afforded the opportunity to speak the truth of who God is to these sailors. He informs them not only where he’s from, what his nationality is, but he also lets them know who he worships. He doesn’t worship some regional pagan deity. He worships the Lord, the God of heaven, and he is the creator of all things, the sea and the land.

Category to understand a god like the God of heaven. The pagan idea of a deity is nothing like a god who creates sea and land. They didn’t really have any idea of pagan deities having a real power. These pagan gods were not like the Lord. Create the land and to create the sea and everything in them would be a terrifying thing and it should be. Well then, they make a connection. And Jonah has already told them about running from God. And clearly they see that God is causing this storm and I’m sure they wondered, why in the world, Jonah, would you disobey a God who has this kind of power? What are you doing? And it’s important here that we stop for a minute to see something very deep and something very theological that this story is telling us about God. God is powerful. The pagan gods that the other sailors were seeking help from were false. He not only made the sea and the land, and is the God of heaven and earth, but he’s also involved in the lives of his people. That’s what we see the book of Jonah telling us here. We’re to see that God is real. God is true. We are to see that as Deuteronomy thirty-two thirty-one says, their rock is not like our rock. The Lord is different. He’s the one true God. And this is demonstrated to us in this story about a disobedient prophet and a few terrified sailors. God is in control. And what is he doing here? He is radically going after someone who is disobedient. He is pursuing Jonah, and by extension, saving the people of Nineveh from destruction. God could have forgotten about Jonah. He could have just let things go. He could have brought this word to Nineveh through one of the other prophets in Israel at the time. Or God could have raised up a new prophet to bring this word to Nineveh. He’s God. He is sovereign. He can do what he wants. But instead, what does God do? He pursues Jonah. And we will see through this book that he pursues him to the ends of the earth, even to the depths of the sea, and even to the point of death. In his mercy and love, God is pursuing Jonah. He is radically coming after his child.

To calm down. Jonah tells them the last thing that you and I would suggest, the last thing we would think of, Jonah volunteers to walk the plank. Right? It’s rather interesting that he suggests this, and the sailors don’t want to do it. Instead of listening to Jonah, they actually try to row against arguably the most powerful storm that they have ever experienced. You would think that they would chuck him in the water before he gets the words out of his mouth. I think that’s what I would have done. Well maybe I would have given him a chance to get his swim floaties on, but I would have put him in quick. If it could save us, I’d listen to profit and I’d get him in the water as soon as possible. The sailors don’t though. And the text gives us an indication why this is the case. They have a great fear for the power of God. And they probably didn’t think it was a good idea to put a servant of almighty God into the water. The last thing you would want to do to further anger a God that has control over the sea is to kill his prophet. That would probably guarantee that you yourself would be killed. And so drink and, the storm would get worse and they’re dead anyway. But finally, they have to give up. Why? Because you can’t row a boat against God. You can’t fight God. They can’t fight his power. So they cry out to the Lord and beg to not be held accountable for Jonah’s life. And they finally fulfill Jonah’s request. They throw him overboard and immediately the sea goes calm. And can you imagine? Put yourself in this moment, raging seas, worst storm you’ve ever seen, and in a matter of moments, the sea becomes calm. And that is an amazing display of power from God. It reminds us of Jesus calming the sea, doesn’t it? And how the disciples were amazed. The sailors display a sense of awe to Almighty God also, just like the disciples did when Jesus calmed the storm. And these sailors not only make a sacrifice, but they make vows to the Lord. Jonah made a simple confession of faith in verse nine about who God was, but it was enough. His simple confession was enough for these sailors to realize who God is. And they’re not only called out to him, but they made sacrifices to God.

Now, we don’t know about the future lives of these sailors. We don’t know if they were truly converted, or if they just added the Lord to a list of deities that they worshipped and offered sacrifices to regardless. What happens here is a testimony to the power of even the smallest confession of who God is. We need to proclaim who God is and what he’s done, and let the spirit do his work. We trust that even the smallest proclamation of the word of God can be used by the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes. And because as out of the ordinary as this story is, as strange to us as it is that Jonah runs from God, and he ends up getting thrown into the deep end, God accomplishes his purposes through this, and that is a reason to give God glory. He works all things together for good, even having one of his prophets swallowed.

Now if you and I were writing this story, this is probably not how you and I would have crafted the narrative if we were making it up. Right? I think if we were making this up, I know I would make it a cautionary tale. Jonah ran from God, there was a storm, and Jonah got tossed into the sea by some sailors. He drowned. Learn your lesson. Don’t run from God. That’s probably the story I would write. Don’t run from God or you’ll get it, so you better behave. And I think that’s how most humans would make up a story like this, a morality story to make a point, like the tortoise and the hare, except with a whale and far greater consequences for doing the wrong thing. But instead, in the true story of Jonah, we see that God does not abandon Jonah. In his divine providence, he causes a great fish to swallow Jonah and rescue him from drowning. God pursues Jonah to bring him to repentance, and he does it in a miraculous way. Jonah is as good as dead, and yet God comes to his rescue. And it points to the miraculous way in which God rescues his people from their sin and unbelief. That’s what this story is about. Even this peculiar sequence of events is pointing us to Jesus and his saving work for us.

Now, before we finish up, there’s something important that I believe we need to address about the way in which God rescues Jonah. And I believe that this is important because those with a low view of scripture often use the story of Jonah to attack the authority of scripture. They go to this part of Jonah to say that the Bible can’t possibly be true because how could a fish swallow a grown man and live to tell the tale? But first, God is sovereign, God is almighty, and he can do what he wills. Secondly, people have made claims such as the Bible refers to this as a fish and not a whale, and there’s no fish big enough, so this wouldn’t really be possible. But we can’t get hung up on the word fish. A whale is an aquatic animal. And if you were to just look at it without knowledge of modern classifications of animals, you would probably call a whale a large fish yourself. And the truth is, is that in Jonah’s day, any aquatic creature would have been called a fish. Thirdly, we’ve seen examples of whales who have large enough openings in their throats to consume a small home. It wouldn’t take much for a good-sized whale to wash Jonah down. And lastly and most importantly, the Lord Jesus Christ talks about Jonah as a real living person, who went into the belly of the great fish, and then Jesus points to himself going into the earth and rising again. And Jonah came out, and so did Jesus. The story of Jonah is used by Jesus to point to the resurrection, and the sure and certain hope that we have of eternal life in Christ. And as always, we do well to trust God’s word. And just to be safe, we should probably interpret it the same way Jesus did. Just to be safe. Jesus talked about Jonah as a true story, as a real human being, and we should trust the Lord.

And it is in the truth of this miraculous event that we’re gonna finish up this first chapter of Jonah today. Because we come away with a unifying message. God pursues his people, and he does what he wills to do it. God didn’t abandon Jonah when he went to Joppa, and bought a ticket to go the complete opposite direction from his will. God did not abandon Jonah on the boat. Instead, he radically pursued him. And in his pursuing of Jonah, he also brought glory to himself and caused even pagan sailors to bring sacrifices to him. God did not even cease to pursue Jonah, even as he was sinking in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. God planned and ordained to have this great creature consume him, instead of letting Jonah die and receive the just punishment for his rebellion. So as we look at the story of Jonah, it reminds us of something important. God also pursues us despite our rebellion. Through the word and spirit, he rescued us and he saved us by his mercy and grace. He did not take no for an answer. God came for you and he saved you. He brought you from death to life. He took your heart of stone and made it a heart of flesh. He brought you out of the kingdom of darkness into his glorious light. Now the story of Jonah is a miracle, an amazing miracle. But let us not forget the amazing miracle that God has done in your life. He has pursued you. He has rescued you. You are not merely sinking to the bottom of the sea and needing a rescue though. You were dead in your sin and unbelief. And God dove to the bottom of the sea and resurrected your dead corpse. He pursued you radically. And that is the story of God’s grace and mercy. And it’s the story that is on display for us here in Jonah. So now, as you live in God’s world this week, it’s my hope that you will be reminded of this mercy and grace motivate you to do the opposite of what Jonah did. Jonah went the wrong direction, knowing God’s mercy and grace from you. Go in the right direction. Jonah ran away from God. But in our hearing of the word and in the spirit working in us, may the love that God has shown you by pursuing you, motivates you, not to run away, but to run towards God, run in the right direction, run towards his mercy, rest in his grace, and trust in his love. Because we know that our God, the God of heaven and earth, is pursuing you, and he will never stop. Amen.

📚 Want to keep reflecting on God’s mercy in Jonah?

Check out our Dwell in the Word devotional video series on Jonah — short reflections to help you stay rooted in the Word throughout the week.