Read These Bible Passages:
Jonah 1:1-17 (Running from God)
Jonah 2:1-10 (Running into God)

ILLUSTRATION:
While Brian cut his grass he could not help but notice his little five year old neighbor, Suzie, struggling to get her pink, sparkly, oversized suitcase out of her front door and onto the pavement.  The look of determination had arrested her facial expressions, while keeping her onlooker in suspense.   After a lot of pushing and struggling she was successful and appeared to be well on her way.  Suzie glanced over at Brian and he quickly looked back at his weeds and pretended not to notice her.  Off Suzie went mumbling her frustrations underneath her breath.   She circled around the block several times with her luggage in tow before Brian asked the obvious question, “Suzie, what are you doing?”  
“I am running away from home!” She replied with an outpouring of passion.
“So” he said, “why do you keep making loops around the block?”
She innocently answered, “Because my mommy and daddy won’t let me cross the street by myself.”

APPLICATION: 
Have you ever wanted to run away?  Run away from people, family, work, life, problems, addictions, or a screaming infant (especially if it is 2:00 AM)?  If you have lived on the face of this planet long enough to take your first breath than I would be safe to say that your answer is most likely a resounding YES!
What about running from God?  Oftentimes people can find themselves running from God in two different circumstances.
1.)	Running from a relationship with Him.
2.)	Running from a specific call that He has given to you personally.
Either one is unsafe territory with lots of invisible grenades lurking around, ready to explode.  We want to explore the fascination of running (and no I don’t mean “exercise”) so we can begin the journey with God, which is the only place you want to be. Hallelujah! 

INTRODUCTION:
Come and gather around friends of all kinds. Let me tell you about a story that will tickle your fancy and keep you on the edge of your cushioned pew. Today our one-of-a-kind journey entails a great adventure that certainly does not repeat itself every day. This memoir is a rare treat to be treasured and admired.  For the next two weeks we will cast out our nets and fish for wisdom from this popular book that has landed smack dab in-the-middle of the bible. The dramatic story of Jonah is unique in that it is more concerned with the prophet himself than with his prophecy.  The emphasis here is on the “messenger” rather than the “message.”  The condition of Jonah’s soul, and God’s loving discipline of him, will instruct and humble the reader. Out of all the prophets from the Old Testament, Jonah is the only one who was called by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to go and preach repentance to a large group of Gentiles.  In comparison, Jonah was the Old Testament version of Saul (Paul).  Both were Jewish men who started out desiring to see the “ungodly” burned and destroyed.  In order for God to get their attention and agree to go and preach salvation to the Gentiles, Saul was blinded by a supernatural Light and Jonah was in the belly of a fish that was astronomical in size, each for a total of three days. Yet the outcome revealed Jonah to have a much different attitude from Paul. The fingerprint of Jonah’s soul had been suffocated by selfish ambition and pride. All the while the antidote of God’s mercy had always been available to set this captive free.  Why do you think Jonah ran from God's call?  What was it that he despised about this assignment?  Do you realize that Nineveh was located in Assyria, which is present day Iraq?  Today Nineveh is called, Mosul.  The Assyrians (the Ninevites) were Israel's arch-enemies.  They were people that had attacked and oppressed Israel and Jonah didn't want to offer them a message of hope and mercy.  Be careful not to judge Jonah!  When was the last time you were rushing to go preach hope to your enemy?
Over the next two weeks we will study a total of four chapters, two chapters each week. To sum it up, here is how I would describe each chapter in this radically, outrageous, whimsical book that pushes all boundaries:

Chapter One- Running from God
Chapter Two- Running into God
Chapter Three- Running with God
Chapter Four- Trying to run God

Anyone notice a common thread between each chapter?  Yup, you guessed it, RUNNING! Jonah had this one figured out. In fact, his face would have been a perfect fit for a multimillion dollar Nike advertisement. Better yet he might as well have invented the “swoosh” (sorry Jonah you were about 2800 years too early).   So how about in honor of Jonah, we lace up our running shoes and go on a jog with him, a swift sprint through the oracles of this self-centered prophet.  Let’s get prepared to breathe in all the scenery that lies before us. Those who have ears let them hear.  

Focus on This Theme:
Chapter One’s theme- Running from God
Chapter Two’s theme- Running into God
Jonah was a man, called of God, whose testimony is left for everyone to read and cast judgment.  He will always be chronicled as the prophet who initially packed his bags and ran from God's will.  Yet the consequences are never pleasant when we reject God.  That's one of the main messages God issues from Jonah's experience.  
We will use Jonah’s story in chapter one to identify three reasons why we run from God when He is calling us to live out His will or we are attempting to dodge a relationship with Him. 
We will learn from Jonah’s prayer in chapter two that a different perspective can run you right smack-dab back into the Lord (where you belong). 

BIBLE PASSAGE #1 (Running From God)
Jonah 1:1-17 (NIV 1984)
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 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, and we will not perish.”
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.
8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”
10 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.)
11 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?”
12 “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.”
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried to the Lord, “O Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, O Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
17 But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.

ILLUSTRATION:
	The story of James Bartley has been repeated all throughout Christian literature and has even found its way into bible commentary.  Whether it is fact or fiction, I cannot be for sure. Although I do believe it is a story worth sharing while studying the book of Jonah.  In 1891 James Bartley was a shipmate on a British vessel called The Star of the East.  During a whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands, an accident occurred when James was thrown overboard and assumed to be dead by drowning.  The crew continued their mission and caught the whale that had been swimming in the water at the time of the accident.  During their routine process to extract the blubber from the great fish they stumbled upon a large lump in the stomach of this sperm whale.  As they cut through the stomach, it turned out to be James Bartley.  He was unconscious, yet was still alive.  There were reports of him being transferred to a hospital where he made a full recovery.  The reports say that his skin had turned a whitish color from the stomach acids and he lived with that until he passed away eleven years after the incident. Today his tombstone in Ireland reads, “James Bartley- A modern day Jonah.” 

COMMENTARY: (Running From God)
As we get started, let’s address a burning question that secretly lingers in the hearts of many people, “So do you mean to tell me that Jonah really lived in the belly of a whale for three days?” 
There are two problems with the statement above.  First, if you have been a bible believer for any length of time then you have probably heard this sarcastic question come from the mouth of a doubter. Let me put it to you this way; Jesus believed and confessed this wild story. He said in Matthew 12:40, “Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish.” Can Jesus lie? If you believe in the validity of the words that sprang forth from your Maker’s mouth, than you can rest assure that poor Jonah spent three smelly nights in the belly of a humongous, gigantic, enormous, monstrosity of a fish! The second point I would like to bring up, is never in the book of Jonah does it say that he was in the belly of a whale.  In chapter one verse seventeen, we are told it was a “great fish.” A whale is only the obvious assumption.
Jonah’s name in Hebrew means, dove. True to his name, Jonah pretends to be a dove and attempts to fly away from God’s direct call over his life.  “Jonah” the all-consuming voice of God speaks, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2).  The Living Bible paraphrases the last part of the second verse to read, “the wickedness of Nineveh was such that it … smelled to high heaven.”  Can you even imagine?  
I wonder if the stench from Nineveh’s sin that God “smelled in heaven” was the same malodor Jonah inhaled in the great fish’s belly.  Just a thought!
 Have you ever noticed how simple God’s call is? It is rarely complex to understand; but it is always significant!  You and I don't always see the picture that God sees, but if God takes the time to communicate an assignment to us, it is important.
Before we go much further, I want to dissect a little deeper into Jonah’s reality. Jonah was most likely enjoying a comfortable life until he heard the call from God.  The message to go to Nineveh was plain and clear but the task was a challenge for this particular prophet, primarily because Jonah had to face an enemy he assumed he’d never face again. Nineveh was not the kind of place you would want to raise your children.  In fact it had a reputation of being horrific and over the top. It was the Assyrian policy to never keep their prisoners of war alive. They gloated over their victims and enjoyed every atrocity. They would hold down their prey, cut out their tongues and skin them alive. They built pyramids of human skulls outside every conquered city in order to ignite fear in whoever might look. Their cruelty was widely spread and known throughout the world. To put it plainly, this would be like God asking you to go to the house of Jeffery Dahmer and preach peace to him or better yet how about Adolf Hitler? You probably would have ran the other direction and bought a plane ticket to Paris, just about as fast as you could say “Eiffel Tower.” And that is exactly what Jonah did.  He thought he could buy a one way ticket out-of-dodge to Tarshish.  Some archeologists believe that Tarshish is what we currently know today as southern Spain.  If this is correct, than Jonah calculated that a 2000 mile journey over the seas was far enough to run from God.  “Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the LORD.  “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24).  Jonah should have paid more attention to the stories told of King David when he said, “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence? If I rise on the winds of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea (um hello Jonah) even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast” (Psalm 139:7, 9).  You can run but you most certainly cannot hide! 

THREE REASONS WHY WE RUN FROM GOD:
	Like Jonah, we will all experience a time in our life when we run from God.  Whether it is a calculated marathon to try and escape from surrendering to Him as Lord over our life, or we play a clever game of dodge ball with a specific request He has declared. Either way, we are running!   I believe there is a reason behind every attempt to flee from the One who carefully knitted you in your mother’s womb. Let’s evaluate some of these reasons together.

1.)	PRIDE- Pride says, “I recognize that the Lord wants me to do this, but my way is better. I will do what I want and the Lord can just sit back and watch me accomplish my will” (I, me, and my- get the point?)
Well meet Adam and Eve, this was their handicap. No matter how you slice it or dice it, pride was at the forefront of what went down in the garden in Genesis chapter three.  God clearly told them “not to eat of the tree of good and evil or they would die” (Genesis 2:17).  Except when tempted to be like God and have the knowledge of God, they cratered. So what was on the list of things to do once they tried to elevate themselves above their Maker?  That’s right; they went for a jog (Genesis 3:8)!  They tried to run away from God and His presence as they were dripping wet with guilt and shame, which is always the offspring of pride.  
The bible says that “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Anybody watch the news lately and see the story of Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong? Both of these talented and well respected men thought because of “who” they were, they would never get caught in their sin. Well allow Numbers 32:23 to be the one to address this point, “you may be SURE that your sin WILL find you out.”   Pride will always take you one step further than you wanted to go.  Let’s go back and examine Jonah.  His pride took over and said, “I recognize that the Lord wants me to go to Nineveh, but going to Tarshish is a much better plan for me.  I will go to Joppa and find a way out and the Lord can sit back and watch me accomplish my will.” Notice in verse three of chapter one, Jonah “went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” Have you ever noticed when running from God, that Satan is always happy to provide the transportation?  The Bible says Jonah, “found a ship.” Sometimes we justify our actions by saying, “But I found an open door.” It is a dangerous thing to try and justify our motives simply because things seem to fall into place. Some people mistakenly think that a course of action is alright because they found a ship. 
The truth is, anytime we want to run away from God, we will always be able to find some sort of assistance. In fact, the devil will make sure that we find a boat and that it sails on time.  The enemy will do anything to help us be disobedient to the will of God and the price to pay for that fare is always more than it appears to be.

2.)	FEAR- Fear says, “I know that I should accept the Lord into my life and begin a relationship with Him but I am afraid I will lose all of my friends and people will judge me. I am also afraid that if I become a Christian then I will have to go to Africa and live in a hut.” When I was an unbeliever these were words that came out of my mouth while running from God. I remember being afraid to give my life over to Jesus, not knowing what He would give me in return.  I didn’t understand yet about His loving mercies and how His yoke is easy and His burden is light. So with fear shackled around my ankles, I remained determined to reach Tarshish.
What I find so interesting about Jonah’s character is he admitted that he knew how gracious and compassionate the Lord was and He feared that the Ninevites would repent and God would forgive them and they would be saved (Jonah 4:2). I have to be honest here, there are many things that I have feared over my life’s span but the salvation of a lost country has never been one of them. In fact, Jonah was so adamant about this that he said “he would rather die” than see this happen (4:2)!  I have always imagined this scene as Jonah who was a speck of dust, raising his fist at the almighty God.  He was angry because what he feared would happen was taking place. Which resulted in him throwing a temper tantrum like a four year old who appears to hold his breath by puffing out his cheeks and threatens death, yet secretly is breathing threw his nose (oh don’t pretend like you never did this to your parents or even to God)!  Can’t you just see it? Jonah had too much pride to choose death over his life.  Instead he was throwing a fit and hoping that God would fall for it.  
We do not have to fear that God does not love us or that He will not come through for us in our time of need. We need to learn to accept the reality of His love for us, so that our fears do not control us. First John 4:18 says that perfect love casts out fear. If you're afraid of facing a person or a situation in your life, God's love can help you put your fears to rest. Trust Him for your Nineveh.

3.)	DOUBT- Doubt says, “Did God really ask me to do that or am I just crazy? Maybe I didn’t hear from Him correctly.” If I had a dollar for every time I said this or heard that from someone else, I would be rich!  

ILLUSTRATION:
Several years ago, tucked away in my room and on the floor laid out before the Lord, I heard Him speak. He told me He wanted to “bless me with sons.” At the time I only had one daughter and no plan to have any more children.  As the Lord would have it, I got pregnant and birthed my beloved, Noah, and once again had no plan to have another.  Yet in January 2012 the Lord spoke to me again and said my second son will be named “Samuel.” After wrestling with the Lord over this, my husband and I began to try for Samuel in obedience to the King.  Over the remainder of 2012, I ended up having two miscarriages and a lot of doubt.  “Did I really hear from God about Samuel or am I just crazy?” I would entertain many thoughts like this.  The doubt began to creep in like the flood waters that take over a house. My doubt had encouraged me to run in the other direction and I would attempt to the best of my abilities to stop any future pregnancies.  I wish I could share the ending to this story but I am currently in the middle of this season and cannot put a complete period at the end of this sentence yet!   I guess the Lord will have to do that.  Just know this; doubt will eat your soul like cancer eats the body.  It is unholy and not from the Lord.  Doubt can jerk you so quickly off the road God has laid out for you, it can make your head spin double time.
Jesus says to the doubter, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen” (Matthew 21:21).

LIFE APPLICATION:
	Are you like me and doubting what God has told you to do?  I could almost bet that if you have given place to doubt in your current situation then you have probably responded like Jonah and fled the other direction to Tarshish, where you believe it is safer.  I certainly have and if you talked to me today I would also have a million reasons justifying why I bought that one way ticket out-of-dodge (although the justification does not mean that my position is correct.)
In the book of Mark there is a man who confesses his doubt to Jesus by saying, “I believe, but help me overcome my unbelief.”   My advice to you (and me) would be to pray this simple prayer and admit our doubt and ask for His strength to help us through it, just like Jonah did when he was stuck in the middle of a fish’s digestive system. Stay tuned because we are about to read the dramatic plea of Jonah to be rescued from death’s grip.
SIDE NOTE:
	When you read this prayer below, keep in mind that when Jonah refers to the distress of the past he means the time he spent in the water, not the time he spent in the fish.  The water is the threat of death.  The fish is the refuge of salvation.  The cry of distress is past tense from when Jonah was in the water.  The voice of confidence and thanks is present (in the fish). Let’s read the cry of Jonah’s heart (his prayer) together.

BIBLE PASSAGE #2 (Running into God)
Jonah 2:1-10 (NIV 1984)
From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. 2 He said:
“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.
3 You hurled me into the deep,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me.
4 I said, ‘I have been banished
    from your sight;
yet I will look again
    toward your holy temple.’
5 The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you brought my life up from the pit,
    O Lord my God.
7 “When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.
8 “Those who cling to worthless idols
    forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
    Salvation comes from the Lord.”
10 And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

COMMENTARY: 
Three ministers were talking about prayer in general and the appropriate and effective positions for prayer. As they were talking, a telephone repairman was working on the phone system in the background. One minister shared that he felt the key was in the hands. He always held his hands together and pointed them upward as a form of symbolic worship. The second suggested that real prayer was conducted on your knees. The third suggested that they both had it wrong--the only position worth its salt was to pray while stretched out flat on your face. 
By this time the phone man couldn’t stay out of the conversation any longer. He interjected, "I found that the most powerful prayer I ever made was while I was dangling upside down by my heels from a power pole, suspended forty feet above the ground." 

I think the most powerful prayer Jonah ever prayed was in the belly of a fish. Wouldn’t you agree?  Just like the telephone repair man who was hanging upside down, prayer was all he and Jonah had!  Do you ever wonder what was in Jonah’s head when he told the sailors to throw him overboard?  I believe in that moment Jonah had come to the conclusion that he was going to kill himself.  There is no reference about Jonah’s faith and him declaring that God would save him before he took the plunge.  In fact the pagan sailors even asked for God to forgive them for taking Jonah’s life (1:14), they too believed he would die.  Maybe he thought he would rather die than go to Nineveh? Or could it be that he was willing to lay down his life to save those other men on the ship, which turned out to be one of the reasons why the shipmates repented and came to the Lord (1:16)?  That would be just like God to use the “wasted” time spent running from Him to, in turn, bring salvation to the people Jonah came into contact with while trying to deny the very gift/call he was given.  In other words, Jonah could not run from the anointing that God had already given to him back in Joppa.  Jonah had the gift to preach to the lost no matter where he was and in hearing this prophet the gentiles would instead turn from their idols, offer sacrifices, and make vows to the Lord (1:16).
We have no idea how long Jonah was in the water but what we do know is as soon as he was in the deep he began to run to God, instead of from God. Finally we see the shift take place, a transformation of sort. Jonah receives a holy knock in the head to wake him up from his slumber.  He lost sight of the truth until God made a dinner reservation for Jonah and his friend, the whale. 
So often we have to be thrown into the deep until we cry out to God and turn from our ways.  I know many people who pray for God to change themselves or someone they know.  Yet when they experience disaster or heartache they assume God had abandoned them instead of recognizing that the suffering was handed to them as an opportunity to change.  When we are in the belly of a whale, we tend to see things from a much different perspective.  Jonah finally got it, “salvation comes from the LORD” (2:9)! PERIOD!  Paul echoes this same outcry in Titus 3:4-5, “When the kindness and love of God our Savior (Jesus) appeared, he saves us, not because of righteous things we have done, but because of His mercy. He saved us!” It always points back to salvation by faith—a faith that leads us to change our mind which births repentance and a trust in the Messiah, our Savior.  Obviously by the look of Jonah’s story, there is nothing we can do to earn His mercy, grace, and salvation.  It is a gift from God, not by works lest no man should boast (Ephesians 2:9). Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). 
As a result of his three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, the people of Nineveh would hear about the Lord’s salvation and would have an opportunity to repent, believe and be saved from the wrath of God.  The anointing that drips from Jonah’s mouth results in the kind of revival that our current day church is begging God for.  I am talking about the kind of revival we read about in Acts chapter two when the same kind of anointing emerges from Peter’s mouth.  Did Jonah even recognize the gifting he was endowed with?   Stay tuned for next week to see how Jonah begins to slip back into his old ways once on dry and comfortable land (sound familiar?).

CONCLUSION:
The hero of this book is not the fish, nor is it even Jonah!  The hero in this story (and all stories) IS GOD and His loving mercy to all people. The central message is that God has a plan and purpose for your life and it is good.  His love runs deeper than the Grand Canyon and wider than the Appalachian Mountains.  No matter where you go, you can never escape from His love, nor would you want to.