Episode 1. No Way God - No Way
Life gets busy…we toddle along, we wake up one day and it’s a mess. How did this happen? Maybe somewhere along the line, we wandered off God’s path for our lives. Join Berni Dymet, on …
It doesn’t matter where we go or what we do or how we hide, we cannot hide from God, from His sight, from His love, from His power, from His influence.
No Way God
I received a letter recently from a woman who wrote that in the last few years of her life, things have been just a mess. She has been through divorce, she has been suffering from depression, she’s had illness and been in hospital and you could really feel the pain as you read this letter. And the worst thing for her was “listening to you – (me) and the program called Christianityworks,” she said, “Well, it doesn’t work in my life.” And there was this sense of anguish and disappointment in the words that she wrote.
Jesus promises so much, God makes so many high statements about who we are and how He wants to bless us and how abundantly He wants to fill our lives with good things and then you hear preachers like Berni, talking about God’s blessing. I mean, the last series on Christianityworks that we finished last week, was called, ‘In all that they do, they prosper.’ and this woman said, “I think what a lot of other people sometimes feel – well it ain’t working for me.“ My hunch is a lot of children in God’s family feel that sense of disappointment in their hearts and the worst thing about it is everyone in their church is walking around making like they are a super Christian and so you can’t really talk to people about that. Well, we are going to talk about it, at least one particular reason why sometimes a life in Christ is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
Now there are lots of reasons why that can happen, but we are going to focus over these next four weeks on just one of those and that’s when we rebel against God’s will for our lives. The four week series we are starting today is called, “When we run away, God has His way,” and it is based on Jonah’s story – the four chapters of Jonah in the Old Testament. It’s a profound book and I think it’s a profound teaching series because God has a plan for your life and mine. It’s a good and a perfect plan and sometimes, like Jonah, we rebel. Now Jonah’s rebellion, as we will see, was a very obvious form of rebellion. We sometimes manage to be a little bit more subtle about the way we rebel against God and sometimes even we don’t notice that we are doing it, and then we wonder why life, a life that promised so much in Christ, has turned to custard.
As I was preparing for this series, I really had a sense from the Holy Spirit that He wants people to realise, not just you but me, that sometimes we rebel against the good and perfect will of God in our lives and that God does have a plan. He loves us so much; He’ll do some things to get our attention. So let’s do that. Let’s just let the Holy Spirit work through this story of Jonah, to speak God’s will into our lives.
Let’s begin – today we’ll be looking at the first chapter of the Book of Jonah, in the Old Testament, so if you have that, grab it, open it up – its right towards the end of the Old Testament – quite a short book. Jonah, Chapter 1, I’ll just read the first three verses. “One day the Lord told Jonah to go to the great city of Nineveh and say to the people, “The Lord has seen your terrible sins, you are doomed.” Instead, Jonah ran away from the Lord. He went to the sea port of Joppa and bought a ticket on a ship that was going to Spain. Then he got on the ship and sailed away to escape.” The Lord told Jonah – God had a plan to use Jonah to do something in the lives of the people of Nineveh. Now we don’t find out what that is till a few chapters down the track, so we’ll talk about that plan in a few weeks, but right now let’s just stick with what Jonah knew at the time. Jonah didn’t know exactly what God was doing, but he really felt the call on his life to go and follow God and go to Nineveh.
Now Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians in Jonah’s time were the dominant, geo-political force – they were the world power, like America, I guess is today, and the Hebrews, the Jews, saw them as the enemy. They were evil people, they did horrible, despicable things, they worshipped foreign gods, they sacrificed human beings, they conquered countries and God says to Jonah, “I’ve seen their evil, go and talk to them, be my prophet, be my man who goes to Nineveh and speaks to them.” God is up to something and He tells His prophet Jonah, “Get up and go,” and instead, Jonah flees. He gets on a ship and goes exactly in the opposite direction.
We’ll look at the consequences of that in a moment, but what about us. When God tells us to go, or to do or to be, when He tells us about His plan to use us to bless other people – He does that in a lot of different ways. Maybe someone gives us a prophetic word, maybe the Holy Spirit just speaks in our hearts and we know that we know that we know. You just know when God is calling you to do something and God has this very definite path planned for us. We can’t see the whole thing, we don’t know exactly how it will pan out but He has this definite part and then sometimes we wander all over the place, anywhere but the place that God wants us to be in, because well, maybe God’s call isn’t convenient just at the moment or maybe were afraid to go to Nineveh because they’re horrible people. Maybe God is just drowned out by the noise and the business of our lives – we’ve just got too much on and we ignore that little quiet voice, we delay, we put it off.
It might be something at work, or to do with our career, or changing where we live, or what we are doing with our money, or what church we’re involved in, but somehow God’s will just never makes it to the top of our ‘to do’ list. Has that ever happened in your life? It certainly has in mine and I would ask you prayerfully to think back and say, “Lord, are you talking to me here, is there something that I’ve missed, is there something you’ve said to me, you’ve called me to do and I’ve just put you on the back burner.?” We are going to look at how God responded to Jonah’s rebellion and exactly what we can learn from Jonah’s story.
Stormy Sea
We’ve been looking at the story of Jonah and how Jonah rebelled against the will of God. God said to Jonah, “You’re my prophet, go to Nineveh. I know who Nineveh is, I know that they’re horrible people, I know that they do terrible things, but I want you to go to Nineveh,” and he rebelled and of course we rebel sometimes too, don’t we? Maybe you think ‘rebel’ is a strong word, but God’s will, God’s plan for people who call themselves ‘Jesus followers’, that plan is not an optional extra. If we really want to be blessed in that relationship with Jesus, I believe we need to be right in God’s sweet spot. Jonah wasn’t and this is what happens, let’s read it now.
Jonah Chapter One, beginning at verse one right through to verse three, if you have a Bible. Let me read it. “But the Lord made such a strong wind when Jonah got on that ship, such a bad storm came up, that the ship was about to be broken into pieces. The sailors were frightened and they all started praying to their gods. They even threw the ships cargo overboard to make the ship lighter. All this time Jonah was down below the decks, sound asleep and the captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep at a time like this? Get up, pray to your God, maybe He’ll have pity on us and keep us from drowning.” Finally the sailors got together and said, “Let’s ask our gods to show us who caused all this trouble. It turned out to be Jonah and they started asking him, “Are you the one who brought all this trouble on us? What business are you in, where do you come from, what is your country, who are your people?” and Jonah answered them, “I’m a Hebrew and I worship the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land,” and when the sailors heard this they were frightened because Jonah had already told them that he was running from the Lord. Then they said, “Do you know what you’ve done?”
Well, Jonah rebels against God. Jonah hears God say to him, “Go to Nineveh,” and he hops on a ship and he goes in exactly the opposite direction and – surprise, surprise, surprise – a huge storm blows up – a storm so big that the ship was about to sink. Now understand that the Hebrews were not seafaring people, they hated the ocean, so the notion of a huge storm – you’ve seen the waves in a storm, it’s really scary – this was a scary thing for Jonah, to be on the water and for a storm to be there. You see how pathetic it is, for Jonah to run away from God, thinking somehow that God can’t reach him when he is on a ship to Spain. Of course God can reach him, and God reached out to Jonah by sending a massive storm.
It’s a bit like Adam in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis – when he’d sinned, when he’d eaten the apple from the tree – trying to run and hide somehow from God. Let’s get a revelation here; it doesn’t matter where we go or what we do or how we hide, we cannot hide from God, from His sight, from His love, from His power, from His influence and when this storm happens and all of a sudden everyone’s petrified of losing their lives and finally the sailors come to him and say, “Jonah, what is it that you’ve done, what’s going on,?” Jonah answers them, “I’m a Hebrew and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
You see, it’s just like us when we run away from God, it’s a contradiction between what he believes and the fact that he’s running away. And the sailors hear that and say, “Do you have any idea what you have done.” I’m not sure that they cared about Jonah; I think they were more worried about the impact of Jonah’s actions on their lives. See, Jonah’s story mirrors our own. We rebel against God’s will and His plan; we go in a different direction and God decides to get our attention.
As we’ll see later, God wasn’t punishing Jonah here; God never intended that for Jonah. God sent this storm and calamity, the ship falling apart, to get Jonah back on track – to get Jonah back into His will. So often, when we run from God and then something bad happens, so often we mistake that for punishment. That’s not what this was about. God sent the storm to get Jonah’s attention, to get Jonah back on track, and in the middle of the storm, in verse nine, Jonah declares his faith. Jonah answered, “I’m a Hebrew, I worship the Lord God of heaven.” Well buddy, here’s your problem; you’re not living out your faith. You’re believing one thing but you’re running in the opposite direction.
And so often we go – yea, well, I believe in God but, hey, let’s live together before we get married. Sure, I believe in God but let’s gossip about that woman behind her back. Yea, absolutely, I believe in God but I’m going to rip that guy’s head off – and we wonder why there is a storm in our lives! This mess that Jonah has gotten himself into is not just impacting him but the people around him. Does that ring a bell with you? The sailors were in the same boat with Jonah and they asked him ‘the’ question – “Do you know what you have done.” It’s a good question! We are toddling along through life, we do this, we do that, we marry that person and life looms so large that when God’s Spirit tries to nudge us in this direction or whispers to us, “No, go that way instead,” we don’t listen and little by little the wind picks up. The waves pick up and before we know it, there’s a huge storm raging in our lives and that storm is God ringing our bell. That storm is God saying, “Ahem, excuse me, hello, it’s God here.” Well that’s great, so God gets our attention, but now what?
Man Overboard
So Jonah runs away from God. A huge storm hits his life; he’s rebelled, he’s in the middle of a storm, well, now what does he do? Well, let’s read the rest of the first chapter of the Book of Jonah. “The storm kept getting worse until finally the sailors asked Jonah, “What should we do with you to make the sea calm down?” and Jonah said to them, “Throw me into the sea and it’ll calm down. I’m the cause of this terrible storm.” Now that is a huge realisation, “I’m the cause of this storm.” Don’t we so often try and blame other people, when we rebel against God and God allows a storm to hit our lives; we want to blame everybody, including God. Yet Jonah in the middle of this storm responded to God’s call and said, “It’s me, it’s my fault, I’m the one, I was the one that rebelled against God.”
God doesn’t send these storms to punish; God sends these storms so that we can come to the same realisation in life that Jonah did. It’s a huge realisation. But they were the words, what about the action? He said, “Throw me into the sea,” – that roaring, raging, frightening, frothing ocean. God sent this storm and I am going to throw myself onto His mercy, into His choice. ‘Lord, I know that I’ve done the wrong thing, but do with me what you will.’ That’s how Jonah responds to God. Now the sailors tried their best to row to the shore, but they couldn’t do it, and the storm kept getting worse every minute. God controls that storm, so they prayed to the Lord, “Please don’t let us drown for taking this man’s life, don’t hold us guilty for killing an innocent man, all of this happened because you wanted it to,” and they threw Jonah overboard and the sea calmed down and the sailors were so terrified that they offered a sacrifice to God and made all kinds of promises.
The moment they did it, the moment that Jonah allow himself to be thrown on the mercy and the pleasure of God, what happened – the storm died and these pagan sailors who were worshipping other gods, believed in the God of Jonah, because they saw God’s power. Wow! That is an awesome response, and then we see right at the end of that chapter, in verse 17, the Lord sent a big fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was inside the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Now we are going to look at that next week, because that is kind of not a very nice place to be for a few days and a few nights. Can you imagine spending a long weekend in the belly of a fish in an ocean? But for the moment let’s look at Jonah’s decision to be ‘man overboard’ in this huge raging storm.
He said it is time for me to bring my life in line with what I confess and believe and Jonah puts his life on the line for God. Pretty clever thing to do because Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will save it. What good is it that a man should gain the whole world yet lose his soul?” What’s the rebellion in our lives? If you’re life is traveling through a storm, one of the reasons could be – and let me say it’s not the only reason – but one of the reasons could be that somewhere in some part of your life, you’ve rebelled. What compromise, what rebellion, what deliberate running away, what treadmill that makes us so busy that we can’t hear God’s Word, what is it in our lives that may be causing a storm that we are traveling through right now?
I know a man by the name of John, and John works very long hard hours in the Information Technology industry. He has a lot of money, he has done very well financially, he has a nice house, he has made a lot of money on the stock market but the man’s not a giver. The man’s life is a mess, he doesn’t spend time with the Lord, he doesn’t have time to do the things that God’s calling him to do and he’s flummoxing through life wondering, “Why is my life in such a turmoil when I have so much money?” Everyone’s story is different, but in that mess, in that storm, while it’s raging, we can be like Jonah and decide to believe in Jesus with our lives; to stake our lives on it, not to believe with our heads and run in a different direction.
You know, when our belief goes one direction and our life goes the other direction, it’s bound to tear us apart. Yet, when we bring them back – when we say, “This is what I believe; I’m going to bring my life to that. My life is going to be lived as a Christ follower. We can decide that bit, and the rest – the rest is up to God, whatever He decides, whatever He does, however He chooses to play out the rest of our days – it’s His choice. I’m through being my own god, I want God’s choice, I will cast myself onto the mercy of God, like Jonah. Now that’s seems to me to be a pretty good decision. It’s a faith step; it’s a huge faith step, because when that storm is raging, it’s not always easy to make that decision. And then what happens to the storm? Well, we will look at what happened to Jonah over the next few weeks. God chose a path for him that he didn’t really like, that didn’t suit him at the time, he had things to go through, things to endure, but the storm went away.
The ‘throw me into the sea’ decision was a turning point for Jonah and it was the end of the storm – it was the start of a new life, doing God’s will. And as we each examine our lives, the question of the sailors needs to ring in our ears. As we consider our rebellion in the middle of the storm, this is the question that should ring in our ears – “Do you know what you are doing?” In the short term, running away from God, may make imminent sense, but when that storm hits, let’s see the storm for what it is. It’s something that’s come out of God’s love and God’s power. When those storms hit in life, maybe, just maybe that’s God knocking on our door, maybe that’s God ringing our bell, maybe that’s God saying, “I love you, I’ve a plan for you. Come back, I want you to enjoy the plan I have for you.” We will look at the rest of Jonah’s story over the next few weeks because I think that as we do, there’s a powerful message of how God can use each one of us, even when we have made the mistake that Jonah made.
Comments