Let's open up our Bibles now to the book of Jonah. We'll be reading Jonah chapter 1. Our text is most of this chapter, but more specifically, verses 3 through 15. Jonah 1, verses 3 through 15 is our text. We'll read the whole of this chapter. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa. And he found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof. and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his God, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots. that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us. What is thine occupation, and whence comest thou? What is thy country, and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am in Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? For the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, take me up and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you, for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood, for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging. And the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. As far as we read the Word of God, may God bless to us this portion of His holy and inspired Word. We recently preached a series through the book of Jonah, and as I said, our text tonight is verses 3 through 15. In the context here of verses 1 and 2 specifically, we note that Jonah was commanded by God to preach the gospel to Nineveh. And when God commands, God must be obeyed. When God commands, we must do what God commands us, without questioning without hesitation and without raising any objections to what God commands. But Jonah did not do that. Our text, verse three, begins with the word but. But Jonah, he disobeyed, he deliberately rebelled against the command of God that was given to him. He did not want to obey God's command, and we'll see later why he did not want to obey it, what excuses he developed in his own mind for his disobedience to the command of God. But he did not want to obey God, and did not obey God. And without a word of explanation, he rose up to flee. to flee from the presence of the Lord, verse three mentions twice. And again, verse 10. But then notice the beginning of verse four, but the Lord. That stands in contrast to verse three, but Jonah, and now, but the Lord, but the Lord. Because of the Lord's hand in what Jonah was going to do and attempting to do, Jonah failed. He failed in his desire to flee from the presence of the Lord. God intervened and God sovereignly stopped him. And God demonstrated in His work with Jonah, first of all, His sovereignty in creation, or over creation. He sent a violent storm. Then He also brought that violent storm suddenly to an end, and He used that that storm to stop Jonah in his tracks. But more importantly, God demonstrates here in this passage his sovereignty in the salvation of Jonah's soul. He pursued his fleeing and sinning child and he brought him to repentance and brought him back to himself. And that, beloved, is how God sometimes works also with us and needs to, needs to, more than we perhaps realize and more than we will acknowledge. We do what Jonah did, and we need what Jonah needed, the hand of God, to bring Jonah back to the Lord. And we can be thankful that God works in our hearts and lives as he did in Jonah's. And so let's consider this text together, and our theme as we do so is Jonah's attempt to run from God. We'll notice disobeying God's command, fleeing from God's presence, and Jehovah's sovereign pursuit. The command of God to Jonah was, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. Jonah did not do that. He knew what he must do. He knew where Nineveh was. He understood and knew well that Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrians. He knew how to get there, to travel east in order to get there, but Jonah traveled west. He rose up to flee unto Tarshish, to flee, as the passage says, from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa. He found a ship that was soon going to sail to Tarshish. He paid his fare, and the ship set sail, and Jonah was on his way. From what we know, the city of Tarshish was located in the far west of the Mediterranean Sea, near Spee. one of the most distant places that was in the West at that time. Jonah planned and Jonah set out therefore to get as far away as possible from the land of Israel. He headed in the opposite direction, he is now aboard that ship, and he is well on his way in his purpose, which was the purpose to flee from God's presence. Why did Jonah do this? Why was he disobedient? And why did he try to flee from the presence of God? Well, that was because Jonah wanted to be a prophet only to Israel. He did not want to preach to the Ninevites. He did not want to bring the gospel to the Ninevites. Now he had been called, initially at least, to preach God's word to Israel. He had been commissioned by God to be a prophet to the nation of Israel and to the church of God in the Old Testament. And he knew as a prophet that God had chosen Israel as his special people. and had not chosen other nations to be his people, had not chosen Assyria to be the church and the people of God, and being a prophet in Israel and being a prophet who was called by God to bring God's word to the Old Testament church in Israel, he was jealous for the cause of the Old Testament people of God. Jonah would have said, if Jonah had argued with God at this point, Jonah would have said, but God, Israel needs thy word. The church needs the word of God. They need to hear the gospel. And he was right. He would have been right. They did. They did. But Jonah thinks to himself, why should I preach to heathens? Why should I preach to these Assyrians, to the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh? How in the world does that fit with God's purpose to save his church in Israel? He didn't want to preach to anyone else but to the nation of Israel. One of the reasons why Jonah did not want to preach to the Assyrians was because they were Israel's arch enemy at this time. And they were heathens. and they were thoroughly wicked and ungodly, and they served the idol gods that they had. and being the enemies of the people of God who had attacked the people of God and who oppressed the nation of Israel and who made life difficult for the church in the Old Testament, Jonah's thinking is, why should they hear the gospel? They're not going to be interested in it anyway. And besides which, the gospel is intended for the Jews. not for these ungodly, heathen, pagan, Israel and church-hating enemies that live just to the east of us and that are oppressing us. Another reason why Jonah did not want to preach to the Ninevites, to the Assyrians, was because he didn't want any of them to be saved. Jonah mentioned that later in chapter 4, verse 2, when he prayed to the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." He didn't want the Assyrians to be saved. He was genuinely afraid that if he did go there and preach the gospel to the Ninevites, to these ungodly, heathen, and pagan enemies of the church of God that God would work salvation in them, and he didn't want that. His thinking was, and his approach was, the mercy of God should only be for Israel, not for the ungodly in Nineveh. And that really amounted to pride on the part of Jonah. Thinking that he knew better whom God should elect and whom God should save and in whom God should work his mercy. He was proud. And then in the third place, the reason why Jonah did not want to preach the gospel to the Ninevites was that he did not want to be viewed as, and even called by Israel, as a traitor to them, a traitor to the cause of God. If some were saved in Nineveh, as Jonah suspected, and as was the purpose of God, as the book of Jonah shows, then Jonah did not want to be known as the one who had preached the gospel to them, because then he was sure that the Israelites would view him as a traitor, and he wanted to avoid even the appearance of being such a person because he brought the gospel to Nineveh. So Jonah tries to flee from his commission and from the presence of God. Now it's very well possible, beloved, those same things have been or do characterize us at times. For example, in our witnessing to others, the work of an evangelism committee, the mission work that we do as churches, or even just a personal attitude that we have concerning others, others who are outside the church. We make a judgment concerning who is supposedly worthy of the gospel and who is not worthy of the gospel, who is worthy of our attention in spreading the gospel and who is not worthy of our attention. We'll bring the gospel to those who are churched rather than to those who are unchurched. We'll witness to those who belong to a certain nationality, but not to those who belong to another nationality. We will speak to those who are our relatives and speak to them of the gospel of Christ, but not to the neighbor who is a no good drunkard, not to the man on the street. We will witness and bring the word of God to one who already holds to certain beliefs, certain truths, and therefore might be more receptive to our witness to them and shut off others because of what they believe and confess. And we might even be tempted sometimes to use past experience to justify that and say, well, how many times have those who have been unchurched or who belong to this certain nationality, how many times have they come to church? How many times have they joined? And in that connection, it can even be worse than that, in that we develop the idea that we and our children are more worthy of the gospel than others. That's really what Jonah was saying. The Jews are more worthy of the gospel than those Gentiles. The nation of Israel is more worthy of the gospel than the nation of the Assyrians, the Ninevites. And we can develop that idea and think to ourselves, it makes God, it makes sense to us that God has saved us. We've never been heathens, pagans, worshippers of idols. We've never been drunkards out on the street and those who have blasphemed the name of God. It makes sense that God has saved us, and we think to ourselves, we are way easier for God to save than those others. We imagine that we are naturally more receptive to the gospel than others. That's really what Jonah was saying and what we can sometimes be guilty of as well. And the text condemns this and the implied calling that comes to the church and to the people of God through this passage is First to churches and ministers of the word and missionaries, go where I send you, God says. And that means go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We may not be selective as to who we speak the gospel to. And then even to a congregation as it does its evangelism work and to each of us in the witness that we give to others, we may not take the approach of deciding who is more worthy of receiving the gospel and receiving our attention in explaining the gospel to them compared to others. We simply obey. God has decided whom he will save. And God says to us, I will save them. And I am pleased to use you as an instrument to bring my word to them, and your calling then is simply to witness to all to whom I give you the opportunity to witness and to bring my word. Witness faithfully, witness by your life, witness by your speech, witness by bringing them to hear the preaching of the gospel here in the church, but leave the fruit to me. We may not be selective. We may not be racist. Jonah was, and that was a sin. So Jonah tried to flee from the presence of the Lord, and we need to understand next what exactly that meant, the meaning of verse three, when it says twice that he fled from the presence of the Lord. Well, when Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord, that wasn't simply Jonah trying to hide from God so that God could not see him. trying to hide from God and find a place to hide where God would not find him. That was not what Jonah was doing. Jonah understood that God was everywhere and everywhere present. In fact, God had just reminded him of that when God spoke to him about Nineveh in verse 2 and said, go to Nineveh, that great city, cry against it for their wickedness has come up before me. And that was a reminder to Jonah of God's omnipresence. God knew all about Nineveh. He knew that it was a great city. He knew that the wickedness of Nineveh was great. And if God knew that about Nineveh, that meant that God was present there in Nineveh. So Jonah knew God was everywhere. What the passage means when it says that Jonah tried to flee from the presence of God was this, that Jonah was trying to run away from the realm or the sphere, namely the location and the nation where God made his presence clearly known and felt. That is, Jonah was running away from the church. That word presence is literally face. He tried to run away from the face of God. God had shown his face to the nation of Israel and God had taken up his abode in the nation of Israel. God had revealed himself to them. God was present there and present with them as Jehovah And therefore, for one who was living in Israel, as Jonah was up until when he tried to flee from there, for one who was living in Israel, that person was constantly reminded of and felt the presence of God there. Reminded of that through the Word of God that was spoken in Israel. Reminded of that through the sacrifices that were done in the nation of Israel. Reminded of that through all the feasts and all the ceremonies of God that were conducted in the nation of Israel. That is, reminded of that through God's Word. And what Jonah was trying to run away from, essentially, was the Word of God. The Word of God. The Word of God as it was pictured in all of the sacrifices and ceremonies and feasts there in the nation of Israel, and the Word of God as it was spoken to God's people there. Therefore, he was attempting to escape God's Word. He wanted to get as far away as possible from the Word of God and to get as far away as possible from any reminders to him of the Word of God, from anything that would remind him of God's commission to him to bring the Word to Nineveh. He wanted to go to a place far away from the church where he could forget God and could forget about the things of God. He wanted to get as far away as possible from those things in the hopes that his conscience would no longer be pricked for his disobedience to God. Sometimes the child of God today does the same thing. We try at different times and try in different ways to avoid or to ignore or to escape from the Word of God. Most often that happens when we are knowingly living in sin. And then instead of turning to the Word of God and turning to Christ, the living Word of God, for pardon and for strength to fight against those sins, we tend to run away. Maybe not physically, although sometimes that too. But our attempts to run away from the Word of God can be that we neglect God's Word and neglect prayer in our daily lives. Our attempts to run away might be that we don't attend the worship services for a time. Or even if we do, we block our ears and we block our hearts to the word that is proclaimed and preached. Because we don't want our consciences pricked. We don't want our sins exposed. We don't want our actions condemned by the word of God. Therefore the sin of Jonah can be our sin too. Perhaps it is this, that a member of the church doesn't answer the phone because he or she recognizes or at least suspects that it's one of the elders calling. Or a young person moves out of home to live elsewhere in order to escape the admonitions and the discipline of godly parents. Or a sinner, someone living and walking in sin, rejects the admonitions that are brought to that person by pointing out the sins and the weaknesses of those who bring those admonitions. Or one who shuts his or her ears to the preaching hears words, but that's all, because otherwise the conscience will be pricked. And therefore, as he or she hears the word, he or she occupies the mind by applying that word to others instead of to oneself. That's how we are by nature. We don't always want to hear that word of God. It takes the work of the grace of God to make us receptive to his word. But then notice again Beloved verse 4, but the Lord, but the Lord. That is a very significant and a very powerful but. God did not let Jonah run away. God did not let Jonah escape from his presence. God pursued him. And God brought Jonah back to where Jonah should be in the church and in the presence of God. And as the rest of the book indicates too, God brought Jonah back to a place of obedience and he went and preached the word of God to Nineveh. Not wholeheartedly, but he obeyed. Those words, but the Lord speak to us of the sovereign grace of God in pursuing and preserving and restoring Jonah. What God does with the elect. And we can be thankful for that. And God will do whatever needs to be done for the salvation of those whom he has eternally chosen. And God will do great things to save just one child of his, as is evident here. The greatest evidence of God's doing great things to save his people, the ultimate demonstration of God doing that, of course, is the cross of Christ. Just think of what God did there to save his people. But now God uses his work of providence and uses his power in creation to stop Jonah in his attempt to flee from the presence of God. God said, that's enough, Jonah. You've gone far enough, Jonah, in your attempt to run away from me. And then God used his almighty power to send a violent storm and to send it with a purpose of bringing Jonah to his senses and using that as a means to rescue and to save Jonah and to return Jonah again to the safety of the sheepfold of Christ. When the storm came, the sailors suspected there was a specific cause for this storm. Verse 7, they said everyone to his fellow, come and let us cast lots that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell upon Jonah and Jonah was exposed. And he was exposed by God. He was exposed to these men as the cause for the violent storm that God sent, a storm that put all of their lives at risk, and a storm that meant they had to throw overboard much of the cargo that they were carrying. but a storm that reminded Jonah himself that God had followed him. God had not let go of him, and he could not run away from God, and he could not escape from the presence of God, and he could not escape from the Word of God that he was trying to escape from. The storm became more and more violent, tempestuous. And as it did so, the sailors attempted to save the ship from sinking, but every attempt that they made failed for them. They tried to lighten the load. They threw their cargo overboard, but that made no difference. They tried to pray, they prayed to their gods, they called on Jonah to pray to his god, but that made no difference. They tried to row harder to get the boat to shore, but the sea was tempestuous against them and that too was a failure for them. And Jonah told them what they had to do. Jodah told them in verses 11 and 12, this is what you have to do, and they asked him, and he answered them, and he said, throw me overboard, cast me forth into the sea, that's how the sea will be calm again. They tried to avoid that, but eventually that's what they had to do. They threw him overboard and into the raging sea, and then God, again by his providence and his almighty presence and power in the creation, in every part of the creation, which underscores the folly of Jonah in trying to flee from him, caused this miracle to happen, the storm stopped, and then a follow-up miracle, Jonah being saved from drowning through being swallowed by a great fish. And what we see in all of that is a grand display of the grace of God, his loving pursuit of Jonah, his early prophet, and his strained child, his loving pursuit of him in order to restore him to himself. The storm itself being a means to discipline Jonah, a means to correct him, to stop him on the path of disobedience and then God further disciplined him, that is further chastised him and further corrected him by him being thrown overboard into the ocean. tossed into the raging sea without, from his perspective, without any hope of being rescued and any hope of surviving that. And God brought upon Jonah here a chastisement that brought him to experience what it was really like for him to be far from the presence and far from the face of God. This was a judgment of God, a chastisement of God that fit the sin that Jonah committed. His sin was, I'm going to try and get away from God's presence. And God said, okay, Jonah, then I will let you experience through my chastisement, which I will use for your good, which I will use to bring you to repentance, I will bring a chastisement, a judgment upon you that makes you experience first hand. what it's really like to be far from my presence. And Jonah speaks of that, you'll notice in chapter 2. He said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, out of the belly of hell cried I. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed me about, all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight. The judgment of God was that which brought Jonah to experience and know what it really means. to be away from the presence of the Lord, away from the face of God, away from the face of the favor of God. God used that to bring Jonah to his spiritual senses. And he speaks of that in chapter 2, in his prayer from the fish's belly. A chest is meant that was brought upon him as a mercy of God. Not a punishment, but a mercy of God. A mercy of God because Christ would suffer the punishment for Jonah's sin. And he was brought by that to repentance and forgiveness and back to God and to his presence and to his favor. And that, beloved, is how we must view God's chastisements upon us, too. They are a work of God's grace. They are a work of God's mercy. He does chastise. He chastises us individually. He sometimes chastens us as families, chastens us as a congregation, chastens us as a denomination of churches. We've seen that. We've experienced that. Perhaps we experience that now. And maybe not in the same extreme way But this is true, when we run from God, when we try to escape the word of God, when we turn a deaf ear to his word, when we turn our backs on God and on Christ and on the church, God sends judgments to chase it. And that's his way of restoring us, just as it was for Jonah. Hebrews 12 says, despise not the chastening of the Lord. Despise it not because whom the Lord loves, he chastens. It's a loving correction. It's a love that has already punished our sins through the cross of Christ. And it's a love that pursues us when we err and stray from the ways of God. And it's a love that corrects and brings us to repentance and to experience by faith God's gracious forgiveness. There is no joy in fleeing from the presence of God. The way of obedience is the way of joy and peace and of experiencing the Lord's blessing. The joy and blessedness of God is found through living in the church and remaining consciously in the presence of the Lord. When we need to be chastened by the Lord, and we do because we're all sinners, despise not that chastening. May God use it to humble us. May God use it so that we seek and find and receive the grace and the mercy of God that there is and that we need always in Christ. Amen. O God and Father, we are thankful for Thy faithfulness and sovereign work in the salvation of Thy people, in our salvation. We who are sinners and we who sin daily against Thee need often to be chastened by Thee. We know that no chastening is pleasant at the time, but it works fruit in the lives of Thy people. And it is given and done in thy love, and we are loved by thee, for we are thine in Christ and we belong to him. And thou workest all things, even the judgments that thou dost send upon us individually, or upon the church, or upon our churches. and even other judgments by which we are affected as chastisements for our spiritual good. Continue thy gracious and mighty work in our hearts and lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.