Jonah 1:1 - 16

Running from God

© 2000, J.W. Carter
Scripture quotes from KJV

Jonah 1:3.

3But 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.

What was Jonah’s response to God’s call? (To head for Tarshish.) It is interesting that Jonah want to Joppa from which to run. When Paul was called to the ministry he went to Joppa to start that ministry. Scholars are undecided on the exact location of Tarshish. It could refer to Tarsus, where Paul came from. There was also a Tarshish near the southern tip of Spain. Tarshish is also, literally, "The sea," and could refer simply to Jonah’s going out to sea to get away from God.

Why would Jonah want to run from God? It makes sense when we realize that Nineveh was an enemy of Israel, and at this time it was at the peak of its strength. It would be a long and difficult journey to a city of 120,000 inhabitants where he would be the only voice for God. Jonah, aware of the wickedness of this city, did not want to be God’s missionary to this land. He would be persecuted there.

Also, Jonah had a fear that the people would repent. What if they did? (God would be faithful and deliver them… a prospect that Jonah wanted no part of.) Remember that people had a very localized view of their God’s. Few understood the concept of omnipresence. They felt that the gods were personal and local, and one would be able to remove himself from the influence of such a god if they traveled away from that god’s kingdom.

Did Jonah love the Ninevites? We will see that Jonah clearly did not. Jonah could not imagine that God could love the people of Nineveh, just as God loves the lost of today. Often we act more like Jonah, despising the lost world, rather than loving them as God does. God has not called us to build church fortresses to keep in the saved. Even the New Testament church did not build church buildings. He called us to tell the fallen world of His love, and to leave the results to the miraculous movement of the Holy Spirit.

Jonah knew that if the people of Nineveh would repent, God would forgive them and bless them. This was an insult to a theocentric Israel, and would be the be viewed as God’s crossing over into Assyria.

We have experienced God’s work in Nineveh in our own contemporary setting. We thought that the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain was an impossible boundary to God’s plan, but both fell, almost overnight. There is no telling what God can do with the people who lived through those years of socialist communism. Some of God’s miracle of grace in those places will wait until someone he has called will go.

We may think that the safest place to be is in our pew on Wednesday night. The truth is, the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will. Look at what Jonah did. Forgetting his dignity and duty, he paid the ship’s fare, mixed with the passengers (unclean by their religious standards), and hid in the hold of the ship. Look how sin can remove us from the blessings that God has intended for us.