Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the Prophet Jonah, the portion
we read, chapter 1, and reading from our text, verse 3. Jonah chapter 1 and verse 3. 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. Jonah chapter one and verse three. and what is upon my spirit is
disobedience to God and if the Lord will in the next few weeks
to look as a series through the book of Jonah and each chapter
presenting a very clear subject for us. So this evening, with
the Lord's help, to consider disobedience to God. Now Jonah was a prophet. We read
of him in the Book of Kings in Jeroboam II's time, making prophecies
in that time. some 783 BC, this time would
have been. And we have Jonah sent by God
to go to Nineveh, the principal city and capital of Assyria. Gentiles and a sworn enemy against
Israel to preach unto it. And with our text, we read of
Jonah's response to this. Now, dear friends, each one of
us, and this especially applies if we are the Lord's people,
we, like Jonah, know the Lord and know his voice, and like
Jonah as well, know his will. And where that is so, We have
such a lesson before us here in the consequences of disobedience
and how the Lord deals with his people in their disobedience. And it is in this way, and I
hope the word will be a real profit to us, because when the
Lord calls his dear children, as Peter says before us in his
epistles, as obedient children, not fastening yourselves according
to your lives, in your disobedience, in ignorance of the Lord, according
to the form of conversation when we're in our sin. But now, as he that is, the call
of our souls is holy and would have his dear children to walk
in his ways, so may it be our real desire that we be found
as obedient children. And yet when we come to a book
like Jonah and the character of Jonah, I believe many of us
have been in a way really comforted to find someone in the Word of
God that felt as we do very often, has done what we have done, not
the same, but still in disobedience. And as sinners, when we see fellow
sinners walking in ways and the Lord dealing with them and showing
mercy to them, and that they're not cast away, but they're still
his children, and he bears with them in all their characters
and their infirmities. And when it seems sometimes that
his lessons and teaching doesn't achieve the full end that we
would think that it should, and we look that in our own lives
and we can see an echo there as well. And so it is in that
way that I felt drawn to the Book of Jonah at this time. to
find one of the Lord's dear people and to look at how the Lord dealt
with them, to look at the goodness and mercy of the Lord, not to
encourage us to walk in any ways of sin. Why? We cannot but read
of Jonah's account and think in reality what it was. Terrifying,
terrifying to walk through. We were never willingly, I hope,
walk in such a way, and yet we often are found in ways that
we need to prove and know, and we will, if we are the Lord's
dear children, that he had not dealt with us after our sins
have deserved. Well, I want to look at several
points. I'm not going to introduce with
just a few points. about seven that are upon my
spirit based upon this first chapter, Disobedience to God. And the first thing that I bring
before you and bring before me is God's reason for a command
and our reason for disobeying God's command. In our text, and just above it, in verse 2,
we have God's reason for the command that he gave to Jonah. He says, Arise, go to Nineveh. that great city and cry against
it. And he gives the reason for their
wickedness is come up before me. That is the only reason in
the inspired, infallible word of God. I believe Jonah, he understood
that there would be another reason as well. If God sends a minister,
if he sends warning, then there is a very clear likelihood that
instead of it just being as condemnation and to vindicate God in what
he is about to do, it is that he is going to send repentance. He's going to send blessing to
the people We're not told that in this first
verse, but we may imply it by Jonah's reason for running away
or disobeying the Lord. And the point I want to really
make here is that it is very seldom that the Lord's dear people
will disobey a command of the Lord without a reason. There's usually some cause, some
reason why. If we go back to our first parents,
to Adam and Eve, then we have Satan coming and Satan tempting
them to go against the express command that they were not to
eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. God had said what the consequence would be in the day that thou
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. But Satan countered that. He made out that God had an ulterior
purpose, a reason to keep them from that tree. He said told
to Eve that God knew that in the day that they ate their eyes
would be opened and that they would be as gods, knowing good
and evil. He slighted the Lord. He implied
that there was another reason that hadn't been told them and
that because of that, that they were then justified or drawn
into, deceived into disobeying the Lord. And Satan is still
the same. He'll still try to deceive and
counter and bring another reason as to why the command of the
Lord should not be carried out. And I really want to highlight
this so that we are mindful when the Lord does give us a very
clear command to know that if we disobey, it is very, very
likely we will have a reason at hand. We'll have something
that we'll tell to those round about us that may question our
actions. We'll have something that will
be used to quiet our conscience, to still that, and to justify
us in taking a different course, a different action. And just
being aware of it, being mindful of it, may it be a help to us. And may we be delivered from
the foolish past that we just disobey without really any reason. Though sometimes it might be
to despise a birthright like Esau
did just for a mess of pottage just to indulge the flesh, just
to go after something that is forbidden because we just like
that and don't like to take up the cross. We think of the case
of what is termed the disobedient prophet in Jeroboam the first
time when the kingdom had been separated, or ten tribes, from
Judah. And Rehoboam was left with Judah,
Benjamin, and Jeroboam, the others. And the prophet was sent to speak
against the altars of Bethel. And he was given a very clear
command to pronounce against that, the altars, and he discharged
it all very correctly and rightly. And his prophecies came true
as well. But he was told that after he
delivered the word of the Lord, he should not go back the way
that he came, neither should he eat bread or drink water in
that place. And he testified that to the
king. And he was able to resist the
king's invitations to just do that, to go back and to dine
with him and to tarry with him. He refused that. But then when
an old prophet heard that this prophet had prophesied, he longed
for that communion and fellowship with him. So he lied to him.
He made out that an angel of God had spoken to him to bring
him back and to go against the word that he'd been given directly. And so the prophet did go back. Yet when they sat at meat, then
that old prophet had to suddenly say to the prophet that had come
back, that because he had disobeyed the word of the Lord, then his
carcass would not come into the sepulcher of his father's. And
when he left, then in the way, a lion met him and slew him,
and the old prophet had him buried in his own tomb. The lion didn't
tear him, nor the ass, The lion just executed the Lord's
judgment. But that prophet was a prophet
of the Lord, though he was slain in that way, he had a solemn
consequence of disobedience. But what a very close searching
word. The reason for his disobedience
was a counter word from one of the Lord's people. And yet it
wasn't a true word. And yet he believed that. We
must remember that in these Gospel days, the Lord has spoken unto
us by his beloved Son, and the whole of the Word of God is the
Word of God, and God speaks to us through his Word. And if any come and they counter,
the Word of God, the Holy Bible, and the message and the teaching
of it, then we are not to receive them, nor believe them, nor go
after them. It is to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to
these things, it is because there is no truth in them. We are not
to add or subtract from the Holy Word of God. So that was a cause
in that man's case, that prophet, of disobedience. We think of
the case of David and Solomon, David in his adultery, idleness,
staying at Jerusalem when he should have been fighting with
his men, lust of the flesh, and then with the murder seeking
to cover up the transgression that he'd already done. And with
Solomon, his wives married many strange wives. They turned away
his heart. And these were reasons why they
turned away, as with Solomon, the Lord appeared unto him twice. There was always a reason, even
with King Saul, who was not one of God's children, but when he
was sent to utterly slay the Amalekites. He has a reason why
he didn't fully do it, why he kept the king alive, why he kept
the best of the oxen and the sheep. The people did that to
sacrifice to the Lord thy God, he says to Samuel. So he had
a reason ready why he had done this. Now with Jonah, you've
got to turn to the fourth chapter to get an idea of the reason,
because we read in verse 2 that Jonah prayed unto the Lord. This
is when the Lord had turned away his anger because they repented,
and Jonah was angry with this. And he says, 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. So we are told the reason now
why he ran away. The Assyrians were a great enemy
of Israel. They were at their height at
this time, They were the means of taking away the ten tribes. The Lord wonderfully delivered
Hezekiah and Judah. But here was a Gentile nation
and the Lord was turning, as it were, away from his own people
and sending preachers to the Gentiles. And Jonah, he knows
that if the Lord sends a preacher, because the Lord is merciful,
slow to anger, and he's a gracious God of great kindness, then he
would turn away. And the thought of the Gentiles
being blessed, when our Lord spoke about that it should be
more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for
his own people. And how the Jews in Christ's
day, they rose up against our Lord for suggesting ever that
there should be blessings on these surrounding nations. They
hated the Samaritans and the idea that the Samaritans should
be blessed was another thing that they found very hard. And
you find later on, 10 years after Pentecost, when the Gospel was
first sent to the Gentiles in the case of Cornelius, that Peter
was hauled before the other apostles. Thou went in to the uncircumcised,
to the Gentiles, thou didst eat and drink with them. He rehearsed
the matter from the beginning, how the Lord was in it, how the
Lord directed him, how the Lord blessed them. But we get this
idea of even then, of how alien it was for them, the thought
that God's peculiar, special people that had been so favoured,
that God was going to leave them and bless the Gentiles, or bring
the Gentiles into that fold. And the Lord says in John 10,
that other sheep I have which are not of this fold, his meaning
of the Gentiles. And here we have Jonah, and he's
thinking ahead. If it was just going by what
the Lord says in verse two, the reason for you, Jonah, to go
and preach is because their wickedness is come up before me. That's
all you need to know. You go. You go and preach that. But Jonah, he thinks ahead. If
I'm going to preach that, then this is going to happen and that's
going to happen and they're going to be blessed. And if they're
blessed and God turns away his anger, they're going to turn
around and they're going to say, well, you're not a prophet anyway
because you said that it would be destroyed in 40 days and it
wasn't destroyed in 40 days. So the only reason that they'd
know that they'd escaped the judgment of God was by faith,
believing that Jonah's message was true, and that if they hadn't
repented, they would have been destroyed. They would have been much more
happy for Jonah to say they'd be destroyed in 40 days. In 40
days, he sees it's destroyed, and he says, well, my true prophet
of the Lord, my prophecy's come to pass, and they've been destroyed. But he thinks ahead. And maybe be very careful, and
this evening maybe, if there's any of you and the Lord has so
clearly shown you in the Word of God, the way that you are
to go, that he's shown us what we are to do. But there's something
that is countering it. And if we take the lesson from
Jonah, is what is countering it, we're running ahead. we're
thinking if we make this step of obedience then this is going
to happen and that's going to happen and we don't like where
it's going to lead to. And so rather than venturing
in faith we're going to stop because we are countering the
Lord's direction with our own thoughts and own reasons. And
so I bring this first point before you. God's reason for a command. Think of that concerning ourselves. God's reason, whatever it is.
And then what is our reason? What are we putting up to justify
ourselves, quiet our conscience, so that we go against it? So this is the first point. Disobedience. to God through the account of
Jonah. But secondly, providence. When we are walking in a path
of disobedience, sometimes providence seems to favour us in the way
that we should go. It did with Jonah here. In our text, he goes to flee
under Tartarus. I think it's 2,700 miles down
the Mediterranean, as far as he could go away. Instead of
going the 600 miles the other way to Nineveh, he was going
in the complete opposite way. Instead of going west inland,
he was going to go east as far as he could go. But he goes down
to Joppa. and he finds a ship going to
Tarshish, and he has the fare to pay for it. We can easily
read over this, but if you and I were intent on going to a certain
place, and we went down to a port, or we went to an airport, and
we happened to find that there was a ship or an aeroplane that
was going to the very place where we wanted to go, And what's more,
we could afford the fare. We could pay for that fare. We
start to think, well, we're rather justified in what we are doing. There is a place to watch providence
and to see those things working for good. But that is only when
we are walking in a way that the Lord has bid us to go in. I often say with direction, with
guidance, there's three things that must meet. And that is the
Word of God, we must be doing that which is not against the
Word of God, but what is commanded. And it must be that which is
open to us in providence, and that of which we are made willing
to walk in that way. Those three things, all line
up like the master of the Tasmanian ferry that showed me many years
ago as we went out of the heads at Melbourne from the bay into
Bass Strait. And he said, as the ship turned,
he said, now we're going to line up in the middle of the rip,
the two mile wide stretch out through into the Tasmanian Strain. And he said, you watch those
two lighthouses. He said, they will merge into
one light. And what would happen then, where
we were standing was one place. One lighthouse was another place.
The other lighthouse was the other place. And there'd come
a time when all of those three points would line up exactly. Very vivid illustration. I've never forgotten where we are. the word of God
and providence. Well here Jonah, yes, he had
his inclination, what he wanted to do, that was lining up. The
ship was there, the fair was there, that was lining up, providence
was, but God's word was not. And he very soon found that out. So dear friends, be very careful.
When you seem to have providence, in your favour, do you have the
word of God? Do you have the Lord's command
in your favour too? Well, the third point is this.
The one that was disobeying can be so asleep to the Lord's displeasure
while all around are filled with fear. And we have this. In verses five and six, the Lord
has sent this great wind out into the sea, a mighty tempest,
so the ship was like to be broken. The picture, this is not just
a rough sea. It is threatening the ship. And
these seasoned mariners, they know it. They cried every man, they were
afraid. They cried every man to, His
God cast forth the wares into the ship. And then we read this,
but Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, he lay
and was fast asleep. We can be walking a total contrary
way to the Lord, and the Lord is bringing things into our life
and into the lives of those round about us, and they are fearing,
but we are not. We're just asleep. We're oblivious
to it. We think everything's still going
all right. What a lesson we have in Jonah. How did David, how was David
feeling in all those times that months from the conception with
Bath's fever to when the child was born? Can't have been living
close to the Lord. But we don't read of any unrest
or trouble in his conscience either. How is it with us, dear friends?
Don't take just because to us everything seems calm and no
cause of alarm. You say, I don't know what my
brethren are worried about. Why are they all worried? Why
are they troubled? Why are they all concerned? The one that is disobeying is
the sleeper and the unconcerned one. But you know, and this is our
fourth point, God found him out. And in finding him out and awakening
him, the ungodly were used. Those that cried to their own
gods, but didn't know the God that made heaven and earth and
the sea, and had control of those. God used those men to go and
to awake him. What meanest thou, O sleeper?
Arise, call upon thy God. Could we ever think the Lord's
dear children, a prophet, a preacher, a minister, needs to be exhorted
to wakefulness and prayerfulness in a time that others are all
concerned and troubled and distressed. Well, Jonah tells us that is
true. If someone had told us that, we might say, I don't believe
that possible. How could that be so? How could
it be that one of God's children could get so far off like that? So prayerless, so sleepy, so
near to be stirred up by ungodly well, Jonah. And yet when he was stirred up,
when he was awakened, God was pleased to lay the matter
right and find him out. And again, it was through the
men, they said, let us cast lots. God was to be the one that discerned
the lot and made sure that Jonah was to be the one that was found
out and not another. And so when his point is so direct
to him, he can't get away from it. He can't get around it. And
here we see the first real evidence of grace to actually bow before
the Lord. They'd asked him so straightly,
why? For whose cause this evil is
upon us? What is thy occupation? Whence comest thou? What is thy
country? What people art thou? All of
these things they knew had some bearing upon the situation that
they are in. The troubles, the trials, the
things that we're in, our obedience and what we do and how we act. These things are vital to consider. What is our occupation? Where
do we come from? What is our country? What people
are we? Have we had to confess? We actually are a believer, and
I'm a preacher, and I'm a pastor, and I'm a member of this congregation,
a member of this denomination, and I believe in, as Jonah had
to say, I believe, I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which
hath made the sea and dry land. It was a mercy, it was grace
that he was brought to confess this. God brought him to really
confess it and he says in the end of verse 12, I know that
for my sake this great tempest is upon you. He's in no doubt
now. God had found him out and showed
him that he was the cause of this. And it's our mercy if we
are disobeying the Lord, if we are walking contrary to the Lord,
if we are sleepy and careless, that we are awakened in the same
way. The Lord is able to use those
that do not know the Lord at all, might even be those in authority
in the land, those that are raised up to administer the law or justice
in the land that they are even used. Here it was those that were qualified
on the sea, those that knew the sea, those that were responsible
for the ship where Jonah was. May we never pass over the blessing
of conviction of sin. How many times, dear brethren,
it may be, they've tried to get dear brethren that have been
disobeying the Lord to see that they are, to convince them of
it, and they've failed. But here, they didn't fail. God brought Jonah to bow What was to be done then? I want
to look then in the fifth place that the end of the matter is
determined by God and no amount of rowing will turn the Lord aside from
that. Now Jonah, he would fall into
the hands of the Lord. But here these mariners, they
did not want to be the cause of Jonah's death. Jonah says,
take me up in verse 12, cast me forth into the sea. We'll
come into this in a moment, but we see they want another way. They don't want to have this
man's blood upon them. So we read in verse 13, nevertheless
the men rode hard to bring it to the land, but they could not,
for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them. The Lord had a
plan, the Lord had a purpose, the Lord had his will to be done. The command that he'd given to
Jonah at the first, it wasn't done. Jonah ran away and Jonah
disobeyed, and he'd fled from the Lord. What a solemn thought
to think that we could even hide ourselves or flee from the Lord. Yet sometimes we can get so hard
that that is what we, even if we don't actually say it by our
actions, we are thinking that. But here, the outcome was not
going to be in Jonah's hand or in these mariners' hands. They
were being shepherded and directed as to exactly what the Lord had
prepared and what the Lord had planned. He knew what he would
do with disobedient, fleeing Jonah. Dear friends, if you and
I are the Lord's dear people, the Lord knows what he'll do
with us as well. And if we are walking contrary
to him, and if we are disobeying him, He knows how to deal with
us. He knows how to chasten and correct
and to bring back. And we won't be able to turn
aside his hand. You know, God said to David that
because of his sin, and this is when David, like Jonah, had
been brought to confess. He says, I have sinned. When
he sinned in the matter of adultery and murder, Nathan said that the Lord hath
also put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. But because the thing
had been so public, because it had been a cause of disrepute
in Israel, that child that was to be born, that would die. The
child that was born would die. You know, David, for a whole
week, he wouldn't eat, he lay upon the ground, He besought
the Lord for that child's life. Then the child died. And the
servants, they feared to tell the king. They said, well, if
he's done this while the child was alive, what will he do now?
We tell him he's died. But when David heard them whispering
and he perceived the child was dead, he said, is the child dead?
They said, yes. Then he rose up and he washed.
And they said, well, How is this, that when he was alive, you fasted? Why is this now, that now that
you're eating, now you're rising? And he said, because while the
child was yet alive, I said it may be that the Lord, who can
tell, that the Lord will repent. But now that he is dying, He
shall not come to me, I shall go to him. He knew there's no
reversing of that. That child was saved with the
Lord. And one day he would go to be with the Lord too. But no amount of prostrate fasting
in that case would turn. But it is right. It was right
that David would do it because there is that who can tell. And
that's exactly what later on, we won't go into it this evening,
but the Ninevites said, who can tell? Which is what brought them
to repentance. But it is subject to the will
of the Lord. And we see here when the Lord
has a purpose and a plan, that nothing is going to turn away
from that. When our Lord was going to Calvary,
And he said that they were to have swords, but when one was
used, he said, put up thy sword within its sheath. There was a purpose. Thinkest
thou not that I could pray my father, he presently give me
12 legion of angels, but how then? How then should the scriptures
be fulfilled? We sing in one of our hymns.
His purposes ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have
a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. And we see it
with Jonah here. No amount of rowing. How much
rowing are you doing? How much am I doing? How much
are we trying to turn away the purposes of the Lord? His chastening,
his dealings with us. How much are we fighting, resisting
it, refusing to bow? May we be like Jonah, who had
a different spirit, as it were. And this is my sixth point. Jonah
was like David. David, when he numbered Israel
and the Lord offered him three choices, each of them were terrible
choices as it were, but David's choice was to fall into the hands
of the Lord because he was merciful. Now, we already said in chapter
4, that Jonah knew what the Lord was like. He says, I knew that
thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness
and repentancy of the evil. Now he knew that when he says
to the mariners that they are to cast him. Take me up in verse
12 and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm
unto you. I know that for my sake this
great tempest is upon you. It is not suicide. He is casting
himself upon the Lord. And I believe that he knew of
the merciful kindness of the Lord. And we know the Lord's
end, that that had to happen. That was to be so. You know, in Psalm 107, We read
there of them going into one trial and one trouble after another,
and one is of those going down to the sea in ships, doing business
in deep waters. And we understand that too in
a spiritual way. But each time they fell down
and there was none to help, then they cried unto the Lord in their
trouble. And here Jonah, and may we be
the same. Whatever position we're found
in tonight, be resolved into this. We will stop our fighting,
our rowing, our struggling. The last place. that God had prepared
a way to escape. In verse 17, 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. What an amazing thing. Just at
the very time that Jonah was thrown into that tempestuous
sea, There is this great fish to swallow him up. And preserved alive, he's not
dead. Those mariners, I've no doubt
that they believed that he'd died. There'd be no other reason to
think otherwise. This was a miracle. It was a
wonderful provision of God. And yet it was the law. providing
a way of escape. Now the Lord in his ministry
on the earth, when they were asking of him a sign, he said,
there shall be no sign given this generation except the sign
of Jonas the prophet. Whereas Jonah was three nights
and three days in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man
be three nights, three days in the heart of the earth. That was to be a sign. The Lord
himself was three days, three nights in the heart of the earth
and then rose again from the dead. Really in these Old Testament
accounts we have the wonderful teachings of the Gospel. The
blessings of mercy to rebellious, disobedient sinners. the blessings
of the provision of a preparing God. You listen to Abraham's
word to his son going up the mountain. And Isaac says, the
fire and the wood, but where is a lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham says, my son, God
will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. And the ram
was there. right next to the altar. They
didn't see it at first. The angel pointed it out as he
stayed Abraham's hand. And there was the provision. It was when Nathan was used to
bring David to confession of his sin. And David said, I have
sinned. Nathan doesn't have to say, I'm
going to go and see what God will do. He says, It is in that way that
God can be just, and yet save rebellious sinners. That's why he can show mercy,
because it is not Jonah that died, but Christ that died. And
not Jonah that just died, but rose again. It is Christ that
rose again from the dead. And because of that, he can justly
forgive sinners, whether it be Jonah or whether it be the Ninevites. whether it be the Jews or the
Gentiles. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. If the Lord is dealing with you,
if He is dealing with me, if He is dealing in the way of chastening,
correction, bringing us to confession of sin, to fall before Him, it
is because of the mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ. These
are gospel days in which the Lord said the Son of Man came
not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And this is what
is held out and set before sinners, brought under conviction of sin
and confession of sin. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
one name given among men whereby we must be saved. There is no
other name and it is he that lived and died and rose again,
put away sin. Jonah's actions and what happened
to Jonah never put away his sin, but what the Lord Jesus did on
Calvary put away Jonah's sin. And every believer's sin, it
is the one sacrifice for sins. And these things point to that.
And we're to know that sin is a bitter and an evil thing. And God must deal with it with
his children and bring them to confess it and to forsake it
and to walk in his ways as obedient children. And then in obedience,
not just to the law, not just to what he'd have us to do in
our lives, but in the gospel obedience of baptism and the
Lord's Supper. Walking in his ways, being as
his witnesses, salt and light, go home to thy friends and tell
what great things God hath done for thee and had mercy on thee. Jonah could say that. and those
that the Lord healed and blessed when he was on earth, he charged
to do the same. May we be of those that tell
to sinners round what a dear Saviour we have found, point
to his redeeming blood and say, behold, the way to God. We have then in this first chapter
of Jonah disobedience to God and the Lord's dealing with it
and the Lord's mercy and grace and kindness. And may we truly
know this same God, for it is the same God that dealt with
Jonah as deals with all his children and the God before whom we must
stand at the last great day. May we also cast ourselves upon
his mercy and seek his grace and trust in him that lived and
died and rose again. Amen.