JONAH: The Prophet

Who Ran Away

Jonah 4
4 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And
he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I
said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste
to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and
merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,
and relenting from disaster. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please
take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to
live.” 4 And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
5 Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city

and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the

shade, till he should see what would become of the city.
6 Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up
over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him
from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of
the plant. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God
appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it
withered. 8 When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east
wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that
he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is
better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do
you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do
well to be angry, angry enough to die.”
10 And the LORD said, “You pity the plant, for which you
did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into
being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should not
I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more
than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand
from their left, and also much cattle?”
Fundamental Lessons in the Life of Jonah:

1. Jonah was Out of Touch with the Storms

that is Raging Outside.
2. Jonah was Out of Touch with His Message
3. The only thing Jonah is in touch with, is his
own comfort.
1. Out of Touch With the Storms that is Raging Outside
- ARISE, GO, AND CRY.

“Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of
Amittai, saying,
2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their

wickedness is come up before me.

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.”
STORMS in our LIVES:
- War
- Money
- Addiction
- Choices
- Discrimination

“JONAH branded the people of Nineveh as Immoral. Failing to

Recognize that immorality is always preceded by impiety.”
2. Out of Touch with His Message.

“He had been so close to the proclamation of God’s

Word, but never bothered to get to the heart of His
message and its implications for the world.”

Story of Gehazi:
-2nd Kings 5:20
“Gehazi had come to a point where he lived surrounded by the
truth without ever applying it in his own life.”

OUT of Touch with God’s Word.

What you think would happen if we take God’s word in our

hearts seriously and apply it in our lives?
“Why is there such constant disparagement of the mind?
Why so much appeal to the emotions? Why so little content
presupposed on which to decide?
Why all the talk of “souls” and so little talk of whole people?
Why the obvious exploitation of the testimony of the famous?
Why is it so often a case of the most simplistic the message the
most sophisticated the techniques?
Why is there the need for always being bigger and more
successful?
Why the creation of Christian “celebrities” and “one man
denominations”?
Why the unconscious manipulations or the open fraudulence in
public appeals for money or in prayer letters?
...Part of our failure to get thinking people to take the
Gospel seriously is born of a credibility gap. We claim
Christianity is true - a claim which is awesome by
contemporary standards, but then we whittle down our
claims by the patent incongruity of our practices of the
truth. The way we operate speaks louder than what we say.
Without the practice of truth, evangelism is in danger of
becoming a giant institutional mouth or as E.M. Forster
dismissed it scornfully, “poor, talkative, little Christianity!”
-Oz Guiness
C.S. Lewis wrote in his book:
“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the
existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself ... as if
the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who
were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought
to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did you never know a lover
of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the
power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for
the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from
love of the thing he tells, to love of the thing he tells it, down in Deep
Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what he says
about Him. They sink lower—become interested in their own
personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.”
3. The only thing Jonah is in touch with is
his own comfort…

“we move naturally in the direction of

our comfort, and God sometimes tells us
to get out of our comfort and move into
arenas of discomfort.”
Luke 14: 25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned
and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate
his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers
and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after
me cannot be my disciple. 33 So therefore, any one of you
who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.......
34 salt is good but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness
be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the
manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him
hear.”
“And let us run with perseverance the race
marked out for us, fixing our
eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of
faith.”
Hebrews 12: 1-2 (NIV)