God pursues His kids

Welcome to our women's Bible study on the book of Jonah. Today we're going to study the remainder of chapter 1 and just a few reminders from the introduction. Some important things for us to remember is that the book of Jonah is about God, it is about his mercy, it's about his compassion, and it is about his justice. The book of Jonah helps bring those characteristics of God into view for us so that maybe we can see them more clearly than we do at other times. In this book, God calls out to people before they reach that line of judgment. He calls out, he gives them an opportunity to respond, and that's his mercy at play. If they do respond, then his justice kicks in and holds back the judgment because they have responded to him. Remember that in this book as we're studying it, our focus goes out to the big picture and then it goes back into Jonah. It'll go out to the big picture and then it'll refocus. And as we started last week, our view was very wide. The evil of the Ninevites had come up into God's presence and he saw how close they were to the line of judgment and he wanted to tell them, you are desperately close to that place where my judgment must act. And so he called Jonah and said, would you go over and tell them? And then right now, we just pause on Nineveh. We don't even deal with them right now. The pause button on the call of compassion has been hit while God deals with his kid. And in the same way, God called Jonah, gave him an opportunity, and was waiting for his response. And already last week, we saw that Jonah's response, rather than arise and go to Nineveh, he went down to Joppa and he went down into the boat. And so that's where we start the call to Nineveh is on hold. This chapter is all about God's pursuit. One kid, one wayward kid. And so I called today's message, God Pursues His Kids. And this is a truth about God that we learn as we study this chapter. So we're in verse four. We did one through three last week. Jonah chapter one, verse four says,

Jonah had gotten himself into a downward spiral. And it started when he went down to Joppa and he went down into the boat and then he went down into the innermost parts of the boat and then he laid down. That's the final. There's nowhere else for him to go. That's the lowest he could possibly go on his own. So how did this get started? God prepared something for Jonah to do. That's what God does. God told Jonah to go somewhere and to do some thing. God did or Jonah did not want to go to that somewhere and he did not want to do that thing. And we don't know why we're not told why. Maybe he just didn't have an appetite for that particular ministry. Probably had something to do with the Assyrians themselves since they were enemies of Israel. We said that Nineveh was not a place that a good Hebrew boy would want to set foot in. And we will find out later on their one motivation is that if they truly repented and God spared judgment, now he's at odds with his own people because they were already fussing with Israel. They were already enemies. So who wants God's judgment to be spared? It's like they deserve it. So Jonah didn't want to do that thing. And you know what? The same element can happen in our lives. God calls us to do something because good works prepared in advance for us to walk in. He calls us to do some thing. Perhaps we don't have an appetite for that thing. And you know, sometimes we just don't want to do it for all sorts of reasons. Let me just give you an example. God puts on your heart to echo his character of forgiveness and forgive someone. And we're like, oh, look at the time. I have other things to do. We don't have an appetite for what God has called us to do. And so when we don't obey, that's turning from the presence of the Lord. And so we can understand how sometimes that happens to us. Rather than a rise and walk in agreement, when we turn from the presence of the Lord, we start going down. And this is actually disobedience, but we don't like to call it that. When somebody says, how are you doing today? We don't say, well, I'm disobedient today. Never. But we might say, well, I'm a little distracted. And so we create distractions for ourselves. But either way, we keep going down until our spiritual life has been lulled into sleep. That's what happens to us as well. And so then God begins to pursue us. That is his character. And when he pursues us, it's not usually sunshine and rainbows. It's usually a tempest. So let's read about what happened, how he did that with Jonah. Okay, verse 6.

So in a pagan situation like this, there's so many sailors, there's so many probably passengers, everybody had a God. And so they go around and saying, you, you, you, y'all call out to your gods. Let's see which one is going to fix this because we don't know. But maybe one of your gods is the one to control this. So everybody had to call out to their God. So look at verse 7.

And then they said to him, well, tell us on whose account this evil has come up upon us. What's your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you? And Jonah begins to answer. And he said to them, listen to what comes out of Moses. He goes, well, I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord, Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the God of all gods, who made the sea and the land. Interesting. Boy, that's a man of conviction, isn't it? And you're thinking to yourself, really? You fear this God who you are turning from? What duplicity, what double-mindedness we see in here. And when we are in a downward spiral, when we turn from the presence of the Lord, we begin a double-mindedness. We begin the same sort of duplicity. Our words are on autopilot. We say the same things we have always said. I'm a Christian. I go to Calvary Chapel. But our actions could show something completely different. And this is called double-mindedness. And it is a hallmark of people that have turned from the presence of the Lord in some way. Maybe we can even see that in our lives to degrees. Okay. The men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this that you have done? For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them. So I also wonder how that worked out. Like, I serve God, but by the way, I'm fleeing from him. He told them. Would have loved to hear those words. Verse 11.

Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not. For the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. I love that word, tempestuous. Therefore, they called out to the Lord. They, the mariners, the sailors, they called out to Jehovah. Oh Lord, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood. For you, oh Lord, have done as it pleased you. So they picked up peace dove. That's his name, right? Jonah. They picked up dove, the symbol of peace, and they threw him into the sea. What happened? Well, the sea became peaceful. There you go. That's all that has to be done.

And so as we close this chapter, we see everyone involved in the story has been introduced to something new. The mariners, the sailors, have been introduced to Jehovah. And the way I see it, they become God-fearers. They see that he actually does control the sea. That's what I get from sacrifices and making vows. They become Jehovah-fearers, God-fearers. Jonah has been introduced to the belly of the fish. And he has never been there before. And so God, the way I see it, God is gonna continue to take him down and take him further down than he could have achieved by his own means. It's like, Jonah, you got yourself down to Joppa, down to the ship, down into the ship. You laid down. You like that? I'm gonna take you down to the bottom of the sea. And so God has created a whole new reality for him. Now, what I wanna do, because I feel like Jonah chapter one is a lesson on people who have turned from the presence of the Lord. I wanna ask, what can we learn from this? What can we apply to our own lives? And how will this help us in the people that we love, the people that we are surrounded with? So I have four observations from this chapter, and I'm gonna put them on the screen for you. The first observation is, beware diversions and distractions. And this one is pointed to us. Like I said, the word disobedience is so incriminating. We don't use it. We choose softer words. I've told you guys before about the word games that I play, because I know that the Bible says no complaining. And so when I'm talking to my husband, I will say to him, I'm not complaining. I'm just explaining. Because explaining is academic. It's what teachers do. It is a noble thing to explain. But you know, I'm really complaining. And in the same way, we delude ourselves that these distractions and diversions are not disobedience. I'm just a little distracted, but you know that they are. And so it happens to us. Jonah actually sought a diversion. God calls him, says, Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh, walk on dry land eastward to Nineveh. And he's like, oh, what I really need right now is a cruise. I would like to go on a cruise. I need a little diversion. I'm gonna go west and go on a cruise. And that was his diversion. That was his distraction. And how do we become distracted from God's call? Rather than get up and do what God has given us to do, we kind of look around sometimes and look for something else to do, something to distract us, something to divert us from the call. And I'm not saying the little vacation and a little house remodel or a little side gig is turning away from the presence of the Lord. But what I put here for point number one is beware of diversions and distractions because a short-term diversion can turn into a long-term turning from the presence of the Lord. And so we need to be careful with those things, how we handle them. Second point is, observation here, is that downward momentum is difficult to stop. Newton's first law of inertia is an object in motion that tends to stay in the same motion. Jonah's first choice was his most important one. And I believe that's true in our lives. That first choice of turning the opposite way, just the idea, I'm going to Joppa to see what's going on there. That was his first choice. And once he got into that downward motion, it created a downward spiral. And if it had been arrested, and remember, he had money to do it. If it had been arrested at that first choice, we would have never gotten there. So we remember that our first choice is important. By the end of chapter one, Jonah's emotional and his spiritual condition is like a person who's checked out, right? He's laying down in the bottom of the boat. It's a little bit like being depressed. It's a lot a bit like being depressed. If you have ever been depressed in your life, even for a short season, you know this feeling of being checked out. You know the feeling of going back to bed with your clothes on. And it didn't start out of nowhere. I'm not saying every depression is a spiritual turning from the Lord, but some are. Some of them are. Some of them are imposed for other reasons. But there are some striking similarities. So we should ask, before we leave this chapter, we should ask questions. Am I on a dangerous path in any realm in my relationship with the Lord? Have I made a first choice that begins that inertia that will continue to go until it meets an object of resistance, a tempest? Will I love that tempest? No, I won't. And so is there anything right now where we see in our life, we really have turned from obeying what God has given us to do? And maybe this is our wake-up call. This is God's call of compassion to say, why don't you all just turn right now so that we don't have to go through the tempest thing? He gives us a choice to do that sometimes. So, all right, point number three observation is that we can fool ourselves and we can fool others, but only to a point. Jonah fooled everyone for a time. Nothing on his ticket said, prophet fleeing from the Lord, storm to follow. No one had any idea of what his condition was like. They didn't suspect a thing. How do we fool ourselves? Well, it's called deception. Again, we can turn from the presence of the Lord and we can convince ourselves that we have not done that. Not me. And then just like Jonah, we say all the same things we've said before, muscle memory. You know, I play piano and I don't play a lot anymore. In fact, it's shocking, I need to, but yet I can go weeks or months without playing and the muscle memory kicks in. I sit down and I can play just like I've always played. We have the same muscle memory. We say all the things we've ever said. And so we convince ourselves that our spiritual life isn't depressed. And so we fool ourselves, but God wants better for us and God pursues his kids. And he will eventually show us that, you know, where we're at. How do we fool others? Or what I wanna say is, how do others fool us? And so, you know, I never like to take a Bible study and say, well, let's put this on other people. I just wanna, you know, internalize it ourselves. But I think in this case, I do want to talk about for a little bit, people in our lives that have turned from the presence of the Lord. I'm going to call them people who are backslidden. And I didn't really even realize until yesterday morning, cause I'm reading through Jeremiah, that's a Bible word. Did you know that? Jeremiah eight says, God says, this people turned away in perpetual backsliding. I thought we made up that word, but it's a Bible word. Okay, so I wanna talk about how does this relate to people who are in that condition? People who have backslidden. So backslidden equal to turn from the presence of the Lord in this context, okay? What do we see about Jonah? Well, at first, nobody really notices because see, he's saying the same things. But then we're kind of thinking to ourselves, you know, that guy doesn't, like he's always down in the bottom. He doesn't seem to like to be up on deck in fellowship with other people. And so we begin to ask, like, why is that? And sometimes when we ask people, like, are you okay? How come you haven't been to church? This and that and the other thing. Sometimes they'll respond with like blog-esque things, like five reasons the church doesn't meet people's needs, you know, or something like that. And we kind of feel a little bit like it's our fault. Like, oh, we've done you wrong. That's why you're not. But then we begin to understand. Then the clarity comes and we go, you know what? You've turned from the presence of the Lord. Your spiritual life is asleep. And at that point, we can grab those characteristics that we see about God, compassion and mercy and say, aha, I know what I need to do. I'm not mad at you. I need to. engage. I need to pray for you. I need to understand where you're at. A lot of people, some people, think that if people act like Jonah, they're backslidden. They can only process it by saying, I don't think they were ever saved. I think this book helps us see these things happen to God's kids. Jonah was a prophet, you guys. Have you ever thought of Jonah as being backslidden? What else would you describe it? Okay. So this happens to God's kids and we can't just dismiss it and say, well, they were never saved. No, we're complex and God pursues us. So we all in this room, everybody has somebody in their life that is either beginning a downward spiral, in a downward spiral, or has completely turned from the presence of the Lord. We all have those people in our lives. And so what do we do? We ask God for his mercy. And we say, when we pray, we say, God, call their name. You have to call them. There's nothing I could do. There was not a thing one of the sailors or the captain could do to help Jonah. Not a thing. It had to be God. And so we ask God to continue to call their name, which brings us to point number four, fourth observation. God sees his kids and God pursues his kids. God often does it with a storm, not always, but God knows when his kids have gone down. And so I have a few wonderful verses I'm going to put up on the screen for you to remind us of that. I love this one. I don't think it's in the study guide. Jeremiah 23, 24 says, can a man hide himself in secret place so that I cannot see him, declares the Lord. Do I not feel heaven and earth? See, we can't hide. We can't run and hide. This is such a comfort that we, that God sees it all. And then the one that was in your study guide, Psalm 139, just want to read it. Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, don't you think this was written for Jonah? Even there, your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. God doesn't let his kids run and hide forever. God pursues them. Now, me on the other hand, I look at Jonah and I would say, well, clearly he doesn't want to do what you've told him to do. Just cut him loose. Let him go. Call somebody else. You know, I'm the checklist girl. Like, let's just get this done. Like you're talking about Nineveh, get it done. No, God will hold his whole program on pause to deal with his kids. He's done it for me. And I love that about him. So God doesn't make, let me say it this way. God can, and God does make our life uncomfortable for a purpose. Is every single thing that's uncomfortable in our life because God is bringing it to tell us something? No. Is everything that's uncomfortable in our life because Satan is fussing with us? No. We have to be discerning. We have to say, what is going on? But God knows how to get the attention of his kids. Talking about discipline, I want to bring up Hebrews 12, 5 and 6, put it on the screen.

The Lord disciplines those that he loves. So I want to wrap up here. We know that God loves his kids. God pursues his kids. It's his work. But what about the people that we love that have turned from the presence of the Lord? How would God have us to interact with them? I already admitted to you that sometimes their lives are pretty messy. And my first response in Jonah is cut them loose, call somebody else. When we see a messy life, we can be afraid to get involved sometimes. But I didn't make a slide for this, but I have four Ps for when someone that you love has turned from the presence of the Lord. Four Ps to respond. Pray, praise, persevere, but don't paddle. So you can write paddle with a line through it. So pray, praise, persevere, paddle. Okay. And let's go through those. The first one is to pray for the storm. When we have kids or we have people in our life that are clearly backslidden, we so much want to just shed love and acceptance and all of that. And I'm not saying that there's ever not a place for that. But I think that we need to pray for the storm. I often tell moms, I said, don't pray that God would bless your kids. Pray that God would make them miserable. We need, we rarely grow in the Lord through times of ease. We grow in times of difficulty. Bring it on. Let's get through this, you know, and then praise. When you see the storm, praise God for the storm. Okay. Praise God from the storm. Can we be discerning enough to see a God ordained storm in somebody's life and say to ourselves, I see what's going on. Okay. This is going to be good. This isn't going to be bad. This is going to end well. And that brings us to persevere. We need to persevere in prayer for these ones that we love. Oh, how easy it is to be inspired to start to pray and how difficult it is to persevere in prayer because we don't like messy. And sometimes God has, because of his compassion and his mercy, he has this long, long, long, long, long leash for his kids. He has so much patience and long suffering that we don't really possess. And we grow weary. God hasn't grown weary. God is persevering. God is long suffering, but we need to persevere with them. And then the last P is paddle. Don't paddle them out of the storm. And that's not paddle like spank, spank. Okay. That's paddle like row, row. Because what did we see in the story? Look at verse 13. The men rode hard to get back to dry land. Jonah said, toss me over. And they're like, oh no, I could never do that. Let's row you back to Joppa. That's where this started. Let's get you back to square one. Isn't that what we want to do? We want to fix it. And so we row really hard. And I like how Paul says we work harder on their spiritual life than they're working, right? And so resist the temptation to fix their life. Now, those of you in this room who have the gift of mercy, this kills you. This just stabs you in the heart. And you look at a situation, you say, no, no, no, I can fix this. I know I can. And you'll love me for it. Let me do this. Let me fix it. But we, we dare not take God's place. Did you know God has the gift of mercy as well? And his gift of mercy is perfectly balanced with his justice. And what did God do in this situation? He was merciful in that he used one of his creation. He created a specially designed fish to be a holding tank and contain Jonah. So you can't do that. All we can do is try and row them back. But God has what it takes to do it. So resist the temptation to do that for those in your life that are backslidden. So next week when we do chapter two, we're going to spend a little bit of time in the New Testament story of the prodigal son, because that's what we see here. And there's a lot of similarities, a lot of things we can learn, but I just want to share one thing to whet your appetite for chapter two. When the prodigal son came to his senses, like Jonah will next week, I want to read the words that it says in Luke 15 verse 18. When he came to himself, he said, I will arise and go to my father. Good choice. Just like Jonah is going to arise. And so this story is going to end. I'll come back next week for chapter two. Father, I thank you for all the things that we can learn in this and the aspects of your character that we can bring into view. Lord, we know that you are good. You are just. You are filled with mercy, filled with compassion. You have a long leash and we learn that you pursue your kids. Lord, you do not give up on us. You do not give up on those that love you. How tempting it is for us to give up or to not want to get involved in messy lives. So I pray in every life here in this room and every woman who's listening online that you speak to us as to what aspect of this you want us to put into play in our lives. What is the call you have given us, Lord? The things that maybe we have not had an appetite for that we need to be obedient and we need to honor you with what you the good works that you have prepared for us and given us to do. Lord, would you give us the wisdom to turn right now and engage in those things before the storm, Lord? And Father, we thank you that you are so gracious, so good. And we just want to say we love you. Jesus name. Amen. you