RUNNING AWAY

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.
In Christ, Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

But 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.

Jonah 1:1-3

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Today, we start to look at the Book of Jonah, a fascinating account of a man who I think we’ll all be able to relate to in many ways. It’s an account many believers are familiar with but my prayer is that the Lord will speak to our hearts in new ways as we look into these five chapters over the next week.

Let’s begin by looking at the first three verses which set the stage for all the events that follow. Look again at these words here:

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

But 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.  Jonah 1:1-3

The first thing we need to note is that the word of the Lord came to Jonah. This was indicative of someone receiving guidance from God to do something such as prophet being called to deliver a message, something we see true with Jonah who was told to go to the “great city of Nineveh” to “preach against it” as “its wickedness” had “come up before” the Lord.

Before we go much further, we need to learn a little more about Jonah and where he was situated relative to where God was calling him to go. This information isn’t found in the opening verses but elsewhere in the Old Testament (Did you know that Jonah was mentioned outside of the book that bears his name?).

We need to first look at the Book of 2 Kings, Chapter 14 where we find the following:

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah, son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah, son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher. 2 Kings 14:23-25

So we know that Jonah was indeed a prophet and his hometown was Gath Hepher, a town just to the west of the Sea of Galilee. This made Jonah a Galilean, a heritage Jesus would share when He came later.

Further, we find Jonah’s connection to the twelve tribes of Israel through these words from the Book of Joshua as Canaan, God’s Promised Land to His people, was apportioned among the tribes:

The third lot came up for Zebulun according to its clans:

The boundary of their inheritance went as far as Sarid. Going west it ran to Maralah, touched Dabbesheth, and extended to the ravine near Jokneam. It turned east from Sarid toward the sunrise to the territory of Kisloth Tabor and went on to Daberath and up to Japhia. Then it continued eastward to Gath Hepher and Eth Kazin; it came out at Rimmon and turned toward Neah. There the boundary went around on the north to Hannathon and ended at the Valley of Iphtah El. Included were Kattath, Nahalal, Shimron, Idalah and Bethlehem. There were twelve towns and their villages.

These towns and their villages were the inheritance of Zebulun, according to its clans. Joshua 19:13-16

So Jonah lived in Galilee in the town of Gath Hepher which had been given to the tribe of Zebulun. This we know as fact from the scriptures.

With this as a guide, let’s now look at where Jonah lives in relation to where God was telling him to go.

If you were going to travel in a straight line from Gath Hepher to Nineveh, the distance would be more than 500 miles to the northeast and you would have to leave Israel in the process and go through Assyria as Nineveh was the Assyrian capitol. It would be quite a journey if Jonah had taken it but he didn’t.

Instead, he ran away from what God was calling him to do.

For although Jonah was supposed to head northeast to Nineveh, he chose instead to go nearly due south to the port of Joppa (a place just south of modern day Tel Aviv if you need a reference point). There, Jonah paid a fare and hopped on a ship bound for Tarshish, a port on the southern coast of Spain, some 2,500 miles west of Joppa.

Jonah wasn’t just trying to run away a small distance from the Lord. He was trying to get far away!

Unfortunately, Jonah would soon learn that there is no ship fast enough to sail away from the Lord. More on that in future devotions but let’s now discuss what is really going on here because at the heart of these opening three verses is the sin of blatant disobedience, plain and simple.

God told Jonah to do something. In turn, Jonah decided to do his own thing, attempting to flee from what God commanded him to do. Maybe his decision was because he was afraid of what might happen to him if he approached the leadership of a powerful and great nation within its capitol and brought words which would probably not be received well. It would be possible that they could even choose to kill the messenger. There were probably many reasons Jonah came up with to talk himself out of carrying out the Lord’s will. Unfortunately, none of the reasons would suffice as adequate.

For God will never send His people to anything that He isn’t going to bring them through. It was true in the days of Jonah and it’s still true today.  

This brings me to the questions of the day:

How often are we just like this?

How many times has God been calling us to do things and we decided to ignore Him, even trying to distance ourselves from Him as Jonah tried to embarking on that ship out of Joppa?

Perhaps in Jonah, we see more of ourselves than we would ever want to admit.

As we will see as this story plays out, Jonah made a bad call in not obeying what God called him to do. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past and do what he did. Let’s uncompromisingly follow the will and way of the Lord in all we do to include carrying out any tasks He gives us. Let’s promise the Lord He will never see us running away from Him but rather running to Him with every day He blesses us with.  

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com