When You Run from God

It has been a long time. I should do better now at making entries. Barb and I have moved to Stanzel, Iowa where I am the new pastor of Bethel Baptist Church. The church and parsonage sit on a quiet thirty acre estate with a private lake on the property just down the hill from the parsonage. There are often geese on the lake and there is great fishing. The lake has lots of Bass, Carp, and Hybrid Bluegill. Deer are often seen running through our yard. It is a great setting. But now let's begin to look at Jonah.

Isaiah wrote, “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (53:6). The message is true. Every one of us has at some time and in some way run away from God. We have rebelled and tried to hide from God. Yet, though undeserved, God laid the punishment we deserved upon Jesus. Jesus died on the cross in our place to bring us forgiveness and reconciliation to God.

Still, so many continue to run and try to hide from God. Like the prophet Jonah, we do not want to do as God directs us, but instead we flee from God and hide. The story goes something like this: God told Jonah to “arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me” (1:2). Instead, Jonah fled “from the presence of the Lord” (v. 3) and ran away from God and all that God wanted him to do. He boarded a ship and headed for Tarshish. He even went to the lowest part of the ship thinking that God could not find him there, and fell asleep. His conscience was so seared that he slept right through a great storm that rocked the boat and threaten to sink it along with all aboard (vs. 4-5).

The Scripture tells us that the sailors did not know the true God, so they cried out in fear to various false gods and they threw the cargo overboard “to lighten the load” (v. 5). As the storm continued, they discovered that perhaps Jonah could enlighten them as to the nature of the problem (vs. 7-8). Jonah confessed that His God was the true God, the maker of “the sea and the dry land” (v. 9), and that he was running “from the presence of the Lord” (v. 10). Jonah told them to “throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me” (v. 12). They tried not to do it, but in the end they gave in and threw Jonah overboard, and indeed the sea became calm again (v. 15).

The end result for these sailors was a new found faith in the true God (v. 16). For Jonah, however, it was three days and three nights in the belly of a “great fish” which had swallowed him (v. 17). The lesson learned from Jonah is that it does not pay to run and hide from God. He will find you and He will discipline you in whatever way necessary to secure your repentance and bring you back to Him.

How many times and in how many ways do we try to run from God or to hide from Him? We don’t attend church because we “have better things to do.” We avoid certain people because they remind us of the Lord, or perhaps even talk to us about God. We see the pastor or a deacon coming and, because we haven’t been in church lately, we turn and go the other way. We avoid God and hide from Him in any way we can. We simply turn and flee “from the presence of the Lord” (v. 3) in hopes that He won’t find us.

Psalm 139:7-12 tells us clearly that there is no place we can go where God will not find us. As He did with Jonah, He may bring hardship into our lives in some way because we are running from Him. The purpose is to bring you to repentance and to bring you back to Him. Let God into your life and follow Him. That is what Jonah learned and we should learn it too. Amen.