Jonah

Jonah: In Over His Head

May 26, 2021 by David Noland Leave a Comment

And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Then 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.
Jonah 1:7-10

Inevitably, any time you willingly hide from God in the midst of your self-induced circumstances, you will find yourself in over your head. There is no hiding from the One who can see deep into the recesses of your heart and mind. The Father will always pursue His wayward child in an effort to get his attention, but He will not force His will upon us. However, He will allow the consequences of your sin to exact its payment in kind. And sometimes, even in the midst of your rebellion, God will still get the attention of those observing from the sidelines.

In the fall of 1994, I actively watched my life begin a downward spiral of circumstances that were completely within my control, but I was too immature to recognize what I was doing until two years later I was a college dropout, three credit hours short of a Bachelor’s degree, and living in a city where I knew nobody. Situations in my life were spiraling out of control as I was building a life that was built upon one lie after another until I was in over my head. I became angry with my acquaintances, my friends, myself, and ultimately with God Himself. So I ran.

For two years I lived in a small apartment on the southside of San Antonio, scraping by from paycheck to paycheck. I crawled into a bottle and pretty much stayed there for a good long while. I took advantage of the very few friends I had. I was the definition of a prodigal – wasting my life knowing I was the child of the King of the Universe, but refusing to live as the Prince He desired, instead preferring to sleep in the pigpen of squalor and sin.

I would often find myself telling people, “Yeah, I’m a Christian, but I have no use for God.” I still had my Christian books on my bookshelf whenever acquaintances would visit. People would ask me about them and I would be dismissive because I was more interested in having a good time instead of being a good man.

When you allow sin to take over your life and you try to hide from God, it will always catch up with you and people will see because it will not only affect you, but it will affect those around you. My behavior during that time period would frequently put my job in jeopardy. I would find myself ostracizing my “friends” and being argumentative with them about everything. I rarely would allow myself to actually get close to anyone, even those who truly wanted to get to know me. The storm of anger became my driving force and the destruction it left in its wake is more than I have ever been able to recover, or ever will, and much of which I would prefer not to revisit.

Broken relationships. Estranged friendships. Less than edifying entanglements with people I had no business being involved with. All of which encouraged the continued descent into the inebriated black hole I found myself in. And it wasn’t long before all fingers pointed to me.

And the same was with Jonah. “So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.” (Jonah 1:7) As the storm raged around the mariners, they called upon their own pagan methods of trying to determine why the storm was so heavy upon them and what they were supposed to do in order to survive. So they took a gamble and rolled the dice, and the lot fell to Jonah. The one who had already admitted he was hiding from God. And Jonah was sober enough to acknowledge that it was his own sin that put the group in that situation.

And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
Jonah 1:9

The mariners themselves were likely beholden to a pagan god of the sea of that day, as their belief was that they must pay homage to the one who makes their livelihoods possible. Even in the midst of his rebellion, Jonah acknowledged that he “feared the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” His words spoke to the heart of their false belief. It wasn’t a pagan god that was causing the storm, but it was the Creator of the sea AND the dry land that was causing the storm in order to get Jonah’s attention, and perhaps the attention of the sailors as well.

Man Overboard

About a year and a half into my time in San Antonio, life began to get darker and darker. My few friends began to abandon me. The timeline of events that happened in my life over that time are somewhat jumbled by my perpetually drunken state. But I do recall finally waking up one day after a night of binge drinking, passed out and not knowing how I got where I was. I was a man overboard

Then came the crusade. In April 1997, Billy Graham brought his evangelistic crusade to San Antonio. While I did not attend, the impact of his presence in town was surely felt. A series of co-workers began witnessing to me in the midst of that week in ways that were quite jarring. A Messianic Jewish lady would have her prayer time during my lunch time. The next day, a Pentacostal gentleman would hand me a small 2 x 3 inch card with a Scripture verse on it. The next day, another Pentacostal lady gave me a ride to the bus stop. Still the next day, a Lutheran student would give me a ride to the bus and challenge me to “not forsake the assembly.” (Hebrews 10:25) By the end of the week, another young lady would sit beside me and share with me her materials that she was using to serve during the crusade as a counselor.

By the end of that week, I was floored. I was drowning in my own sin and God was screaming at me to get my attention. That evening, I picked up the phone and arranged for a pickup to a local Baptist church around the corner from my apartment and that Sunday morning, every song and every word spoken was as if God was speaking directly to me. The sermon passage – the parable of the Prodigal Son. The final invitational hymn – Lord, I’m Coming Home.

Over the Moon

I found myself that day weeping on the back row of the church as God’s Spirit washed over me. To this day, I don’t understand it so much as I embrace that experience of God wrapping me in His grace. Weeks later, an older lady who was sitting on that same row would remark that she could see that God was “all over” me. It was an amazing experience to be able to survive the reckless life I was living in order to embrace the grace of God again. And that lovely young lady that shared her materials with me at work would later become by beautiful bride, who still stands by my side to this day.

Not everyone is so lucky. Some continue in their sin and rebellion only to continue to dig the hole deeper and deeper, their hearts hardening more and more with each passing moment. And it is heartbreaking when you see others following in the same path you walked and refusing to learn from the lesson of your own failure. As long as the storm is raging and your ship is afloat, it’s not too late. As long as you are breathing, you can still cry out to the Lord for grace. Even when your life throws you overboard, there is still hope.

Jonah: The Coming Storm

May 25, 2021 by David Noland Leave a Comment

But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”
Jonah 1:4-6

Many folks may know my personal story, but few know the full details. It’s not a matter of hiding details from public view, but it is a matter of timeliness and discretion depending on the situation whether it warrants the revelation of greater detail. I’ve never been one to shy away from telling my story of how I came to experience the grace of God, but I have often tempered the drama behind the story in an effort to draw attention to the saving power of Jesus to redeem a wayward soul.

In May 1990, I graduated high school with honors and was preparing to enjoy my last “summer of freedom” before heading off to college in the fall. I had gone to the small town of Amite, LA to interview for my first job in grocery at the local Winn-Dixie. After a successful interview, I was due in Greensburg to pick up my mother so that she could take me home and retrieve the car, a maroon 1980s model Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – a big boat of a car that could be difficult to control if you aren’t careful.

Seeing that I had plenty of time before I was due to pick up my mother, I decided I was going to go visit a close friend of mine from school who lived in the area where I was. So I turned off of the main route down a lesser known road that I had only traveled on one time before, and then from the opposite direction. Being young and reckless, I decided to try to make haste and get to my friend’s house quickly and then make up time to get to the courthouse where my mother worked at the time. On the radio, Amy Grant’s “Angels Watching Over Me” was playing, and at the time I didn’t realize how important that song would soon become.

As I entered into a sharp right handed curve, the weight of the heavy car and my higher than normal speed carried me over the center line of the highway. I immediately noticed another car coming in my direction and instinctively I tried to make it to the ditch to avoid a collision. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the ditch in time. The other vehicle hit my car near the front passenger side fender and my heavy vehicle turned over in the ditch.

I crawled out of the car and flagged down a passing car and some electrical workers that were working nearby to contact emergency personnel. The horrifying scene of the car that I had hit would haunt me for years to come. In fact, I still occasionally have nightmares about that experience and find myself slowing down more than I probably should when traveling into sharp right curves – 31 years later. After emergency personnel arrived, I was driven to the local hospital and treated for minor injuries, including some cuts and scrapes and a swollen black eye. For several years, there was a splinter of glass that remained stuck in the edge of the septum of my nose until it finally worked it way out over a decade later.

That afternoon, I received word the passenger of the other vehicle had died and her elderly mother who was driving was seriously injured. In that moment, I finally realized the depths of my arrogance and my sin. Here I was a smart, “good” kid now guilty of taking the life of another human being as a result of my own negligence. My aunt came by and visited with me and delivered the news and together we prayed for grace and forgiveness.

When my father arrived home from work, I watched from my window as mom went out to tell him what had happened and where things stood now. I saw as he threw up his hands in anguish and then turned and leaned on the hood of his old red and white Chevy S-10 pickup. At first, I thought he was angry with me, but I soon discovered he was upset about the situation but more worried about me and the shape I was in. To this day, I don’t think he knows that I was watching out that window.

Up to that point in my life, I had always known about Jesus and the grace of God, but I never really experienced. That fact that I should have been dead from that accident was enough to get my attention to lean on the grace of God for my eternal salvation. It did not mean that I would escape the consequences of that day. I did end up going through a legal process of determining whether or not I would be brought to trial for charges related to the accident and death and injuries of the occupants of the other vehicle.

Over the next 20 years or so, I would experience nightmares almost nightly. Some would say it was a form of PTSD. I became sensitive about my own driving and any criticisms of it as I would find myself being over cautious about how I drive in order to ensure that wouldn’t happen again. Yes, I have had a couple of other minor incidents since then, but none that resulted in any injuries. However, the single most important thing that came out of that whole experience was to learn of the depths of the love of my father and the breadth of the grace of my Heavenly Father.

Consequences Follow Choices

Just as Jonah decided to disobey God’s direct command and travel in the wrong direction from his intended goal, I was traveling on a road that was leading to disaster, both literal and figurative. “But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.” (Jonah 1:4) I was not only traveling down a road I had no business being on, but my life was also traveling down a dead end street of pride and arrogance. I had always been a bit of a loud mouth in my youth and that got me in more trouble with my peers than I care to admit. I even had a joking word for it: OPIS (Oral Pedal Insertion Syndrome, otherwise known as “Foot in Mouth Disease”).

I was slowly drifting away from the “faith” of my childhood and preparing to launch into college on my own terms. Had that accident not occurred, I think the next few years of my life might have turned out differently, and not for the better. It took God using a disastrous situation of my own making to get my attention and draw me to Him. In the case of Jonah, God created the storm on the sea to get his attention and try to get him back on the right path to obedience.

Consequences Impact Others

Just as the consequences of my own recklessness that day impacted another family in our community, Jonah’s actions directly impacted a ship full of sailors.

Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.
Jonah 1:5

The storm that arose was so violent that experienced sailors were afraid for their lives. In order to save themselves, they began throwing their precious cargo – the source of their livelihoods and sustenance – overboard. People respond to the circumstances that occur around them, especially when it directly impacts their lives and livelihoods. If your actions threaten another’s career, they will naturally respond in whatever way necessary to save themselves, even if they don’t see the cause for the danger. But if your response is to hide in the middle of the storm and close your eyes to what is raging around you, I can assure you they will let you know.

Consequences Invite Response

The pagan captain of the ship that Jonah was on woke him from his slumber and for all intents and purposes was dumbfounded as to why he would be sleeping in the midst of such violence raging around them:

So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”
Jonah 1:6

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WHY ARE YOU ASLEEP?! WAKE UP?! The world is burning and you don’t seem to care. For all we know, you’re the one who lit the match that started the fire. Call out to your god and stop this madness!

When your world is falling apart around you, how do you respond? Do you close your eyes and hope it just fades away? Or do you cry out to the One that can save you in the midst of your turmoil?

Do you run and hide in the bowels of existence to avoid the pain? Do you turn to the bottle? Addictions to self medicate? Entertainments to avoid reality? Playing games to avoid human connection? Hiding away in the basement thinking God can’t find you?

Whatever life brings your way, whatever situation you find yourself in – whether by your own hand or the hands of those around you – there is peace available in the midst of the storm. Peace is not found in hiding from the one who can still the storm. Peace is not found in closing your eyes to the reality of what is occurring around you. Peace is only found in the realization of our state of disobedience and our repentance before our Holy God. Then and only then will you ever hope to know peace in the midst of the storm.

Jonah – The Reluctant Prophet

May 24, 2021 by David Noland Leave a Comment

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.
Jonah 1:1-3

As a child I grew up struggling with a hearing deficiency. I would often hear sounds that seemed to me that my parents were calling me from another room. At other times, my parents would send me to get something and I would come back with something other than what they had requested. It wasn’t until I was until I was around 10-11 years old that I was diagnosed with auditory nerve damage. It was almost 30 years later that a doctor was able to start giving me insight into why I was experience the loss of the miracle of sound as he theorized the cause as high fevers from childhood maladies of mumps and chicken pox – both contracted at an earlier age = combined with the systemic shock of bee venom after getting stuck in a beehive at the age of 9.

I received my first set of hearing aids in my late 20s, but a year later they were unfortunately damaged as I neglected to remove them while on a water ride at a local amusement park. I still remember the first sensations of overwhelming loudness as I got used to this new experience of sounds that I had never heard before. When I got home from the audiologist, I went to the kitchen to pour myself a soda and as soon as the cola hit the glass, I heard this awful static that seemed to me as if my hearing aids were defective. It was the first time I could remember hearing a soda fizz.

Over the years, I have had to get used to wearing the hearing aids and retraining my brain on how to hear and listen so that sounds were not so overwhelming to me. Doors that once seemed to close quietly now banged loudly. I could now turn the television down to hear it at a normal level. And the beautiful thing is that if there were sounds I didn’t want to hear but couldn’t control, I could just turn the volume on my hearing aids down or off completely. For once I began to have a sense of control of my senses.

Sometimes, however, I would find myself willfully choosing to ignore the sounds around me, and this often would lead to strained relationships. I would learn to tune out “nagging” or complaints. I would walk away from conversations and plead ignorance because I didn’t want to be bothered. Not only did I learn the new experience of the miracle of sound, I learned how to manipulate that experience into a world of my own design at my own beck and call.

In the same way, the prophet Jonah whose ears were tuned to the hear the word of the Lord, learned how to shape his world by disobeying what God had told him to do – an act of disobedience that led to near disaster for a group of innocent mariners.

The Coming Word of the Lord

“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai…” 109 times in the Old Testament the phrase “the word of the Lord came” appears. Three Hebrew words – dāḇār Yᵊhōvâ hāyâ. Beginning in Genesis 15:1 with Abram going through to Ezekiel 7:1. In every instance, it demonstrates the active nature of God’s command. Interestingly, not one time does the Bible ever say “The word of the Lord left”. God’s word is always coming; it’s never leaving. And its coming always demands an obedient response.

Every time the phrase “the word of the Lord” appears in the Scriptures, God is always getting ready to do something to draw His people to Himself. Either through the establishment of a covenant with His chosen people, a call to repentance, or an edict of judgement, the word of the Lord is always an exercise of God’s initiative to exercise His sovereignty and exclaim His righteousness and extol His love for His children.

The Commission of the Lord

The message the God had for Jonah was simple: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” Get up. Go out. Give warning. It’s really that simple. Nineveh in the time of Jonah was a large trading port on the Tigris River north of Babylon in what is now the eastern half of Mosul in Iraq. Nineveh was founded by Nimrod (Genesis 10:9-11) and it was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the largest city in the world at the time, developed under the leadership of Sennacherib.

Nineveh was also known as a religious center for the worship of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, likely similar to the Babylonian goddess Asherah. Ishtar was a goddess of love and war demonstrating the contradictions of idolatry similar to the attribution of wisdom and war to the goddess Athena in Greek culture. Archeologically speaking, Ishtar is likely the oldest known pagan god of the Ancient Near East and she appears prominently within the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Much has been speculated about the religious practices of the cult of Ishtar, but it is known that there were elements of ritualistic marriage and ritualistic sexual practices and temple prostitution as commonplace.

It is likely that this paganistic idolatry is what God was referring to when He mentions “their evil has come up before me.” Additionally, the Assyrians were famous for unusual cruel and appallingly creative methods of torturing their enemies. They invented the art of impalement, flaying, and amputations as tools of warfare. They would intentionally advertise their brutality as an element of psychological warfare, and it wasn’t just boasting – they delivered on their promises.

Eventually, the Assyrians were conquered by the Medo-Babylonian Empire under the leadership of King Cyaxares in 609 BC, about 140 years after the events of the book of Jonah (between 780-746 BC).

The Cowardice of the Prophet

Instead of being obedient what Jonah knew to be the call of God, he “rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” Jonah, corrupted by his own conflicting prejudice and knowledge of the nature of God, chose not to deliver the message of judgement against Nineveh and in fact fled in the opposite direction. In fact, Tarshish is as far away from Nineveh and Israel as you could get in the known world of the Mediterranean as it was a province in the south of modern day Spain, beyond Gibraltar.

Assyria, as we have already discussed, was known for their religious paganism, immoral sexual practices, and flagrant cruelty. It was a cruelty that would be visited upon Israel by Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V (1 Chronicles 5:26) around 740 BC. Sennachareb completed the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel around 701 BC.

The Assyrians then attached Judah and lay siege to Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:13-17). The Assyrian seige of Israel was prophesied by Isaiah (Isaiah 8:9, 10) as a result of the sin of King Ahaz paying tribute to the foreign king Sennacherib. Eventually, the Assyrian siege, largely in part due to a Babylonian revolt in the east, but primarily due to God’s preservation and mercy over Israel, ended with Jerusalem preserved.

Given Assyria’s reputation for religious idolatry, moral depravity, and inhumane cruelty, it’s no wonder that Jonah harbored prejudice against the Assyrians of Nineveh. On top of the constant attacks upon Israel and Judah, the nationalistic pride of Jonah was also apparent and surfaced in the form of animosity and a desire to see Nineveh be destroyed.

However, many times God will call us to lay aside our prejudices and pride in order to bring about repentance and fulfillment of His objectives. Obedience to the word of the LORD is not optional; it’s imperative. It doesn’t matter what our history is. It doesn’t matter what our preconceived notions about the nature of God is. It doesn’t matter what we feel that our enemies deserve. What God’s word demands is that we speak His truth. That we speak judgement to sin, and grace in the face of repentance. As we will soon discover, grace isn’t always permanent, just as repentance isn’t always permanent. Eventually, Nineveh was destroyed by the Babylonians. But there was a brief time of reprieve, and a brief period of mercy for Israel as well. But it is not for us to decide what God’s word demands. It is for us to choose to be obedient to His commands.

Seek peace with your adversaries. Love those who hold different points of view than you. Get past the hurts of the past and move forward to the healing of the future. Even if that healing is only temporary, you are still responsible for your response to the word of the Lord as it comes to you.