The Voice - The Book of Jonah

I want to begin this morning by reading you a children’s book that I came across a couple of years ago. The book gets at what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk with you about the Voice. The voice in all of us that chases us. That comes after us when we have gone astray, that seeks after us regardless of where we try to run. I want to talk to you about our God who desires to catch us and to hold on to us, no matter how hard we try to resist.

The book I am going to read to you is entitled “The Voice.” I contacted the publisher this week and was given permission to show the pages of the book on the screen so you can look up there to get a better view of the pages. “The Voice” by R.W. Metlen . . . .

You know there are countless religions throughout the world that have various understandings of who God is and how we should relate to Him. And most of those other religions give you detailed instructions on how to find God. They give you specific ways to discover God and where to interact with him whether through meditation or dancing, whatever. But Christianity is unique. You see Christianity is not a story about humans searching around existence trying to find God. Christianity is the story of a God trying to find his creation. The Bible records God’s efforts throughout time to find us and bring us back to him. In the Christian faith God is the pursuer not us. He is coming after us . . . trying to find us. He is trying to rescue us. From the time of creation, God has worked tirelessly to draw us home. Our life journeys then are lived based upon how we respond to God’s pursuit of us. Will we respond to His voice or will we run from it? And when that voice pursues us further, will we run faster and push harder, or will we finally stop and listen?

God does not want us to run from him. He does not want us to talk too much. He wants us to listen to him. Last week Pastor Bernie looked at the parable of the Prodigal Son . . . That is a story where the Father let his son leave home and pursue wild living with his inheritance . . . and then welcomed the son back with open and loving arms when he returned. Today I am going to look at the story of Jonah where the father, God, does not let Jonah go, but pursues after him until Jonah does as God asks. The story is about Jonah’s struggle to listen and respond to the voice of God.

Jonah hears the voice several times throughout the book of Jonah and he hears the voice of God in several different ways. The first time Jonah hears God’s voice it is in the traditional way we think of hearing God, in words. The Bible says that “the word of the Lord” came to him and told him to go to Nineveh and preach against it because of its wickedness. Jonah heard the voice and understood what it wanted him to do, but Jonah wasn’t a big fan of what the voice was telling him to do so he decided to run away from God. Instead of going to Nineveh, where God had asked him to go, Jonah flees towards Tarshish. Now Tarshish was about as far away from Nineveh as the ancient mind could comprehend. While Nineveh was east of where Jonah was, Tarshish was way to the west in modern Spain. That is 2500 miles in the opposite direction. Jonah did not just ignore the voice, he literally tried to go across the world to escape it.

Jonah went down to the port and boarded a ship headed towards Tarshish. But Jonah could not escape the voice and it followed after him. Now this time Jonah hears the voice of God again, but this time it is not through words, but through things that happen to him. The Voice speaks to Jonah through experiences and life circumstances. God was not pleased that Jonah ignored his voice and brought a huge storm and before you know it Jonah is overboard and fighting for his life in the raging waters.

The voice did not abandon Jonah though and sends a big fish which swallows him and rescues him from the waters. Now when we remember this story we often think that the bad part of the story is that Jonah was swallowed by a fish. But that was one of the good part of the story. It tells us that our God is a merciful God. . . that despite the fact that Jonah got himself in a dangerous predicament by fleeing from God, God still loved Jonah and had a plan for his life. No matter how odd the method, God rescued Jonah from drowning. While God did not communicate to Jonah through words here, Jonah’s life experience communicated to him a message from God. Jonah seems to get the message. In chapter two, Jonah prays to God in thanksgiving for rescuing him from the dangerous waters. Jonah says, “I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!” Jonah was grateful that God had chosen to save him despite his disobedience to God’s voice and vowed to be faithful to God. So you would think at this point that the story would end happily with Jonah living a faithful life and listening to God’s voice, but that is not quite so. And that is not how our stories usually end either. No matter how many times we learn, there is always more to learn, more room to grow.

After Jonah was spit from the mouth of the fish, God once again came in a voice to Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh and proclaim that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days for its wickedness. This time Jonah obeyed, but something unexpected happened after Jonah delivered the message. The people of Nineveh decided to repent and change their wicked ways. The people of Nineveh fasted, gave up their evil ways and violence and hoped that God would spare them from his judgment and punishment.

And sure enough when God saw their reaction and how they had turned from their evil ways, he had compassion on them and did not bring the destruction that he had threatened. But this did not make Jonah very happy at all. Jonah finally follows God’s voice and this is what happens? He told them they were going to be destroyed!! After all Jonah is a prophet and prophets are in the business of communicating God’s plans. It does not look so good when the prophet’s message is not fulfilled. People stop believing that you are really a prophet. Additionally, Jonah was not a big fan of the people of Nineveh to begin with. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire which was one of the chief enemies of Israel. Jonah did not want them to repent, but wanted them to be destroyed. Jonah understood that God’s compassion encompassed the Israelites, but he did not expect God’s so-called enemies to experience God’s compassion.

And God was still not done with Jonah. Jonah went outside of Nineveh and sat to watch if anything would happen to Nineveh. He still held out hope that it would be destroyed. He was sitting in the warm sun when God gave him a shady plant to sit under. But then the next day God provided a worm which ate the plant, and the sun began to scorch Jonah’s head until he was faint and wanted to die. Talk about a bad few days . . . God scolds Jonah by saying, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”

And that is the end of the story of Jonah. No happy ending. No super obedient Jonah praising God and thanking him for everything. Just a question from God. A voice prompting Jonah to change his perspective. A voice echoing in Jonah’s head beckoning a response . . .

I believe the story of Jonah is indicative our own spiritual journey with God. We are all on a journey to hear God’s voice and to respond to it. God used a huge storm and a big fish to get Jonah’s attention, what is he doing to get our attention? How is he talking to you right now? Are we listening? Are we truly hearing what God is saying? Are we responding?

You know part of our problem with hearing the voice of God is that we are not good listeners to begin with. We can’t even listen very well to people in front of us, so it’s no surprise that we struggle to listen to God who we can’t even see? But it’s a discipline and one worth pursuing because it is by listening that we must effectively live into God’s will.

There are 3 principles and 3 cautions that I believe God wants us to learn today about the voice. About the voice of God calling out to each of us. These are things that are illustrated in the children’s book I just read and they are things that are clearly communicated in Jonah’s journey and the journey of countless others throughout the Bible.

First, we can trust the voice. God created us. He knows every hair on our head. He knows our gifts and our shortcomings. He absolutely knows what is best for us and what will enable us to live a life of fulfillment. One of my scariest experiences as a child was learning to jump off the diving board. I remember walking to the edge of the diving board and just looking down. My instructor would be yelling at me to jump and that she would catch me. All I could do was trust that she was telling me the truth. And I just had to trust what I knew about the instructor. We have to truly believe what we know about God in order to trust his voice. In order to jump off and follow him we must believe he is good and knows what is best for us.

In Jonah’s case, the voice knew what was best for Jonah. God had something that Jonah needed to learn. Jonah needed to learn that God’s compassion was not just for Jonah’s people or at least people just like him, but that God’s mercy and compassion extended even to His once enemies. God knows what we need to learn and will guide us towards more faithful living if we listen to his voice.

Second, the voice will be intrusive. The voice will poke and prod in areas of our life where we do not want the voice to go. God knows us intimately. He can and will go where no one else can. Those dark secrets in our lives will be addressed. He knows our gifts and our shortcomings. It is easy to acknowledge the voice of God when we know we are doing things right, but we hate to hear that voice when we are acting badly or hiding sin. The voice will seek you out.

I sometimes think that the Bible should come with a warning. Beware!!! . . . Christianity may be hazardous to your ego . . . vulnerability and transparency is not easy. It reminds me of Lucy’s discussion with the Beavers in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lucy is asking about Aslan, the lion, and whether he is safe. Mr. Beaver responds, “safe, who said anything about being safe? Course he isn’t safe, but he is good.” The Voice is not always safe, but it is always good.

Think about how intrusive the voice was in Jonah’s situation. No matter how hard Jonah tried to run away, there was that voice calling to him. Hey Jonah, look at this storm. How do you like running away from me now. Do you like big fish, why don’t you live in one for a while. And then God gives him shade, then takes it away. . . can’t you just picture Jonah like the character in the story I read, just wanting to scream. . . LEAVE ME ALONE!!! We don’t want to hear the voice when we need to learn something. We don’t want to change.

But this is the nature of God’s voice. It enters deep into our souls and urges us to become more Christ-like. God’s voice pushes us to trust, to live a journey moving towards his will.

The third principle we need to learn about the voice is that the voice will not run from you. If you are feeling far from God, you are the one that has moved. God is a constant presence, he is always with us. Most of the time when we think God is not talking to us, we are just not hearing well enough. Sure we are listening to lots of noise, but we are not really hearing what God is trying to tell us. Hearing the voice of God takes time. It takes discipline to block out all of the other voices in our lives. But the voice will not leave us. If you can’t hear it, try taking your hands off your ears.

And now for the cautions about the voice. First, the voice is not intended to make you feel guilty. The voice is not intended to make you feel bad about yourself. God’s voice is there to prompt us towards better living. His goal is not guilt, but life transformation. When we feel excessive guilt we are stuck. We are obsessed with the sin and unable or unwilling to move on to correct the wrong behavior. The voice prompts us to move on, and not to wallow in despair.

Second, the voice will not always lead us down the easy path. Our path in obedience to the voice will not always be a cake walk. Sometimes the voice will lead us down paths that cause us heartache and pain. Jonah was led into stormy waters, the belly of a big fish, and to preach destruction upon a wicked city. These were clearly not easy things to endure.

Change is hard. Acting according to the will of someone else is a challenge. My mom and aunt told a story a couple of weeks ago about my brother as a young kid. Apparently he was so stubborn that he refused to ever walk in the direction that my mom wanted to lead him. So they would have to act like they wanted to go one direction and wait for him to walk the opposite direction, which was really the direction she wanted to go in the first place. You see some of us ignore the voice, because we just want to go our own direction.

The last caution is not all voices we hear are the voice of God. We have countless voices in our lives telling us what to do and who to be, but only one voice is worthy of following. So how do we know which voice is God’s? Well, first of all God’s voice will never be inconsistent with His word in the Bible. So by studying God’s word in the Bible we will better be able to discern His word as it is spoken to us. Second, we discern God’s voice through the church. The church as a community of believers functions as a support net for us. We should interpret scripture and God’s voice collectively to ensure that we are not misled. Lastly, Christian formation and maturity lead to a better ability to discern God’s voice. As we grow in our prayer life and our obedient actions, God’s word will become clearer and more readily apparent to us. We will be able to quickly recognize phony voices and push them away, opening our hearts to God’s voice.

Each of us are on a journey whether we realize it or not. A journey to respond to God’s voice. Will it represent a life running from God’s voice or will it represent a life running towards that voice. Listening to it and truly hearing it. Being guided by it. How will you respond today when you hear the voice? Where is the voice leading you this morning? When the voice says, “follow me,” will you? Will you do as the Voice asks?