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Jonah Part 1 — Stop Running

Speaker: Pastor Bisch
Text: Jonah 1

Pastor Bisch opened by reframing Jonah as far more than a children’s story about a man and a whale. The book of Jonah is not mainly about the fish. It is about a man running from God, and a God who refuses to stop pursuing him.

Jonah was a prophet, someone who heard the word of the Lord. But when God told him to go to Nineveh, Jonah went the opposite direction. He did not run because he misunderstood God. He ran because he understood God too well. He knew God was merciful, and he did not want that mercy extended to the people of Nineveh.

Bisch connected this directly to the church’s theme: “Speak, Lord, we’re listening.” Jonah’s life showed the opposite: “Speak, Lord, I’m not listening.” The challenge was clear: it is possible to hear God’s voice, know God’s will, and still refuse God’s heart.

The sermon made Jonah deeply relatable. We may not be in the belly of a fish, but we often know what God has asked of us and still choose the opposite. We know we should forgive, surrender, stop a sin, obey a prompting, or go where God is leading — yet we resist.

Bisch pointed out that Jonah “paid the fare” to flee from God. He compared this to the ways we may “pay” to avoid God’s presence today: distractions, entertainment, subscriptions, phones, news, or anything we use to run from obedience.

The storm in Jonah 1 was described not as random punishment, but as “targeted mercy.” God used the storm to expose what Jonah was running from. Jonah’s private disobedience began affecting everyone on the boat. Yet even there, God’s mercy reached not only Jonah, but the pagan sailors too. The sailors moved from fearing the storm to fearing the Lord.

Finally, Bisch explained the fish as a picture of grace. The fish was not the punishment; it was God’s provision. Jonah had not yet repented. He had not yet prayed. Still, God sent the fish. That is the gospel: while we were still sinners, God came after us.

The sermon closed with three questions:

Is there a “Nineveh of obedience” in your life that you are running from?
If you are in a storm, what might God be showing you through it?
If you have come through a storm, when was the last time you thanked God for the provision He sent?

The central message was simple and searching: stop running. God is pursuing your heart, not to destroy you, but to restore you and send you into what He has called you to do.

Here are the scriptures quoted or clearly alluded to in the transcript:

Jonah 1 — Read aloud almost verbatim (the whole chapter 1 is read)
Jonah (sign of Jonah / three days in the belly) — alluded to as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection (referenced when connecting Jonah’s three days to Jesus)
Matthew 12:39–40 (allusion) — the preacher refers to “the sign of Jonah” (Jesus’ own reference to Jonah’s three days and nights) when linking Jonah to Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Romans 5:8 (allusion) — “while we were still sinners” / God reaches out in mercy (sermon cites the idea that God saves while we are still sinners).
Romans 10:9 (quoted/paraphrased) — “if we confess with our mouths and believe in our heart… we will be saved” (the altar prayer language is taken from this verse).
2 Kings 14:25 (allusion) — brief mention that Jonah is referred to in 2 Kings (background comment).
General Old Testament prophetic language — “the word of the Lord came to Jonah” (prophetic formula used throughout the OT; the sermon highlights that phrasing while reading Jonah 1)

Bisch gave four main challenges:

Ask yourself if you have a “Nineveh of obedience” — something God has called you to, but you are running from or refusing.
If you are in a storm, look for what God may be showing you — not just asking why it is happening, but what God may be exposing or shaping.
If you have come through a storm, thank God for the “fish” He sent — the provision, people, Scripture, conviction, or mercy that carried you through.
Have you/do you pay money to go in the opposite direction?

Laurence Input>

Ask yourself if you have a “Nineveh of obedience”

this is a private thing
my personal Nineveh
brainstorm > forgiving others, answering yes to God’s call to leadership, personal health (diabetes, weight management, physical fitness)

If you are in a storm, look for what God may be showing you.

Why am I experiencing this hardship?

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?

Hebrews 12:7 NIV

What Hebrews 12:7 says, and what it doesn’t say.

“God did this to you to teach you a lesson.” discuss…
God is in control,
Ephesians 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will… ESV
Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ESV

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Deuteronomy 29:29 ESV

we need to be discerning about the narritives in our head
Pastor Jay, “God didn’t push me off that ladder.”

If you have come through a storm, thank God for the “fish” He sent

Have you/do you pay money to go in the opposite direction?

Bisch pointed out that Jonah didn’t merely drift away from God’s will. He actively paid money to go in the opposite direction:

“He paid the fare… he went over and above to escape the presence of the Lord.”

He then applied that to modern life by saying that we sometimes do the same thing. We spend money, time, and attention on things that help us avoid what God is calling us to.

“We literally physically pay to escape from the presence of the Lord.”

A cruise ship ticket
A Netflix subscription
A phone subscription
News subscriptions
Other forms of entertainment and distraction

What others are there?

reels
the pub
?

His point was not that these things are sinful in themselves. Rather, he was asking, What are we investing in that helps us avoid obedience?

Earlier he used another illustration:
“If God calls you to Calgary, and you say, ‘Nope, I’m booking a ticket to Hawaii.'”
His point there was that Jonah didn’t merely hesitate. God said “go east,” and Jonah intentionally bought passage to go west.

Likewise, God may call us toward forgiveness, reconciliation, service, generosity, repentance, or some specific act of obedience, and we can end up putting our resources behind an entirely different direction.

That’s why he emphasized the phrase:
“Speak, Lord, we’re listening” versus “Speak, Lord, I’m not listening.”
In Bisch’s telling, the ticket wasn’t really about travel. It was a picture of the ways we sometimes finance, justify, and reinforce our own escape routes when God is calling us somewhere we’d rather not go.

Laurence

In my experience, the kingdom I’m building is at very least vulnerable, and at best not funded by God.

Bisch’s picture of buying a ticket to Tarshish can be placed alongside Paul’s picture in 1 Corinthians 3:12–15. Paul writes that believers build on the foundation of Christ with various materials:

Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw.

Then comes the testing:

“Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire…” (1 Cor. 3:13)

And then:

“If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (v.15)

What strikes me is that neither passage is primarily about losing salvation.

In Jonah, God pursues Jonah despite his disobedience.

In Corinthians, the builder is still saved even when his work is burned away.

The tragedy in both cases is not damnation but wasted opportunity.

Jonah eventually goes to Nineveh, but imagine the detour:

the fare paid,
the storm,
the terror,
the fish,
the suffering of the sailors.

All of that before he finally does what God asked him to do in the first place.

Likewise, Paul seems to envision a believer standing before Christ and discovering that much of what occupied his energy, attention, ambition, and labor had no lasting kingdom value. The person is saved, but the work is gone.

There is a sobering question hidden in both passages:

How much of my life is gold, and how much is just expensive straw?

Or in Bisch’s language:

How many tickets to Tarshish have I purchased?

Not necessarily sinful things. That’s what makes it uncomfortable.

Jonah’s ship ticket wasn’t a ticket to a brothel or a pagan temple. It was simply transportation in the wrong direction.

Many of the things that become “wood, hay, and stubble” are not evil things. They are simply things that consumed our time, money, strength, and attention while God was calling us elsewhere.

As I think about my own situation, I see echoes of things I’ve wrestled with this year:

waiting on Sarah and Clinton,
caring for Andrew,
encouraging Nicholas,
serving in the co-op,
driving the bus,
writing and preserving stories,
sitting on the porch, metaphorically speaking, waiting for prodigals.

Those are not flashy things. They may not even feel productive some days.

Yet Paul might say those are precisely the kinds of things that often survive the fire because they are rooted in love, faithfulness, obedience, and service rather than self-promotion.

The image that comes to mind is this:

Jonah spent money to go to Tarshish.

The sailors threw cargo overboard to survive the storm.

One way or another, the cargo was lost.

The question is whether we voluntarily lay things down in obedience, or whether circumstances eventually force us to discover they couldn’t be carried into God’s purposes anyway.

My Testimony

A Personal Reflection: My Own Jonah Story

As Pastor Bisch spoke about Jonah running from God, I found myself thinking about seasons in my own life.

There were times when I sensed the Holy Spirit prompting me in one direction, but I chose another. Some of those choices were deliberate. Others were more passive. Sometimes I feared people’s opinions more than I trusted God’s leading.

As a young man, I found myself in a relationship that moved in directions I had not wanted it to go. Looking back, I can see places where I surrendered convictions I had once held. At Bible college there were also moments when I sensed God prompting me to speak, and I refused. Eventually, in an effort to quiet those promptings, I stopped praying and stopped reading my Bible.

When I look back now, I sometimes think of Samson after his eyes were put out—blind, wondering how he got there, wondering what might have been different if he had listened sooner.

There have been seasons when I have wondered about the things that were lost. I have wondered about opportunities missed, relationships affected, and years that seemed to end in disappointment and regret. Like Paul’s image in 1 Corinthians, some things feel as though they were burned away in the fire.

Yet as I have reflected on Jonah, Samson, and my own story, I have come to see something else.

God’s mercy did not end when Jonah boarded the ship.

God’s mercy did not end when Samson lost his sight.

And God’s mercy did not end when I made mistakes.

One thought has stayed with me:

What if the greatest loss would be spending the years I have left staring backward into the smoke, trying to calculate exactly what burned, instead of noticing that God is still putting work into my hands today?

I do not know what might have happened if I had made different choices. Those things belong to God.

What I do know is that God was still pursuing Jonah. God was still working in Samson. And God was not finished with me either.

Today I find myself less interested in calculating what was lost and more interested in asking:

Where is God calling me now?

What Nineveh might I still be avoiding?

What work has He placed in my hands today?

Perhaps those are questions worth asking together.